Quite a frustrating interview as PR-B notes and difficult to square Tainter's admission of global collapse as the likely outcome with his expression of equanimity about the current state of affairs. In fairness, he does explain this as taking a much longer term view as an historian but it is probably his scientific - and consequently, unemotional and apparently uninvested - approach that grates.
The complexity issue makes sense - it does solve human problems, but also creates wealth but the link between these two things now seems ruptured. The law of diminishing returns as a causal factor in collapse also makes a lot of sense.
The bit that really hit home for me was your reference to your previous interview in which it was pointed out that more complex systems simplified the roles of population. This seems obvious when we consider ancient societies that used slave labour extensively but while fossil fuels have obviated the need to some extent it has by no means eliminated slavery but redefined it to allow those in power to enjoy a more expansive life. It is arguable that the continued acquisition of wealth traps those in power just as much in the hamster wheel.
All of which would seem to suggest that smaller communities would lead to simpler and richer lives, which I think was your point, Rachel, in describing your experience in different cultures.
To me that neo class society is unnecessary, but when people can get away, they can be intellectually lazy and will do so. It also creates complexity, maybe not in technical or structural terms, but eg when teenager asks, why is that nanny taking care of us kids but neighbor doesnt have nanny... and these questions will be endless and "burden" parents and adults with contradictions. But tech wont solve these. These emotional contradictions, or intellectual (conflict with how world should be or is taught in school, vs what it actually is) are more painful than actual technical complexity.
People with possibility strive for smaller communities. That often comes with price of doubling or tripling commute. But it can still be worth it to people who can then eg have pets and family there, that isnt possible in other place, downtown of very high density population.
Nice to see Tainter interviewed. His book was literally under my hand when I saw the Planet: Critical email this morning, as I'm working on a related manuscript myself. However, as has been clear in several of his previous talks, there is an underlying optimism or agnosticism about the current moment and future that some of us find odd (or frustrating). I think for very good reasons, most contemporary collapsologists tend to think "this time it's different" (e.g. permanently declining energy and other resources, global society rather than a local affair (i.e. non where to go), ecological/planetary limits overshot, reliance on fragile global supply chains, species extinctions, etc. etc.), so I was glad to see that you started to push him on some of this. He presents an absolutely vital part of the puzzle of collapse but squaring this with the other pieces (known and missing) and the present moment requires the work of many other thinkers too. However, diminishing returns on complexity invested alone is worth the price of entry (and diminishing rates of innovation is always a valuable point to make to techno-optimists). Thanks.
As a senior software engineer, I can completely agree with the analysis that as technological maintenance decreases in relevant returns, society begins to deteriorate.
However, this has little actual relevance to the technologies themselves but instead, how they are implemented in a society.
In the United States especially, business leaders have become as detached from societal realities as our political leadership has. In the US, technology is seen as a replacement for Human Beings, which then follows with the less than expected results.
Businesses and many other institutions (especially education) are rife with poor technology implementations that see our young increasingly rely on them as crutches for their daily lives. Instead of doing the required hard work that is part of every learning process, increasingly young students are allowed to offload such work to their devices. Now we have students in High School who literally cannot write or even read at the expected levels of their education, And many are so poor at mathematics that it is a wonder that any of them are even promoted into the tougher math courses offered in US High Schools.
Yet, this is just one example as to how ruinous technologies have become in the public sphere.
Instead of using technologies within the scope of expected contexts as tools, many now see them as the lifeblood of their lives, careers, and institutional entities.
Many of us in my profession have been warning people for years of the serious, detrimental negatives of such technological but to no avail. Now the consequences are being seen everywhere, which is a driving factor in the current decline in the United States.
However, technology alone cannot be held responsible for all of the US' ills. There is a lot of historical precedent for our nation's demise, which as one increasingly delves into our own histories, finds that it actually began with the creation of the US Constitution, which was implemented as such a compromised document that in reality, benefited very few, while promoting the agendas of the landed, White wealthy.
The result is that traditional, historical societies find the concepts of such a collapse as more relevant as presented here than those societies, like the United States and Israel (both settler, colonial societies), which have too many historical contradictions to sustain them unless such contradictions are confronted and dealt with. In neither case here, they weren't...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer / Military Historian Analyst
That sounds like what was crux in WW2: nazi army had superior tech in early days and well trained, well motivated crews. However soviets and allies could replace broken and destroyed equipment by numbers and had designed easy to use equipment, so fresh outta camp people could have chance to learn them on the go. We see this play out in ever aspect of society..... education takes too long, companies demand 20 year experiences and so on.
