[D66] Comparative Analysis: Greer vs. Haag

[René Oudeweg]

chatgpt:

Perfect — let’s expand this into a comparative deep dive between John 
Michael Greer’s Not the Future We Ordered and Chad A. Haag’s 
Hermeneutical Death. Both diagnose modernity’s collapse, but they come 
at it from different traditions and with different emphases.

Comparative Analysis: Greer vs. Haag
1. Core Question

Greer: Why do societies cling to the myth of progress even when it no 
longer works?

Haag: What happens to interpretation and meaning when collapse destroys 
the frameworks that sustain them?

2. Intellectual Traditions

Greer:

Rooted in ecology, systems thinking, psychology, and myth studies.

Influenced by Joseph Tainter (collapse theory), Carl Jung (psychological 
archetypes), and cultural historians.

Thinks in terms of myths, narratives, and coping mechanisms.

Haag:

Rooted in continental philosophy, hermeneutics, phenomenology.

Influenced by Heidegger, Gadamer, Nietzsche, and collapse thinkers.

Thinks in terms of language, interpretation, and being-in-the-world.

3. Diagnosis of Collapse

Greer:

Collapse = failure of the myth of progress.

People experience “grief stages” (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, 
acceptance).

Emphasis on psychological defense mechanisms and collective illusions.

Haag:

Collapse = hermeneutical death (loss of interpretive frameworks).

The very act of making sense collapses, leaving individuals in nihilism.

Emphasis on existential exhaustion and breakdown of shared meaning-worlds.

4. Role of Technology

Greer:

Technology is double-edged: it once gave credibility to progress but is 
now part of diminishing returns.

Warns against blind “techno-fixes” for peak oil and ecological decline.

Haag:

Technology actively accelerates hermeneutical death.

Digital culture = shallow, fragmented, hyper-speed interpretation 
without depth.

Meaning collapses not just because of resource limits, but because of 
information overload.

5. Psychological / Existential Experience

Greer:

Collapse = a grieving process as progress fails.

Societies must build new myths (resilience, sustainability).

Still relatively optimistic: humans always create new stories.

Haag:

Collapse = death of meaning itself.

Even attempts at new myths risk futility in a saturated, collapsing 
interpretive space.

Much more bleak/tragic: a post-hermeneutical existence may mean living 
after meaning.

6. Prescriptions / Outcomes

Greer:

Advocates “mythic reorientation”: build new cultural narratives around 
limits, cycles, and resilience.

Example: localism, low-energy living, myth of decline instead of myth of 
progress.

Collapse is survivable if framed properly.

Haag:

Suggests a kind of post-hermeneutical modesty: local, small-scale 
communities that interpret within their own limits.

No grand new myth will “save” us — instead, survival depends on letting 
go of totalizing meaning systems.

Collapse is both material and existential — we must accept living after 
meaning.

7. Tone & Worldview

Greer:

Pragmatic, cultural-historical, psychologically attuned.

Collapse framed as a long descent rather than apocalypse.

Offers cautious hope through new myths.

Haag:

Philosophical, existential, hermeneutical.

Collapse framed as the end of meaning itself.

Offers less hope — more a call to endure and adapt to hermeneutical 
exhaustion.

Big Picture

Greer = collapse as failed myth (progress → decline → new myths)

Haag = collapse as failed meaning (interpretation → exhaustion → 
post-hermeneutical life)

Both agree that industrial modernity is doomed, but:

Greer emphasizes psychological coping and myth-making.

Haag emphasizes existential exhaustion and the eclipse of interpretation.

👉 Together, they complement each other: Greer gives the 
cultural-psychological map of collapse, while Haag gives the 
existential-philosophical depth of collapse.