Get lost
Our entire way of life is unsustainable. So it is probably best, if not vital, to lose our way, and our way of life.
If affluent industrialised people are not losing our way, as well as losing generally, then we aren’t headed in the right direction.
Getting lost is frightening. But it’s part of this process. The collapse of industrialised civilisation is not just economic. It is intellectual, psychological and even spiritual. It will take with it everything that humanity has bolted on to its expansion. That includes all semblance of certainty.
It is already becoming increasingly difficult to decide who we think is right and who we think is wrong. Industrialised people have searched in vain for someone else to blame for our predicament. And it has shocked us to the core. Many are now desperately clinging to certainties like hastily built conceptual life rafts. The far right. The polarising culture wars. The archaic religions from far away. Anything, anything will do.
But it won’t do.
The chaos that is coming will be a chaos of uncertainty. It has to be. For it is our certainties that have led us here. Like the pupating body of the larvae, they must melt down to be reborn a butterfly.
In the meantime, people like us remaining positive unavoidably numbs any call to action. It’s too easy to be seduced by the notion that everything will probably be alright. If you are rich, like me, then things remain pretty alright, which adds to the illusion.
Appropriate action is difficult. So people like us, with no immediate need to change, avoid it like handsy family members. We do the peripheral stuff. We order those organic spinach muffins.
But despair too can be a luxury item. I realised this while indulging my taste for survival shows and combat footage. Despair there, and you’re dead. If we despair now, we’re dead. We must continue to make choices, even and especially uncertain ones. That’s been all too easy for me to forget. I am writing this in a warm house with a belly full and no imminent danger.
So yes, hope can be counterproductive. But despair is definitely counterproductive. At least, in times when action is needed. Even if the right action is unclear. Take a little time out to despair while you safely can. But don’t get carried away with it. Like feet first carried away…
We must cultivate a tough, realistic positivity. A radical acceptance of uncertainty.
The remnants of our humanity will soon form the trash fires we will huddle round.
The best we can hope for is what is already happening. We’re being put back into our place just firmly enough to keep us there long enough for the planet to recover.
It will not be a smooth transition as this system collapses. We don't yet have another one to take its place. The dominant system has not allowed another to grow viable within it. It will try to smother and absorb its babies until it is too weak to do so.
In the interim, prepare for a lot of shit to happen that we don’t agree with or even understand. There’ll also be freedom to try a lot of things that our current society has written off, suppressed or ignored. In that could be our salvation.
The nature of chaos is that everything is up for grabs. Hold on to your hats and heads, it’s going to get wild until new equilibriums are formed.
And isn’t this what we all wanted, the wild? Many won’t survive of course. If you do, your life is very unlikely to look like anything you might have been planning, wanting or expecting.
Whatever we do now will be within that process. It has far too much momentum to stop.
We must remove the impossible notion of “changing the entire course of world history” from our to do lists. It is getting in the way of much more urgent tasks.
I had focused my measure of success down to being “probably useful”. I can focus further.
My new definition of success in life is that at least some of my descendants have one.
That’s kind of it. This is not to say that I think my lineage, bloodline or DNA is in any way special or precious to anyone else. It is only to acknowledge a biological, animal fact. I have an inculcated interest in those that come after me. I have a sense of responsibility instilled in me from those that came before. I couldn’t shake that off even if I wanted to.
I can’t bear the thought of my children enduring terrible suffering, either directly or through the suffering of their children. Life expands from there.
We must work with what we have to be responsible ancestors.
We could go with hedonism into the mayhem. Relish the adventure. We could stay drunk ‘til the Apocalypse. It’s certainly tempting, especially on Fridays.
But we can choose to protect somebody or something through the chaos. We can strive so that some of this survives to the other side. I fear it will probably take a religious level of fervour. You will need a community you can rely on. It will take extreme discipline and sacrifice.
Which is why that beer is calling.
Splendid stuff. Having just returned from a few weeks in the UK I can report that all hands are to the pumps of distaction in the neoliberal world. I'm sure the same is happening here, I just don't see it as clearly. The religeous component of how societies navigate the civilizational change really fascinates me. I've started to wonder where exactly the line is between holding strong opinions on the intrinsic value of nature and those opinions becoming a matter of collective faith. Is it just that we need to start sharing basic rituals? Will individualism delay or even prevent a logical and largely facts-based religeon (now there's a novel idea)? Do we need to start promoting woshipful practices for the ecologically woke? Scariest of all for me, is that despite my own strong sense of individualism and dislike for organised religeon, I'm pretty sure I'm ready to overlook various short-commings to follow a charismatic leader in this direction were one to rise up. I'm hoping that it's just a sign that my subconcious acknowledges that the only productive way forward is via the route of solidarity behind a singluar philosophy. If you've ever had any cultish inclinations now might be your time to rise up Andy.
If I were into religion this would be my church: https://www.biocentrism.org/