I got Covid while in the hospital. I’m the sickest I’ve been since having covid in March 2020. Fortunately we have meds this time and hopefully my health will bounce back more than it did then, when my previously managed health conditions were sent into free fall

Everything is so bad. The timeline seems so short and it feels like I’m just destined to spend remaining time in and out of hospitals trying to improve until the healthcare system truly collapses or I die from some illness bc my immune system keeps getting destroyed from novel airborne illnesses I’m getting AT THE HOSPITAL

I’m on meds now and after I recover from this bout of covid I have to keep trying to improve my life with chronic illnesses so I can get a job and make rent and feed myself but what happens when healthcare really collapses. When I can’t get the meds I’m on now which keep me somewhat functional if not productive

The only people helping me right now are other disabled people and I’m like if there’s an evacuation bc of a climate event is everyone going to leave us? So many of my communities are over covid, even on the left, and I know deeply how disabling and deadly it can still be. And how disabling and deadly climate disasters can be, and the rise of fascism, and everything coming. Just feels like a lot of people are telling me that they don’t care about my survival and you’d think with the amount of history I’ve lived through in only 30 years that wouldn’t be news but it is

And disabled people are so strong and adaptable and many of us are so collapse aware. And I know it’s not just disabled people getting left behind. It just sucks. And I don’t know what I can offer to the table that will help us survive when I’m literally bedridden from what many claim is “just a cold.” Sorry for the fever induced ramble

I want to know what will happen to us. I don't care how awful the truth is. Even if everything is worse than we anticipate. At least I could find a way to deal with it. I could face it, see what I can do about it, and make the best of it.

That's not how it works. We know nothing, truly. We have a bunch of information that we haphazardly try to fit into a narrative. Given predictions by scientists who can neither agree what'll happen nor when it'll happen. Giving us tolerances so large they're effectively saying "nothing may ever happen, the world could end next year, and everything in between".

It's not the fact that we're heading off a cliff that burdens me. It's that we don't even know which cliff, how far it's away, how fast we're going, how our collective behavior will affect it in the meantime, and how deep the drop at the end of the road is going to be.

Blindly waiting feels worse than what we're waiting for.

Grateful for this sub.

I fell into some bad patterns this year when medication shortage hit and I was unable to manage my emotions when rationing my medication was not enough to iron out the supply wrinkles. My psychiatrist took me off the useful meds and honestly with the still-ongoing supply issues this might be better than continuing to ride that rickety train.

A lot of things started to feel contradictory and I fell into a pattern of self-harm. Inpatient for the first time in my life. People are lost over the summer. Grief is hard. The different meds the doc has me try mess me up in new ways, but gotta try things first. It’s been hard. A friend tried to off themselves in the Fall, and then I fell into a pattern of substance abuse. I have never been in this sort of battle before but now I’m in another paradox of pain and trying to navigate layers of internalized shame. I was taken to the ER by concerned friends. I was talking about suicide again, as the drugs made me say dark intrusive thoughts in public because I was numbed out and did not care. I am trying to ground myself. Things are bad and there’s not much support but dammit there is more than nothing. Ive been away from the problem narcotic for 8 days and I plan to keep going without. I am trying to avoid the news but the reality of climate change is like an infohazard deflating my future.

People matter. Tell your loved ones you love them

"So the fight against environmental breakdown is not and has never been just a fight against environmental breakdown. It is also a fight against the great maldistribution of wealth and power that blights every aspect of life on planet Earth. Billionaires – even the more enlightened ones – are bad for us. We cannot afford to keep them." This is collapse related as it highlights the relationship between Neoliberal Capitalism and the climate catastrophe. BAU is not sustainable.

every moment is just pain at this point :/

I mean. Cant do anything to change this shit so live on the moment and find meaning in the people and community around you, right? Except good luck finding any community in this capitalist hellscape. I speak to maybe the same 5 people in person every day and that’s it. Go to a bar, everyone’s sticking to their friends so you just stand there. Go to a hobby club? Different people everytime, never learn anyone’s name. Take a class? Everyone is focused on their learning. Where tf am I supposed to make friends?

I was listening to Currents today and yesterday by Tame Impala:

Let it Happen

I heard about a whirlwind that's coming 'round

It's gonna carry off all that isn't bound, and

When it happens, when it happens

(I won't be holding on)

So let it happen, let it happen

Yes I’m Changing

I was raging, it was late

In the world my demons cultivate

I felt the strangest emotion but it wasn't hate for once

Yes, I'm changing, yes, I'm gone

Yes, I'm older, yes, I'm moving on

And if you don't think it's a crime, you can come along with me

Life is moving, can't you see?

