I’m going to take a bit of a detour from the past few Contemplations concerning the Architecture of Collapse I’ve been developing and address something that is a bit of a pet peeve for me. It’s the constant barrage of propaganda emanating from the various levels of government in my nation state of Canada. Probably like most around the globe, Canada’s governing institutions market with endless stories the benefits of their actions and policies. It’s a never-ending parade of what great things they are accomplishing or have planned that will address and solve the problems of the day or those just around the corner. They are the best version of government ever, just ask them.
This is still tangentially related to societal collapse in that governing institutions derive their legitimacy and powers mostly from the sociocultural narratives that surround them. Yes, they hold in their back pockets the very real threat of more repressive and violent means, some of which could be said to be ever-present, but narrative management has been found to be less costly and more effective; and thus why they spend exorbitant amounts of resources and time engaged in it. One of the most prominent stories from which they attempt to make themselves legitimate in this day and age is that they are the bringers of perpetual prosperity. As such, they are one of the loudest voices advocating for the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice — the main action driving our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot and concomitantly societal collapse.
That’s bad enough, but what truly irks me is not just that they are doing this–only highlighting the benefits of such growth, never the negative impacts or limitations–but that they always remind you that the message is brought to you by the government in question and for national and provincial politics the party that currently holds the reins of power, when in fact it’s brought to us by ourselves via our tax dollars: our governments spend significant amounts of tax revenue to propagandise its citizens–we are paying to have our ruling elite tell us what great things they’re doing and what great leaders they are.
The citizenry tends to be silent about this entire situation, and it’s a silence not because of acclimatisation alone but because of a deep resignation or acquiescence to the story we are being sold–or perhaps a combination of both. We’ve also become accustomed to the government speaking at us as opposed to for us and as a result so rarely pause to question both the source of the voice and the content of the message.
This is the unchallenged–or, more precisely, ineffectively challenged–propaganda I am referring to in this Contemplation’s title. It’s not that no one objects; in fact, there are many who do raise concerns as I will note below. It’s that the challenges tend to get systematically marginalised, ignored, or overwhelmed by the volume and persistence of the state’s self-promotional messaging. The basic assumptions underpinning the narrative–that growth is good, the state is benevolent, and that prosperity for all is quite achievable–go virtually unchecked and unquestioned in mainstream discourse. It’s not the clumsy lies of a totalitarian regime but the subtle and pervasive marketing of a liberal democracy that is selling itself to its citizens using money taken from the citizens themselves. But the story has some holes; some rather large and gaping ones as I will argue below.
Above all else the story we are being told is a theology of endless growth, and one that the evidence and planet are telling us we cannot afford; yet, we keep being told otherwise–we are told to ignore our lying eyes in favour of the comforting narratives being weaved by our political elite.
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The Idolatry of Good Government
In several of my We’re Saved! Contemplations I argued that the entire concept of “good government” is beyond naive–it’s dangerous (see: Part 1 Website Medium Substack; Part 2 Website Medium Substack; Part 3 Website Medium Substack [Note: I recommend reading these for a more detailed discussion on the subject; this one can be considered a related addition or addendum to them]). In fact, I’ve begun to wonder if the term “good government” could be considered a theological one smuggled into politics to help foster the notion that the political elite provide salvation, moral righteousness, and benevolent authority–not surprising given the history of the ruling elite and their prehistorical roots in religions.
In this light, when citizens tend to speak of good government, they may be expressing faith rather than a set of policies or outcomes that could be highlighted and agreed upon as being “good”. I need to be careful not to overstate this observation; there are many who support a government and tend not to believe it is perfect or benevolent, and may simply hold that our system is preferable to other governing systems. The “good government” faith I am referring to is not a universal cultural narrative, simply the dominant one–the one that the state cultivates through its ever-present propaganda. It is also the one that mutually reinforces the propaganda in a self-sustaining feedback loop whether citizens genuinely believe it or are merely resigned to it. This feedback loop is structural, not just psychological, because its legitimacy depends on the growth narrative and the supposed prosperity it brings: the state engages in propaganda to manage the narrative. This propaganda, then, is a symptom of a deeper systemic problem as opposed to its primary cause. Regardless, the outcome is the same: the narrative goes unchallenged in the public square.
