So, using the same tools that we've been talking about with global systemic risk, how can we understand the process of social collapse? What are those mechanisms that, again, will help us be— to govern, or to possibly regulate these mechanisms, so we don't end up where we don't want to be? One is tipping points. These are structurally-defined points after which there is no recovery. The most obvious example, again, is that rubber band. There is that tipping point at which it breaks, that there's no recovery. This has been talked about with global climate change. The argument about whether a two, or two and a half, or three, or four degree Celsius change would actually create dynamics—again, emergent dynamics— dynamics that we might not be able to explain or predict, that prevent any kind of human agency. All right? A point of no return. And these might be structurally defined inside our ecology, inside our infrastructure, inside of any one of our systems. You've got feedback loops, and again, I've talked about feedback loops. The most obvious one is the flow of water that you can regulate, that I've talked about, and you seek the desired temperature. But there are feedback loops that might be giving you the wrong signals. Okay? There are feedback loops that— something might be going on that actually leads you to actually make it worse. And this often happens in any kind of reporting where it has to go through a black box. There is the tragedy, for example, of some airplane accidents where the pilots are given a signal by the machinery, they're given a signal by the instruments that leads them to believe they should do x when actually what they should do is the very opposite of x. And this is the kind of feedback loop that could become very, very problematic. And it can also be a feedback loop that goes beyond our particular domain. Okay? It might be a feedback loop which begins at one layer of a system and it encourages, or curtails, a behavior in another part of the system. So the feedback loop might not just be in a single domain, but across various domains. There is cascading failure. The most obvious example of this is with electricity. As the electric power system is overwhelmed, one blackout will lead to another, will lead to another. Or, let's take a look at the example of COVID. As one hospital becomes full, or one ICU unit becomes full, then more patients are sent to the next hospital. Okay? They become full, and on and on and on to the point that you simply run out of hospitals. You have contagion. Again, we've learned about contagion. We've learned a lot about the mechanisms of contagion. But contagion doesn't have to just be with viruses; it can be, for example, in this case, in this illustration, about debts and the risk to countries debts in economies. So, Italy was particularly risky, this was around 2010, 2011. And what would it affect? It would affect these particular links. Or a bank failing leads to other banks possibly failing. So again, a previously isolated problem can spread throughout a system, perhaps hitting this tipping point from which there is no response. You also can have synchronous failure. That is, the system could survive this breakdown, or it could survive this breakdown, but it can't survive both. And they don't have to be related. They can break down for different reasons, but the fact that the two systems are overloaded that they both break, the system is not established. Again, the system could fix this after some crisis, or it could fix this, but the combination—the unexpected combination. Again, start thinking about the aggregate number of these various systems and interactions upon which we depend. If the wrong two, or three, or four were to go bad, okay, what happens, can a system deal with that? We might also have to accept the fact that we live in cycles. Okay? And we've talked about this before. This is a classic representation of it. Let's say you have a collapse. Then you get reorganized and you innovate. You start building again, you have growth and exploitation where you're enjoying this period. Then you conserve because you realize you don't have that much of a particular resource, but this inevitably leads to collapse. And we see examples of this in ecological systems. We might see this in social systems. Again, this is a generalized version of a Malthusian situation where there is a cycle, after which we cannot continue and it must collapse. We have the pace of technological change. We have created technology that we don't understand. We have created technology that we use but we don't really understand it. For example, I don't really understand what's going on in my phone; I don't understand what's going on in my computer; I don't understand, really, what's going on in a car. Yet I use all three. And we, as a society, in a sense, have come up with technological changes and impose technological changes and evolve technological changes that might be too fast for us, that might simply get away from us. And again, any of these, or a combination thereof, could lead to the kind of collapse that we want to avoid. Finally, the softer source of collapse, and this is one I'm particularly interested in. Think about the interaction between a sense of obligation, a sense of legitimacy, a sense of authority, and how this makes up power. Let's imagine you start losing the legitimacy. Let's say you start losing everybody's willingness to live with the system, or an authority begins to be questioned, or a sense of obligation to each other, or to other members of the community, is relaxed. A combination of these, okay, could lead to a social collapse, even with the physical infrastructure perfectly available, simply because human beings don't want to go along with the system. They don't go along with the system. If you think about it, social life is like a massive Ponzi scheme. It only works as long as we think it's going to continue to work, as long as we believe in the fiction of our social collective. Should we ever stop believing in that social collective? Should we stop feeling obligated to that social collective? Then, that might bring some kind of collapse. And it's hard to imagine the state of the world. This is a painting by Thomas Cole. He's a Hudson Valley painter and he has this great depiction of five stages of the rise of civilization, the culmination of civilization, the fall of the civilization, and then the aftermath of the fall. If you will, this is the ultimate illustration of a potentially dystopian future. What will it look like? What does the end of globalization mean? And we have to start thinking about this. We have to start coming up with models, or with ideas, about what it would entail, what it would cost and to whom, so we can have a dialogue, so this doesn't just come on us and we don't know what to do. And what we really want to avoid, and this is the final slide, is the fate of this gentleman. Here he is in this war-torn horrific environment and he's armed and he says, "I think I won!" No one is going to win from a social collapse. No one is going to win from the collapse of this system. Everybody will lose, some more than others. But as a whole, we will lose. We might think we've won, we might think we've shown all those other global members how we do it, but, yes—we'll end up like this. We will win, but will the world be worth living in? And on that happy note, thank you very much.
