“Around the world, people are dramatically changing their lives to prioritise creativity and social contribution. They are worrying less about their career, financial security, or the latest trends. They are helping those in need, growing food, making music, campaigning for change and exploring self and spirituality. Why is this shift occurring? Because they have rejected the dominant view of reality and no longer expect elites or officers of the establishment to solve the worsening problems in society. After decades of greed, hypocrisy, lies, corruption and stupid policies, they are no longer waiting for any elites to rescue anyone, let alone the planet. But they are no longer upset, numb or despairing. They are living life more fully, according to what they value. It is precisely because these people regard modern societies to be breaking down, that they are living more freely. They need neither an underground bunker nor a fairytale of a better tomorrow as they are living for love, truth and beauty today. Who are they? I call them doomsters. I am one of them. Perhaps you are too?”
That’s an excerpt from Chapter 12 of Breaking Together, which is now available as a free audio. In the chapter, I offer some examples of the many forms of ‘doomster’ life, around the world, what psychology tells us about this phenomenon, and the extent to which we might become a force for positive social change in an era of societal collapse. In the subsequent chapter I go on to explain why the officers and wannabes of the establishment now fear us enough to misrepresent, censor, and even criminalise us. That is probably because we doomsters are escaping so many of the lies and preoccupations of modern societies. This kind of freedom is something I explored in a discussion with former Occupy Wall Street activist Karen Perry, in our recorded conversation on the benefits of collapse acceptance.
Ahead of my conversation with Karen, I welcomed reflecting on how I have been experiencing many of the 15 benefits that she lists. So I encourage you to do the same, starting with the first 8 that I explored in Part 1 of my essay on those benefits. In Part 2, I offer my reflections on the final 7 benefits, including how I have started and sometimes stalled on each. In doing so, I also offer some ideas on the ways that activism and ambition can still remain part of the life of a ‘deeply adapted’ doomster, just not in that superhero mode afflicting many panicking environmentalists today. You can watch the discussion on Youtube and Odyssey, or listen to it on soundcloud. An audio narration of both Parts 1 and 2 of this essay is also available from Michael Dowd’s soundcloud.
8. RELEASE – let go of the pain of the story of needing to save everything before it is too late.
Faced with such dreadful data and news on the environment as we see in 2023, it is torture to hope for a managed turnaround towards an ecological civilisation. Any psychologist will tell you that living in cognitive dissonance, and suppressing anxieties, can lead to harmful attitudes and behaviours. It is why the anti-doomers are likely to flip into ecofascism as they try to imagine a salvation from the situation. When I comment on that, my critics claim I am being rude. But it’s simply what we learn from the psychological research on ‘experiential avoidance’ and sociology on the role of the authoritarian personality type in the rise of fascism, as I detailed previously in a psychotherapy journal.
I am grateful I have dropped my own superhero complex. There was a time, from 2012 to 2015, when I was hobnobbing with elites at Davos and other summits of the World Economic Forum. I was imagining that perhaps we might create a network of people who had the skills, contacts and ambitions to create the necessary changes. I remember a fellow Young Global Leader entering an elevator in a hotel in Moscow, and joking “maybe WE are the illuminati.” The conversation was about one world problem or another. But my Davos experiences taught me that there is no smart and ethical states-personship at the top; or if it exists, then it was very well hidden. Instead, I met a lot of people doing their jobs in seeking the ‘best’ deals for their countries or organisations, and a lot of people just having fun by feeling elite. Their awareness of why there are intractable problems in the world was extremely weak. And for many, I wondered if societal problems were simply an opportunity for them to display what an amazing person they were. Unfortunately, the agenda that has emerged from the WEF on environmental issues is superficial, technologically deluded, and anti-democratic. In my book I call this the agenda of the ‘fake green globalists’ and outline a completely different approach that is centred on community solidarity (the ecolibertarianism I explained in another essay).
I have wondered whether my resistance to the elites’ ideas on what to do about societal disruptions and collapse means that I have not fully let go of my desire for impact at scale. At times during the 2 years it took to write my book Breaking Together, I wondered if I am addicted to the pursuit of impact. Those moments of doubt were useful, as they meant I checked with myself whether I was hiding anything I had understood or felt to be important, simply to have an impact or avoid a negative reaction. The result is a recklessly ambitious book that is obnoxious to some and inspiring to others. I am not letting go of the idea that I can try to reduce harm and help others to do the same, but am not taking it upon myself to be significant in that. I don’t even think we will prevent the elites causing more harm with their panicked authoritarian schemes. But I feel like including resistance to such unnecessary harm in my way of living in the world. Therefore, I am realising that release from the old stories of the superhero activist or environmental professional doesn’t need to lead to a selfish ‘fxck it’ mentality. Rather, our aspiration can be for a peacefully principled and engaged surrender to what is to come. After all, at the moment of our passing, we will not know what becomes of our species and planet; but we will know what became of our life.
