Collapse Is a Phase, Not an Endpoint

The Paralyzing Belief That We've Already Lost

Collapse is already here and has always been here for much of the world. Today’s crises are not sudden ruptures, but the accumulated consequences of centuries of extraction, exploitation, and systemic deterioration. For much of the Global South, and for many within the West itself, these conditions are not new. They have long existed through warfare, dispossession, poverty, and political abandonment. The perception of collapse as sudden says less about collapse itself than about how successfully Western societies insulated themselves from the violence sustaining their perceived stability.

As the realities of imperial violence and global exploitation become increasingly visible, Western populations interpret collapse as sudden, uncontrollable, and total. The appearance of stability within the West relied on forms of exploitation and violence rendered politically distant from everyday life. As this insulation weakens, collapse becomes imagined as a singular moment of irreversible catastrophe. It removes the middle ground between prevention and finality, which is where collective resistance is built.

Resistance requires understanding collapse not as an endpoint, but as a condition to organize within. Much of the political apathy emerging across Western societies today is rooted in the perception that collapse will arrive suddenly and completely. If collapse is understood as instant and absolute, then every new economic, political, or ecological crisis reinforces the belief that meaningful intervention is already impossible. Consequently, the possibility of collective action dissolves into nihilism. Collapse becomes associated not with adaptation or organization, but with inevitability and defeat. Collective survival will depend on the ability to organize within collapse itself.

The conditions of collapse require collective organization. The mass surveillance, state violence, and resource scarcity already emerging from present conditions of collapse cannot be navigated alone. They require durable local structures of solidarity, mutual aid, and collective leverage. As market-driven political and economic systems become increasingly incapable of meeting even the basic material needs of those within the imperial core, dependence on local collective structures will become not a political choice but a practical necessity. The central political question is no longer how to prevent collapse entirely, but how to organize collectively within its conditions.