Collapse Quotes

“It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ”
― Colette

“Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion... Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.”
― Suzette Boon, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

“I was just thinking... isn't it lucky that we decided to become co-editors? If one takes a blow to the head, the other can fill in. If the other's lung spontaneoulsy collapses, the one can fill in. It's a perfect system once you think about it."
~Will Landsman”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“An important sign of the collapse of the rule of law is the rise of a paramilitary and its merger with government power.”
― Timothy Snyder , The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“He tans into burning while the opening fanfare to "Peaches en Regalia" flows over him, the bugle call for a hippie army that marched at the peak of the American parabola, that moment when physics held its breath to allow levitation, a small reward before the descent. The hippies knew it then, Maggot Boy Johnson thinks; they couldn't build it into words but they could feel it; a floating in the stomach as history shifted direction. They stopped, hey, what's that sound, and knew that the spiny skyscrapers reflected in the river, the chasms of concrete, the wide streets and sidewalks, the power lines cutting into the hills and mountains above missile silos, the highways drawing lines across the blank plains under enormous skies, the pupil of God's eye, would be the ruins that their grandchildren wandered among, the reminders that once there was always water in the faucet, there was electricity all the time, and America was prying off the shackles of its past. The vision opened up to them and winked out again, and those it blinded staggered through their lives unable to see anything else, while the rest of them wondered if they had only dreamed it.”
― Brian Francis Slattery, Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America

“Hard to describe what those next years felt like to live through. Except as a hollowing out, a loss beyond repair...even as it kept begging to be repaired. While the promise of what had been so very close haunted me. In so many ways.

"So much in motion, such energy, it disguised the decay of things, the incremental rot. How much was hollowed out."

Impossible to tell how fast society was collapsing because history had been riddled through with disinformation, and reality was composed of half-fictions and full-on paranoid conspiracy theories. You couldn't figure out if collapse was a cliff or a gentle slope because all the mental constructs obscured it. Multinationals kept their monopolies, shed jobs or even their identities, but most did not go under. Governments became more autocratic, on average.

Here was fine, there was a disaster. But here was just a different kind of disaster. A thick mist drenched in the smoke of flares that kept curling back on us. Why fight a mist if all that lay ahead was more of the same?

Those of us who survived the pandemic, and all the rest, passed through so many different worlds. Like time travelers. Some of us lived in the past. Some in the present, some in an unknowable future. If you lived in the past, you disbelieved the conflagration reflected in the eyes of those already looking back at you. You mistook the pity and anger, how they despised you. How, rightly, they despised you.

So we stitched our way through what remained of life. The wounds deeper. The disconnect higher.

The shock that shattered our bones yet left us standing.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander

“It happened so fast. It had been happening for decades.”
― Kelsey Josund, Platformed

“Pray for lightning.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Let’s savour the downfall of paradise shall we? Nothing better than see paradise collapse and finally give way to the ugly mess that is this truly tragic world of ours! Cast our illusions away and look the devil straight into the eye, congratulating him on the work he created on planet earth!”
― Ryan Gelpke, 2018: Our Summer of Creeping Boredom and Beautiful Shimmering

“Homo Defessus – Never before in human history has so many people considered their everyday tiredness (because they are so busy and have so much to do) as a badge of honor. We are living in the era of Homo Defessus, the exhausted man. I wonder if the historians of the distant future (if there will be any) will look back to our epoch and decide to give it a name: “The Dark Ages”, because for the first time humans, not only deliberately sought exhaustion, but they were also convinced that this mentality is their pride, an indisputable token of greatness.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“Homo defessus — Never before in human history have so many people considered their everyday tiredness (because they are so busy and have so much to do) as a badge of honor. We are living in the era of Homo defessus, the exhausted man. I wonder if historians of the distant future (if there will be any) will look back at our epoch and decide to give it a name: “The Second Dark Ages,” because for the first time, humans not only deliberately sought exhaustion, but were also convinced that this mentality was their pride, an indisputable token of greatness.”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“But on a deeper level, collapse was an option. Letting my business fall apart was a real possibility. Beyond the surface of managing bills and trying to stay on top of the daily grind, I made a choice, a conscious choice, that even though my world had turned upside down, the girls and I were going to survive this. Because, for me, letting my family fall apart was not on the table.
I would not run, move, or give up, like many urged or predicted. I went back to my Thoughtfully Fit training plan.
Guided by the sticky notes and years of success in making other people’s lives work, I became ground zero to test-drive my new model, to help me be Thoughtfully Fit through this crisis.”
― Darcy Luoma, Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success

“The collapse of the Aricebo Observatory was a good example of what happens to poorly maintained industrial facilities.”
― Steven Magee

“It is my hope that we do not need to fall by our own hand before we realize that we can only stand by God’s.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“it’s collapsing one way or the other. We know that it is, the system is shutting down one way or the other. One way is that ecological disaster causes it to collapse in a chaotic way. Right? And the other way is that we shut it down in an organized fashion, which is what can happen if we mass mobilize.

