Jem Bendell, former Professor of Sustainability Leadership and author of Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response To Collapse, discusses prioritizing caring for each other, skepticism towards green solutions, tough conversations about the climate crisis, indigenous harmony with nature, regenerative agriculture, the influence of the gut biome, accelerationism, and the guest's book Breaking Together.
Shift towards local and community-based initiatives for sustainability.
Embrace deep adaptation strategies to navigate climate change with acceptance and resilience.
Recognize the interconnectedness of freedom, nature, and solidarity-based politics amidst societal collapse.
Deep dives
The Shift to Bottom-Up Approaches in Environmentalism
The podcast highlights the growing disillusionment with top-down global efforts to address sustainability issues and the shift towards more local, bottom-up possibilities. It emphasizes the need for a different economic paradigm and the importance of individual actions and community-based initiatives.
Accepting the Collapse of Industrial Consumer Societies
The podcast explores the idea that modern industrial consumer societies are already in a state of collapse. It discusses the limitations of current systems and the need for open dialogues within civil society about power down strategies and resource sharing.
Rejecting Techno-Solutionisms and Embracing Deep Adaptation
The podcast challenges the notion that technology and ingenuity alone can solve the climate crisis. It explores the concept of deep adaptation, which involves accepting the inevitability of climate change and finding strategies to navigate it with realistic acceptance, hope, and resilience.
Nature's Freedom and the Freedom of Nature
The podcast delves into the intersection of freedom and nature. It argues that nature needs freedom in the sense that destruction of the environment limits human freedom, while freedom needs nature because it is through nature that humans learn and evolve. The discussion touches on the importance of a solidarity-based politics and the reconnection with nature in finding new ways to live amidst collapse.
The Illusion of Free Will and the Influence of Gut Biome
The podcast discusses a study that claims the signal to move a hand in a human comes from the arm before it comes from the brain. However, this study has been debunked and is not considered replicable. The study is often cited to argue that neuroscience proves there is no free will, but there is an absence of other studies to prove the same thing. The speaker suggests that the gut biome may play a role in decision-making and consciousness. They explore the idea that one's consciousness is the collective awareness of the bacteria in their body.
The Relationship Between Consciousness and the Self
The podcast delves into the concept of the illusory self and the constructed and relational nature of identity. The speaker explains that we are not thinking our own thoughts, but rather thinking culture's thoughts, influenced by the worlds we live in. They discuss the idea of witnesser consciousness and the connection to a universal field of consciousness. The speaker reflects on the importance of spirituality, gratitude, and being present in the world amidst the awareness of societal collapse and environmental degradation.
Former Professor of Sustainability Leadership and author of Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response To Collapse Jem Bendell tells us to stop pretending and learn how to navigate climate change through deep adaptation.
AboutJem Bendell
Professor Jem Bendell is a world-renowned scholar on the breakdown of modern societies due to environmental change. Downloaded over a million times, his Deep Adaptation paper is credited with inspiring the growth of the Extinction Rebellion movement in 2018, and generated a global network to reduce harm in the face of societal collapse. He completed his PhD at the University of Bristol and his Geography BA (Hons) at the University of Cambridge. He was one of the few intellectuals on the green left who criticised many of the policies during the pandemic as being ineffective and harmful. Away from that work, and having stepped back as a Professor, he is now a regenerative farmer in Bali and a singer-songwriter, releasing an EP with the band Sambiloto.
Before the summer of 2023, Bendell was a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership and Founder of the Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria. Bendell was also the Founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum and the co-Founder of the International Scholars’ Warning on Societal Disruption and Collapse. A major transformation in Bendell’s career began in 2017 as he took a year out to study the latest climate science, and released the Deep Adaptation paper which went viral.
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