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Tim Morgan has written that:

“I have this sense of acceleration towards some kind of crisis, so there’s a need to sort of encapsulate SEE knowledge before things start breaking loose. The former might be conceit, the latter might be unduly fearful, but I don’t think so. I sense a kind of disintegrating rationality, which I might be wrong about but, again, I don’t think I am.”

These are striking words. Tim Morgan is not given to sensationalism. His work has consistently attempted to understand the economy through the lens of energy, rather than through the comforting assumptions of conventional economics. When someone so measured speaks of acceleration towards crisis, it is worth paying attention.

Many people sense that something is changing. The institutions which once appeared solid seem increasingly fragile. Political systems struggle to address long-term problems. Public debate becomes more polarised and less rational. Confidence in expertise declines, yet simple answers fail to convince. Economic statistics may continue to report growth, but large numbers of people feel less secure, less hopeful and less connected than previous generations.

Morgan refers to a “disintegrating rationality”. By this he means not simply disagreement, but a loss of the shared assumptions that enable societies to make coherent decisions. The financial system becomes detached from physical reality. Governments promise outcomes that cannot be delivered. Consumers are encouraged to expect ever-increasing material abundance, even when the energy basis that once supported such expansion is weakening.

If this analysis is correct, then a period of disruption lies ahead. It may involve financial instability, shortages, political upheaval and a painful recognition that the age of effortless prosperity is ending. Such prospects naturally provoke anxiety.

Yet history suggests that periods of breakdown can also become periods of renewal.

The extraordinary growth of recent decades has brought many benefits, but it has also carried heavy costs. Communities have weakened. Families are scattered. Work has become insecure and often meaningless. High streets have emptied. Craft skills have disappeared. People possess more goods than ever before, yet loneliness and dissatisfaction remain widespread.

A future with lower material consumption need not be a future of misery.

Indeed, it could become an opportunity to recover things that prosperity itself has eroded.

More local production could strengthen local economies. Repair could replace waste. People might know the origins of their food and the names of those who produce it. Skills once regarded as obsolete could regain their value and dignity. Neighbours might depend upon one another again. Time could become less dominated by consumption and more available for family, friendship, creativity and public service.

None of this means romanticising hardship. Poverty, insecurity and injustice must be resisted wherever possible. The transition will require wisdom, fairness and compassion. Those with the least resources must not be left to bear the greatest burdens.

But if the era of expansion is indeed drawing to a close, we should not assume that human flourishing ends with it.

For generations we have tended to equate prosperity with wellbeing, as though more wealth automatically produces better lives. Increasingly, the evidence suggests otherwise. Beyond a certain point, the relentless pursuit of growth can diminish the very qualities that make life worthwhile.

The future may therefore prove to be a paradox.

We may have less, yet value it more.

We may travel less, yet belong more deeply to the places where we live.

We may own fewer possessions, yet recover skills, relationships and purposes that consumer abundance has obscured.

The decades ahead may ask much of us. They may require resilience, imagination and mutual support. But they also offer the possibility of rediscovering what genuine prosperity means.

If Tim Morgan is right about the crisis, the story does not end there.

On the other side of excess and illusion may lie a society that is poorer in material terms but richer in human terms. Less affluent, perhaps, but more secure. Less wasteful, but more appreciative. Less driven by the demands of endless growth, but more attentive to the needs of people and place.

That would not be a tragedy.

That would be progress of a different and better kind.

The outcome could be a society with less prosperity as we have recently measured it, but a far higher quality of life. And that, in the end, would be good.