To the survivalists, collapsonauts, and earth activists, to keep up courage
To Joanna Macy, Ursula Le Guin and Constance de Polignac
To Antoinette R., Laurie L.-M. and Géraldine R.
To Hugo, Antoine and David S. Buckel
To the growing mycelium …
There are things that one can only see properly with eyes that have wept.
Henri Lacordaire
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.
Edward O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2012)
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly.
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992)
I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves.
Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: the Diaries and Letters of EttyHillesum 1941–1943 (London: Persephone Books, 1999)
This is not so much a return to the earth as a return to ourselves. A spiritual experience. It is to heal, rediscover and reaffirm ourselves.
Tee Corinne, quoted in Françoise Flamant, Women’s Land. Construction d’une utopie: Oregon, États-Unis, 1970–2010 (Donnemarie-Dontilly: Éditions iXe, 2015)
You say that there are no words to describe these times, you say that they do not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or if necessary, invent.
Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969)
Acknowledgements
There are paradoxes we would like to do without: writing about the absolute need for nature, meaning and connection … while spending long days immersed in books and in front of a screen, cutting off the presence of human and non-human beings who matter.
We feel an immense gratitude to our companions, Élise, Stéphanie and Marine, and for our children, for having understood and accepted this for many weeks, and especially during this tough final marathon. All your love, and ours, is also found in this book! (We know that’s not much comfort.)
At the end of this adventure, we would like to thank Sophie Lhuillier and Christophe Bonneuil, for your willingness to take risks and your kindness, as well as the entire Seuil team for your understanding and your patience. We are delighted to walk at your side!
A huge thank you to Dominique Bourg and Cyril Dion for the foreword and afterword, for your presence and your authenticity. Thanks also to both of you for proofreading, as well as to Nicolas Haeringer, Élise Monette, Typhaine Domercq and Denys Chalumeau, for critical and encouraging comments during the writing.
We send our warm thanks to the intrepid cowgirl Charlotte de Mévius, as well as to Hugues Dorzée from the magazine Imagine demain le monde and Alexandre Penasse from the journal Kairos, for your trust and support throughout these years.
Thanks to you, brothers and sisters who made the mycelium grow: Agnes, Aline, Claire, Clément, Corinne, Étienne, Helena, Josué, Laurent L., Laurent R., Lise, Marine S., Michel-Maxime, Muriel, Nathéa, Raphaël, Sébastien, Tylie, Valérie-Azul, Vincent and many other filaments and spores. Also to you, our families and neighbours, Nelly and Michel, Chantal and Pierre, Nicole and Michel, Brigitte and Philippe, Typhaine and Sam, Yannick and Virginie, Monique, Benoît and Caroline, Anne and Jean-Martin, Luc, Marc Pier, Sébastien and Corentin, for help, in-flight refuelling and encouragement.
Maxi-admiration and ultra-gratitude for daring, sensitivity and inspiration: Zoé Alowan, Jean Claude Ameisen, Jean-Pierre Andrevon, Margaret Atwood, Carolyn Baker, Janine Benyus, Dominique Bourg, Paul Chefurka, Yves Cochet, François Couplan, Ashlee Cunsolo, Alain Damasio, Philippe Descola, Vinciane Despret, Cyril Dion, Michel-Maxime Egger, Arturo Escobar, Christophe Fauré, Monica Gagliano, Rachel and Antoine (Geb-nout), Brian Goodwin, John Michael Greer, Émilie Hache, Marc Halévy, Stephan Harding, Geneen Haugen, Jean Hegland, Émilie Hermant, Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer, Xavier Hulhoven, Bill Kauth, Paul Kingsnorth, Maja Kooistra, Bruno Latour, Charles-Maxence Layet, Ursula Le Guin, Jacques Lucas, Joanna Macy, David Manise, Dennis and Donella Meadows, Edgar Morin, Baptiste Morizot, Marisa Ortolan, Kim Pasche, Bill Plotkin, André Ruwet, Suzanne Simard, Agnès Sinai, Rebecca Solnit, Starhawk, Isabelle Stengers, Valérie-Azul Thomé, Bruno Tracq, Patrick Van Eersel, Patrick Viveret, Francis Weller, Edward O. Wilson, not to mention the precious punk blue tits whose language has finally been deciphered by that fine diplomat and interpreter Alessandro Pignocchi (and one of which ended up perched on the cover of the original French edition).
Thanks to the pessimists-plus and optimists-plus of the social networks, as well as countless collapsonauts who have written touching and often overwhelming messages over the past three years; you have given us immense courage! We haven’t given up on answering you … before the collapse.
Special mention to the modest genius of an Earth-Dweller who wrote on the walls the beautiful sentence (spotted in 2010 at the University of Nanterre) which served us as title: Une autre fin du monde est possible…. We take this opportunity to make an appeal to the person who sent us the photo … please get in touch, for the next version of these thanks.
Finally, thank you to the sacred feminine, to magic, to the witches, to the Shambhala warriors, the New Warriors, to the spirits of the places that have given us hospitality while we were writing, and to all the other-than-humans who amaze us, who give us life and who are relying on us.
Foreword
I remember something I once read, though I cannot recall where. We are in Gallo-Roman Provence, towards the end of the fourth century. A patrician, at the head of a vast estate, boasts of the power of Rome. The same archaeological excavations reveal that shortly after its owner wrote about his pride in belonging to the Empire, the villa and its inhabitants were victims of a barbaric incursion. It seems that the assailants feasted on the spot and celebrated their crime by drinking out of the skull of the former master of the estate. Perhaps it is this sinister side of this story that prevents me from remembering where I read it.
Whether that is the case or not, the elites of that time, like those of today, displayed a mixture of arrogance, naivety and crude cynicism. Like today, the end of the Empire saw a dramatic rise in inequality. We can imagine that after centuries of the Pax Romana, it must have been difficult to imagine anything like the end of the Empire. It’s equally difficult for us to admit that after centuries of ‘progress’, thermo-industrial civilization and its high growth rates could fall apart.
If you have opened this book, you have probably had some intuition of such a collapse. So have I, and I am convinced, too, that the moral and political manifestations of our movement towards collapse can already be seen and felt around us. For several years, we have seen the