Sure it requires highly educated lot of experience person to manage supply chains but that is still boring and stressful office job and somewhat unnecessary. Not to mention downstream problems to life. As we see now in banks, they simply refuse any "competition" or reforms to they 50 year old tech, well as they can afford so blackmailing society. Few other companies can. These reforms tend to make things simpler but require lot of effort.
As a contrast to Tainter's approach and suggestions your audience deserves to hear Peter Turchin's perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations. For the past 30 years Turchin has been working to turn history into a proper science rather than a collection of just so stories. His work takes subjective opinion out of interpreting the rise and fall of civilizations and reveals the simple metrics that largely dictate how civilizations predictably rise and fall. Turchin would be a great on Planet Critical.
What a frustrating discussion. I could understand Joseph’s attitude if he were merely a 75-year-old man randomly plucked out of Utah for this discussion, telling us that all our worries will blow over. But given that he has conducted the type of research that he has, it is amazing that he can find no other way to describe our current situation than as one being typical of historical patterns, or as he said “things get a little bit better, things get a little bit worse” over and over.
If we may consider him a scientist, I would say that he is suffering from what James Hansen has called scientific reticence, or simply the extreme reluctance to connect to the next dot if that data point is not supplied from one’s sample.
The big failure here is in not considering the true nature of climate change and environmental destruction that we are causing and that has by now slipped out of our control. For Joseph to talk about human technology and societal complexity and the cycles they go through is one thing, but not to recognise that climate change in particular, although caused by us, is now running free on its own and will continue to in almost all cases no matter what we do, is just baffling.
That the end of humanity as well as most life on the planet is now underway due to climate change was not recognised in this discussion of how societies collapse is astounding. And we cannot let ourselves off the hook by saying as Rachel did that our climate models are not precise enough to allow us to predict the future. That is simply not true. It is true that the future is not yet here, by definition. We do however know that extinction is coming based on the current trajectory. Climate change is happening all on its own now in a non-linear acceleration. This much we know. We do not need to be able to predict with accuracy when a particular species will become extinct from the processes occurring now and still to occur from climate change. To say as Joseph did that it is foolish to try to make predictions about our own situation relative to collapse is itself foolish given what we know about climate change. I almost cannot believe that I’m having to say this, but the science is clear enough on this question. Yes, it is true that for a variety of reasons scientists rarely make such admissions, and this is itself a tragedy and is something that needs to change, but enough voices from the scientific community have managed to speak plainly on this for us to know.
People are generally perhaps placing too much emphasis or expectation on the notion that a change to our energy source is going to have a dramatic impact on the entire climate change question. That we will come up with a new source of energy, and that greenhouse gases will disappear magically and that the Earth will stop heating up, allowing us to “adapt.” Adaptation is an illusion, just like the remaining “CO2 budget” is an illusion. We burned through our budget decades ago. The way things are going, the combination of human ignorance and the resulting inertia, to say nothing of the unsurprising political shifts pushing us backwards on these and so many other issues, plus the fact that no such scientific energy discovery, no such new energy source is on the horizon, and existing renewable sources are very unlikely to be able to bridge the gap, particularly before extinction-causing thresholds are reached, it is not difficult to see what is coming.
When scientists say that “the way things are going now” we will experience X it is completely exaggerated to claim that this assumption of continuity is unwarranted because part of it lies in the future. Only an idiot paddles his canoe towards the waterfall’s edge because “I can’t be sure of what will happen because it hasn’t happened yet.”
For people who aren’t aware of this, the way to determine when global warming will cause humanity to become extinct is not to answer the questions “What level of average surface temperature exceeds our ability to survive and at what time will that temperature be reached?” That these questions cannot be answered with precision does not allow us to throw up our hands and claim that anything is possible or that we just don’t know what our fate is. Let’s say that in all likelihood, humanity has less than 200 years remaining on Earth. This time frame is quite within the bounds of what can be projected. Let’s also say that this is not so much because of the absolute temperature levels being reached, but critically, because of what the pressure cooker of global warming does to human societies in particular: it causes all other issues, both natural ones like freak weather, drought and famine, as well as “purely” human activity like human violence, political extremism, protectionism, mental stress and other factors to become magnified. And it all increases, it all gets worse, over time, as heat rises and all of these effects pile up. Rather than asking if we have any reason, or if we have good enough grounds for suggesting, that this is our fate, we are much more obliged to ask if there is any good reason to expect that this is not our fate, other than the very bad reason and the arguably false assertion that the future is not known to anyone.
