Of Sinking Ships and Collapsing Societies

The passengers, led by an able crew and a wise Captain, set sail and ride the ocean waves, hoping to arrive at a safe port in a new, perhaps more exotic location. Before they can sip their cocktails or start their new life, they must brave the ocean’s swell, pass the time and perhaps fend off some pirates.

Most of the time, it works out well enough but sometimes – quickly, chaotically – ships sink into the ocean, full of death and destruction.

The unsinkable Titanic, for example – the greatest, most magnificent cruise liner of all time – sank just two hours and forty minutes after she struck the iceberg, along with her wise Captain, the majority of her able crew and 1500 or so passengers.

More recently, the MS Estonia – a Baltic Sea ferry en route from Estonia to Sweden in 1994 – wasted much less time. From the time the ship started leaning a bit further over than she normally did in those cold, rough September seas until the time she too disappeared underneath them, no more than forty minutes passed.

The wise Captain of the Estonia, her able crew and the 852 soon-to-drown passengers trying to reach Stockholm did not have much time at all to do anything about their problem by the time they had realised something, somewhere had gone very badly wrong.

For the few that were later rescued, survival was a horrific affair:

“Survival that night was a very tight race, and savagely simple. People who started early and moved fast had some chance of winning. People who started late or hesitated for any reason had no chance at all. Action paid. Contemplation did not. The mere act of getting dressed was enough to condemn people to death, and although many of those who escaped to the water succumbed to the cold, most of the ultimate winners endured the ordeal completely naked or in their underwear. The survivors all seem to have grasped the nature of this race, the first stage of which involved getting outside to the Deck 7 promenade without delay. There was no God to turn to for mercy. There was no government to provide order. Civilization was ancient history, Europe a faint and faraway place. Inside the ship, as the heel increased, even the most primitive social organization, the human chain, crumbled apart. Love only slowed people down. A pitiless clock was running. The ocean was completely in control.”

They were not supposed to sink, of course. Everything was all going so well – until a little hole appeared in the wrong place or a screw that hadn’t been tightened properly gave way – and the magnificent system that was such a fine ship, with such a worthy purpose, suddenly broke and sank.

Of Collapsing Societies I

It’s now clear that our world’s economic systems are in trouble. Liberal capitalism itself has been questioned, found wanting and will need to be improved upon before it’s too late, as long as the politicians remember to listen to the right group of experts.

Western democracies are also under the spotlight in functional, if not ideological, terms compared with the world’s more autocratic and fundamentalist regimes. Regimes which, in contrast to previous assumptions, do not in fact make viable societies impossible, at least for now. The West’s lack of reaction to the Russia – Georgia war this summer is one example.

What would happen if some of the other fundamental pillars of our societies – that nobody is paying too much attention too right now amidst crashing stock markets, bankrupt banks and millions of newly unemployed citizens – started to give way?

The fundamental pillar of society called Justice, for example.

Of Collapsing Societies II

What if a country’s justice system were to start collapsing for some reason?

Of Collapsing Societies III

What does the Internet say of such pessimism? Surely there are some experts writing about why and how societies collapse who can offer us some hope. After all, societies have collapsed throughout history – from the still mysterious collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Babylonia and the Bronze Age palatial civilizations through to Rwanda’s genocide in the 1990s.

Professor Jared Diamond might be our man, if we trust Google. He is the author of a Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book on the fates awaiting societies: Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

You can watch a lecture of his to the Long Now Foundation on Google Video.

Jared Diamond is indeed worried about the state of things, and sees parallels between the collapsed societies he has studied and the current state of the world.

He uses five key indicators to think about how a society is progressing:

1. human environmental impacts: over-harvesting, over-exploitation, the depletion of natural resources, too many people, too little food;
2. climate change: drought, excessive rainfall, sudden increases or decreases in temperature and their effects on your agricultural system;
3. a society’s relationship with its enemies; war and weakened societies. Will your enemies take advantage of your weaker situation?
4. a society’s relations with friendly states: trade partners, supply lines and imports;
5. a society’s response to its problems: does the society learn? Which cultural aspects stop it from adapting?

He also mentions:

1. a society’s failure to anticipate a problem and to act to reverse its course;
2. the isolation of a society’s elite members from the consequences of their actions.

Do You Know How To Swim?

The Titanic sank in less than three hours, the MS Estonia in much less than one. How long might it be before civilisation as we currently understand it goes under? 20,000 years? 250 years?

Jared Diamond doesn’t think so:

“I don’t think we have another 20,000 years,” Jared Diamond said in his impeccable German and with the same unassuming, polite composure with which he had answered all preceeding questions. And he added: “I think it’s closer to fifteen years.”

He said that in 2005, 3 years ago. The clock, as they say, might already be ticking.

And what if one of Nicolas Taleb’s black swans were to pass over our troubled ship at a crucial moment?

What if it suddenly all just went wrong? How long would it take the societies and tribes you belong to to collapse into something you don’t recognise and can’t cope with?

And do you know how to swim?