Collapse!: and what we can do about it

by Frederick Marx

Modern industrial civilization is unraveling. Systems are collapsing.

Compassion is scarce. And still, life calls us to wake up—and wise up.

In his bold and irreverent continuation of the Confessions of a Sacred Fool series, sacred clown and spiritual truth-teller Frederick Marx dives deeper into the mess, the madness, and the contradictions of modern life. With razor wit and raw honesty, he analyzes the global to the most personal, never overlooking everything that makes it survivable.

But this isn’t a book of problems—it’s a book of possibilities. Blending ancient wisdom with street smartness and a good dose of laugh-out-loud truth, Collapse! And What We Can Do About It offers practical, soulful, and often hilarious tools for how to stay sane, stay kind, and show up for what really matters.

If we’re going down, let’s go down laughing – with love and truth.

164 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 3, 2026

About the author

Frederick Marx is an Emmy and Oscar nominated filmmaker. He is best known for the documentary, Hoop Dreams, which Roger Ebert named ‘Best Film of the Decade’ and the International Documentary Association named "Best Documentary of all time."

His work has been featured in: The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, USA Today, Rolling Stone, Reuters, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Time, Forbes, GQ, and The Wall Street Journal.

Nearly 25 years after he attended his first meditation retreat, he became an ordained Zen priest in the Hollow Bones Order of Rinzai Zen. His recent documentary, Journey from Zanskar, was narrated by Richard Gere and featured the Dalai Lama.