I’m very very aware and have been for the better part of the last decade and you are absolutely correct in saying the collapse has already started even though I’m not directly affected yet I live and breathe that every day It’s An undercurrent you can’t see or hear But I can feel it deep in my bones
Hence the existential dread hanging over us - the not-quite-tangible pall that sucks the color out of my days. I have had to search for and record daily the snippets of joy and peace that remain. Keith, you have helped me identify this as a phenomenon that isn’t happening to only me.
Thanks for this Keith. I have known for over 30 years since reading "Its a Matter of Survival" by David Suzuki in 1990 when my kids were babies - bought a property in 2006 and planted hundreds of fruit and nut trees, then sold it and bought another high up a mountain, high rainfall, good soils. At age 73, now planting nut, oak, macadamia and chestnut trees for the kids, grand kids, and tiny, remote township - with probably a 1% chance that it will succor any of them.....
Although like you, I'm aware of it in my bones every hour of every day and it underleis, unspoken, all my relationships, (so I am tending to become quite hermit-like), the work keeps me going and focused - and it is very beautiful up here that I feel a part of the natural world - for as long as it lasts.
Copernican, it is you who seems full of hate and anger. Collapse is already well underway, which if you looked closely at your anger and where it comes from - fear - reveals that deep down you do actually understand.
We've trashed and disrespected our one big beautiful planet and there can be no return to the wealth, comfort, good wages, and wife at home of the 60s & 70s. But like it or not, we're ultimately all in this together - even ultimately the tech bros and oligarchs.
In your heart you know that life has already become harder and harder for many millions for the last few decades, and just will keep on getting harder and harder... and harder.......that is collapse (unless there is a nuclear war or runaway heating).
The planet may recover in maybe a few thousand years but civilization, tens of thousands of other species, and possibly even humans, will not.
Wow. You are a dangerously hate filled individual. Projection says you are confessing your own inner longings and beliefs, as you cannot know anything but what is in your own heart. Dangerous.
Great piece. Reminds of Gil Scott-Heron’s “the revolution will not be televised.” Even after hearing it for decades, only eventually did I take it to mean that the revolution takes place in the mind before one will see it reflected in the world around them. IMO collapse hinges on a similar admission, with the same vulnerability of surrender. Given its gradual pace, despite isolated moments of grandeur, it’s only after we admit to ourselves that it’s happening that we begin to notice the macro trend.
There's another great GSH tune titled "Whitey on the Moon," about the most privileged leaving the rest behind. Rings true today with the billionaires making their oligarchy, and Musk and Bevos being the new space cowboys.
The collapse is underway at breakneck speed. There is no longer time to be in denial. I'll say it in plain English. This insane motherfucker needs to be stopped at all costs. America is almost out of time. Stop fucking around. Get organized and shut the damn country down in protest. Help your communities manage the tough times ahead. Shut down the money flow to those that consider you disposable. I'm a pacifist at heart, but Trump is on a power trip to destroy America. He has aligned himself with Russia. He is a traitor. Period.
If I recall correctly, the wall went up in 1961 and fell in 1991. Thirty years is a long time to wait for an oppressive system to implode. Perhaps I ought to have added “in a reasonable timeframe” to my comment?
You are a liar. You are ignorant and know not of what you speak. You'd be better off being silent for the ignorant hate in your heart should just stay in there so the only damage it does is to you.
I‘ve always liked this definition of collapse: “a long economic malaise punctuated by a set of destabilizing conflicts . . . with economic upheaval mixing into warfare.” The destabilizing conflicts which are obviously here so far have come primarily from the interconnected realities of economic hardship and cultural and political alienation. The environmental collapse has been around as long but its effects have been harder to perceive, at least in the “developed” world.
To your point, this state of society has been around for a while even if it was not generally noticed or explicitly comprehended. The mass shootings of our era go back to 1999. The earlier of the two most recent cataclysmic financial breakdowns occurred in 2008. Donald Trump’s first election, after the rearguard Bernie Sanders campaign, was another watershed of social degeneration, in 2016.
