Will Trump Cause the Collapse of Civilisation?

Civilisations can and do collapse. The Late Bronze Age Collapse was so total that in Greece the art of reading and writing was lost, and people came to believe that the palaces that had fallen into ruin had been built by giants. The collapse of the Roman Empire left Europe in the hands of weak kingdoms which relied on local feudal lords for a millennium.

Many people assume that our civilisation is somehow immune to this, that the progress of the past few centuries must mean that there can only be continual, never-ending progress into the future. This complacency betrays an ignorance of both history and the threats to our civilisation, and will allow those threats to hit us before we can prepare sufficiently. History is not a straight line. It has overall trends, but it has its ebbs and flows. And as our technologies become more powerful, those ebbs and flows become more extreme.

As you may have noticed, we are experiencing what we could call a nationalist revolution. It is happening all over the world, from Brazil to Italy to Hungary to Turkey to India, but is exemplified (at least for me) by Britain voting to leave the EU and Trump becoming President in 2016. At the time of writing in early 2020, it still isn’t clear what the fate and consequences of this revolution will be. Broadly there are three possibilities:

1)      It renders itself irrelevant and unpopular. Governments cannot solve the problems we face, from derelict communities to global crises, by severing ties with other nations. Once this becomes clear, support will shift from nationalists to more progressive, outward-looking movements.

2)      It achieves a kind of balance with the global system whereby its constituent parts are better protected and the system is more resilient as a whole, which seems to be one of the revolution’s goals. Previously centrist voters would see the appeal of nationalism, making it the new norm and giving far right groups even more confidence. Trade wars and tough immigration policies become more acceptable, and human rights and international organisations more suspicious. Global institutions still exist, but remain far too weak to prevent the slow descent into ecological meltdown.

3)      Nationalism pushes its agenda so thoroughly that the global economic system breaks down. International trade and cooperation become fragile or even non-existent. Countries become very insular in their outlook, relying on national identity and fear of the outside to maintain social cohesion as incomes fall and sea levels rise. Wars rage over dwindling resources, and the temptation to push that big red button grows ever stronger.

I’m cautiously optimistic that it will be the first possibility. Nationalism is probably too detached from reality to either work or cause catastrophe. Before either happened, economic and political forces would compel nationalist leaders to row back. Will Trump cause civilisation to collapse? I doubt it. At least, not directly.

With or without nationalism, the global system is still heading towards collapse. It is built on extreme individualism, which means allowing corporations to dig up and burn fossil fuels because it turns a profit. An individual’s right to make more money is sacred and inviolable. Nationalism is merely an obstacle that needs to be removed before the system can be fixed. If green internationalist parties come to power in the next few years, that will be when the real work begins.

There are two big problems with fixing the system. Firstly, the timing. We have until 2030 to halve our carbon emissions as a species if we’re going to stand a chance of avoiding going over the 1.5 degrees threshold. In order to achieve that, climate-focused governments need to be in place around the world and successfully reducing emissions by the end of 2020. Will we be able to beat nationalism by then?

Secondly, is fixing the system even possible? For years liberal-minded politicians have hoped that the problem will be solved by tweaks to the system, such as by subsidising solar panels. This has not worked, as evidenced by the inexorable rise in emissions. The problem is the system itself. Neoliberalism cannot get us out of the climate crisis. It forbids large-scale intervention from the government, and instead demands that problems – even global, extinction-risking problems such as climate change – be solved by individuals. Many people have descended into climate malaise because they cannot see how 7 billion individuals can coordinate themselves to beat the crisis. The answer is to see climate change as a systemic problem, rather than buy into neoliberalism’s worldview.

Although there are still some socialist countries (democratic or otherwise), the idea of free trade is the foundation of the global system. Will we be able to whip out the tablecloth out from under the tower of glasses, or will we just smash everything? Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union and in so doing hastened its collapse, leading to Russian GDP almost halving, the Yugoslav wars and the rise of Putin’s nationalistic oligarchy. State control was the foundation of the Soviet Union. By trying to relax state control, the Soviet Union ceased to function well enough to survive. If we end neoliberalism, will the global system collapse? If so, then we appear to be in a Catch 22. Neoliberalism is leading us towards collapse, but getting rid of neoliberalism will also lead to collapse. Perhaps our civilisation is simply ripe for collapse.

Transubstantiating the Foundations

Well that’s a depressing idea, but before we resign ourselves to cannibalising our children let’s look a bit closer at the nature of system collapse and see whether this idea holds up. Everything from atoms to galaxy clusters are systems, including single-celled organisms, human beings and empires. You are a system composed of many smaller systems, and you are also a node in much larger systems. A system is a network of many individual parts that interact with each other in such a way that the network continues to exist. The foundations of a system are how its constituent parts interact with each other. A strong system will keep the connections between parts strong, so that they don’t weaken or leave the system.

The system grows until it inevitably hits the reasons why it can no longer expand, which manifest themselves as physical limits and barriers which make the system distinct from things outside it. Growth stops and its shape becomes relatively stable. But circumstances change, sometimes due to an inadvertent by-product of the system growing, sometimes due simply to the passage of time. Eventually the system will find itself in circumstances which weaken the connections between individual parts, making the system as a whole less effective, which in turn weakens the connections more, and so on. It might be a quick collapse or long and drawn out, but systems cannot survive changing circumstances forever.

Generally speaking, systems react to impending collapse by doing what they’ve always done but more vigorously. Imagine an army that has won many battles, but has finally met an enemy that is stronger than them. After it becomes apparent they cannot win, the soldiers flee for their lives. What will the general do? Quite likely, his instinct will be to continue barking orders, but even more loudly. He will only know how to do certain things, because that is the way he’s been trained and they have always worked in the past. So he will continue doing what he does best, even though the mechanics of the system have been broken and his soldiers ignore his meaningless orders.

Another example of system obstinance in the face of crisis is the collapse of the Mayan civilisation. According to archaeologist Professor Arthur Demarest, before their collapse the Maya expended great effort building enormous, ornate temples. What we might mistake for a Golden Age was actually the Mayans panicking and pleading with their gods to stop giving them misfortune. From their perspective, placating the gods with temples had always worked, but in reality spending more time building temples only hastened their demise.

Another, more down to earth example is leaves in autumn – the red and yellow colours are in fact a sign of photosynthesis in overdrive, as the trees try to absorb as much energy from the sun as they can as the days get shorter, until the leaves become redundant.

Another, more topical example is how governments continue to enact neoliberal policies such as tax cuts despite the fact neoliberalism is now obsolete and dangerous. And so money that needs to be spent on developing green technology and building green infrastructure is instead spent by billionaires on bigger mansions – our civilisation’s equivalent of the Maya’s useless temples.

Most systems, be they inorganic, organic or even human-made, will continue doing what made them successful in their prime until they die. But humans are different from most other systems. We can form a fairly accurate picture of the world in our minds, and use that to find the best path to our goals. If we see that we are heading towards disaster, we can change course. Let’s go back to the general of the defeated army. Instead of simply bellowing his orders more loudly, as an intelligent and innovative being who understands how his men think and who has a strong desire to keep the system intact, perhaps he can find another way of bringing his men back into formation.

Can we, as intelligent and informed people, pull that trick on our civilisation? Can systems radically reform themselves in order to adapt to the circumstances without collapsing? Bear in mind that we are not talking about simply changing direction, we are talking about altering the fundamental connections between people, changing the very nature of the system. This may be relatively straightforward for small groups of people, but we need radical reform on a global scale. 

We’ve already mentioned glasnost and perestroika, attempts to reform a large system which did not go well. But history has another, even more ambitious example which arguably succeeded: the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity. For centuries the foundations of the Empire had been faith in Rome’s military strength, its Republican political system and later its divine emperors. By the time Constantine converted, the Empire had been wobbling for some time and people were looking for fresh ideas. Authority shifted to the priesthood of the cult of a Jew who had been executed by the Romans. Now, paradoxically, to be Roman was to be Christian. The rise of the Church was accompanied by a radical change in how people had to relate to those in power – fear of and loyalty to Rome was replaced by fear of and loyalty to God. Whereas before you could pick and choose your cults, now there was only one game in town and its priests had a lot to say about how you should live your life. Disparate tribes became one congregation.

