Day of the Sickness, 32nd of Summer, 525 M.E. (Deneb): The Guardian ran an article today on the subreddit r/collapse. "The threat of nuclear war, genocide in Gaza, ChatGPT reducing human cognitive ability, another summer of record heat," The Guardian wrote. "Every day brings a torrent of unimaginable horror. It used to be weeks between disasters, now we’re lucky to get hours." But instead of ignoring the distressing events, the redditors of r/collapse look the disasters in the eye and unflinchingly document and discuss the End Times.
Posts from r/collapse would occasionally pop up in my Reddit feed, but I never officially followed the sub. But after the Guardian article, I popped in and almost immediately saw this:
I don’t think collapse will look like some sudden disaster. It’s already happening, quietly, gradually. Every day, life gets a little harder. Rent rises, wages shrink, apartments get smaller, work hours get longer. I see my friends and family less, and I care less, too.
I’ve started lowering my standards for everything. Jobs, food, relationships. Job security barely exists anymore. People hold onto worn-out clothes, fewer get married, even fewer have kids. Most of us are just buried in our phones, numbing ourselves with distractions, disconnected from reality.
The dreams I once had for my life feel distant now, like echoes. What’s left is debt, exhaustion, and the constant pressure to survive. And yet, every day, we’re told we’re free, safe, and prosperous.
But this is what collapse really looks like. Not fire or chaos, just the slow erosion of meaning, until we forget what it felt like to hope for something better.
We see our lives becoming worse. We see more people dying from violence and drugs. The number of homeless people keeps increasing and we start worrying that if we lose our job or the Social Security program ends, we will be the next ones. Fisheries are disappearing, the corals are bleached, species extinction is a daily event. The worst president to ever occupy the White House got reelected, and this time the Senate and media just follow along with whatever he says.
Another word for collapse is entropy. Another word for entropy is impermanence, and impermanence, if anything, is swift. Our natural environment is crumbling, the social safety net is weakening, and most of us struggle to maintain mental and physical health. To simultaneously heal individuals, society, and nature, these interconnected challenges should be addressed together. There's nothing that can be done about the physical realities of entropy and impermanence, but all things and experiences are interconnected and arise in dependence on other factors. The key to coping with impermanence is interconnectedness.
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