Edge of Collapse

Becoming collapse aware in the age of the permanent polycrisis.

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Doomer or Realist?

12 min readMar 2, 2025

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A realistic painting depicting a resilient neighborhood community during a governmental collapse. Residents are seen sharing food, repairing homes, and providing medical aid. Some tend to a community garden, while others establish a barter system with handmade goods. The atmosphere is tense yet hopeful, with makeshift barricades in the background and signs of self-sufficiency, including solar panels and water collection systems. Warm lighting highlights the spirit of unity and cooperation in the
(Image credit: Created by the author with DALL-E)

I’ve been accused of being a doomer more times than I can count. It happens whenever I lay out the ugly, unvarnished reality of where we’re headed.

Climate catastrophe.

Economic collapse.

Authoritarian backsliding.

I get it. It’s easier to slap a dismissive label on someone than it is to accept that they might be right. That we might, in fact, be standing on the precipice of something truly irreversible.

But let’s be honest. Are we really talking about “doomerism,” or is this just realism wearing a less palatable face? After all, hope is a seductive drug. It lulls us into believing that “someone, somewhere” is handling things. That billionaires, politicians, or green tech geniuses will swoop in at the last moment with a miraculous fix. That everything will, somehow, work itself out.

It won’t.

We are past the point of minor course corrections. The global polycrisis — global problems ranging across economic instability, climate disaster, biodiversity loss, political extremism, and societal fracture — is accelerating. And while the affluent among us may still feel a sense of security, the cracks are already visible.

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Edge of Collapse
Edge of Collapse

Published in Edge of Collapse

Becoming collapse aware in the age of the permanent polycrisis.

Angus Peterson
Angus Peterson

Written by Angus Peterson

Becoming collapse aware in the age of the permanent polycrisis. Follow to get all the new stories: https://anguspeterson.medium.com/subscribe

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