I’ve believed since at least 2000 that people who issued rhetorical scare warnings about totalitarianism, a precursor to and an embodiment of collapse, in the U.S. had ignored the totalitarianism that had already been established, especially after 9/11, when the Constitution became the feckless husk everyone sees it is today. 9/11 itself, the first of the cataclysmic collapses on our 21st century event horizon, has never been adequately explained - another collapse, of media and democracy, along with the unrestrained continuous warfare unleashed afterwards that the world’s population has been subjected to mainly by the West since 2001.
I wrote in May 2015, because I saw and felt it then (I wasn’t alone), that any “general decency and amiability of yore has been supplanted by frothing discord, silent rage, and explosive volatility.”
In May 2018, Chris Hedges published “America: The Farewell Tour in which he “examined the social indicators of a nation in serious trouble.“ Several years later, he said, “life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. There have been over 300 mass shootings this year. Close to a million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999. There are an average of 132 suicides every day. Nearly 42 percent of the country is classified as obese, with one in 11 adults considered severely obese.
These diseases of despair are rooted in the disconnect between a society’s expectations of a better future and the reality of a system that does not provide a meaningful place for its citizens. Loss of a sustainable income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress.”
All this is to say: I agree. Evidence of collapse has been there for anyone with eyes to see, but perhaps (I don’t mean this to sound elitist) there is only a minority of Cassandras or sensitive types who have the gift first for seeing, then for facing, “unpleasant facts”, as Orwell put it, unimpeded by denial - until it is too late.
Yes to every word! And as to “the gift” you mentioned, I am really struggling as to how to live on the daily with any semblance of wellbeing given the clear sight of the disintegration of our country and the planet itself happening right before our eyes. I feel like there is some kind of sacred responsibility humans ought to have to see this and not look away. But it’s a very hard line to walk between being a witness to all this completely unnecessary devastation, knowing what is coming next and remaining balanced. In the years before the t 1 regime, I used to read Chris Hedges in small doses bc it was too overwhelmingly sad and scary. But he has turned out to be exactly right about everything, so prescient.
You have properly named 9/11 and it’s Chosen aftermath for its (obvious) importance in Our Personal Surrenders; our constitutional surrenders. Constitutional protections were surrendered for false safety (in a scenario that’s never been adequately addressed).
This perfectly sums up my increasingly impossible to ignore existential dread. We’re all frogs and the pot is thisclose to a roiling boil, but any frog that dares ask if it’s hot in here gets shouted down for being dramatic. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills all the time.
I agree 100%. I have an incredibly sensitive existential dread meter. It has been so in the red that I cannot sleep, when I do I awaken with a start and anxiety that will not dissipate despite medication and very skilled cognitive behavioral techniques. I have been sounding the alarm for quite awhile and I am consistently told by others “we have been here before. It will all work out. It always does.” Fortunately I have three friends who validate I am not crazy, that THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL. But now I have to recalibrate what my retirement is going to be like…nothing like what I worked so hard for, saved for and planned carefully for. Depending on who you think “they” are, the clown, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the nihilist tech bro’s, the billionaires, the bought politicians, they truly hate us.
My husband and I are only 5 years away from retirement. It seems everyday finds me hoping we will have money to live on after retirement. I am an Empath, and some days I have grief days knowing how people in this country are being treated. There seems to be monsters around every corner.
Look into “meditation “ yoga, chanting (check out Krishna Das) it’s a way of following you breath, by counting them or simply focusing on them in order to realize your own “mind” , how to develope “mindfulness” as a means of
I would like to leave the US. Spend my retirement in the EU. My husband is resistant because of our son, d-I-l and two granddaughters in California. If we could move to Australia or NZ he might be convinced, but that will not be an option due to restrictive laws in those two countries. So since I can’t run away, I will be marching systematically through all the medications available to treat anxiety until the clown car leave office. And I know all those medications; I am a psychiatrist.
Great piece and an important thought shift on how we talk about our mutual impending doom. Apocalypse on a gray scale didn’t come up for me in school.
In this way, the collapse feels more like somebody asking if they look fat. At some point that answer will be yes for everyone but it could gradually get worse for a long time before that point of universally accepted collapse arrives.
