"The Great Unraveling" 10 minute video interview series hosted on the Post Carbon Institute site features luminaries in various disciplines speaking on what are our opportunities and constraints as human civilization moves forward into the future. As interviewed by Laurie Laybourn-Langton.
Paraphrasing Daniel Hayer on Cycles Of Societies: How societies throughout history all tend to fall into certain patterns. How they begin to develop, change, fall into crisis, and evolve.
"It starts with a growth phase and then moves into a disintegration phase with fractured social cohesion from inequity in wellbeing. A possible surprise is that this occurs not only on the masses broadly from the top to the bottom, but also within groups of society, including the elites.
As population and resource consumption come up against limits, competition forces wages down which leads to popular immiseration where the wellbeing of the majority goes down. This should be a warning sign but this is also a phase where the elites do really well so they use their positions of control to continue it. As rising numbers of new elites compete for a finite number of positions of power nationally and globally we then see polarization and nationalism result in a rise of populist, demagogue figures. Because the majority of the population is immiserated they are ready to fall into factions and follow one or another of these charismatic leaders, leading to a fractured society. This is the disintegrative phase."
Are there instances of recognizing this as the tipping point to collapse and taking preemptive steps to mitigate the speed and severity?
When we recognize that inequity is the key marker then it is possible to redistribute resources to draw out the time scale for a softer landing onto what comes next.
https://www.postcarbon.org/great-unraveling/societal-cycles/
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