Denying the obvious
Many areas within science and culture stimulate reasonable debate about facts, or differences of opinion and even controversy. What exactly is causing the universe to expand? Whose advice for proper nutrition is the best one to follow? Is capital punishment an effective and morally correct solution to the problem of violent crime?
But there are also quite a few points of fact that are clearly proven and thus not subject to legitimate disagreement. The fact that water is wet, for example. Or the speed of light through a vacuum. Like those things, we have also confirmed without a doubt that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing, and that it is already causing terrible suffering and destruction in our world. Damage that will reach catastrophic proportions long before this century is over. Scientists may disagree about how fast the changes are occurring or what the exact effects may be, but except for a small number of dissenters, none doubt that we are rapidly entering a climate breakdown that will destroy civilization.
The denial of climate change is fading. And that is a good thing. many people who refused to acknowledge it before have now come around to the reality of the situation. Hard to deny what is right in front of your face. Or so you might think, but deniers often find a way. Take, for example, what is replacing denial of climate change. The new denial is even worse. Now that we are finally starting to admit to ourselves that climate change is real, we have turned to denying the consequences of it.
Collapse Denial is the New Climate Denial
We have seen this story before. It is climate change denial 2.0. Rampant denial and false hopium in the face of a realistically undeniable fact, which in this case is that the collapse of civilization on a global scale is inevitable.
Within human society, there are a dizzying array of psychological barriers and processes that foster the avoidance and denial of societal collapse. One reason for the refusal to accept the reality of societal collapse is what is called “motivated interference,” which occurs when we hold a specific bias to ignore evidence. For example, we have confirmation bias, which is the tendency to cherry-pick and assimilate only those facts that fit comfortably within our existing knowledge, attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs. Collapse, being multifaceted, resistant to neat categorization, and lacking a clear geographic specificity, readily lends itself to confirmation bias. We also have the phenomenon of availability bias, as represented by the tendency of people to make up their minds on the basis of what evidence is most readily available. Every solid media source these days is pumping out hopium by the boatload, and most people are eating it up readily. There is also pluralistic ignorance, another type of bias, which we can describe as the process whereby false consensus is created within a group of like-minded individuals by its members suppressing their opposing ideas in an effort to maintain parity with the others, resulting in the group overestimating adherence to its position (something that can affect climate activists as much as deniers and drive both further apart). There are many more factors, even biological, as we humans are poorly evolved to deal with ideas like societal collapse and climate change because our psychological evolution has attuned us to respond to short-term personal and/or group threats, abrupt threats, threats that leave us repulsed or disgusted, and immediate danger. Societal collapse, like climate change, fails to match up well with these long-conditioned threat prompts. If it isn’t happening right now, it simply gets ignored.
In addition to these concepts, there is also another powerful component to the current blindness to scientific reality: Targeted interference. A lot has been written about climate change denial, but very little about its counterpart in collapse denial, and there is one simple explanation for that. Just like with climate change denial, an enormous amount of money is being spent encouraging us to ignore the possibility of societal collapse, and blinding us to its inevitability. Corporations, especially the original nemesis of the fossil fuels industry, are spending huge sums of money attempting to obfuscate the reality of climate change and its consequences. Almost no coverage is given to dissecting how nations will respond to those consequences, or to what will happen when the planet reaches the point where there simply are not enough resources for all nations to survive. We are constantly told by political and industry leaders that “more research is needed” because “even the science isn’t clear.” While no scientist would ever disagree with a call for more research, it is a flat-out lie that scientists have not been clear about the consequences of unrestricted “business as usual” or the truth about climate change. The real truth of the matter is that we are the victims of a well-funded and sophisticated misinformation campaign that attempts to keep us in the dark about the collapse of civilization that is coming.
That is potentially even more scary than our inherent ability to deny proven fact. This truth, that a large portion of those in power across the world are devoted to reinforcing the denial of collapse, is the real demon in our midst. Awareness of looming societal collapse, just like that of climate change, is simply not good for business, or for their own survival prospects. They know it, and have acted on it.
