There Is Still Room for Hope

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

daylight ~ see ~ bug ~ collapse ~ woods

They were submitted by: https://Bakinginatornado.com

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A lot of us look ahead and see the potential of a societal collapse.

I'm certainly guilty of that myself, but Im trying to get better. Obviously I get that line of thinking, though. We're in a post normal world now. The damage done to our climate and the related side effects from progressing climate change and atmospheric heating cannot be undone. Experts agree now that even if we went to net zero carbon emissions tomorrow, we couldnt erase the changes we are facing (and will continue to endure) before the end of this century, and we aren't even close to any sort of net zero emissions even as many countries are beginning to come together for timelines of when that may happen. Raging fires, ice storms, heat domes, lack of water sources, billionaires looking to space for the answers... it's all here to stay in our life times. Combine that with growing fascism in multiple countries, increasing street violence in those countries, civil wars, our fears about Afghanistan and the Taliban, weaponized unreality, the culmination of decades of science denial for the sake of profit, and a going on 2 year fight against a pandemic, and it's no wonder so many of us cannot see a future that isn't at least somewhat apocalyptic. Add in that it doesn't help when even the more "liberal" parties make promises of going back to easier times, promises that sound so good to many of us in theory but are outright lies in the face of climate change science, and you have a pretty heady mix of negativity. Yes, even without Trump or any of the other shit of even the last ten years, we would still be pretty royally screwed when it comes to being able to live and breathe easily from this point on. And constant promises of returning to a state of normal make it harder for folks to consider bracing for an ever changing future.

What I think we're getting wrong though is an end to everything as we know it being the immutable result of all this. I think, or at least want to hope, we can do better than that.

I live in a hurricane zone so I tend to keep some things on hand for emergencies, but I've made lists even on this blog for resources in case we do experience black and brown outs here and how to live off the land or pack a bug out back if things were to get really rough. I think there's a lot to be said for preparation, for the anxiety relief that tends to come with knowing you can weather most storms with a little know-how, work, and a few tucked away items.

But I think we also have to focus on the potential for rebuilding something new and better and to do that through mutual aid and community building. If there was one strong take away from the last couple of years at least, I would hope it's that we can, in fact, come together to handle most things for each other even while our politicians fight over which party can do as little as possible for the populace and get away with it. We can come together and build communities and mutual aid networks. We can be the hope we want to see in the world.

And perhaps most importantly, we can adapt.

Even if you just consider the changes that have come since 1900 when industrialization here in the u.s. was in full swing, our country grew, we got the automobile industry, plane travel, telephones and tvs and all manner of improved methods to listen to music, space travel, undersea exploration, the internet, computers that were as big as houses with barely any capabilities to computers we carry in our pockets. We've worked on defining human rights and adapting what those should be and who they should apply to. We've survived world wars and pandemics and companies hell bent on profit over people. And while some of us have done so with less grace than others here we are considerably better now than 100 years ago and still changing. It's entirely understandable to look at the last several years at the very least (and much of history for many folks) and feel like the pendulum has swung too far into hate and division and greed and destruction to be corrected, but the future is still wide open, and we could still make it swing the other direction with the right kind of work.

I'd love to run off into the woods and hang out with my pet alligator in a bayou hut far from civilization. I even painted myself one to look at every now and then. But there's still daylight at the end of this tunnel if we choose to make it that far, and I have to believe we can do better. There's no less reason to be prepared, but for all of us and everyone that comes after us, we have to build something different than we have, than we've ever had.

The challenge is in the not giving up, in seeing this through, in doing more than voting and going back to the day to day. We have to build not subsist on the same bullshit we've been fed all these decades. The challenge is in reimagining everything we know to be unchangeable and building something that works and not just a marginal step at best that will be undone every 4 to 8 years. We have to listen to the folks hurt by existing systems and who have always done their work to protect the world, and we have a limited time to stop questioning them and hear what they're saying.

