Breakdowns Versus Foreshocks

The most thorough look at this issue from the perspective here is Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down. He argues “that our circumstances today are surprisingly like Rome’s in key ways. Our societies are also becoming steadily more complex and often more rigid. This is happening partly because we’re trying to manage-often with limited success-stresses building inside our societies, including stresses arising from our gargantuan appetite for energy…. Eventually, as occurred in Rome, the stresses may become too extreme, and our societies too inflexible to respond, and some kind of economic or political breakdown will occur…. “People often use the words `breakdown’ and `collapse’ synonymously. But in my view, although both breakdown and collapse produce a radical simplification of a system, they differ in their long-term consequences. Breakdown may be serious, but it’s not catastrophic. Something can be salvaged after breakdown occurs and perhaps rebuilt better than before. Collapse, on the other hand, is far more harmful…. “In coming years, I believe, foreshocks are likely to become larger and more frequent. Some could take the form of threshold events-like climate flips, large jumps in energy prices, boundary-crossing outbreaks of new infectious disease, or international financial crises.”” Homer-Dixon argues that foreshocks and breakdowns can lead to positive change if the ground is prepared. “We need to prepare to turn breakdown to our advantage when it happens-because it will,” he says.24 Homer-Dixon’s point is critically important. Breakdowns, of course, do not necessarily lead to positive outcomes; authoritarian ones and Fortress World are also possibilities. Turning a breakdown to advantage will require both inspired leadership and a new story that articulates a positive vision grounded in what is best in the society’s values and history.

-James Gustav Spaeth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (2009)