Let’s not become attached to collapse

There are moments when life confronts us with such undeniable pain that our hearts split open. For many people I know, that moment came with the realisation that our civilization is unravelling – that the seas are rising, the forests are dying, and the systems built to sustain our comfort are breaking. In that shock, there can be a strange grace. For a time, we awaken from the trance of consumption, routine and ambition. We see more clearly the suffering of the Earth and of each other. That often inspires compassion, and a yearning to live differently. It is a process I’ve often described in my past writings. It is why I encourage people to talk about societal collapse more openly, including our desires to reduce harm. Which is why, when I founded the Deep Adaptation Forum in 2019, I proposed that its ethos would be to “embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, so that we reduce suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.” Over the years I have witnessed people of all races, creeds, and economic classes, find their own ways to pursue that noble goal. It’s something I celebrate in the newly released video of Chapter 12 from my book. However, I have had to accept that something quite different can happen when we awaken to collapse, which might suppress presence, service and creativity. I wonder if that happened in me and others who participate in communities formed around an awareness or acceptance of collapse. If you are in such a community, I hope the following reflections on not becoming attached to narratives about collapse will be useful. 

For decades I valued the teachings of Anthony De Mello. I have been revisiting his writings as I prepare a spiritually-grounded peer-mentoring programme for metacrisis and collapse (part of the MMI). I realised his clear explanations of how we become attached to stories of self and reality, and how that undermines presence, peace and love, are also relevant to communities developing around collapse. That is because, after the awakening described above, the egoic mind does not disappear. Instead, it starts making a story out of the awakening. The egoic mind wants to hold on to the insight, to clothe it in certainty and identity. “I am one who sees collapse,” it says. “I know what’s coming.” And for some, “It is my responsibility to help people in this situation.” Without noticing, what was once a burst of awareness and aliveness becomes a new attachment – a new prison, as Anthony De Mello might have said. 

He taught that we are metaphorically asleep, and that the greatest obstacle to waking up is not ignorance, but illusion. That is a key distinction. It means we don’t need more information on the world, or a better story. Rather, we can benefit from witnessing how we stitch new information into a story that we use as a new illusion of certainty. When we cling to our opinions, our roles, our emotions, we are neither free nor present to what is. We may think we’ve found the truth, but even if we are less ignorant than before, we are still trading one illusion, or dream, for another. 

So it can be with an awareness or acceptance of collapse. Some people cling to hope that “everything will be fine.” But others cling to certainty that “everything is doomed.” Both offer illusory forms of security. The egoic mind wants to know, to feel settled, to avoid the wavering ground of uncertainty. It will even choose a bleak certainty over the discomfort of not knowing. Seven years ago, in the Deep Adaptation paper, I noted how some analysts could be bombastic about their certainty of near-term human extinction; it seemed they preferred a certain finality, rather than a painful uncertainty. 

I now realise we can also become attached to collapse. Not because the analysis is wrong (and I assess it to be right), but because we make it part of who we are. We find belonging among others who “see the truth.” We draw quiet pride from being awake while others sleep. We feel safer from having the analysis at our fingertips, even when it points towards a tragedy. As a result, we might become more involved in our particular story of collapse than being curious and engaged with what is happening around us. 

Becoming attached to collapse

I didn’t see this process so clearly before, as the initial shock of awakening to collapse was opening so many hearts and minds. As an intensifying perspective, it made many of us stop postponing the asking, and then expressing, of what is in our hearts. For a while, many of us felt more tender, more connected, more alive. We felt the preciousness of each moment. We shed the illusions of progress and control. But when that new awareness hardened into a fixed identity – “the collapse-accepting person,” “the realist,” “the one who sees the end,” “the one who prioritises kindness over anything else,” it appears to have begun to dull some of us again. For some, what began as freedom has developed into another cage.

