Connect
Collapse Acceptance Alliance
Zoom discussions
Thursdays @ 5pm PST / 8pm EST / 12am (Friday) UTC
We aim to create a safe and supportive space to explore our grief, discuss the full range of benefits of collapse acceptance, and build community. We believe in, and have experienced for ourselves, the emotional and relational blessing of these community discussions, as we support each other through our personal and collective challenges. (Facilitated by Val Christensen & Peter Melton — See video below)
Interested in joining in this “Post Doom, No Gloom” zoom discussion?
Email ‘why you feel the group may be a good fit for you’ to:
Resilience & Acceptance in the Face of Collapse
Nine Week Zoom Course
This free, 9-week online Zoom course guides participants through written, video, podcast, and other material exploring subtopics including The Great Unraveling, deep adaptation, inner and outer resilience, Indigenous Wisdom, and collapse acceptance.
For more information and details, see the Course Syllabus and/or reach out to the course developers about upcoming course offerings.
Email… CollapseAcceptance@gmail.com
David Baum interviews Peter Melton and Val Christensen, co-hosts of the “Collapse Acceptance Alliance” zoom gatherings (see above). 40-minute insightful conversation!
GALLOWS HUMOR FOLDER — Click HERE
Michael Dowd’s Main Programs: SLIDES in several formats — HERE
Emotional and Practical Support (Range of Excellent Resources) — HERE
(7-week: Summer 2022) “Post Doom, No Gloom Views on Death, Dying, & Sacred Endings” — HERE
(5-week: Spring 2023) “Skills for Post Doom, No Gloom Living” — HERE
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Videos for Coping, Adapting, Sharing with Others
These five videos offer tools and perspectives vital for staying sane, grateful, and on-purpose in contracting and increasingly difficult times. The first one: “Sanity 101: Living Fully in an Age of Decline – Essential Wisdom for Hard Times” is foundational, and the most important. If you only watch one video of Michael Dowd’s, make it this one.
Sanity 101: Living Fully in an Age of Decline — Essential Wisdom for Hard Times
A 90-minute crash course (four 20-25 min sections with a break between each) in living with awe, gratitude, and generosity in an age of chaos and breakdowns. Even those with no understanding of the runaway nature of biospheric and civilizational decline feel the stress of these times. So… how do we cope? How do we stay (mostly) positive? And importantly, how can we support others who are confused, angry, depressed, or filled with fear, blame, or guilt? A 30-minute “Cliff Notes” version can be found here.
The Big Picture: What Every Young Person (and Grandparent) Should Know
The first collapse-related post-doom “religious naturalism” presentation that Rev. Dowd has presented in an actual building (not Zoom) in more than two years, this 30-minute sermon (UU Flint) is precisely the kind of supportive message he is especially passionate about these days. A 20-minute Q&A (“talkback”) session after the sermon is on the church video, here: 1:04:40: https://youtu.be/GOpI6lJ3P-A?
New Serenity Prayer: Emotional Support for Climate Anxiety and Environmental Dread
This 25-minute video was created to help people experience as little suffering as possible, now and in the near-term future, by providing a clear and compelling guide for “accepting what we cannot change, changing the things we can, and having the wisdom to know the difference … living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Beyond Hope and Fear: Clarity, Compassion, Courageous Love-in-Action
This 23-minute Zoom presentation offers an essential “big picture” perspective that can help us move (A) from confusion to clarity, (B) from blame to compassion, and (C) from fear, overwhelm, or despair to meaningful and courageous love-in-action.
Post Gloom: Deeply Adapting to Reality
This is a 70-minute “hope-free” roadmap for staying sane, sober, and inspired in the face of the inevitable (and already underway) collapse of industrial civilization and the hardships already experienced in most parts of the world. This video explores how to “live life fully and love the life you live” even at TEOTWAWKI — i.e., within the context of the collapse of industrial civilization, abrupt climate change, resource depletion, coronavirus pandemic, and other symptoms of ecological overshoot.
Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow
Rev. Michael Dowd is a bestselling religious naturalist “compost theologian” and TEDx speaker whose work has been celebrated by 6 Nobel laureates and other science luminaries, including noted skeptics, and by religious leaders across the spectrum. Michael and his science writer, evolutionary educator, and fellow climate activist wife, Connie Barlow, have addressed 3,000 secular and religious groups throughout North America over the past two decades. (Connie is a leading advocate of Assisted Migration of trees poleward in an abrupt climate regime.) Their work has been featured in major media throughout the U.S. and Canada, including The New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Discover, and Canadian Broadcast Network. They live in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Doom
definition
1. A normal feeling of disgust or dread upon realizing that technological progress and economic growth and development are the root of our predicament, not our way out.
2. A name for the anxiety and fear called forth when living in a corrupt, dysfunctional civilization causing a mass extinction.
3. The mid-point between denial and regeneration . . . with or without us.
Post-doom
definition
1. What opens up when we remember who we are and how we got here, accept the inevitable, honor our grief, and prioritize what is pro-future and soul-nourishing.
2. A fierce and fearless reverence for life and expansive gratitude — even in the midst of abrupt climate mayhem and the runaway collapse of societal harmony, the health of the biosphere, and business as usual.
3. Living meaningfully, compassionately, and courageously no matter what.
A post-doom mindset is a hard-earned and often fluctuating state of being. Classic stages of grief mark a well-worn path. However, mere acceptance of what is unavoidable need not be the endpoint.
What shifts in perception, understanding, relating, and identity become possible when we walk through a post-doom doorway? How do priorities, life-ways, and outer-world involvements shift and clarify on the other side? And how can such changes call forth genuine equanimity, even joy?
What opens up when we share our personal journeys along this trajectory and especially gifts to be found on the other side of “doom”? What stories, perspectives, and tools assist us in going beyond emotional detachment, stoic resolve, and spiritual transcendence?
Those with a post-doom mind and heart haven’t given up; they’ve stood up. Empathy follows naturally in the wake of realizing what is underway and unstoppable.