For most Americans, heads anchored firmly in the sand, shrugging off
anything they are now hearing about “Peak Oil,” still driving their
gas-gulping SUVs, reveling in suburban sprawl, and gullibly counting on
their pensions and 401Ks to be there when they need them, the notion of
civilization’s collapse is still largely relegated to the lunatic
fringe. Whatever the problem, they cluelessly argue, technology will
find a solution. But millions of those same individuals are far deeper
in debt than they were one year ago, and during that year, they have
seen the prices of gas, food, and virtually everything else
dramatically increase. Some of those Americans have in the past year
have had to face the reality that they are part of the
rapidly-vanishing middle class who are only one paycheck or one
catastrophic illness away from financial oblivion—who between mortgage,
car payments, monthly bills, childcare, medical expenses, gas prices,
and doubling monthly credit card bills, now realize that not only will
they not be able to pay for their kids’ college education but that
every new day necessitates walking more precariously over an economic
tightrope across a gaping precipice with a thousand-foot drop. Those
folks know in their bones the reality of collapse—they feel it, smell
it, taste it, but may not yet be able to allow the words to pass from
their lips. It’s still too horrifying to fully contemplate.
For both groups of Americans, collapse is very bad news. It will mean
the end of lifestyles they cannot imagine living without. They have
become their lifestyle, and in its absence, they believe they will have
no identity—that literally, they will cease to exist. For these folks,
collapse will be extremely painful, and worse. Since they have isolated
themselves in their hermetically-sealed suburban “dormitories,” they
are not likely to survive unless they are willing to radically alter
their behavior, and by the time they are, if they are, it may be far
too late to do so.
Unquestionably, collapse will be brutal and agonizing. It is, in fact,
the cessation of life based on fossil fuels, weather and climate as we
have known them, and the money system to which we have become
accustomed. It will be physically, economically, emotionally, and
spiritually excruciating. It will test human beings, particularly those
individuals who are not members of the ruling elite but who enjoy
privileged, comfortable lifestyles devoid of sacrifice and
inconvenience, beyond anything they could imagine in their worst
nightmares. Some will endure; others will perish; in fact, some experts
speculate that at least one-third of humans on planet Earth will not
survive. Whether collapse occurs slowly or quickly, it will be
torturous.
Collapse is a form of death, and Americans do not like the word
“death.” We go to extraordinary lengths to dress it up, pretty-fy it,
deny it, and as my favorite of all meaningless anti-death cliche goes,
“put it behind us.” Like banshees, we drive ourselves heroically in the
first half of life as if there were no death. It will engulf others but
not us. We are the “exception,” and whether as individual Americans or
as a nation, we are addicted to our exceptionalism—others will die; not
us. Other civilizations will collapse; not ours. Yet it was Jung who
said that, “There is a great obligation laid upon the American
people—that it shall face itself—that it shall admit its moment of
tragedy in the present—admit that it has a great future only if it has
the courage to face itself.” (Report on America, International
Psychoanalytic Congress, Nuremberg, 1910) America the nation is not
likely to “face itself,” but as individual Americans, we must, if we
intend to successfully navigate collapse.
I too resist collapse, but at the same time that I resist it for
similar or different reasons from those around me, I am also
consciously working to embrace it. To embrace something or someone is
not necessarily to throw one’s arms wildly around that event or person,
but to slowly, intentionally open to the gifts inherent in what we most
dread. I do not say this lightly. I am a survivor of breast cancer. My
world “collapsed” thirteen years ago when I was diagnosed with it. But
as is frequently the case, my world was also transformed by a terminal
illness, and I became a different person as a result of it. As the
Buddhist teacher, Pema Chödrön writes, “Openness doesn’t come from
resisting our fears, but from getting to know them well.” (Comfortable
With Uncertainty, P. 47)
So what might be some of the gifts of collapse?
First, collapse strips us of who we think we are so that who we really
are may be revealed. Civilization’s toxicity has fostered the illusion
that one is, for example, a professional person with money in the bank,
a secure mortgage, a good credit rating, a healthy body and mind,
raising healthy children who will grow up to become successful like
oneself, and that when one retires, one will be well-taken-care of. If
that has become your identity, and if you don’t look deeper, you won’t
discover who you really are; and when collapse happens, you will be
shattered because you have failed to notice the strengths, resources,
and gifts that abide in your essence which transcend and supercede your
ego-identity. In a post-collapse world, academic degrees and stock
portfolios matter little. The real question, as Richard Heinberg so
succinctly puts it is: Do you know how to make shoes?
Just ask countless individuals who have had everything stripped away as
a result of speaking truth to power. One day they were “solid citizens”
with sterling careers; the next day, they were “enemies of the state”
fearing for their very lives. We can learn much from their journeys
about preparing for life after collapse. One way to prepare is to
explore the issue of identity apart from one’s social roles. For me, a
spiritual path has been crucial in assessing who I am apart from what I
do.
Secondly, collapse will decimate our anti-tribal, individualistic,
Anglo-American programming by forcing us to join with others for
survival. You may own a home outright with ample acreage on which you
have produced a stunning organic garden, have a ten-year cache of food
and water, drive a hybrid car, and live a completely solarized life,
but if you think you will survive in isolation, you are tragically
deluded. Collapse dictates that we will depend on each other, or we
will die.
