Doomee's Earth Hospice: Love Means Never Having to Say Goodbye

Prologue: Moment of Diagnosis.

Imagine a doctor's office. The fluorescent lights, the sterile smell, the weight of a diagnosis that changes everything. You receive some life-changing news, life-ending news. In that moment, you fall through every emotion, every memory, you spin out on hopes and dreams, you care so much and so little about so much and so little. You are hit with every emotion. All. At. Once. Suddenly your world becomes very small.

Now expand that moment to planetary scale. We are that patient, and Earth is our body—and the diagnosis is terminal.

This is not a metaphor. This is our current reality.

The symptoms have been accumulating for decades: rising temperatures, collapsing ecosystems, infrastructure under increasing stress, social systems fraying at the edges. We are not approaching a crisis—we are in the midst of it. The difference now is our collective recognition: this is no longer about prevention, but about how we will bear witness to our own final transformation.

Lord of the Flies

Sociological insights reveal a stark truth about human behavior under systemic stress: contrary to romantic notions of collective resilience, our species tends toward fragmentation, tribalism, and defensive violence when fundamental resources become scarce. Historical precedents—from colonial resource wars to contemporary refugee crises—demonstrate that human societies more readily militarize and segregate than they cooperate.

As ecological pressures intensify, we can anticipate increased social stratification, where access to water, arable land, and energy becomes a mechanism of survival and power.

Communities will likely fracture along existing lines of economic privilege, ethnic identity, and geographical advantage, with the most vulnerable populations bearing the most extreme consequences of systemic breakdown.

The Doomee Perspective: A Philosophy of Compassionate Witnessing

Radical Acceptance: Beyond Hope and Despair

The Doomee perspective is not about giving up. It's about showing up—fully, authentically, with our entire human capacity for complexity and care.

We reject two dominant narratives:

1. Naive solutionism—whether technological or social—that suggests we can engineer our way out of this crisis through technical fixes or idealized collective human transformation.

2. Complete nihilistic despair that paralyzes us into inaction.

Instead, we choose a third path: radical acceptance coupled with intentional compassion.

This means acknowledging the depth of our ecological crisis without allowing that acknowledgment to destroy our capacity for connection. We are not here to fight the inevitable, but to witness it with grace, to reduce suffering wherever possible, and to maintain our most profound human capacities.

Philosophical Roots: A Synthesis of Wisdom Traditions

The Doomee perspective draws from multiple philosophical traditions, while transcending their traditional boundaries:

Stoicism teaches us to focus on what we can control—our internal responses, our moral integrity, our capacity for reason and compassion—while accepting external circumstances.

Engaged Buddhism offers a model of compassionate action even in the most challenging circumstances. It reminds us that our fundamental human dignity is not determined by external conditions, but by our capacity to care.

Ecological Grief Theory provides a framework for understanding our emotional responses to systemic loss, allowing us to grieve without being consumed by grief.

Beyond Nihilism. While we share nihilism's recognition that life is meaningless and absurd, we arrive at radically different conclusions. Where nihilism often leads to moral abdication ("Nothing matters, so why try?"), the Doomee perspective finds in life's meaninglessness the ultimate freedom to choose reducing suffering as our purpose. Because there is no inherent meaning, we are free to make the reduction of suffering our highest calling. The end of all life, then, becomes not a tragedy but the ultimate fulfillment of this purpose - the final end of all suffering.

Personal and Practical Strategies: How We Bear Witness

Planetary hospice demands practical wisdom. We cannot prevent the collapse, but we can create pockets of compassion and reduce suffering wherever possible. Before and now while entering collapse, community organization was and is a critical practice. Not as a means of resistance or prevention, but as a way of creating human connections that can absorb shock, distribute care, and maintain our most fundamental human capacities.

Again, community building is not my focus, but I think it's helpful to acknowledge it for context. Skills of resilience, of course, go beyond individual survival. Local food production becomes an act of community care. Basic medical knowledge transforms from a personal skill to a form of collective solidarity. Mechanical repair and water purification are not just survival techniques, but ways of maintaining human dignity in systemic breakdown.

For me, the practical strategies of community building are less about saving ourselves and more about creating small, sustainable networks of mutual support. We prepare not out of fear, but out of a commitment to reducing suffering wherever possible.

While a Doomee might participate in community efforts (and more power to 'em), the Doomee perspective itself is about personal orientation toward reality rather than collective strategy. The Doomee perspective fills a crucial gap in collapse-aware frameworks. Where Deep Adaptation, for example, asks "how do we prepare?" and Doomerism gets stuck at "why try?", the Doomee perspective asks "how shall I be?" It's less about doing the work necessary for maintaining a civilized society, and more about being. Just being. Society or not.

