finding resilience in uncertain times | climate, food, energy, safety, money

We must turn “our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.”

“All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead,” writes Chris Hedges in his mini-manifesto “Zero Point of Systemic Collapse” (Adbusters)

“We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it”—it being the whole system of governance and business-as-usual. “This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance. It means turning our energies toward building sustainable communities to weather the coming crisis, since we will be unable to survive and resist without a cooperative effort.”

But to accomplish this, he argues, we have to change our way of thinking. We have to get real.

“The cultural belief that we can make things happen by thinking, by visualizing, by wanting them, by tapping into our inner strength or by understanding that we are truly exceptional is magical thinking. We can always make more money, meet new quotas, consume more products and advance our career if we have enough faith. This magical thinking, preached to us across the political spectrum by Oprah, sports celebrities, Hollywood, self-help gurus and Christian demagogues, is largely responsible for our economic and environmental collapse, since any Cassandra who saw it coming was dismissed as ‘negative.’”

I could imagine that the same kind of magical thinking could be entrenched in the “resistance,” too. I just hope that those who want action will reach for shovels, not bombs.