9. TRANSCENDENCE – experience a heightened connection to the Oneness of everything
Something that Karen and I have both noticed in ourselves and other doomsters, is that after the despair, an acceptance of societal collapse leads to a greater connection and love for both ourselves and other Life. The despair seems to be an inescapable part of the process. In the ache of meaninglessness that characterises our deepest despair, lies the secret for connecting to the sacredness of our lives. There is even some psychology on this, which suggests that despair and depression can lead to a ‘positive disintegration’ of old stories of self, other and reality. That allows for a transcendence of our egos, and living from a more expanded sense of self.
I think that a meltdown in my sense of self-worth in 2018 due to the research I was doing on climate change was key to my own spiritual experiences that year. My non-ordinary experiences included moments of apparently shared consciousness with other people. I also changed my pace of life, in a way where I began to notice and connect with wildlife, domestic pets and strays. This process ended up with me adopting a stray kitten that had been found on the steps of a Buddhist Temple. Black cats in Bali live at the temples, rather than in houses, as they are believed to keep bad spirits away. My cat Buki (pronounced boo-key) accompanied me during the book research, writing and launch. It was such a solitary time that I doubt I could have written the book as I did without him by my side for my last four months of writing. Also, through his intelligence, character and love, I realised the capabilities and magic in other sentient beings. As he disappeared from my life soon after I launched the book, I have been experiencing the grief that accompanies love and wonder. I’m pleased he came in from the fields to appear right at the end of the first interview I did about the book back in May.
I also had moments of telepathy with my him. For instance, I had never gone looking for Buki during the daytime. But one afternoon, for some reason I felt compelled to head out to look for him. About 70 metres from home, I found him stuck up the top of a palm tree. I know we live in societies where writing or talking of experiences like that is likely to get you dismissed as a lunatic. And perhaps that is the benefit of collapse… I care far less about what people think when they are blinded by a pathologically deadening culture that is collapsing in on itself.
Where this rejection of the puritanism of Imperial Modernity and embracing of our own experiences of transcendent consciousness will take us as groups, movements and societies, is unclear to me. I do not subscribe to the ‘hopium’ that all of humanity will have a spiritual awakening and so then we will fix everything. I also think that some of the embrace of spirituality, mysticism and magic, can be done as an attempt to escape the pain of our situation and reaffirm our frightened egos with the idea that we are spiritually agentic souls. Therefore, I am dubious about the people who claim they are helping to ‘manifest’ the future by having a great time in exotic locations, or by using psychedelics, or by trying to ask aliens to come help us! More controversially, perhaps, I am also dubious about the whole tradition of prayers of petition to get what we want, whether it’s a Mercedes Benz, world peace or a return to 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. Similarly, I am dubious of anyone trying to intentionally access altered states of consciousness for defined material objectives. In both cases, an ego-based engagement with the realms of consciousness beyond our separate selves seems impossible and delusional. Instead, we can simply invite our greater alignment with the unfolding of that greater consciousness.
Unfortunately, we know that ego transcendence is not the only way people can respond to a sense of the mortality of themselves and all they love. When people try to resist despair and cling on to their stories of self, it can manifest as becoming more extreme in one’s views and attachments. Terror management theory points to this and I believe it explains how illogical and aggressive some scientists become when arguing against those of us who recognise the end is nigh for industrial consumer societies. That means there is work to be done, by all of us, to help each other with the difficult emotions involved in reaching a positive form of collapse acceptance.
I appreciated Karen listing this benefit, as it also helped me to see where I have stalled in this area of collapse acceptance. In the last few years, I remained in intellectual combat to defend the credibility of a perspective that societal collapse was inevitable. That process of inquiry led me to discover it had already begun. On the one hand, the nastiness of some of the criticism was motivating me to look ever closer and wider at the relevant science. But on the other hand, it has locked me into a reductionist, determinist, combative and anti-magical way of interrogating and communicating about the world.
10. EMPATHY – accept the many emotionally difficult responses that occur to the realisation or experience of societal collapse.
