Living at the Edge of Civilizational Risk

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Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome new readers, welcome back old friends, and here’s a big hug from little Snowy to all.

Today I want to reflect gently on the notion of civilizational risk.

When I discuss this topic, people get scared, I think, and misunderstandings arise. So I want to take a moment to try to explain it well. I think we all feel it, in some way, these days, after all.

America’s having a catastrophe autumn.

Asheville, in ruins. Florida, braced for another mega-hurricane, just days after the last one.

All these herald the arrival of mega-scale climate impacts.

And in their wake, people have begun to say things like, “nowhere’s safe,” or “how much longer can we go on like this?”

I don’t live in Florida. And you can tell me if you do, and if I’m wrong. But I wonder if there aren’t people there who are beginning to wonder if it’s going to be a place that can be lived in. What if this happens every year? What if the severity and frequency of such events increase?

This is all a primer on civilizational risk. We’re beginning to live it.

Living at the Edge of Civilizational Risk

Now. When I say “civilizational risk,” people think Hollywood movies. A meteor levels the entire planet. Oh no, it’s the zombie apocalypse. That’s not risk, that’s certainty.

Bang, we’re all…

Risk is different. It’s about uncertainty.

So. What does civilizational risk mean? It doesn’t mean we’re all doomed, we’re all going to die, etcetera. The sort of hyperbole and exaggeration that less careful readers will attribute.

It means uncertainty. And that means, in turn, that not all of us are affected equally. Some places and the people in them are beginning to experience the full burden of civilizational risk.

That means, that yes, the things we think of as civilization can suddenly fall apart. Food’s being carried in by hand to some disaster struck places even as we speak. Water and shelter are in scarce supply. These are some of the results of the last mega hurricane.

But not all of are affected that way. Some of us are comfortable enough in our living rooms, offices, homes.

If you’re in Washington DC, you’re not in Florida, or the mountains of North Carolina.

That doesn’t mean that civilizational risk isn’t real, or it isn’t rising. We can think of another dimension of it, which is that America’s democracy is at risk, and even if climate change doesn’t affect you, that probably will affect more or less everyone on earth.

Understanding Civilizational Risk

So let me distill a few lessons from the above.

• Civilizational risk is real, and it’s rising.
• It doesn’t affect us all equally, but that doesn’t give us license to ignore it,
• Because in the end, the scope of this kind of risk does affect all of us.

How so?

Civilizational risk is accruing because our institutions have failed. And when institutions fail—their job being to manage, reduce, and transform risk, which is negative possibility, into positive possibility—that risk then falls on people’s shoulders. Like a great weight, which often can’t be carried.

Let’s go back to Florida now. I just read a story about a mother who can’t evacuate, with her children. She doesn’t have the money. So there she is, staying put. Putting herself and her kids at great risk.

This is how civilizational risk works. It’s how all forms of macro-scale risk work. Institutions fail, and…

People are left to fend for themselves.

That’s a terrible set of outcomes, because in a very real sense, being left to fend for yourself is civilizational collapse. The point of this project we call civilization is that human existence isn’t reduced to the jungle, the elements, predator and prey.

The Frequency of Collapse

Once a century events. Becoming once a decade events. Becoming annual events.

Think of this as a vibration. As a vibe, if you like. As this frequency increases, people are beginning to ask uncomfortable, difficult questions. Such as: how long can we go on like this?

We’re approaching certain limits, in other words. I don’t know if Florida’s going to be “livable,” but in a sense, that’s the wrong question. A better way to think about it is: risk is increasing, and in many ways, spiraling out of control.

A friend was recently telling me how hard it’s become to get insurance now in place after place. This of course is a vivid example of institutions failing, and risk then having to be borne by people.

But think of the consequences. If you can’t insure your home against a disaster, can you sell it? Who’d buy it? What does that do to the housing market? Then, prospective buyers will probably ask for a steep risk discount, if there’s much of a market at all.

Let’s take that chain of consequences further. As housing markets seize up, of course, public purses shrink. The very resources necessary to rebuild after disasters become harder and harder to come by. National governments have to step in—after the fact.

Economies begin to slide. Corporations relocate their headquarters. Investment begins to shrink. Jobs dry up.

Now you see the outlines of a vicious circle.

That’s civilizational risk. This spiral. And it doesn’t mean the Hollywood scenarios of “civilization ending” overnight. Rather, it means that in certain places, for certain people, in certain moments, the risk of losing it all is increasing, and it’s borne on individuals’ shoulders, because there’s little to no protection against these forms of risk.

We’ve discussed climate, because the examples of the hurricanes are vivid ones, but you can just as easily substitute a nation losing its democracy to an authoritarian, and the logic, the vicious cycle, remains precisely the same.

The Failure of Leaders and Institutions

And that brings me back to the central point, which is the failure of leaders and institutions.

Let me underscore the point. Civilizational risk is ever-present. We don’t know if and when the metaphorical meteor will strike, and there’s always a tiny chance it will. But in our age, that risk is rising. Sharply. Steeply.

Precisely because leaders and institutions haven’t taken the notion of civilizational risk seriously.

Whenever people like me—“people like me,” go ahead and chuckle, I suppose that means climate scientists, anthropologists, better economists, social scientists, etcetera—bring it up, our leaders don’t even hear about it.

That’s because they’re protected from our dangerous, uncomfortable thoughts by layer upon layer of yes-men and women. Pundits, advisors, etcetera—whose only real purpose is to keep power protected from reality. Go ahead and take a hard look at how close the election is—but should anyone be losing to Donald Trump? Why won’t the Democrats say the obvious things about economy, about people’s lives, about how they’re struggling?

Layers of protection keep their sacraments safe. Think of pundits as guards on a castle wall, and advisors as the sergeants-at-arms inside the citadel. Nothing is allowed to penetrate.

And so our leaders and institutions are flying blind.

Why is catastrophe after catastrophe hitting us? Because the issue of civilizational risk wasn’t taken seriously. It was dismissed as hyperbole, exaggeration, alarmism—hey, things aren’t going to collapse, just like that. And that wasn’t what any of us meant, really—but looking around it’s hard to argue, now, that things are in an incredibly position, for more and more people, whether it comes to the climate, democracy, the economy, or society.

As leaders and institutions failed to take the issue of civilizational risk seriously, of course, they did nothing about it. They’ll say they “did something,” of course, but not in any meaningful sense. “Doing something” about a problem means solving it, at least in some small part, but in our age, the macro-trends all plummet downwards.

So the burden is now falling on people’s shoulders. Sure, the government will be there, piecemeal, to help rebuild, where it can, if you’re lucky. But that isn’t addressing risk.

It’s post-hoc, after the fact, too little, too late, especially for those lives already devastated, and those to come. The entire point of our modern conception of risk is to do something about it.

And for that to happen, our institutions and leaders need to make a paradigm shift. They need to take civilizational risk seriously.

Or else what? Or else this is the future. Accelerating waves of destabilization, the frequency of catastrophe increasing, and people left to fend for themselves in the chaos.

That isn’t civilization, my friends. Don’t let anyone tell you it is.

Our leaders and institutions are failing on that level, and if you imagine that troubles me, you’re right. It does. It should trouble all of us.

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