Here to help in these trying times

For several years I thought my parents and grandparents were just morons, but it doesn't make sense because they're educated, rational people. Their only blindspot is current events. Aging doesn't explain it, nor does politics - I think they seldom vote at all.

Then it dawned on me. Its because they know what they're seeing and hearing is all true, and they can't bear it. Maybe they feel responsible, maybe they feel powerless - I don't know. But its abundantly clear. In their hearts they know its all true, but they can't accept it, so they invent these elaborate conspiracies and..

And... to be honest I'm kind of jealous. They go on with their life, compartmentalizing their fate into some deep dark recess of their minds... and here I am, rotting away from fear, apprehension, despair...

If I could take a pill that made me forget about collapse, I would. Right now. I wouldn't think twice.

I have been hyperaware of the climate catastrophe for most of my life, as someone whose family is involved in climate research. Things are not looking good, and stress is really starting to set in, for a variety of reasons.

For context, I'm currently studying nuclear engineering. I feel it's an underrepresented field that has massive potential to both offset the energy discrepancy between renewables and fossil fuels & help reduce the carbon output and mining footprint of our existence.

Sea temperatures are through the roof. Millions of people are dying of famine in Sudan currently, and India is currently experiencing deadly heatwaves. This upcoming election is a choice between a fascist and a war criminal. I fear it's only going to get worse from here on out.

I fall into pits of despair on a daily basis now. I try my best not to, I exercise and study and try to eat the healthiest diet I can. It helps, but these thoughts just keep creeping back.

My studies take up a lot of time and energy. I knew they would from the start, but given the developments in the world, I can't help but wonder if I'm doing myself more harm than good. If I'm sacrificing time for a nonexistent future.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels this way. Hence why I'm here.

If there are any other wildfire and smog survivors: what keeps you from fearing loss of your lifespan or brain, lung, and heart damage associated with these issues? Cause it has been very stressful coming to grips with all these limits in my life and relatives who still for some reason think not using a cooking vent is "ok" and opens windows even during those bad air times since I was forced to move back to North West against my control... I really need some people who understand what I am feeling here.

Okay--what the fuck???? What the fuck did I do to incarnate into this dimension????? I'm so mad/sad/dejected.

I was already pissed about the environment, but now it seems like the world might be trying to take itself out before all that with major wars. That the U.S. keeps escalating.

And then we have big Trungus trying to have a fascist coup. The fascist supreme court can't decide whether or not he should be indicted for the last coup he attempted or whether he should have immunity for said coup. The fact that it's been nearly 4 years with no prison shows that democracy as we knew it is pretty much done. How could things be more crazy????

The amount of cognitive dissonance it takes to work some random job to pay taxes and pay corporations for basic living necessities is too damn high!!!! I mean, I get it if you have a family. But I've got to get out and do something else.

I feel unwelcome to most people around me. This is due to:

Capitalist indoctrination:

Most people think that human history only goes back 10,000-13,000 years--to the dawn of agriculture. They believe that humans are just inherently bad and evil and wrong and fucked up and worthy of hell--wait. No. That's the religious conditioning. The secularists believe all that, they just don't believe in hell. Frankly it's hard for me to see how they are different. I believe they both come from indoctrination: capitalist indoctrination.

The idea of history being full of inequality and poverty for ever and ever and ever and ever and ever amen--is NOT SO! That is only the majority of history for the past 10k-13k years, going back to the dawn of agriculture.

With agriculture came stratified social classes.

Here is an excerpt from Tribe by Sebastian Junger:

“Among anthropologists, the !Kung are thought to present a fairly accurate picture of how our hominid ancestors lived for more than a million years before the advent of agriculture. Genetic adaptations take around 25,000 years to appear in humans, so the enormous changes that came with agriculture in the last 10,000 years have hardly begun to affect our gene pool. Early humans would most likely have lived in nomadic bands of around fifty people, much like the !Kung. They would have experienced high levels of accidental injuries and deaths. They would have countered domineering behavior by senior males by forming coalitions within the group. They would have been utterly intolerant of hoarding or selfishness. They would have occasionally endured episodes of hunger, violence, and hardship. They would have practiced extremely close and involved childcare. And they would have done almost everything in the company of others. They would have almost never been alone.”

...

