We need radical acceptance of reality if we’re to have hope for a better future. We must fight with revolutionary optimism, even if we won’t benefit personally. We have arrived at this moment of crisis because far too many of us chose to ignore the harms inflicted by our government at home and abroad because it didn’t directly affect us. Because it was easier to live in fantasy and pretend that we’re the good guys. Because we didn’t want to give up our comfortable lives and fight for the marginalized and oppressed.
Mop Up
The most boring part about fighting wildfires is what’s called “mop up.” After firefighters contain the active growth of a wildfire we spend days on our hands and knees literally touching every inch of ground around the fire’s edge. We use our hands to dig through the ash and find hotspots: places where embers are still burning and hot to the touch. Then we use our tools to mix those hot embers around in the dirt until they no longer pose a risk of re-starting the fire. It’s incredibly dirty boring work.
The Palisades fire which killed 12 in Los Angeles in January of 2025 started from a small brush fire that was left to smolder after it was declared contained.
Firefighters mopping up a small brush fire that authorities say reignited as the Palisades fire five days later were ordered to leave the original burn scene even though they complained the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch, according to firefighter text messages reviewed by The Times.
To the firefighters’ surprise, their battalion chief ordered them to roll up their hoses and pull out of the area on Jan. 2 — the day after the 8-acre blaze was declared contained — rather than stay and make sure there were no hidden embers that could spark a new fire, the text messages said.
America didn’t mop-up after its genocide of the indigenous Americans. It didn’t mop-up after the civil war. It imported burning Nazi embers and scattered them throughout our government after WW2. We watched with dispassion as we burned Latin America. We numbed ourselves with fast food and sit-coms while we blew apart the Middle East.
The voracious capitalist monster has run out of fuel abroad and now it’s coming to consume its host. The only way any of us survives, the only way future generations have hope is if we see the truth of the moment that we’re in and fight as one.
There is no going back to “normal.” Normal is fueling our comfort by burning marginalized groups. Normal is starving other nations so that we can gorge ourselves. Normal is turning a blind eye to evil.
Get Radical
It is imperative that each of us develop a radical mindset. That we develop radical acceptance, and revolutionary optimism. There is a wildfire bearing down to destroy us. To destroy our future. What are you going to do? Lay down and die? Let it burn you up? Or are you going to fight?
The only effective way to fight is by letting go of your attachments to how you want things to be. You cannot be effective if you’re trying to cling to what little you have in this life. Your future is already gone. This trajectory we’re on is completely unsustainable. It doesn’t matter if you stay quiet and play it safe. There is no safety in a firestorm.
Without urgent action to accelerate decarbonisation, remove carbon from the atmosphere and repair nature, the plausible worst-case hit to global economies would be 50% in the two decades before 2090, the IFoA report said.
At 3C or more of heating by 2050, there could be more than 4 billion deaths, significant sociopolitical fragmentation worldwide, failure of states (with resulting rapid, enduring, and significant loss of capital), and extinction events.
Our way of life is over. Climate change guarantees that. The inaction of our governments today is only going to accelerate and worsen the effects, we’re past the tipping point. We will burn. And drown. And starve. And freeze. And we will be murdered in camps and in wars by fascist governments as the ultrawealthy subvert governments in order to protect their ill-gotten wealth.
All of your nice comfortable fantasies of a nice retirement if you just work hard will not come to pass. The billionaires know what’s coming. They’re building their doomsday bunkers in preparation for the coming catastrophes. They’re ruthlessly extracting every last resource from you right now and burning every bit of goodwill they’ve ever generated because they don’t intend to share this planet with you.
Governments are turning far-right all across the globe because this is the end game. We are barreling toward collapse and no one has a will to fight. We are on a sinking ship and the rats are clawing each other to death to reach the highest, safest point, and no one is working to save the ship.
I agree this dark. It is bleak. It is not doomerism.
Only after you accept reality can you be effective. Only after you let go of your attachments can you be effective. You must embrace radical acceptance. You must embrace revolutionary optimism.
The only way we get through this is if the working class bands together as one to fight for our interests. The capitalist mindset of every man for themselves, this mindset that if I just accumulate enough wealth then I can be protected from the wildfire that’s coming, and I can ignore everyone around me being burned to a crisp will not work. Even the billionaires in their bunkers are going to be taken out by their own private security when the collapse comes. No one will be safe.
We must work together. Sacrifice for each other. See reality for reality. Not flinch from the hard truth that many of us won’t make it. Radical acceptance that I will not have the easy comfortable future that I want. Revolutionary optimism that even if my life doesn’t get better that my efforts are still worthwhile and that common humanity is worth fighting for.
I firmly believe that this is the mindset we need to face our future and it incumbent upon each of us to put in the work to develop radical acceptance and revolutionary optimism.
See part two of this post below, my daily practice to help me achieve the required mindset and consciousness.
Practices to Stay Sane in a Collapsing Society
We can’t put a date on Doomsday, but by looking at the 5,000 years of [civilisation], we can understand the trajectories we face today – and self-termination is most likely,” says Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
What a great analogy, Jack! We have indeed been negligent in mopping up so many disasters we have brought on ourselves through greed, self-centeredness, and just plain laziness—and the world is paying the price. Thank you for your insight. You’ve given us a way to think about (and hopefully remedy) this dreadful mess we’re in.
To attempt to go back to what we thought of as normal is a serious miscalculation. If that’s what any of us think is possible then the time has been wasted on fantasy! It seems there are many that dream of ‘yesterdays’ glory but, dear souls, you’d be lying to yourselves. This is no longer the time for phoenix dreaming!