What follows are some of the insights I have gleaned from my own experience and from others about how to persevere in dark times.
Author Archives: John Halstead
Guideposts for Navigating a Post-Truth World
What touchstones do you use to determine what’s real/true/good?
The Gospel of Compost
What composting has taught me about the messiness of life and the sacredness of endings and how the “gospel of compost” has helped me to face the inevitability of environmental and social collapse and even possible human extinction.
Pre-order “Wyrd Against the Modern World”
“Wyrd Against the Modern World” reflects upon our present moment of unraveling as a time of hierophany, an irruption of the sacred into the world. Through readings of Carl Jung, D.H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, and other critics of modernity, the book argues that the crisis of the modern world is fundamentally a spiritual one.
Voting Like It’s the End of the World: 5 Reasons I’m Not Voting for Biden (or Trump)
This is going to be an unpopular post. A few weeks ago, I announced on social media that I would not be voting for Biden and would instead be voting for the Green Party candidates, Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker. What followed was a firestorm of fury from my progressive friends and acquaintances. The responsesContinue reading “Voting Like It’s the End of the World: 5 Reasons I’m Not Voting for Biden (or Trump)”
How Everything Can Collapse Book Discussion Tomorrow @ 7:30pm(ET)/6:30pm(CT)
I hope you will join us (even if you haven’t read the books) tomorrow (Tues Oct. 6) at 7:30pm(ET)/6:30pm(CT) for an engaging conversation about collapse. Erik Assadourian’s Gaian book club will discuss two books that grapple with collapse, both the possibility of collapse and living through it as well as we can. One of theContinue reading “How Everything Can Collapse Book Discussion Tomorrow @ 7:30pm(ET)/6:30pm(CT)”
“Why activism isn’t really the cure for eco-anxiety” by Britt Wray
Saying that activism is the cure for eco-anxiety or eco-grief is a shortcut–a too-quick move from pain to action—and it threatens to leave people far less resilient and capable of facing the ecological crisis than they ought to be.
An Open Letter to My Activist Friends
We need to start organizing–really organizing, not just mobilizing. Mobilizing is short-term, high-energy, and tends to focus on self-expression and symbolic action. Organizing is long-term, harder, and not as sexy. Mobilizing creates spectacles. Organizing creates community.
Animism for the Religious Naturalist
Animists see a world that is full of other-than-human persons, including salmon persons, tree persons, and even rock persons. It is difficult for many Westerners to understand the concept of other-than-human persons, especially when talking about (seemingly) “inanimate objects” like rocks. But for the animist, there is no such thing as inanimate matter, because it is all a part of the complex self-regulating living system called Gaia. Animism is not about the projection of consciousness or agency onto non-human things, but about respect and reciprocity within a more-than-human community that transcends the subject-object dichotomy.
“Preparing for the end of the world as we know it” by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective
“If we do not learn the lessons of our current system, nor learn to face its death in a generative way, then we might refuse to let it go when its time comes, holding on to it at any cost and possibly leading to further violence. What’s more, we might continue to repeat the mistakes of this system in the context of whatever comes after it.”