“One study in the 1960s found that nomadic !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert needed to work as little as twelve hours a week in order to survive—roughly one-quarter the hours of the average urban executive at the time. “The ‘camp’ is an open aggregate of cooperating persons which changes in size and composition from day to day,” anthropologist Richard Lee noted with clear admiration in 1968. “The members move out each day to hunt and gather, and return in the evening to pool the collected foods in such a way that every person present receives an equitable share… Because of the strong emphasis on sharing, and the frequency of movement, surplus accumulation… is kept to a minimum.”

...

“Boehm points out that among current-day foraging groups, group execution is one of the most common ways of punishing males who try to claim a disproportionate amount of the group’s resources.”

...
“ Hominids that cooperated with one another—and punished those who didn’t—must have outfought, outhunted, and outbred everyone else. These are the hominids that modern humans are descended from.”

Excerpt From

Tribe

Sebastian Junger (Emphasis added)

So, for me, I consider injustice wrong. I consider capitalism wrong. I consider the idea that you have to work your life away for basic necessities wrong. These things pain me. But I would rather that than to act like capitalism is cool or THE ONLY THING THAT HAS EVER EXISTED EVER THE END FOREVER AMEN.

It's just not true. But in order to enforce capitalism 2 things are required. Well mainly 1: a violent state apparatus to protect the rich from the poor. And 2: an ideology that allows people enough cognitive dissonance to accept this and repress their frustration about it really helps for a cohesive society. So religion or capitalist ideology ("we deserve it," in both cases) helps the system to function and reproduce itself.

I would like to find a way out of this system. And not through orthodox Marxism, but through just realizing--hey if we keep doing this we're gonna kill each other and our habitat. What if we tried to get along?

But people are afraid to think this way, because it might threaten their precious cognitive dissonance, which makes them believe that nothing horrible is wrong. So they tend to not like me or at least to not resonate with me emotionally, and I cannot feel a sense of emotional solidarity with the majority in capitalist America--it's not really there for many, not without much excavation.

So much of wars is just competing systems of oppression trying to outmaneuver or kill each other. Because in the capitalist worldview, it is either oppress or be oppressed--they can't imagine anything else.

Basically, if we could just choose to get along, we wouldn't have to fight the wars, and we could focus on remediating climate and environmental disaster and providing basic needs to all and having a ton of fun. It would really be a very easy transition. I don't even think it needs all this communist theory, if people just understood it was killing us and that there is another way.

Really like some spiritual realizations or something.

It's not impossible. It's really not. How bizarre is that?

Anyways I'm supposed to be starting a career, trying to make a positive impact on the world and I'm just like.... what? I'm supposed to do what?

Should I focus on leaving the country?

Trying to be a therapist so that people can learn to excavate the many many layers of emotional repression compounded on them for who knows how long? So that they can find once again solidarity with their fellow person?

Try to lead some kind of nonviolent movement for peace?

That's really all I can think of but I too struggle to believe in people at this point.

Try to weather the storm until it blows over? That seems most likely. I just... why? Why on earth are things this bad? When we could just choose different things? It wouldn't be that hard?

(Why am I villainized in many spheres just for saying this? Why is it so hard for people to realize it? Why don't they even seem to want to realize it, why do they seem attached to their suffering? )

I think I just need more community around me, and I live in the Southern U.S. (trying to move ASAP), but I'm just struggling to keep my mental health up enough just to move through the day. It's been hard lately.

I just needed to vent that shit out.

Trying to figure out what to do. Move to a monastery? Small farming community? I relate so little with society now.

Thanks for being here. I can realize that I do have reason to live, sometimes it just takes a vent to do that.

Pretty much the title.

The past few days I've been getting high, listening to some Macroblank, and digging deep into the rabbit hole. When I fully realized what is going on about a month ago, I was mostly angry. Now I'm just plain sad. It's been quite a long journey of self discovery, and I have finally... "arrived".

One year ago I thought I'm doing so much for the animals and the planet by stopping consuming animal producsts and switching to fully plant based. I almost felt entitled that I'm doing so well. It doesn't matter. Well, at least not in terms of helping this planet. It's already too late, and simply by existing in a 1st world country, I am living a unsustainable life on the top of this pyramid scheme that I was born into.

I just feel saddness and some sense of guilt. And it is quite lonely, since nobody really gets it. I hope I'll get to enjoy life and my favorite things, hiking and mountainbiking again without slipping into depression. Good luck everyone.

