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Breaking Together

A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse

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Breaking Together

By: Jem Bendell
Narrated by: Matthew Slater
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About this listen

The collapse of modern societies has begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together.

How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what should we do? This audiobook describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse.

Jem Bendell argues that reclaiming our freedoms is essential to soften the fall and regenerate the natural world. Escaping the efforts of panicking elites, we can advance an ecolibertarian agenda for both politics and practical action in a broken world.

©2023 Jem Bendell (P)2023 Jem Bendell Freedom & Security History & Philosophy Philosophy Politics & Government Science Freedom Capitalism Socialism Economic disparity Taxation Economic Inequality Liberalism
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Jem Bendell actually takes it further and gives data and timeline of near future societal collapse. It’s heavy yet convincing logic for the economy, money, energy, biosphere, climate, and food all collapsing. Bendell after dealing with the dense collapse arguments moves to the second half of the book and the central transformation process of feeling the emotions of losing everything, collapse into the reality that “imperial modernity” aka current materialistic ways of living are dying. Instead of just feeling fear, feel every emotion, see what remains — the freedoms, connection to nature, each other, and solutions like shortening supply lines for one example. There are a few of Jem’s views apart from the fairly harmless ones like brushing aside Hipsters as just a fashion, his emotive angle on mainstream Covid response and his broadside view that vaccines were untested and efficacy as non-existent is jarring and created a dissonance that his views are possibly blinded by anti establishment and distrust of corporations that borders on conspiratorial and that possibly the previous 10 chapters were actually biased the same way. That said if you think everything in the modern world is gone Pete Tong — I think it is best to look at it directly and unflinchingly like Bendell has and listen, and digest this important book at an emotional level. Breaking Together is actually somewhat freeing under all the loss.

Feeling environment, politics, society is falling apart?

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I read Deep Adaptation and for months afterwards walked around in a daze unable to get my husband to understand why I was always close to tears. Eventually life returned to something like normal but I still felt uneasy like I was living in a dream. When this book came out I was ready and while my husband didn’t read it with me he listened carefully as I worked my way slowly through it. It is hard going (even for someone with an academic background). We have 4 acres of prime wet tropics land. We’re getting “our house in order” and paying down our debt. We’re now planting food including fruit trees and learning about permaculture. By 2028 we intend to share this land with two or three other like minded families. In the negative I disagree with the author on the effectiveness of vaccination. Perhaps as an immune compromised person I see things differently bc one in three people who have my form of leukaemia died if they caught Covid prior to vaccinations. The odds are much improved now. In a final note to the potential reader, if you read this book with an open mind and bring your full intellect to bear on the topic you too are taking the green pill.

I’m taking the green pill with some relief

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.