If we have come to a point of collapse acceptance, it is likely we have gone through all manner of emotions beforehand. Many of us have had years of stressful striving with different hopes and approaches to social change. Karen, for instance, was very involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and thought through that campaign that activists, the public and politicians would finally tackle the roots of the problems we face. In the past, both Karen and I were annoyed by people who said that it was too late to stop climate change and overshoot collapsing our societies. She therefore believes that remembering our own journey of thoughts and emotions can enable our empathy for others who are still reacting in numb or aggressive ways. “It’s haaaaard, the situation sucks,” said Karen. I still have that in my ear, with the kind of tone that invites a big hug and collective exhale. It’s the kind that gets you ready to start again.
As I reflected on this benefit, I realised I am not as empathic as I could be. Intellectually, I recognise how difficult it is for some of my vociferous critics. They misrepresent myself and others due to their anxieties about the planetary situation. There is a reason ‘shoot the messenger’ is such a well-known phrase! Although I know this, intellectually, it doesn’t translate into me feeling entirely magnanimous about it all. Instead, I see the damage they have done to the motivation of some activists, professionals and politicians. I see senior ranking scientists framing the situation in a way that supports massive state subsidy for nuclear and renewables, and undermines the attention to fair adaptation to try to decelerate the collapse. I see the damage they have done to the credibility of activists who actually had a better integrative reading of the science and its significance than many career environmentalists and climatologists. That has made it easier for activists to be vilified and face custodial sentences, while their critics sell more books, win new grants, and appear as the wise ones in mainstream media despite getting it badly wrong in the past. So, although I know we will all be dead one day and we must all go through the scary and momentous situation of climate-induced disruption to our lives, I haven’t found pure peace about the actions of privileged people making matters worse due to defending their status and identity.
Reflecting on whether I am benefiting from increased empathy helped me to realise something else. When we experience aggression from people who are captured by the stories and fears from which we ourselves have been released, it is an invitation to make amends for our own past aggressions. For instance, I did not like the Dark Mountain initiative when it began, because I thought it meant giving up. I can’t remember if I said anything or wrote anything negative about them, but for the negativity I felt, I am sorry. Therefore, today I make amends by recommending you consider the poetry they publish as well as the writings of their cofounder Paul Kingsnorth.
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11. SOLIDARITY – use privilege in a radical way to help people to live more freely and caringly.
In her summary of this benefit of collapse acceptance, Karen writes that we “cash out retirement accounts to set others free; group up to live more affordably.” I related to this benefit, as in 2023 I quit my job-for-life Professorship and moved country to be able to put much of my savings into projects to regenerate nature and make farming in my area less dependent on fossil fuels. Privilege, or personal advantage, is a relative phenomenon. By moving to Indonesia, I became relatively privileged. I call my rather simple and shaky old house the ‘Bhakti Shack’ to remind me of why I have chosen the life I have – which is to have more time and funds to work on things I believe in, to express myself, and to support people and projects that are worthwhile. This is also one reason why I have made my Breaking Together book free to download. I am now looking for ways of living in solidarity with low-income people in a country that does not depend on exploiting the rest of the world’s resources. Currently, that means I am spending my savings on a project that doesn’t make much financial sense – as any small-scale organic farmer will probably tell you! But that is because my aim, and wish, is to develop a different relationship to the place I live than that of a consumer.
Reflecting on this benefit, I realise that I have not put all my eggs in the basket of complete global collapse, including monetary collapse, before 2040. Therefore, I have not sold my house, and I am putting together a small income from my ongoing writing and independent teaching (so please help fund this writing, or come on a course, either online or in Australia!). That highlights how this benefit of collapse acceptance involves a sense of time horizons. If I felt certain everything will have gone to shit by 2030, I’d likely be throwing my money around at good people and projects even more. Therefore, I see an importance in paying attention to the latest environmental data and science, to continue to reassess the pace of change. If 2024 global temperatures and weather events are as bad as I predicted in Chapter 5 of my book, then selling my house, donating to more charities, and saving more stray kittens would make sense!
The question of how to live in active solidarity with the rest of life, including humans, can remain an open one. Last year I concluded that I had not done as much as I would like to engage young people about this situation. Back in 2019 I had made a short film about my conversations in school about societal collapse. But I had become so busy with research, adult education and advocacy, that I had not made time to engage young people. That was why last year I signed the Scholars’ Oath to The Future, whereby we all committed to try to do more to help young people understand and respond to our predicament. My current idea is that our farm school will work with networks of schools in Bali to demonstrate organic and regenerative methods, and we go from there. But we need to build a bamboo training centre for that, so if you can help out, please get in touch!
