Breaking Together: A freedom-loving response to collapse

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One such person in modern times may be Professor Jem Bendell of Cumbria University, whose new book, Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse, was released on 9 May 2023. JemBot: “Certainly, the development of critical wisdom through real-life experiences and relationship building is a major focus in Jem Bendell’s ‘Breaking Together. The Human Development Index is a massive dataset collected by the United Nations and published annually since 1990. The list I was providing from ‘Breaking Together’ that detailed pathways to attaining critical wisdom didn’t include a fifth point as such.

Half way through the programme, the UN secretary-general warned that rather than progress, many of the goals were moving backwards. In ‘Breaking Together,’ Jem Bendell discusses numerous ways communities can begin to shift power dynamics and encourage cooperative relationships. This event was partly set up as the launch of Jem’s new book, Breaking Together: you can see my blog review of it here. I hope they find nourishing and practical wisdom there: about freedom; about the culture that got us here; about the welcome of collapse, and the grieving of it; about how we might respond and what we might want to build. Dan: Please go deeper into the subject of how critical wisdom may be attained in practice, through pathways that provide live learning experiences through real relationship building.In other words, the focus is on the process and the integrity of our actions, rather than being fixated on the end result.

In Breaking Together Bendell argues that the collapse of industrial consumer societies is not just “inevitable” but is in fact already underway. For years when I heard people say all the environmental and social problems are being driven by the money system, my mind went blank. Psychological Readiness: By focusing on the interpersonal, psychological aspects of collapse readiness, we can help individuals navigate the changes they might wish to make in their lives and work. Perhaps it's time to broaden our sources of insight and scholarship, when considering liberation and the collapse of white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, ableist systems? Impersonal top-down approaches, preference for the interests of friends and disconnection from the needs of ordinary people were obvious in the response to Covid and are increasingly obvious in the responses to all the crises that make up the Climate and Ecological Emergency.While the earlier chapters are things he needed to say to set the scene, my sense is that it is these latter chapters where Bendell says the things he really wants to say. But the evidence I present in Breaking Together supports the view that we have reached a point where most modern societies, while continuing to function on the surface, are already in the early stages of their collapse.

Having said what I said above, these new ideas did indeed come from white males – they were able to have them because of privilege (more access to money, comfort, respect, education, books, contacts, leisure time etc. So that cost is not a barrier to people accessing the analysis in my book Breaking Together, today the ebook becomes free to download. But her response to my first public lecture on deep adaptation to climate change showed me what was possible. Perhaps a collapse of our modern day society will be a good thing as it presents us with a real opportunity to develop a fairer , freer society in which we take back our inalienable rights and power.

Since Deep Adaptation was published, a world event has taken place that provides numerous case studies and insights into how modern society might respond to a crisis: the Covid 19 pandemic. I think the younger generation is more compassionate, empathic and loving than we were (it’s my biggest source of optimism, in fact). The conversation about the Light / David Icke et al is a much bigger one (and maybe a blog article), but why do you oppose 15-minute cities? My view is that such ideas are propagated by tech companies to distract from their own responsibilities for the code they release into the world. That was downplayed as it was not considered global, and yet we now know it is a regional and global process.

In contrast to many authors in the field, Bendell doesn’t shy away from confronting the coercive systems of political and economic power that drive collapse. Again, each of these actions can be seen as embodying ecolibertarian principles, though how they represent them can vary depending on context and implementation. And remember, your approach needn’t be devoid of lightness – humor can often be a bridge between people, a common thread in our shared human experience.

Specific societies have been disrupted terribly for centuries both by natural disasters and political violence. On the one hand, there are efforts to take our freedoms and money under the cover of climate actions. One, that is a zoonotic disease that spread to humans because of our destruction and exploitation of natural habits.