The Biology of Collapse: Lessons from Nature on Growth, Power, Extinction and Rebirth

One of the biggest misconceptions about collapse is that it only concerns the future or present, when in fact, human history is defined as much by its periods of growth as it is by a long list of frequent, spectacular collapse events. Whilst the symptoms of collapse may be currently culminating into their global, systemic manifestations, it has taken countless failed societies, ecological catastrophes and technological and economic bubbles to get here. Collapse is not something that happens to a civilisation. It is an entrenched quality of an unsustainable system. The process of systemic collapse we are currently experiencing was put into motion thousands of years ago, when early human societies set the foundations for a growth-driven, anthropocentric culture.In order to protect itself, society has always chosen to skip the chapter of collapse when writing its history books - or even better, present it as a “freak” event: a special situation that only ever happens once, like the Holocaust. According to mainstream historians, economic crises had their culprits, famines had their geopolitical stressors, and environmental disasters had their villains. But few ever dared to connect the dots and identify the single culprit above them all: malignant growth driven by human supremacy, greed, colonialism, inequality, and genocide. This civilisation has always collapsed because it never changed its mantra. Unless we recognize the entrenched and systemic nature of collapse which makes it so ubiquitous and inevitable, we won’t see the end game that is currently playing out.Whatever our future holds, we remain bound to the laws of biology governing our bodies and minds: the heartbeat that makes our blood flow, the chemical signals that make our brains think, and the life forms we depend on for our nutrition. And yet, human development over the millennia has been a journey of consistent, reckless defiance against biological principles and pillars. We altered our environment, our relationship with other organisms, and the fundamental temperature, precipitation and atmospheric parameters that make biology possible in the first place.This book approaches systemic collapse from a different angle. While most history books will blame collapse on a war, a technology, religious or political rhetoric or pure human folly, the ultimate driver behind all forms of collapse is, and will always be, biological - after all, each of us eventually faces their own biological collapse: death. Biology is the silent force beneath everything. It is the elephant in the room that never speaks out, but controls the tectonic plates upon which culture, economy, politics and ideology erect their temporary foundations.The essays, stories and historical accounts included here cover a scope as diverse as the polycrisis itself, but all of them pivot around the same central thesis: our objective reality is, and will always be, our biology: it rises above opinion, above speculation or ideological affiliation, and stays grounded on scientific fact. It is these facts we should be paying attention to, and not our constructed realities. Because whenever culture, politics or religion seem to make no sense, biology always will. Read more