Reflecting on my privilege also led me to realise the incredible advantage of not being as coerced as so many others are by the systems of Imperial Modernity. We know that as mortgage debt, rent repayments, spiralling prices, overdrafts, 30-yearolds living with parents, shitty bosses, forgotten dreams, lying legacy media, and advertising onslaughts. Recognising all of that means that although I have dropped the heavy idea it is my responsibility to do everything I can to end such exploitation and oppression, I still feel drawn to use my experience, training and networks to share my views to promote a ‘great reclamation’ of our power. That is where I differ from some other people who take societal collapse seriously. Some can sound like “whatever it takes” authoritarians. Some can sound like “humans are a disease” misanthropists. Some can sound like “nothing matters anymore” nihilists. Some can sound like “I’ll defend myself from the event” isolationists. Instead, I am with Karen in the intention to try and help grow ‘collaborative resilience’ in communities. There are many approaches to that, and many considerations, as I discussed in a previous essay on ‘power and privilege in the face of collapse’.
Thinking about privilege and solidarity brings up the questions of scale. Why would we only focus on our neighbourhood, if our impact on the world through our working, spending and saving is affecting people, badly, elsewhere? If the answer is “I can’t affect that” then that is a poor use of consequentialist ethics. Instead, just as we can adjust our way of living locally to try to help without certainty of outcome, we can do the same through our wider relations. That brings us to the issue of our political engagement. Therefore, I disagree with those people who think collapse acceptance involves giving up entirely on political engagement. My book Breaking Together was my attempt to stimulate thinking about what a solidarity-focused politics for an age of collapse could involve.
I have no grand vision of political success, through revolutionary means of otherwise. My reading of the situation is that the growing global techno-authoritarian apparatus, including surveillance, censorship, public sentiment manipulation, personal financial sanctions, and the disruption of coherent opposition via conspiracy porn, will not go away. It will align with ecomodernist financial and institutional interests to help railroad their agenda as the only reasonable response to societal disruptions from environmental change. Parts of that agenda and apparatus will be incoherently, inauthentically, and opportunistically resisted by Big Oil interests and reactionary populists. However, over time, the ecomodernist agenda will fail in the majority of countries that have millions of poor people relying on fossil fuels and who are not so deferential to the institutions of centralised power. Nevertheless, the ecomodern story will keep the populations of OECD countries compliant for longer as they experience disruption and decline. The mechanics of all of that are spelled out in Chapters 7 and 13 of my book. And while I accept that this is the future, and is a socio-political dimension to collapse, I consider it worthwhile to point out that such responses aren’t helpful and take some personal steps against it. We can all join that resistance while at the same time being careful that we don’t fall back into distracting habits of self-righteous consternation and condemnation.
As with so many things, there is benefit in seeking balance in our lives. I particularly liked the metaphor Karen used of saying she needs to put her own oxygen mask on first, before trying to help others in this difficult era. Then we can gift ourselves an exit from the rush and the fear, to experience the joy found in discovering that our resources and talents can benefit someone, or some creature, with relatively less advantage than ourselves. Thanks be to creation for evolving us to feel that way!
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12. AMENDS – prepare to be able to leave this existence feeling that one has done one’s best for others and wider life.
After the Deep Adaptation paper came out in 2018, I noticed that some people were accepting its analysis but then responding with a rather panicked fundamentalism. I therefore added a fourth R to the dialogue framework. It is based on a recognition that the environmental situation might already be uncontrollable, and so how we think and act is as important as what we intend to achieve. This R of ‘reconciliation’ invited reflection on “with what and with whom might I make peace with as we face our common mortality?” Karen’s twelfth benefit of collapse is about this invitation to no longer delay ways of making amends before one dies.
Considering this matter again, I have felt stuck. I don’t know what I might feel that I have done wrong and to whom. I don’t know what aspects of my life, or society, or life on Earth, might be bugging me in my subconscious. Therefore, as I ponder what amends or reconciliations I could pursue, I am left with a sense that I have a lot to discover about myself and life, and will need some guidance in that in due course, probably from people more enlightened than myself. Currently, that leaves me feeling curious and grateful for this prompting from fellow collapse accepters. They have helped me to see that becoming psychologically ready to die at any point means potentially enjoying life for years to come precisely because of the deeper agreement with the universe, our past, and our fate, that is involved in such readiness.
