I’ve been quiet here for a very long time.

What has there been to say? I’ve no words of hope or inspiration. No candle to hold against the dark.

As the years accrue, so too do the problems. We’re living through polycrises: great tectonic shifts in the way our planet functions, the implications of which we still don’t really understand. Climate change is beginning to bite, with record-smashing droughts, floods and fires, the beginnings of mass displacement and famines. Biodiversity is in freefall, fertile soils are disappearing, we’re still living through the covid pandemic and new data on pollutants shows that every place and each one of us is contaminated with microplastics, PFAS and other ingenious human inventions. Inequality is on the increase, globally, alongside a turn to authoritarianism, right wing populism and intolerance. We’ve atrocities in Ukraine and Gaza. Afghanistan, Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen and Syria still smoulder. Trumpian politics threatens the United States once more.

Peaceful co-existence and multi-cultural harmony are artefacts of stable, largely equal societies where citizens feel enough of an abundance to welcome and share. Complex problems require multifaceted solutions and difficult compromises, backed by a willingness to change. Political populism and partisanship, unpinned from fact in our post-truth era and backed by vested interests, undermine our capacity to address the critical needs of our societies and face this difficult future. In the face of so much risk, the richest see only the opportunity to profit, believing sheer wealth and climate bolt-holes will mean they and theirs will survive the turmoil to come, but money won’t buy a functional biosphere, or the social constructs, systems and institutions needed to provide world class medical care and research.

What is there to say in the face of obvious madness?

I’m 45 now. I’ve spent half my life trying to make things better in a world that’s getting worse. I’m questioning if anything has been worth it, feeling like I’ve sacrificed too much for too little and finding it hard to belong much of anywhere after living so much in the spaces people prefer to ignore and avoid. It’s human nature to avoid pain and discomfort, and when you can’t change the system there’s a perverse sense in numbing yourself within it. Surrender to the algorithms, to the continual marketing and dopamine-system hijacking. Elevate the economy to God-King and sacrifice our life systems to it in the hope that poverty will stay someone else’s problem and we can keep the comforts the system buys our loyalty with.

See, this is why I don’t write any more. When there’s no light to shine, what help am I to anyone?

Our problems are structural, yet we’re still sold the lie that the solutions lie in individual choices. No amount you and I reduce, reuse, recycle will fix this mess. No feel-good protest will free us. It’s hard graft to wrest back some political power, to learn to work collectively and make shifts at meaningful scales, and we’re undermined all the way by the systems and structures we’ve built our societies from. How do you convince people to tear down what they depend on? How do you convince people they need to lose – assets, material comfort, perceived security – in order to win? I struggle to even convince myself, let alone find the charisma and strength needed to bring others with me. I’ve utterly failed at finding my tribe and working collectively.

I can’t call on you to sacrifice the things I’m not willing to surrender myself. I too want a safe home, a warm bed, a full belly, the protection of the law and other services of the state. And I’m so very tired. I need to rest.

What is there to say?

Rest. Love. Play. Sing. Talk. Connect. Don’t take for granted what we have while it’s still here. Live.

Photos: Lake Mungo National Park, south-western NSW, Australia