Citizens, when they are adhering to the good government mantra, may simply be investing in the idea that somewhere in the labyrinth of bureaucracy and political hierarchy is a benevolent parent that will eventually–if we just elect the “correct” ones–get it all right. It is a faith, and it’s rewarded by a steady diet of self-congratulatory messages from the elite, but that is paid for by the faithful.
Here in Canada, the shift in advertising priorities of our federal government attests to this argument. The recent “Choose Canada” campaign of The Privy Council Office came with $3 million of federal funding; and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada was allocated $9 million to fund the “Building Canada’s Economy” campaign, cancelling consumer protection spending in order to help fund this marketing. Provincially, our Auditor General of Ontario revealed the provincial government had recently spent a record $112 million on advertising, with $43 million of that on a totally partisan attempt to foster a positive impression of the governing party and what they are doing for the provincial population. Beyond these obvious allocations of funds are the constant reminders of government benevolence each and every time a politician speaks; little is said without a pitch for what wonderful things our political class is accomplishing and why the growth they are pushing is great.
This isn’t good governance, this is propaganda dressed up in a cloak of state authority and chanting its own gospel of prosperity for all.
The Dogma of Infinite Growth
What is the gospel our political elite is chanting from? It is one that goes beyond the unquestioned assumption that economic growth is great for everyone; it’s one that such growth is both necessary and inherently good. It’s also one that has dominated Canadian political policy for decades and could be referred to as a Neoliberal Techno-optimist Growth Narrative, a story that establishes a hierarchy of political and social goals where environmental and social concerns are quite subordinate to economic ones. When environmental and social issues are addressed, they are dressed up in such a manner that sees them pursued only insofar as they contribute to the overriding objective of economic expansion.
But one of the questions that might be asked at this juncture is whether the growth narrative is structurally necessary for modern government or is it simply one of many options for aiding state legitimacy? I would argue that it is, at least currently, the former. Since about the turn of the late twentieth century, governing institutions have tended to tie their legitimacy to economic performance using such metrics as gross domestic product, employment creation, and attractiveness for investments. The growth narrative has become the primary measure by which modern states judge themselves and are judged, and abandoning this is unthinkable currently as it is a structural feature of our socio-political and -economic systems. To abandon the growth gospel our ruling elite read from would be akin to admitting that they and their playbook are irrelevant to the predicaments of the time.
The question that the public should be asking constantly–but often isn’t, or when asked gets drowned-out by the political elite and its compliant media–is: who is the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice actually good for? And this question needs to be asked even more urgently nowadays because the growth-at-all-costs is being broadcast across our nation with a renewed vigour and leveraging of every political and social perturbation towards the desired endgame of economic expansion.
For example, with the narrative that China holds a monopoly on the critical minerals needed for advanced technologies comes a tale that the Ontario government is chanting through its “Protect Ontario” advertisements: Ontario can become a “critical mineral superpower” with its promotion of the Ring of Fire–a region of northern Ontario that geologic surveys suggest is chock full of the needed minerals. They claim the deposits could rival the value of the Alberta tar sands and bring vast wealth into Ontario. What they don’t say is that: the marketing is full of misleading stock footage from other regions, implying it’s completely hypothetical at this point; the citizens will be on the hook for billions and billions of dollars to build the roads and infrastructure needed for the various private sector corporations to access the minerals; various First Nations groups have challenged the proposal based upon environmental and unfulfilled constitutional concerns; there will be massive ecological destruction as a result of this development; and that most of the wealth benefits will accrue to a few individuals and companies–some foreign.
The message sent by the provincial government is clear, unambiguous, and completely unchallenged in its telling: extraction and growth are good for all and it is the only path forward.
The Canadian federal government’s messaging is similar and with close to another $100 million in advertising slated to follow over the next few years, Canadians can expect to be exposed to constant reminders about what a great job our political elite are performing and how much it’s benefitting the country’s citizens. And I can guarantee that the funds directed to these legitimisation activities of narrative management are far, far, far greater than the “official” accounting presents.
The political message is obvious: Be grateful for such hard-working, brilliant leaders doing such a great job on your behalf because growth is coming and prosperity for all has arrived!
I could go on but here I will set aside the argument that the wealth generation that accompanies economic growth is primarily for the benefit of the ruling elite and its financiers. Instead, let us examine the evidence surrounding the growth narrative.
