A personal greeting, on the Fourth of July.

Dear friends,

The Fourth of July is not rightly called a "holiday" in the sense of "holy day," but it is a milestone of sorts. This is the 250-year anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. Two hundred fifty years is the lifespan of empires. The American empire is aging out, and we are here for the collapse.

At Collapse Club, we pay attention to the phenomenon of "collapse" because we think it means something important. Not only the U.S., but the global industrial civilization of which it is the epitome and exemplar is collapsing. This is a tragedy of planetary proportions, and surely we must be able to learn something by paying close attention.

Collapse is enlightenment. Apocalypse is revelation.

To be "enlightened" is to be awake to ones own ignorance. One comes to know that one has been living according to rules which don't apply. Things are not as they seem. There is more to the story. We are more free than we know. It is possible, by an assiduous process of attention and letting go, to live unburdened by the falsehoods that are foisted on us by our culture, by our family, and by the tricks of our own mind.

In Collapse Club, we do this together. We gather for conversation, to listen and to speak. We learn about each other. We come to appreciate the kaleidoscope of human experience. We are the seeds for each others' understanding.

We attempt to be a refuge from the abhorrent miseries by which the dominant society conducts itself. The United States of America grew to its grotesque supremacy by consuming the blood and bones of indigenous people, human slaves, and the innocent land and its creatures. All the crimes of patriarchal monotheism are on display here. We are the Wetiko festival.

The current occupants of the seats of power have doubled down on their crimes. They have deliberately blinded themselves to the damage they cause. They have foreclosed opportunities to turn away from the path of death. They have amassed armies of cruel brutes to expand their regime of violence. They believe their salvation lies in an imagined purity, but the true purpose of their frenzied machinations is to avoid seeing within themselves and thereby to avoid the reckoning they know is due.

Mother Earth is not fooled. She has been abused, and she will restore her balance. In endless patience she has absorbed our transgressions, to the very limit of possibility. But now we are tipping into the time of consequences. The heat stored in the oceans will come roaring into the atmosphere. The dark power of the deep will burst into light, and everything will change.

What then shall we do? How are we to live in this time of collapse?

In our conversations, we have uncovered some simple truths: Whatever is yours to do, do it. Be honest with yourself, and also be kind. Find someone to help and help them. If you are called to heroism, be a hero. If you must retire into the safety of silence, be silent.

Each of us is an incarnation of the universal spirit unfolding into the knowing of itself. What you are is what it is. None of what you experience is lost; all of it is valuable. We do not see to the farthest horizon. We can only see and act within the boundary of our own life.

I am grateful for the conversations that have come to me in Collapse Club. I am grateful for what I have learned. I love the people here and I love what we do together. Tonight, as the bombs go off in the distance, I will think of you and look forward to the time when we can be together again.

❤️ David B.