Connection with others in real time. Various events and gatherings. From the spiritual to the practical, the artistic to the mundane, we invite you:

https://www.deepadaptation.info/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?page=acymailing5_front&ctrl=archive&task=view&mailid=177&subid=2756-tH3d5dOwybB620&key=TLReWiEi&noheader=1&action=acymailing5_frontrouter&noheader=1

Abrupt Reduction in Shipping Emission as an Inadvertent Geoengineering Termination Shock Produces Doubling in Warming Over Oceans | Nature

I reviewed the article and the comments, and I concluded that nobody knows what they're doing.

People who make essential decisions also have no clue what they're doing. Four years later, it turns out that the cooling effect of aerosols was severely underestimated. The 2020 global sulfur limit accidentally and irreversibly shortened our lifespans.

I remember seeing a tweet that India will try to reduce their surface temperature by injecting sulfur into the atmosphere by 2027. IMO, it would be too late, and it might be too late even if they tried it now.

Humans are usually good at kicking the can down the road, but they did the exact opposite this time. The danger of removing aerosol masking was severely underestimated, and the energy that oceans have absorbed since then isn't leaving the planet.

The wet bulb temperature event might be close. Even if it happens first in India rather than in the US, considering the amount of outsourcing in India, it will have a negative impact on the entire world.

I posted my first time yesterday about leaving Fl for NYS and felt so supported and loved by the responses. So thank you. I would love book recommendations on the broad theme of "collapse" please. Thank you.

You'll have to excuse my distressed state, given the circumstances

The circumstances now are fight for a better world or upset the balance of nature to an unforgiving extent.

What we're doing amounts to suicide if we're not gonna use whatever means necessary using the resources available to us and open your mind to what's necessary. It is necessary for us to do better. It is necessary to take a stand against ourselves, so that we can preserve ourselves... We use the internet, TV, whatever ... the news, no bullshit .. Let smart people get up and try to bring an awareness of our problems to the public on an extensive scale, and then prepare ourselves to act on that information, together... In discussion with one another ... For the sake of our future. This is fucking nuts!!! Stop using doubt that we can do this as an excuse... WE CAN LOVE EACH OTHER AND OUR HOME ENOUGH TO BRING PEACE TO THE PLANET. Stop with me .. THINK about this and what we are doing ... It is the most relevant thing ever for us to reevaluate our life decisions and coarse as a whole ... Our global society CAN be all we could ever hope for ... A spot in this heavenly hell, a bittersweet journey as of now, because of us and our neglect.

Let's work together. Open your mind. Let us do better .. we have enough common ground to understand one another.

Ignore how poorly I'm communicating... Lol just get.it.! We're better than this. Cut the bullshit, let's get to work, HELP ourselves and the rest of the planet and bare our souls .. With the choices we have in this experience of reality, it is our moral duty to be brave and open up, be strong and work to understand one another, and appreciate one another ... Everybody's fucking up ... Stop fucking up! We were gifted with amazing things that came from our efforts ... Movies, music, stability, so much ... We are not owed the flexibility to brace ourselves if we need to simply respond -- because reality persists -- and our obviously wicked ways are due some attention ... Let's grab the bull by the balls and do it! Let's fucking talk about it, man!! Just talk experiencer to experiencer ... We're in this together! I love you guys, I want you to know that, whoever you are, wherever you are, I appreciate you and the life your living, whatever that may be like for you ... I want to help in whatever way I can ... Please let's make something of it all. We owe it to ourselves and to the people of the world of which we're all apart ... Lets do something... Open up. Be strong with me. Reach inside yourself. Peace comes when we bring it, let's bring it,you know we could if we would. I know you know what I'm talking about. Please support me in at least that ... I really want what's best for us and you really do to, so friggin act like it! We gotta!

I hope I don't totally suck at this. Lol. Let me suck, we all do right now, bless our hearts

Hi all, once again turning to this community for context and support regarding a deep disappointment I am feeling with the people in my day to day life. They simply refuse to engage in any kind of conversation about world events. I am a very passionate person and I feel like my main goals right now are to actively engage in activities around harm reduction. It feels like the only antidote to the helplessness and hopelessness I feel. But I'm doing so I have found myself more disconnected from my immediate community than ever. No one will engage in discussion about the future, heck no one will even acknowledge the present. I am left to make my plans and take actions alone and it feels incredibly isolating and the disappointment is so visercal. In the early days of learning and integrating knowledge, I soothed myself by telling myself that people would join me if I did all the research and made all the actionable things easy for them to engage with; I prepared myself to be a source of solace and knowledge for my community as they became more aware of collapse and the tragedies of the world. Instead, they have abandoned me completely, and I feel terrified that there may be no point in what I'm doing if there's no momentum gathering behind me - I can't be resilient on my own :( what's worse is that I have found myself becoming jaded and bitter towards them - people who I love and care for, because how can they be so cruel and detached? At the very least how can they now care at all about how I am feeling, and how can they still push for me to shut up and mask for them - why don't they want to know the real me anymore? I feel used and abandoned. I can't even look at them the same anymore. I don't want to lose my people, but are they even really my people anymore? It's been such a hard process. I thought these people truly cared about me, but it feels like they were only in it for the good times and the cheap thrills. Now that it's time to grow up and face reality, build resilience and become aware, they would rather shun me in an attempt to save their own delusions. The social fallout of all of this was the least expected for me and has been the biggest and most difficult blow in coming to terms with reality.

