But it is also essential that we help the large majority of people wake up and realize that other people’s political and technological efforts will not be enough, and that every one of us has a personal responsibility for doing everything we can to help each other and our descendants to prepare for, struggle through, and create a new society after, the coming civilizational collapse.

Likewise, I am not saying that the work of activists, innovators, model-builders, facilitators, healers and artists is disconnected from each other — each can draw on the others, and we can draw strength and courage from each other. What I am saying is that we each need to determine what we do best, and do that work, rather than the work we may perceive ‘most needs to be done’ or is most urgent, or easiest. When artists get distracted into doing activist work, for example — organizing, debating with deniers, writing rhetorical articles etc. — I think they often end up doing mediocre work, and waste time and energy that could be better spent doing what they are really gifted at doing, and which needs to be done just as desperately — even if that may not yet be appreciated.

An additional challenge is that in doing this work — as activists, innovators, model-builders, facilitators, healers or artists — we are constantly walking a line between arrogance and self-doubt. We need to have the self-confidence and self-knowledge to know what is needed and what we can do (that we do well), and to do it regardless of opposition and indifference, yet have the humility to appreciate that this is not about us, not about what one person can do, not about genius or leadership, but rather about serving, about being of use, about being a part of a vital collective effort that unites us all, and that what we are doing will probably not get much recognition, or much appreciation, until we are gone, if ever. That is a fine line to walk.

Where is the writing and art appropriate to the Dark Mountain moment, you ask?

It’s in Drew Dellinger’s poem “hieroglyphic stairway”–astonishingly, read out to the U.S. Congress: http://www.drewdellinger.org/pages/video/153/the-power-of-poetry_spoken-word-in-the-halls-of-congress.

It’s in the “altars of extinction” created at Samhain rituals by the Reclaiming collective: http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/96/96-altarextinct.html.

It’s in the artwork of Chris Jordan: http://www.chrisjordan.com.

And more.

In truth there is beauty and cruelty, hope and despair, disintegration and growth, and an endless arrays of cycles and polarities. We are both unbecoming and becoming. Just as this structure emerged, others are yet to emerge. If there is any point in art, it is to reveal the complexity of what is in ways that bypass the mind and initiate a deeper knowing of who we are, including the world that we are a part of. If art is to envision what is possible, as you say, why not envision a possibility of a joyful transition and engage in one’s own life in enjoying such a transition oneself even before it becomes a necessity of circumstances? Why would the artists not live together with the permaculture, deep ecology, and soul healing communities, working in harmony to add their unique skills and insights to create a joyful evolution?

“Oh, Canada”, indeed.

I don’t believe a solution can be obtained from the government, or rather, that the only solution government will provide involves using the armed forces. Perhaps in one of his darker moods, Bruce Sterling seems so far alone in naming such a solution, which, while it will likely never be called that, would be, in fact, genocide.

We in the privileged classes are ‘lucky’ in the sense that we’ll see such a solution applied to others long before it’s applied to ourselves. (It may serve to sharply focus our thinking).

When I argue for a technological solution, in great part this is due to not seeing any political or sociological solution. Certainly, a vastly depopulated humanity will find its own sociopolitical solutions. While planning and storytelling of such can be fun and informative, I consider it much like drawing up plans and charters for intentional communities: fun to do, but totally different from the challenge in getting people together and actually forming a community.

In short, a technological solution may be the only option we have open to us, that preserves most of humanity. Certainly, computer evolution is many more orders of magnitude faster than sociopolitical evolution. (Greg Egan’s novel _Dispora_ takes this to an extreme, with all ‘humanity’ living as simulations inside a basketball-sized chunk of computronium buried some kilometers underground).

In any case, whether a technological succeeds or (more likely, in many peoples’ opinion) fails, it is the contribution *I* can make. I’d like to be part of the ‘save the world’ community, and contribute where and how I can, and not simply be summarily dismissed.