“Thousands of human cultures have flourished throughout the human past, but there have been only about 24 civilizations. And all (except our current global industrial civilization—so far) have collapsed. … During such times societies typically see sharply declining population levels, and the survivors experience severe hardship. Elites lose their grip on power. Domestic revolutions and foreign wars erupt. People flee cities and establish new, smaller communities in the hinterlands. Governments fall and new sets of power relations emerge. … Thinking in terms of simplification, contraction, and decentralization is more accurate and helpful, and probably less scary, than contemplating collapse. It also opens avenues for foreseeing, reshaping, and even harnessing inevitable social processes as to minimize hardship and maximize possible benefits.

Excerpted from a must-read strategic change essay by Richard Heinberg:

“In his benchmark 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies, archaeologist Joseph Tainter explained the rise and demise of civilizations in terms of complexity. He used the word complexity to refer to “the size of a society, the number and distinctiveness of its parts, the variety of specialized social roles that it incorporates, the number of distinct social personalities present, and the variety of mechanisms for organizing these into a coherent, functioning whole.”1

Civilizations are complex societies organized around cities; they obtain their food from agriculture (field crops), use writing and mathematics, and maintain full-time division of labor. They are centralized, with people and resources constantly flowing from the hinterlands toward urban hubs. Thousands of human cultures have flourished throughout the human past, but there have been only about 24 civilizations. And all (except our current global industrial civilization—so far) have collapsed.

Tainter describes the growth of civilization as a process of investing societal resources in the development of ever-greater complexity in order to solve problems. For example, in village-based tribal societies an arms race between tribes can erupt, requiring each village to become more centralized and complexly organized in order to fend off attacks. But complexity costs energy. As Tainter puts it, “More complex societies are costlier to maintain than simpler ones and require higher support levels per capita.” Since available energy and resources are limited, a point therefore comes when increasing investments become too costly and yield declining marginal returns. Even the maintenance of existing levels of complexity costs too much (citizens may experience this as onerous levels of taxation), and a general simplification and decentralization of society ensues—a process colloquially referred to as collapse.

During such times societies typically see sharply declining population levels, and the survivors experience severe hardship. Elites lose their grip on power. Domestic revolutions and foreign wars erupt. People flee cities and establish new, smaller communities in the hinterlands. Governments fall and new sets of power relations emerge.

It is frightening to think about what collapse would mean for our current global civilization. Nevertheless, as we are about to see, there are good reasons for concluding that it is reaching limits of centralization and complexity, that marginal returns on investments in complexity are declining, and that simplification and decentralization are inevitable.

Thinking in terms of simplification, contraction, and decentralization is more accurate and helpful, and probably less scary, than contemplating collapse. It also opens avenues for foreseeing, reshaping, and even harnessing inevitable social processes as to minimize hardship and maximize possible benefits.”

What is a likely scenario today? Richard Heinberg explains:

“To summarize this already brief summary: Due to energy limits, overwhelming debt burdens, and accumulating environmental impacts, the world has reached a point where continued economic growth may be unachievable. Instead of increasing its complexity, therefore, society will—for the foreseeable future, and probably in fits and starts—be shedding complexity.

General economic contraction has arguably already begun in Europe and the US. The signs are everywhere. High unemployment levels, declining energy consumption, and jittery markets herald what some bearish financial analysts describe as a “greater depression” perhaps lasting until mid-century (see, for example, George Soros’s comments in a recent Newsweek interview). But even that stark assessment misses the true dimensions of the crisis because it focuses only on its financial and social manifestations while ignoring its energy and ecological basis.

Whether or not the root causes of worldwide economic turmoil are generally understood, that turmoil is already impacting political systems as well as the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. Banks that innovated their way into insolvency in the years leading up to 2008 have been bailed out by governments and central banks fearful to avert a contagious deflationary destruction of global capital. Meanwhile, governments that borrowed heavily during the last decade or two with the expectation that further economic growth would swell tax revenues and make it easy to repay debts now find themselves with declining revenues and rising borrowing costs—a sure formula for default.

In a few instances, the very financial institutions that some governments temporarily saved from insolvency are now undermining the economies of other governments by forcing a downgrade of their credit ratings, making debt rollovers more difficult. Those latter governments are being given an ultimatum: reduce domestic spending or face exclusion from the system of global capital. But in many cases domestic spending is all that’s keeping the national economy functioning. Increasingly, even in countries recently considered good credit risks, the costs of preventing a collapse of the financial sector are being shifted to the general populace by way of austerity measures that result in economic contraction and general misery.

A global popular uprising is the predictable result of governments’ cuts in social services, their efforts to shield wealthy investors from consequences of their own greed, and rising food and fuel prices.

Throughout the past year, recurring protests have erupted in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America. The long-range aims of protesters are in many cases yet to be articulated, but the immediate reasons for the protests are not hard to discern. As food and fuel prices squeeze, poor people naturally feel the pinch first. When the poor are still able to get by, they are often reluctant to risk assembling in the street to oppose corrupt, entrenched regimes. When they can no longer make ends meet, the risks of protest seem less significant—there is nothing to lose; life is intolerable anyway. Widespread protest opens the opportunity for needed political and economic reforms, but it also leads to the prospect of bloody crackdowns and reduced social and political stability.”