Future Serious Resources for December 7, 02025
Unwell Children ⊗ Collapse ⊗ Moving Forward Together
Hey,
This week, we’re heading to Spain for a month, where our son plays professional basketball for Lucentum Alicante. I am so looking forward to getting out of the U.S. and tuning out the noise, almost as much as being together for the holiday. (My daughter is coming, too.) So, not sure what the publication schedule will look like…
NEWS: Registration is now open for Cohort #4 of my Confronting Education Workshop, which starts in February. Tiered pricing for every budget! Early Bird discounts! Amazing community learning! Get all the deets by visiting the workshop info page.
FINALLY: As always, thanks for reading. As a reminder, all posts here are free, but if you want to show your support for my work in general, a paid subscription is always an option. Remember: I’m donating all proceeds from paid subscriptions to my local food pantry at the end of the year (now at $1,740.50!)
With gratitude,
~Will
“America’s Children are Unwell”
Apologies for the U.S.-centric share here, but I think the findings in this article resonate around the developed world.
The kids are not ok. And the question is, as the article suggests, “Are schools to blame?”
If we’re honest with ourselves, we know the answer: We choose school health over student health every time. (Read that again.) God forbid our test scores go down, or elite universities don’t accept our kids, or we let kids run around outside for an hour every day instead of keeping them hunkered down in sterile, concrete classrooms. I could go on.
As this snip suggests, we are in denial when it comes to the rising mental health issues our kids are experiencing.
The experience of school has changed rapidly in recent generations. Starting in the 1980s, a metrics-obsessed regime took over American education and profoundly altered the expectations placed on children, up and down the class ladder. In fact, it has altered the experience of childhood itself.
This era of policymaking has largely ebbed, with disappointing results. Math and reading levels are at their lowest in decades. The rules put in place by both political parties were well-meaning, but in trying to make more children successful, they also circumscribed more tightly who could be served by school at all.
“What’s happening is, instead of saying, ‘We need to fix the schools,’ the message is, ‘We need to fix the kids,’” said Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College and the author of “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life.”
“The track has become narrower and narrower, so a greater range of people don’t fit that track anymore,” he said. “And the result is, we want to call it a disorder.”
This is a choice. And it’s a choice that isn’t especially difficult to map to the larger challenges we’re facing in the world right now. Once again, it’s about separating kids from one another, from nature, from passion, from meaning. This has got to stop.
Sadly, it won’t.
Why Collapse is Inevitable
I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news that I’m coming across more and more of these types of posts. Good as in more people are waking up. Bad as in we’re kinda screwed.
This particular post by Ernesto Van Peborgh is the second in a series of three (for now), which are all worth the read. I chose it because I think it makes a clear and compelling case that, yes, we’re kinda screwed. And, because it cites the Three Horizons model for thinking about our current predicament and how we might get out of it. (A model we discuss in my workshop, btw.)
His bit on consumption is especially eye-opening:
We often believe consumerism is driven by greed, convenience, or habit.
But modern psychology suggests something more unsettling:Consumption regulates existential fear.
Growth gives us an illusion of continuity.
Shopping eases the anxiety of mortality.
Economic expansion displaces the terror of impermanence.In other words:
We consume because we are existentially unanchored.
This means the extractive economy is not merely a material problem —
it is an emotional one.
A cosmological one.You cannot solve overshoot by telling people to consume less.
That is asking them to relinquish their primary mechanism for buffering existential fear.Collapse is not technical.
It is psychological.
I find that an especially compelling lens at this time of year. And maybe I should stop telling people to “Buy. Nothing. You. Don’t. Need.” because the buying is the need itself.
So, what do I tell them now? How do we become more “existentially anchored” without continuing to amplify the existential threat of consumption?
(BONUS LINK: If you want to dive into the “whys” of collapse even more deeply, here you go: “How Everything Collapsed at Once.”)
(EXTRA BONUS LINK: I mean, why not just pile ‘em all up at once? “The Truth About Collapse Acceptance.” )
“Navigating Collapse Together”
So, in the midst of all these collapse links, how about one that suggests a way to move forward anyway? (We need a little bit of light here, don’t we?)
This is a lengthy essay from Nicole Negowetti, the author of the book “Feeding the Future,” due out next year from Georgetown Press. It’s the third part of a series that she has been writing to tease out the question “What becomes possible when we understand collapse not only as crisis, but as a collective passage?”
That’s a question for our times, no?
Anyway, this may have been my favorite read this week. It brings together so many of the relevant themes and framings that we need to be diving into right now. Here’s the conclusion:
We are living through a passage in which old systems are unraveling and new patterns are taking shape. No single strategy, movement, or generation can navigate this alone. We cannot predict the future, but we can influence how we participate in its formation. The ways we relate to one another, listen, share food, care for soil and water, and make meaning are not preparations for some future transformation. They are the transformation, unfolding through practice.
Collapse is already here in many forms, and so is the possibility for regeneration. Whether we meet this moment in isolation or relationship, fear or curiosity, domination or kinship, these choices shape the conditions future generations will inherit. The world is shifting in ways none of us can fully map, yet we are not without agency. Every act of care, every restored relationship, and every small step toward shared responsibility contributes to the future that is already taking shape. This is work we can keep doing, steadily and together.
“We are not without agency.” I’ll admit that I struggle with that idea all the time, especially here in the States, where it just seems like our leaders are trying to be as destructive and stupid as they can be. Many days, I feel this upwelling of anger and powerlessness. And yet…I have choices to make every day that matter.
We all do.
Thoughts / Reflections / Questions / Shorts
A compostable replacement for plastic? May it be so.
Thinking: We are an immature species…ego-driven, competitive, only concerned with now. Can we grow up? Fast?
Metabolizing Life - An interesting 17-minute video of Douglas Rushkoff talking about our current situation.
Are we on the path to extinction because we’re too polite? - Valid question.
Sign of the times…ugh. “Violent conflict over water hit a record last year.” Of course, we’re not teaching this…are we?
As always, let me know what you’d like to see more (or less) of in these newsletters. I’m always open to learning and evolving in ways that help you make better sense of this interesting moment.
With gratitude,
~Will
Wow - this landed: We choose school health, over student health.
I’ll be asking this question…forever. Thank you!
~Zoë