I feel your despair, and at times succumb to my own. The future has not yet been written, and may yet change course. We must keep pushing against the evil empire, because we do not know which will be the grain of sand that breaks the machine. In the meantime, we can create our own communities centered on the arts, science, literature, music, etc.
Three years ago I addressed my despair over environmental destruction by buying a cabin on the side of a mountain in the deep woods. Initially my goal was to not see any humans as much as possible. I filled my cabin with books and art supplies. I wandered the mountain to catalogue the native plants and trees. I tracked life in the vernal pools. At some point I ventured into the closest tiny town - 400 residents - and found the community center, a place dedicated to the arts and folklife of Appalachia. There I met fellow travelers. I am amazed the number of people who are in these mountains for similar reasons as me. Together we have art, literature, permaculture, herbalism, music and generational knowledge of these forests. Find your people. Rise or fall, we will ride this out together.
We are blessed/cursed to be here at the end of it all, to see how it ends, to see where it ends. But the ancient ones tell us a new dimension is at hand in this burning rubble of human ignorance (averageness?). Every bird, fish, mammal, the earth itself, knows it. Something will rise out of these ashes. I feel glum, darkness, despair. Yet your spirit of naming it all is the light the ancients have pointed to. Thank you, Umair. We are blessed/cursed to be here at the beginning of what comes next.
Some great and profound material in this essay, but also some over-the-top grandiloquence.
We, like all mammals, are prisoners of our social reality. There is no "divine spark" to anything, and words like "democracy" become weasel words subject to endless confabulation. The universe promised us nothing upon our birth, only that our lives are contingent and subject to external forces, now arranged toward civilizational collapse.
I think if you put humans in a decent environment, one that doesn't pit them against each other and drive them nuts, they might not be shameless. They might be great.
Who came up with capitalism? It’s baked right there in the dopey book of Genesis, nature is the dominion of man? The biggest lie of them all . Chimps > Homo sapiens , a duh
I would argue with much of what you have said here but there would be little point to the argument. You are grieving and angry and not ready to listen to any other point of view. Many of your subscribers are at the same point. I have already written two essays that address exactly what is troubling you. "How to live when you think the world is dying" and "Living in a time of failure" I'm in the process of writing "Is This the End of Civilization?" The bad news is that things are very bad, the good news is that things have been very bad many times in the past and people still found ways to live meaningful lives. The best news is that nobody knows the future. Did you predict the new rise of fascism and the total domination of corporate power and forget to warn us? Yet now you have predicted that it's game over and all effort is futile. Pretty sure that some of the Babylonians felt that way when Cyrus and army showed up at the gates. Pretty sure that Persia felt the same when Alexander showed up with the Greeks, and the Greeks when the Romans showed up, and then the Barbarians, Islam. Civilizations come and go but the ideas live on. If you believe that any of the things that you think are lost are worth fighting for then you are ethically obligated to keep fighting, win or lose. It probably looked pretty bad when Hitler owned all of the real estate in Europe up to the English Channel. I guess the British should have just said, "We're fucked! What's the point" and given up. So maybe get a grip, instead of thinking how horrible everything in the universe is think of one good thing that is closer to home and meaningful in your life. Work on that for a bit until you are ready to look a bit further out again without being overwhelmed by the outrage. You're a great writer and I truly wish you the best.
I did predict it. I warned everyone I knew since 2010. I told people to stop reading and watching the villains point of view because it would lead to fascism.
What we are facing is the knowledge that dictators and authoritarianism last generations. And the only 2 ways in all of human history they have been toppled is by a military coup in which you get much worse and the people rise up and overthrow which takes multiple generations.
So basically what you are saying is...just die in bondage because people in the past did and eventually things will change. You left out the multiple generations part though.
If that is what you got out of what I wrote then you did not read very carefully, and certainly did not bother to take a look at anything that I’ve written and published on Substack. Perhaps it will hit differently when you are ready to engage and listen as well as shout. Right now you are too invested in shouting “We’re fucked” and hearing echoes to be able to hear another point of view.
If you read any of my history you'd know that I am starting the revolution now - if I can, because I'm not waiting generations. If I'm going to be enslaved, either in a camp or in my own mind through theocracy, then I'd rather die. I'm going to die free one way or another.
But what you say, much like the historians I've been listening to, is that it will come. But you all leave out the 250 years of waiting for it part. You guys leave out that at least 2 generations have to live in these "isms" to reach a boiling point to drag them out and kill them.
