Transformative Adaptation: The human future, outside the climate-'safe’-zone

It’s the end. But imagine that the moment has been prepared for. (By having the courage to be here on this list, and to read this, you are already preparing.)

But…of what is it the end?

In a moment, I will turn to outlining an answer to that question. But, just ahead of the release of my new book Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible, I thought it best to make it clear what transformative adaptation is, and why it is essential now, as we collectively move into an era of worsening ecological dangers. For only by getting a sense of that can one be well-placed to fully answer the question I just raised.

There is perhaps one other question that best encapsulates the philosophy and necessity of transformative adaptation; how are you, personally, along with others going to influence the future, so that the inevitable ending of our civilisation is welcomely transformative, rather than only apocalyptic?

For, when I started this article by saying “It’s the end…But the moment has been prepared for”, did your mind or heart lurch straight to apocalypse? That is: To complete unredeemed civilisational meltdown? If so, this is probably because we half-want it. We want to be saved from the endless and difficult task of having to keep trying, of having to act as our greatest selves in what will be an endlessly difficult future. In this way, we steal our selves: I mean, we rob ourselves of our truest, biggest selves.

But also our minds lurch to apocalypse because that is a way in which we make ourselves safe against it. We prepare mentally for its possibility, by entertaining it. We steel ourselves. This steeling of ourselves, together, which is also simultaneously a softening of ourselves (because it centrally involves facing our collective vulnerability), is a deep and literally vital aspect of Transformative Adaptation [TrAd].

So, on the one hand: This tendency, this secret lurching towards a terrible endgame, shows first our fragility. Our proto-doomism. Our appreciation of how very bad things might be, or simply are (and saying that out loud beyond ourselves remains the great taboo, albeit one that is finally crumbling). Our desire not to have to struggle against immense odds any more. To be able to simply give up.

But on the other hand, it also shows our deep desire and determination to become resilient inside. We imagine the worst so that we can prepare ourselves for it, at least psychologically. And as inside so outside. Together: we will confront this greatest crisis. Together: we will become resilient.

We will overcome our separateness. We will find a greatest meaning. This great crisis will give us what we desperately need: that great meaning. 

This civilisation is coming to an end. But it doesn’t have to end in abject collapse. We don’t know that it will end in that way: Resist the siren call of an excessive knowingness that pretends to exterminate all hope. As we seek to transform and adapt, we know that the odds against are immense. But immense is not the same as infinite.

Another world is still, just, possible. If enough of us move fast enough to transformatively adapt, at every level of society, especially the - crucial - level of community, the minimum level of potential human survival and flourishing.

In TrAd, we aim for the best, and prepare for the worst. Simultaneously.

We ride two horses: preparing for potential civilisational collapse, and aiming at a transformation that might prevent collapse, even yet.

And meanwhile, we can in any case enjoy it all, each moment, while it lasts. Aware of fragility, living and walking in beauty, not staking everything on uncertain consequences.

This civilisation, I have been suggesting, might be endable by way of what would on balance be a magnificent transformation. This is what I call a butterfly future. Accessible by way of ‘thrutopian’ imagining: co-creating a sense of how we will get through what is coming in the most flourishing-full and decent way possible. Transformatively adapting, to the calamities that are here and the worse ones coming. Using them (rather than letting them go to waste): to transform ourselves, together.

In any case, one way or another, the burden of my work for the past decade has been that the end of this civilisation is coming, sooner than most people realise. It itself is an ‘endling’… This civilisation is, or at least should be, the last of its kind.

What will we allow this process - of this civilisation’s ending - to birth? And how are YOU going to contribute, fully, to it ending transformatively, rather than merely apocalyptically? These are my questions. These are the questions that we answer by way of what we DO, in TrAd.

And bear in mind, as you consider these questions, that climate is of course ‘merely’ the canary in the coalmine: We are in a metacrisis. What does that mean? Basically, to put it collectively: we don't know how to live anymore. We have lost a lot of sight of what most matters. There's thus an essential philosophical or indeed existential dimension to all of this: we need to re-figure out how to live, how to exist. And until we do that, this 'metacrisis', this ‘polycrisis', this everything-crisis is self-evidently not going away, however much we improve our governance or develop our technology.

We will cease to exist if we fail to figure out how to make sense of and give meaning to our existence.

This then is the end of the beginning. It’s The end we start from.

And…to what end do we strive? This meaning of the word “end” is what Aristotle means to highlight when he draws our attention to what he calls ‘final causes’. The end of the beginning is seeing the point of the suffering that we are undergoing if we are lucky enough to be feeling it now, while society is still relatively stable, rather than later, when many others will feel it, when society may be much more fragile. The end of the beginning is getting the point. Finding the meaning. Unlocking the great secret of this crisis: that actually being willing consciously to go through it (and to learn and grow, all the while) is itself the way not to be swallowed without residue by it.

There is a great cause, a great end, drawing us, like a North Star. Setting us in motion, in process. Bringing us out of our small selves. Giving us purpose. Giving us a cause. Giving us good cause. Bringing us together. There is a very real sense in which, this time, (and) for good, we really are all in it together.

Let us let ourselves be carried forward by the motion of emotion and by the rational emotions implicit in this wonderful motion.

It’s the end. Now, at last, in truth, we can really begin.

Hopefully, this is a message that speaks to you. It aims to empower citizens to build for the future in their communities and beyond, rather than be paralysed by fear and the enormity of the global problem. The full book, Transformative Adaptation: Another world is still just possible, is going to become available this November (timed to coincide with CoP - and with the US Presidential election). It delves deeper into the movement and gives examples and suggestions for how you can play the most vital of roles in making the end of our civilisation transformational.