There's no future left for you and me

I was hoping and I was searching endlessly

But baby, now there's nothing left that

[Chorus]

I can do

So don't be blue

There is another future waiting there for you

…

It was always there, and I didn’t notice. Been listening to it since 2015 I’m sure.

I have wondered before if that’s how people become artists, musicians, influencers, whatever. Just completely giving up any obligation to make this dying society any “better,” and just living for fun and passion and spreading beauty, because the points don’t matter and the rules are made up.

I got so incredibly angry last night, realizing that I believe this society pathologizes, condemns, shuns, leaders.

Isn’t that what we all are here? Just the absolute basics of understanding what is going on and acting in accordance?

And I have been—I can’t speak for anyone else—but really nearly completely ostracized from society for speaking about it and not being sorry for having emotions about it. I’ve had multiple people suggest I was bipolar, all kinds of gaslighting from parents about not being the 100% “functioning” little adult that they imagine “functioning” is. Tried to communicate to them about it, and I mostly just got blank stares. I think my Mom kind of gets it.

But like… where do you work…? To make a difference?

I think most of us are here, because on some level we realized that these systems not only do not want to change but will stop at apparently nothing to recreate themselves.

Reality, as I said in a rant last night, is pathologized. Having emotions related to reality doubly so.

Like, when I’ve been honest about it I mostly got the cold shoulder, lots of people silently abandoning me, talking down to me subtly, etc., like I’m dealing with a “mental health” issue, that is, by definition my own, originating and ending inside me and completely disconnected from anything going on around me which is to say invalid.

Anyways. I have no issue being haply amidst collapse or finding meaning in absurdity—it’s doing so alone and being ostracized when I try to share it with people that goes against my mammalian biology and probably hundreds of years of evolution.

Guess I’m just realizing that I don’t have to do it anymore. I can move to some tiny little hippie town, do something simple—fun even, transition to a new way of life. With others who are doing the same.

“You can’t fix a problem with the same kind of thinking (that any solution will come out of a society so atomized it is metastizing) that got you into it.” - or something like that by Albert Einstein.

Just this. Probably need this t-shirt. I'd like to see the comet in the sky flying towards the Earth. It is so tough looking at all the anomalies and feeling the dread, not really knowing the timeline... How are you all coping?..

That's it, that's the title.

Tw. Rambling about people dying.

The new Argentinian president and his group of politicians have essentially promised that they would kill people. They have said, time and time again, that they would use violence against protesting civilians.

People say I'm overreacting due to how angry I feel, but I think my anger is completely justified. People should be angrier, they should feel the true gravity of this situation. People are going to die, we've been warned, and we can't do shit about it, the culprits will most likely never get persecuted.

We are being governed by murderers/will be murderers, and people think my level of indignation is unjustified. Well, forgive me for not wanting innocent civilians to get murdered I guess.

What do you think are some worthwhile efforts of any kind? What are some things you guys do? I wanna say specifically to help nature/biodiversity, but I'm interested in literally anything really, I just wanna help whoever/whatever I can. One action I'm looking into is native plant gardening, but what other actions/volunteering opportunities should I look out for? Just looking for ways to turn the depression into something that can help others. I'm not trying to save the world (definitely been stuck in that impossible spiral at times). I want to refocus on doing what is within my control or what's obtainable in my corner of the world instead of letting the stress of the whole world come crashing down on me.

Are people who are codependent also more likely to be collapse aware? Codependent people rush to solve and control things. Seems like a trait more likely to dig deep enough to learn how much is spiraling out of control. Just figured out that I am codependent (through therapy), and am making this connection. Curious if others out there feel this way too.

I realize I’ve been in some way shape or form looping back to this question with people, for the last 10 years are so. People meaning, friends, coworkers, casual acquaintances.

What that question means to me- tell me how you are keeping up with low wages, inflation, toxic work places, climate breakdown, housing security, etc. most of my conversations with others tend to all lead down an anti capitalist, depressing turn.

I keep asking, because the answers I have received, don’t make sense to me. What I am realizing, is there is no correct answer out there. The truth I believe, is this current system is meant to annihilate us.

how are you coping with grief and isolation because others may not be aware?

If you've never heard this song, you might like it.

It feels like the quintessential "yeah life sucks, but it's always sucked" song.