And that's something we must all come to terms with. The end of all of human history and the only way to topple a dictator is for people to agree to kill them themselves.
Let me be very plain and direct. I do not say, “It will come”. I say it is our responsibility to bring it about. Part of my content is direct political advocacy and the goal of it is to get people to act. I also tell people to remember the limitations of being a human being. This means that you will be wrong sometimes. This is very comforting to me because I believe that things are just as dire as you do, and I’ve been thinking this from a time before you were born. I remind people that human life is short and if all that you do is scream into the wind then you are going to miss a lot. Don’t forget to share in some of what is good, what is worth fighting for. Do you believe that the Fascists have a plan that will enable them to maintain control for many generations? I don’t. I see inevitable collapse. What comes after collapse is the million dollar question and here on Substack I see many threads of possibility being planned and actualized for a better future. These threads did not exist fifty years ago. It is something to be hopeful about. Seeing around corners is very difficult. There is a corner directly ahead of us. Keep working to make the world better and doing what is right, because it is right, and don’t concern yourself too much about the outcome. Your last post sounds like you are just saying, “we’re fucked” and little more. If that is just you screaming into the wind and you need to do that to prepare for whatever comes next, fine. But it didn’t sound like that. It sounded like, “We’re fucked and you all are too stupid to know it and I give up”
I can see and even feel your hopelessness but what I believe is that these “average people” you are so angry with are the way they are because we abandoned them. We took away their livelihoods and, even worse, we took away their education. No more art or music, drama, debate, civics, science, and even shop classes where kids (boys mostly) could learn mechanics and carpentry and electronics. We took critical thinking away from them. We, who had been handed the stars, gave the less fortunate “No child left behind,” which made test scores the almighty. We allowed money to rule and this became their God. We have only ourselves to blame. Money has allowed only a handful of criminals in this country from ever having been held accountable for anything, beginning with the Civil War right up to Trump never facing prosecution for all his NYC crimes. Imagine a Southern United States if the insurrectionists had paid for their crimes against America. Imagine a US where Trump had gone to prison back in the day. It makes perfect sense that the “average person” would hate the “elites.” I hate them too. I hate that they abandoned everyone in this country between the coasts. We are to blame, Umair. We are the enemy of enlightenment.
Who is this "we" you speak of? I certainly didn't. I certainly voted to make their lives better. Every single time. I wanted the things that would have made them more. They voted against those things. So please, spare us the double speak cuz some of us are sick of Republican talking points.
There was no one to vote for. The neoliberals abandoned the entire country except the coasts. Obama shattered my heart into a million pieces. He lied to Planned Parenthood about codifying Roe being the first thing he would work towards when he was elected and then, when he was elected, said it wasn’t his first priority. Look how that turned out.
Bill Clinton’s administration laid the groundwork for severe, systemic damage to the American education system. The primary arguments that Bill Clinton "destroyed" education center around federal overreach, the introduction of high-stakes testing, structural inequities, and post-presidency corporate ethics.
You guys have primaries and elect your own government. Instead of blaming the cities, look in the damn mirror and understand how YOU are the voter who voted for the people running your state. I find it hilarious that you blame presidents for your problems instead of your governor. That explains why you think it's our fault.
You people from the stix need an education. Too bad you voted that away, too.
I never said this was a president‘s fault. This is the fault of both Republicans and Neo liberals and I am just as much at fault as the bad player Democrats. For years, I couldn’t understand what had happened to the Democrats and then I started really looking into it. The Republicans have always abandoned the people and then Citizens United started buying off the Democrats and everyone was fucked. Read history.
Your last few posts have been cathartic for me. Your truth-telling about the utter & unrelenting ugliness, pettiness, and complete-commitment-to-destruction-of-any-worthwhile-thing in which we now all live....is wonderfully releasing. Truly, your last, best gift can be the ability to name the truth.
You (& some of your readers) are walking through the hottest fires of grief right now and refusing to turn away....a heroic choice if ever there is one..... which will lead (eventually...perhaps a long eventually) to the blackened aftermath of true acceptance and further clarity about, as Native elder Stan Rushworth says, "how to comport yourself during this time". No changing of the ending, no righting of the ship, no miraculous staving off of massive environmental & cultural destruction. Just choice(s) of how to comport ourselves during this time. I wish you well on that journey.