Looking at the purposeful reinforcement of societal collapse denial, we can quickly recognize a familiar story of corporate actors and government officials pursuing private gain, hiding information from the public, and pushing the views they want to see demonstrated by people onto society as a whole. To do this successfully, these actors coordinate public relations campaigns and prop up their own set of experts to deny the possibilities of disruptions to the civilization that they need to continue. Even they know that collapse is inevitable, but just like the fossil fuels industry needing to keep the cash flowing today, so too does government need to keep the functions of society moving along in order to serve their own retention of power and wealth until the bitter end. Such contributions to harming the public good serve to make the consequences greater and more horrific for the people down the line, but help extend and increase the short-term gains and profits by maintaining the functioning of the whole machine. The playbook used by climate change deniers is the same as that used by the tobacco industry to deny carcinogenic links to their product and it parallels the current one being used to downplay the potential for societal collapse. In many cases, the movement is employing the very same people who had defended Big Tobacco and the fossil fuel industry in the past. Now that climate change is getting out of the bag, denying it doesn’t work as well, so instead they have turned to denying the consequences of it instead.
Aside from the business concerns, we also must look at the various politicians and world leaders who represent both businesses and constituents whose economic livelihoods rely on fossil fuel development and access to cheap energy, not to mention the continuance of modern civilization. They also have major incentives to engage in societal collapse denial. Between the political and corporate interests there lies a synchronicity of purpose. They all want to keep the ball of “business as usual” rolling along, and kick the can of consequences down the road until it is no longer their problem. What we end up with is a coalition of corporations, political leaders, and through them individual members of society who have come together through mutual benefits realized at the cost of environmental degradation and the eventual collapse of civilization.
All of them come together to sell the idea of solutions to the population. And such deception is made easy by the fact that people fear collapse so badly that they are ready to grasp at any possible hope desperately. The same phenomenon of self-delusion can be seen in many people who receive terminal medical diagnoses. In their fear and desperation, they begin to turn to experimental treatments, holistic remedies, and eventually to the spiritual or metaphysical in search of some solution.
Our Way of Life
There is a distinct social and political culture undergirding the idea behind the collapse denial movement, premised not on the facts about climate science or geopolitics, but on a visceral hatred directed at anyone identified as the enemy. In this case, enemies include most climate scientists as well as those who understand the problems of overshoot and resource scarcity as they relate to global conflict and collapse. Really, “enemy” means anyone perceived as an opponent to the lifestyle made possible by access to cheap fossil fuels.
Because that is the real fear. Not the possibility of death, but the idea that the comforts of modern civilization could disappear. The complete and total loss of all aspects of the lifestyle they have come to depend on. Comforts that are not limited to things like transportation, communication, and industry, but also to the shelter provided by the concepts of ordered and lawful society. The very concept of collapsing into a world governed solely by the laws of nature rather than the laws of man creates an instant shutdown in peoples minds, a barrier to any factual information no matter how obvious or proven. It is a defense mechanism that engages subconsciously to shutdown such lines of thought.
And that is why even those who are intimately familiar with the facts, be they climate scientists or military generals, will still hold onto the hope provided to them by others who have the same reasons to support a different outcome. While I understand the motives of corporate and government actors as a desire to protect profits and the power of wealth and ordered civilization, I would characterize many of the rank-and-file activists denying the inevitability of societal collapse as motivated by threats to their “civilized” way of life. It is a viral delusion because it hits all the points needed for a lie to become deeply held as a truth. People will believe a lie either because they want it to be true or because they fear it to be true. The fear creates an instinctual denial of that which is feared, and the want spawns the search for hopes against it, no matter how ridiculous they may be.