I am just reading Liquidate by Alf Hornborg. On page 145 he says:
"The pervasive loss of indigenous languages, traditional ecological knowledges,
and crafts – and their replacement with standardised outlooks and
practices geared to modern technology – is nothing less than a systematic
deskilling of most of humanity. We should recall that the much celebrated
technical, scientific, and artistic expertise of modern society is reserved for
a small minority of its population, while its overwhelming majority is compelled
to perform tasks that are very rarely conducive to creativity. Semiotic
freedom, in other words, is a matter of highly uneven global distribution.
Moreover, whatever expertise is encouraged in modernity tends to be dependent
on advanced technologies, which means that it is defined by those technologies
rather than by the inherent skill of a human being." That fits in quite well with your observation about simplification in complexity. Put Hornborg on your show Rachel.
The media sage Marshall McLuhan suggested thinking about the Object in the Field. If the Mayan civilization collapsed it's possible that the rest of the world, the field, wouldn't be affected or even know about it. But the Ecological Overshoot Unraveling as described in the landmark Overshoot by William R. Catton Jr. describes how the planetary field itself is collapsing. The easy resources have already been plundered and turned to waste. Now increased complexity becomes too expensive. This house of cards is coming down.
I’ve read Tainter’s collapse book three times and I can say that it is far clearer than he is in this interview. The book is brilliant and I think Tainter’s meticulous and perhaps overcautious approach does not fare so well in conversation. I was disappointed with his presentation of his thesis here because it is a fundamental insight, highly relevant to a systems understanding of what we are living through. I can only recommend that others read the book or reach out if you would like help integrating the ideas.
Indeed, it's a very valuable piece of collapse scholarship and, with good reason, frequently cited. But also worth noting that it is nearly forty years old now and that good scholarship does not always make for a good public communicator or speaker (and vice versa too) and can also be a bit parochial too.
OMG did she just say "free world" and ignore the EU leaders and other fascist leaders? Moreover fascism and corporatization has hijacked democracy - this is to keep capitalism going by dividing populations. War is one of those mechanisms to create chaos, so is under funding science, using immigrants as scapegoats, dumbing down education, so capitalism is never challenged. In terms of your Israeli analysis you are completely clueless
Yes, this must have been a very frustrating interview for both of you. Lots of waffling is quite normal for many academics, but this was exceptionally disappointing from the man who literally wrote the book on society level collapse. He is knowledgeable of the contemporary collapse concerns, but won't speak to them. Sad.
I despise podcasts, and "talking heads" videos even more, so now that I know they are available I can at least read a transcript. You might put a link in your Substack lead for dinosaurs like me ... I'm approaching professor Tanier's age and many of my generation don't watch videos ...
This man is not a deep thinker, researcher. Bases his research on his personal short term landscape. High school philosopher. Continuously references the Cold War? Would you call this “shallow-deep?” No just void.
He has a patronizing tone in his voice the betrays his comfortableness with being a wealthy white man. He does not seem to recognize the seriousness of our climate tipping points.
Tainter’s book was fascinating, but brilliant researchers can sometimes be detached duds to talk to in person. Most heartbreakingly amusing part was his suggestion that you meet with Malcolm Nance! Ha.
I wonder if you could get Emmanuel Todd on? His last book, Defeat of the West, was incredible but not translated yet into English, and I’ve found his thinking more relevant as time has gone on. He does seem to do a lot of interviews and I think one with him here might be fruitful for you
Rachel you have my admiration for keeping level headed and on track while Prof Tainter avoided addressing the points you raised by talking down to you, minimising yr leads or gaslighting. Endlessly blowing his own trumpet instead. I felt infuriated by some of his responses and concluded that his views simply aren’t current and that he was unable to address the questions you posed. An old gas bag, way past his expiry date.
Originally written by Tears for Fears, rather than wallowing in sadness, King Tut’s Revenge channels the madness into movement, making the song feel like a protest against apathy and conformity - turning despair into defiance.
🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁
Keep protests peaceful.
Don't kill anyone.
Here are resistance related guides from around the world:
🇺🇸 Fundamentals of physical surveillance: a guide for uniformed and plainclothes personnel
I see there is some frustration about Joseph's response around cyclic recurrence of good and bad and that things will change. I thought it was nice to see the perspective of completely different generational contexts and the tension. I am closer to his age than perhaps Rachel's and honestly I think he is right. I cannot imagine what people now would make of having to get gas masks and practice bizarre and frankly useless means for protecting themselves from an inmminent nuclear attack. Perhaps, excatly because he has lived those times,not to mention Nixon, Watergate, Petrol crisis etc,; this all just goes round in circles of sometimes terrible, then getting better again. At it's most basic in terms of life, we cannot have one without the other. But perhaps with Social Media, hyper sensitivity and the scarcity of sources to trust, it just feels worse now. Or is it worse...
Now, where I though it got interesting was when the discussion turned to "was anything really different now, underlying good/bad experience. I thought the enquiry was necessary and I think it could have been pushed further. When the discussion moved to the loss of order in the world, the rule of law etc, of course this is the case. However the discussion did not touch on the core point here, that the period of the USA as a superpower guarenteeing international norms is over. I think perhaps Joseph is myopic in that he is in the US bubble, but from outside that bubble, it is clear that Trump and the Tariff thrashing and all the fiscal moves do stem from the realization that the deficit driven economic model cannot be sustained with the existence now of China, BRICS and all that entails. So the US is not policing the world, and the unsaid deal that we invest in US bonds so that the US Military Industrial Complex keeps the world safe has been broken and renaged on in the last decade. That economic empire is falling.
My reflections on the whole complexity innovation theory is that it seems logical, but one might say a narrative fallacy. The idea of diluting money in Roman times etc. There are other scholars that would point to slavery as being the engine of growth and conquest and the subsequent incapacity to replace this, especially with Christianity on the rise, led to the inevitable collapse of the system. How could it keep going. And yes, this is energy, but it is not reduction in innovation. And this brings me to my point on this era we are in. I think innovation is a factor but I was sad to not hear the underlying systemic factor of limits to growth as introduced by the Meadows et all in the early 70's. They correctly pointed out the floors in the model of current capitalist growth. It depends on constantly growing GDP, population etc. Now in the western world, as predicted in the LTG model modernity has created populations that are aging out, and the fiscal cost of paying back the social contract these people took part in is literally bankrupting governments. None of this is really about innovation. It is about whether finite resources can support the model with a constantly growing demand. And no it cannot. There are simply limits to growth.....
Quite a frustrating interview as PR-B notes and difficult to square Tainter's admission of global collapse as the likely outcome with his expression of equanimity about the current state of affairs. In fairness, he does explain this as taking a much longer term view as an historian but it is probably his scientific - and consequently, unemotional and apparently uninvested - approach that grates.
The complexity issue makes sense - it does solve human problems, but also creates wealth but the link between these two things now seems ruptured. The law of diminishing returns as a causal factor in collapse also makes a lot of sense.
The bit that really hit home for me was your reference to your previous interview in which it was pointed out that more complex systems simplified the roles of population. This seems obvious when we consider ancient societies that used slave labour extensively but while fossil fuels have obviated the need to some extent it has by no means eliminated slavery but redefined it to allow those in power to enjoy a more expansive life. It is arguable that the continued acquisition of wealth traps those in power just as much in the hamster wheel.
All of which would seem to suggest that smaller communities would lead to simpler and richer lives, which I think was your point, Rachel, in describing your experience in different cultures.
To me that neo class society is unnecessary, but when people can get away, they can be intellectually lazy and will do so. It also creates complexity, maybe not in technical or structural terms, but eg when teenager asks, why is that nanny taking care of us kids but neighbor doesnt have nanny... and these questions will be endless and "burden" parents and adults with contradictions. But tech wont solve these. These emotional contradictions, or intellectual (conflict with how world should be or is taught in school, vs what it actually is) are more painful than actual technical complexity.
People with possibility strive for smaller communities. That often comes with price of doubling or tripling commute. But it can still be worth it to people who can then eg have pets and family there, that isnt possible in other place, downtown of very high density population.
