I am writing a living literature review on societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/ The idea behind this project is to make academic research on societal collapse more accessible to anyone who’s interested in the topic. If I come across new information that changes any of my previous conclusions, I’ll update the review. This also means that I greatly appreciate if you send papers which might be relevant to the posts you will read here. While some of the research I summarize is historical, I also often focus on topics that are future oriented, like how we could make our society more resilient to societal collapse.
Some examples of what I cover:
An overview of the different theories of societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/mapping-out-collapse-research
What factors allow a society to survive a crisis: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/what-factors-allow-societies-to-survive
The role of famine in societal collapse: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/famines-role-in-societal-collapse
The best places to weather global catastrophes: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/the-best-places-to-weather-global
Also happy to discuss here, if some of those topics interest you or if you curious about the concept of a living literature review.
A living literature review on societal collapse
byu/zutnn inFuturology
2 Comments
What’s your opinion after doing all this research? Where are we headed?
Interesting to see you reference Tainter. I might be paraphrasing because it’s been 10 years since I’ve read [his book](https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X?dplnkId=abc35156-a883-4ded-b0ce-3f15e4c5002c&nodl=1), but I took his meaning to be that at a certain point the administrative complexity required to run a complex society requires so much energy that it outweighs the return you get to run society. So it’s not so much energy itself, but how you organise energy, or anything really, like there is some upper limit where things naturally fall apart for current human systems, or at least they have in the past.
I don’t agree, mainly because there is essentially an unlimited amount of energy available, and humans are slowly but surely getting better at organising complex systems. Specifically from memory Tainter had said some things about milk production I remember looking up because he had used it as an example, and he was wrong (of course he wrote the book in 1990 and I read it 20 years later). I think his ideas can probably be used for other things, but I haven’t given it much thought recently.