Despite the setbacks for the climate denial parties, the denial movement does not lack teeth or influence. Prominent figures in this realm still have opportunity to exert power through their solid standing within the various corporate institutions and political parties. They are simply switching the narrative to that of collapse denial. Rather than fight the truth of climate change and conflict head-on, they are taking the stance that it can be mitigated, and that civilization can survive intact, so long as we all support the required changes. That branches the conversation into many different sub-narratives of greenwashing and gaslighting, creates more internal division within the population over what the “right” changes are, and takes all attention off the truth. They have gotten us all to “not look up” because we are busy looking around for a solution to the problem, which we are promised really exists.
Despite the overwhelming evidence in the scientific, social, geopolitical, and economic realms, there appears to be a considerable share of people questioning or denying both the inevitability and cause of global societal collapse. Such disbelief can be seen in the absolute rejection of the existence of climate change as it always has, but added to the mix is now denial about what such change will actually bring about. There is also a lack of awareness or knowledge about the ancillary effects of mounting ecological pressures on our complex and interdependent human systems. Even those who only experience uncertainty about climate change tend to focus on the core issue of it alone, as if it were going to happen in a vacuum without human reaction to it. This is precisely the lever used by those promoting the hopium and denial around collapse.
The inevitable response to pressures that cannot be relieved upon a group of societies and nations is the outbreak of conflict. Everything else will be tried, of course, all the hopes of going green and international cooperation and all that. But when it fails? When the challenge has finally been recognized as one of survival in a petri dish of a world that can no longer support all the people and nations, what then? Who decides which nations survive and which do not? Who decides who dies and who gets to live? Globalization is already crumbling for this very reason. We have deluded ourselves into blaming it on all sorts of things, but the truth is simply that those in power of our nations and industries know the truth that most of us are ignoring through denial.
That truth is that time is almost up. What we are seeing playing out in the geopolitical arena is not just another series of conflicts in a long line. It is the positioning and kickoff for the very last global conflict of our current human civilization. Those at the top know that this is the last battle, the one for all the marbles, and they also know that not all of them will survive. That not all of them even can survive.
And the motivation comes from the very same place within them as the collapse denial does for all the rest of us. The fear of our lifestyle not being able to continue. The difference for those at the top of the chain is that they are aware of the truth of it. They have no one to dispense comforting lies and hopes to them, like we do. They are fully aware of their position as parasites feeding on a dying host, and they know that there will not be enough left on the corpse of it to sustain everyone. And so, their actions are all about making sure they are in that small group of survivors, at the expense of everyone else. The biggest action they have taken is to support the denial of the collapse, to nip those fears right in the bud, and to keep people focused on other things while they get ready to weather the collapse they are well aware is coming.
In essence, what we are seeing is the “prepping” mentality taken to a nation-state level. They are preparing to survive, and to retain their lifestyle and their power and comfort, knowing full well that the rest of the world is doomed. That civilization will not continue in much real form, beyond possibly the idea of walled city-states or enclaves where these current leaders can live out the remainder of their lives with power and comfort and ensure the continued legacy of their descendants.
But we don’t believe it, no sir. We will fight that vision with every fiber of our beings, because…well, because that’s just crazy, right? It is too fantastical to imagine such a thing, and so among the many other reasons we have to shun this reality is the scale. You haven’t been told that you are going to lose your job, that it will cost you thousands of dollars, or even that it will reduce your lifespan by a few years. Those things, while horrible, are things you can grasp. Things you could maybe prepare for or have some way of mitigating. But what the scientists are actually saying is that the human race faces the collapse of all civilization at best, and the extinction of our species at worst.
