Thank you for your helpful ideas about building a community of people thinking about not only the collapse that we are witnessing, but ways to move forward and recover from this difficult transitional period. What we are living through is a convergence of unhealthy aging — personal, institutional, and geopolitical. Trump is not the cause of this condition. He is its most visible embodiment. I am very interested in the ways to repair our adult developmental capacity so that we can begin to utilize some of the great suggestions I've seen from folks about policy, program, and relational possibilities for the future. Thanks for starting to identify people whose ideas will be essential to recovery.
Yes, I talk about the possibility that the universe may even have delivered Trump to be our saviour, undermining a system that was headed for a cliff. The best at gaming that system are our 1% now, and we weren't going to take drastic action to change it unless we had to. Hello Trump.
Yes. Trump's rapid-growth-with- immediate-pain model of change has transformed our previously highly-divided, disoriented nation, largely attributed to him, and, ironically, is galvanizing us into a unifying force with which he must contend.
I would add the name of Christopher Armitage to The List with his substack of @The Existential Republic. I will share this post with him. He does thorough research and promotes realistic solutions at the state level. He takes on complex topics. Caring. Ethical. Moral. A leader.
Re "galvanizing us into a unifying force with which he must contend." That's progress, that I've written something about in my post coming tomorrow Yes to Armitage. Thanks for forwarding this to him. I subscribe but never have passed anything of his along so he wasn't copied on my Open Letter. Here's where I comment on him: https://substack.com/@suzannetaylor/note/c-224903198?r=22nl7&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
Thank you for attempting to build a new group of heroic, independent, ethical and kind visionaries similar to this present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence who have the country's, and its inhabitants', best interests in mind.🇺🇲❤️🕯
I’ve been thinking along the same lines- the convergence of systemic forces in this moment are so perfectly embodied in how Trump and his movement. Periods of paradigm change are quite disruptive, and it’s important to contain the chaos so more humane and adaptive systems can emerge.
Let's see if the engine purrs. It's challenging to get people off their silos, where, as a longtime subscriber, you have seen that this isnt the first idea I've tried to float to get engagement going. Fingers crossed this one will be THE one.
Yes Sue I know from what you say. The thing is in order for anything to fly it must have wings , 97 % as a guesstimate don't have the ability to observe on that level of consciousness they haven't developed there ability to see "on high"
so guess the best place to start would be opening up a wing shop , where people grow there own wings!
Actually it's kind of a fetching idea as a storefront for real conversations, staffed by the 3% of the wise ones, to turn out high flyers! Where are you in the world? I'm in L.A..
I went looking for you and found this very wonderful thing:
A Declaration of Our Becoming
There comes a moment in the life of a species when it must face itself.
Not the image it has created, not the roles it has performed, not the systems it has built—but its true nature.
We stand in that moment now.
For too long, humanity has lived at the surface of itself. We have built civilizations without first understanding the consciousness that builds them.
We have organized power without first awakening wisdom. We have inherited structures shaped by fear, separation, and unconsciousness—and then wondered why suffering persists.
This is not a failure of humanity. It is a failure to fully become human.
Within each of us lives a deeper intelligence. A capacity to observe without distortion. To feel without defense. To know without being taught. These inner faculties have remained dormant—not because they do not exist, but because they have not been nurtured.
We were never meant to live only from habit, fear, and survival. We were meant to awaken—to perception, to compassion, to clarity, and to direct knowing.
The transformation of the world will not come from replacing one system with another. It will come from the awakening of the individuals who create systems.
No authority can grant this. No institution can manufacture it. It emerges when enough people choose to see clearly.
This is the great turning point: when we stop waiting to be led, and begin to stand in awareness together.
The future will not be shaped by the unconscious many, but by the conscious few who choose to become fully human—and who help others remember that they can.
This is not a call to fight.
This is a call to awaken.
Not tomorrow.
Now.
Not someone else.
Us.
We are not here merely to survive the world as it is.
We are here to participate in the birth of what humanity can become.
Wildlands has been making positive actions happen and writing about it for more than 3 years on Substack. I have decades of experience, and research-backed, information-packed essays and grassroots actions. Our mission is big! Our voice is small due to all the noise. We are creating a lot of impact in spite of it all. Your list is incomplete without including Wildlands.
Great to have you taking part -- and do have a say in the Chat. There are more savvy collapse folks than I know about, and hopefully this will draw all of you so we can be smarter together than we are separately.