In the summer of 2025 I went through this same crisis of mind and life. I am here if you need an unobjective ear.
I have spent the last year coming to terms with my feelings and plotting a new way forward. I have, unfortunately, given up on humans. And honestly, I view death in a whole new light - no longer something to fear, but something to celebrate. My whole world view has shifted.
Once upon a time, I was an artist, an activist, and a nerd. My sense of justice used to be so high that I get mad at how the planet works...like things having to eat other things - fucking sick. I don't like it, never have. And now I get even more angry about it.
And that leads me to today. I am a whole new person. I used to be unapologetically me, but now it's so much worse. I am not afraid to go against social morms and decorum. I am not afraid to say eat the rich in public, I am not afraid to stand up to anyone. I will shame people for the slightest things and I'll get into a fight over anything. My gloves have come off on the ignorant.
However, the drive to be the best version of me is still there. I am still a teacher. I am still a defender. I am still a creator. But my ideas changed. Where I used to put faith in schools and libraries, I now see the need to create my own learning centers. I recognize how mediocre art has become and I am now teaching others techniques for free. I'm trying to find the sewers and crafters, handymen, electricians and anyone in my community who is willing to teach people. I'm growing a permaculture food garden to show people how food grows wild...on 2 inner city lots. I created an ecosystem that was dead before now with predators. It only took 3 years to grow wild food.
Don't give up. Please. It's hard to come to terms with this new world. But, I promise that if you put in the time to recognize what your community needs right now and start working towards that, you may find small ways to help.
We have to stop thinking in terms of Hollywood and influencer culture. Those are national acts. We need to focus on our small communities and focus on the work that can help at home.
My garden is in the front yard with huge crops growing. People stop and look all the time. I am buying plaques to place around to explain that it's wild growth and everything here is from seeds from 3 years ago. They can grow it, too. If they stop moving what they think are weeds, they might be surprised to find it's really food.
It appears that you have lived an honest life, not a wasted one my friend. And continue to do so. Perhaps rage and judgement are new(ish) to you. It's not arrogance.
I still continue to be the optimist. But a really, really, fucking pissed off optimist.
How to explain to those who spit in the face of all that [great literature, real science, high standards] that these things bring comfort and solace, to life, which is so difficult?
Maybe Truth tellers, like Umair, are like firekeepers in olden times- keeping the flame (truth) alive between camps (epochs), in animal horn or shell (language), for posterity (children/the future).
What does a truthteller do though, when the evidence and their vision reveal a bleak, soulless and cultureless future, or no future at all?
Nietzsche, ironically, believed in what he called, "dying at the right time." How though to know when life has been lived completely and enough and then have the courage to move along? How to die at the right time (from worldly circumstances, but in the right way), in a wrong time? How does one, if necessary, compress, then integrate the collective life lessons and wisdom of the body, mind, soul and spirit and steady the whole of that realization, that structure, as bullwork against the coming horror of civilizations apparent fold and maybe worse?
Continue to do the "work," without expectation. The ends are in the process.
Not so fast, dude. It’s not over til the fat lady sings, as my parents used to say. And I don’t hear it yet, despite the terrorizing insane bullshit screaming everywhere.
Yes there’s tons of these people.
Fuck them, honestly. You can’t tie in your health to this shit.
Don’t scare your pup, at least.
Get out of here, if you’re back in country. It’s hard to deal with this stuff if you are here nonstop.
Remember the world is not this.
Here we are suiciding, it’s true. And people are waking up, albeit it slowly, truly. Maybe it’s time to step away from it for a bit.
If you don’t want to go back to France, maybe try someplace outside of Europe. Chile, UAE, Malaysia…..your passport is still a good one. Or maybe try the Nordic countries.
Just go and sit down and have a coffee. Dubai is accepting dogs in some restaurants now….things change everywhere all the time
You did a lot, wrote a lot, and now a pause.
Maybe try something you have never done: drawing, ceramics, archery, idk. In whichever place you go to.
But you don’t sound good.
Fuck these people
You still have your life.
