From Collapse Awareness to Collapse Acceptance
How some of us are getting there.
A while ago, a media company approached me about doing some writing and research for a show about prepping for the collapse of civilization. It didn’t work out, but the idea motivated me to dig deep into the premise. Until recently, I didn’t understand that I wasn’t just learning about survival.
I was going through the stages of grief.
As you might already know, the stages of grief first emerged in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s 1969 book, On Death and Dying. Psychologists have expanded her original stages, ultimately giving us seven.
They fit like a coffin.
Most of the world still lives in the first two stages, somewhere between disbelief and denial about the impending collapse of civilization. They reject the science on carbon emissions, overshoot, overpopulation, overconsumption, overreliance on fossil fuels, and just about everything else. When you talk about megafires, superstorms, atmospheric rivers, and famines, a wild silence blooms. Some of them would rather believe in weather m…