Nice to see Tainter interviewed. His book was literally under my hand when I saw the Planet: Critical email this morning, as I'm working on a related manuscript myself. However, as has been clear in several of his previous talks, there is an underlying optimism or agnosticism about the current moment and future that some of us find odd (or frustrating). I think for very good reasons, most contemporary collapsologists tend to think "this time it's different" (e.g. permanently declining energy and other resources, global society rather than a local affair (i.e. non where to go), ecological/planetary limits overshot, reliance on fragile global supply chains, species extinctions, etc. etc.), so I was glad to see that you started to push him on some of this. He presents an absolutely vital part of the puzzle of collapse but squaring this with the other pieces (known and missing) and the present moment requires the work of many other thinkers too. However, diminishing returns on complexity invested alone is worth the price of entry (and diminishing rates of innovation is always a valuable point to make to techno-optimists). Thanks.
As a senior software engineer, I can completely agree with the analysis that as technological maintenance decreases in relevant returns, society begins to deteriorate.
However, this has little actual relevance to the technologies themselves but instead, how they are implemented in a society.
In the United States especially, business leaders have become as detached from societal realities as our political leadership has. In the US, technology is seen as a replacement for Human Beings, which then follows with the less than expected results.
Businesses and many other institutions (especially education) are rife with poor technology implementations that see our young increasingly rely on them as crutches for their daily lives. Instead of doing the required hard work that is part of every learning process, increasingly young students are allowed to offload such work to their devices. Now we have students in High School who literally cannot write or even read at the expected levels of their education, And many are so poor at mathematics that it is a wonder that any of them are even promoted into the tougher math courses offered in US High Schools.
Yet, this is just one example as to how ruinous technologies have become in the public sphere.
Instead of using technologies within the scope of expected contexts as tools, many now see them as the lifeblood of their lives, careers, and institutional entities.
Many of us in my profession have been warning people for years of the serious, detrimental negatives of such technological but to no avail. Now the consequences are being seen everywhere, which is a driving factor in the current decline in the United States.
However, technology alone cannot be held responsible for all of the US' ills. There is a lot of historical precedent for our nation's demise, which as one increasingly delves into our own histories, finds that it actually began with the creation of the US Constitution, which was implemented as such a compromised document that in reality, benefited very few, while promoting the agendas of the landed, White wealthy.
The result is that traditional, historical societies find the concepts of such a collapse as more relevant as presented here than those societies, like the United States and Israel (both settler, colonial societies), which have too many historical contradictions to sustain them unless such contradictions are confronted and dealt with. In neither case here, they weren't...
Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer / Military Historian Analyst
That sounds like what was crux in WW2: nazi army had superior tech in early days and well trained, well motivated crews. However soviets and allies could replace broken and destroyed equipment by numbers and had designed easy to use equipment, so fresh outta camp people could have chance to learn them on the go. We see this play out in ever aspect of society..... education takes too long, companies demand 20 year experiences and so on.
Sure it requires highly educated lot of experience person to manage supply chains but that is still boring and stressful office job and somewhat unnecessary. Not to mention downstream problems to life. As we see now in banks, they simply refuse any "competition" or reforms to they 50 year old tech, well as they can afford so blackmailing society. Few other companies can. These reforms tend to make things simpler but require lot of effort.
As a contrast to Tainter's approach and suggestions your audience deserves to hear Peter Turchin's perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations. For the past 30 years Turchin has been working to turn history into a proper science rather than a collection of just so stories. His work takes subjective opinion out of interpreting the rise and fall of civilizations and reveals the simple metrics that largely dictate how civilizations predictably rise and fall. Turchin would be a great on Planet Critical.
Peter and I have been in contact! He's deep in research for a new book but I hope to have him on future.
What a frustrating discussion. I could understand Joseph’s attitude if he were merely a 75-year-old man randomly plucked out of Utah for this discussion, telling us that all our worries will blow over. But given that he has conducted the type of research that he has, it is amazing that he can find no other way to describe our current situation than as one being typical of historical patterns, or as he said “things get a little bit better, things get a little bit worse” over and over.
If we may consider him a scientist, I would say that he is suffering from what James Hansen has called scientific reticence, or simply the extreme reluctance to connect to the next dot if that data point is not supplied from one’s sample.
The big failure here is in not considering the true nature of climate change and environmental destruction that we are causing and that has by now slipped out of our control. For Joseph to talk about human technology and societal complexity and the cycles they go through is one thing, but not to recognise that climate change in particular, although caused by us, is now running free on its own and will continue to in almost all cases no matter what we do, is just baffling.