If you read all of this, thank you for sparing some time for me today. Please let me know if this is normal, or if you know why people react like this. It might help me take it a little less personally. And for what it's worth I really don't shove it down people's throats or anything, I'm just honest about what I'm learning about, my future goals, and how my hopes and dreams are changing in the process - it feels like I can't talk about my reality at all without putting people off. Masking is almost physically painful for me with people close to me so I can't lie to them when they ask, but I don't force it on them.

I've been trying to get one started in my area off and on for about two years, but haven't been able to get anyone to show up to a meeting. Any suggestions for topics or formats that are working for others?

I live in Florida and my car AC isn’t working right now i’ve been having a lot of car issues. On my way to work I was driving with the windows down. It was 91 degrees at 8 am with 80% humidity. I was sweating profusely and actually had to pull over to throw up at some point because i genuinely got sick from the heat and humidity. Luckily i’m getting my AC fixed soon, but i’m starting to worry about what will happen if the power grid shuts down during a storm while there’s hot weather. The heat and humidity is becoming unbearable

Im 17 and I graduate high school next week. I feel like it won’t matter in the long run because my view of the future is negative. With the wars and the climate change and the economy and bird flu, it just all feels like we’re on the verge on the verge of collapsing. I feel like my future is going to be short lived and that nothing I do is going to matter. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to try my best, but I just hate that I live in a world where I feel like the human race is on the verge of collapse. I’m just starting my life but I feel like it won’t matter, and I hate feeling like that.

My wife and I might be purchasing a house in northern New England soon. Friend of a friend will do a private sale for way under market (the median house price has increased 60% here since Covid). Five acres, pump, well, river on the property. Fairly secluded but close enough for work. We’re going to basically use most of our life savings for the down payment. She works in healthcare, so I figure if she can’t find work we will already be done. It’s an insane amount for a house, but I think this area will fare better than 99% of places in the country.

I’m much more of a doomer than her and think we have 2-3 years left of relative normalcy. It’s hard to want to put 6 figures down into a house when we could fuck off and travel or be more mobile while everything deteriorates, but she hates that idea. I want to put in solar and a heat pump to be off grid, but that will take at least 2-3 years. I have some experience with livestock but not growing food. The learning curve seems insane with the fucked up weather. It just seems futile. I’m thinking of just prepping for 1-2 years with an exit plan.

It is a beautiful property and would make for a nice place to die though.

I am putting my house on the market and leaving Florida for somewhere in New York state hopefully by the end of this summer. I'm a single woman without a large income and every so often I get this lurch of fear that I'm making a terrible mistake. I know I'm not, intellectually as well as socially I can no longer stay here.

Please give me some truly terrible facts about Florida, the heat, climate change, the rising water levels, the rising insurance prices, the political landscape: facts that I can turn to when I am feeling scared about leaving again. I know this is the right decision but family members are questioning me and this causes a lot of doubt and anxiety.

I need some posts I can read when I start getting that "maybe I should just stay here and be sorta miserable, it's not that bad, I can just go to the beach" feeling come over me.

I live in a moderately warm climate, which experiences hot dry summers. In the old climate regime, we anticipated several days over 100 in July. Not much more, and possibly some in June.

It’s 100 next week. It’s a reminder that as far away as the Brazil floods seem, as far away as the Mexican drought feels, as far away as the south Asian heat wave may be… I’m living through this. I am not a passive observer. I am on this soon to be fireball.

I have thoughts every day about what will happen as I am in an environmental field, but this morning while driving it hit me particularly hard. I saw every passing town as it will be in the future; abandoned due to the climate, destroyed by war, or burnt down in a forest fire. It feels like I’m living through memories of the past, and I am remembering that the present is collapse. I see pictures in Gaza as a future, paradise as another possible future, Haiti as another.