(Interview with Truthout)”
― Bree Newsome Bass

“A nuclear test is not a nuclear test. It is an intelligence test.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“Insanity at its best is believing that we can reinvent the truth. Insanity at its worst is to expend our lives attempting to reinvent the truth that the reinvention always fails. And if there’s one truth that we cannot afford to reinvent, it’s the truth that our society is filled with the best and worst of both.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The COVID-19 pandemic is going to look like nothing when compared to the collapse of the global food supply system that ongoing climate change will bring.”
― Steven Magee

“It is entirely possible that society will collapse in the coming decades. The wide-ranging problems caused by global warming are accelerating.”
― Steven Magee

“We know the Roman Empire fell into oblivion but can scarcely imagine let alone admit that we might face a similar fate.”
― Roman Krznaric, The Good Ancestor: A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking

“Already on that highway Las Vegas felt like a dream, fleeing from my memory, growing fuzzier and more unreal with every passing mile of creosote basin rimmed by jagged hills. Will what we call civilization go like that too, a brutal, gleaming, plasticized absurdity that we will recall less with nostalgia than with befuddlement and wonder that a whole species could consent to live that way? There are other ways. It's not too late to find them. One way or another, we will have to.”
― Ben Ehrenreich, Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time

“I will never give up until you collapse on me, say it love or say it enmity.”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“WW3 is against humanity.”
― Shannon Patrick Ramos

“You seem so calm, like the sea before a storm. But then a memory crosses your mind—a friendly gesture from someone sitting in a café long ago, a yellow tulip you once tucked into her hair, or an old slip of paper with her phone number—and everything falls apart.”
― Shahid Hussain Raja

“Outside the snow continued its diligent job of covering up the earth’s scars and imperfections, till one day it would melt and everything would come undone. And time would march on, seemingly never ending, yet always just at the edge of collapse.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Dying in Champoussin

“When you no longer reward intelligence as much as simply going through school and memorizing enough stuff to fool the exams, the percentage of actually intelligent people drops and they are replaced by the middle of the bell curve. Since this happens across the board, no one notices because they lack the ability.”
― Brett Stevens

“The end of the Hittite Empire thus offers important insights into the dynamics of complex societies under stress.”
― R Jay Driskill

“In recovering and studying the Hittite past, we not only illuminate an ancient civilization but also gain perspective on our own historical moment.”
― R Jay Driskill

“There exists a culture shared even by those who are dissatisfied with mass culture, and it is among the most dangerous precisely because it is dazzling—deceptive. It is a culture that belongs to those who are "dissatisfied with the world as it is." This manifests in the following ways: They still carry a certain belief and hope in humanity. If they suffer, they might dream that their suffering will one day “be heard by everyone.” Through their works, they may fantasize about becoming popular. They might romanticize the psychiatric term "trauma." They might aim to "fix and recover" things or people. They might set their minds on leaving a "meaningful impact" and become activists. They might frequently “discuss” on philosophy forums. They might be aiming at “dark vibes.” They might cling to mottos like “forever alone.” They might refer to themselves as "just a random book lover.” They might have interests in “just some random weird stuff.” They might still be screaming into the void. They might try to “prove their depth” publicly. They might refer to themselves as "lost souls" to the point of weariness, even internalizing this very term—coined by the system to reduce by classifying them—implying a form of domesticated rebellion. And so on. These supposed outsiders are actually on the inside, worshipping at the altar of visibility, validation, and vague worldly hope. Their beliefs—“art-as-cure,” “literature-as-refuge,” “activism-as-purpose”—are not radical to the point of exile but packaged and predictable. They don't reject the system; they only ask to be understood within its boundaries. They weep, but with an eye to applause. They write, but always with a publisher in mind. They compose, but just to make money. They mourn, but only to be noticed. They claim detachment, but still speak as if begging to be liked and heard. They imagine themselves as “wild,” but only within the categories that subcultures and language allow. After all, there are two ends to the ruins: on one end, these kinds of “loners” who are still tied to conventional wisdom; and on the other, the utterly unknown, mystic, cosmic, and free spirits who have transcended everything human.”
― Sov8840

“still, he smiles — faintly, knowingly — because even here, inside the quiet machinery of suffering, there’s a kind of grace. he exists in that impossible balance between clarity and collapse — wholly sane, yet living inside what can only be called the twilight zone of the human condition.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty