This Civilisation is Finished: Conversations on the end of Empire - and what lies beyond

Review of ‘This Civilisation is Finished’, by Rupert Read and Samuel Alexander, published by The Simplicity Institute, Melbourne, 2019This is an important book. Not because of its wisdom, although its Socratic form and early protestations of “complete honesty” imply such, nor because of the impressive range of empirical data advanced in support of its position, as there is very little, but because its principal author, Rupert Read, a professional philosopher at the University of East Anglia, is spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.This Civilisation Is Finished therefore promises deep insights into the underpinning principles and arguments animating the group’s radical response to climate change. And in this it doesn’t disappoint. Although one has to swallow hard in order to get through the authors’ self-congratulatory and somewhat sanctimonious opening, and although a wide range of topics is spread somewhat thinly across seventeen very short chapters, the core argument is clear. The world is facing Armageddon as a result of anthropogenic climate change and civilisation as we know it is finished, along with consumerism, growth and global capitalism, the principal drivers of this crisis.Faced with such a dire future, only a “paradigm shift” (Read borrows the term from Thomas Kuhn’s description of radical theory-change in science) in the way humans organise and live their lives, particularly in relation to the planet, provides a viable way forwards. But how is this fundamental reconstruction to be achieved? Unlike Kuhn’s account of revolutionary change within science, Read thinks that “it is very unlikely that this civilisation will transform itself”, and so a radical, bottom up initiative from outside the current institutions is required and warranted. “We are called to rise up”, and we are justified in engaging in (non-violent) civil disobedience in doing so since it is the system itself that must be overturned if this fundamentally necessary restructuring is to be achieved. Unsurprisingly, Extinction Rebellion (XR) is the recommended vehicle for effecting such change, a movement which escapes “the death-grip of [the] humanism” responsible for “the rape and murder of most nature” and one which is our best hope for the restoration of the ecosystem.If this revolutionary change is successful, the difference in our way of life will necessarily be profound because we have gone wrong in two main ways. Not only is the Earth collapsing under our artificially bloated population and our decadent way of life, the apparent progress represented by the higher standard of living that the growth economy has delivered to billions worldwide over recent centuries turns out to have been an illusion – “material things cannot satisfy the human craving for meaning”. If humanity is to “save the planet” and provide a fulfilling life, its future model should be based on the prehistoric hunter-gatherers (and certain peasant societies) who lived in balance with nature and had, he thinks, “a pretty easy and good life” as a result. Conscientious meditation confirms this empirical claim, providing “’mystical’ insight into our connectedness and wholeness….. [when we] see and feel the beauty of humanity and of ‘Gaia’ adequately for the first time”. The surprising anti-socialist conclusion, therefore, is that instead of aiming to raise the standard of living of those currently in poverty by “sharing the wealth” of modern civilisation, we should instead abandon the growth economy (in this, at least, he notes he is in accord with Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber)) and “dismantle the system”, constructing a society based on self-reliant local communities providing for themselves from the land and the ocean.What is one to make of these proposals – after all, the days of climate change denial are largely over and, instead, governments, scientists, businesses, and the public are increasingly working to limit the effects of climate change over the coming decades. So should we believe the authors’ characterisation of the situation, and, more importantly, should we rebel with them?There are a number of reasons for being sceptical, and perhaps the most important is the question-begging nature of the core argument. Armageddon as an outcome is presumed rather than argued for from empirical data, and no cogent reasons are given (other than polemic) why working with current institutions and frameworks should not be the best and safest approach to delivering perhaps the largest and most complex project the human race has undertaken – it is presumed, again, that the regime which created the problem cannot fix it. This might be more convincing were the authors to have advanced a clear alternative implementation plan for the approach they advocate, but no such roadmap is offered, only revolution. This is particularly problematic because throughout the book the authors have emphasised Read’s Precautionary Principle as a guide to action (or inaction), and by any yardstick the revolutionary nature of their solution must clearly identify it as high risk entailing that, by their lights, we should avoid it like the plague.A similar lack of detail is offered with regard to the constitution and operation of the target future civilisation. The base idea behind it, that something like the hunter-gatherers’ life was (and would be) idyllic, is unsupported and preposterous, and reminiscent of Coleridge and his Romantic friends’ plans to found a community in America 200 years ago living off the land. They thought that such a life would only occupy them in physical work for two hours a day, leaving them free for the sort of mystical contemplation that Read advocates, but more knowledgeable friends offered them a more pessimistic calculation of the effort involved in being self-supporting, to which their solution was taking servants! More seriously, if prehistoric hunter gatherers enjoyed such a fulfilling lifestyle it is not clear why the civilisation Read hates grew up at all, and, perhaps fatally, it is not clear why, after all the effort of rebellion, it would not grow up again. Part of the trouble is a tendency, common in ecological philosophy, to cast human beings as somehow “unnatural”, at least in relation to the products of their minds such as modern civilisation, and Read is no exception.In addition, a crucial outcome of the putative revolution which is scarcely touched on either in terms of ultimate number or method of achievement, is human population, a subject surely close to our (human) hearts. Academic estimates of the size of the prehistoric (c10,000 BCE) hunter-gatherer global community vary between <1 and 10 million (consensus about 4m), with the upper bound being similar to projections of the number of people that the Earth could sustainably support under such a regime today. Even if we assume that these estimates are pessimistic by an order of magnitude, the sustainable human population of the globe post revolution would still be no greater than 1% of its current level. Were any other species to suffer such a reduction it is clear that Read would regard this as representative of exactly the sort of Armageddon that he is seeking to avoid. If this sort of disaster is justified for humans, well - so much for the current worry about future generations. Furthermore, Read has no plausible ideas how the necessary reduction of current humans should actually be achieved in the timescale he considers necessary to avert global disaster, and this is something that we who are living currently might be presumed to care most about. It is indeed lucky that Extinction Rebellion is currently a non-violent movement!Finally, the authors do not seem to have spotted that a necessary condition for achieving their recommended way of life (massive population reduction) is, on its own, a sufficient condition for averting climate change Armageddon, as it seems clear that, if the population of the Earth’s current civilisation were to be reduced at a stroke to c100 million, management of global warming would become a second-order issue. This decouples what is necessary to avert climate change from appeals to changes in the way we should live, and reveals what may be at the heart of Read’s motivation – a belief in a quasi-religious way of life that requires faith rather than evidence and experience to sustain it. This is a common feature of many ideological movements and further adds to the perceived risk associated with supporting the radical approach proposed.Overall, the premises are suspect, the case is weak, and the risk presented by the proposed solution is high. As a result, I suspect that this is a book which is more likely to preach to the choir than swell the ranks of Extinction Rebellion.

This is a well-meaning but disappointing book by two over educated academics. The bibliography and notes are nine pages long which reflects their emotional insecurity. Their convoluted sentences go in circles in endless repetition. If you want to learn about climate change and what to do about it, this book offers little. The Postscriptum byHelena Norberg-Hodge is quiet different. Its well written and stays on subject.

The book enabled me to understand how the human race has arrived at this unfortunate course of self-destruction that we are currently embarked upon. With any problem, understanding the root cause is the start of the process to reveal the solution. I enjoyed the philosophical conversation used in the main book, however if it is not to your taste, at least read the Postscriptum to grasp the essence of the analysis of our history and hopefully you will start see a way forward out of the box in which currently we find ourselves.

The result are degradation of our environment, refusal to reproduce by our women that cause societal oldening (aging) and pushing of suffering to the future human generation. My plea to fellow human: reduce joy now to reduce pain later.

Brilliant. Just what is needed at this time.