Collapse Is a Euphemism for Creation: What Comes Next Is Up to All of Us

There’s an idea—and a growing sense of unease, a concern of sorts—that’s been bouncing around in my mind lately, branching into several directions but converging on one truth we all know and see: we are living through the end of something vast, and the birth of something equally immense.

First, to be clear—though my writing sometimes sounds dark and depressing—as if my hope for the future itself were a wilting flower in the scorching heat of the sun’s brilliance—I’m not a pessimist. Beneath my frustration and anger lies a long-term optimism. I believe in humanity’s capacity to adapt, to evolve, and to eventually build something better and much wiser. But optimism without honesty is no different than denial, and we have to start by naming what’s actually happening.

The systems that have governed the modern world—political, economic, industrial, social, technological, environmental—are collapsing in real time. It’s not abstract anymore. The scaffolding that held up the post–World War II order, reinforced after the fall of the Soviet Union and accelerated by the neoliberal global project, is decaying under its own internal contradictions. We are witnessing the slow implosion of the frameworks that once defined our collective “normal.”

The chaos, cruelty, and instability that we are clearly witnessing daily now aren’t anomalies. They’re the expected visible symptoms of a paradigm shift already underway. Complex systems always contain the seeds of their own failure—contradictions that eventually become too large to hide or correct completely. When those contradictions reach critical mass, collapse isn’t a possibility; it’s a law of motion.

Collapse, of course, is terrifying. It’s often violent, unpredictable, and always carries collateral damage in some form. But it’s also a very rare moment of possibility—a kind of civilizational chrysalis. It’s a chance, perhaps the only one we’ll ever get in our lifetime, to rebuild the world on a foundation that truly reflects empathy, justice, sustainability, and wisdom rather than greed, extraction, and domination.

The powerful understand this perfectly. The cynical architects of the present order—the would-be oligarchs, technofascists, and the white nationalist cultists—they too know that the old world is dying. That’s why they’re moving so fast. They’re codifying their privilege and control into law, hardwiring inequality into technology, and normalizing cruelty as policy. They see the shift coming and are racing to lock in their advantage before the new world fully arrives and everyone else finally gets the memo. They don’t need any convincing. They already know. It’s the rest of us who must awaken and come together.

Their power and lust for it is not preordained. Their vision of the future—a surveillance-driven, Christofascist, techno-corporate dystopia—is not destiny. It is only possible if we—‘we the people’—remain passive, distracted, divided, and hopeless. They are counting on our despair and our fracture as their greatest ally—on millions of Americans and billions of people around the world resigning themselves to a system they quietly hate but feel too small to challenge.

Anyone paying attention knows how deep the damage they have created runs. The social fabric, the environment, public trust—all shredded and fraying. The work of repair will take generations. There’s no returning to what was. The old “normal” is gone, and it should be. That means the future is unwritten, which makes this moment—chaotic, dangerous, painful—but also sacred.

We all have choices to make now. Real choices of consequence that will shape not just our own lives but the conditions of life itself for generations to come. The question before us is painfully simple: Will we allow the cynical few to continue their project of exploitation and destruction—to strip ‘our’ planet bare and hollow out democracy in service of their endless appetite for ego and profit? Or will we finally and firmly say no, and chart another path forward—one rooted in human dignity and planetary survival? One that is inclusive and benefits all life in all its forms.

This is one of the many important questions of our time.

Yet, I also have a great concern. It bothers me deeply. I suspect, and cautiously hope, that the next few years will bring a reckoning. That the GOP, MAGA, and the technofascist apparatus will face a sweeping repudiation at the ballot box. That despite all the fearmongering, we will still have peaceful, fair, and free elections, as is tradition in this country, and that there won’t be some civil war 2.0. When that pendulum finally swings—as it inevitably will—it will swing left.

But I worry that it will swing too shallow—not from loss of momentum, but from forces pretending to be in favor of that swing, but quietly paid (read: bribed, i.e corrupted), or worse—blackmailed—to blunt it.

I fear that we’ll once again get a Democratic “revival” led by the same corporate centrists who have spent decades preserving the very structures that brought us here. The ones who play good cop to the GOP’s bad cop, who mouth platitudes about progress while ensuring that nothing truly transformative ever happens. They will offer stability without justice, comfort without repair—the political equivalent of morphine for a dying empire.

I fear that when that happens, millions of Americans will exhale, pat themselves on the back for “saving democracy,” and return to brunch, unaware that the clock has merely been reset on the next catastrophe.

This is America’s most dangerous reflex: mistaking that pause between crises for everlasting peace and stability, and the momentary relief it offers for true progress.

We cannot afford to do that again. Not now. Not when the stakes are now planetary, with climate and ecological collapse now fully underway.

We are living through a hinge of human history—a moment as consequential as the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment, or the fall of Rome. Within that hinge lies a very simple choice: renewal or ruin. Every person alive today has a part to play in determining which side we land on.

Don’t give up. Don’t tune out. Don’t hand your future to cynical people who want to profit from your exhaustion. Rest when you need to, but rejoin the effort when you can. When this era finally ends—when the dust begins to settle—do not, under any circumstances, let comfort lure you back into complacency.

The next world, if it is to be at all better, will have to be built by those who refused to sleep through the collapse of the old one. And it will only be sustained by a vigilant, informed, and devoted diverse populace willing to put the work into preserving it for those who come after us.

Let’s make sure that this time, we actually learn from history—and build something worthy and beautiful, for humankind, and all of life.