Move yourselves into a new place, and do something with your hands. It’ll shift your energy.
umair this july it's been 17 years now i've kept an eye on and tried damn hard to share your words with the world in utter futility. I share your despair deeply. At the same time I find glimmers of Hope in the hearts and eyes of the people known as the quebecois who live in the city called Quebec City where I have been living for 5 years. Come visit Quebec City sometime. Meet with these unique people this unique culture. We're poets and artists and bookstores number almost as many as there are bars. A bubble in the anglosphere of North America. I wish I could put hope in a syringe and inject it into your bloodstream.. I wish men like David Suzuki we're not telling us that we can have a better apocalypse we can work toward a better catastrophe. When I talk to teenagers and people in their early twenties they give me hope at least the ones that aren't glued to screens do. When I talk to artists when I talk to poets when I talk to writers when I talk to doers and makers and Community Builders when I talked to co-op members I gain hope in this little bubble known as Quebec City in the anglosphere of North America.... you wrote the books you knew the path but the world has changed betterness isn't enough the new capitalist Manifesto wasn't enough greed is too powerful of force in this world now greed is a disease that is so endemic to those who have control of it. There are ways to escape the system. And they involve I believe by not living in a way that requires energy. We build ticky tacky boxes, we build stacked shoe boxes, that require massive amounts of energy to survive the heat of Summer and the cold of winter, when we stop building like that using hemp and bamboo and Stone I believe we can escape subscription to energy services, I believe we can build new communities off of the grid away from the grid not dependent on the grid not feeding the grid a participating on the grid in the grid for the grid. I know this is part of the way to make the old way obsolete and irrelevant by unplugging from it. Take care of you Umair. Thank you for still sharing your words. Please keep sharing your words.
You've divided humanity into two groups, the intellectual/artist/morally-conscious ones and the hoi polloi, who have sold out the humanist vision of humanity. I would argue there is a third group, the greedy fascists, and that it is they who have captured the hoi polloi with lies (e.g., neo-liberalism and communist threats) , with depriving them of civic education and critical history in schools, and with bread and circuses.
I have stared into this abyss since I was a boy. I can see it in the silence of a lifetime’s meditative practice. Yet there is something else. There will be only a remnant when the dawn breaks but it is coming. Bear it a little longer. Patience.
I feel your despair, and at times succumb to my own. The future has not yet been written, and may yet change course. We must keep pushing against the evil empire, because we do not know which will be the grain of sand that breaks the machine. In the meantime, we can create our own communities centered on the arts, science, literature, music, etc.
Three years ago I addressed my despair over environmental destruction by buying a cabin on the side of a mountain in the deep woods. Initially my goal was to not see any humans as much as possible. I filled my cabin with books and art supplies. I wandered the mountain to catalogue the native plants and trees. I tracked life in the vernal pools. At some point I ventured into the closest tiny town - 400 residents - and found the community center, a place dedicated to the arts and folklife of Appalachia. There I met fellow travelers. I am amazed the number of people who are in these mountains for similar reasons as me. Together we have art, literature, permaculture, herbalism, music and generational knowledge of these forests. Find your people. Rise or fall, we will ride this out together.
We are blessed/cursed to be here at the end of it all, to see how it ends, to see where it ends. But the ancient ones tell us a new dimension is at hand in this burning rubble of human ignorance (averageness?). Every bird, fish, mammal, the earth itself, knows it. Something will rise out of these ashes. I feel glum, darkness, despair. Yet your spirit of naming it all is the light the ancients have pointed to. Thank you, Umair. We are blessed/cursed to be here at the beginning of what comes next.
Some great and profound material in this essay, but also some over-the-top grandiloquence.
We, like all mammals, are prisoners of our social reality. There is no "divine spark" to anything, and words like "democracy" become weasel words subject to endless confabulation. The universe promised us nothing upon our birth, only that our lives are contingent and subject to external forces, now arranged toward civilizational collapse.
I think this is a very brave essay. Thank you put putting the dread I’ve been feeling into words.
Same
Nature goes one way. Humans go against nature. We’re shameless :)
I think if you put humans in a decent environment, one that doesn't pit them against each other and drive them nuts, they might not be shameless. They might be great.
I don't think the megafauna who used to live on these continents would agree. Where humans arrive on a scene, extinctions start to follow.
Our vaunted “cooperation” coupled with our desperate fears seems to combine into violence.