The collapse story itself is not the problem. Afterall, I gave 2 years of my life researching and writing a book about it! The problem is any attachment to collapse – the demand that reality conform to a narrative, so we can feel smart, certain and justified. Maybe you have already witnessed how our minds can use the story of collapse to avoid vulnerability:

“I don’t need to engage with society, it’s collapsing anyway.”

“Why try to create something substantial, when it’s all ending?”

“At least I’m not one of the deluded ones.”

I think these these are not insights, but defences. Collapse or no collapse, life is uncertain. Every story of self, reality and the divine is still only a story, not the truth it speaks of.  No story, however informed or useful, can deliver us lasting peace of mind. The desire for certainty – whether in utopia or apocalypse – is still desire. The ego may change costume, but it is still a costume.

If attached to the story of collapse, we can accidentally live with blinkers of fear, superiority or resignation. We can stop meeting the living world with curiosity and a sense of possibility. We can dampen our capacity for love – the spontaneous, uncalculated response of an unflinching heart. That can lead to us conjuring excuses for enjoying the comforts of our privilege while not challenging abuses of power. 

Our freedom to be fully alive does not come from having the right beliefs. It comes from seeing that we are not our beliefs. We can still recognise that collapse is happening. We can act with compassion, prepare wisely, resist oppression, and speak truth. And we can also avoid clinging to collapse. We can regard our analysis about collapse as a pointer, and not let it become a prison. If I remember rightly, when founding the Deep Adaptation Forum in 2019 I wanted it to explicitly retain some outward focus for its ethos: how might a loving approach from each of us affect other people and wider nature? Otherwise, it might degrade into a ‘comfort blanket’ for people with the privilege of time to meet online and discuss their feelings – rather than that being part of a more dynamic process of social contribution. [*See Footnote]

“After all this time, you’re not going to recommend denying collapse, are you?” …my friend asked, with some raucousness. “Not at all,” I replied. “After years as a doomster, I’ve noticed how our minds can cling to a story of collapse for a sense of identity and security. And like with any story or belief, attachment to it, or needing it to be true, doesn’t help us be present, curious and kind.” Fortunately, the teachers in this field, like De Mello, tell us the moment we notice our clinging, and the desires or fears it comes from, then we experience a moment of freedom. We can hold our truth more lightly. That means we can meet each moment as it is, with less judgement. It doesn’t mean we are less interested in assessing the latest information and trying to work out how best to respond – but we aren’t trying to see the world and ourselves one way or another (or win the argument!). I realised I touched on that with the first song I released – Trust We Get There – but hadn’t applied it to collapse acceptance.   

A deeper and persistent spiritual invitation 

Over the years, at times I wrote about the spiritual invitation of climate chaos and societal collapse. I recognised it provided a shock to wake us up, if ready for it. But now I see that the spiritual invitation includes noticing any cravings for certainty, approval, and belonging, that arise because of collapse awareness. For those normal personal needs can drive an attachment to new ideas and stories of self and world. Therefore, I now see collapse awareness or acceptance is best experienced as a medicine of liberation than a diet of limitation. 

If interested in these ideas, I recommend De Mello’s “Call To Love” (the audio book is free, read by his brother: Introduction). I feel I have benefitted from revisiting such teachings by De Mello, and other contemplatives from a variety of religious traditions. Those teachings are part of what distinguishes them from more dogmatic followers of religious cultures. They include the lesson that when we no longer demand that life make emotional sense – then we have the chance to find peace. That is not the peace of ignorance or resignation, but the peace of presence. In that presence, we find a subtle and persistent invitation to feel universal and unconditional love towards all sentient life. An experience of such love doesn’t depend on a story of the future. It can be here, now, in the sound of the rain, the touch of a hand, the laughter of a child, the chants in a march, the planting of a garden, or the voices of a choir.

We never needed the world to be saved, or to collapse, or to transition, for us to be fully alive and engaged in a loving way. Without attachment to any story of how the future will unfold, we can see the suffering, the beauty, the endings and beginnings, with an open heart and mind about what’s ours to do.

I’d like to offer these reflections as a partial conclusion to the conflict with some volunteers in the DA Forum and DA Facebook group earlier this year. I was disputing their possible bias, censorship, and resistance to criticism. I still perceive that moderator-attachment to identities and beliefs were not being disclosed, despite shaping the discussions and decisions at the time. I still consider it problematic for some volunteers to accidentally accrue unaccountable power and that better governance could be reinstated easily. And I still wonder if some senior volunteers prioritised their perceived emotional needs and stories above being present to what might have been occurring, and so focused on my actions and personality rather than addressing the issues I was raising. However, I also think I was attached to my story of needing to be responsible as a person with some agency in the field of collapse awareness. Without that attachment, I might have more easily accepted that what we do or don’t do would make little difference to international affairs and war crimes. Therefore, I might have been more patient when I became upset at the attitudes expressed. Would that have led to a better outcome than the conflict that ensued? Not necessarily. But we know how we wish to be, and not be, in any situation. My anger was an indicator to me of something needing attention. But it was not a good scheduler. 

I am told that processes are underway in the DA Forum, where they will revise and clarify what they exist for, and how they address any perceived weaknesses relating to cultural bias and accountability. I am pleased to see that difficult topics are being allowed to be discussed in the DA Facebook group. The arguments that arose around moderation of that group caused some people, including myself, to reassess what we want in the field of metacrisis and collapse. That has led to a few new, or forthcoming, initiatives. My own launch of the Metacrisis Meetings Initiative is part of that flourishing. Our fifth meeting will be in January, where we will discuss and celebrate the myriad positive ways that people have been living due to their collapse awareness. That will help us to reflect on how we wish to integrate collapse awareness and acceptance in future (registration info is at the bottom of this blog). Ahead of that meeting, I am pleased to share a beautiful video accompaniment to the narration of Chapter 12 of Breaking Together which I mentioned when opening this essay. The chapter is titled “The Doomster Way”. The reading is by Matthew Slater and the video by Ezca Rizqia. We’d welcome hearing your own doomster journey in the comments on the video.

—

Footnote

*I have recently been informed of discussions that led to the dropping of the phrase after the comma in the original statement of ethos for the Deep Adaptation Forum. That statement read: “to embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, so that we reduce suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.” I was told that the opinion that “saving more of society and the natural world” evoked patriarchal and colonialist tropes, was accepted and so the ethos was truncated. However, I wonder if such an opinion relies on patriarchal and colonialist assumptions, where the ones doing the saving are assumed not to include the immense diversity of people on this planet. For instance, in terms of impact today, the greatest savers of societies and wider nature are not from the Western white middle-aged middle classes. Arguably, the most reduction of suffering from a localised collapse that involved a Deep Adaptation group occurred in Southern India, during 2021 (which I featured here). In any case, “so that we reduce suffering” can’t be imagined as related to patriarchy or colonialism, so dropping it indicates an intention to focus on cultivating a way of feeling, without explicitly considering consequences for others. That’s an interesting philosophical issue. I prefer to think of love as describing a quality of relating to other sentient life, and so one can’t really be loving to any concept, such as “our predicament”. It is an interesting question whether one can be loving to God, or a divine being, or an abstract concept of nature or nation, rather than being loving towards sentient life. My own view, similar to De Mello, is that ‘love’ of any concept is actually a fear-based and egoic attachment to story, which can inspire animosity to non-believers who, because of their awakened state, threaten to undermine delusion.

—

Doomster Vitality! Metacrisis Meeting #5 

In our 5th Metacrisis Meeting, on the first Monday of the month, January 5th 2026, we will explore the many ways people are growing personally and professionally because they recognise or experience a metacrisis and societal collapse.  Not despite it. We will share how we are evolving, and where we find vitality in these difficult, tragic, and sometimes depressing, times. The aim is mutual inspiration and encouragement.