That the end of humanity as well as most life on the planet is now underway due to climate change was not recognised in this discussion of how societies collapse is astounding. And we cannot let ourselves off the hook by saying as Rachel did that our climate models are not precise enough to allow us to predict the future. That is simply not true. It is true that the future is not yet here, by definition. We do however know that extinction is coming based on the current trajectory. Climate change is happening all on its own now in a non-linear acceleration. This much we know. We do not need to be able to predict with accuracy when a particular species will become extinct from the processes occurring now and still to occur from climate change. To say as Joseph did that it is foolish to try to make predictions about our own situation relative to collapse is itself foolish given what we know about climate change. I almost cannot believe that I’m having to say this, but the science is clear enough on this question. Yes, it is true that for a variety of reasons scientists rarely make such admissions, and this is itself a tragedy and is something that needs to change, but enough voices from the scientific community have managed to speak plainly on this for us to know.
People are generally perhaps placing too much emphasis or expectation on the notion that a change to our energy source is going to have a dramatic impact on the entire climate change question. That we will come up with a new source of energy, and that greenhouse gases will disappear magically and that the Earth will stop heating up, allowing us to “adapt.” Adaptation is an illusion, just like the remaining “CO2 budget” is an illusion. We burned through our budget decades ago. The way things are going, the combination of human ignorance and the resulting inertia, to say nothing of the unsurprising political shifts pushing us backwards on these and so many other issues, plus the fact that no such scientific energy discovery, no such new energy source is on the horizon, and existing renewable sources are very unlikely to be able to bridge the gap, particularly before extinction-causing thresholds are reached, it is not difficult to see what is coming.
When scientists say that “the way things are going now” we will experience X it is completely exaggerated to claim that this assumption of continuity is unwarranted because part of it lies in the future. Only an idiot paddles his canoe towards the waterfall’s edge because “I can’t be sure of what will happen because it hasn’t happened yet.”
For people who aren’t aware of this, the way to determine when global warming will cause humanity to become extinct is not to answer the questions “What level of average surface temperature exceeds our ability to survive and at what time will that temperature be reached?” That these questions cannot be answered with precision does not allow us to throw up our hands and claim that anything is possible or that we just don’t know what our fate is. Let’s say that in all likelihood, humanity has less than 200 years remaining on Earth. This time frame is quite within the bounds of what can be projected. Let’s also say that this is not so much because of the absolute temperature levels being reached, but critically, because of what the pressure cooker of global warming does to human societies in particular: it causes all other issues, both natural ones like freak weather, drought and famine, as well as “purely” human activity like human violence, political extremism, protectionism, mental stress and other factors to become magnified. And it all increases, it all gets worse, over time, as heat rises and all of these effects pile up. Rather than asking if we have any reason, or if we have good enough grounds for suggesting, that this is our fate, we are much more obliged to ask if there is any good reason to expect that this is not our fate, other than the very bad reason and the arguably false assertion that the future is not known to anyone.
I am just reading Liquidate by Alf Hornborg. On page 145 he says:
"The pervasive loss of indigenous languages, traditional ecological knowledges,
and crafts – and their replacement with standardised outlooks and
practices geared to modern technology – is nothing less than a systematic
deskilling of most of humanity. We should recall that the much celebrated
technical, scientific, and artistic expertise of modern society is reserved for
a small minority of its population, while its overwhelming majority is compelled
to perform tasks that are very rarely conducive to creativity. Semiotic
freedom, in other words, is a matter of highly uneven global distribution.
Moreover, whatever expertise is encouraged in modernity tends to be dependent
on advanced technologies, which means that it is defined by those technologies
rather than by the inherent skill of a human being." That fits in quite well with your observation about simplification in complexity. Put Hornborg on your show Rachel.
The media sage Marshall McLuhan suggested thinking about the Object in the Field. If the Mayan civilization collapsed it's possible that the rest of the world, the field, wouldn't be affected or even know about it. But the Ecological Overshoot Unraveling as described in the landmark Overshoot by William R. Catton Jr. describes how the planetary field itself is collapsing. The easy resources have already been plundered and turned to waste. Now increased complexity becomes too expensive. This house of cards is coming down.
I’ve read Tainter’s collapse book three times and I can say that it is far clearer than he is in this interview. The book is brilliant and I think Tainter’s meticulous and perhaps overcautious approach does not fare so well in conversation. I was disappointed with his presentation of his thesis here because it is a fundamental insight, highly relevant to a systems understanding of what we are living through. I can only recommend that others read the book or reach out if you would like help integrating the ideas.
Indeed, it's a very valuable piece of collapse scholarship and, with good reason, frequently cited. But also worth noting that it is nearly forty years old now and that good scholarship does not always make for a good public communicator or speaker (and vice versa too) and can also be a bit parochial too.
