IT'S PARTLY THE times and partly my own overthinking, but lately my mind keeps going toward the ways it could all fall apart. American democracy feels fragile, like a teacup on a saucer that’s partly hanging over the table’s edge. And companies and governments, though fully aware of what they’re doing, continue to tug voraciously at the threads that hold our ecosystems together, permitting more pipelines and drilling and business as usual.
Some have called our current era “the dying gasps” of late capitalism. The bubble of exponential economic growth, powered by the extraction of millions of years of decayed organic matter stored as carbon-rich fuel beneath the ground, can’t last forever. Neither can our living beyond the Earth’s means, though the endless options on e-commerce sites suggest otherwise.
It is too easy to surround myself with shiny new things to ease the sense that the world as we know it is ending, to buffer my sense of self with what feels familiar and safe. But then I wouldn’t be awake to what is being birthed in the wake of the dying colonial project. As much as it’s terrifying and full of risks, I want to get my hands dirty in the collective creation of a better world.
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