But obviously it wasn’t a smooth transition. Taking the eucharist did not prevent the Visigoths and Vandals from sacking Rome, and indeed some historians argue that Christianity was one of the factors behind the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Radical reform cannot save the whole of a crumbling system, so some things will need to be sacrificed. But what we call the Byzantine empire (or the Basileia Rhōmaiōn as they called themselves) lived for another thousand years after the fall of the Western Empire, thanks in no small part to the renewed identity, unity and drive that Christianity gave them. Christianity was the salvation of the Roman Empire, politically if not spiritually.

Could we pull off a similar revolution? Possibly, but bear in mind that the Roman Empire may have had a population of about 90 million at its peak. We have to reform a system with a population of 7 billion. The Romans had to sacrifice Rome itself. What would we have to sacrifice?

Calm down, dear

Some of you may be thinking – isn’t this all a bit dramatic? A shift in values and economic models does not require an apocalypse. The shift from Keynesian social democracy to neoliberalism in the 80s, while painful and chaotic in some places, was not a cataclysmic event. While many of the specifics are still be to agreed, we broadly speaking know what we need to replace neoliberalism with: a world where states are interventionist, enact evidence-based policies and are willing to cooperate internationally. There are politicians who understand this, we just need to get them into office. Whipping the tablecloth out from under the tower of glasses is a false analogy.

This viewpoint does not understand how radical a change to our lives the climate crisis necessitates. Getting politicians who understand the scale of the problem into office is just the first hurdle. Firstly, we need global cooperation as we have never seen before. A global ban on fossil fuel extraction would quickly be rendered meaningless if one country ignored it. The United Nations was founded on mutual fear, but if the crisis is to be solved nations will have to rise above tribalism and genuinely try to solve the problem together. This will require moving more authority to global institutions, and away from nation-states.

Secondly, the tough decisions that will need to be made will raise fundamental questions about how we organise our societies. Take for example air travel: because our battery and solar panel technology will probably never be good enough for a plane to be able to fly without fuel, air travel would not be possible in a zero carbon world. Of course not even the most radical green government would completely ban air travel, but if their policies led to a sharp decrease in the number of flights, that leads to the question: who should be given those plane seats? Naturally the rich will continue to fly as though nothing had changed, but why should the poor be asked to forgo seeing the world, because of a crisis not of their making? A frequent flyer tax would be a good start, but even if people only made 2 flights per year, that would still be too many. Perhaps we could ration out plane seats, but how could we ensure this was done fairly and without succumbing to complete state control over daily life?

The shift from social democracy to neoliberalism was a shift of emphasis onto elements of culture (individualism), society (businesses) and psychology (greed) which had been influential for a long time before the 80s. The shift we need in the 2020s is not merely a return to social democracy. We will need to forge new kinds of relationships within and between communities, governments and global institutions. We need to replace profit as the supreme value. And we somehow need to do that in a matter of years, before we trigger global warming’s vicious circles.    

The Lifecycle of Empires

Many kinds of cycles in history have been proposed, including economic cycles, psychological cycles and even biological cycles. I think you can argue there is a cycle based on a simple idea: that the two greatest forces in human history are centralisation and fragmentation.

Yuval Noah Harari argues that some 70,000 years ago humanity went through a cognitive revolution that allows us to cooperate with people outside our tribe thanks to ‘inter-subjective realities’. For example a French knight and an English knight may not know each other, but thanks to their shared beliefs they trust each other enough to go on crusade together.

However a capacity for shared beliefs is not enough to forge an empire. To bring many tribes together, you need a strong idea – one that appeals to many diverse people, fits into how they see the world, has a concrete goal and justifies a particular group to lead the charge.  ‘Rome’s strength will civilise the world’, ‘We worship God and so He smiles on our empire’, ‘The proletariat taking control of the means of production is the next stage of history’. History’s greatest empires have been driven by ideas that allowed them to adapt to and take advantage of their technological, social and psychological circumstances.