The Evidence We Are Ignoring: A Planet in Critical Condition
The pursuit of the infinite growth chalice is problematic on a number of levels, but particularly from a biophysical perspective. The evidence is quite overwhelming that this pathway is unsustainable–significantly unsustainable.
From the calculations that we are using about 1.7 Earths worth of resources to sustain our current consumption levels–an ecological deficit that has been compounding for about half a century already–to the evidence that we have breached 7 of the 9 planetary boundaries recognised as fundamental to planetary life, we have blasted well past the natural environmental carrying capacity for our species.
Ocean acidification is the latest boundary to be breached due to constant absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, with the ocean absorbing around 25% of what is put into the atmosphere through hydrocarbon burning. This absorption results in a chemical process that reduces the amount of the mineral aragonite available to shellfish, corals, and plankton to build their skeletons and shells. The impact of this cascades through the oceans as dungeness crabs lose their ability to find food, oyster growth slows, and the food webs that are the foundation of marine life weaken. Of particular concern for Canada is that the colder waters of the Arctic and coast of British Columbia absorb more CO2. This is not a distant threat but a slow and steady one that threatens all marine life.
And these breached boundaries are all interconnected and form a system of cascading risks.
Climate change remains in the high-risk zone. 2025 has been the third warmest year on record and marks the first three-year period that has exceeded the 1.5°C threshold. With Canada warming even faster than the global average with its reflective snow and ice being lost at a record pace this is no longer a theoretical threat that could occur at some future time; it has arrived.
Nature’s capacity to sustain life is being eroded due to changes in biodiversity integrity. Land systems and freshwater change boundaries have been transgressed, disrupting hydrological cycles that support human settlements and their agriculture. Nitrogen and phosphorous cycles have been pushed beyond their safe limits resulting in coastal water dead zones. Novel entities (e.g., chemicals, synthetics, plastics) that cannot be absorbed or processed by the Earth’s sinks have been introduced and continue to expand in use.
Only stratospheric ozone depletion and aerosol loading boundaries are considered to be operating within safe limits; every other major system that serves to help keep our planet habitable has been breached and places life in peril.
Canada’s Outsized Role in the Crisis
Global ecological collapse is proceeding and Canada’s contribution is not just unsustainable, it’s extravagant. A 2026 study found that on an annual basis humanity is using about 1.7 Earths worth of resources, with Canada ranking eighth in the world for per capita consumption using about 6.6 global hectares per person–this is about four times the sustainable level of the planet’s biocapacity and double that of a country like China.
As bad as these numbers appear, they also reveal a structural problem for Canada and its economy: it is built upon exporting its ecological wealth. Close to two-thirds of Canada’s domestic ecological footprint was exported for other countries’ consumption. So Canada is not just consuming its share of the planet for its own citizens, it is externalising its consumption for others using Canada’s biocapacity to fuel global markets. All the while, politicians are telling Canadians that this type of growth is the path to prosperity.
It’s been estimated that humanity must reduce its overall ecological footprint by about 60% over the next 25 years to achieve carbon neutrality, let alone address all the other breached planetary boundaries. What are Canada’s politicians doing in this regard? Selling a story that is the exact opposite.
There’s an objection that could be raised at this point. One could point out that while growth may indeed be ecologically unsustainable, the degrowth project some advocate for would lead to economic collapse, mass suffering, and sociopolitical instability. In this light, surely the ecological costs are more than preferable to the costs that would be borne by a society pursuing degrowth. A transition towards a degrowing of our footprint would not just be profoundly difficult, it would require a restructuring of almost everything from economies to supply chains to employment models, and even to our very conception of prosperity. The disruption and suffering it would cause is unacceptable.
This objection, however, rests on the false premise that continuing along with business-as-usual is somehow “safer”; an assumption the evidence is increasingly showing is not just false but exceedingly dangerous. Seven breached planetary boundaries. 1.7 Earths of resource consumption. Cascading ecological collapse. Degrowing our footprint isn’t a choice between comfort and hardship; it’s a choice between catastrophic collapse and a pathway where some of the consequences of our ecological overshoot might be mitigated. I need to acknowledge here that degrowth is not a proven “solution”–in fact, I am rather ambivalent about it for a variety of reasons–but it will occur whether we wish it or not given ecological reality. So, the question is not whether it’s a viable pathway to avoid collapse–a process that is already unfolding before our eyes–it’s whether we can “manage” some of the consequences of our evolving simplification.
