collapse

The old paradigm is based on control. But our old paradigm "civilisation" has no control over its destiny. As Adam Sacks writes, in "The Natural Laws of Collapse":

That birds fly and pigs don't is a consequence of laws of nature governing physics and biology. Nothing that transpires on physical planet Earth is any different: the laws of nature are inviolate. Always.
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Collapse of civilisations, including ours, is inevitable and always has been. Hidden in plain sight, we have not grasped what will sooner or later become obvious: Civilisational collapse is not up to any of us, no matter what we do. As when faced with an unstoppable Hurricane Katrina, which is only obeying the laws of nature, the best we can do is to be prepared.
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As civilisations grow larger the ability to change seems to dwindle, and we witness all civilisations in history going through their birth, vigour, then death.
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Social complexity is very expensive, and the more a civilisation grows the less you get back per unit of input (also called "diminishing returns"). Sooner or later every civilisation busts its budget, cannot afford its armies or its bureaucracies, is unable to suppress increasing dissatisfaction among the masses who must be at least nominally pacified (think bread and circuses), exhausts its resources, suffers from its environmental travesties (the most salient of which is destruction of trees and soil), runs out of food, and is eventually supplanted by simpler more sustainable groups (if there are any around) or just disperses (if there's any place left to disperse to).
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The civilisational life cycle, as described above, is a law of nature. The collapse is therefore predictable. It has nothing to do with our specific Euro-American now-gone-global deplorable civilisation -- it has to do with any civilisation that gets to a certain size, necessitating hierarchy and class
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And that's where we are now. The determining factor is size (relative to resources). All else is simply the stories we tell ourselves. Therefore:

We can write to politicians, we can riot in the streets, we can write learned tomes, we can cavort through the vast wasteland of talk radio, we can make impassioned documentaries, we can bring down Monsanto, we can put up solar panels and drink organic yak's milk. None of that will change the outcome one bit (as tragic as that may be now that humans have become a global force) -- because civilisation is on a course prescribed by laws of nature which have no regard whatsoever for human wishful thinking.

Resistance is futile. Any energy expended on trying to rescue this "civilisation" is energy wasted - this applies both to physical resources, and to human resources, i.e. our thoughts, words, and actions. We can go down with the sinking ship, or we can get into the lifeboats. The lifeboats are the new paradigm, based on unity rather than hierarchy and class. We cannot stop the old ship from sinking. We can only prepare for change.