With what dwindling energy we may have left in our overburdened organs of outrage, Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!, summoned a second wind. In response to Trump’s achievement of astounding us with new lows (who thought it was possible?) by announcing “a whole civilization will die tonight,” Kaveh ignited in rage:
“6000-year-old civilization threatened by one cartoon ghoul totally unencumbered by the clang of a conscience, of a soul, for whom Dantean ideas of Hell seem specifically conceived. This disfiguring rage, rotting our kidneys.
From the vantage point of my family in Iran’s mortal terror, my own disfiguring rage seems comfy, lavish. The compulsion to leverage that delta, between their terror and my rage, into action. But what action?”
Where there is the heat of all-consuming rage, I hope you can forge iron-sharp clarity of purpose. I want that most for myself, too. I think it is what we are all seeking in this moment.
After many months at the forge of my fury, there is no part of me that is any longer confused about the meta-task at hand. We do not have a necessarily technological or economic problem (although emergent solutions will come in those forms), if we plunge to the heart of the issue, we are living through and witnessing, as noted by Dr. Michael P. Schlaile, the “expression of long-established systems of meaning and sensemaking.” He understands that, “Ideas about the good life, progress, growth, justice, and nature shape which future visions appear plausible or desirable,” and therefore, which enraging present moment we inhabit. First and foremost, it is the myths that occupy these ideas that must be toppled and built over.
In a time of ecological and social upheaval, we are beginning to understand the value of stability cultivated through systems of resilience. And we understand that the fragile and self-consuming monomyth of capitalism will not deliver us to that goal. We see clearly that it will devour us en route to eating itself alive. Frantically, we are re-learning, uncovering, and forging new worldviews that redesign our cultures and economies around interdependence, ecological resilience, and democratic control. We want to create post-extractive, place-based economies that function within planetary boundaries, regenerate ecological health, and foster collective and equitable well-being. We understand that these activities are the ingredients for fostering cohesive and adaptive societies that can help us flourish now and into the future. We also understand that they have only just germinated, and are poking their slender sprouts into a toxic atmosphere and polluted soil. We wonder if they have a chance at life.
We can see with more clarity every day, the future envisioned by the sensemaking that has dominated our civilization for centuries is a doomed and destructive one. Yes, now is the time of monsters. We can see our doomed path, perhaps have already adopted a new meaning and sensemaking and have found that our new worldviews only outline the ugliness of the world in richer detail. Because we have not lived within this new sensemaking long enough for it to materialize into a better world, we remain caught in a transitory period surrounded by old monsters, newly grasped but not yet slain. That is our burden, but it does not mean we are hopeless.
The goal of my upcoming book is to help people make this ontological leap, to help people detangle themselves from a doomed worldview and root themselves into one based on mutual thriving. Through a close study of what it means to be alive, I arrived at the same meta-purpose Zen and Indigenous elder Norma Wong offers in her book When No Thing Works: “I do what I do to move ever-closer to a world that lives in interdependent thriving.” With purpose now in blazing clarity, the goal of my next project (and hopefully second book) is to help answer that most natural next question. WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO?
In Kaveh’s response, he goes on to despair at our apparent lack of agency.
“At what point does tithing merely what won’t be missed of our resources—cognitive, financial, temporal—become obscene? Two and a half years (and counting) of impenitent autoplay genocide? The world’s richest person canceling aid to millions of the world’s poorest? Domestic secret police murdering civilians and disappearing people into concentration camps? Literal child sex traffic island? I’m actually asking.”
I’m not naive. Sometimes I shudder at the massive inequality of power; how much the pedophile class has been allowed to accumulate, and the god-like digital tools they’ve created and weaponized. And yet, since you’re actually asking, I personally believe that at no point do these “tithes” become obscene. Yes, we feel impotent. It will take time. Yes, time is a cruelty to those who will continue to suffer. Let it feed your resolve. Yes, we feel erratic. It will take the clarity of purpose to calm your tremors into disciplined movements. Yes, we feel hopeless. It will take more of us. Don’t stop, they are coming.
One day, the scales will tip, people are only just beginning to wake up from the stupor of an ultimately civilization-destroying ontology. One day, our collective actions will be in alignment and our tithes will not be the 10% of what we can afford to skim off the top as we fight to survive and pay rent. One day the cost we will exact against this system will be our whole essence and our mutual thrust will be an overflowing deposit into a future where these ghouls are displaced and their graves pissed on—because piss makes good fertilizer for what we will grow from their bones.
Despite my urge to do it all, I have learned that we will, when giving our best, only be able to flex against one variable of this wicked problem. I have learned that when we feel overwhelmed by the monstrosity of the metacrisis, it isn’t because we aren’t doing enough, it is because we do not see or trust that there is a network of aligned humans all working toward that same future of mutual thriving. If we have not reached that critical mass, then it is our job to help create it, until we can feel at peace knowing we exist as part of a growing collective with a shared purpose and an inextinguishable fire that burns with controlled rage.
I want to help create that critical mass, which is why I have begun mapping all the needed ingredients for this shared future before I will myself choose a singular, focused track to dedicate my energy to.
I want to help people choose a path, and foster the structure for the mutual assurance we need. This is why I am developing the “Agents of Resilience Framework”, which I will keep sharing about here on Substack. For a year, with the temporal tithe I could afford, I have been learning from the many solidarity frameworks that have come before me in an effort to craft a tool that will be useful to on-the-ground practitioners and everyday citizens attempting to grow the alternative economic and cultural system we desire from the ground up.
I have seen in the data that eighty nine percent of people want more climate action from their governments yet only 8% say they personally participate in climate action. This signals to me that there is a large gap between interest and agency. Too many people are spellstruck by the enormity of the problem, convinced by an individualistic baseline that they are responsible for solving it all, and thus are kept in paralysis from doing anything.
My goal is to make it abundantly clear how and where you can exchange your disfiguring rage for the clarity of action.
It is almost ready, and when it is, I will link that project here.
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