Things cannot go on as they have
The shifting material and cultural reality we face and how to face it
In the last post I made a claim:
“Things cannot go on as they have. The culture that you were born into is falling away, and something else entirely is emerging.”
I’d like to interrogate this a bit, add a little detail and nuance.
To start I’d like to qualify that that I am a strong believer in the sense that the specific ways in which collapse, institutional breakdown and risk play out will be wildly diverse. There will be no one catch all way in which our lives will be impacted. In Texas people might freeze in poorly built homes. In Las Vegas there may be a slow and uneven rationing of access to water. In rural America you might see the first and most severe signs of supply chain and infrastructure breakdown and lack of access to goods.
There will also obviously be differences in impact in within localities. People with the resources will use those resources to keep having access. Those without certain resources may have less power over the opaque and corrupt process of gaining access. There may also be a phenomenon in which people who are used to being without resources upend the expected outcomes by tapping into and relying on long-standing, robust networks of sharing and mutual aid, while those reliant on the corporate, globalized world suffer.
I think beyond the material changes in the world that are already playing out, we are also all experiencing a rapid and disorienting cultural shift that will change the ways in which we think about ourselves and each other.
I think about how just in the past few years I’ve gone from thinking of myself as a liberal progressive to, I honestly don’t know what. My own identity is shifting and collapsing under the weight of a society that increasingly makes no sense. or at the very least, is having a hard time making sense of itself.
This process is a scary one to me, as in times of historical uncertainty not only do you get heightened emotions, you also get people willing to go to extreme lengths to survive and/or keep access to resources they feel entitled to. When you ain’t got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.
This process of cultural disorientation may breed a religious adherence to different cult-like groups that promise to not only explain the entirety of the world in simple (and often inaccurate) terms, they will also suggest they have the singular answer to the world’s problems. Not to pick on Bitcoiners, but the common refrain “Bitcoin fixes this” is an example of this kind of thinking.
In my estimation a healthy approach to the shifting material and cultural realities we are seeing is to keep your head about you, remain skeptical, and develop and diverse resource and psychological toolkit.
On the material side, this means resilience in the basics — food, water, shelter, etc. — and then building out capacities in extending spheres of influence: self, family, neighborhood, community, etc.
On the psychological side, this means adopting myriad skills to comprehend and navigate the world. As I’ve argued in my book about the strength of communities of practice, one good thing about building out the material side is that psychological skills will necessarily come alongside the physical ones.
But you may also explore different ways of knowing by engaging in deep and nuanced conversations with people different than you, giving them the benefit of the doubt. Conversation is an important skill, as is the ability to work on a project alongside someone different from you.
I also think regular practice in mindfulness, whatever that means for you individually (to me in means routine time in nature), will be key in providing you a grounded psychology with which to navigate the world.
In the end, I think going clear-eyed into the details of the shifting and often disorienting world we are facing gives us the best possible chance of making it. And the sooner you accept the responsibility to see the world as it is and get to work in building your capacities to navigate it, the better off you’re going to be.
So, I guess I am saying, if you’re reading this now: you are going to make it.
Interesting read.
This is also a test-comment - how does this work ...