Who came up with capitalism? It’s baked right there in the dopey book of Genesis, nature is the dominion of man? The biggest lie of them all . Chimps > Homo sapiens , a duh
I would argue with much of what you have said here but there would be little point to the argument. You are grieving and angry and not ready to listen to any other point of view. Many of your subscribers are at the same point. I have already written two essays that address exactly what is troubling you. "How to live when you think the world is dying" and "Living in a time of failure" I'm in the process of writing "Is This the End of Civilization?" The bad news is that things are very bad, the good news is that things have been very bad many times in the past and people still found ways to live meaningful lives. The best news is that nobody knows the future. Did you predict the new rise of fascism and the total domination of corporate power and forget to warn us? Yet now you have predicted that it's game over and all effort is futile. Pretty sure that some of the Babylonians felt that way when Cyrus and army showed up at the gates. Pretty sure that Persia felt the same when Alexander showed up with the Greeks, and the Greeks when the Romans showed up, and then the Barbarians, Islam. Civilizations come and go but the ideas live on. If you believe that any of the things that you think are lost are worth fighting for then you are ethically obligated to keep fighting, win or lose. It probably looked pretty bad when Hitler owned all of the real estate in Europe up to the English Channel. I guess the British should have just said, "We're fucked! What's the point" and given up. So maybe get a grip, instead of thinking how horrible everything in the universe is think of one good thing that is closer to home and meaningful in your life. Work on that for a bit until you are ready to look a bit further out again without being overwhelmed by the outrage. You're a great writer and I truly wish you the best.
I did predict it. I warned everyone I knew since 2010. I told people to stop reading and watching the villains point of view because it would lead to fascism.
What we are facing is the knowledge that dictators and authoritarianism last generations. And the only 2 ways in all of human history they have been toppled is by a military coup in which you get much worse and the people rise up and overthrow which takes multiple generations.
So basically what you are saying is...just die in bondage because people in the past did and eventually things will change. You left out the multiple generations part though.
If that is what you got out of what I wrote then you did not read very carefully, and certainly did not bother to take a look at anything that I’ve written and published on Substack. Perhaps it will hit differently when you are ready to engage and listen as well as shout. Right now you are too invested in shouting “We’re fucked” and hearing echoes to be able to hear another point of view.
If you read any of my history you'd know that I am starting the revolution now - if I can, because I'm not waiting generations. If I'm going to be enslaved, either in a camp or in my own mind through theocracy, then I'd rather die. I'm going to die free one way or another.
But what you say, much like the historians I've been listening to, is that it will come. But you all leave out the 250 years of waiting for it part. You guys leave out that at least 2 generations have to live in these "isms" to reach a boiling point to drag them out and kill them.
And that's something we must all come to terms with. The end of all of human history and the only way to topple a dictator is for people to agree to kill them themselves.
Let me be very plain and direct. I do not say, “It will come”. I say it is our responsibility to bring it about. Part of my content is direct political advocacy and the goal of it is to get people to act. I also tell people to remember the limitations of being a human being. This means that you will be wrong sometimes. This is very comforting to me because I believe that things are just as dire as you do, and I’ve been thinking this from a time before you were born. I remind people that human life is short and if all that you do is scream into the wind then you are going to miss a lot. Don’t forget to share in some of what is good, what is worth fighting for. Do you believe that the Fascists have a plan that will enable them to maintain control for many generations? I don’t. I see inevitable collapse. What comes after collapse is the million dollar question and here on Substack I see many threads of possibility being planned and actualized for a better future. These threads did not exist fifty years ago. It is something to be hopeful about. Seeing around corners is very difficult. There is a corner directly ahead of us. Keep working to make the world better and doing what is right, because it is right, and don’t concern yourself too much about the outcome. Your last post sounds like you are just saying, “we’re fucked” and little more. If that is just you screaming into the wind and you need to do that to prepare for whatever comes next, fine. But it didn’t sound like that. It sounded like, “We’re fucked and you all are too stupid to know it and I give up”
I can see and even feel your hopelessness but what I believe is that these “average people” you are so angry with are the way they are because we abandoned them. We took away their livelihoods and, even worse, we took away their education. No more art or music, drama, debate, civics, science, and even shop classes where kids (boys mostly) could learn mechanics and carpentry and electronics. We took critical thinking away from them. We, who had been handed the stars, gave the less fortunate “No child left behind,” which made test scores the almighty. We allowed money to rule and this became their God. We have only ourselves to blame. Money has allowed only a handful of criminals in this country from ever having been held accountable for anything, beginning with the Civil War right up to Trump never facing prosecution for all his NYC crimes. Imagine a Southern United States if the insurrectionists had paid for their crimes against America. Imagine a US where Trump had gone to prison back in the day. It makes perfect sense that the “average person” would hate the “elites.” I hate them too. I hate that they abandoned everyone in this country between the coasts. We are to blame, Umair. We are the enemy of enlightenment.