Suzanne, as always, your heart is in the right place. That's a good list of writers, I'm familiar with many of them. There are of course innumerable others who have called out the folly of human behavior going back decades or hundreds of years from cultures on most continents of this planet. Considering that there is overlap in our understanding and messages, I find it frustrating that we're not united into a single, cohesive, larger voice.
IMO, awareness of overshoot is nearly zero in the public, although more seem to be catching on to climate change. Overcoming this ignorance in the face of a terrible news media and constant messaging to consume, consume, consume is a Herculean task. The voices here don't have the power or infrastructure to make much more than a dent.
The Limits of Growth was published in 1972. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring ten years before that. These warnings have gone largely unheeded.
We're on an oil tanker that needed to correct course five miles from shore, now just 500 feet away. The crash is inevitable. It's now a question of local, resilient communities that Margi Prideaux writes of and is working so hard to create in Australia. I don't think organizing at a global level is possible. If we're fortunate, perhaps some local communities can endure the destruction we have caused to our one and only real spaceship, Earth. Is anyone organizing in your community of L.A. or southern California?
The point of what I'm doing is to deal with what you are talking about, that the public doesn't know what's going on. Yes to what you are saying, that it's not about prevention but coping.
I needed some baseline of who to address in the open lette, so that people wouldn't shine it on, I took people like you, who I've already promoted one way or another, where I'd saved that material in the Banks of the best things on Substack, so that each person would have a connect to me from my promoting something of theirs. I said to pass it along to others who aren't addressed in my open letter, and you'd have a bunch of them to send it to, so how about that forward? If we get to do anything on Zoom, I'd still appreciate your co-hosting with me.
I don't know what will succeed, and even after the open letter to create action, we aren't barreling ahead, but I'm in the one foot after another school. Try something and something opens for trying something else. If we don't try, we're dead, so I figure it's worth some effort. Nothing is going on in L.A. It's a wasteland for consciousness, after it was the epicenter, much of which was at my house.
The collapse people are the ones with the most fire, so putting their sparks together is my hope for what Brian Swimme once said to me: "We’re both pointed at the same thing–igniting a great raging forest fire of love that will sweep us forever out of this deadening sadness of egos and superficiality.”
So excited! LaVonne Ellis and I started the New Whole Earth substack a year ago, and it seems there are pockets of like-minded folks everywhere. We’re remnants of the old back to the earth movement, and the Whole Earth Catalog was our bible. These days, it’s those analog values and practices that need to be dusted off and updated to modern capabilities.
The movement around our little pocket is loosely termed the wellbeing economy and lifestyle, and community is home base, wherever you are.
Finding and building community, sharing what we’ve learned over the many years and crises is the reason we jumped into Substack. You could say we’re well-seasoned, but we need to learn more ourselves and connecting these pockets is the way to build resilience and strength.
Tin cans and string, metaphorically speaking, with today’s technology will be crucial to stay connected when these new tools break down or are taken away from us. We’ll be sure to inform our subscribers that there are others out there who are allies and helpers. Tiny treasure chests scattered throughout the country and beyond. A widening collection of thinking caps. Sowing the seeds. Addressing the obstacles. Thank you for reaching out—looking forward to growing together.
Just got to this. Nobody was talking like I did three years ago when I started here, and now look. You are coming from my foundation back in the Human Potential Movement. Evolution moves along. We were discovering ourselves then, and now we’re discovering our mutuality. Stick with me for more!
Speaking of the Whole Earth Catalogue, I got one of my best lessons when Peter Coyote, the actor, helped Stewart Brand to not be stiff on TV interviews about a new book. Coyote told him the secret was not to focus on what you do, but what you do next. No matter how idiotic you have been, you can recover: “That was such a dumb thing I said. What I meant was….” It is a life-changer, where not knowing what’s coming next, rather than the tight control that caused stiffness, is where the good things show up.
When I was a kid, we’d make “daisy chains” with clover blossoms, as well as chains of popcorn and cranberries to drape our Christmas tree. Resistance, to be successful, relies on the same principles. Happy to be strung along with you!
The asteroid reference is so good. There's no way we'd sit on our thumbs and do nothing. An asteroid would almost be better than what we have right now. It would be a quick ending. Right now we're dying a slow horrible death. Keep it going!
Thank you for your helpful ideas about building a community of people thinking about not only the collapse that we are witnessing, but ways to move forward and recover from this difficult transitional period. What we are living through is a convergence of unhealthy aging — personal, institutional, and geopolitical. Trump is not the cause of this condition. He is its most visible embodiment. I am very interested in the ways to repair our adult developmental capacity so that we can begin to utilize some of the great suggestions I've seen from folks about policy, program, and relational possibilities for the future. Thanks for starting to identify people whose ideas will be essential to recovery.
