Telling the truth and acting like it’s real: What’s the story in October 2024?

It’s almost 6 years to the day that I discovered Extinction Rebellion, and ran as fast as I could towards some of the most wonderful experiences of my life.

And yet 6 years on, having put so much of myself into civil resistance with different campaigns, I don’t feel that ‘we’, by which I mean the collective movement of movements, are now being honest with ourselves, each other, or the wider world.

The tenets of XR to ‘Tell the Truth’ and ‘Act like the truth is real’ resonated so strongly with me, and still do. Like the words through a stick of rock.? And I’ve been trying to live these out. What that means to me is that when we receive or come to understand new information, we need to take it in, assess it and act appropriately.

So when I saw the horrors of the crazy hotter sea temperatures in 2023 (as well as witnessing a mass fish death first hand), studied the accelerating global temperatures over the last 2 years, and read James Hansen et al’s ‘Global Warming in the Pipeline’ paper last year, I knew it was too late. My last shreds of hope disappeared, and I knew I had to give myself over fully to the collapse acceptance that was growing within me but I’d been resisting for many years. (And of course carbon, and global temperatures are only a part of the true picture anyway.)

I hadn't really believed the “rapidly closing window” line anyway, I couldn't see any evidence that the window wasn't effectively already shut. But the truth is that I’d been allowing myself, since 2019, to hold on to a shred of hope. The other truth is that I’ve been meaning to write this for 12 months.

But if I’m honest, I think hope is killing us. Especially the ‘hopium’ variety.

It really is deadly. It's depriving us of getting on with the real job at hand. Survival, together.

We're alone, because no one is coming to save us.

But the reality is we’re far from alone. We are and can be, together.

We are fundamentally caring beings. The fact that corporations and wealthy interests spend billions on propagandising us to focus on ourselves and to make us think that other people are selfish too tells us a lot. (Think about that). For the majority of us, that's not our innate values, otherwise we wouldn't have needed to be persuaded away from caring.

So we need to let go of hope, like we let go of the side of the pool when we’re learning to swim.

I, you, we, need to stop waiting and start doing.

It's time for those who accept that societal collapse has started and that much more is coming, whatever we now do, to look in a different direction.

It's time to turn more of our attention to resilience, and together protecting our communities from at least some of the impacts of the multifaceted disruption that's now inevitable. And that includes resisting the rising wave of far right facism.

Some have already begun. Through building bridges and allyship where they live with those people who have been working in their community for years, usually outside of the ‘climate’ space. And through local democratic processes like running community assemblies.

We need to stop looking to the government. Regardless of logo they serve elites and global capital’s interests first, whether blatant, or in the name of ‘pragmatism’ and ‘growth’ for all.

We've been being softened up, so we're habituated to televised daily genocide, to increasing state repression of our democratic rights, and to multi year prison sentences for peaceful people who challenge state or corporate power. We're already habituated to the lying and disinformation so that not only do we not trust politicians, we don't know what's true anymore.

Politicians are literally unable to do more than a part of what we need them to do. Partly because they are captured by corporate capital, partly because of the built in short termism in the political system, and because they have failed for so long it's now too late. But also due to the innate nature of the growth obsessed economic system, or ‘superorganism’.

We may, if we’re lucky, get 'pockets' of good policies from government, but as many millions of people all around the world can attest, communities will, at some point when the shit hits the fan, be left to sort themselves out ... Or worse, be surveilled and repressed whilst trying to do so.

We also know that we don't have to repeat the culture we're shown from 'above'. In fact it’s an act of leadership to resist replicating it. Like being in an abusive relationship and refusing to become an abuser.

But let’s just come back to the mess we’re in for a moment, as a little more emphasis is needed.

We're not in a 'polycrisis', or any of those other left brain terms. This implies we're in a number of interconnected crises which impact each other but do have solutions. In reality there are no such things as 'solutions' in complex adaptive systems, ie, the living world, and globalised industrial consumer societies; there are only interventions with desired and undesired effects and consequences.

What we're experiencing is the multifaceted collapse of the living world and its ability to support life. And that includes our very own human society, and our economies, infrastructure, public services, social fabric, and of course our physical and mental health.

What scientists are doing in their carefully worded peer reviewed papers is repeatedly measuring how fast the bus is careering towards the cliff edge and exactly how far from the cliff edge it is.... Without admitting that the driver's foot is glued to the accelerator pedal and that, short of a complete miracle, the bus will be going over the edge, even if we don't know exactly when that will be.

Far from this being the time to fold inwards in depression and despair however, this is our moment to choose to live as wholeheartedly as we ever have, and live lives of meaning, purpose and connection.

Resilience is a verb, a doing word. We build our resilience together, through taking action together to care, love, restore, repair and resist.

In Solidarity with our brothers and sisters everywhere, in Humility for our frailties and with the beauty and courage of our Humanity.

This isn't to deny the grief, frustration, fear and anger. But to fully acknowledge it, openly together, and then direct our energy in service.

Surely this is what it is to be human in these times.

Some of you may feel what I'm saying is a betrayal. A betrayal of the courage shown by many thousands of brave people nationally and internationally, to risk our liberty, potentially our livelihoods and for some even more. I’ve felt this, and I think this is a part of why I have hesitated so long in going public. But just like at the start of 2019, when the tension between what I believed and how I was showing up in the world became unbearable, in 2024 here I am again.

The stories we told ourselves back in 2018/19 no longer hold true, and serve us and our wider communities so poorly now.

XR’s second demand was zero emissions by 2025, because that's what the evidence demanded back in 2018. Well we’re weeks away from 2025 - it’s time to accept we need a different story now.

And we know, in our heart of hearts, even if we don't yet speak it out loud, that pretty much everything is going to keep on getting worse for the rest of our lives, and our children's lives, and most likely at an accelerating rate.

It's time to redirect our energies. So much love and courage has been shown by thousands of people across our movement of movements. Let’s again harness that together and act like the truth is real.

Zoe Cohen - October 2024