You've probably noticed that collapse content is everywhere. But as I've been thinking about it, I realized that to navigate all this information, we first need to step back and become conscious of our dominant cultural myth. This myth is perfectly embodied by the UN's Sustainable Development Goals—the idea that all nations are on a linear path towards becoming "developed," and once they get there, they get to stay there.
But that's not how things are. The process of modernization was a temporary phase, and now it's stopping and reversing. So, if we want to accurately envision our future, we need to scrap the old linear trajectory that puts "developed" countries ahead. Instead, we should think of it as a rubber band that's been pulled out and is now snapping back to a more primitive state. In this cyclical view, the humans who are closer to the starting line are actually closer to the finish line—they are the ones who are "ahead" on the trajectory toward the future.
So, if people in developing countries, or those further along in collapse, are ahead of us, we should be paying attention to them. I decided to test this idea by reading some articles giving voice to people in these regions.
My first stop was an article from Burkina Faso, a personal account from a 36-year-old woman. She described an "infernal" summer of extreme heat and constant power cuts while she was pregnant. She ultimately had a miscarriage, lamenting, "Imagine I could have, too." What struck me was the disconnect: even while describing a hellish reality, she seemed to be envisioning a modern, stable existence for her child, blaming the doctors for not warning her. It seemed she was fixated on bringing a child into a world that was already so broken it couldn't even support a pregnancy. This wasn't the perceptive insight I was hoping for.
Next, I looked at another article from the Philippines, where people were dealing with devastating floods. Their pleas were heartbreaking: they hoped the government would stop corruption and that their children could play in the streets again. I had bad news for them. The floods are going to happen again, and their children won't have much fun. It felt like many people are just wired to act out a script—make babies and hope someone else fixes the problem—without updating their understanding of reality.
What did I learn from this? First, many people are just operating on autopilot, unable to see the predicament for what it is. And second, I realized the media plays a role in this. These articles felt like they were hitting a floor below which the narrative couldn't go. They gave us crumbs of reality but were cherry-picking to avoid showing the full, devastating picture. The truly hopeless voices were being filtered out.
Then, I got a comment from a subscriber in Mali. She told me that the future I describe in my videos is their present: "Wars, no water, no electricity. Only in the capital do we have six hours of electricity per day... Yet women keep having five, six children. We have no future. Everyone can see that." When asked if she'll have kids, she replied, "No, because I won't bring a soul into this hell. People here despise me for it. A woman with no children is their worst nightmare."
I cried reading that. She is living so much closer to the future, and it was humbling and refreshing to hear from someone who is actually observing the same "autopilot" behavior I was talking about. This destroys the misconception we have in the developed world that things will get so bad that everyone will wake up and change. Things can get extremely grim, and people will still just be robots.
So, who should we trust as a legitimate expert? We need to ask: who is speaking, and who isn't? The experts we usually hear on podcasts have credentials and high status from "developed" countries. But just because someone is from the global south doesn't mean they have insight if they are still high-status within their collapsing country. They are still living farther from the future than others.
Take people like Samantha Sweetwater or Rob Hopkins, who I see on podcasts. They are high-status people speaking to high-status people, promoting concepts like the "Institute of Imagination." It's laughable. If my subscriber from Mali sat down with them, she'd be rolling her eyes. Their "solutions," like collapsing oil companies, show they simply don't understand the complexity of the predicament because they haven't lived it.
In conclusion, the humans with the most insight into our future are the ones living at the bottom of the hierarchy in regions where development is already being undone. They are the ones who can appreciate the complexity because they're living through the reality of a future without fossil fuels. Don't trust the polished experts from "behind" on the trajectory. Listen to the people who are ahead, living the future we're all heading toward. You can always tune into the others for a good laugh, but don't take them seriously.
The above I auto generated from the transcript using AI. I found it useful as the video played. It helped me hear her message. But without watching the video it is not so useful, for as good as it is, nuance is lost. The benefit is that it helps you to see the bigger message that the collapse wave is coming at us but that we are not all on the same side of the wave. Some people are ahead of the wave of collapse and some are behind it. This maters because the stories we tell, and the stories we listen to, are different depending on where on the wave we ride. But now ride we do, he haw!