It doesn’t have to be a specific time period, but for example the aboriginal people of Australia maintained their society for 60,000 years without recking the environment. No private property, very egalitarian. Direct power over their food and livelihoods. Sacred existence.
Research supports that Hunter gatherer people have more leisure than modern humans to boot! Like a 20 hour work week. They spent time together doing everything. And they shared music and stories as the sun went down.
Obviously there were hardships. Higher infant and adolescent mortality accounts for the lower life expectancy… but otherwise their health was better and lifespan similar.
Maybe we’ll never go back to that exactly. But I think we remember it as we contemplate creating a new society that places ecological health above other markers of success…. Among other things.
I think there was a specific point — about 7,000 years ago — where humanity "went wrong".
It was the advent of grain agriculture.
Before that, food could not be saved past a turn of the seasons. You couldn't hoard for very long, because the food ran out or spoiled.
About 7,000 years ago, in at least three independent regions, grain agriculture arose — wheat in Mesopotamia, rice in the Orient, and corn in Mesoamerica.
Food that could be stored for more than a year gave rise to hoarding and withholding, leading to social stratification, hierarchy, and "power over". Granary receipts (on clay tablets) were arguably the first form of money, which formed the basis for capitalism.
Such civilizations are notable for their enduring monuments, such as pyramids. In short, excess hoarded food turned into symbols of power and tribute.
It need not be that way. Equatorial regions, seemed to avoid this. When you can go out on any day of the year and easily gather food, hoarding holds no power.
A civilization based on hazelnuts in BC managed to avoid that trap. It left no grand artifacts. It is only known because at its centre, near present-day Hazelton, there are gathered many varieties of hazelnuts that came from all corners of the Pacific Coast.
How did they avoid the "grain trap?" Without refrigeration, hazelnuts go rancid.
"[Ishmael] There's only one way you can force people to accept an intolerable lifestyle. [Julie] Yea. You have to lock up the food." — Daniel Quinn, The Teachings That Came Before & After Ishmael, p181
I will just add a couple of resources to further illuminate the question of how we got to where we are now.
1) BBC documentary series “Century of The Self”, which reveals when, how, and by whom (hint - Freud’s nephew) marketing and consumerism were developed to a high art of persuasion and manipulation.
2) The book “Underground History of American Education” by former New York State Teacher of the Year ~ John Taylor Gatto.
Of course, there is more to it than just these two elements, but together they constitute a primer in how a few wealthy and powerful people came to control the development of our culture and its institutions.
Punching through. What a wonderful way of putting it. We need to make IRL, local friends, as many as possible, focused on growing food as well as all the other skills that makes life (and community) possible under collapse conditions, because those conditions are coming over the horizon. Setting up a system that enables people to work together on common goals they all agreed to support. It’s a lot of work. So yeah. Punching through is an apt analogy.
Like politics, it’s all local. Start with notices at the local library. Local. Physical. Online has had its chance and failed miserably.
I love that we can, (so far!) have these discussions around tactical responses to the unfolding collapse. Everyone's personal circumstances are different, for those of us 'better off', by the omnicidal cultures material definition, we can have intellectual discussions and hypothesize tactics, but we must always remember, the overwhelming majority of the planets human inhabitants don't have 'time' for this debate, they are desperately scrabbling around in a losing battle with survival. All the other species, flora and fauna aren't asked their opinion, with the exception for a small number of 'Westerners' and almost every indigenous people on the planet.
We don't all have to agree, we never have, we never will, the more privilege we have, the more responsibility to behave, respond and act with the greater good, the living Biome.
I'll drop my latest article on our predicament below and folks can dissect them as they see fit, gently hopefully :)
Yes - different people in different places will have different responses, and I am certainly not going to suggest for example, what may or may not be appropriate for Palestinians as how to appropriately respond to the militarised fascist annihilation, dispossession and genocide.
But regarding collapse more generally, I would say this - there is no 'way through'. It's a dead-end kill-box, and all of us on this planet are in the box. This doesn't mean we shouldn't make some effort to die with dignity and with commitment to where, who, and what, we care about but let's not deceive ourselves as to the outcome. Effectively, to use another metaphor, we have already taken the cyanide pills and now we're just waiting for the full effect to kick in.