OMG did she just say "free world" and ignore the EU leaders and other fascist leaders? Moreover fascism and corporatization has hijacked democracy - this is to keep capitalism going by dividing populations. War is one of those mechanisms to create chaos, so is under funding science, using immigrants as scapegoats, dumbing down education, so capitalism is never challenged. In terms of your Israeli analysis you are completely clueless
I took note of this, but given the way the conversation was going, it was perhaps a concessionary way to get Tainter to become real.
Yes, this must have been a very frustrating interview for both of you. Lots of waffling is quite normal for many academics, but this was exceptionally disappointing from the man who literally wrote the book on society level collapse. He is knowledgeable of the contemporary collapse concerns, but won't speak to them. Sad.
I at least learned one thing -
That there are transcripts available at planetcritical.com.
I despise podcasts, and "talking heads" videos even more, so now that I know they are available I can at least read a transcript. You might put a link in your Substack lead for dinosaurs like me ... I'm approaching professor Tanier's age and many of my generation don't watch videos ...
Thank you, I was going to ask the same thing. A link to each episode would be brilliant.
Great episode. Thank you for sharing this conversation Rachel and Joseph.
This man is not a deep thinker, researcher. Bases his research on his personal short term landscape. High school philosopher. Continuously references the Cold War? Would you call this “shallow-deep?” No just void.
He has a patronizing tone in his voice the betrays his comfortableness with being a wealthy white man. He does not seem to recognize the seriousness of our climate tipping points.
He equates money with oil and visa versa. His beliefs then seem to cloud his perspective. Very linear, with an ego centric bearing.
Tainter’s book was fascinating, but brilliant researchers can sometimes be detached duds to talk to in person. Most heartbreakingly amusing part was his suggestion that you meet with Malcolm Nance! Ha.
I wonder if you could get Emmanuel Todd on? His last book, Defeat of the West, was incredible but not translated yet into English, and I’ve found his thinking more relevant as time has gone on. He does seem to do a lot of interviews and I think one with him here might be fruitful for you
I want to listen to learn why Humanity is in Crisis
Rachel you have my admiration for keeping level headed and on track while Prof Tainter avoided addressing the points you raised by talking down to you, minimising yr leads or gaslighting. Endlessly blowing his own trumpet instead. I felt infuriated by some of his responses and concluded that his views simply aren’t current and that he was unable to address the questions you posed. An old gas bag, way past his expiry date.
Next National Day of Action
✖️ 👑 / ✖️ 🤡 / 🧻💩 is in 7 Days
get ready for
FIGHT the TRUMP TAKEOVER
this Saturday August 16th 2025
Organized by No Kings!
https://www.fightthetrumptakeover.com
🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁🍁
Join the freight train.
🚂🇨🇦🇬🇧🇫🇷🇯🇵🇦🇺🇩🇪🇺🇦🇸🇳🇳🇱🇰🇷🇵🇱🏴🇻🇦
🍁 Elbows UP! 🏒
SIGN IDEAS:
Hands off MY Elections
Stop using MY money for YOUR crimes
VANCE DANCES TO NOBODY, DHARMA OR TRUMP
Not a chance Vance
How is it YOUR money?
Epstein ENTRAPS, Trump then Delivers
THEY'RE OUR FILES - NOT YOURS
Epstein + Trump = Blackmail
Why are you so afraid Schumer?
What's he got on you Murdoch?
What is Trump's asking price?
Put ICE on ICE
I'm an ICE block
ICE PrICKS
Try Rhyme Brain to come up with clever lines:
https://rhymebrain.com/en
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MAD WORLD [Ska Punk Cover] by KING TUT'S REVENGE
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lWzfnQ_DgqI
Originally written by Tears for Fears, rather than wallowing in sadness, King Tut’s Revenge channels the madness into movement, making the song feel like a protest against apathy and conformity - turning despair into defiance.
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Keep protests peaceful.
Don't kill anyone.
