It was the late '90s when I first became convinced that we were living through the beginning of the end. In all likelihood, that belief was shaped by the end of apartheid. As a white male, having the world shift out from under your feet can have a significant influence on how you view the world. It certainly did for me and my friends. In particular, I remember the conversations I would have with my friend Bruce. We smoked a lot of pot. Like, a lot. Too much in actual fact, looking back on it all now. We would sit together next to the swimming pool in my parents' garden, smoking joints and talking about some deep shit. The conversation would almost always circle back to the collapse.

We were convinced that the late 20th-century consumer capitalist society was unsustainable. Bruce, at times took a more metaphysical, spiritual view; I took a more environmental view. I was certain that with our patterns of consumption and misguided belief that we needed to dedicate ourselves to infinite economic expansion built upon finite resources for the purpose of maximizing profit for the shareholders, it would inevitably collapse. The only question for me was when. Would we see it in our lifetime or in the next generation? I felt then that it was at least two or three generations away.

And so I lived my life with the framework that the end was on the horizon. I built nothing for tomorrow. No future, no savings, no home. I simply lived from one day to the next. It was a nihilistic and selfish way to live. And to be honest, looking back now, it was a very childish way to live. But you know what? It was fucking fun too.

Nothing ever happens

The 21st century did not do a very good job of convincing me and Bruce that we were not, in fact, living through the end of days. 9/11 very much reinforced our discussions. We both were of the opinion that this would be the number one defining moment of our lives and for the rest of the 21st century. I firmly believed that this was the moment that would spark the start of WWIII, akin to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. I was studying international relations at the time. Well, perhaps studying should be “studying.” This is because I spent far more time outside the lecture hall and in what was called “Little Jamaica,” an area frequented by university potheads. We talked a lot of shit there, and I made some truly good friends there. Many like-minded individuals. And by like-minded, I mean others who were equally convinced of the imminent collapse.

Maybe it was a South African thing. But there were many of us, all quite certain we were watching a slide from the 20th-century certainty that this system, this civilization, this period of success and excess, was coming to an end. The real question was what time frame were we looking at? Was this going to be a collapse over generations or a collapse in a relative instant?

By 2010, I had to leave South Africa. Perhaps I was suffering from a minor case of psychosis from years of substance abuse, maybe even PTSD from various experiences involving violent crime. Nonetheless, I had to get out. I moved to Chile just after the 2010 earthquake. I was surprised to see the resilience of society in the wake of an earthquake that would have brought many other nations to their knees. It was during my time in Chile that I went down a little bit of an InfoWars rabbit hole. Yes, I know, Alex Jones, LOL. But at the time, the content they were creating really fit in well with my mindset. It resonated with me. However, I had friends who challenged me, and it did not take too long for me to pull my head out of my own ass long enough to see the bullshit and realize it was all just a sales pitch. It was all just marketing solutions to the terror they were creating.

I was still certain that the collapse was imminent, but I had hope. I had hope in the resilience of our species. I had hope that was birthed by Chilean students and Chilean society standing up to the government and forcing the government to listen to the people when it came to university reforms the government had planned at the time. I also saw the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement, and I really thought, "Shit, maybe we can turn a corner and start to hold the wealthy and powerful accountable and see a redress of power in society." Yes, I know, naïve and idealistic. What a noob.

Nothing changed

So I moved on. I moved to Spain in 2012 and just hid away from it all. Smoked a lot of pot, did a lot of coke, and played video games and watched cinema. I buried my head in the sand and thought, "Fuck it." If it's all going to slide into madness and violence, I may as well enjoy it in a beautiful place and live a somewhat hedonistic life until the end.

Then the fractures started splintering the stability. Early signs of this were the Catalan independence movement and the Scottish independence movement. In a theoretical sense, I can get behind both ideas, but down on the ground, in the physical and bloody battlefield of the real, where did those movements start? In bank accounts. And where did the money come from? Perhaps the same place as the money that paid for Brexit and Trump in 2016.

Things started speeding up. We were racing to the edge, and I hid myself deeper, moving to a village on the fringe. Growing bushes and living in a haze of smoke and alcoholism. I stopped writing; I slid into internalized existential dread.

Then came covid, and the world shut down, reset, and restarted. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then came AI and ChatGPT.

I had to move again. But in so doing, I found myself no longer hiding away in a smoke-filled, self-imposed exile. I started to live again. Still, I felt as if we were watching the Sea People coming; I felt as if Vesuvius was rumbling, as if the plague was knocking. It was there, on the edge of my vision, no matter where I looked, a system in decline, on the verge of collapse.

Fatherhood

But then, something unexpected happened. After a holiday in the sun, walking through the ruins of a collapsed civilization and its amphitheaters and aqueducts, my son was conceived. And 9 months later, everything changed.

I had to confront my fears of collapse and process the reality of parenthood in such a precarious time.

To be honest, none of it has slowed down. In fact, it has all sped up. AI is not going anywhere, and where it was in the post-COVID landscape looks so childish and infantile in comparison to the powerful specter it has grown to be now.

Now as a father I have to try and prepare my son, not for the world I grew up in, but the world he will grow into, and hopefully, flourish and excel in. But how do I go about doing that without allowing the pessimism and terror to overwhelm me and prevent me from doing so? Where AI is now will not be where it will be in 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years from now. The automation of labor, the political world we live in now, will not be what it will be in a decade. The climate we have now and have had up to now will not be the same. And so, I try and walk a fine line of preparing him for what I hope will be the future of his present as well as giving him the skill set to survive what I consider to be the more likely and scary future of a post-collapse world.

The problem lies in the fear I have that I will ruin my son's life by imprinting upon him my fears. I am certain they are rational fears based upon the patterns I can see in international politics, the trends in international capital, and the constant and unpredictable changes to our climate. I was here in Valencia to witness DANA in 2024. These things will not be exceptions but the rule as we, as a species, scrabble for anything firm to cling to as systems fail and things begin to fall apart.

I want my son to have a happy life, a good life. I want him to be a part of something and to have childish and innocent experiences.

But I also want him to be prepared for life during and after the Collapse. The question is, can I do both?