At the risk of sounding nit-picky, I must add that I personally do not want civilization to be renewed. I want it to be eradicated and relegated to the dustbin of human history as quickly as possible. I do have a vision, as I have written about repeatedly on this website, of what humans might create as an alternative to civilization, and I believe that this is also Byron's intention in writing this paragraph. No doubt this is a semantic issue, but I need to emphasize my repudiation of civilization and my commitment to the development of localized niches of eco-centric habitation and functioning which will do whatever it takes to ensure that civilization does not re-emerge on planet earth.
In Chapters 3 through 5, Byron takes us on a sobering journey through current reality, and I suppose that since I am already so familiar with its content, I most appreciated the opening quote of Chapter 3 by A.H. Almaas: If you haven't struggled with a question, you cannot digest the answer even if it is handed to you.
Each time I'm asked "so what do we do about collapse and its attendant catastrophes?" the essence of the Almaas quote leaps to mind. The current presidential election charade is nothing if not the antithesis of what these words assert. The culture of empire is one in which individuals refuse to think or feel deeply about anything unpleasant or that challenges them to venture beyond the bounds of narcissistic consumerism. Thus, the intolerance of the overwhelming majority of Americans for being present with the dilemma without immediately jettisoning into "solutions." And as my friend, Tim Bennett, writer of "What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire", says, when people ask for "solutions", they fundamentally don't want an answer because an honest answer will require them to change everything about their lives down to their toenails. What the citizens of civilization desire instead, is some soporific, like a political candidate or a mass movement that will allow them to continue to live their lives exactly as they have been living them with the exception of perhaps a few minor changes that cause minimal discomfort.
I was relieved when I discovered that Byron ends his three-chapter analysis with a repudiation of national electoral politics by asserting that they "cannot be an effective means for regaining control over our corporate hijacked civilization." Here, I would want of Byron only one thing more--to lose the word "civilization" and perhaps replace it with "planet" because I believe that the fundamental assumptions and constructs of civilization must be questioned and eradicated. In fact, "industrial civilization" is itself a corporate hijack, and on one level or another, it always has been, even before the corporation existed.
I define civilization as Derrick Jensen does, "stories, institutions, and artifacts-that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities." Industrial civilization has exploited and defiled the earth for the past 6000 years and is inherently based on hierarchy, inequality, environmental and human degradation, and as a result of a fundamental split between humans and nature in the European psyche, skillfully analyzed by psychologist and author Ralph Metzner, has developed a "use" relationship with the more-than-human world.
With this in mind it was reassuring to read Byron's unequivocal emphasis on the pivotal issue of values:
I can't stress this point enough: the ultimate source of civilization's crises arises from our own deepest values. If these are not changed-if we do not change-then no technology can do any more than briefly delay civilizational Collapse-at the cost of making the Collapse of even greater magnitude than would otherwise have been the case. (131)
From Chapter 8 ("Strategies For Survival") onward until the book's end, Byron offers options for those who are willing to stare down collapse and allow it to transform every aspect of their lives. Consistent with the above quote regarding values, Chapter 8 begins with a section on knowing oneself and the assertion that individual survival first begins with critical thinking. "Clear critical-thinking abilities," Byron says, "in conjunction with physical health and robustness are the two fundamental essentials for individual and family survival. Hard times require sound minds and healthy bodies." (140)
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