With more optimism to remind people what humanity has survived so far.

I found this song several years ago and it's a personal favorite.
Let me know if you enjoy the song and it uplifted you at all.

My title is mostly rhetorical. I am just so disarmed by how many people ignore the simple statement that we live on a finite planet with finite resources. When discussing the resource exhaustion on the horizon (top soil loss, freshwater loss, the finite nature of fossil fuels) I receive a constant “well find more”. Where? Where will we find more? Do people think the world is just their country and that I am talking about the resources here? “When we run out we’ll take some from others” we already are! That’s the whole point of global capitalism, to extract the resources and wealth from every inch of the planet.

Does anyone else encounter this? It’s a strange cognitive dissonance that seems so easy to disprove. But of course that’s not how people change opinion so… idk.

I'm posting here because people in the other mental health support subs don't understand my angle. I'm 38 and grew up in a fundamentalist Christian 'Moral Majority' household. I wasted the 2010s trying to make peace with my fundamentalist Christian family and was miserable the entire time. My biggest regret is how I spent that decade.

I strongly believe the following things are inevitable within the next two years.

• Trump wins the 2024 election
• U.S. debt default
• U.S. dollar loses it's status as world reserve currency
• U.S. pulls out of NATO
• End of the U.S. constitution as our governing document.
• Hyperinflation on the scale of Venezuela or the Weimar Republic
• Massive civil rights crisis in the US as the regime attempts to enforce a neo-Victorian culture and lifestyle. International sanctions will be likely.
• Trump uses a nuclear weapon
• Civil war, depending on how the American people react to what's about to happen and also, whether the military splinters when Trump issues illegal orders.

I'm a believer in the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory and 'The Fourth Turning' and believe that is where we are. I also don't believe America is awake enough to get through this one.

A lot of people think they will leave the country when the shit hits the fan, but that's going to be a lot more difficult than most people think. The lucky few will be able to leave this country, but I think the U.S. internal turmoil will spill over into other countries in the coming years. Like the Germans who fled for Poland or Austria, they weren't safe for long.

On a personal level, I simply can't live a normal life with this elephant in the room. My 30s were ruined by COVID and I don't want to rebuild my life only to have it snatched away again in a little over a year. So, I'm stuck in an never-ending terrified state. Another factor is I'm gay, but I'm afraid to be completely out of the closet right now as I believe the LGBTQ community will be among the first victims of the coming Trump regime. I'm straight-acting enough. It's hard to believe reality has come to this given how it was in 2015. It's also hard to forgive myself for wasting the 2010s.

I SPECIFICALLY blame the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage for the rise of MAGA and Trump. EDIT: A lot of people are taking this out of context and I want to say I am NOT blaming the LGBTQ community. This is ENTIRELY the fault of the fundamentalists whose brains broke when they lost that specific culture war battle. I grew up in a church that preached consistently that God would destroy America and that we'd have a civil war if same-sex marriage was ever legalized. Terrifyingly, it appears they were right.

The 2010s were my years to enjoy and now it's too late.

Can anyone else here relate?

2 years ago I started working on a short film about dealing mentally with collapse. I found a psychotherapist on /r/collapse and made an animated short from a long interview.

Private link, please don't share (publicly, anyway)

It's done pretty decently at film festivals and I'm now putting it into distribution. Some of that is going to be targeted at educational contexts, and I want to put together a 1-2 page discussion guide for those purposes. I'm not a mental health professional or educator so I'm trying my luck here to see if anyone here who is one of those things would like to help me with that in some capacity, whether it's looking over my drafts or writing it directly. (I am still in contact with the original psychotherapist, but he is in circumstances that preclude his assistance.) DM or email at venusbytuesday@gmail.com

General comments on the film, including negative ones, are welcome. If you want to work together on a future thing you can also contact me.

More info on my film here. It's a collapse-aware film but I market it mainly as a film about climate anxiety.

I've been an ostrich for the past... however long. There was a moment there where the cracks in the corporate internet looked like everything was about to come tumbling down, and with it the Death of Capitalism! and we'd all just be sassy anarchist trash animals dancing in the flames... But we're in a slow crumble, not a cathartic collapse. I felt keyed up and ready to fuck shit up, but I didn't know what to throw rocks at, and so I didn't, and in the meantime I still got bills and people I care about so I guess I'll just keep going to work until something changes. Things do change... But never in the “right” way. So now I'm in a rut that feels like it has all of us, where I'm constantly tired, barely making ends meet, and unable to do anything with my life aside from work and maintain myself so I can still work.

