The Five Stages of Collapse
Disclaimer
This article was originally written in French. The AI may have screwed up some bits. If you understand French, please change the website language for a better experience.
| Enjoyment (between 💀 and ❤❤❤❤❤) | ❤❤ |
| Writing style (between 💀 and ✒✒✒✒✒) | ✒✒✒✒ |
| Language | 🇬🇧 |
| Reader's age | 23 |
| Pages (Kobo Clara HD) | 290 |
What's it about?
Dmitry Orlov was my first encounter with the topic of collapse. He approaches it from his perspective as an engineer (the laws of physics aren't ours to change) and as a Soviet citizen (witness to a major collapse).
In this book, Orlov presents his warning in a fairly academic manner:
- Definition of collapse
- Structure of the book
- The loss of faith in the economy: Financial collapse, its inevitable causes, its consequences, and how to mitigate the damage. He uses Iceland as an example.
- The loss of faith in trade: Commercial collapse, with the alternative economy of gifting, as well as the damage such a collapse brings. The Russian mafia is his example.
- The loss of faith in the state: Political collapse. At this point, I thought he was already describing the end. However, there are still two more stages before hitting rock bottom. The good news is that it's possible to stop here. He chooses the Pashtuns as an example.
- The loss of faith in the community: Social collapse. Almost at the end, when you can no longer rely on your community (village, region, religion). At this point, almost everything has to be done on your own. Society becomes much less complex, and the population shrinks drastically. The Roma people are his example.
- The loss of faith in human goodness: When it’s impossible to trust anyone. Surprisingly, Orlov has an example: the Ik people.
Each situation provides a glimpse into what our modern world could look like under these conditions.
What I liked
- The demonstration of the long-term inevitability of reduced complexity.
- Very vivid examples, yet full of advice on how to survive such a scenario if it were to happen.
- An easy-to-follow progression that connects trust, societal complexity, population, and comfort.
What I disliked
- The parallels with our world deeply unsettled me. It took time to distinguish between them.
- The lack of scientific citations. The field is relatively young, and the topic is too complex given the small sample size of data (collapsed civilizations). Orlov draws major conclusions, but scientific pursuit should (and probably has, since 2013) solidify these advancements.