The Ladder of Awareness

In a 2012 paper entitled The Ladder of Awareness Paul Chefurka describes the gradual awakening that many people experience as they learn about the predicaments that we face. He divides the awakening process into the following five stages.

Dead asleep.
Awareness of one fundamental problem.
Awareness of many problems.
Awareness of the interconnection between many problems.
Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life.

Here are some thoughts to do with the five stages, illustrated with some of my own experiences and education. (My journey started with learning about peak oil. However, for most people climate change is what makes them aware of the limits that we face.) Each Stage starts with a quotation from the Chefurka paper.

Stage 1. Dead Asleep

At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behavior and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.

People at Stage 1 do not understand that the world is changing in a fundamental way. Unusual events — extended summer droughts, for example — are treated as something that that can be handled on a case-by-case basis.

When Chefurka wrote his paper in 2012 most people were ‘Dead Asleep’. That is probably no longer the case, particularly with regard to climate change. Even those who deny that the climate is changing, or that human activity is the cause of the change, are not asleep ― they recognize that ‘something is going on’. In fact, these people are edging into Stage 2. In other areas such as biosphere destruction, resource depletion and over-population, most people are still at the ‘Dead Asleep’ phase.

My starting point was what was then called Peak Oil. I read a number of articles and slide presentations on the topic, one of which was from Matt Simmons. He gave a presentation on Peak Oil to a meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. The audience gave him a polite but rather frosty reception. Before the meeting I spoke to Simmons briefly; I pushed back on some of his arguments. Our discussion was not entirely amicable. He died a few months after that meeting. I wish now that I had simply shaken his hand and told him how much I appreciated what he had done. But it is too late now.

Stage 2. Awareness of One Fundamental Problem

Whether it’s Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.

Stage 3. Awareness of Many Problems

As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow. At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems — for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion. They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the "highest priority" problem.

My study of Peak Oil led to an awareness of related issues, including climate change, over-population and the destruction of the biosphere. Like most other people, my first response was to ignore these new issues on the grounds, “That’s someone else’s concern, I can’t cope with any more problems”. But these topics cannot be siloed so easily — they all matter. They are all components of the Age of Limits, and they all interact with one another, frequently in ways that are difficult to understand or even identify. People who are at Stage 3 are fully aware of how complex and interactive these issues are; it is not enough to look at just one issue, say climate change, on its own. It interacts with many other issues such as population growth, industrial production, pollution and financial policy.

In my case, an introduction to systems issues was provided by the Club of Rome Limitations to Growth report, issued in the early 1970s. Its findings are summarized in the following (updated) chart.

People who arrive at this rung on the ladder of awareness also come to understand that the interactions between variables are both difficult to identify and difficult to measure. No matter how good our mathematical models and simulations may be, they are limited in their ability to predict the future because we do not understand all the parameters that are involved. A dose of humility is called for.

Stage 4. Interconnections Between Many Problems

The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.

An understanding of Stage 4 came to me as I worked on technological solutions to climate change. It quickly became apparent that such solutions do not exist, even if we as a society were to put all of our effort and resources behind them (which we are not doing). Climate change is a predicament. We cannot “solve” climate change, but we can respond and adapt.

Stage 5. All Aspects of Life

Includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a "Solution" is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.

One of the reactions to reaching Stage 5 is to look for spiritual meaning to the predicaments that we face. In his paper, Chefurka talks about inner and outer paths. He is, however, quite critical of traditional religion in the context of spirituality.

. . . the inner path does not imply a "retreat into religion". Most of the people I've met who have chosen an inner path have as little use for traditional religion as their counterparts on the outer path have for traditional politics. Organized religion is usually seen as part of the predicament rather than a valid response to it.

This statement is unfortunate, but it does contain much truth. The response of organized religion to climate change has been limited and haphazard — not as an opportunity for leadership. However — and this is a huge “however” — rather than “retreating” into religion the situation presents the faith community with an opportunity to provide badly needed leadership. It is this thought that provides the basis of the ideas in Three Themes.