I know there aren’t any guarantees. The planet might be past the point of no return. I take it that’s your position. And perhaps it’s delusional thinking to believe otherwise. I’m not sure. Im agnostic on this one. We don’t have a crystal ball. But either way, we agree it can lead to more dignity.
I think we might see small communities surviving at high latitudes at an 1800s level lifestyle. Other then that, it's all up for grabs. No one's ever seen this before. No certainty except when it happens, it will be brutal.
My thoughts are that if people can manage to build close knit local communities that back each other up and start working like a collective immune system against centralized authority by surrounding it and rooting it out whenever there is an infection then it might work.
It's getting trust and local community relationships established that's the tricky part. Without those communities in place when there is a collapse it seems very likely that some other authoritarian force will simply rise again and the oppression depressingly repeats.
Internet is a low trust network. So meeting people in your neighborhood community centers, churches, bookstores, groceries and serving people less fortunate are a few easy ways to make friends and influence everyone.
Here in Seattle we have Katie Wilson running for mayor as a progressive who shares my interest in building a great city for everyone. Better pay, minimum wage $20 an hour, caps on rents, social housing, more public rapid transit, fewer cars, more investment in schools and parks where we congregate. We want more cheese and more time to play in rat park.
How to change if you want to grow community, build trust human to human? You can take tiny steps -- look up BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits for instance.
There is nothing permanent here. Surfing is the metaphor for life I use because to your last point, the fight is never going to end. As socialist Tony Benn said years ago, paraphrasing: There are two flames in the human heart. The first is the flame of anger at injustice and the second flame is hope for a better world. The fight never ends. But that is our work.
You need a daily spiritual practice to really see this impermanence, interdependence, compassion practice. Look at buddhist practices or something similar -- no god, but a way to meet the thought that authoritarian force will simply rise again and oppression depresses you. Those are thoughts that you can challenge by observing history. Challenge your thoughts with kindness, not reactivity saying they are wrong. They serve a purpose. What is it?
We stand on the shoulders of giants. Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi my father and mother, ancestors for me. Who do you thank for your beautiful heart and taking a stand? Not sure who you are Beach Hippie, but Americans who happen to be Black have been fighting fascism here for the life of this country. And we have expanded rights in this cage we are in largely thanks to their nonviolent protests and organizing with Whites and other people breaking through to the other side of authoritarian rule.
And that is just one example of people pushing back to create a more just world.
Thank you Justin. This really grounded me. I’m the co-chair of the Green Team at my church. We’ve done a good deal to move the church along the path of sustainability - solar panels that generate all of our electricity, starting the conversion to heat pumps, insulation and air-sealing to improve an 1860’s era building, EV charging station, composting, LEDs, native plants on the grounds (a start anyway) - and all also as a means of outreach and education for the congregation in their lives and in their homes.
But you bring me back to the big reality of where we are. I have to take this to my church group. Talk about things like this. Thank you.
A church has a built in community (and hopefully love). So you are well ahead of most people just on that alone. Consider community defense at some point as well. Things like recon skills, aversion and conflict resolution are great skillsets for the community to have. I have some writing on tekmil that might be useful too.
Great stuff Justin! I haven't seen collapse as such an ambush yet, but you hit the nail on the head.
And you actually provide a perfect introductory text for the kollapscamp.de in Brandenburg, Germany, at the end of August. That's exactly what the event is all about: “turn, face the line, and punch through”. I'll be there precisely because of your five named areas
- Grief That Doesn't Flinch -> Counseling (always underestimated by me)
- Skills That Ground You -> Learn first aid and low tech
- Structures That Don't Obey -> building and promoting alternatives
- Resistance That Bites -> renounce capitalism wherever possible
- Community That Endures -> a tough nut to crack, (mental) resources are often exhausted, tempers overheat too quickly - but the Kollapscamp.de wants to be celebrated as a big party... :)
Count me in. The only thing I can add from my experience is self-defense from covert harassment and interference. If you're a leader or a member of a core group.. it began with members picking fights over trivial matters to disrupt the meeting, spreading rumors while vying for a leadership role or selling a product and a news reporter asking to do a candid interview of our group. The targeting persisted and became overt years after I left the group beginning in the mid 90's up until 2013 when I chose permanent recovery and started a sole proprietorship completely distancing myself from politics and activism. My conclusion after taking the inner path is that the goal is "trauma based personality change" perhaps to create contingencies for a greater reset or great simplification and to keep order while alpha testing crowd control and experimental cures to common diseases for the Elite ahead of a plotted event an ELE leading to a population bottleneck.