We can grasp a potential catastrophe if we know it is a problem with a solution and that will be fixed within a short time. But we resist when that event is something which has no viable solution, will take decades to fully materialize, and is of world-ending proportions that can only be averted if we pretty much end our world some other way first. Because that is really the only possible solution to avert the very worst of the ecological effects of climate change. We literally would have to end the world as we know it. Change almost every aspect of our lives and societal functions. No more driving cars. No more eating meat or flying in planes. No more plastic, no more industrial agriculture, no more…lots of things. Simply trying to complete such a list of things that would have to change makes us totally exhausted. What we are being asked to do will take gargantuan efforts, and what is the result in the end? We still lose everything about our lives that we want to keep anyway. The truth of the situation is that it is a no-win situation, and all we can do is maybe pick the way in which we will lose. It is very difficult to accept such a problem as real when it requires this magnitude of a solution. And that makes it almost instinctive for us to brush off, thus making goals to reinforce such denial very easy to achieve. How much easier it is to shut the real bad news away and instead focus on dealing with more tractable problems. Even poverty, racism, and famine seem more easily solved than societal collapse. The problem is just so bad, and the results so horrible, that it is nearly unthinkable. Our minds try to save us from the utter hopelessness of it by pushing aside thoughts of collapse in favor of irrational hope. Denial kicks in as our minds’ default for immediate self-preservation as opposed to confronting the idea of inevitable and unavoidable doom.
Collapse denial, like all other forms of denial, is based on the very specific desire for such an outcome to simply not be real. In the end it doesn’t really matter whether the denial came from within themselves or as a result of grasping onto the hopium offered by the bad actors out there. Those who are in denial of collapse are just trying to protect themselves by refusing to accept the truth about what is happening in their reality. In the short term, such denial can be a benefit, as a coping mechanism that gives you time to adjust to disturbing changes in your life. But staying in mindset of denial for too long, without naturally progressing through the other stages to eventual acceptance can seriously interfere with your ability to tackle the challenges that are coming.
And there is the rub.
In the beginning of one’s awareness of this reality, denial can be helpful. It offers us a period of time to adjust to a difficult new reality, and to learn new information in preparing a response to it. But when denial progresses and spreads, like a cancer, it becomes malignant and harmful. Initially it helps us with the shock, but if that shock is not followed by understanding and embracing the truth then we never reach the point of working out how to prepare for the new reality that sparked the denial in the first place. Instead, it can inspire us to seek out solutions that will make such a shocking reality seem false. Make us grasp at misleading information that refutes broadly held consensus and supports what we hope to be true rather than what we fear is true. And it leads us right down the path of being kept as the passive and ignorant victims to die later so that those who did accept the truth and prepared for it can survive.
In short, collapse denial is just the new climate change denial, sponsored by the same old actors and reinforced by the same mental processes that allowed us to deny climate change until it reached this point. The consequences for our denial of anthropogenic climate change are that now such change cannot be stopped, and the collapse of global civilization is inevitable. The consequences for denying that fact will be many. First and foremost, it will prevent those who deny from taking the necessary steps to prepare for it. Successful survival even for those who do prepare is far from a sure thing at this point, but for those who do not get ready the penalty for such is guaranteed.
I could quote the science all day. But would it really matter? The lure of hope such denial is based on is just too strong for most to overcome. They will rail against the very real potential for collapse in every form, be it nuclear war, environmental degradation, or rampant disease and famine that end up sparking it. Doesn’t matter. For the deniers there will always be some magical solution if we can just change, if we just vote enough, protest hard enough, or resist long enough. They just won’t see. But, if you are on the fence, there is plenty of information available for you. Most of it is quoted in my book, Wasteland By Wednesday, which can be found easily online, and also most of it is elsewhere on this blog of mine or others like it all across the internet. It isn’t really hidden information, although your various newsfeed algorithms probably keep much of it from your casual view. Yet another feature, not a flaw. A great place to start for those who wish to get a good understanding of the climate related causes of collapse is a blog called Ok Doomer. Jessica Wildfire does a great job there. Lots of science-fact there to help you weed out the science-fiction, and a good springboard to develop your own search for more answers.
The collapse of civilization is coming. Humanity will most likely set of the societal collapse through war long before the ecological collapse gets into full swing, and it will be rapid and dramatic. Deny it if you want, but when it hits you where you live one day, don’t say you weren’t warned.