We have to take "impossible" off the table.

There's still more than enough time for the future we have to be one of building a new way forward and not like you know being cannibals that eat each other to survive in a Mad Max landscape of hellfire and water shortages. We don't have to fight each other to the death for a bit of water. We just have to believe in how much better we can be and make it happen.

____________________

Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

What TF Sarah https://crazymamallama.blogspot.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Light Lessons

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

 

My words are: gut-wrenching ~ greenhouse gas emissions ~ blue zone ~ womb ~ associated ~ spirit

It was submitted by: https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

                        __________________

I'm writing this journal from the womb that has become my home, a little underground bunker I worked a second job to be able to afford as soon as Donald Trump won his 4th term and nominated his sons to lead the country in case of his death and thereafter. I knew then that there was no hope left.

Probably should have realized that the first time with the mishandling of literally everything but especially the coronavirus and the looming reality of climate change. But I couldn't quite give up back then. I really thought any day people would wake up to how bad things had already gotten and would continue to get, but that time never came even as we died in astounding numbers from constant inaction and lack of adequate healthcare in various pandemics. Trump's flagrant misuse and outright theft of government funds in his later terms didn't help either.

It's gut-wrenching to think we could have stopped this. We could have put more research into the growing threat of novel viruses and super bacteria. We could have cut greenhouse gas emissions. We could have put stricter regulations on our military, our corporations, participated in the Paris agreement. We could have done anything, literally anything, but we chose profit over life, so now here we are at the end of ours. Collectively.

The end of humanity at least this go around...

Capitalism killed as so many of us said it would, and I hope if life happens again, those beings learn from our mistakes.

I live in what the United Nations named a blue zone in 2030. The various color schemes were meant to indicate how dangerous a zone would be for humans living above ground and without major protections. Red zones were coastal areas that essentially sunk into the oceans. Then orange, yellow, blue, and green.

I wouldn't even have to move to be safe in a bunker. Pro. I'd be underground the rest of my life with risky trips to get supplies or maybe healthcare if things continued on the same trajectory. Con.

I wouldn't have been able to save for a bunker AND a move so pros or cons really never mattered much. A move was never guaranteed as people emigrated en masse to those zones. Space was limited, and that came with other risks. Life underground would be my future if I chose to live long enough to see it through.

So here I am both loving and regretting being alive to experience this.

Life seems vastly more complicated in the grand scheme of things while the day to day stuff grew an inversely proportional level of simple. I grow a lot of my own food with grow lights in an off shoot of my bunker. I eat simpler, have less, and don't fight for a 9 to 5 to live paycheck to paycheck. There are no paychecks anymore. Life is fundamentally about substitence. The few people around me and I trade my cucumbers for their chicken eggs or something from my stores of booze and toys for some handmade socks. Bartering for necessities or small luxuries is an interaction I actually look forward to now instead of the existential dread I associated with a trip to the grocery store.

If it weren't for watching the world end, I think I'd be happier. That whole thing is sort of like a thorn in your foot though. Try as you might to forget it and keep moving on, it's always there to remind you with a little pain and potential infection. I'd be happier without the grief I feel for life as I knew it. It's never gone, but I still find myself smiling and at peace for more than I ever had time to do before.

So I guess what I really want to do with this journal from now until it's my time is show whoever comes next the true spirit of humanity without capitalism and money, to show that we do help one another. We do love and share and work. It doesn't have to be about winners and success because we can't win unless we all win, every last vulnerable one of us. I want to write down for all to see how we lived at the end, how we helped one another, how we grew into tighter communities and bigger families, and learned a different way of life, a better one. We're not lazy and unmotivated and greedy when there's system propping up those qualities as desirable and necessary.

Actually, I think we're the light. And I'm going to prove it.

                           ________________________


Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:




Baking In A Tornado https://bakinginatornado.com/




Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com




Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog




On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/




Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/




Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/




Climaxed https://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com




Follow Me Home https://followmehome.shellybean.com