Show Notes
Season 2 Episode 11 ‘Free Will in Nature’
Today my guest is Jem Bendell. Before the summer of 2023, Jem was a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership and Founder of the Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria. He 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 his 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.
After the release of his book Breaking Together in May 2023, Jem decided to leave employment as a full Professor in the UK. Jem then entered a new phase of his life, where the development of the Bekandze regenerative farm school in Bali and playing devotional music for groups become his main focus. He still writes and lectures on collapse readiness and response.
Jem begins today’s discussion with an outline of the main thesis of Breaking Together: that societies globally have already begun to experience climate breakdown driven collapse. This gives a context for our main discussion of free will in nature. We look at the claims by some biologists and neuroscientists that free will is an illusion. Jem suggests reasons to doubt this verdict, and why free will might in fact exist throughout the natural world. We discuss Buddhist and Vedantic ideas about consciousness. And Jem explains why it’s crucial to admit the limitations of our knowledge in the face of the ultimate questions about life and death.
Resources
His book, which includes chapters detailing the evidence for ongoing global systemic collapse. Chapter 11 discusses free will:
Bendell, J. (2023). Breaking together: A freedom-loving response to collapse. Schumacher Institute
Free audio reading of the introduction to Breaking Together.
His first essay in a series about Free Will. (Includes a discussion of the Libet etc. experiments which purport to disprove free will)
Jem Bendell’s Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview from 2024
Resources
Collapse
Is Collapse Plausible by Matt Colborn.
See also the Collapsology Portal, which exists to ‘Better understand the current risks of social and environmental collapse’. Includes an up to date listing of scientific papers on the topic.
Free will deniers:
Sapolsky, R. (2023). Determined: The Science of Life Without Free Will. Penguin.
Wegner, D. (2017). The Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press.
Silicon Valley:
Rushkoff, D. (4 Sept 2022 ). The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse. The Guardian
Yanis Varoufakis on technofeudalism
Burnout:
Wright, S. (2021). Burnout: a spiritual crisis: from stress to transformation. Sacred Space Publications.
Title Music: ‘Stranger things’ by Music Unlimited on Pixabey.
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