Capitalizing Collapse: My Heart is Not for Sale

The Market of Grief

As our planetary crisis deepens, a peculiar industry grows: the commercialization of collapse awareness. Self-help books promise "resilience strategies." Wellness coaches offer "eco-anxiety management." Retreats sell "collapse preparedness." Even our pain becomes a product, our grief a growth market.

This wasn't accidental. It's the final stage of emotional capitalism—the system's attempt to profit from its own dissolution.

Marketplace of Feelings

The Doomee perspective recognizes a fundamental truth: authentic responses to collapse cannot be packaged, optimized, or sold. Our grief, our fear, our rage—these aren't problems to be solved. They're not market opportunities. They are markers of our humanity. They are our experiences to be witnessed.

We reject the instrumentalization of collapse awareness, the professionalizing of grief, the optimization of pain, and the commodification of mutual aid. In their place, we choose something far more human: raw, unpolished presence, compassion that has never been marketed, connections that exist outside of economic exchange, and the genuine, messy reality of human relationships. We're not interested in a polished program for coping—we want simply to be human together. Being human is really all we have. I don't think it should come with a price tag.

Power of Broken Vessels

Those who struggle most deeply with collapse awareness—the depressed, the anxious, the "oversensitive"— are often those who see most clearly. Our pain is not a dysfunction to be corrected but a natural response to an unbearable reality. Our heightened sensitivity isn't a weakness; it's a form of truth-telling.

Our broken hearts don't show weakness; they show strength. Like cracked vessels, the goodness we collect cannot be kept to ourselves. We are vessels not for storing, but for sharing. The cracks keep us from hoarding our love, allowing what flows into us through effort to naturally flow out to others with ease.

Marketplace of Collapse

The commodification of collapse awareness is popping up in increasingly cynical ways. There are now $3,000 "resilience retreats" that promise to transform eco-anxiety into "empowered action." Life coaches rebrand themselves as "collapse counselors" without changing their productivity-focused frameworks. Meditation apps now offer "ecological grief" packages behind subscription paywalls. And "collapse-proof your mind" workshops treat systemic breakdown as just another personal development opportunity. Meanwhile, "green" (read: green-washed) brands capitalize on our fears, selling survival gear and "sustainable" luxury items. Social media influencers monetize their "collapse journey" through sponsored content selling more of the same. Corporate training programs repackage climate anxiety as a career skill to be mastered. Commodity investments, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, doomsday bunkers, and guns-guns-guns! Dooming is booming!

Each of these represents the system's attempt to profit from its own dissolution, turning even our most profound griefs into opportunities for consumption. I ain't buying it.

Practice Authenticity

1. Reject the Performance of Coping. Instead of presenting a polished facade of "resilience," we acknowledge our struggles openly. We don't pretend to have mastered

collapse awareness. What the hell does that mean? Imagine selling "resilience" to terminal cancer patients. We are in planetary hospice and the money-driven world is eating itself and swallowing us with it. We say, white simply, "Fuck that." We choose to remain learners, fellow travelers, and broken helpers.

Practice: When someone shares their pain, resist offering solutions. Simply say "I hear you. I feel this too." Share your own struggles not as lessons learned, but as ongoing questions. Share as a means to help. Resist the natural stress response to dump your distress out of yourself and onto someone who might already be crushed under the weight of their own. Unless, of course, you've agreed to delve into the pain together.

2. Embrace "Useless" Beauty. Not everything needs to serve a purpose. Not every action needs to optimize outcomes. We cultivate beauty not because it will save us, but because it exists. We help others not because it will prevent collapse, but because connection to others—people, nature, other animals—is what makes us human.

Practice: Spend time regularly engaging in activities with no productive value. Watch sunsets, birds, the leaves in the trees. Make art you'll never share. Plant flowers that may never bloom. Help others without documenting or measuring the impact. And one of my go-tos: take time to look at the sky. When was the last time you looked up at the clouds and saw transformations of bunnies into whales or a profile of Abraham Lincoln? I'm not saying go tripping, although, that's fine too. I'm just saying that beauty is all around you. Sometimes our busy, worried brains forget to turn that switch back on allowing us to see some literal silver linings.

3. Practice Non-Productive Presence. Sometimes the most radical act, the most helpful act, is simply being with another's pain without trying to fix it. We resist the urge to offer solutions, to monetize help, to package wisdom. We simply witness, befriend, and empathize.

Practice: Create or join spaces where the only goal is presence. No agenda, no outcomes, no strategies. Just humans being with humans in the face of overwhelming reality. This can be one on one. This can also mean online spaces (for now), but I wouldn't rely on technology for your connections. We can't be sure of its availability as systems crash, markets consolidate and crumble, or political powers take away our freedoms in order to maintain control.

4. Maintain the Commons of Care

We actively resist the privatization of mutual aid—where it used to mean neighbors helping neighbors. Our help is not a product. Our compassion is not for sale. We maintain community relationships and spaces where care flows freely, outside the perversion of market exchange.

Practice: Organize gift-based support networks. Volunteer where your community most needs it and where it connects to your heart. Share your skills without expectation of anything in return. We can also create free spaces for grief and connection. Even if you do that one on one. There are a lot of lonely people out there. A conversation with a neighbor or a stranger can be magically healing. Resist the urge to professionalize your collapse awareness.

Authenticity of Endings

In a world rushing to commodify even its own collapse, the Doomee perspective offers a radical alternative: the courage to remain genuine. To not buy into all the fear, the drama, the click bait, and the crap. We don't need to optimize our apocalypse. We don't need to monetize our mourning. We need only to remain present, to help where we can, and to maintain our fundamental human capacity for unmarketed connection.

Our pain is not a product.

Our grief is not a growth opportunity.

Our collapse awareness is not a brand.

We are simply humans, witnessing one of the greatest transitions Earth has known, choosing to remain authentic in our responses, genuine in our connections, present in our care, resolute in our convictions of kindness and freedom into a most poignant end.

This isn't a strategy to be sold.

This isn't a method to be marketed.

This is simply being human at the end of things.

And that is enough.

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Philosophical Foundations: A Note on Byung-Chul Han

I'm exploring more ways of thinking and being to help us maintain our positive Doomee perspective in the face of the uncertain times we are entering. In this essay, I referenced philosopher Byung-Chul Han's concept of "emotional capitalism" from 'The Burnout Society' (2015). While Han does not specifically address collapse, his framework helps us understand how to resist the commercialization of our personal responses to planetary crisis. Han critiques how capitalism commodifies our emotional experiences and offers insights into how awareness of societal collapse are exploited by market forces. His work is helpful to anyone interested in preserving authentic connections to ourselves, to others, and to all life as we continue our spiral into planetary hospice.

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