I have been an activist for over thirty years. Without exception, every
time I have been involved with other activists in promoting change,
personalities clash, egos become bruised, people tantrum, become
disillusioned, and walk away from the group. We all seem to have
Ph.D.’s in “self-sufficiency” but remain tragically ignorant of genuine
cooperation. We will transform this pattern as civilization collapses,
or we will perish, and the process of that transformation probably
won’t be a pretty picture. However, we can begin preparing in present
time for the collective thinking and action that collapse will
necessitate by, for example, starting “
Solari Investor Circles”:
which join small groups of people together to research the resources in
their community and how they can use those to prepare for collapse. A
particularly useful tool in the Solari model is the concept of “
Coming Clean”
by Catherine Austin Fitts, which offers individual and group guidelines
for working harmoniously to transform our communities from the inside
out. Another is my article “
Preparing For Collapse: Three Things You Can Do”.
Not only will we be compelled to relate differently to humans, but to
all beings in the non-human world as well. Only as we begin to read the
survival manuals that trees, stars, insects, and birds have written for
us, will our species be spared. The very “pests” that we resent as
unhygienic or annoying may, in fact, save our lives. One year ago, the
honey bees used to circle around me on warm days when I ate my lunch
outside under the trees, sitting on the grass. Today, I sit under the
same trees on the same grass, but the honey bees are gone. No one seems
to be able to tell us why. Maybe it’s time to ask the bees to tell us
why.
Paradoxically, collapse may bring meaning and purpose to our lives
which might otherwise have eluded us. In our linear, progress-based
existence, we rarely contemplate words like “purpose.” With
civilization’s collapse, we may be forced to evaluate daily, perhaps
moment to moment, why we are here, if we want to remain here, if life
is worth living, if there is something greater than ourselves for which
we are willing to remain alive and to which we choose to contribute
energy. These decisions probably will not be made in the cozy comfort
of our homes, but in the streets, the fields, the deserts, the forests,
in the eerie echoing of our voices throughout abandoned suburbs, and
beside forgotten rivers and trails. Purpose will rapidly cease being
about what we can accomplish and will increasingly become more about
who we are. In a collapsing world, the so-called “purpose-driven life”
will no longer exist. Humans will be “driven” by only one issue: the
determination to survive and assist loved ones in surviving. From that
quest for survival will emerge authentic purpose, which will
undoubtedly not resemble anything we can imagine today.
Lest the reader infer that I’m portraying collapse as some exercise in
airy-fairy spirituality devoid of practicalities, I hasten to add that
collapse will require humans to attend to the most pragmatic realities
of existence—food, water, shelter, health care, and a host of other
survival issues. As centralized systems such as federal, state, and
local governments are eviscerated, communities will be compelled to
unite in order to solve these issues—to grow gardens, make clothing and
other items, treat each others’ illnesses, bury one another, create
community currencies, and rebuild infrastructures on an intensely local
level.
The quality of spirituality that may emerge from attending to such
fundamentals may be a genuine “fundamentalism” in the truest sense of
the word. In a post-collapse world, “fundamental” spirituality will be
about caring for the basic needs of loved ones, becoming nurturing
stewards of the ecosystems in whatever condition they may be at that
time, noticing what one now values as opposed to what was most
important prior to collapse—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling
all aspects of existence to which we were oblivious, or only mildly
attentive, before the distractions were stripped away. Certainly, this
is not likely to be the comfortable, privileged, indulgent spirituality
of the New Age workshop circuit, but may more closely resemble the
earth-based honoring of the sacred that our tribal ancestors so dearly
revered.
Spiritually, we can now begin preparing for the collapse of
civilization as we have known it by opening ourselves each day to the
“lesser collapses” of civilization that we see around us, such as the
loss of a viable, uncorrupted electoral process, the demise of
centralized systems and corporations that no one ever thought would go
bankrupt, the decay of infrastructure, and the deterioration of
institutions such as education, religion, health care, and the legal
system. Human beings have had several thousand years to create
functional societies, and in many cases, they have. Those civilizations
have also collapsed because all civilizations ultimately do. The United
States has had 231 years to fashion a sustainable nation. With the
death of Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War, corporations and
centralized systems triumphed in controlling every aspect of American
life, and they have been doing so until the present moment. Thus, not
surprisingly, in the 1970s when corporate America knew very well that
U.S. oil production had peaked and that within three decades, the
nation and the world would be confronting a catastrophic energy crisis,
it did absolutely nothing, choosing rather to wallow in the profits of
hydrocarbon energy and suppress alternative technology rather than
assist the nation in building lifeboats.
For millennia, many indigenous people have described the demise of
civilization we are now witnessing as a purification process—a time of
rebirth and transformation. Their ancient wisdom challenges us to face
with equanimity the collapse that is in process; that is, to hold as
much as humanly possible in our hearts and minds, the reality of the
pain the collapse will entail, alongside the unimaginable opportunities
it offers. As Pema Chödrön would say, “Get to know collapse well.”
Some people tell me that they would rather not know what’s going on
because they prefer to live their lives from day to day doing the best
they can to make a better world, enjoy their loved ones, and earn their
bread. I certainly understand their desire to protect themselves from
the pain of awareness, but I also know that they are exchanging
long-term preparedness for temporary comfort and that the pain of
awareness in present time is far less than the pain they will incur as
a result of ignoring it.
I do not claim to be an expert on collapse or spirituality, but I leave
you now with these words from wise women and men who are:
Only with this kind of equanimity can we realize that no matter what
comes along, we’re always standing in the middle of sacred space. Only
with equanimity can we see that everything that comes into our circle
has come to teach us what we need to know.
—Pema Chödrön
Writings 
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