Sitting Ducks at the End of the World
There’s this strange, exhausting thing humans do.
We sit around the campfire of catastrophe, sipping tea, narrating our own downfall in real time like we’re sports announcers who forgot we’re also playing the game.
A corporation runs itself into the ground thanks to a director who thinks "synergy" means firing half the staff and installing a ball pit.
A country watches its democracy slip-slide into authoritarianism under a "very serious man" who can barely tell the truth from a Cheesecake Factory menu.
And what do we do?
We post.
We meme.
We mutter at the dinner table.
But we don’t stop it.
This isn’t a dig.
It’s not because we’re lazy or stupid or evil (despite what late-night talk shows would have you believe).
It's because we're human. And humans, contrary to popular motivational posters, are not wired for courageous collective rebellion at the drop of a hat.
We're wired for survival, for status quo maintenance, for keeping our heads down and hoping the storm blows over.
History’s Inconvenient Mirror
Nazi Germany.
Good, decent Germans — people who loved their kids, sang in choirs, made soup for sick neighbors — ended up participating (directly or passively) in the greatest atrocity of the modern world.
Most didn’t charge the gates of power with pitchforks. They rationalized, they adapted, they hid, they told themselves it was temporary, or "not as bad as it could be."
They weren’t uniquely wicked. They were uniquely cornered.
Fear. Propaganda. Peer pressure. Exhaustion.
It’s terrifyingly easy to slip into collaboration when all your basic needs are under threat, when resistance feels suicidal, when “just one more compromise” promises to get you through the day.
We think we'd be different.
The Most Boring Coup in History
Fast-forward to today, and look around:
Billionaires strip corporations for parts while workers shuffle along on worsening benefits.
Politicians openly sabotage institutions while voters doomscroll, sigh, and refresh their Door Dash order.
Environmental collapse is practically scheduled like a Taylor Swift album drop, and we’re still debating plastic straws.
It’s not because people want to be passive.
It’s because the systems we live inside are skilled in making rebellion seem impossible, unpopular, and personally disastrous.
But…
They only have power because we give it to them.
If workers stopped working, the economy would collapse in a week.
If citizens refused to participate in rigged systems, governments would lose their legitimacy overnight.
If ordinary people realized just how many of them there are compared to the suits at the top, the whole pyramid would tip over like a drunk at last call.
So Why Don’t We?
Because action requires:
Trust in each other. Which is hard when we’ve been trained to compete instead of collaborate…
A sense of agency. Which is hard when we’re ground down by debt, fear, and 24/7 bad news…
Imagination. Which is hard when the future has been sold to us as either “tech utopia” or “Mad Max, but without the cool cars”…
We need new myths.
New blueprints.
New songs.
Because revolutions don’t start with facts.
They start with feelings.
With stories.
With people deciding, together, that enough is enough.
The Hopeful Part
If you’re feeling despair, it’s a sign you still have a pulse.
If you’re feeling angry — good.
Anger is a form of love that hasn’t given up yet.
And if you’re feeling the itch that maybe, just maybe, we don't have to accept a world where greed is king and compassion is a liability — you're in good company.
You're early.
You're necessary.
History’s full of moments that almost tipped earlier, if only a few more people had stood up.
Maybe this time, we will.