Yes, I talk about the possibility that the universe may even have delivered Trump to be our saviour, undermining a system that was headed for a cliff. The best at gaming that system are our 1% now, and we weren't going to take drastic action to change it unless we had to. Hello Trump.
Yes. Trump's rapid-growth-with- immediate-pain model of change has transformed our previously highly-divided, disoriented nation, largely attributed to him, and, ironically, is galvanizing us into a unifying force with which he must contend.
I would add the name of Christopher Armitage to The List with his substack of @The Existential Republic. I will share this post with him. He does thorough research and promotes realistic solutions at the state level. He takes on complex topics. Caring. Ethical. Moral. A leader.
Thank you!
Re "galvanizing us into a unifying force with which he must contend." That's progress, that I've written something about in my post coming tomorrow Yes to Armitage. Thanks for forwarding this to him. I subscribe but never have passed anything of his along so he wasn't copied on my Open Letter. Here's where I comment on him: https://substack.com/@suzannetaylor/note/c-224903198?r=22nl7&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
*those
Thank you for attempting to build a new group of heroic, independent, ethical and kind visionaries similar to this present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence who have the country's, and its inhabitants', best interests in mind.🇺🇲❤️🕯
I’ve been thinking along the same lines- the convergence of systemic forces in this moment are so perfectly embodied in how Trump and his movement. Periods of paradigm change are quite disruptive, and it’s important to contain the chaos so more humane and adaptive systems can emerge.
I don't know about containment, but for sure get ready for a bumpy ride!
Correction: The *Existentialist Republic
An asteroid named collapse is right. Thank you Suzanne for jump-starting the engines on this.
Let's see if the engine purrs. It's challenging to get people off their silos, where, as a longtime subscriber, you have seen that this isnt the first idea I've tried to float to get engagement going. Fingers crossed this one will be THE one.
Yes Sue I know from what you say. The thing is in order for anything to fly it must have wings , 97 % as a guesstimate don't have the ability to observe on that level of consciousness they haven't developed there ability to see "on high"
so guess the best place to start would be opening up a wing shop , where people grow there own wings!
I'd invest in that !
How much?
Actually it's kind of a fetching idea as a storefront for real conversations, staffed by the 3% of the wise ones, to turn out high flyers! Where are you in the world? I'm in L.A..
Where all those amazing franchises were founded
Seattle
I went looking for you and found this very wonderful thing:
A Declaration of Our Becoming
There comes a moment in the life of a species when it must face itself.
Not the image it has created, not the roles it has performed, not the systems it has built—but its true nature.
We stand in that moment now.
For too long, humanity has lived at the surface of itself. We have built civilizations without first understanding the consciousness that builds them.
We have organized power without first awakening wisdom. We have inherited structures shaped by fear, separation, and unconsciousness—and then wondered why suffering persists.
This is not a failure of humanity. It is a failure to fully become human.
Within each of us lives a deeper intelligence. A capacity to observe without distortion. To feel without defense. To know without being taught. These inner faculties have remained dormant—not because they do not exist, but because they have not been nurtured.
We were never meant to live only from habit, fear, and survival. We were meant to awaken—to perception, to compassion, to clarity, and to direct knowing.
The transformation of the world will not come from replacing one system with another. It will come from the awakening of the individuals who create systems.
No authority can grant this. No institution can manufacture it. It emerges when enough people choose to see clearly.
This is the great turning point: when we stop waiting to be led, and begin to stand in awareness together.
The future will not be shaped by the unconscious many, but by the conscious few who choose to become fully human—and who help others remember that they can.
This is not a call to fight.
This is a call to awaken.
Not tomorrow.
Now.
Not someone else.
Us.
We are not here merely to survive the world as it is.
We are here to participate in the birth of what humanity can become.
Yes that's Me!
Hi Sue-
Wildlands has been making positive actions happen and writing about it for more than 3 years on Substack. I have decades of experience, and research-backed, information-packed essays and grassroots actions. Our mission is big! Our voice is small due to all the noise. We are creating a lot of impact in spite of it all. Your list is incomplete without including Wildlands.
Cheers from the wild... see you in Wildlands!
Great to have you taking part -- and do have a say in the Chat. There are more savvy collapse folks than I know about, and hopefully this will draw all of you so we can be smarter together than we are separately.
