After decades of avoidance and denial, today no one is unaware of the growing and potentially catastrophic dangers of the climate crisis. “Once-in-a-century” weather events are now regular occurrences, as are record breaking temperatures, and the paradoxical contrasts of destructive flooding in some places and critical water shortages in others. The costs of increased fires and floods are routinely figured into insurance calculations and military planning. Anxiety and depression over these issues are increasingly reported by psychotherapy clients. And couples say they are including the climate’s future in their decision to have children.

Many climate scientists say they are depressed about their work. Some have stopped focusing on the future and instead concentrate on immediate projects to lessen climate change’s effects. But another group of scholars, while acknowledging the global environmental crisis, say that there is a problem even greater, more fundamental, and likely catastrophic to humanity. For them humanity’s greatest danger is growing economic and political inequality.

Luke Kemp is an Australian PhD currently working at Cambridge University in England. He has a new book out titled, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse (available in the US next month.) The Guardian’s sober review by its Environment Editor, Damian Carrington, begins this way:

“We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilization], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

“I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites….

Today’s global civilization, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

Thus, “societal collapse” is not something new. What’s new is the complexity and interconnectedness of our world.

Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires, meaning a society built on domination, such as the Roman empire: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave and men over women. He says that, like the biblical warrior slain by David’s slingshot, Goliaths began in the bronze age, were steeped in violence and often surprisingly fragile….

“History is best told as a story of organized crime,” Kemp says. “It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population…. History shows that increasing wealth inequality consistently precedes collapse.”

Last December, a Guardian article also by Carrington looked at another scholar studying humanity’s future.

“More and more academic articles are mentioning the threat of collapse because of climate change,” says [Danilo] Brozović at the school of business at the University of Skövde, Sweden. The issue of collapse hooked him after it was raised in a project on business sustainability, which then led to his comprehensive review in 2023.

The field is not short of extreme pessimists. “They believe what we are doing will eventually cause the extinction of the human race,” says Brozović. Some say today’s challenges are so great that it is now time humanity comes to terms with extinction, and even build a vault containing our greatest cultural achievements as a record for some future – perhaps alien – civilization. Others, using data on deforestation and population, rate the chance of catastrophic collapse at 90% or more.

Brozović says drastic change in how we are living is the only way to avoid disaster.

Having extensively surveyed the study of societal collapses, does Brozović think the way humanity currently lives looks sustainable? “No, no – definitely not,” he says. “We have to do something – that’s the conclusion that arises from reading all this research.”

“At the end of the day, we have to radically transform society, and we have to do it fast,” he says. That means overhauling politics, policies and institutions, safeguarding food production and the natural world that supports life on Earth.

“That’s the recipe to mitigate collapse,” he says. “But nothing is really happening substantially. We are shifting the discussion of what is acceptable and what is not, and a lot of good, positive things are happening. But the question is, will it happen fast enough?”

Luke Kemp believes it will not be fast enough. Yet he still believes it’s important how each person responds.

“Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is to stop destroying it. In other words: don’t be a dick. Don’t work for big tech, arms manufacturers or the fossil fuel industry. Don’t accept relationships based on domination and share power whenever you can.”

“But even if you don’t have hope, it doesn’t really matter. This is about defiance. It’s about doing the right thing, fighting for democracy and for people to not be exploited. And even if we fail, at the very least, we didn’t contribute to the problem.”

Today there is a lot of “what’s the use?” frustration expressed in response to the climate crisis and the growing global economic inequality. This is the result of the growing awareness that the lifestyle changes that have been urged upon us (recycling, electric cars, passive energy) are not nearly enough to make a difference. Nor have political processes been able to genuinely confront the severity of the crisis.

Climate researchers were reluctant for many years to talk about the cultural transformation they believed was necessary. But now, many, like Kemp and Brozović, are saying clearly that Western industrial society is simply unsustainable, even if they have little expectation such drastic change will come about.

But Kemp, at least, is also saying something more. While this isn’t his wording, what Kemp is urging is living a life of grace. That is, we do what seems right simply because it so, not because it will necessarily lead to any specific results, and that is enough.

To listen to the bleak prognosis of scholars like Kemp and Brozović can seem unbearable. “Self-termination is most likely.” Yikes. But this is where spiritual awareness comes into play. Our challenge always, as Ram Das famously taught, is to “be here now.” None of us embodies human civilization. Rather we simply live our individual lives as they are given to us.  In this case, “you do you” isn’t selfish but the freedom to live as it seems right to live, i.e. to do the right thing in the here and now.

I’ve quoted this passage often from Jesus Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. In this context it’s worth hearing the whole passage again.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

You can lay awake at night fretting about the end of human civilization as often as you want but it won’t change a thing. Instead, we can wake up each morning and open ourselves to whatever the world brings to our doorstep. What opportunities will we have to both love our neighbor and love our enemy, as Jesus challenges us? Along what pathway will we find the injured person needing care and assistance?

How all of this will play out is beyond anyone’s knowing. I suspect the popular paraphrase of the line from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises will be close: gradually, then all at once. In the meantime, it is almost certain that we will see more of what we are seeing now.

In my community, as with countless others around the world, there is an ongoing debate what to do to solve homelessness. But it won’t be “solved.” Rather, it will only increase and the question will be how do we behave towards them as their neighbors (the question Jesus’ actually posed). And the same question will confront us in refugees fleeing war and natural disasters, the unemployed and underemployed, those who can’t afford adequate food and health care, those struggling to support their family, those who are lonely and depressed, those struggling with addiction.

More than anything, to deal with the challenges that have come upon us, we need a spiritual transformation of our understanding of ourselves, of other people, and of the world. This is what Jesus and all the great spiritual and mystical teachers have tried to convey. Eternal life is not some prize awaiting us but is already real now. We all live in the Eternal Now, and past and present are only ideas in our mind. We are all one with God, the creation, and our neighbor. This is what Jesus meant by his two-part great commandment: love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself. We are all engaged in One Love, for this is what life and existence is about.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world, and that experience will only grow. The challenge is to disengage from our mind and live here and now. Or in Jesus’ classic words, “Seek first the kingdom of God.” That kingdom, Jesus says, is within and around us but we won’t recognize it if we are lost in our thoughts and worries. Living in the peace of the Spirit within us, we see ourselves as one with God and the world around us, for all Eternity.

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