However painful the abandonment of the pursuit of the perpetual growth chalice might be, degrowth may at least preserve some of our agency in what will befall our planet. Moving away from ever-increasing material throughput towards local community resilience and ecological stewardship would not be simple nor easy, but the alternative is very likely to be much, much more difficult to navigate–if it can be navigated at all.
The Silence of the Faithful–Or of the Resigned
The state is immunised from the scrutiny it deserves because of the belief in “good government” and its gospel of growth. The faithful–or the resigned–shrug all too often when lights get shined on the partisan nature of the political elite. They dismiss as alarmist the evidence regarding planetary collapse. When regulations get loosened and the newly elected government leaves them in place despite campaign promises to the contrary, the faithful see no cause for alarm. Good governments don’t need to be constrained and the growth gospel cannot be false.
To be fair, this propaganda is not entirely unchallenged with Ontario’s Auditor General being critical of the partisan nature of government advertising and opposition parties labelling it “taxpayer-funded propaganda”. Retired University of Victoria’s School of Public Health professor Dr. Trevor Hancock penned an article challenging the federal government’s strategy for sustainable development, highlighting that the strategy “somehow manages to ignore planet Earth, fails to mention planetary boundaries or our ecological footprint, or to recognize ecological limits and the need to invest in restoring our ecosystems and natural capital as a matter of national security”. He goes further to argue that this is “ignore-ance”, the political act of knowing but deliberately looking away from inconvenient truths. And newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney, in his recent mandate letter to Cabinet, failed to mention the words “environment” or “planet” at all in its seven priorities; instead, they all focussed upon economic growth in one form or another.
Challenges do exist but as often occurs they are marginalised, ignored by the mainstream media, and/or drowned out by the voluminous narrative management by the state. In effect, the state propaganda goes unchallenged in the public sphere, even if objections have been raised. I am not claiming that no one objects to the stories weaved by the ruling elite, but rather that such objections gain little if any traction in their attempts to dislodge the dominant narrative.
Regardless of their stated intentions, all governments operate according to self-preservation and in our present times this is tied very tightly to the idea of infinite growth and the prosperity it supposedly brings to the masses. The narrative surrounding this is not just self-promotional, it’s self-delusional. It argues that salvation lies in what is destroying our planet and, ultimately, us.
An excerpt from Prime Minister Mark Carney’s statement regarding the recent breakdown in trade talks between the United States and Canada epitomises exactly the narrative that I have in mind: “Canadian economic growth is accelerating, and we are on course to have the second-fastest growth in the G7 over the next two years. Our economy is creating jobs at four times the rate of the United States. Our exports to non-U.S. markets are on track to double over the next decade. Foreign direct investment in Canada is at its highest level in two decades, running at twice the rate of our nearest G7 competitor. Canada now ranks as the most attractive country in the world for infrastructure investment.”
It’s very revealing what Carney does not say here. He does not admit that investment attractiveness comes at a cost: the liquidation of Canada’s biocapacity–that the majority of its ecological footprint is exported for foreign consumption. Nor does he mention that Canada’s per capita consumption is amongst the highest in the world–multiple times higher than sustainable levels. He also fails to discuss the ongoing expansion of the extractive industries ravaging the Canadian landscape, be it the oil and gas, mining, or forest industries–three of the most destructive enterprises pursued by our species. These are not innocent oversights but purposeful manipulations of reality and language in order to steer narratives. His statements are profoundly misleading and based upon lies of omission.
The Business Sector Comparison: A Necessary Clarification
And I cannot overlook the identical role of the similar narratives constantly put out by business interests looking to expand their market share, with estimates that globally they spend close to a trillion annually. The amount of propaganda put out by them to sell their products as well as the narrative that growth is a positive force–to say little about their leveraging of salvation stories in this regard–probably dwarfs that of our governing institutions.
