#7Jon Mills: The Psychology Behind Our Self-Destructive Civilisation

Get Jon's book "End of the World: Civilization and Its Fate": https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/end-of-the-world-9781538189016/

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Dr Jon Mills is a philosopher-psychoanalyst and Honorary Professor at the University of Essex, whose work bridges Hegelian philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary existential threats facing civilisation. With over 35 books to his name—including five Gradiva Award winners—Jon has spent decades developing what he calls “dialectical psychoanalysis,” a rigorous philosophical framework for understanding the unconscious mind. His latest work, which we’re discussing in this episode, confronts an uncomfortable question: does humanity possess a collective death drive that propels us towards self-destruction?

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You can find Jon’s work at:

• Website: https://www.philosophypsychoanalysis.com

• Publications: https://www.philosophypsychoanalysis.com/academics-psychoanalysis-philosophy

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In this conversation, I sit down with Jon to explore the darkest questions about our species’ future. We examine whether humanity harbours a death wish, diving into the multiple existential crises threatening civilisation—climate change, nuclear weapons, AI risks, geopolitical conflict, and overpopulation/demographic collapse. Jon brings his formidable philosophical toolkit to bear on these challenges, drawing from Hegel, Freud, and his own dialectical framework to understand how good and evil operate simultaneously in human affairs. We debate techno-optimism versus existential pessimism, explore the psychology behind apocalyptic thinking, and we talk about my previous episode on secular eschatology and we discuss what that reveals about our relationship with mortality. We’re left with the question of whether our species can transcend its self-destructive patterns or whether we’re inexorably drawn towards catastrophe.

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⏳Timestamps

00:00 James’s Intro
01:21 Claude AI’s intro to Jon
02:16 Jon’s prolific output
02:59 Does humanity have a death wish?
04:13 The collective forces at play
05:57 Collective and the collective unconscious
09:03 What we mean by humanity - metaphor or reality?
11:03 The crises facing humanity today
12:25 What Jon wanted to achieve with the book
15:45 Universal pessimism?
19:41 James on demographic collapse
23:29 Poverty decline globally
25:21 Optimism on climate
26:09 China and the Thucydides Trap
27:45 James on AI concerns
28:16 Negative trends in prejudice and freedom
31:03 The psychology of the Thucydides Trap
34:35 Good and evil are operative at once
36:43 James’s secular eschatology thesis
41:45 Why are most apocalypse predictions Western?
43:26 Apocalypse as death-cope
44:39 Apocalypse as unmet need gone rotten?
45:35 Jon’s relationship with death
48:18 Jon’s guest recommendation: Michael Montgomery