Could there be some beauty in collapse?

Although many people are breaking apart into self-righteous factions, many people have been breaking together, whereby they allow the upsetting situation to break down their old habits, so that they become more open-hearted and open-minded in how they live their life, including the way they relate to other people. As a result, they are dramatically changing their lives to prioritise creativity and social contribution. They are worrying less about their career, their financial security or following the latest trend. They are helping those in need, growing food, making music, campaigning for change and exploring spiritual paths. That is happening because they have rejected the establishment’s view of reality and no longer expect its officers to solve any of the worsening problems in their society. After decades of greed, hypocrisy, lies, corruption and stupid policies, they are no longer waiting for any elites to rescue the planet. As they let go of false hopes that they will be saved, they can move through grief and begin living creatively again, with an awareness of how every day is a blessing. This doesn’t mean they don’t grieve, worry or feel sad and angry, but that their feelings of wonder and gratitude about life don’t immediately trigger those other difficult emotions or keep them stuck there. Instead, 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 fairy tale of a better tomorrow as they live, today, for truth, love and beauty. Who are they? I call them doomsters. I am one of them. Perhaps you are, too?

If so, welcome. There are many ways to live differently from now on, as seen in Chapter 10 of Breaking Together. (This text is a reproduction of the closing pages of that book, released 3 years ago). Any change in our way of life doesn’t need to happen all at once. In my case, I think I was emotionally knocked down onto a metaphorical canvas and took years to fully stand again. The general ethos and approach to dialogue that is described by the phrase ‘deep adaptation’ was key for my own process—and I still recommend people engage in networks that use that framework for mutual support. But some years later I arrived at a far less inward-looking orientation. I am certain we cannot wait for the storm to pass or seek to skirt around its edges—we must learn to dance in the rain. (That led me to update the Deep Adaptation framework this year).

That dance does not need to become a rave. Modern culture indoctrinates us to admire largesse and express grand aims about changing the world. Instead, we can reclaim our freedom to be small in our desires for impact, in our communities and local environments. Unfortunately, our ability to dance our own little shimmies of freedom and social contribution is under threat… I wrote Breaking Together for people who are ready to connect their work to a broader ‘ecolibertarian project’ of a great reclamation of power of all kinds and at all levels. Together, we might become a more significant force for positive social change in this era of societal collapse. We are a peoples’ environmentalism in contrast to the agenda emerging from corporate domination. Together, we might elaborate a policy agenda at all levels of governance from the local to global, to counter the agendas of those I describe as ‘fake green globalists’.

If you take on board the arguments in Breaking Together (summarised for you here) it will be like taking a green pill . Swallowing the ‘green pill’ opens your eyes to how the modern money system is a death matrix that shapes our lives, so we collectively destroy the living world. The greenness of the pill describes both our waking to the living world and the role of the money-power in its destruction. But there is another aspect to this opening of our eyes. “Our whole culture, our whole civilisation, in so far as it is involved in time and living only for a future, is nuts, it’s not all here. We are not awake, we are not completely alive now.” Those were the wise words of contemporary psymusic voiceover artist Alan Watts, who, before he died, was a teacher of Eastern spiritualities in the West.[i] E.F. Schumacher thought similarly, and suggested that “the life and death problems of industrial society… [lie] in the heart and soul of every one of us.” The ‘evotopian’ vision I have floated in this book is of a world where dominant systems don’t restrict us so much from being able to experience ourselves, each other and nature. It is a vision where many more of us are not prevented from opening our hearts and minds to each-other and nature. It is a world where more of us would feel safe enough and free enough to care for ourselves, each other and nature. Helping to promote that in our own lives is one great beauty found within the pain of collapse. “Let us truly live the beauty and responsibility of being a prophetic people,” said Bishop Oscar Romero, before being murdered by those working with US imperialists. This kind of work is not for the wishy washy…

Dancing long into the night will involve a lot more than being convinced about the science on our predicament or eloquent about its implications. It will require a commitment that comes from a depth of faith in the eternal rightness of living from universal love. Because unfolding collapse will be more of an ugly process than a beautiful one. No sugar-coating of our predicament is possible. We messed up, in the biggest possible way a species could mess up. Let alone an intelligent one. By ‘we’ I mean the modern human, with our irrational stories of self and reality. So, I can’t leave you with an upbeat ending about our ‘salvation’. Probably only deeper faith can sustain us in the years ahead. It’s where we sense the infinite powers of creation and the ultimate rightness of reality, whatever may come to pass. Human extinction? Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world! But what strange times we are in that such jokes can be told (not that I think near-term human extinction is inevitable (please check out Chapters 3, 4 and 5 in Breaking Together))…

I am keenly aware that the youth of the world could be better helped to organise around these issues. One way that older people can help is simply by stopping gaslighting the young. Instead, we can help validate what many young people sense about their future and encourage them to discuss and experiment with creative ways of responding. One simple idea for how to encourage them came to me on Christmas Day. My Dad knew it was the last Christmas that we would have together, so his parting gift was a t-shirt with the following emblazoned across the front:

“I’m not arguing, I’m just explaining why I’m right.” Since then, I have felt a strange pride about my feeling of embarrassment as people I walk past on the street look at my t-shirt. I will be making some t-shirts in his honour, to give them to the young people I know, to help spark their conversations. I think the first one might say:

“Doomsters have more fun.” Because, why the heck shouldn’t young people have fun by living free of the habits of the stupidly self-destructive society we have left crumbling around them?

Nevertheless, I hope future generations may remember that we weren’t all so dumb. In that spirit of recognising our elders, I will close with the words E.F Schumacher used to close his own book, fifty years before I wrote this one: “Everywhere people ask: ‘what can I actually do?’ The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, put our inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve; but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind.”[ii]

The previous text was taken from the closing of Breaking Together, published 3 years ago. Most of the book is available as a free audiobook.

The author was interviewed recently about the book by the hosts of Collapse Life (see video).

In the August 2026 salon of the Metacrisis Initiative we discuss the spiritual invitation and response to metacrisis and collapse with Reverend Stephen Wright. If you are a member of the initiative, then there is no need to register: just see the details and video link below, which will appear if you are logged in. If you can’t see it but are already a member, then use the email associated with your paid membership to request a password reminder, or a log in link, to your inbox. Any problems: use the contact form for this site and we will fix things for you.

You can learn about Reverend Stephen Wright from some my previous essays:

Deep Spirituality in an Era of Collapse – by Stephen Wright

They Weren’t 10 Commandments – on a dialogue between Stephen Wright and Jem Bendell

Heartfullness: The Way of Contemplation – review of book from Stephen Wright by Prof Jem Bendell

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[i] Yes, I am jesting here. I first read a book from Alan Watts in 2002 but it didn’t quite reach me as much as his ideas do now, after I’ve been sufficiently wounded by life. I recommend this video on this his and work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6lRcGxH-Mc

[ii] Schumacher, E. F. (1973). Small is Beautiful. Blond & Briggs. https://archive.org/details/small-is-beautiful-1973-e.-f.-schumacher/page/n221/mode/2up