Once the empire has some success, the idea behind it becomes more persuasive, and there becomes a virtuous circle between the strength of the idea and the strength of the empire. Eventually, as the economic strength of the empire reaches its limit, the idea begins to lose its strength. ‘Rome is just another empire who couldn’t conquer the world’, ‘God did not protect us from the heathens and doesn’t seem to be in a hurry with the Second Coming’, ‘Communism is a cynical power grab by bureaucrats’. The idealistic façade drops as reality becomes harder to ignore, and the empire becomes weak.

Fragmentation is the default for humanity. It is the instinct to preserve ourselves, our family and our tribe, and the belief that anyone outside that tribe is suspicious. Xenophobia is deeply ingrained in our minds because for millions of years it was a successful strategy. Humanity’s strength lies in overcoming that xenophobia with inter-subjective realities. But centralising ideas are precarious things, as you might imagine any attempt to get millions of apes working together to be. Once the idea is discredited, the force of fragmentation will pull the empire apart.

Whether you’re a peasant or an aristocrat, while the empire is keeping you safe, you will give the empire what support you can and you won’t rock the boat. But once it stops making you feel safe, you will stop caring about the empire and do what you can to protect your interests yourself. As the empire fragments, people will start looking for new ideas. Some of these will justify and reinforce the fragmentation, but some might be centralising ideas which herald the birth of a new empire.

This is a cycle that can be seen throughout history: an empire flourishes in an age of idealism, but once it starts to suffer defeats and seems to become unable to deliver its promises, morale goes down, leading to an age of cynicism and realism as the empire declines. But it should be noted that idealism and realism are not mutually exclusive. For an empire to flourish, the idea behind it must at least appear to be grounded in reality. And an age of realism is fertile ground for new ideas.

Clearly we’re currently living through an age of realism and fragmentation. The neoliberal order, underpinned by American military might, reached its peak in the 90s. The centralising idea behind it was ‘A global and free market will make everyone richer’. In 1992 Francis Fukuyama was confident enough in the power of that idea to declare the end of history. In the 21^st Century it reached its limits. The failure of the War on Terror proved not only that the American military was not as effective as it thought it was, but also that its priority was merely to secure oil for itself. The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent austerity made a lot of people question whether they stood to gain from neoliberalism. Trump’s belief in isolationism is perhaps proof that the neoliberal order has fragmented. If he struggles to see the point of NATO, which is the closest thing the USA has to an actual empire, then why should the world follow America’s lead? Neoliberalism is dying, and those who still defend it are hopelessly dreaming of a return to a time when ‘things made sense’.

Clearly nationalist movements around the world are exploiting and encouraging this fragmentation. But some of the Left also seem to want further fragmentation by giving people greater control over their communities. As a bleeding heart lefty myself I’m not unsympathetic to this, but at the same time it’s clear that in many cases people already have too much control over their communities. Areas outside cities in England need more wind farms, and more and cheaper housing, but residents concerned about house prices prevent these from being built. Nimbyism can only be cured by centralisation. A deepening of democracy could only work if it was accompanied by a heightening of democracy, that is, if people were more engaged with global institutions. Indeed, to move beyond our age of fragmentation, perhaps the centralising idea we need to rally around is as simple as ‘Through international cooperation, lets tax the superrich and use the revenue to stop climate change’.  

The Birthplace of Progress

If systems are generally obstinate in nature and cannot easily transform themselves, how does evolution work? Systems are simply replaced by other systems which are more adapted to the circumstances. These more adapted systems are often born on the periphery of the original system. They are heavily influenced by the original system, and thus inherit at least some of the features which made it successful, but they are nonetheless different in nature because circumstances on the periphery are tougher or simply different.

In human-made systems, the periphery is often geographical. Take for example the spread of civilisation in the Iron Age. When the Persian empire ruled the known world, Greek civilisation flowered on its periphery. Alexander the Great defeated the Persians, and although his empire fell apart after his death, Greek dominance from India to Italy was unquestioned for centuries. On the periphery of the Greek world was Rome, which went on to build an empire which stretched from Scotland to Kuwait. Thus did civilisation spread from the Middle East to Western Europe.  