And that is why it is going to be almost impossible to motivate even the aware American voting public that something, like general strikes, need to occur sooner than later. Americans won’t see the fascism until they are unemployed, unhoused and uninsured. That could take quite awhile….
Collapse happened to the Native American 200 years ago. Versions are different accordingly - will earth become so inhospitable we all perish? Not sure about that... yet
I completely agree - I am always amazed that these heat dome events don't shake up more people, but my belief is that the collapse doesn't get real until it is costing folks a painful amount of money. For example, when you can no longer afford property insurance in coastal areas, the collapse gets real. When you can no longer afford medical care on your middle class salary, it gets real. When the hurricane hits and you can't afford to rebuild, even with some help from insurance, the collapse is real.
I’m very very aware and have been for the better part of the last decade and you are absolutely correct in saying the collapse has already started even though I’m not directly affected yet I live and breathe that every day It’s An undercurrent you can’t see or hear But I can feel it deep in my bones
Reminds me of the story about how to cook a frog.
I feel the exact same way—in my bones.
Hence the existential dread hanging over us - the not-quite-tangible pall that sucks the color out of my days. I have had to search for and record daily the snippets of joy and peace that remain. Keith, you have helped me identify this as a phenomenon that isn’t happening to only me.
We all have to keep each other strong and keep each other from going down an ugly rabbit hole that doesn’t have an exit
Thanks for this Keith. I have known for over 30 years since reading "Its a Matter of Survival" by David Suzuki in 1990 when my kids were babies - bought a property in 2006 and planted hundreds of fruit and nut trees, then sold it and bought another high up a mountain, high rainfall, good soils. At age 73, now planting nut, oak, macadamia and chestnut trees for the kids, grand kids, and tiny, remote township - with probably a 1% chance that it will succor any of them.....
Although like you, I'm aware of it in my bones every hour of every day and it underleis, unspoken, all my relationships, (so I am tending to become quite hermit-like), the work keeps me going and focused - and it is very beautiful up here that I feel a part of the natural world - for as long as it lasts.
Copernican, in my view your comment displays thinking that in itself is a good example of collapse happening here and now.
Copernican, it is you who seems full of hate and anger. Collapse is already well underway, which if you looked closely at your anger and where it comes from - fear - reveals that deep down you do actually understand.
We've trashed and disrespected our one big beautiful planet and there can be no return to the wealth, comfort, good wages, and wife at home of the 60s & 70s. But like it or not, we're ultimately all in this together - even ultimately the tech bros and oligarchs.
In your heart you know that life has already become harder and harder for many millions for the last few decades, and just will keep on getting harder and harder... and harder.......that is collapse (unless there is a nuclear war or runaway heating).
The planet may recover in maybe a few thousand years but civilization, tens of thousands of other species, and possibly even humans, will not.
”…destroy White Men”?
Ok, I see where you’re coming from. (Not that it wasn’t clear in your previous tirade.)
So no use in discussing with you much further, except for perhaps calling your BS out for everyone to see.
Wow. You are a dangerously hate filled individual. Projection says you are confessing your own inner longings and beliefs, as you cannot know anything but what is in your own heart. Dangerous.
Copernican - you are one disturbed individual. I hope you get the help you so dearly need. Good luck.
I think you ought to have to prove your accusations against progressives. You are a mixed up individual spewing hate. Now I ignore your bluster.
You are stating a hard truth. I see the sheep are upset with you because of that. Only serving to validate your point.
As for me and my house, we will go with God. I place ALL of my faith in God Almighty and in Our Lord Jesus Christ!
Faith alone preserves us. Blessings.
Great piece. Reminds of Gil Scott-Heron’s “the revolution will not be televised.” Even after hearing it for decades, only eventually did I take it to mean that the revolution takes place in the mind before one will see it reflected in the world around them. IMO collapse hinges on a similar admission, with the same vulnerability of surrender. Given its gradual pace, despite isolated moments of grandeur, it’s only after we admit to ourselves that it’s happening that we begin to notice the macro trend.
Well said. That Scott-Heron phrase even lit up once or twice in my head while writing it.
