Collapse vs Reshaping

I’ve always had a thing about language. I first wrote about when I encountered the now infamous sign in Montreal “Humans and the Natural World are on a Collision Course”. 

The sign had good intentions – to bring awareness to the impacts we’re having on the natural world, the realities of climate change – but it was also fundamentally wrong. 

For starters, Language like this reinforces the illusion of separation - a narrative that has fuelled domination, extraction, and colonialism for centuries. The idea of "man versus wild," the belief that humans were "given dominion" over the earth, the assumption that nature is something separate and external to us - these all perpetuate the very mindset that has driven the crises we face. It’s also fundamentally untrue: after all, we are nature.

Secondly, the sign also positioned climate change and its impacts as an event – a collision, bound to happen sometime in the future, but that maybe somebody else (a driver, perhaps?) could direct us away from (or maybe we could ‘brace for impact’?).

But climate change is not an event. It’s not a one-time thing, and it’s certainly not something that we can be singularly driven or directed away from by a slight change in course.  Climate change is deeply connected to our growth-dependent (& growth-obsessed) economic systems, our connection to nature (that separation idea!), our understandings of time and growth (that long, linear line western globalised culture loves), to histories of colonisation and its current, ongoing manifestations, and even to domination culture.

To address the deeper causes, layers and complexities of climate change, we’ll need more than just lithium batteries and electric cars - it will require a fundamental shift in many of the ways we live, work and relate to the world. 

But this thinking has got me wondering too about the premise of ‘collapse’, and how true and useful the word is in this time.

‘Collapsology’ studies the collapse of industrial civilisation by examining the systemic factors that could lead to it – like climate change, resource depletion, democracy threats, economic precarity etc.

Many will argue – and I agree - that we are in a form of collapse, that our systems and world cannot continue in the same way we have been, and our denial of this will likely result in catastrophic impacts.  

There’s much evidence behind this.

Günther Thallinger, who sits on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies has said with 3 degrees of warming, “The financial sector as we know it ceases to function. And with it, capitalism as we know it ceases to be viable.” (He goes on to argue that capitalism must solve this existential threat, though I disagree with that premise.)

The Stockholm Resilience Centre posits that we’ve now breached 7 out of 9 planetary boundaries - a horrifying thought.

A study at Stanford has found that rising global temperatures will dampen the world’s capacity to produce food from most staple crops, even after accounting for economic development and adaptation by farmers.

We of course haven’t even gotten to the subjects of democracy, AI, biodiversity, nuclear threats or global conflict.

We live in a world where our supply chains, trade routes and energy markets are all deeply interconnected, and so it’s hard to argue that we’re not undergoing a fundamental reshaping. 

But this is my point: there’s a subtle difference between collapse and reshaping, or collapse and unravelling, and the language we use matters.

Language shapes our understanding of the world - for each sentence we read we unconsciously absorb layers of meaning behind it.

The word collapse – while theoretically implying a long chain of events – also speaks to the idea of a ‘moment’. A one time idea.  An end.

It’s also so big, so complex that it is actually kind of hard to get our collective head around.

And if there’s one thing I know about calling people to action – helping people to rise into their role in remaking the world – it is that fear is usually only a very short term motivator. After an initial burst of action from the idea of ‘emergency’, people’s nervous systems move into chronic survival mode: they’re often left feeling overwhelmed, scared, grief-laden and holding a range of emotions that they don’t have space to unpack and feel.  The response inevitably becomes apathy, burnout or a combination of the two, dampening any movements for change.

More toxic variations arise too, where the fear becomes othering or captured by demigogues.

Love, justice, creativity, joy, beauty, honour, care on the other hand are all far more sustainable motivators.  They allow us to do the work – to show up for long haul, difficult moments of changemaking – with a more reliable and solid foundation.  (They’re not the whole work by any means – our foundation needs walls, footing and structures that allow it to grow.)

Collapse, by this same vein, is not a word that offers much to the imagination, creativity or generativity we are famous for as a species. It inspires fear more than possibility, uncertainty more than creativity.

Now, some will say that’s the point: that it’s collapse. That certain events are locked in. That to call it otherwise diminishes the gravitas of what it is.

And this may be true. But I believe how we inhabit this time matters. The end of one thing is always the birth of another, even if it’s going to look radically different, and the propensity for fear and stories of collapse to become captured by demigogues matters too.

Which brings me again to this idea of collapse vs reshaping.

What happens if you think of living in a collapsing world? What do you notice in your heart, body and mind?

What happens when you think of living in a reshaping world? What do you feel now?

What happens in your thoughts, your energy, your body when you compare the two? 

Now, this post isn’t to ever say we deny reality.  We must hold the world as it is in one hand, as equally as we hold the world as it could be in our other. This means look squarely at the crises we’re facing, and both individually and collectively, our role in creating and perpetuating them, and how we intend to move through them. 

I’m also conscious the term “reshaping” can sound passive and distanced, neglecting our agency and participation.

But the framing we hold in this time of deep change will shape our capacity to respond and to greet this moment with the tenderness, wisdom and care it deserves. 

We live in a world in radical need of remaking - but what if our world was already reshaping itself? What if our role was simply to orient that reshaping - which will inevitably have labour pains - towards love, towards justice and towards regeneration?

**While I continue to grow my use and understanding of the word reshaping and its alternatives, I will continue to also use the word collapse, because it’s a recognisable term. This may be the case for you as well – but if this post resonates, I invite you to shift your internal framing to a reshaping world and see what arises. I’d love to hear from you.