Who is this "we" you speak of? I certainly didn't. I certainly voted to make their lives better. Every single time. I wanted the things that would have made them more. They voted against those things. So please, spare us the double speak cuz some of us are sick of Republican talking points.
There was no one to vote for. The neoliberals abandoned the entire country except the coasts. Obama shattered my heart into a million pieces. He lied to Planned Parenthood about codifying Roe being the first thing he would work towards when he was elected and then, when he was elected, said it wasn’t his first priority. Look how that turned out.
Bill Clinton’s administration laid the groundwork for severe, systemic damage to the American education system. The primary arguments that Bill Clinton "destroyed" education center around federal overreach, the introduction of high-stakes testing, structural inequities, and post-presidency corporate ethics.
Guess who voted for all the things that would have made your life better.
You guys have primaries and elect your own government. Instead of blaming the cities, look in the damn mirror and understand how YOU are the voter who voted for the people running your state. I find it hilarious that you blame presidents for your problems instead of your governor. That explains why you think it's our fault.
You people from the stix need an education. Too bad you voted that away, too.
I never said this was a president‘s fault. This is the fault of both Republicans and Neo liberals and I am just as much at fault as the bad player Democrats. For years, I couldn’t understand what had happened to the Democrats and then I started really looking into it. The Republicans have always abandoned the people and then Citizens United started buying off the Democrats and everyone was fucked. Read history.
Your last few posts have been cathartic for me. Your truth-telling about the utter & unrelenting ugliness, pettiness, and complete-commitment-to-destruction-of-any-worthwhile-thing in which we now all live....is wonderfully releasing. Truly, your last, best gift can be the ability to name the truth.
You (& some of your readers) are walking through the hottest fires of grief right now and refusing to turn away....a heroic choice if ever there is one..... which will lead (eventually...perhaps a long eventually) to the blackened aftermath of true acceptance and further clarity about, as Native elder Stan Rushworth says, "how to comport yourself during this time". No changing of the ending, no righting of the ship, no miraculous staving off of massive environmental & cultural destruction. Just choice(s) of how to comport ourselves during this time. I wish you well on that journey.
You're a writer. The correct word in this context is, nausea.
In the summer of 2025 I went through this same crisis of mind and life. I am here if you need an unobjective ear.
I have spent the last year coming to terms with my feelings and plotting a new way forward. I have, unfortunately, given up on humans. And honestly, I view death in a whole new light - no longer something to fear, but something to celebrate. My whole world view has shifted.
Once upon a time, I was an artist, an activist, and a nerd. My sense of justice used to be so high that I get mad at how the planet works...like things having to eat other things - fucking sick. I don't like it, never have. And now I get even more angry about it.
And that leads me to today. I am a whole new person. I used to be unapologetically me, but now it's so much worse. I am not afraid to go against social morms and decorum. I am not afraid to say eat the rich in public, I am not afraid to stand up to anyone. I will shame people for the slightest things and I'll get into a fight over anything. My gloves have come off on the ignorant.
However, the drive to be the best version of me is still there. I am still a teacher. I am still a defender. I am still a creator. But my ideas changed. Where I used to put faith in schools and libraries, I now see the need to create my own learning centers. I recognize how mediocre art has become and I am now teaching others techniques for free. I'm trying to find the sewers and crafters, handymen, electricians and anyone in my community who is willing to teach people. I'm growing a permaculture food garden to show people how food grows wild...on 2 inner city lots. I created an ecosystem that was dead before now with predators. It only took 3 years to grow wild food.
Don't give up. Please. It's hard to come to terms with this new world. But, I promise that if you put in the time to recognize what your community needs right now and start working towards that, you may find small ways to help.
We have to stop thinking in terms of Hollywood and influencer culture. Those are national acts. We need to focus on our small communities and focus on the work that can help at home.
My garden is in the front yard with huge crops growing. People stop and look all the time. I am buying plaques to place around to explain that it's wild growth and everything here is from seeds from 3 years ago. They can grow it, too. If they stop moving what they think are weeds, they might be surprised to find it's really food.
It appears that you have lived an honest life, not a wasted one my friend. And continue to do so. Perhaps rage and judgement are new(ish) to you. It's not arrogance.
