10 May - the day we ate the year in Europe. Since then, we have been living for tomorrow. Man is a self-aware being, and that is a great value, but it also comes at a great price. The never-ending fear of passing. The knowledge that what is born is also a fish. It dies. It is this repressed fear that forces our minds into the past, which is a clinging hold, and into the future, which offers hope. Because most people believe in a meaningful future that is becoming more, better, more beautiful. In the intergenerational promise of a better life for their children... we have come to the end of that.
It's time to reflect on the possibility that we are too late to avert an environmental catastrophe that will affect the entire planet, with all its consequences, in the lifetime of the people living today. To be more precise: in the lives of everyone under the age of seventy. We have lost the control that was perhaps never in our hands. This is a huge threat to the very existence of humanity, too. This does not, of course, mean that everyone and everything will perish. But our world as we have known it will be transformed beyond recognition.
Having accepted the possibility of the collapse of our environment, what is left for us? Where will we be without the vision we have for ourselves, our families and our wider communities? Where do we find the meaning in our lives that is necessary for the healthy existence of our consciousness? This is why it is so difficult to accept what may lie ahead. It is more natural than anything else that, when faced with this prospect, a person, especially a parent, is seized by despair, tormented by anxiety, overwhelmed by grief. He is essentially grieving, even if he is not aware of it. The opportunities she missed, the years she will not live to see, and those closest to her as she feels the fear and pain that awaits them as the world around them collapses.
Mother Earth is not to be feared, she will shake herself, heal herself (the immune response is already in place), and if need be, rest half a million years on it. She will be fine. The components of nature, plants, animals are already suffering in an extraordinary way and are disappearing en masse. But the animal least able to adapt to the changes will be the one that caused them... man. And especially its community, the artificial world created by mankind. We need a profound adaptation, involving changes at the personal and collective level, to help us prepare for the collapse of our societies due to climate change, and to live with that knowledge. A feasible plan that does not fool people into thinking that our current economic, social and political systems are resilient enough to adapt to massive change and thus survive unchanged.
Social collapse is a process that has begun, either gradually or abruptly, bringing to an end systems and values that are thought to be eternal and unsustainable, such as food, water, energy, security, housing, the state, morality and equal opportunities. Man, as a mass, is not able to transcend his own shadow and, especially in difficult circumstances, to make significant sacrifices in defence of higher values. The process is inevitable because humanity cannot do enough, fast enough, to protect and maintain its own water and food supply from environmental impacts. Those who accept that societal collapse is inevitable, or at least possible, will be the first communities to know that there is no more important task left today than to prepare.
The goal can only be to mitigate the physical and psychological damage caused by the collapse. This is the essence of a community-level response, not that some will survive in their caves longer than others...