There's another great GSH tune titled "Whitey on the Moon," about the most privileged leaving the rest behind. Rings true today with the billionaires making their oligarchy, and Musk and Bevos being the new space cowboys.
A rat done bit my sister Nell
…and we are all living…
In a B movie
The collapse is underway at breakneck speed. There is no longer time to be in denial. I'll say it in plain English. This insane motherfucker needs to be stopped at all costs. America is almost out of time. Stop fucking around. Get organized and shut the damn country down in protest. Help your communities manage the tough times ahead. Shut down the money flow to those that consider you disposable. I'm a pacifist at heart, but Trump is on a power trip to destroy America. He has aligned himself with Russia. He is a traitor. Period.
A fascist regime can only be ended by overwhelming violence, sorry to say.
Maybe not - try twlling that to the East German punks who ultimately brought the wall down.
If I recall correctly, the wall went up in 1961 and fell in 1991. Thirty years is a long time to wait for an oppressive system to implode. Perhaps I ought to have added “in a reasonable timeframe” to my comment?
Sure, why not? The point is, youth culture had a lot to do with it. So what are the American youth up to these days?
“Digital masturbation” (aka, video gaming) in many cases.
East Germany was a dictatorship, but not a fascist one. It was also a much (much) less violent society than the US.
Amen.
You are a liar. You are ignorant and know not of what you speak. You'd be better off being silent for the ignorant hate in your heart should just stay in there so the only damage it does is to you.
Eat shit and die, fucking troll.
“Death cult” enough for ya?
All I have left to offer: Strike Strike Strike Strike
Think you struck a nerve?
Their level of ignorance is astounding. Sheep are like that.
IT IS A DEATH CULT. 100%
I‘ve always liked this definition of collapse: “a long economic malaise punctuated by a set of destabilizing conflicts . . . with economic upheaval mixing into warfare.” The destabilizing conflicts which are obviously here so far have come primarily from the interconnected realities of economic hardship and cultural and political alienation. The environmental collapse has been around as long but its effects have been harder to perceive, at least in the “developed” world.
To your point, this state of society has been around for a while even if it was not generally noticed or explicitly comprehended. The mass shootings of our era go back to 1999. The earlier of the two most recent cataclysmic financial breakdowns occurred in 2008. Donald Trump’s first election, after the rearguard Bernie Sanders campaign, was another watershed of social degeneration, in 2016.
I’ve believed since at least 2000 that people who issued rhetorical scare warnings about totalitarianism, a precursor to and an embodiment of collapse, in the U.S. had ignored the totalitarianism that had already been established, especially after 9/11, when the Constitution became the feckless husk everyone sees it is today. 9/11 itself, the first of the cataclysmic collapses on our 21st century event horizon, has never been adequately explained - another collapse, of media and democracy, along with the unrestrained continuous warfare unleashed afterwards that the world’s population has been subjected to mainly by the West since 2001.
I wrote in May 2015, because I saw and felt it then (I wasn’t alone), that any “general decency and amiability of yore has been supplanted by frothing discord, silent rage, and explosive volatility.”
In May 2018, Chris Hedges published “America: The Farewell Tour in which he “examined the social indicators of a nation in serious trouble.“ Several years later, he said, “life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. There have been over 300 mass shootings this year. Close to a million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999. There are an average of 132 suicides every day. Nearly 42 percent of the country is classified as obese, with one in 11 adults considered severely obese.
These diseases of despair are rooted in the disconnect between a society’s expectations of a better future and the reality of a system that does not provide a meaningful place for its citizens. Loss of a sustainable income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress.”
All this is to say: I agree. Evidence of collapse has been there for anyone with eyes to see, but perhaps (I don’t mean this to sound elitist) there is only a minority of Cassandras or sensitive types who have the gift first for seeing, then for facing, “unpleasant facts”, as Orwell put it, unimpeded by denial - until it is too late.
Yes to every word! And as to “the gift” you mentioned, I am really struggling as to how to live on the daily with any semblance of wellbeing given the clear sight of the disintegration of our country and the planet itself happening right before our eyes. I feel like there is some kind of sacred responsibility humans ought to have to see this and not look away. But it’s a very hard line to walk between being a witness to all this completely unnecessary devastation, knowing what is coming next and remaining balanced. In the years before the t 1 regime, I used to read Chris Hedges in small doses bc it was too overwhelmingly sad and scary. But he has turned out to be exactly right about everything, so prescient.