13. EXIT – consider how you wish to live and die as situations degrade, and prepare for that.
Chatting with Karen, I sensed that we both feel extremely grateful and somewhat in awe of being alive right now. I certainly feel a relish and gratitude for life that has been heightened by the beneficial shifts explored in this essay. However, I still have waves of anxiety as I see the devastation occurring around the world. Part of that is my uncertainty about how I will cope when I am in the middle of a disaster, or have difficulty meeting the basic needs of myself and those close to me. The truth is that I don’t know how I will respond. However, in the smaller emergencies in my life, such as Buki disappearing, I have noticed that I could improve my capacity to give my full attention to a situation so as to act wisely in the moment. That tells me to reprioritise both meditation and circling, so I might have more awareness of my emotions and more equanimity about them in difficult situations.
With this benefit, Karen is also highlighting our fears about the process of us dying. During our conversation, I explained that I have no ideas on how to advise others on issues around suicide. Nor have I looked into how it might be possible to end one’s own life in a peaceful way, let alone actually preparing. That helped me to realise that I still feel and behave as if the risks of starvation or painfully untreatable diseases, for instance, seem far away for both myself and those I know. Karen said that she has discovered that people who have given this their attention and identified potentially peaceful ways to die now experience a calm from simply knowing that is possible for them. It reminded me of how it was not just a sense of responsibility for why we banned any discussion of this topic in the Deep Adaptation Facebook groups when I set them up in 2019. We were also worried about societal reaction to allowing such discussions. I left the conversation with Karen thinking I too might benefit from knowing that my fear of death doesn’t need to include my fear of the process of dying.
This discussion of exiting life also brings up other questions about policies in the medical system. At the time of writing, my father is in a situation where he would have preferred to have been helped to pass away. His suffering is beginning to be a form of torture. Outside the UK, many other countries have changed their policies on assisted dying for the terminally ill, and I believe a far more sensitive conversation on this topic in society would lead to better policies with the necessary safeguards. The difficulty of even discussing such issues highlights a wider death aversion in modern societies. This shows up in the habitual statements of medical staff, carers and friends, which assume or encourage the terminally ill person to be ‘fighting’ for longevity. The story of that fight serves to distract from how the dying person might make sense of their life and death. It robs people of the potential for discussions about life, death, consciousness, meaning and purpose, which might make it easier for terminally ill, and us all, to pass away peacefully. Although there are very caring people in nursing homes and palliative care, we would all benefit from escaping the death-phobic shackles on our love for the dying, so that we could better help them to prepare psychologically and to decide when they wish to depart. I believe that education and advocacy on this issue could be a part of a policy agenda that responds to our new era of the creeping collapse of modern societies.
During our recent podcast interview, Douglas Rushkoff told me that in Tibet they traditionally brought children to the bedside of dying people, partly for them to become acquainted with death as a regular and inevitable aspect of life. It is also why the Stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome made ‘memento mori’ – remembering that we die – a foundational part of their philosophical framework. A recognition of the benefit of bringing conversations about mortality back into modern life is why ‘Death Cafes’ are one the ways that participants in the Deep Adaptation Forum support each other.
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14. GENTLENESS – drop desires for getting everything right or being the best you can be.
Reflecting on a number of these benefits, I sensed that the general effect could be a kind of calm, or equanimity, about what is happening to society and the environment. I began to wonder if collapse acceptance might even propel me to the extremes of the stoic ‘amor fati’ where I love my fate, no matter how strange and stressful that fate might turn out to be. I have described it earlier as a peacefully principled and engaged surrender to what is to come. Am I there yet? I don’t think so. But I am a lot closer to it than during the years gone by.
One of the issues that often comes up in discussions about how badly modern humans have destroyed the planet, and how much suffering is to come, is the matter of blame and shame. Knowing how destructive those emotions can be, some people welcome analyses of our predicament that absolve anyone of any guilt for the ecological tragedy. They might point to theories that ecological overshoot is inevitable for any species that receives an influx of a non-renewable resource. They might also cite the theory that technological adoption by ever greater numbers of people is inevitable, as if it is a property of the technology itself. Believing those two ideas means the global carnage can be forgiven for simply being the innocent exuberance of homo sapiens. In Chapter 9 of my book, I go into some detail on why the evidence for those theories is flawed. For instance, many species manage their population numbers voluntarily. In addition, ancient humans utilised fossil fuels for thousands of years without burning them at ever faster rates or basing their civilisation on their combustion. Accepting that ecocide has resulted from industrial consumer societies growing to dominate the planet is shocking but does not need to invite shame or blame. Instead, from a Buddhist perspective, where I am made of the same consciousness as another human, I regard anyone’s behaviour as arising mainly from their nature, nurture and circumstance. ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ Therefore, any destruction I have contributed to is significantly due to the culture I grew up within and doesn’t make me inherently shameful. What matters is the extent to which I am present to the situation today and seek for my future behaviours to reduce harm, made amends, and replenish life, without psychologically ‘beating myself up’ in the process.