This is the straight scoop on our future. I became the Population Preacher in 1964, at 14 years of age, making charts showing that humans would destroy the planet without population control. Of course, I also predicted they would not practice population control, so the outcome was already inevitable. People did not take kindly to my ideas, but here we are!
Very well done! Yes, that ambush analogy resonates including the implication that a lot of us won't make it through. Regarding a name for what we need to get through, I've adopted a term I heard Bill Rees use a lot, unraveling. It implies that things don't all fall apart at once; some systems continue to operate for a while. But I think you are looking for something more concrete. How about Sufficiency? Enough water, food, and shelter to keep on living for the survivors to discover and build new systems on the fly to carry on, at least as long as circumstances allow...
It doesn’t have to be a specific time period, but for example the aboriginal people of Australia maintained their society for 60,000 years without recking the environment. No private property, very egalitarian. Direct power over their food and livelihoods. Sacred existence.
Research supports that Hunter gatherer people have more leisure than modern humans to boot! Like a 20 hour work week. They spent time together doing everything. And they shared music and stories as the sun went down.
Obviously there were hardships. Higher infant and adolescent mortality accounts for the lower life expectancy… but otherwise their health was better and lifespan similar.
Maybe we’ll never go back to that exactly. But I think we remember it as we contemplate creating a new society that places ecological health above other markers of success…. Among other things.
I think there was a specific point — about 7,000 years ago — where humanity "went wrong".
It was the advent of grain agriculture.
Before that, food could not be saved past a turn of the seasons. You couldn't hoard for very long, because the food ran out or spoiled.
About 7,000 years ago, in at least three independent regions, grain agriculture arose — wheat in Mesopotamia, rice in the Orient, and corn in Mesoamerica.
Food that could be stored for more than a year gave rise to hoarding and withholding, leading to social stratification, hierarchy, and "power over". Granary receipts (on clay tablets) were arguably the first form of money, which formed the basis for capitalism.
Such civilizations are notable for their enduring monuments, such as pyramids. In short, excess hoarded food turned into symbols of power and tribute.
It need not be that way. Equatorial regions, seemed to avoid this. When you can go out on any day of the year and easily gather food, hoarding holds no power.
A civilization based on hazelnuts in BC managed to avoid that trap. It left no grand artifacts. It is only known because at its centre, near present-day Hazelton, there are gathered many varieties of hazelnuts that came from all corners of the Pacific Coast.
How did they avoid the "grain trap?" Without refrigeration, hazelnuts go rancid.
"[Ishmael] There's only one way you can force people to accept an intolerable lifestyle. [Julie] Yea. You have to lock up the food." — Daniel Quinn, The Teachings That Came Before & After Ishmael, p181
Hands down ~ ONE of the BEST THINGS I’VE EVER READ about our global/societal/personal dilemma!! 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Thank you thank you for articulating things I have long been aware of and thinking about, you just took me to a whole new level of clarity.
Well it makes my day to read a comment like this! Thank you for affirming.
Earned five entries in my database of favourite quotes!
https://substack.com/@tzikhit/note/c-121098963?r=5784vh
I will just add a couple of resources to further illuminate the question of how we got to where we are now.
1) BBC documentary series “Century of The Self”, which reveals when, how, and by whom (hint - Freud’s nephew) marketing and consumerism were developed to a high art of persuasion and manipulation.
2) The book “Underground History of American Education” by former New York State Teacher of the Year ~ John Taylor Gatto.
