Collapsenik

Do you doubt that anything can be done to avoid ecological and/or social collapse, and feel scared and confused about this? Are you wondering how to reorient your life to better deal with this awareness?

Here are four quick insights I can share with you from this research project:

1. Find the others! Practice relational processes with other people who perceive reality in the same way you do, to (re)connect with your own emotions, other people, and the rest of the living world.
2. Find or start a new “crew” (i.e. a small self-organised group, convening online or offline), in which to start taking generative action on planetary issues while building deep trust and mutual aid.
3. Grow new capacities to live with discomfort and uncertainty - the world is only going to get more and more complex to figure out, so let's find our peace with this, and embrace a state of maplessness!
4. Discover the extent of your own privilege. While the future is scary, the present is already awful for so many humans and other-than-humans. Maybe you have much to be thankful for in your life? How could you leverage your comforts and privileges to be in solidarity with those living through high-intensity struggles, right now?

For more learning and details on an important collapse-awareness project I looked into during this research (the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF)), see this introduction summary, and the next few ones. If you are particularly fearless, feel free to dive into the full Chapter 5 of the thesis, which is entirely about this case study; and/or Annex 5.3, specifically about the Diversity and Decolonising Circle, a crew that started in DAF to address issues of systemic oppression.

Some other resources you may want to check out:

• The Deep Adaptation Forum Events page, full of free regular events to practice relationship-building in a collapsing world
• This video by the DAF Collaborative Action team, in which the members describe some benefits they have drawn from their crew; and this other video, in which members of the DAF Diversity and Decolonising circle document some of their practices.
• Rich Bartlett's Microsolidarity website, full of great resources on how to get a mutual aid / mutual learning crew started. See also this resource document from DAF on microsolidarity crews.
• "A Silenced History: Climate, Race, and Colonies" - a 25-minute video primer on the many connections between climate change, racism, and colonialism. Check out the resource sheet for more details!
• "A multiple-group inquiry into whiteness" (2002) and " When first-person inquiry is not enough: Challenging whiteness through first and second-person inquiry" (2005), two excellent academic papers collectively authored by the European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness. These articles document the journey of a group into discovering and challenging their own privilege and prejudice, including several useful practices.