15. ENJOYMENT – have fun with the time you have left as a way of honouring being alive at this time.
When people receive a terminal diagnosis, after the initial shock, many find deep happiness in experiencing all manner of life’s experiences. Something similar appears to happen for people who accept that collapse is inevitable or underway. In my case, I opened up to a new playfulness and experimented with theatre, music, nature immersion, and more. I desired to experience more connection to self, other and nature. For me this hasn’t been hedonism, and I’ve become even less impressed with material luxuries. That’s partly because my answer to the famous question “what makes you come alive?” has always included doing what I feel is mine to do. That is why I gave so much of my time to research and write Breaking Together. If only my black cat Buki was still lying next to me, then writing this essay would have felt a fine way of spending time in this age of collapse.
When Karen and I discussed this benefit, I asked about her use of the “bucket list” idea in her original description. She explained she wants people to ask themselves what’s in their hearts and not imply any judgement of that. Whereas Karen’s collapse acceptance doesn’t mean she wants to cruise first class around the world, she wouldn’t give her attention to negativity about those who might do that. However, we both agreed that a true acceptance of the tragedy of biospheric and societal collapse typically creates a softness, and a desire to live lightly, rather than a desire for lots of new products and experiences. As I didn’t want to imply that a consumer mentality of ‘more’ experiences is a normal way for people to respond to their acceptance of collapse, I didn’t include the phrase ‘bucket list’ in my summary of this benefit.
Karen uses the term ‘Global Hospice Day’ to describe doomsters taking time out to cherish being alive, with a reverence from recognising how much is being lost every day, and how any day might be our last. Hearing her describe this, I realised how much my emotional world is shaped by the information on the screens I have in my house and in my pocket. That takes me away from stillness and presence. So let’s reclaim our consciousness from the intrusion of media and of friends who forward us its content. Let’s bless ourselves with a digital sabbath, where we use our time to experience the sights, sounds and textures of the real world, including each other IRL!
I hope my reflections on these benefits of collapse acceptance have been of use. The initial feedback on my discussion with Karen indicates it is helping people move through their anxiety to embrace their new outlook and make decisions accordingly. Therefore, I recommend you make time to listen not only to my Chapter 12 but also my 100-minute conversation with Karen, and reflect on the benefits in your own life.
My chat with Karen Perry was my first Deep Adaptation Conversation. These conversations replace the many DA Q&As I did previously with live audiences from the DA movement. The new format will allow me to go deeper on topics with the individuals who I really want to explore issues with.
Thanks for getting this far. I look forward to seeing some of you online during the Leading Through Collapse course, starting in a month. Another way of engaging people on these topics is via the Deep Adaptation Forum. In addition, Karen Perry helps facilitate post doom conversations with Michael Dowd. I welcome seeing any written reflections from you on these topics in the Deep Adaptation Leadership group on LinkedIn.
The list of these benefits as Karen Perry originally wrote them, and from her substack, follows below:
8. Super Hero Release – good riddance to pressure and guilt
Don’t have to fix it, solve it, fight it, save it. No purity test to pass. Hooray!
9. Universalism – heightened connection to the Oneness of everything
Tap in to the collective coherence, look a non-human in the eyes, feel the force
10. Empathy – towards self and all others
Give yourself extra grace, love, and compassion. Help, not squish, the spider. Someone flips you off? No worries, mate, I feel ya, collapse sucks.
11. Privilege Perspective – ability to view it and use it in a radical way
Cash out retirement accounts to set others free, group up to live more affordably
12. Amends – finding forgiveness and completeness in all relationships, including with self
Right wrongs with whomever, feed birds/give back to community of life
13.Death Comfort – forces the conversation and preparation
Exit strategy plan, balanced spiritually for what comes next
14. Letting Go – of control, worry, fear, blame, shame, legacy, dreams, expectations
No need to sweat the small stuff…or any of the big stuff
15. Enjoyment – global hospice time to have fun with the bucket list
Honor all that has been sacrificed/taken by enjoying and loving life as much as possible
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