chat

Either it's too late or it's not but we will only ever know the truth of it in hindsight. That's a scary proposition but, unfortunately, it's the reality.

It's really important to not foreclose on the opportunity for change by giving up prematurely. I know that's hard (believe me, I do.) While it's scary to confront the prospect of doing everything you can and failing or doing everything wrong and thus failing, it's important to focus on confronting what it would be like not trying and failing. After all, everything seems impossible until it's achieved and then retrospectively it seems as though it was an inevitability and so it's preferable to try and fail than to not try at all. This isn't any consolation and it's completely intellectualizing the problem but it's an important frame to maintain imo.

There's three paths forward, from what I can tell:

1. Revolution and bringing the world back from the brink

2. Climate apocalypse

3. Climate catastrophe and reconstruction

1 is what we can hope for. Idk if it's a viable possibility but so be it. 2 means we're all fucked. 3 seems the most likely but, thankfully, we can shoot for 1 and if we land at 3 then basically all the efforts will still be applicable to the latter anyway.

A vulgar take on this next part would be to call it opportunism or accelerationism, but it's really not - if we have a number 3 outcome and a subsequent partial collapse of society then the people who are best organized, who are the most connected to their communities and who are capable of vanguard-style leadership and who are genuinely able to provide for their community's needs, are going to be the people who will be best positioned to reshape the political landscape. Post-WWI Russia was a similar situation. The years just prior to the Chinese revolution were too. It will be different under a number 3 scenario but the broad brushstrokes will remain the same.

If the person who knows how to grow food and is looked to for organizing the distribution of local resources in serious post-collapse community says that we aren't reverting to capitalism, people will listen. And I'm not even talking about some sort of autocratic edict being handed down here, obviously - if you're a leader and you talk to the people in your community who look up to you and rely on you and you tell them about how the previous economic system's externalities led to this outcome then you won't even need to directly educate and propagandize them against capitalism because living in the fallout and having someone bring their attention to how deeply unwell and destructive the previous system was would turn anyone against it immediately.