So the big question remains: If we have passed the tipping point into convergent, mutually reinforcing catastrophes, and we have no real agency, as individuals or even as nations, to slow or reverse the self-accelerating vortex of systemic collapse--all of which I'm firmly convinced is true, what can or should we do now? As I see it, we have four general options: denial, delusion, despair, or determination, and only the latter is adaptive; the other three will hasten our (now inevitable) ruin.

Determination to do what? To grow gardens, grow community, and grow awareness, as long as we can, by learning, teaching, healing, and creating. To take good care of everyone we know or encounter, abandoning no one, to the extent possible. And finally, to accept the inevitable peacefully, whether it is our own extinction, or a dramatic die-off or evolutionary bottleneck that kills off most of us, but leaves a few tough, resilient survivors to eke out subsistence on what remains.

Those few, if they even survive, will fall into two general categories: the "chimps" or survivalists, who swear by violence and intimidation; and the "bonobos"--those (myself included) who prefer a more communal, celebratory, mutually affectionate way of coping, with the ultimate goal of seeding a postapocalyptic Gaian future, a deep understanding that we are, and always have been, a part of a larger. living world, and not apart from it. If you are a fellow "Bonobo," welcome aboard. If you are a "Chimp," (i.e. a "Trumpanzee"), go take your assault weapons and MAGA hats somewhere else and battle to death!