It had not been noted until then, because his name ended up eclipsing that of his co-authors, but Pablo Servigne never writes alone. With Raphaël Stevens, he published How everything can collapse And Another end of the world is possible. Two works which, in the middle of the last decade, made the agricultural engineer the leader of collapsology, the study of the collapse of our civilizations.
We find him a few years later surrounded by Nathan Obadia, expert in martial arts and non-violent communication, for an unexpected “collective development” book, The Power of the Meerkat (Editions du Seuil). More explicit, the subtitle urges us to “tame our fears to get through this century”.
And in fact the work intends, in nearly three hundred pages, to teach us to dialogue with our concerns in order to “no longer be afraid of being afraid” and not to remain frozen in the face of the great threats that weigh on us. An invitation to peaceful action which deserved some further investigation…
Where does this meerkat that serves as the common thread of your book come from?
Nathan Obadia: He arrived a few years ago at a training course that I was running. It’s as if we all have a little desert sentinel within us, on the lookout for the slightest danger. At that time I discovered polyvagal theory, an approach developed by neuroscientist Stephen Porges. He explains that fear, from the point of view of the nervous system, can lead to action as well as to immobilization, like the meerkat facing danger.
It offers keys to therapists and patients who have been traumatized to understand the things inside them that are completely locked. Because, when overwhelmed by too much threat, our meerkat freezes and says “no, we must not move”. Like a mouse in a cat’s mouth, or like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car.
Pablo Servigne: Talking about theory, about the ventral or dorsal vagal nervous system, puts people off a little. Whereas if we explain that we have a meerkat inside us, we immediately want to take care of it, to tame it, rather than fighting it or fleeing it. It’s a powerful metaphor.
And once we understand that we have this alert mechanism within us, what do we do with it?
Pablo Servigne: The meerkat is just the sentinel. He will always be there. And it is better to make it an ally, because in our body, this threat detector will always have priority over the cognitive brain, over reason. Even if he is wrong, even if he is disrupted by trauma, he is still the one who decides our reactions.
The meerkat, in popular imagery, is this erect and worried rodent. It’s the symbol of a hypervigilant society, right?
Pablo Servigne: But it’s OK for him to be vigilant. As soon as there is danger, he barks and warns everyone. In fact, it saves lives. What is pathological is not being hyper-vigilant, nor being afraid, but fearing fear and blocking it. Fear is an energy of life, which is used to move and change the world! The pathological side appears when the meerkat is disturbed or traumatized, that is to say when it is too afraid or not afraid enough.
And indeed there is a paradox with the fears in our society… We are at the same time too afraid, with many pathologies linked to anxiety, stress or eco-anxiety and at the same time it is as if our society was not afraid enough. Because there are huge threats and we are not moving. Friends, we’re going to have to overcome our fears, otherwise we’ll never be able to get through this century. That’s the intention of this book!
It is also a book for personal development, to face more individual fears than collapse…
Nathan Obadia: Exactly, we cannot escape working on ourselves. Learn to welcome fears, to avoid accumulating stress, anxiety, frustration or anger linked to all the little worries of everyday life… Succeed in getting through them better because we can never control everything 100%. In martial arts, there is a state of calm vigilance where one can act with the right amount of effort. The wisdom is there: not to be in reaction all the time.
When a fear emerges, I observe that it is there, I let it pass through me, I thank my meerkat, I understand its message, then I connect and restore meaning. And if enough people do that, we can move forward together with a more societal and political approach.
Pablo Servigne: In fact, one cannot do without the other. Personal development is necessary but not sufficient. The risk is to be navel-gazing. We’re going to do our yoga class, our evening breathing and everything is fine. Except that the world’s problems are systemic, political. You have to get organized. Conversely, when we see our activist friends, who are fully committed to defending the climate but who forget themselves and don’t take care of themselves, they go straight to burnout. I experienced this personally…
We weren’t expecting you to write a development book…
Pablo Servigne: I’ve done a lot of work on myself in recent years, because I realized that I was ignoring my emotions and my body. I must have pissed off a lot of people without knowing it… And I got burned out. I learned that I was dissociated, that I was traumatized, so I reassociate myself, to have more just action. When I was 20, I thought it was a sprint. I discover, at 40, that it is a marathon. You need to calm down and get organized. The key to this is much healthier connections with others and with the world.
“ And I tell activist friends who criticize “personal dev” that we will not do without it. Sorry ! Without this, we will continue to project our fears, our anger and our shadows onto others. That’s not how we make collectives. »
How do we make them?
Pablo Servigne: Our meerkats calm down when they have a secure connection with others. Authentic connections. When our emotions are listened to and understood, we make the right decisions. A brain that doesn’t have access to emotions makes bad decisions. I think that politicians are all dissociated, it’s normal at this level of competition and violence, and they continue to make absurd and dangerous decisions. Today, to achieve political responsibilities, one must be completely dissociated, feeling nothing. Our society is unfortunately made like that, and it risks ending badly…
Nathan Obadia: The meerkat, the less he feels heard, the more he screams. In a state of dissociation, the risk is to take refuge in the world of thoughts, disconnected from emotions and physical sensations. This is what can lead to the danger of ideology. Reassociating means listening to the meerkat, welcoming our fears, understanding what they have to tell us. The collective starts with that, and it does the meerkat good. The collective is an antidote to fears
On a societal scale, the whistleblower is a bit of a meerkat. Is the hidden message of the book “take care of your whistleblowers”?
Pablo Servigne : Yes, that’s it: “learn to listen to us!” (laughter) If society trusts certain whistleblower meerkats, these people must be grounded and aligned. It’s a good sign to have whistleblowers, and society passes laws to protect them.
“ But paradoxically, I became a super alarmist because I was dissociated, because I did not feel the effects that these catastrophic numbers were producing on my body. I gave that to society but I kind of screwed myself up for years. »
Now that I’ve worked on myself, I’m having a really hard time getting back into collapsology. For example, the news of Putin launching nuclear maneuvers today chills me more than it would have done before… To continue to remain present to this bad news, I must continue to accept the intensity of the fear , sadness and anger. Not easy ! But it’s better than being dissociated and feeling nothing. Our job is here, to get out of trauma and learn to feel.
Nathan Obadia: The challenge of the book is to demonstrate that to be able to welcome all this bad news and the emotions that go with it without dissociating ourselves, we have no other choice but to tame our inner meerkats, both individually and collectively. This is the only way to strengthen the struggles against authoritarianism and the destruction of life, and to build credible and powerful alternatives…