This personal focus actually makes the Doomee perspective more accessible and immediately applicable—you don't need a community to agree or participate, you just need to make your own choices about how to be present with reality while maintaining compassion. Your Doomee toolkit is portable, ready to help you help others wherever this ride takes us.

The Ethics of Bearing Witness: Sacrifice and Solidarity

In the landscape of planetary dissolution, our most profound act of resistance is continuous care. We acknowledge that we will die—as all living beings do—but we choose to remain present, to help, to reduce suffering for as long as we can.

Suicide, while an individual's personal choice, represents another form of unnecessary violence in the Doomee perspective. This one is close to my heart. I have lived with depression and suicidal ideation for most of my life, since I was a child. If you're struggling, I feel your pain. I really do. As I unenviably feel the pain of all sentient beings. I am not going to judge anyone for their choice here. I'm just offering one way I've come to think about it. Maybe it will help you too.

Why I've come to see suicide, usually, as an unnecessary violent act is not because it removes an individual from the struggle, but because it potentially abandons those who might need our help. I was never put here to be happy. Of that, I am sure. But I can help others. And I have. At least in those moments. As long as I can do that, I feel I must use my privilege (being in a position to help) to at least try. If humans spent more of their time trying to make others happy instead of trying to make themselves happy, the world would be a much happier place.

Our commitment is not to endure endless personal suffering, but to the understanding that there is always someone who could use our support. In other words, we are willing to give our lives; but we should think hard before taking any life, including our own, if it might mean another would suffer without us. I wrote a short companion piece to this article reflecting on my own dark thoughts and how I've come to keep on going: "Suicide Can Wait: They Need You"

The Ultimate Peace: Accepting Extinction

In planetary hospice, we confront a truth that many find difficult to accept: we are not merely witnessing the end of human civilization, but potentially the conclusion of Earth's grand experiment with life itself. This isn’t a tragedy to be mourned. It’s perhaps the most profound resolution possible.

Every living being experiences suffering. From the smallest insect to the largest whale, from the lowliest fish in the sea to us complex computer-loving primates—consciousness brings with it the capacity for pain. As Earth's systems unravel and collapse, this suffering will increase exponentially. Exponentially.

Doomees aren’t hoping for this collapse—we work tirelessly to reduce suffering wherever possible—but the collapse is here. Ready or not. We recognize that in the final dissolution of life on Earth lies the ultimate cessation of all suffering. The end of suffering on Earth could very well be the end of all suffering, everywhere… forever. To this Doomee, that is a good thing.

This is not nihilism. Not exactly. Nihilism denies the existence of any objective meaning in life, morality, or knowledge. The Doomee perspective holds the deepest form of acceptance and compassion. Just as a hospice nurse understands that death can be a merciful end to unbearable pain, we recognize that the end of life on Earth means the end of all pain, all fear, all suffering. It is, in its way, the most complete fulfillment of our mission to reduce suffering.

This perspective offers a kind of cosmic peace. The universe existed for billions of years before life emerged on Earth, and it will continue for billions more after we're gone. Our role is not to rage against this ending or to accelerate it, but to help ease the transition, to reduce suffering where we can, and to accept with grace that in complete extinction lies complete peace. 

Neither is this a call to martyrdom. It is a recognition of our profound interconnectedness. We sacrifice not out of moral superiority, but out of a deep understanding that our individual well-being is fundamentally linked to the well-being of others. In the most difficult moments, we ask: Who needs help right now? How can I reduce suffering, even incrementally?

Our dignity is not determined by our ability to prevent collapse, but by our capacity to maintain compassion in its midst. We are witnesses, caregivers, and holders of collective grief—maintaining our humanity not through grand gestures, but through continuous, humble acts of care.

The Moral Imperative: Our Shared Commitment

Our credo is simple yet profound:

• We cannot prevent the ending

• We can minimize suffering

• We will maintain our highest moral capacities

• We will witness with grace and intentionality

An Invitation to Presence

Planetary hospice is not a destination. It is a way of being. It is an invitation to:

• Accept without surrendering

• Grieve without despairing

• Care without expecting salvation

• Witness our collective journey with open hearts and clear eyes

We do not claim special knowledge or superiority. We are simply humans, facing an unprecedented ecological transformation, choosing presence over panic, compassion over competition.

In the end, our humanity is not measured by our ability to prevent collapse, but by our capacity to face it with dignity, with interconnectedness, and with an unwavering commitment to reducing suffering.

At the end, what we hold in our hearts is all we truly have. For me, that is enough. It has to be.