The Philosophy of Collapse: the Seneca Effect

In the 1st Century AD, the Roman Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca was observing the start of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. It was a process that would take a few more centuries to complete, but that was already evident to those who were willing to look beyond the surface.

Seneca never explicitly mentioned the idea that the Empire was going to fall, but a sensation of impending doom pervades his writings. In a letter to a friend, he summarized the issue in a lapidary sentence.

“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”

It was the first time someone noticed in writing a typical feature of those complex systems called CAS (complex adaptive systems) that may also be defined in terms of the concept of “holobiont” in biology. These systems tend to evolve gradually (“increases are of sluggish growth), but when they reach a tipping point, they switch to a different state, usually involving collapse (“ruin is rapid”). It is the way the universe goes: usually smoothly but often in bumps. You can even make a mathematical model that explains how it works. The result is this nice “Seneca Curve.”

You can see this curve in many cases of calculated and observed trajectories for real-world trajectories. Several examples are listed at this link, the most worrisome kind being those climate “tipping points” that could turn Earth into an uninhabitable planet.

Seneca saw the collapse taking place around him, but he was a good Stoic, and he never had a gloomy attitude. He may not have been the greatest philosopher in history (I tend to compare it to a modern blogger!), but he was a brave man who faced his destiny with courage and dignity when Emperor Nero, his former pupil, forced him to commit suicide. Seneca understood the basic concept of Stoic philosophy that another Stoic thinker, Epictetus, wrote as:

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”

If you understand the Seneca Effect, you can use it as a compass to manage your life and your activities. Sometimes, collapse is unavoidable, but if you are prepared for it, you can use it as the starting point for a new beginning. Seneca himself wrote: “there is no success that’s not the result of a past failure,” a statement that I call the “Seneca Rebound.” And so we move in life, always forward, simply because we don’t have a choice.