I am not trying to suggest that state propaganda is a unique villain in this story; I am attempting to argue that regardless of the source the growth narrative itself is the central problem. I choose the state as my focus in this Contemplation because it is the institution that claims legitimate authority over our collective future, then uses our own tax dollars to fund its self-promotion. Of course the growth narrative is amplified by many others, particularly business interests, the media, and a variety of other sociocultural institutions; so my complaint is not necessarily with just the state per se, but with the dominant social story that the state and business interests jointly promote. I see the state as a very troubling purveyor of the narrative since it claims legitimacy through it as well as using compelled funding to propagate it endlessly.
Conclusion: Breaking the Spell
As I mentioned at the outset of this Contemplation, the truly irksome aspect of the conditioning of my nation’s population is that we are paying for it ourselves. On top of this preposterous arrangement is the silence of the people, but this perhaps points to its success.
The political elite are helping to sell us a product–the pursuit of the infinite growth chalice–that the planet cannot afford–as shown by the planetary boundary framework to the ecological footprint accounting, and much in between. The evidence is increasing that we need to degrow (rapidly and significantly) our footprint and simplify our societies. This message, however, is not only absent from the multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns of our governments but is actively sabotaged since it challenges the very foundation of our governing institutions’ legitimacy. Admitting that growth is at the root of our various existential predicaments is to admit that our governments are, in their current iteration, exacerbating the dilemmas we face. And this, I would argue, is a truth that no amount of taxpayer-funded propaganda can hide–though it can certainly obscure it for a time.
But deny, obfuscate, and roll out salvation narrative after salvation narrative is what they will continue to do. In fact, I wager that such stories will multiply and become increasingly urgent in their appeal as our collapse picks up speed. And with such urgency will be an increasing amount of our nation’s “wealth” dedicated towards activities of legitimacy and associated tales–eating our seed corn as it were–in an attempt to prolong the wealth-generation processes that support the ruling elite.
It would be satisfactory to me if a tipping point of the population could wake up to the realisation that the gospel our leaders–political and business–are reading from is a lie. That our preachers are charlatans. And that the collection plates are the multiple layers of taxes and increasing price inflation for goods and services we are forced to pay.
The difficulty–if not impossibility–of this task should not be overlooked. The propaganda society is exposed to, the deeply ingrained faith (or resignation) of the masses, and the institutions that benefit from the growth narrative are exceedingly powerful and pervasive. But I’m wondering if naming the illusion is not entirely futile and that small acts of naming it may accumulate over time, even if these don’t produce immediate changes. Sociocultural shifts do tend to occur through the slow accumulation of alternative narratives, not sudden breakthroughs–although I also have to wonder whether such time is even available to us; some would argue absolutely not. So, I offer this Contemplation as one such act of naming that might contribute to a longer conversation that goes towards helping see the illusion for what it is and, for some, to act in ways they feel can contribute to mitigating the worst of the impending consequences.
The planet has run out of time for such propaganda to continue to go unchecked and unchallenged. While it is virtually impossible to break the spell, it must be named for what it is: a story propagated by vested interests that are benefitting from it and NOT in the best interests of the planet nor its guests that depend upon healthy and long-lasting ecosystems.
Special Offer
If you have made it to the end of this Contemplation, I have an offer for you. Send me an email at olduvaitrilogy@gmail.com requesting a copy of Part 1 of my trilogy and I’ll fire off a PDF of it to you for your “fictional” reading pleasure. If you like the beginning of the tale, please consider ordering the trilogy here: Purchase Book(s) — Olduvai.ca.
What is going to be my standard WARNING/ADVICE going forward and that I have reiterated in various ways before this:
Only time will tell how this all unfolds but there’s nothing wrong with preparing for the worst by ‘collapsing now to avoid the rush’ and pursuing self-sufficiency. By this I mean removing as many dependencies on the Matrix as is possible and making do, locally. And if one can do this without negative impacts upon our fragile ecosystems or do so while creating more resilient ecosystems, all the better.
Building community (maybe even just household) resilience to as high a level as possible seems prudent given the uncertainties of an unpredictable future. There’s no guarantee it will ensure ‘recovery’ after a significant societal stressor/shock but it should increase the probability of it and that, perhaps, is all we can ‘hope’ for from its pursuit.
If you have arrived here and get something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my “fictional” novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the “profits” of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
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You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially William Catton’s Overshoot and Joseph Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies: see here.
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