Future Serious Resources for July 6, 02025
"It's Too Late" ⊗ 12-Steps ⊗ r/collapse
Hey,
Hell of a week, huh? If this week didn’t get you thinking about chaos, complexity, and collapse, well…
I’ll be honest; I couldn’t “do” July 4th this year. Not that it’s ever been a biggie for me (though it was for my dad, who in his eighties used to festoon himself in red, white, and blue outfits and drive his electric scooter down the main street of his little town each year.) Until we get “independence” from sheer brutality and hatred that’s our calling card these days…I’m passing.
Anyway, some heady links this week. It’s becoming clearer to me that our efforts are likely best focused on adaption rather than fixing. Lots about that below.
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. (Thanks so much to JB for their support this week!) Remember: I’m donating all proceeds from paid subscriptions to my local food pantry at the end of the year (now at $1,108.50!)
See you Wednesday with Provocation #24.
With gratitude,
~Will
“It’s Too Late”
When I saw this headline quoting the amazing environmentalist David Suzuki, I almost didn’t want to read it. But I’m very glad that I did. My inclination these days is to agree that it is too late to save ourselves from some really tough decades ahead, that the challenges are existential, and that humans collectively are just not going to be able to meet the moment. We’re too separate. We’re too numb. We’re too incapable of letting go of a “success” narrative that is ironically pushing us to the brink.
But in this no-holds-barred interview, I think Suzuki frames what the response needs to be right now:
I’m not giving up on the immediate years, but the focus on politics, economics, and law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. They’re designed to guide humans, but we’ve left out the foundation of our existence, which is nature, clean air, pure water, rich soil, food, and sunlight. That’s the foundation of the way we live and, when we construct legal, economic and political systems, they have to be built around protecting those very things, but they’re not…
We had previously said that the choice with climate change was mitigation and adaptation, and people began saying 20 years ago that we had to talk about adaptation. Other people said we can’t talk about adaptation because that acknowledges that climate change is real and impacting people. Well, we’re way past the time when we should have been thinking about adaptation.
Look, I’m not giving up in the sense of not doing anything, but Trump’s election was the dagger in my heart. Trump’s win was the triumph of capitalism and neoliberalism, and he’s going to wreak havoc. There’s nothing we can do about that, except maybe incremental changes. That’s not what we need. We need revolution. Can you have a peaceful revolution? I don’t know.
But I’m saying, as an environmentalist, we have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems.
“We have failed to shift the narrative.” And, I’m sorry, but the narrative will likely not be shifted until the whole thing falls apart.
So yes…the work now is adaption. It’s preparing ourselves and our kids for increasing chaos, complexity, and collapse. I’ll be writing more and more about this in the coming weeks.
A “12-Step Program” for Dealing With Collapse
So, building on the first link, if it is “too late,” then I think that does flow pretty easily into the idea that we’re going to need some ways to find “acceptance” and get focused on our physical, mental, and spiritual health, both individually and collectively. I’m not saying this is a perfect framing to do that, but I do appreciate Justin McAfee’s attempt at connecting our addiction to a way of life on the planet that is killing us to the ways that many have attempted to cope with addiction in their own lives:
Addiction means compulsion in the face of harm. It is the pattern of knowing something is destroying you and continuing anyway. It thrives on escape, denial, and dependency. Measured this way, industrial civilization is addicted, both structurally and psychologically.
We tear down forests to make packaging we throw away. We drain aquifers to grow almonds for distant markets. We burn oil to ship plastic toys across oceans. Each hit gives us a short-term high. We call this comfort, convenience, and control… but the long-term damage is undeniable. Still, we cannot stop. Like any addict, we find reasons to keep going. We tell ourselves stories about innovation, progress, and economic growth, just as an alcoholic swears they'll quit tomorrow.
This is not a matter of personal failing. Civilization itself is built on extraction. Its foundation is the permanent conversion of land, water, and life into commodities. The system simply could not function without destruction. That is the cycle of addiction.
McAfee offers a great revision of the 12 Steps that AA has made famous. I’ve actually been using them as a daily meditation, trying to focus on a different one each day. I’m still addicted to the narrative, but it’s helping me understand my addiction more clearly, which is half the battle.
Wondering…do you sense your own addiction in these ways?
r/collapse: “It’s Not For Everyone.”
Increasingly, I’m finding Reddit to be an interesting source for news of all sorts, fully aware that many of the channels are echo chambers filled with misinformation and intended to create even more separation in our lives. That said, the key to Reddit is the moderators who watch over each channel. And as a frequent reader of the r/collapse channel, which curates news and research about, um, collapse, I found The Guardian’s deep dive into its inner workings both fascinating and kinda inspiring.
There are lots of places on the internet, and especially on Reddit, that collate news stories around a theme: r/UpliftingNews, r/LateStageCapitalism and r/nottheonion (which posts news so ridiculous it seems like satire) to name a few. But r/collapse is much more than a collation of links for people to feel outraged and nihilistic or warm and fuzzy about. What’s striking is the clear-eyed, unemotional tone in which posts are written: neither pessimistic nor hopeful, just peering through the window at a relentless decline.
“We are not an activist subreddit,” one moderator, a retired history teacher, told me. “We filter out people who want to organize and protest. We are also not inclined towards accelerationism, we’re not seeking doom. We accept that perhaps it’s going to happen, but it’s not a conspiratorial subreddit. It’s basically logic, rational and scientific.”
The moderators also say that people who are concerned about societal collapse tend to think it’ll come suddenly with a nuclear bomb or terrible pandemic. The subreddit is of a different mind. One moderator, an engineer who preferred to remain anonymous, explained the tenets of r/collapse like this: “In the long term, it’s going to be very difficult for us to maintain this very complex industrial society. We’re looking at a type of simplification of industrial civilization. I think most of our members think this is what collapse is, which is why almost half of the members, when asked when they think collapse is going to happen, said that it’s already happening.
I’ll cop to the practice of checking r/collapse a few times a week when my strength is up, lol. I’ve even contributed a few times. It’s a real community of folks who are supporting one another in meaningful ways. You might check it out.
Quoteables
“Not only is (the Western model of education) irrelevant, it is also actually creating and reproducing the same sicknesses which are killing the planet.” ~Manish Jain
“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” ~Albert Einstein
“If you wanted to design learning environment that was directly opposed to what the brain is naturally good at doing, you’d design a frickin’ classroom.” ~John Medina
Thoughts / Reflections / Questions / Shorts
To Save Nature, Make It Sacred Interesting read.
Wondering: What would an education for “minimalism” look like?
Some fascinating research on why people aren’t having as many babies.
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