The House of Delusions

Sometimes, in life, it's just too late. You have to grow up and accept that it is just too late. This does not mean we are jumping into the other denial mode of foolish doom—inevitable extinction. What is inevitable is something a lot more concrete: social revolution. Then, we will see if humanity wants to survive—whether we opt for the mass death of fascism or pull ourselves together to survive.

Roger Hallam

https://rogerhallam.com/2024-hottest-august-on-record/?ref=roger-hallam-newsletter

“Knowledge, and especially disagreeable knowledge, cannot by any art be totally excluded even from those who do not seek it.  Wisdom, said Aeschylus long ago, comes to men whether they will or not. The house of delusions is cheap to build, but draughty to live in, and ready at any instant to fall; and it is surely truer prudence to move our furniture betimes into the open air than to stay indoors until our tenement tumbles about our ears. It is and it must be in the long run be better for a man to see things as they are than to be ignorant of them.”

A.E. Housman

“The past was protests and campaigns. The future is revolution and religion. The only social theory half-relevant to our current moment is the structural determinism of system collapse and revolution. 

Most likely, resistance will become next to impossible over the next few years because of egoist postmodernism ("I don't have to get arrested if I don't want to") and increasing state repression. Combine that with the increased escapism as the objective reality worsens. The historical records of pre-revolutionary periods show this trend: the calm before the storm.  And then, "out of nowhere" there will be a George Floyd moment, a Gaza moment, but a hundred times bigger . . .

While we wait for that moment— six months or six years away—there's plenty to do. We should learn a few key lessons from the early communists under Lenin: in particular, leadership, ideology, and discipline. A small, solid core organisation within a broader social ecology that sees the world as it is—that this system will come to an end, and the future will be ours for the taking if we are prepared to organise to take it. . . The old rationalist religion of those brainy white guys in the 1700s is a bust, and instead, we need a new transcendence of the self.”

Roger Hallam

(https://rogerhallam.com/extinction-rebellion-will-never-happen-again/?ref=roger-hallam-newsletter)

XR America supports all climate activism: disruptive nonviolent civil disobedience, traditional protests, artivism, teach-ins, mental health support, elder direct actions, and climate litigation - while recognizing that the state of the planet in 2025 is far worse than 2019.

Time to exit the House of Delusions.  Not a time for whining, nor for giving-up, nor for escapism, and we sure as hell don’t need another iteration of the “self-organizing-system.” Time to eradicate call-out culture, virtue signaling, assertions of moral or political superiority, and those incessant self-serving elitist/exclusionary demands for “a just transition.” Time to face the time and do something different.

We don’t have all the answers, but we’re not afraid to ask the questions.