Is "Magic" a Sensible Response to Ecological Breakdown and Civilizational Collapse?

The first essay in a short series

How Paul Klee might envision magic redeeming civilization, according to Midjourney

A subscriber asked me a wonderful question — perhaps the question - in a comment on my last post. He wrote: 

Daniel, I have been wondering how you might bring your interest and experience in the occult to this discussion of the approaching economic and environmental collapse. While there are a number of organizational strategies you speak of, there is no mention of the spiritual (other than perhaps the experience of ego-disintegration). Do you see a role for magic? for subtle activism? for ceremonial planetary energy work? For working with allies from other dimensions or other parts of the universe? While these activities/processes are objects of ridicule for most activists, (and yes, there is much naive and superficial stuff going on in those fields) do you not see such a focus playing an essential role in moving through what is to come?

Today, I want to elaborate on what I wrote to him. Interestingly enough, this came up in a public discussion I held with the prolific, vociferous cultural critic Douglas Rushkoff in downtown Manhattan a few nights ago (which, sadly, we forgot to record). We discussed our different views on civilization collapse, sometimes called the “meta-crisis” or the “poly-crisis.”

Douglas may be in the “bargaining” stage of the grief process. He still tries to envision a Houdini-like escape for humanity as a whole, hoping for a sudden quantum leap in consciousness. While he sensibly rejects the prospect of futuristic technological fixes saving us (such as carbon capture or geo-engineering), he still sees the possibility of a magic, miraculous planetary awakening in the nick of time, following by a collective “power down.” 

This was my hope in Quetzalcoatl Returns (2006) and How Soon Is Now (2016). At this point, I find it very unlikely. I have toggled toward Jem Bendell’s perspective, in Breaking Together, that collapse is inevitable, catastrophe is probable, and extinction is possible. I don’t see how the current debt-based financial system can put the brakes on, as it requires 3% growth of GDP annually or the Ponzi scheme falls apart and, with it, all the supply chains and hyper-financialization stratagems. Some form of reset — perhaps not exactly a “Great Reset — is inevitable. 

Of course, such a sudden miracle is conceivable; therefore, it is still possible, even if tremendously unlikely. I can envision a few different ways it could be brought about. The simplest way is for one (or a few) tech plutocrats to undergo an authentic initiatory rupture, directly realizing their solidarity with the human community as a whole and the larger community of life. They would understand their capital to be purely a responsibility, entrusted to them from the Gaian entelechy, to engineer a transmutation of consciousness and society before we hit the skids.

A company like Meta or Google — or a post-capitalist re-creation — would be perfectly positioned to unleash tools such as social networks that not only support our human family in rapidly educating themselves about the various ecological and geopolitical crises threatening all of our future, but also help society quickly reorganize in decentralized communities and bioregional confederations. This redesign would include new tools for exchanging value and new forms of currency, designed to share wealth horizontally, meshed with peer-to-peer decision-making platforms that help the people quickly build “people power” in their areas. 

Fixing the thing is, on the one hand, not that complicated, and, on the other, intrinsically impossible. We simply need to collectively supersede the brutal, one-dimensional profit motive at the core of the capitalist economy, and re-focus on “win-win” outcomes for our human family that also heal the regenerative capacities of the biosphere. Many books provide the analysis, diagnosis and prognosis. We simply need to “evolve to solve.” 

In The People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations are Laying the Foundation for Socialism, authors Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue that the amazingly efficient infrastructures built by Walmart, Amazon, and other corporate behemoths show how we could unleash a post-capitalist infrastructure (something like fully automated luxury socialism) with rapid evolutionary potential.