Abstract

Falling down a waterfall is a boundary experience that epitomizes a crisis. This philosophical essay draws an analogy to the maladaptation civilization finds itself in. Falling down a waterfall is a singular event, but it has structure. There are stages that lead up to it, and if one survives the fall, there will be stages that follow it. I suggest that such a mishap is analogous to the ecological overshoot. What leads to the overshoot, and what is entailed by it, is a parallel sequence of stages. As a civilization, we are in an unprecedented situation: we have reached the limits of growth. We are overwhelming the load capacities of the global system, with climate change as tangible symptom. Akin to what leads up to a waterfall, the first stage of the civilizational crisis is a petering-out of familiar pathways. The second stage is reality-denial: the pretense that such petering-out cannot be happening. Stage three is the lure of the risky choice – followed by the great geopolitical freak-out, which is stage four, the core of the crisis. We’re in the current; we’re swept over the edge; we’re going down. And if we survive, the worst isn’t over yet, for now other dangers lurk. This is stage five: the stage of lethal irony. You think you’ve made it and win a Darwin Award anyway. But say you scrape by, then the final stage of the crisis will be a transition to lingering perils: an aftermath of heightened vulnerability.