Make Preparations
The End Is Near. Or Not. Who Cares?
“Did you hear about Phil?”
“No.”
“He died.”
“Oh no.”
“I know, right? But at least he died doing something he loved.”
“What was that?”
“He died living.”
“Lucky bastard.”
“Amen to that.”
Any discussion about living is a discussion about dying. This is the existential reality of the style of thinking assumed to be exclusive to the homo genus among earthly creatures. It’s our personal doom loop & despite our feelings of superiority over our creature kin, I imagine I’d prefer the cool comfort expressed by the squirrel in the road any day. This deep thought trip is a drag. But I digress.
We know of many standard cultural responses to the existential dilemma of living toward death from our guru class including: Live in the moment. Be here now. Make today matter. Om.
Whether one sees our quirky, quixotic journey of civilization as endless ascendance or certain doom, the reality of individual death inevitably informs much of the roiling conflict many feel in life. Waves of fear, doubt and insecurity crash the shores - producing endless hand wringing over the punishingly ironic death sentence of life & the bloodthirst for legacy or, for some, providing a calming backdrop of meditative noise that serves as the foundation of their acceptance of the gift of existence, here and now.
Have I worn out my word salad buffet pass yet? Probably. And yet the gentleman persists.
There are examples of calm grounding all around us. Some settle on prayer or meditation. Some find solace in the grace of wisdom mined through aging. Some read self-help books, invest in talk therapy, or buy pillows & art work emblazoned with “Love, Laugh, Live” or some equivalent cotton-candified emotional puffery. Some do forest bathing, barefoot grounding, partner with an emotional support animal, or any of the nearly endless nature-themed options. But are all these activities just copium-in-action, like playing checkers when the game is chess?
The most obvious source of enlightenment should come from those who precede us in death. The hard earned section of the acceptance of death library is filled with volumes of tales from the hospital, morgue, hospice and funeral practices. Some even now have access to medical aid in dying services, choosing, rather bravely, to face their own demise with agency. Most though, battle to the end, waging a war they are sure to lose with bigger bets on less likely outcomes. Nearly all of these people who laboriously fight to the finish are honored in death - with platitudes & talk of their “love of life”, “commitment to family”, “belief in god”, “service to society” or any of the other standard songs on the death jukebox. Stay yoked to the big lie and receive the adulation from the left behind - quit on it with intention and get a cold shoulder from the masses.
It’s all rather pathetic if you ask me, the curmudgeon in the back of the room mocking the immaturity homo colossus has embraced since we abandoned tribe. How’s that for a shocking turn of tone? And yet the gentleman persists.
Death, like life, is sacred. To me, the “purpose of life” is, in fact, death. All living things are cycling nutrients, endlessly serving the community of life by interacting with the living world to, in the simplest terms, feed the living world. Is this too banal for you? Is there a need for it to “mean something”, or is this the curse of our navel gazing buffoonery, our hijacked ego overtaking our capacity to just be? Further, in no way does the deep meaning I find in being a nutrient cycler a lesser outcome than the idea that we’re “the” fullest expression of meaningful sentience on the planet, tasked with caring for all of it while building a legacy that will outlive us and our progeny. You don’t have to agree with me but I’m OK with being equivalent to a grub, gnawing away at dead wood only to be dug out of the log by a hungry bear and eaten up. I see only success in all our varied paths to the end.
But what is “the end”? Well now we’ve crossed into a wading pool too deep for a floundering man without water wings. Let’s stay in our lane, which is the ongoing collapse of Global Industrial Civilization & the reality that homo colossus (us) is functionally extinct, on the glide path to doom for the community of life due to our hubristic pursuit of ascendance.
Let me clean up that last passage with my elevator speech version.
Global Industrial Civilization is in collapse from overshoot & homo colossus is functionally extinct.
Is that so different from: You are a creature of finite life, born into inevitable death?
Both demand you sit upright and attend to a reality you’d rather ignore. Youth & vibrance appear immune to death just as a busy airport or Times Square seem to be immune to collapse. And yet both also carry the scent of certain death, always lurking right behind the curtain. And that lurking sense of doom is what drives us to the comforting narratives of prayer, meditation, therapy or those annoying pillows I find so objectionable. My proposal is that the approach we take to both the obvious and controversial inevitable ends are dishonest, spawned by an immature creature who forgot who we are and why we’re here and have enacted a story that defies reality. Thus, it would make perfect sense that this creature would be structurally unable to make headway with accepting our predicament and doing anything about it.
But what is there to do? We’re back to the list. Be here now. Live in the moment. Make everyday count. There isn’t anything to do, other than accept the gift of life and make every effort to be present in & for it.
Boldly: You are, in fact, doomed. One way or another. To me, the fierce headwinds the Collapse Acceptance movement (whatever the hell that is) has faced are no different than the denial & avoidance of individual death so prevalent in our culture. While there is energetic debate over the truth of Collapse that would make the notion of acceptance thereof controversial, there is no debate over the inevitably of our individual death. And yet our individual death sentence is toyed with like a phony mouse for an indoor cat. Sometimes, she ignores it. Other times, she engages vigorously. Eventually she simply tires of it and behaves as if it doesn’t exist anymore.
What’s my point, beyond letting my wordsmith off leash in the thesaurus park?
I’m afraid I don’t have one. And, further, I assert that I don't have to have one. This requirement to phrase everything in a problem/solution format and to have a logical, empirical, science or faith based explanation for all of it is part and parcel of our disorder.
It just is. You just are. This too shall pass. And not just flatulence. Your life. Your legacy. Your interminable sense of self worth. And that’s just fine. Civilization too shall pass, as all before have and any subsequent will. Acceptance is the only way forward.
OK, I lied. I do have a point. I always have a point. If you can navigate the acceptance of your personal demise, you can navigate acceptance of the collapse of Global Industrial Civilization. Both are, actually, empirically true and inevitable. We can debate timelines. We can debate specific causes. But we can no more debate the functional truth of each reality than we can debate the rising of the sun. It just is.
Moving past the “prove it” stage of endless growth versus inevitable collapse is the same as moving past the “peek-a-boo” stage of toying with your inevitable individual death. At the risk of oversimplifying something so complex, it just is. And that’s OK.
If there is work to do, it begins with acceptance and passing through that unmarked door, closing it behind us, and revealing a new realm of possibilities, informed not by absurd fictions of forever but instead grounded in the reality of now and the truth of the consequences of living.
Lucky bastards we are.
And now the gentlemen relents.
Programming Notes
This isn’t a story of what you should think, it’s a story of what I think. When I sound like I’m lecturing the reader, I’m just talking to my alter ego.
There is not now and never will be a request or option to pay for this content. There is also no space for comments. That’s not because I don’t care what you think. It’s because if you have something to say, I encourage you to write your own commentary somewhere. And leave the comments off. I’m not a pinata, and you shouldn’t be, either.