Having been imprisoned by Mussolini’s regime, the Marxist thinker Gramsci wondered why the world’s first communist revolution had taken place in Russia, which had barely moved past feudalism at the time, and not in the industrial heartlands of Europe as Marx had predicted. He developed the idea of ‘cultural hegemony’ – the bourgeoisie of advanced capitalist societies were able to prevent revolution because they were able to plant their values in the minds of the rest of society. Another way of saying this is that the connections between people in the capitalist system were stronger than Marx had hoped, and this meant that despite its flaws it was resilient. This does not mean that capitalism was the most adapted system to the circumstances, only that new ideas could only flourish on the periphery of capitalism, such as in Russia. Communism proved to be a good adaptation to the industrial world (again, despite its flaws), helping Russia to conquer Eastern Europe, become a nuclear power and even pressure capitalist societies to treat their workers better.

Being on the periphery does not guarantee that you have better or even good adaptations. Britain was on the periphery of the Roman world, but the Romans can’t take much credit for the world-spanning empire that sprang from that island over a thousand years after the legions left. The periphery is mostly populated by creatures that are hungry to scavenge the corpse of the system, such as bacteria and barbarians.

As the Western Roman Empire struggled to hold onto its territories and increasingly relied on mercenaries to guard its borders, communities were forced to shift their focus onto their localities because they could no longer rely on support from the empire. This was the beginning of feudalism and of the fragmentation of the system. Eventually the Germanic tribes conquered the Western Roman Empire, but because they didn’t have any strong ideas or organisational structures, Western Europe remained weak and fragmented. It look a long time for strong, centralised kingdoms, let alone empires, to emerge from the ashes.    

What is on the periphery of neoliberalism? Because it is a global system, we have to think in dimensions other than geographical, but here are some possibilities:

1)      China certainly used to be on the periphery, until Deng Xiaoping partially opened the country up to the global system. Since then it has grown into an economic powerhouse and taken its place among the leading players of the global economy. Neoliberals had long believed that democracy was necessary to keep the state from overreaching its bounds, but Milton Friedman maintained that individual freedom is more important than democracy. China went from being communist to the private sector accounting for about 60% of GDP – a huge leap in individual freedom in Friedman’s terms, and one which has clearly helped China. If free market miracles are possible without democracy, then could neoliberalism afford to ditch democracy? This has no doubt been in the back of the minds of would-be demagogues across the world, who have started to test democracy’s fortifications for cracks. Despite massive tree planting initiatives, it has yet to be seen whether China’s model is a good one for the Anthropocene.

2)      Nationalist movements have been on the social periphery for decades, and were largely mocked until they gained confidence in 2016. Their ideology, if it can be called that, is fragmentation. Neoliberals are trying to use them to prop up their system, in much the same way as the Roman Empire paid Germanic tribes to guard its borders as it grew weak – a strategy that did not end well for Rome.

3)      Movements such as School Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion can mobilise large numbers of people and give voice to their passion, but lack the organisation to be influential by themselves.

4)      International organisations, most notably the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, were sponsored by countries to further their own interests, although of course they ignore them if it suits them. But in doing so, they created an architecture above the geographically-limited nation-states which could form the basis of a global government. In my Master’s thesis I argued that having an elected parliament would give weight to the United Nations – if you’re a government that claims to respect democracy, it would be hard to ignore the rulings of a global parliament. But that isn’t realistic in the near future, not least because a significant proportion of the world’s population still lives under autocracy (thanks China). Nonetheless, the General Assembly could take the role of legislature if national governments agreed to execute its will. Perhaps the UN could take inspiration from the Vatican’s reign over Medieval Europe - despite Europe being fragmented at the state level, the Church was a centralising force that Europe’s kingdoms obeyed solely because of its ideological/cultural power. This is the kind of empire we need to build. With the backing of popular green movements and the scientific community, the United Nations is probably the institution most likely to end the climate crisis.

Who will come out on top? In the short term, it will be whoever takes opportunities and risks. In the long term, it will be whoever builds an empire with strong foundations. To build a successful empire, you need at least one (preferably all three) of these ingredients:

1)      The latest technology – Harari argues that this is one of the least important factors in building a successful empire, yet it is hard to imagine the Roman, Ottoman, British and other empires even existing had they not used more sophisticated technology than their enemies. For much of history, it was military technology which mattered most, and to a lesser extent transportation technology. But information technology has played an underrated role in many empires, and in today’s hyperconnected world, who wields it the most effectively could win – especially given how it can empower the second ingredient.

