What do we do now?

The rate at which the world has begun to burn, both literally and metaphorically, is dizzying. Even for someone like me, who has anticipated and confronted the reality of climate chaos, political and economic corruption, the erosion of institutions, and social instability, this summer has felt like a lot. I have a harder and harder time looking to the future and dreaming of anything other than survival.

Will I ever publish a book? Will AI and the profit motive simply destroy literature? Will I ever be able to make a decent income from the work I long to do in the world? Will I ever be able to travel with my kids and show them the world without worrying about border patrol and facial recognition scans and luxury emissions? Will they go off to college or be able to dream of who they want to be in this world? How long do we have until instability subsumes our ability to adapt, until we’re consumed by uncertainty?

I’m constitutionally incapable of throwing my hands in the air and just enjoying life, despite the fact that I’m insulated by enough privilege that this is still a very real option (most of the time, when I’m not choking on wildfire smoke or hiding from oppressive heat and humidity inside my air conditioned home). That said, it has begun to feel truly useless to continue to grasp at some sense of control. To tell myself if I just prep hard enough and build community hard enough, that things will be okay.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about what we do now that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost. Now that concentration camps proliferate in my country and people succumb to heat and fire and floods. Now that we’re so firmly entrenched in the rule of corrupt politicians and their billionaire tech-bro puppeteers that they’ve started saying the quiet part out loud - that they don’t care if people suffer, they don’t care if people die… that’s actually part of the plan - because they’re confident honesty won’t threaten their power anymore.

What do we do now? How do we survive this? How do we build a life within this?

I’ve given this a lot of thought over the past few years. I think I’ve finally clarified my guiding principles within this nightmare, stripped away all the noise, and whittled my priorities down to a three-pointed North Star. I hope it helps to keep me present in the good, without denying reality.

First, love with abandon.

I mean this as expansively as possible. Love my people, the friends and family closest to me. I’m an introvert, usually quite content to be by myself. I’m fighting that desire to retreat from people. Instead, I’m trying to love them with my whole mind and body, with presence and honesty. Love my community, pour myself into the place where I live. If anything’s going to save me, it’s this place, flawed as it is. Love the earth, spend more time observing and wondering and care-taking and being awestruck by the plants and animals, the clouds and rivers and hills (small as they are, here in prairie country). Love the art and music and movies and books that move me. Seek out transcendent, embodied experiences with everything and everyone I love in this world.

Second, make art.

I’ve spent so much of my life procrastinating doing the only thing I really feel called to do: write. Crafting something meaningful - at least to me - out of words. It’s hard to express the urgency I’ve felt over the past year to no longer place creative work on the backburner so that I can tend to a paycheck job or chores or some other external pressure. All I want to do is put words on the page. Say the things left unsaid. Tell the stories rattling around in my head. Create create create. Maybe we can out-create the destruction. It feels very now or never. It feels very childish, almost, this overwhelming need to stop wasting this “one wild and precious life.” But I don’t mean it in an irresponsible, “quit my job and drop out of society and only do the things I want to do” kind of way. I mean it in a “ruthlessly discerning with my time” kind of way; figuring out when to say no, and when to say yes.

Third, fight fascists.

The good thing is, priority one and priority two are intimately connected with priority three. This one is the hardest for me, for the simple reason that there are so many different ways to go about fighting fascists. But the fundamental question I’ve started asking myself when it comes to the things I do that could be labeled activism is this: does this action help take power away from oppressive systems and the individuals who uphold those systems, and give power back to the people oppressed by and resisting those systems? If the answer is no, it’s not worth my time. This means I’ve stopped doing work related to electoral politics. I don’t see this as work that fundamentally redistributes power away from oppressive systems and into the hands of the people. It simply puts power in someone we hope will work with integrity within those systems. That’s a fine goal. But it’s not my lane. It’s not the goal I feel compelled to work toward, because in 250 years of the United States, the “good guys” with power have not used it to dismantle the oppressive systems. I’m not saying there isn’t validity to harm reduction. I’m just saying if we’re all working on harm reduction, then none of us are working on harm destruction. I don’t want to reform harmful systems, I want to destroy them.

I’m not sure I can recall a time in my life when I’ve ever felt so hopeless about the magnitude of the problems we face. These are genuinely unprecedented times in human history, not just because of fascism and racism and xenophobia and genocide and all the other societal horrors, but because those things are all playing out on a stage that is burning before our eyes. A stage where any resistance to those societal horrors is being surveilled by the bad guys in ways never before seen in human history. By which I mean, yes, humans have both enacted and endured unthinkable horrors throughout the entirety of our history; but never with the backdrop of the climate crisis and a global surveillance apparatus that lives in our pockets.

The world as we know it stands on a knife’s edge.

And yet, the strange thing is, I’ve never felt quite so resolute in my desire, my need, to fight it. To refuse it. To stand firm as a mountain against all the horror that we’ve wrought, to my dying breath.

Because what else would I do with this one wild and precious life but love, create, and fight those who want to destroy it all?

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