Suzanne, as always, your heart is in the right place. That's a good list of writers, I'm familiar with many of them. There are of course innumerable others who have called out the folly of human behavior going back decades or hundreds of years from cultures on most continents of this planet. Considering that there is overlap in our understanding and messages, I find it frustrating that we're not united into a single, cohesive, larger voice.
IMO, awareness of overshoot is nearly zero in the public, although more seem to be catching on to climate change. Overcoming this ignorance in the face of a terrible news media and constant messaging to consume, consume, consume is a Herculean task. The voices here don't have the power or infrastructure to make much more than a dent.
The Limits of Growth was published in 1972. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring ten years before that. These warnings have gone largely unheeded.
We're on an oil tanker that needed to correct course five miles from shore, now just 500 feet away. The crash is inevitable. It's now a question of local, resilient communities that Margi Prideaux writes of and is working so hard to create in Australia. I don't think organizing at a global level is possible. If we're fortunate, perhaps some local communities can endure the destruction we have caused to our one and only real spaceship, Earth. Is anyone organizing in your community of L.A. or southern California?
The point of what I'm doing is to deal with what you are talking about, that the public doesn't know what's going on. Yes to what you are saying, that it's not about prevention but coping.
I needed some baseline of who to address in the open lette, so that people wouldn't shine it on, I took people like you, who I've already promoted one way or another, where I'd saved that material in the Banks of the best things on Substack, so that each person would have a connect to me from my promoting something of theirs. I said to pass it along to others who aren't addressed in my open letter, and you'd have a bunch of them to send it to, so how about that forward? If we get to do anything on Zoom, I'd still appreciate your co-hosting with me.
I don't know what will succeed, and even after the open letter to create action, we aren't barreling ahead, but I'm in the one foot after another school. Try something and something opens for trying something else. If we don't try, we're dead, so I figure it's worth some effort. Nothing is going on in L.A. It's a wasteland for consciousness, after it was the epicenter, much of which was at my house.
The collapse people are the ones with the most fire, so putting their sparks together is my hope for what Brian Swimme once said to me: "We’re both pointed at the same thing–igniting a great raging forest fire of love that will sweep us forever out of this deadening sadness of egos and superficiality.”
I'm sending you a DM.
So excited! LaVonne Ellis and I started the New Whole Earth substack a year ago, and it seems there are pockets of like-minded folks everywhere. We’re remnants of the old back to the earth movement, and the Whole Earth Catalog was our bible. These days, it’s those analog values and practices that need to be dusted off and updated to modern capabilities.
The movement around our little pocket is loosely termed the wellbeing economy and lifestyle, and community is home base, wherever you are.
Finding and building community, sharing what we’ve learned over the many years and crises is the reason we jumped into Substack. You could say we’re well-seasoned, but we need to learn more ourselves and connecting these pockets is the way to build resilience and strength.
Tin cans and string, metaphorically speaking, with today’s technology will be crucial to stay connected when these new tools break down or are taken away from us. We’ll be sure to inform our subscribers that there are others out there who are allies and helpers. Tiny treasure chests scattered throughout the country and beyond. A widening collection of thinking caps. Sowing the seeds. Addressing the obstacles. Thank you for reaching out—looking forward to growing together.
Just got to this. Nobody was talking like I did three years ago when I started here, and now look. You are coming from my foundation back in the Human Potential Movement. Evolution moves along. We were discovering ourselves then, and now we’re discovering our mutuality. Stick with me for more!
Speaking of the Whole Earth Catalogue, I got one of my best lessons when Peter Coyote, the actor, helped Stewart Brand to not be stiff on TV interviews about a new book. Coyote told him the secret was not to focus on what you do, but what you do next. No matter how idiotic you have been, you can recover: “That was such a dumb thing I said. What I meant was….” It is a life-changer, where not knowing what’s coming next, rather than the tight control that caused stiffness, is where the good things show up.
When I was a kid, we’d make “daisy chains” with clover blossoms, as well as chains of popcorn and cranberries to drape our Christmas tree. Resistance, to be successful, relies on the same principles. Happy to be strung along with you!
Subscribing now. Recommended by Johan!👏💔🇺🇸
The asteroid reference is so good. There's no way we'd sit on our thumbs and do nothing. An asteroid would almost be better than what we have right now. It would be a quick ending. Right now we're dying a slow horrible death. Keep it going!
Remember, it's when people hit rock bottom that they sometimes go back up. So too, please God, for a country.