Another End of the World is Possible

The critical situation in which our planet finds itself is no longer in doubt. Some things are already collapsing while others are beginning to do so, increasing the possibility of a global catastrophe that would mean the end of the world as we know it.

As individuals, we are faced with a daily deluge of bad news about the worsening situation, preparing ourselves to live with years of deep uncertainty about the future of the planet and the species that inhabit it, including our own. How can we cope? How can we project ourselves beyond the present, think bigger and find ways not just to survive the collapse but to live it?

In this book, the sequel to How Everything Can Collapse, the authors show that a change of course necessarily requires an inner journey and a radical rethinking of our vision of the world. Together these might enable us to remain standing during the coming storm, to develop a new awareness of ourselves and of the world and to imagine new ways of living in it. Perhaps then it will be possible to regenerate life from the ruins, creating new alliances in differing directions – with ourselves and our inner nature, between humans, with other living beings and with the earth on which we dwell.

Foreword

Notes

Preface

Notes

Introduction: Learning to live with it

The change in attitude over the last few years

Surviving … is that all?

A branch of collapsology directed towards inner experience

Expanding out to ‘collapsosophy’

Breaking down walls

Notes

Part One: Recovery

1. Experiencing the impact

Living through the disasters

Giving people the bad news

Notes

2. Regaining our spirits

Resilience after disasters

Living and dancing with the shadows

Notes

3. Moving on

Mistrusting optimism

Mistrusting hope

What about the children?

Notes

Part Two: New Horizons

4. Integrating other ways of knowing

New scientific (in)disciplines

Outside the ivory tower

Towards a post-normal science

Notes

5. Opening to other visions of the world

From the universe to the pluriverse

The emergence of a pluriversal mycelium

Notes

6. Telling other stories

‘Zombie’ stories

Stories as weapons for large-scale subversion

Stories of times to come

Notes

Interlude: Entry to collapsosophy

Rediscovering connections through ecopsychology

Accepting our feminine side through ecofeminism

Notes

Part Three: Collapsosophy

7. Weaving connections

Between humans

With ‘other-than-humans’

With deep time

With what is beyond us

Notes

8. Growing up and settling down

Emerging from patho-adolescence

Reconciling our masculine and feminine sides

Restoring the wild

Constituting ‘rough-weather networks'

Notes

Conclusion: Apocalypse or ‘happy collapse’?

The inner path and the outer effect

Survival as the first step

Making breaches and holding on to them

Notes

Afterword

Notes

"We need to get serious about living on the Earth. This deceptively simple truism is the starting-point for this utterly radical book by the three founders of “collapsology”. Here they address the question of how to live through an eco-driven societal collapse, laying out a path beyond our civilization’s chronic destructiveness into a more mature autonomy that will be found only in the joining together of interdependence and collapse-readiness. If you want to know what lies beyond survivalism, and how collapse might be navigable as something other than mass death and disaster, read this book!"
Rupert Read, author of This Civilisation is Finished Pablo Servigne is an agronomist with a PhD in biology.
Raphaël Stevens is an eco-adviser and co-founder of the consulting office Greenloop.
Gauthier Chapelle is an agronomist, co-founder of Greenloop and founder of Biomimicry Europa.