Here are resistance related guides from around the world:
🇺🇸 Fundamentals of physical surveillance: a guide for uniformed and plainclothes personnel
https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsofph0000silj
The RCMP has its own publications including:
🇨🇦 GCPSG-022 (2025) - Threat and Risk Assessment Guide
GCPSG-010 (2022) - Operational Physical Security Guide
🇨🇦 GCPSG-019 (2023) - Protection, Detection, Response, and Recovery Guide
https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/physec-secmat/pubs/index-eng.htm
The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation also has excellent guides on:
🇺🇸 Street Level Surveillance
https://sls.eff.org
🇺🇸 Surveillance Self-Defense
https://ssd.eff.org/
🇪🇺 🇸🇪⚠️ Resistance Operating Concept
https://jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/25
🇺🇦 🇺🇲 Radio Free Ukraine Resistance Manual
https://radiofreeukraine.com/3d-flip-book/resistance-manual/
⚠️ John Hopkins University:
Assessing Revolutionary And Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) Studies
This one is used a lot by ICE, so the Trump Regime keeps suppressing it. Here are alternate links as it keeps getting moved around by the good guys:
Small Wars Journal
Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies (ARIS) Project
https://archive.smallwarsjournal.com/blog/assessing-revolutionary-and-insurgent-strategies-aris-project
Author's website:
On Resistance, Revolutions, and Insurgencies
https://zimmerer.typepad.com/resistance/
Free PDF download of the book from the original author:
Casebook on Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, Volume II 1962 - 2009
http://zimmerer.typepad.com/Documents/ARIS%20Casebook%20Vol%202%202012%20s.pdf
⚠️ Civilian-Based Defense: A Post-Military Weapons System
https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/resource/civilian-based-defense-a-post-military-weapons-system/
🏁 Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States Office of Strategic Services
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184?ref=404media.co
⚠️ Library of Congress
Revelations from the Russian archives: documents in English translation
https://www.loc.gov/item/96024752
🏁 Robert Reich/Resistance School
Communicating Across Difference
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaT8gjnOmQl3dguy0_E0vVCL5ZYEyCTzu
🏁 Bernie Sanders:
https://m.youtube.com/@BernieSanders
🏁 CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists:
Safety Kit
https://cpj.org/safety-kit/
🏁 Activist Handbook:
https://activisthandbook.org/introduction
(⚠️ These are USA sponsered websites. Some publications may have been removed by the Trump regime)
I see there is some frustration about Joseph's response around cyclic recurrence of good and bad and that things will change. I thought it was nice to see the perspective of completely different generational contexts and the tension. I am closer to his age than perhaps Rachel's and honestly I think he is right. I cannot imagine what people now would make of having to get gas masks and practice bizarre and frankly useless means for protecting themselves from an inmminent nuclear attack. Perhaps, excatly because he has lived those times,not to mention Nixon, Watergate, Petrol crisis etc,; this all just goes round in circles of sometimes terrible, then getting better again. At it's most basic in terms of life, we cannot have one without the other. But perhaps with Social Media, hyper sensitivity and the scarcity of sources to trust, it just feels worse now. Or is it worse...
Now, where I though it got interesting was when the discussion turned to "was anything really different now, underlying good/bad experience. I thought the enquiry was necessary and I think it could have been pushed further. When the discussion moved to the loss of order in the world, the rule of law etc, of course this is the case. However the discussion did not touch on the core point here, that the period of the USA as a superpower guarenteeing international norms is over. I think perhaps Joseph is myopic in that he is in the US bubble, but from outside that bubble, it is clear that Trump and the Tariff thrashing and all the fiscal moves do stem from the realization that the deficit driven economic model cannot be sustained with the existence now of China, BRICS and all that entails. So the US is not policing the world, and the unsaid deal that we invest in US bonds so that the US Military Industrial Complex keeps the world safe has been broken and renaged on in the last decade. That economic empire is falling.
My reflections on the whole complexity innovation theory is that it seems logical, but one might say a narrative fallacy. The idea of diluting money in Roman times etc. There are other scholars that would point to slavery as being the engine of growth and conquest and the subsequent incapacity to replace this, especially with Christianity on the rise, led to the inevitable collapse of the system. How could it keep going. And yes, this is energy, but it is not reduction in innovation. And this brings me to my point on this era we are in. I think innovation is a factor but I was sad to not hear the underlying systemic factor of limits to growth as introduced by the Meadows et all in the early 70's. They correctly pointed out the floors in the model of current capitalist growth. It depends on constantly growing GDP, population etc. Now in the western world, as predicted in the LTG model modernity has created populations that are aging out, and the fiscal cost of paying back the social contract these people took part in is literally bankrupting governments. None of this is really about innovation. It is about whether finite resources can support the model with a constantly growing demand. And no it cannot. There are simply limits to growth.....