Four touchstones for dealing with a world careening into chaos

How to go on in a time a crisis

Raven by Erika Mazza-Smith

5 minute read

The events of the world rush as a cascade, overwhelming our powers of comprehension. The contradictions reach a breaking point, ripping and tearing the ground like a tectonic fault in its most shattering moment.

It has been hard to tear my eyes from the scorched terrain of L.A. One of the great urban fires of U.S. history has at this point ravaged an estimated 10,000 structures with 10 found dead so far. Damage estimates start at $50 billion but range up to three times that much. A hot, dry year combined with winds whipped up by climate disruption brought a January conflagration beyond the normal fire season, the greatest in LA’s long history of fires. The ravages comes days before a man who has declared climate change a hoax and promised vastly increased oil and gas drilling is elevated to the presidency.

The scenes of neighborhoods leveled by firestorms fill mass media. But other scenes of even greater destruction seem to only find their place on alternative circuits. Those are of Gaza, where dozens of deaths are reported daily, and once thriving neighborhoods are rendered piles of gray rubble by bombings whose explosive force has been greater than the combined atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is a purely human created disaster, the bitter fruits of a doctrine of racial supremacy. No matter who espouses them, such doctrines always generate remarkably similar murderous outcomes. Yet despite protests around the world, stands taken by governments, and professional judgements this is genocide by groups including Amnesty International, the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch, nothing seems capable of stopping the Israelis. The latest hospital bombing, the newest burning of children, the journalist who was just assassinated, every day there’s a report that sickens the soul, a feeling intensified by a sense of powerlessness to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, AI and humanoid robots race ahead, and people wonder if they will have a job in five years, while tech giants pour hundreds of billions into new data centers to accommodate the emerging world superintelligence as they seek to revive nuclear power to feed it. If that’s not enough of a science fiction reality, there’s Elon Musk seeming to take on the role of shadow president. In what world is this possible? Ours, of course. One in which the world’s richest 500 just hit $10 trillion in net worth, Musk himself is up $213 billion in 2024 to reach an unbelievable $442 billion.

Those are only a few of the events coming to the foreground. Overall, there is a general sense of foreboding, focused by the second inauguration of Donald Trump in a few days. Who knows what is to come? We have a general sense of a world careening into chaos beyond anything we have known, climate impacts intensifying, wars threatening, economic prospects uncertain, social divisions increasing. We feel we are in the hands of powers beyond our control, which in their pursuit of self-interest are operating with malign intent toward the many.

How do you live in such a world? How do you move forward? Keep up motivation? Find hope we can make a better world out of all this mess? I have four touchstones which keep me going.

First is a sense it is better to be clear about our situation than have it obscured. Better for evil to be revealed than let it hide. Better for us to realize a negative direction than to be blindly carried there anyway. As I often repeat, out of the darkness comes the light. The contrast illuminates, draws the distinction, stirs countervailing responses. The institutional powers of the world know it. That’s why they put so much time and energy into information wars that obscure and distract from the truth. Regard the general sense we are in deep trouble as the groundwork and spur for change.

Second is how this realization can drive us together, bring about new unity on the basis of sheer survival necessities. When things seem to be going okay, we feel free to go our own way, do our own thing. When situations grow critical and crisis is obvious, it pushes us to take down our barriers of personal and organizational egotism, and learn how to work together. I believe the multiple and interactive crises facing us, social, political, economic, ecological, will do this and in fact provide the opportunity to set a new progressive agenda. The place to start is the communities where we live, to create civic assemblies that break down organizational barriers to develop and forward comprehensive agendas for change, beginning in the community then moving to broader levels. The best thing about a crisis is that it spurs community, and that is what we need most of all.

Third, rather than crumple under feelings of doom and powerlessness, take action where and when we can. It may not be enough. We may and likely will not be able to conceive actions sufficient to what we face. But we can conceive and undertake actions at some scale, recognizing there is another side to uncertainty. We don’t know how the future will unfold. We don’t know the full impacts of the actions we take, and their synergies with actions others take. The combined effect may be more than we can realize. The actions may be political. They may be to build at a community level. They may be personal to align ourselves more fully with the needs of the world we see. Whatever they are, they will have some impact. If we don’t know all that needs to be done, we can at least do what we know we can.

Finally, a theme to which I often return, to treat others and ourselves with all the kindness and compassion with which we are capable. This is a time of deep uncertainty, and people are going though tremendous fears. I heard that at gatherings over the past holidays, and see it on social media and in many articles I read. So we need to give each other a break, as well as ourselves. To keep up energy to deal with these situations, we need to find places of solace, in nature, with others, in inner practice. Life is a wonderful gift, and we need to appreciate it, as people have through the many difficult histories humans have faced.

I can’t say I find these days easy to take. Some days I wake with a sense of dread, not sure what the day will bring. These four touchstones help me navigate, and find shards of sunlight in the dark skies. I hope they help you, my readers, as we ready ourselves for the days ahead.