Of course, there is more to it than just these two elements, but together they constitute a primer in how a few wealthy and powerful people came to control the development of our culture and its institutions.
Yes, Bernays… I saw that documentary. It’s a MUST WATCH. Intrigued by Gatto’s book. I think I’ve heard some about it. Adding to my list.
Available here: https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_643
I actually have a copy of Bernay's book in my library. If you aren't shaken after reading it, there's nothing to be done with you.
Punching through. What a wonderful way of putting it. We need to make IRL, local friends, as many as possible, focused on growing food as well as all the other skills that makes life (and community) possible under collapse conditions, because those conditions are coming over the horizon. Setting up a system that enables people to work together on common goals they all agreed to support. It’s a lot of work. So yeah. Punching through is an apt analogy.
Like politics, it’s all local. Start with notices at the local library. Local. Physical. Online has had its chance and failed miserably.
I love that we can, (so far!) have these discussions around tactical responses to the unfolding collapse. Everyone's personal circumstances are different, for those of us 'better off', by the omnicidal cultures material definition, we can have intellectual discussions and hypothesize tactics, but we must always remember, the overwhelming majority of the planets human inhabitants don't have 'time' for this debate, they are desperately scrabbling around in a losing battle with survival. All the other species, flora and fauna aren't asked their opinion, with the exception for a small number of 'Westerners' and almost every indigenous people on the planet.
We don't all have to agree, we never have, we never will, the more privilege we have, the more responsibility to behave, respond and act with the greater good, the living Biome.
I'll drop my latest article on our predicament below and folks can dissect them as they see fit, gently hopefully :)
https://kevinhester.live/2025/05/27/navigating-the-decent-into-the-abyss/
Yes - different people in different places will have different responses, and I am certainly not going to suggest for example, what may or may not be appropriate for Palestinians as how to appropriately respond to the militarised fascist annihilation, dispossession and genocide.
But regarding collapse more generally, I would say this - there is no 'way through'. It's a dead-end kill-box, and all of us on this planet are in the box. This doesn't mean we shouldn't make some effort to die with dignity and with commitment to where, who, and what, we care about but let's not deceive ourselves as to the outcome. Effectively, to use another metaphor, we have already taken the cyanide pills and now we're just waiting for the full effect to kick in.
I know there aren’t any guarantees. The planet might be past the point of no return. I take it that’s your position. And perhaps it’s delusional thinking to believe otherwise. I’m not sure. Im agnostic on this one. We don’t have a crystal ball. But either way, we agree it can lead to more dignity.
I think we might see small communities surviving at high latitudes at an 1800s level lifestyle. Other then that, it's all up for grabs. No one's ever seen this before. No certainty except when it happens, it will be brutal.
Solid summary sir.
This is fantastic, Justin - such a clear-headed and heart-felt description of what is happening and our options going forward. THANK YOU.
Much appreciated and thank you for reading and the comment. 🙏
Nice essay.
My thoughts are that if people can manage to build close knit local communities that back each other up and start working like a collective immune system against centralized authority by surrounding it and rooting it out whenever there is an infection then it might work.
It's getting trust and local community relationships established that's the tricky part. Without those communities in place when there is a collapse it seems very likely that some other authoritarian force will simply rise again and the oppression depressingly repeats.
1000%. That’s why community security is an absolute must… and too few eco villages and other efforts are embracing it.
Beach hippie:
Internet is a low trust network. So meeting people in your neighborhood community centers, churches, bookstores, groceries and serving people less fortunate are a few easy ways to make friends and influence everyone.
Here in Seattle we have Katie Wilson running for mayor as a progressive who shares my interest in building a great city for everyone. Better pay, minimum wage $20 an hour, caps on rents, social housing, more public rapid transit, fewer cars, more investment in schools and parks where we congregate. We want more cheese and more time to play in rat park.
How to change if you want to grow community, build trust human to human? You can take tiny steps -- look up BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits for instance.
There is nothing permanent here. Surfing is the metaphor for life I use because to your last point, the fight is never going to end. As socialist Tony Benn said years ago, paraphrasing: There are two flames in the human heart. The first is the flame of anger at injustice and the second flame is hope for a better world. The fight never ends. But that is our work.