I wasn't supposed to come back online for the first time in months to run off on my usual, literally tired rant. I was supposed to come on to tell you to read "The Mysteries" if you haven't already.

I only just picked up my copy two days ago. I had seen the video about how Bill Watterson and John Kascht had spent years figuring out not just how to make this book, but how to even rectify their apparently incompatible styles and methods. The story of two folks who one assumes must be friends (and if not friends, clearly had a lot of respect and admiration for each other) who spent years banging their heads against a wall together and somehow managed to not bang heads too hard against each other is remarkable. The story of this book could almost overshadow the book itself...

Except the book is very, very good. Given what I had heard going in, "An adult fable, a picture book, with an aggressively stylized aesthetic," I was worried I would enjoy it, find it charming and something nice to look at, but somehow inescapably trite. Instead I found my anxieties mirrored and acknowledged, and told to remember we are all dust. Not an original meditation, but a gorgeous attempt at rendering it.

I'm not going too in-depth on the "narrative" here, or what I think one should take from it. It's just an incredibly brief parable of human social evolution (I'd say "social progress" but whether or not that is debatable is, at least from the narrative's timeline, irrelevant). This is mostly a visual piece.

The book feels like a collection of... almost colloidion photography, with it's concrete starkness that sublimates into a dark etherealness. Everything has the feel of long shutter speeds and slow emulsions, a moment caught in molasses instead of film. The stark shift from John's eye for detail and Bill's efficient abstraction likely punches this effect up considerably. I'm not someone who knows much about art, but I've always fallen for it more when it heavily intersects with craft. And these images were absolutely crafted. If I'm ever in a situation where I could have wall art, I would deeply like prints of a few of the pages from this book... but given Bill's history with merchandising, I don't see that happening in any official capacity. I'm also loathe to the idea of any one of these pages out of it's context.

As I've said, it's not a new meditation, but the book made me revisit it. Upon reading it again it lay in my lap on the last page for a spell while I reflected on how... insignificant? temporary? doomed? we all are. How we could fix everything tomorrow and we'd still be one weird solar flare, one big rock, one... Mystery away from having nothing to fix ever again. It's definitely very nihilist. Big doomer vibes. I don't think that makes it inherently toxic. I think we need the space to talk about the sucking hole in many of us that have grown up relatively comfortable in a world with horrors, a pit in our stomach that grows as we watch the bubble that insulated us from those horrors crumble more and more every day... We could build a better world, but this one has a bed for me, a functional kitchen, and lots of mindless stuff for me to consume in between work shifts. What little comfort (or "control") I have took a lot of "labor" to "earn." We could just fuck up this world and I wouldn't be comfy anymore and that would be awful. So time passes and becomes a weird soup, and next thing I know I’ve spent a decade just existing. At this rate the rest of my life will just be an indistinct blur into the grave. But that’s only a helpful realization if you are able to relinquish some of your comfort to change the tempo. The narrative provides no recommendations.

This is where the craft steps in and saves it. I can only imagine the myriad conversations between the two artists as they learned how to work with each other, and the solitary satisfaction of working on an individual component for the whole. Of being a speck of dust in a mote and deciding what your purpose is in that day, what you are going to work on for yourself, for your friend, for your partner, for your family, for your community… What you are going to do in spite of knowing on a long enough timeline nothing we do matters… The craft answers what the narrative cannot.

So in ads and in American Football broadcasts I hear a lot of music from 2008-12. Crank Dat. All The Way Turnt Up. Both playing in stadiums. We are supposed to look back fondly on the days we were young wild and free. They play that song too.

I feel like that's all I do though. I've had multiple setbacks wnd personal collapses amidst the collapse we face. I always thiught I'd die in my 20s. I didn't but I miss them so much. College as the best years isn't supposed to be true but it always is for me. I was a circus performer and stand up comedian. I was a small town star and known for being reclusive. I have always shied away from social status crap but it's the time I was most popular. The period of time from 2011-16.

So the damndest thing is I was a hipster known for not listening to Top 40 crap like the songs I mentioned above. Even though I listen to rap music. Now all of the sudden YT starts making playlists of my type of music from 2008-13. I find it spooky.

Can be collapse related or not.

I’ve been reading:

• Eye of the Storm: Facing climate and social chaos with calm and courage by Terry Lepage

• Universal Christ by Richard Rohr (been having some spiritual existential crises and a renewed interest in Christianity/making peace with my Christian upbringing)

• Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace Wells

• The 100 Years War on Palestine by Rhashid Khalidi (wanting to learn some history on the conflict).