I’m blessed to have my education, but it means that collapse is never far from my thoughts. I live it now, even if it doesn’t affect me as horridly as it one day will. As it does for countless refugees.

We are all memorialists. Take note of everything. Write. Experience everything. Only our memories will remain.

https://youtu.be/R_ZDVYzIhgc?si=sCd2qVnsB5IXFpCR

I’ve been expecting collapse, on just about the timeline that we’re on, for about 20 years- basically my whole adult life.

Massive megatornados aren’t unexpected to me in the least. But seeing the reality of this one is like looking at the face of Cthulhu. Unspeakable dread.

I saw it a week ago and I can’t get it out of my head.

I feel like I'm running out of time to go on that road trip I've been yearning for. Feeling pressure to keep working and stay housed, but it also feels like this summer might be my best chance to travel in the mountains and appreciate everything while its still here, and while there is at least some semblance of stable society and general safety. I was thinking once the berries start to ripen in town I could head into the mountains and just follow the harvest north. Don't want to leave behind my friends and lovers though. I guess I could take shorter trips instead of just leaving all summer, but knowing me I won't actually make it out as much as I would like

Hey collapsniks, how do you stay sane when most if not all of the people in your daily life are normies, aka not collapse-aware? Just had another discouraging conversation with my partner this morning. I felt particularly low after reading headlines about the water issues in Mexico and heatwaves in Asia. I tried to explain how I'm feeling, and how isolating it is that no one's talking about it or even trying to do anything to soften the blows that are coming. Let's just say, I didn't get much sympathy or understanding. They'd rather stick their head in the sand. They hold a strange mix of hopium that technology will save us, and fatalism that it's not worth preparing if it's going to be that bad anyway. I'd rather talk about it, acknowledge it sucks, and then do something, anything, to feel just a tiny bit more prepared to ease the suffering, especially of my own family, for as long as possible if and when it comes. Food storage, food growing, rain barrels, water storage, and similar efforts all sound worthy of time to me but I've struggled to get my family - or even many people in the greater community - interested in and helping with those things. I've also increasingly felt averse to certain lifestyle decisions - like flying for vacation - because it feels like throwing (literal) fuel on the disasters ravaging the planet. But everyone else wants to carry on with BAU. It is maddening and confusing. I know my timeline may be much more pessimistic than most (I am expecting major food issues and disruptions to BAU in the next 2-3 years, even in our part of the US), but even just SOME acknowledgment that things are getting worse would be nice.

How do you do it day in day out?!?

So since Trump got elected things have been brutal. But the last year or so I had a plan I thought was reasonable for my life, and the last couple of months I've been feeling less depressed because I started antidepressants. I thought I'd learn a freelance wfh job from my dad, start making money at about $40k a year, get my own health insurance so I can get a gender affirming surgery, keep living with my parents until I save up enough to get a tiny house, get the tiny house (plus furniture and appliances and that kind of stuff), get a car, after a couple of years get a cat, and bam I'm set up for the rest of my life. And that plan is for if Trump DOESN'T get reelected. If he does, my plan is to drive to Canada and stay with my slightly rich cousins there, until I can figure out what to do next (I'm nonbinary so that's why I'm afraid of Trump being reelected, and yes, I know, Canada's not perfect.).

And the plan for if Trump gets reelected still works. But what if my plan for staying here STILL isn't reasonable? What if I'm never actually able to get good enough at that job to be hired? What if I don't make enough for a tiny house? What if I can't find a better job? What if I get in a car accident and get permanently seriously injured? What if I have to live with my parents forever and they hate me for never moving out? What if I get in an argument with my mom and our family falls apart? I was on the Amerexit sub recently and everyone was making fun of people thinking they'd be able to escape. What if I go to Canada and they send me back to the US and they send me to conversion therapy? What if I get shot? What if climate change destroys the area I live in but I can't afford to move away? What if I'm a failure and I'm doomed and I'm naive for thinking I could have a good future? What if all my efforts turn out to be a waste of time? I'm scared! 😭 I don't want to be here anymore! I hate this place, they treat everyone horribly! But I'm stuck, and my family is here. Am I trapped between two bad options? What they call a rock and a hard place? Is there any hope for me? Why do they hate trans people so much? Why can't they just leave us alone and let us live our lives in peace? Why do they want us dead? What did we ever do to them to deserve this? Why can't we get a living wage? What do I do?! It's too much to handle 😰