2)      Organisation – knowing the talents of those who have the same goals as you, and building roles, processes, rules and communication networks for those people so that you can work together well. Harari argues that this is by far the most important factor in whether one group can dominate another, and with good reason. For all of history thus far the best technology we have had is the human – a flexible computer which even comes with two nimble hands. Technological developments could be seen as just add-ons, ways to make the human even more useful. So the most powerful machines are those made out of humans working well together, whether they are organisations within society or society itself. As discussed in another post, if a group with the right talents become the leaders of society, they can make society survive and thrive in new circumstances. As artificial intelligence becomes better, organisation will become a less important factor, as those with the technology will rely less on other humans.

3)      A motivating idea – empires cannot be built without sacrifice. An empire can’t promise that every individual will benefit from it, because it would fall apart as soon as some sacrifice was needed, so instead empires are based on ideas. Liberalism, and in particular neoliberalism, are ideas which are thinly veiled self-interest, but nonetheless are ideas which people are willing to sacrifice for. An empire must convince people that the success of the empire is an inherently good thing and good enough to override self-interest. One would hope that Earth’s survival is motivating enough.

Conclusion

Our civilisation is currently going through a choke point – we’re powerful enough to wreck the planet, but we’re not yet powerful enough to live self-sufficiently in space. Whatever happens in the 21^st Century, I’m confident that our inventive nature will prevent humanity from going extinct. I’m even confident that civilisation in some shape will survive, even if only in bunkers. The real question is how many people will die early deaths. Millions? Billions? If this map of a world 4 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels (a possibility by 2100 if no climate action is taken) is even just slightly accurate, the transition to such a radically different world is unlikely to be smooth and peaceful.

For countries such as Britain, more frequent flooding will be a problem, but the real danger is that the state will become violently xenophobic. When there are hundreds of millions of refugees trying to cross the channel, it will become next to impossible to persuade anyone that opening the borders is the right thing to do. Whether by denying them help, or by actively deterring them with violence, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that some of the most developed nations will commit the most devastating genocides in history. If you’re thinking ‘I’m already in a developed nation, so at least I’ll be safe’, beware that a country anxious about its survival in a crumbling world will likely toss away any citizens it considers insufficiently useful, normal or loyal.

The stakes have never been higher. Civilisations have collapsed before, but never has humanity been faced with the possibility of a loss of life of this magnitude. Precisely because we are the most powerful civilisation in history, our collapse would be the most catastrophic and there’s no telling how far technology and society would plummet. If there is a chance that tearing down a system based on free markets and sovereign nation-states will save civilisation, then it is absolutely worth the risk. The fact that we are facing global collapse proves that we are a global civilisation – it’s about time we acted like one.

Since I started writing this essay, Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the race to be the Democratic candidate. If anyone was going to at least start radically reforming the neoliberal order, it would have been him. A self-declared socialist becoming President of the United States would have been like Constantine’s conversion. But that’s no longer on the cards, at least for another four years. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, we can’t wait that long. And even if we did wait, there is no guarantee that a socialist USA would be strong enough to save the planet. The American-backed neoliberal order is already weakening and fragmenting. Our best chance is therefore a new green, globalist order to emerge from the periphery and quickly secure the world as the neoliberal order collapses. The alternative is a fragmented nationalist order which will not provide the coordination needed to stop climate change, and even if we manage to put nationalism back in the box in the 2020s it will only re-emerge with a vengeance when the impacts of climate change become severe.

The transition to a green, globalist order would no doubt be chaotic, but it need not be destructive. As mentioned earlier the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a lot of pain, but at the same time it was miraculous: against all expectations, the superpower collapsed without a single nuclear weapon being launched. This proved that in the nuclear age, a powerful system can collapse without ending the world, although of course the fact it didn’t happen once isn’t a guarantee that it can’t happen. We have to be careful, clever and determined, but we can change the world. 

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