• A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (his sci fi books tend to be mind warping similar to the way collapse is, at times sharing common themes).

I know it’s too many books at once, but I probably have some ADHD and I enjoy jumping around a bit.

I just read this article today and had a sudden realisation of how absurd existence is. An existential crisis I suppose. I've always been a negative thinker and lived my life with severe depression, anxiety, and what I suspect is undiagnosed add. I didn't expect to have such a reaction to an article (that really isn't all that different to a lot of the content regarding collapse) but here we are.

Life is absolutely meaningless. Even moreso in the present day because our world is controlled by a small number of incredibly powerful corporations who are obliterating the safe operations of our planetary boundaries for fake wealth. They're now scared to lose their power from fossil fuels that they are ramping up production of petrochemicals for plastic!!

We are absolutely powerless to stop it and the planet's flora and fauna will ultimately perish because of it. So what is the point of living? To see it all burn? To live in a world devoid of animals and plants? How do you find purpose in a world that is being raped by humanity?

Can you give examples of people you know who are completely unaware of collapse. Who are they? What makes them unaware? What is their blindspot? I ask because I dont know why people cant see whats coming for them.

Example-

Wealthy New York friends who are supported by their family. Blindspot -parents money may runs out. Many boomers have made bad investments.

Lower class Pennsylvania friends went into debt buying a house they cant afford to keep up with everyone else who is doing the same thing.

Blindspot- banks cut them off, cant refinance.

I didn't know where else to ask this, since r/collapse seems to be more for articles and news about collapse and not actual discussions aside from Casual Fridays. But there have been several incidents in the area of people's valuables being stolen while they pump gas around here that several businesses have closed entirely due to the nature of the situation.

I am wondering if this uptick in crime is a symptom of the ever spreading cancer that is collapse. I am sure that not everyone involved in this is doing it out of necessity, but when working 9-5 40 hours a week is just enough to keep one's head above water, I wouldn't be surprised if more and more thefts become a thing.

I am not condoning such actions. I am just asking a question.

Hey all, I really just need to get this off my mind and have nowhere else to do so but here, so here goes. I recently came across the new recalibration of the LtG model as shown in the model above. It shows that there's a good chance peak industrial output and food production will come in the next ~1 1/2 years, and peak population soon after. Additionally, pollution is likely to rise at a great rate until the end of the century.

I understand that this has probably already been known by most, and to an extent I knew as well, but seeing it in this stark detail is kind of terrifying me all over again. What happens when food and industrial output drop? Beyond the obvious economic scarcity and worldwide starvation, I'm betting there will be wars, genocides, and mass events of terror to follow (which granted are already happening). Is this really the last good 18 months? Is the world really going to go to shit just as I come of age?

For context, I'm a 21 year old in the US whos currently in uni and comes from a decently well of family. What am I supposed to tell my dad who plans to retire in 10 years? Or my little brother who wants to go to college? What am I supposed to do at a fucking college of the world is on the brink of absolute chaos and death? An ecology degree seems ironically hilarious and naive to me now and yet I'm still pursuing it. How am I meant to justify doing anything at this point, or even exist in this world and be genuine with others knowing all of this?

Well, guess I gotta go back to my studies. If you read all of this, thank you.

Context: I work at a fairly major tour company.

I know, we're all going to be eventually screwed but lately I've been feeling depressed working in the field of tourism. Like we're contributing to the climate change by selling all these tours and such so that people take vacations using flights and cruise ships.

My tour company barely survived the covid wave but I doubt we'd be able to again if we were to be hit by another type of pandemic. So I'll probably be one of the firsts to lose my job if anything of that level ever comes up again.

It's not only that but I've become really jaded in interacting with a bunch of rich or entitled tourists who treat us as slaves. They complain about the smallest of things and put all the blame on you despite it's their fault for not reading the fine print. Asshole tourists who trash or damage nature sites. Recently I had to explain to a tourist couple that they might have to pay fines for damaging a beautiful coral when they went scuba diving and got yelled that they didn't give a shit and had no legal obligation.

I used to think working in tourism was my calling because I liked promoting my beautiful region and talking with people from all over the world. But now, I'm depressed thinking about people traveling without much care about future environmental effects tourism will bring. I'm depressed how I feel like contributing to the collapse.

I should think about switching careers but I don't know where and I'm probably too old/late to start somewhere new.