I still continue to be the optimist. But a really, really, fucking pissed off optimist.
How to explain to those who spit in the face of all that [great literature, real science, high standards] that these things bring comfort and solace, to life, which is so difficult?
Maybe Truth tellers, like Umair, are like firekeepers in olden times- keeping the flame (truth) alive between camps (epochs), in animal horn or shell (language), for posterity (children/the future).
What does a truthteller do though, when the evidence and their vision reveal a bleak, soulless and cultureless future, or no future at all?
Nietzsche, ironically, believed in what he called, "dying at the right time." How though to know when life has been lived completely and enough and then have the courage to move along? How to die at the right time (from worldly circumstances, but in the right way), in a wrong time? How does one, if necessary, compress, then integrate the collective life lessons and wisdom of the body, mind, soul and spirit and steady the whole of that realization, that structure, as bullwork against the coming horror of civilizations apparent fold and maybe worse?
Continue to do the "work," without expectation. The ends are in the process.
Not so fast, dude. It’s not over til the fat lady sings, as my parents used to say. And I don’t hear it yet, despite the terrorizing insane bullshit screaming everywhere.
Yes there’s tons of these people.
Fuck them, honestly. You can’t tie in your health to this shit.
Don’t scare your pup, at least.
Get out of here, if you’re back in country. It’s hard to deal with this stuff if you are here nonstop.
Remember the world is not this.
Here we are suiciding, it’s true. And people are waking up, albeit it slowly, truly. Maybe it’s time to step away from it for a bit.
If you don’t want to go back to France, maybe try someplace outside of Europe. Chile, UAE, Malaysia…..your passport is still a good one. Or maybe try the Nordic countries.
Just go and sit down and have a coffee. Dubai is accepting dogs in some restaurants now….things change everywhere all the time
You did a lot, wrote a lot, and now a pause.
Maybe try something you have never done: drawing, ceramics, archery, idk. In whichever place you go to.
But you don’t sound good.
Fuck these people
You still have your life.
Move yourselves into a new place, and do something with your hands. It’ll shift your energy.
umair this july it's been 17 years now i've kept an eye on and tried damn hard to share your words with the world in utter futility. I share your despair deeply. At the same time I find glimmers of Hope in the hearts and eyes of the people known as the quebecois who live in the city called Quebec City where I have been living for 5 years. Come visit Quebec City sometime. Meet with these unique people this unique culture. We're poets and artists and bookstores number almost as many as there are bars. A bubble in the anglosphere of North America. I wish I could put hope in a syringe and inject it into your bloodstream.. I wish men like David Suzuki we're not telling us that we can have a better apocalypse we can work toward a better catastrophe. When I talk to teenagers and people in their early twenties they give me hope at least the ones that aren't glued to screens do. When I talk to artists when I talk to poets when I talk to writers when I talk to doers and makers and Community Builders when I talked to co-op members I gain hope in this little bubble known as Quebec City in the anglosphere of North America.... you wrote the books you knew the path but the world has changed betterness isn't enough the new capitalist Manifesto wasn't enough greed is too powerful of force in this world now greed is a disease that is so endemic to those who have control of it. There are ways to escape the system. And they involve I believe by not living in a way that requires energy. We build ticky tacky boxes, we build stacked shoe boxes, that require massive amounts of energy to survive the heat of Summer and the cold of winter, when we stop building like that using hemp and bamboo and Stone I believe we can escape subscription to energy services, I believe we can build new communities off of the grid away from the grid not dependent on the grid not feeding the grid a participating on the grid in the grid for the grid. I know this is part of the way to make the old way obsolete and irrelevant by unplugging from it. Take care of you Umair. Thank you for still sharing your words. Please keep sharing your words.
Please keep sharing your words Umair.
You've divided humanity into two groups, the intellectual/artist/morally-conscious ones and the hoi polloi, who have sold out the humanist vision of humanity. I would argue there is a third group, the greedy fascists, and that it is they who have captured the hoi polloi with lies (e.g., neo-liberalism and communist threats) , with depriving them of civic education and critical history in schools, and with bread and circuses.
I have stared into this abyss since I was a boy. I can see it in the silence of a lifetime’s meditative practice. Yet there is something else. There will be only a remnant when the dawn breaks but it is coming. Bear it a little longer. Patience.
This must be what Carl Jung saw on his deathbed when he bemoaned the death of humanity.