Collapse – What Might It Look Like?
It’s important to keep emphasizing that nobody really knows how the future is going to turn out. We can see some clear trends that suggest life as we knew it until mid-2008 has changed irrevocably and a collapse of familiar patterns of civilisation (as the western world enjoys it) is imminent.
Some commentators assert that the current changes are part of a greater process of evolutionary and spiritual change that has been pre-ordained for thousands of years.
They assert this evolutionary/spiritual change will take the form of a vibrational or dimensional shift to a higher state of form and consciousness. (This sounds very Science Fiction/New Age doesn’t it?).
This may sound “far out”, but there a range of changes in basic physical phenomena have been observed in recent years (e.g. planetary warming of Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune not just Earth, changes in the Sun’s magnetic fields, “dark matter”, frequency changes in Earth’s pulse) that suggest fundamental parameters of reality as we currently know it are changing.
Personally, I’m split. I can see a collapse is imminent and also see the signs of a more fundamental evolutionary shift, but it’s hard to figure out how a transition will be made. (peacefully, gracefully).
Anyway, back to today’s news. Here are some important things to remember about collapse.
1. It has happened before. All human empires and civilizations that have existed so far, have all collapsed. In general, the reasons have been a mixture of:
- resource depletion
- financial recklessness and waste
- entrenched corruption that reaches a point where basic societal systems and infrastructure stop functioning effectively
- too many pointless and costly wars.
2. In recent times, collapse has happened to other countries e.g.
- Russia during the 1980s,
- Great Britain lost most of its Empire during the 1950s and 1960s,
- Recent collapses in African countries e.g. Zimbabwe, Sudan, Somalia
- Partial or periodic collapse in countries in South America such as Argentina
3. Collapse will most likely be asymmetric, meaning even within countries that do collapse, not all areas / states / counties will experience a collapse in the same way. Some areas will probably turn into wastelands, whereas others may continue more or less as normal for an extended period.
4. You are living through a type of collapse right now (early 2009). The question is how far will it go?
5. Collapse doesn’t look like a collapse until the degeneration and disruption to essential services goes past a certain critical point. Until then, it looks like a recession, or perhaps a Depression.
In a collapse, basic services become erratic, things that you took for granted you find that you can’t any longer.
6. The underlying reasons for the collapse that began in 2008 are a subject of endless debate. They were probably one or more of:
- a deliberate and planned economic demolition to justify the formation of a “New World Order”
- the bursting of an obvious real estate and financial bubble which was a result of excessive, unregulated speculation. The financial collapse was the visible icing on the layer cake of human folly!
- a combination of resource depletion, especially peak oil , and environmental destruction.
See Social Collapse Best Practices for more details of what a collapse might look like and how to prepare for one.
