The Spirituality of Collapse

The first edition of this article was written in February, 2006, but I have recently revised and updated it. Since the first writing, the theme of collapse seems to have reverberated around the world, now manifesting its symptoms in the scientific community


As I share my awareness of collapse with others, I meet a variety of responses. Many, especially those folks in academia, and the history profession in particular, view the idea of collapse with bemused scorn, asserting that while civilization might appear to be collapsing, current events are not really new and are merely variations on prior historical occurrences. At the opposite end of the spectrum, fundamentalist Christians read current events through the tea leaves of biblical prophecies