You have properly named 9/11 and it’s Chosen aftermath for its (obvious) importance in Our Personal Surrenders; our constitutional surrenders. Constitutional protections were surrendered for false safety (in a scenario that’s never been adequately addressed).
Because something was done to the US what the US had been doing to others all along. How rich.
This perfectly sums up my increasingly impossible to ignore existential dread. We’re all frogs and the pot is thisclose to a roiling boil, but any frog that dares ask if it’s hot in here gets shouted down for being dramatic. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills all the time.
I agree 100%. I have an incredibly sensitive existential dread meter. It has been so in the red that I cannot sleep, when I do I awaken with a start and anxiety that will not dissipate despite medication and very skilled cognitive behavioral techniques. I have been sounding the alarm for quite awhile and I am consistently told by others “we have been here before. It will all work out. It always does.” Fortunately I have three friends who validate I am not crazy, that THIS. IS. NOT. NORMAL. But now I have to recalibrate what my retirement is going to be like…nothing like what I worked so hard for, saved for and planned carefully for. Depending on who you think “they” are, the clown, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the nihilist tech bro’s, the billionaires, the bought politicians, they truly hate us.
My husband and I are only 5 years away from retirement. It seems everyday finds me hoping we will have money to live on after retirement. I am an Empath, and some days I have grief days knowing how people in this country are being treated. There seems to be monsters around every corner.
Move north! Move to a rural area where there is fresh water. My best advice.
Look into “meditation “ yoga, chanting (check out Krishna Das) it’s a way of following you breath, by counting them or simply focusing on them in order to realize your own “mind” , how to develope “mindfulness” as a means of
Same with the waking with existential anxiety that persists despite meds.
I would like to leave the US. Spend my retirement in the EU. My husband is resistant because of our son, d-I-l and two granddaughters in California. If we could move to Australia or NZ he might be convinced, but that will not be an option due to restrictive laws in those two countries. So since I can’t run away, I will be marching systematically through all the medications available to treat anxiety until the clown car leave office. And I know all those medications; I am a psychiatrist.
The collapse is well under way but people are too ignorant to see it.
Easy. When the grid goes down nationwide and takes cell service and internet with it, and can’t be brought back up. People will notice that.
If it goes down for two weeks it's forever. There will probably be some more partials to teach us to ignore them.
No electricity=no gasoline or diesel.
We're the frog in a gradually heating pan.
This is a well-written piece and a great reminder that disaster doesn't always look like the movies
I think that it started today, with the passage of that bill.
Great piece and an important thought shift on how we talk about our mutual impending doom. Apocalypse on a gray scale didn’t come up for me in school.
In this way, the collapse feels more like somebody asking if they look fat. At some point that answer will be yes for everyone but it could gradually get worse for a long time before that point of universally accepted collapse arrives.
And that is why it is going to be almost impossible to motivate even the aware American voting public that something, like general strikes, need to occur sooner than later. Americans won’t see the fascism until they are unemployed, unhoused and uninsured. That could take quite awhile….
Longer than the 3.5 years of this admin. Let's get out the vote for FREEDOM and LIBERTY, starting with each election from here on.
I feel like crying after reading this. Nice essay. Sad but true.
I cry more days than not.
Collapse happened to the Native American 200 years ago. Versions are different accordingly - will earth become so inhospitable we all perish? Not sure about that... yet
I agree
I have beensaying for several years now that we have likely crossed the tipping point in climate change and I get laughed at every time!
“If you think life just feels different, if you’re just not looking forward to the future like you were, that’s collapse.” THIS
I completely agree - I am always amazed that these heat dome events don't shake up more people, but my belief is that the collapse doesn't get real until it is costing folks a painful amount of money. For example, when you can no longer afford property insurance in coastal areas, the collapse gets real. When you can no longer afford medical care on your middle class salary, it gets real. When the hurricane hits and you can't afford to rebuild, even with some help from insurance, the collapse is real.