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URGENCY – do not postpone what’s in your heart. Reflecting on that motivation, I realise that I don’t want to be free of the wish to matter to others in useful ways, but now intend to be free from any compulsion or addiction that would be where my intellectual work serves as a distraction from my pain about our predicament.Ģ. That is partly because I also haven’t yet dropped the story of me contributing something that might ripple out to others.

Instead, I have experienced a couple of years of the most intense intellectual activity and writing to produce the ‘Breaking Together’ book.

Because I haven’t yet dropped the story and habit of prioritising what is intellectual and using the written form for my communication of that. Reflecting on this benefit, I also notice I have stalled in my transformation. I also dropped the story that I needed to be regarded as responsible by sticking to, at least the edges of, what was considered reasonable by senior role holders in the fields that I participated in, such as academia, international governance, and sustainable development cooperation. In my own case, I dropped the story that I should try to be pragmatic in responding to the environmental situation, as well as the idea that being pragmatic must involve accepting existing power relations and institutions to try to nudge them or reform them. For many people there is also a feeling of alienation from the modern societies that created such carnage – where collapse is a form of judgement of the systems and institutions that brought us to this point. There appears to be a psychological escape from the old stories that motivated and controlled us, whether personal or professional. In our conversation, Karen and I discussed why freedom from past preoccupations is such a key feature of people’s response to accepting the creeping collapse of industrial consumer societies. FREEDOM – move away from shoulds to the open doors of coulds. In this Part 1, I introduce the first 7 benefits with the shorthand I used for them in my book, and share Karen’s original text for them at the end of the essay.ġ. I will link to that in Part 2 of this essay on the benefits of collapse acceptance, in which I will describe my own experience in relation to the final eight benefits. Next week I will release my in-depth discussion with Karen Perry on my YouTube channel, where she shares her thinking behind the list, as well as her experience with each of the 15 benefits. By asking yourself what you have started and where might you have stalled, it will be a useful way of exploring your own psychological and practical ‘deep adaptation’. After you read it, I recommend you find time to reflect on your own life in relation to these benefits. Therefore, in this first of a two-part essay, I am sharing my reflections on the first seven benefits. In particular, it has helped reaffirm some of my choices as well as identifying areas where I have ‘stalled’ in my own transformation. I have found it useful to reflect on the extent to which I have been experiencing such benefits myself. That is a key message from former Occupy Wall Street activist Karen Perry, who created the list of benefits. Because there are indeed benefits from not only being curious or aware of collapse risks, but actually accepting that such a collapse is coming or already under way. Within it, I provide an edited list of the benefits of collapse acceptance. I discuss some such people, and their many positive ways of responding, in Chapter 12 of my book Breaking Together – a chapter now available as a free audio. Five years later, I have learned much from the many people who made major life changes precisely because of their recognition that we are in an era of unfolding societal collapse. Therefore, I focused on engaging people who already shared my outlook, to engage in open dialogue on the potential positive ways of responding. At the time, I was somewhat confused about how to integrate my own anticipation of societal collapse into my own life. The topic was too sensitive for that, and I felt too raw. When my Deep Adaptation paper went viral, I didn’t ride the wave onto TV screens and into bookstores.

For years I felt quite timid about my concerns, and then my conclusions, on the dire future of modern societies under increasing environmental stress.

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