Adventures in Living

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Buzz Holling, one of the world's great ecologists, created powerful mathematical models to explain the ecological phenomena he saw in the field. Using these models, he achieved major breakthroughs in understanding what makes complex systems of all kinds—from ecosystems to economic markets—adaptive and resilient. This led to the creation of a group called the Resilience Alliance, with over a dozen participating institutions around the world.

Holling's theory helps us see our world's tectonic stresses as part of a long-term global process of change and adaptation. It also illustrates the way catastrophe caused by such stresses could produce a surge of creativity leading to the renewal of our global civilization.

In a world of far higher energy costs, today's globalized economy won't be viable, because it takes too much energy to keep it running. As energy prices rise, we'll first see cutbacks on long-distance travel and trade. Instead of becoming increasingly "flat" as barriers to commerce and economic integration disappear—as some commentators, such as the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, suggest—the world will become more regionalized and even hierarchical because manufacturing, commerce, and political power will shift to countries with relatively good access to energy. Eventually those of us in rich countries will have to change many things in our societies and daily lives—not just the machines we use to produce and consume energy but also the work we do, our entertainment and leisure activities, how much we travel in cars and airplanes, our financial systems, the design of our cities, and the ways we produce our food (because our current agricultural practices consume a huge amount of energy).

The growth phase we're in may seem like a natural and permanent state of affairs—and our world's rising complexity, connectedness, efficiency, and regulation may seem relentless and unstoppable—but ultimately it isn't sustainable. Still, we find it impossible to get off this upward escalator because our chronic state of denial about the seriousness of our situation—aided and abetted by powerful special interests that benefit from the status quo—keeps us from really seeing what's happening or really considering other paths our world might follow. Radically different futures are beyond imagining. So we stay trapped on a path that takes us toward major breakdown.

The longer a system is "locked in" to its growth phase, says Buzz Holling, "the greater its vulnerability and the bigger and more dramatic its collapse will be." If the growth phase goes on for too long, "deep collapse" eventually occurs. Collapse in this case is so catastrophic and cascades across so many physical and social boundaries that the system's ability to regenerate itself is lost. A forest-fire shows how this happens: if too much tinder-dry debris has accumulated, the fire becomes too hot, which destroys the seeds that could be the source of the forest's rebirth.

Holling thinks the world is reaching "a stage of vulnerability that could trigger a rare and major ‘pulse' of social transformation." Humankind has experienced only three or four such pulses during its entire evolution, including the transition from hunter-gatherer communities to agricultural settlement, the industrial revolution, and the recent global communications revolution. Today another pulse is about to begin. "The immense destruction that a new pulse signals is both frightening and creative," he writes. "The only way to approach such a period, in which uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living."

Source: This article is adapted from The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, (Knopf, Island Press, 2006) by Thomas Homer-Dixon. Printed by permission of the author. Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the Centre for International Governance Innovation Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada.