Murphy: Here We Are

Here We Are. Tom Murphy, Do the Math. Jun 22, 2023.


I was asked some months ago by the Australian Foodweb Education organization to participate in their Here We Are project. The idea is to reflect on the statement: “Here we are, alive, at this moment, in this place, together.”

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Hi, I’m Tom Murphy, and I’m going to be responding to a prompt that goes:

Here we are, alive, at this moment, in this place, together.

And I think it’s a nice way to frame the kinds of things I want to say.

But first, I’ll introduce myself as…lately I’ve been saying I’m a recovering astrophysicist. I’ve had a career building instrumentation for telescopes, and some space projects, and just exploring the universe and what makes it tick. It’s been challenging; it’s fun; it’s demanding, rewarding; [using] cutting edge technology. But it’s also given me a lot of perspective on large time scales, large spatial scales, and I’m less interested lately in the science of astrophysics and more in what those perspectives can lend to our understanding of our current place as humanity on this planet.

So, what I want to do is pick apart this prompt, and treat it piece by piece, and then modify it as I go, and rebuild it in a slightly different way.

So it starts: Here we are

And the first thing we have to decide is: who do we mean by “we?”

Typically, when we say “we” in this context, we’re talking about humans, and specifically members of our civilization. Less so, say, hunter-gatherers or the Kalahari bushmen; we’re not on the same train. So think of it as human civilization. And I’d like to broaden that. I think we have to broaden that definition of “we,” and recognize that we’re part of a community of life: that humans are only 3% of animals by mass, and 0.01% of all life by mass—’cause there’s a lot of stuff out there: plants and bacteria and fungi, and we’re just one of 10 million species: it’s a very diverse Earth.

So, I think “we” really should be all of us in the more-than-human world.

So, the first modification is:

Here we ALL are, alive.

So, let’s talk about alive. Are all of us alive? Are we all accounted for? And what I’m getting at here is that extinction rates are up by about 1000 times over their background rates—the baseline. And at this stage, humans and our domesticated species, our domesticated animals are 96% of all mammal mass on this planet, leaving only 4% in the form of wild mammals. Meanwhile, the mammal mass on this planet—wild mammal mass—we’ve reduced by 80%. Most of it in the last 100 years. And, that’s really not okay. That’s kind-of devastating. And I think one thing that gives me a lot of worry is: if we’ve done 80% in such a short amount of time—knocked down 80% of mammals—the last 20% is going to be a snap. We’ve got this. We’re really good at this. We’re even better than before. So, that’s very disturbing and worrisome.

Our critters are gasping for breath. If they could talk they would be saying “I can’t breathe.” Our knee is on their throat. And one thing I’d like to point out is that: we can’t just dismiss this as “Oh, okay because humans are fine.” Because we’re not fine if the ecosystem’s not fine. Think of the ecosystem as something like our body. It’s got a lot of organs that do different things—different species play different roles in this ecosystem that’s been co-evolved to work together as a system. And, so organ failure can be bad for us. And so, if elements of our ecosystem—especially wide swaths of our ecosystem—are having trouble, then that’s bad for our health as well. And you know the saying: If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything. So if we haven’t got ecosystem health we really don’t have anything. Because it’s all founded—it’s all based on an ecosystem. We don’t exist separate from that. So it’s very important that we pay attention to this.

So are we alive? Yes, we’re alive, but we’re desperately ill at the moment.

We tend to focus on symptoms, and treat them as separate things. Climate change is one of those symptoms, and it’s one that we’ve started to pay a lot of attention to—because, finally, here’s one that we see that can directly affect us, and our organ is having trouble with this particular symptom. There are a lot of symptoms: deforestation, habitat loss, fisheries decline, pollution, agricultural runoff and dead zones. And the list is just enormous of symptoms that tell us that we’ve got trouble. And it’s all really from the same root cause. So, we’d like to understand the fundamental disease and not just treat symptoms. Because if somebody has a fever, you don’t just give them cold water—put them in an ice bath—to chill the fever. That’s not going to treat the actual underlying disease. And so we need to watch out because we are ill as an entire system.

So, Here we all are, BARELY alive, at this moment.

Let’s talk about this moment. I think a lot of us perceive ourselves as at the apex of civilization. But it’s a very unusual moment. I think of it kind-of like the crescendo of a glorious fireworks show. It’s dazzling. It’s impressive. It’s kind-of fun to watch. But it’s temporary. And so to get at that kind of timescale and what this moment means:

The universe is 13.8 billion years old. Humans have been around on this planet in some form for 2.5 to 3 million years. That’s 1/5000 the age of the universe. So we’re newcomers—we’re the new kids on the block. It’s hard to comprehend 2.5 to 3 million years, so I’m going to compare that to a timescale that we do have intuition for and direct experience with: that’s a 75 year human lifetime. So on that timescale, all of our history: agriculture, civilization doesn’t go back longer than 10,000 years. That’s just 15 weeks out of the 75 year lifetime. So it’s like a recent hobby: it’s something we just picked up. We’re not even very good at it yet. We don’t know what we’re doing. Meanwhile, science has only been around for the last 4 days of this life: that’s 400 years to us. And in the last day, we’ve ramped up our energy and resource usage by leaps and bounds, and in the last 12 hours alone of this 75 year life we’ve done the majority of our fossil fuel burning and ecosystem damage.

So I hope you realize that this can’t continue. This thing that were doing: it might be exciting, and you might thing we’re at the apex. But it’s faltering and wavering right now. We’re starting to see the cracks becoming visible. So a lot of people I think sense this, and are concerned. And that makes sense. I’ve been very concerned about this.

Okay, so, here we all are, barely alive, at this MOST PECULIAR moment, in this place.

So let’s talk about this place. And by this place, we mean Earth. It’s always been Earth. That’s our context. We were evolved on this planet as a part of an ecosystem. And I want to give you some perspective on just how special this place is, especially in the context of space.

So, if we were to shrink the sun to a grain of sand: 1 mm across—something that we can visualize—the solar system is about the size of a bedroom. And the sun has 99.85% of the mass in this bedroom-sized solar system all in this one sand grain. Jupiter claims almost all the rest of that, and is about the diameter of a human hair: barely visible. Earth is like a bacterium. We can’t even see it. So, this dusty […] bedroom-sized solar system—has less dust in it—fewer planets in it—less dust than your laptop screen does even after you’ve wiped it clean. It’s really empty. It’s really sparse. Meanwhile we’ve only traveled 1/3 of a millimeter from our little bacterium Earth, and that’s to the moon and that was 50 years ago. Since then, we’ve just been really on the skin, barely skimming the surface of this bacterium-sized Earth. The next star is another sand grain 30 km away, and this unimaginable emptiness describes one of the denser regions of the universe: a swarm of billions of stars called a galaxy!

And meanwhile this environment is very hostile to life. There’s no air. There’s no water. No food. So I hope you’re not hungry. And besides lacking those basic requirements of life—which are by the way on Earth—it’s a radiation hazard. Once you get outside of the protective magnetosphere of Earth, the radiation is up by about 100 times larger. Which means that if you’re going to go to the Moon or Mars, sign yourself up for cancer. ‘Cause you’re going to get it in short order—in a matter of a year or a few. So in order to be protected you’d have to live in caves. And think about how disappointing that would be to be sitting there wearing your space suit but you’re basically a caveman. Where did I go wrong? This is not what I imagined.

One way to drive home the difficulty of resources in space is the International Space Station—which is one of these things that just basically skims across the earth’s surface—has to import its oxygen by rocket launch at a cost of about $100M per rocket launch. It’s that hard to take care of the most basic need of human life, which is air: you can’t live without it for over a minute or two. We’re really tied to the earth and the earth’s resources: very strongly tied.

Because Earth is our haven, and it’s our heaven. It’s our blue heaven.

So here we all are, barely alive, at this most peculiar moment, in this SPECTACULAR LIFE-GIVING place, together.

But I’d say we’re not really together. We’ve isolated ourselves as humans from the rest of the community of life. We’ve declared ourselves above everyone else: the pinnacle of evolution. The master species. We think Earth was made for us and we’re made to rule the earth: that it’s our destiny somehow to have this glorious dominant presence on the planet. And it’s kind-of immature. We’re like adolescents who think they’re invincible and are oblivious to the harm that they might cause to themselves and to others in their environment.

The problem with this is that by not paying attention to the rest of the system, the organs… we could die of organ failure. And if we remain in this isolated mode where we think were somehow separate and we don’t play by the same rules—we’re not part of the system—and we let the system down and deprive it of the resources it needs, it’s not going to go well for us.

So, Here we all are, barely alive, at this most peculiar moment, in this spectacular life-giving place, NO LONGER together.

So as members of the “cult of human supremacy,” which is another name for modern civilization… and that might seem extreme but think about it. How do the people you know think of humans and think of ourselves? Is it as superior species—as the pinnacle? If so, that brings problems. There are consequences to that kind of attitude—to the point where… having that attitude, we can’t really be trusted with almost anything.

So imagine that we pursue human equity and we see some people down below others and we want to raise the standards for those people who are below. That means that we’re going to claim more for us; more resources for humans; less for life. It’s as if we deserve this, you don’t. And that approach just won’t work. I mean it’s not working well even in this lopsided arrangement, let alone trying to ramp up how much we give to the human population.

Also, let’s say that we could implement perfect democracy: textbook democracy, perfect information flow, perfect representation & participation, no corruption. If the votes come from human supremacists—these cult members of our civilization—it’s going to be for the short-term benefit of humans to the exclusion of the rest of the ecosystem, which is really just bad for all of us. It promotes this organ failure.

How about renewable energy? So, if we were to be successful at replacing our fossil fuel habit with solar, wind—and there are real technical hurdles to this by the way; it’s not a guarantee—I mean there are things that fossil fuels do that we just can’t get out of the renewables. But let’s just say that—sweep those under the rug for a second—what if we could? My question is: what splendid things are we going to do with all that energy?

And one way to answer that is to look at what splendid things have we done with the energy that we have had that we’re using today? Well, we’re expanding the human enterprise, knocking down forests, we’re depleting the oceans, we’re ruining habitat, we’re eliminating species, we’re losing biodiversity, we’re losing soils, we’re losing life, we’re losing the vitality of the world. And so by prioritizing a transition on the energy front to renewable energy, we’re basically saying: the most important thing is that we keep civilization fully powered so we can go full speed ahead. Whatever the consequences.

So I think intent matters. What do we intend to do? Why should we be trusted with this great energy surplus? What are we going to do with it that’s so great. And I’m not—you know—color me skeptical that we’re going to do good things with it: restore ecosystems and prioritize the non-human world. So as long as all of these things are in the hands of human supremacists I’m afraid that I’m not going to like the decisions that are made and the consequences.

So, if we don’t learn to exercise restraint and sit on our hands: refrain from doing things just ’cause we can: that spells failure. We have to adopt a stance of humility and in my mind the choice is humility or failure.

So I think we should abandon our fantasies for some glorious destiny that we imagine for ourselves. That’s a mythology that’s not working; it can’t work; it never could have worked. It was always misguided. And if that’s the dream: if that’s the human dream, it’s not an appropriate dream. We need a new dream. That one’s just kind of a little bit rotten, in the end.

So the only destiny we have is: civilization is destined to fail. It’s not built on a foundation of biophysical ecological sustainability. It doesn’t even consider those things. It’s built on hubris, not on humility.

So the good news in all this… A lot of people are bummed out when I say civilization is going to fail. It’s depressing. They don’t want to hear it. And I get it. I mean, I was there too. I spent decades kind-of in that mode.

But the reason it’s not as bad as you think: it’s actually kind-of simple. That we are not civilization. Humans are not civilization. Civilization is just our recent hobby. It’s still new. We haven’t done it forever. It’s not part of who we are. It’s not baked in. It’s not our DNA. Civilization is not humanity. We don’t need civilization to have meaningful and fulfilling lives. [The reader may substitute “modernity” for “civilization” if desired.]

So, where do we go from here? I don’t have answers there; I don’t really know. But I sense that it starts with a new appreciation. I think we need to break the spell. We need to dissolve our love affair with civilization because it turns out it’s kind-of an abusive relationship and that civilization is a jerk. So we’re better off without it. We should recognize that the system we’re in already robs lives of meaning and has been [doing so] for ages. It robs Earth of species. It robs Earth of lives. It’s kind-of a marauding menace. And it’s never really been any other way. It just took a long time for it to get to this scale where it’s global and it’s apparent that it doesn’t work.

Meanwhile we’ve forgotten a lot of old [e.g., Indigenous] wisdoms that I think are really fascinating and time-tested. They work. They’re really worth studying. I’m interested in learning a lot more. And also, we haven’t created new wisdoms that will certainly happen. So one thing to recognize is that: just because we have lived in a hunter-gatherer mode for many many years, and it worked, and now we’re in this civilization mode and it won’t work doesn’t mean that we have to go back to hunter-gatherer. In fact, we can’t go back. We can never go back.

So, the future doesn’t have to look like the distant past—and it can’t. We get to invent new paths; new ways to live on this planet. Founded on a principle and a philosophy that respects all life. We need to accept roles as humble participants in this great dance—not some masters or overlords. So, we need to set aside our tin-pot overlord sham, and take this next great step. I’m honestly excited to see where this might go. What happens next? What is our great next adventure?

Okay, so I hope this was helpful. As a parting sentiment, I’m going to share this statement, this blessing of sorts: May we learn to live within Earth’s bounds to the enduring benefit of all life.

The Profound Loneliness of Being Collapse Aware

The Profound Loneliness of Being Collapse Aware. Alan Urban. Medium. Apr. 21, 2023.

“Is something wrong?” James asked.

I blinked at him. “What?”

“I dunno, you just seem quiet today.”

“No, I’m fine.” It’s just that we’re all going to die a miserable death in the near future, but other than that I’m fine.

Of course, I didn’t say those words out loud. What would be the point?

James and I had been friends for over a decade, but a few years back, I ended up living in a town about an hour away from him. Still, we met up once a month to eat lunch and play disc golf.

We had just reached the 18th basket. “Your turn,” he said.

“Oh, right.” I threw my disc. It was a terrible throw — straight into the bushes.

“Man, you’re having an off day.”

“More like an off year,” I said with a chuckle. It was November of 2020, and everybody was thinking about COVID-19 and wondering when things would get back to normal.

But not me. I knew things would never get back to normal, that the world I grew up in was gone, and that it was all downhill from here.

2020 was the year I became “collapse aware.”

If you’ve never heard that term, it’s when someone has learned enough about climate change, fossil fuels, pollution, biodiversity, and resource depletion to realize that modern civilization is unsustainable and will eventually collapse into chaos.

There are some collapse-aware people who think our civilization has several decades left, and there are some who think it will all coming crashing down in the next year or two. At the time, I believed we had several decades, but I was still terrified.

After searching the bushes for a few minutes, I found my disc and threw it again. We soon finished our game and headed to a Mexican restaurant where we ordered lunch.

“Have you seen how bad the wildfires in California have gotten?” I asked as we waited for our food.

“I know!” he said. “It’s crazy. This drought just keeps getting worse and worse.”

I nodded. “California grows a lot of food. What happens when there’s not enough water for the crops?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess they’ll have to grow food somewhere else.”

“Yea, but what if there is nowhere else?” I said. “There are droughts happening all over the world. What happens when we can’t grow enough food for everybody?”

“They’ll figure something out,” he said. “They could desalinate ocean water, and they could build indoor hydroponic farms. There’s always going to be demand for food, so they’ll find a way to grow it.”

I wasn’t reassured. “Yea, but those things take a lot of energy. What happens when the world starts running out of oil?”

“They’ll just build more solar panels and windmills,” he said.

“But what if I they can’t?” I asked. “We need oil to build those, but we’re already drilling for oil as fast as possible. And what if there aren’t enough rare-earth metals to build the renewables we need? How are we supposed to replace our entire energy infrastructure with renewables and grow enough food for everybody? How are we going to…”

I realized my voice had grown frantic, so I stopped talking.

James stared at me like I had just told him I was planning a trip to Mars.

Our waiter broke the awkward silence by arriving with our food. “Thanks,” I said, looking down at a plate full of beans, rice, and chimichangas. Although I had arrived there feeling ravenous, now my appetite was gone.

Once the waiter had left, James said, “You’re right, it’s bad. Really bad. But people will find a way. They always do.”

I nodded.

“Hey, did you hear what Trump said the other day?”

He obviously wanted to change the subject, so I let him. Although James was smart enough to realize our civilization was doomed, he simply couldn’t admit it to himself. He had too many plans: wife, kids, travelling…

So, I tried to forget about the end of the world and focus on enjoying our lunch. We had a nice time, but I left feeling frustrated. And alone.

I didn’t become collapse-aware all at once. It was a process that began back in 2017. Donald Trump had just become president, and he kept calling climate change a hoax. Then in the fall, Hurricane Harvey came along and dumped more rain than any storm in U.S. history.

For the next few years, I watched as climate disasters got worse and worse. Record-breaking storms, record-breaking droughts, record-breaking heatwaves… It was so obvious that climate change was here, yet the voices denying it kept getting louder.

Then in 2020, COVID-19 arrived. I remember feeling horror and grief as one country after another began to report hundreds of deaths every day. But I also felt hopeful. After years of division, perhaps our nation would be brought together against a common enemy: the pandemic.

How wrong I was. Instead of uniting us, the pandemic divided us even further. I was baffled. For over a century, wearing masks and avoiding public gatherings were standard methods for dealing with a major outbreak. But now, even these basic concepts were being called into question.

Then in the summer of 2020, something occurred to me: If we can’t even come together to fight COVID-19, how will we ever come together to fight climate change?

I had always assumed that once the climate disasters got bad enough, we would get our act together and phase out fossil fuels. But all the evidence I had seen over the previous 4 years suggested otherwise.

So, I started researching. I wanted to know how bad things were, and how long before climate change started affecting our food system and infrastructure. Soon, I came across an article by David Wallace-Wells called The Uninhabitable Earth, an incredibly well-written and well-researched article that explained exactly what we’re in for in the coming decades.

After I finished reading it, I felt like throwing up. I finally understood that if we didn’t stop climate change, it wouldn’t just be inconvenient or bad for the economy — it would completely destroy our civilization. And not in the distant future, but in my own lifetime.

For the first time, I wasn’t just worried about climate change, I was scared. For days, I walked around with this nervous feeling in my gut — kinda like butterflies, but more like hummingbirds. When people spoke, I barely heard them. Sometimes, I forgot to eat.

However, I kept telling myself that collapse wasn’t inevitable. Technically, it was still possible to phase out fossil fuels in time to avert catastrophe. And maybe scientists would make some incredible clean-energy breakthrough, like fusion power plants.

That was my way of coping, but it didn’t work for long. A few months later, I came across a lecture by Sid Smith called How to Enjoy the End of the World. It was and still is one of the most fascinating lectures I’ve ever heard.

Sid explained concepts like the cost of complexity, energy return on energy invested, and Jevons paradox. He also talked about the decline of oil reserves, the depletion of mineral and water resources, and the exponential destruction of the natural world.

Then he said something that really frightened me: “…all of which would spell the end of civilization even without climate change.” I know I said that becoming collapse-aware is a process, but if I had to point to a single moment when I finally understood that the modern world is doomed, it would be the moment I heard those words.

During his presentation, I had completely forgotten about climate change, so to add that on top of all these other existential crises made me realize a terrible truth: It’s already too late to save civilization.

That night, lying in bed, I cried. And not just for me, but for everyone I loved. Especially my children. I felt like we had all been given a terminal diagnosis, and I was the only one who knew about it.

At first, I didn’t tell anybody. I was afraid they would think I was crazy. But bit by bit, I started testing the waters, like when I tried to talk to James about it at lunch.

A few months later, I went hiking with a friend named Aaron. He understood the dangers of climate change, so I thought he’d be receptive to the idea of collapse. As we walked through the woods, I told him a little about what I’d learned.

He listened somberly. “It’s gonna be a mess,” he said, “but hopefully Biden will turn things around.”

“Yea, hopefully…” I said, trailing off. Then I told him about a subreddit called r/collapse and how it’s full of people who think civilization is doomed.

He scoffed. “Yea, there are a lot of crazy subreddits.”

“I’m starting to think they’re right,” I said.

He looked at me. “Then you’re spending too much time on that subreddit.”

And that’s as far as I got with him. Aaron is convinced that oil companies are spreading climate doom in order to make people feel hopeless and give up trying to save the environment.

The thing is, he’s not wrong. Oil companies are spreading climate doom in hopes that we’ll give up. That’s why I always emphasize that even though it’s too late to save civilization, it’s not too late to save as much of the natural world as possible. Every 1/10th of a degree of warming that we prevent will save millions of lives and countless species.

I said as much, but he didn’t want to hear anymore.

A few months after that, the Pacific Northwest had one of the worst heatwaves in history. Several towns broke their high-temperature records by more than 5°C, over a billion sea creatures cooked to death, and the small village of Lytton burned to the ground.

Climate scientists were shocked. Although they had done a great job forecasting the rise in average global temperatures, it seemed they’d been wrong about the impacts of rising temperatures. At 1°C of warming, we were already seeing the kind of disasters that weren’t supposed to happen until we reached 1.5°C.

That’s when I began to realize that we might not have several decades left. We might only have one decade left before things rapidly fall apart.

So, I tried warning more people. I talked to friend named Heather who loves nature and is always posting things about climate activism. We discussed the concept of “global weirding” and how unpredictable the weather has become.

I said to her, “I’m kind of losing hope. It seems like climate change and biodiversity loss aren’t just getting worse, they’re getting worse exponentially. At this point, I don’t see how we can turn things around.”

“It’s definitely in snowball effect,” she replied, “but if we got some serious legislation and policy in place, we could turn this around in our lifetimes. For our children’s children.”

I almost told her that our children probably won’t have children of their own, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her that she’ll never be a grandmother. Who am I to put that thought in her head?

A few weeks later, I sent Sid Smith’s lecture to my older brother. He’s always been interested in emergency preparedness and doomsday scenarios, so I thought he’d be more open-minded about all this. When I called him, he admitted that he never got around to watching it, but assured me that things weren’t as bad as I thought.

“If it gets too hot to grow food, they’ll just move the farms north.”

“I don’t know if that will work,” I said, “With the jet stream breaking down, the weather will get too erratic for farming.”

He dismissed that idea, so I tried another tactic.

“What if we start running out of fossil fuels?” I asked. “Our entire agricultural system depends on oil and natural gas. Without them, we’re kinda screwed.”

“I don’t think that will happen,” he said. “They’re always finding more oil, and I’ve read that the Earth constantly generates oil, so we’ll never actually run out.” (That is bullshit, by the way.)

Obviously, I wasn’t going to convince him. However, there were several people I did convince. And in a way, their reactions were even more disturbing.

For example, I have another brother who patiently listened to everything I said and agreed that civilization will probably collapse in our lifetime. And yet, he doesn’t want to talk about it. Occasionally, I’ll send him an article or video about collapse, but he rarely replies.

I can understand why. Talking about collapse can be very upsetting, so I think he’d rather focus on enjoying his life. I get that. I really do. But it’s not the way I deal with bad news. When I’m upset, I want to talk it out.

And that’s exactly what I told another friend of mine named Jen. I told her that if we’re still alive in 20 or 30 years, we’ll be living in conditions like some of the most lawless and impoverished places on Earth today.

She didn’t say anything.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think you’re crazy. It’s just that…” She shrugged. “There’s nothing we can do, so why even talk about it?”

That reaction is so strange to me. If a massive comet were headed toward Earth like in the movie Don’t Look Up, would everybody just carry on like nothing was happening? Like we weren’t all going to die a fiery death in the near future?

I feel like I’m running around the deck of the Titanic, telling everyone, “Look! The ship is sinking!” and people are saying things like, “No it isn’t” or “We can still fix it” or “It’s not that bad.”

Maybe I’d be better off joining the orchestra, making music, and enjoying myself as the ship sinks.

In a certain sense, I already am enjoying myself. Becoming collapse-aware has made me realize how unbelievably precious life is, and how lucky I am to be alive.

Every morning I sit on my porch, marvel at the majestic trees, and watch as the sky changes color. Every day I hug my kids, tell them I love them, and treasure every moment we have together. And every evening I stand in my garden, watch the insects, and bask in the beauty of the leaves and flowers.

I try to appreciate everything in my life, from the sound of my cat purring to a simple glass of water. I can’t put into words what a miracle it is to be a tiny piece of the universe, observing itself for an infinitesimal moment in deep time.

But I can’t pretend everything is okay, either. I can’t just go on with my life like I did before. I refuse to bury my head in the sand. I want to talk about what’s happening. I want to come to terms with it. I want to warn people.

Most of all, I want someone to hug me and say, “I know. I’m scared, too.”

The last few years have been some of the loneliest years of my life, but I’m trying to change that. Last fall, I participated in Good Grief Network’s 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate, which was a wonderful experience.

And recently, I’ve started participating in Michael Dowd’s Post-Doom discussions. His focus is on moving from collapse awareness to collapse acceptance. The idea is that if you trust reality and embrace your mortality, you can live a life of awe and gratitude, even in the face of collapse. That sounds pretty good to me.

Currently, I’m working on finding more collapse-aware people in my own town, which is challenging given that most people don’t advertise their belief that we’re all doomed. It also doesn’t help that my social skills suck, but I’m not giving up.

Maybe a year from now, I can write another post about how I’m not so lonely anymore.

If you feel alone or misunderstood because of what you know about the future, don’t despair. Be patient, and keep looking for likeminded people online or in person.

Let’s find one another and make music together before the ship goes down.