You need a daily spiritual practice to really see this impermanence, interdependence, compassion practice. Look at buddhist practices or something similar -- no god, but a way to meet the thought that authoritarian force will simply rise again and oppression depresses you. Those are thoughts that you can challenge by observing history. Challenge your thoughts with kindness, not reactivity saying they are wrong. They serve a purpose. What is it?
We stand on the shoulders of giants. Martin Luther King Jr. Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi my father and mother, ancestors for me. Who do you thank for your beautiful heart and taking a stand? Not sure who you are Beach Hippie, but Americans who happen to be Black have been fighting fascism here for the life of this country. And we have expanded rights in this cage we are in largely thanks to their nonviolent protests and organizing with Whites and other people breaking through to the other side of authoritarian rule.
And that is just one example of people pushing back to create a more just world.
Thank you Justin. This really grounded me. I’m the co-chair of the Green Team at my church. We’ve done a good deal to move the church along the path of sustainability - solar panels that generate all of our electricity, starting the conversion to heat pumps, insulation and air-sealing to improve an 1860’s era building, EV charging station, composting, LEDs, native plants on the grounds (a start anyway) - and all also as a means of outreach and education for the congregation in their lives and in their homes.
But you bring me back to the big reality of where we are. I have to take this to my church group. Talk about things like this. Thank you.
A church has a built in community (and hopefully love). So you are well ahead of most people just on that alone. Consider community defense at some point as well. Things like recon skills, aversion and conflict resolution are great skillsets for the community to have. I have some writing on tekmil that might be useful too.
"Consider community defence at some point as well."
Or living on an island.
Be a small target.
Great stuff Justin! I haven't seen collapse as such an ambush yet, but you hit the nail on the head.
And you actually provide a perfect introductory text for the kollapscamp.de in Brandenburg, Germany, at the end of August. That's exactly what the event is all about: “turn, face the line, and punch through”. I'll be there precisely because of your five named areas
- Grief That Doesn't Flinch -> Counseling (always underestimated by me)
- Skills That Ground You -> Learn first aid and low tech
- Structures That Don't Obey -> building and promoting alternatives
- Resistance That Bites -> renounce capitalism wherever possible
- Community That Endures -> a tough nut to crack, (mental) resources are often exhausted, tempers overheat too quickly - but the Kollapscamp.de wants to be celebrated as a big party... :)
Count me in. The only thing I can add from my experience is self-defense from covert harassment and interference. If you're a leader or a member of a core group.. it began with members picking fights over trivial matters to disrupt the meeting, spreading rumors while vying for a leadership role or selling a product and a news reporter asking to do a candid interview of our group. The targeting persisted and became overt years after I left the group beginning in the mid 90's up until 2013 when I chose permanent recovery and started a sole proprietorship completely distancing myself from politics and activism. My conclusion after taking the inner path is that the goal is "trauma based personality change" perhaps to create contingencies for a greater reset or great simplification and to keep order while alpha testing crowd control and experimental cures to common diseases for the Elite ahead of a plotted event an ELE leading to a population bottleneck.
Good analogy. Thanks for the mental framework.
This is the straight scoop on our future. I became the Population Preacher in 1964, at 14 years of age, making charts showing that humans would destroy the planet without population control. Of course, I also predicted they would not practice population control, so the outcome was already inevitable. People did not take kindly to my ideas, but here we are!
Ironically, it turned out that the hippies were right. 😉
https://substack.com/@tzikhit/note/c-121344295?r=5784vh
Very well done! Yes, that ambush analogy resonates including the implication that a lot of us won't make it through. Regarding a name for what we need to get through, I've adopted a term I heard Bill Rees use a lot, unraveling. It implies that things don't all fall apart at once; some systems continue to operate for a while. But I think you are looking for something more concrete. How about Sufficiency? Enough water, food, and shelter to keep on living for the survivors to discover and build new systems on the fly to carry on, at least as long as circumstances allow...
Justin you literally are offering the most valuable stuff I here. 98 hearts is not enough. I am going to promote you more.
:-) Made my day. Thank you.