HISTORY: From Summer 2019 until his Autumn 2023 death, Michael Dowd recorded almost 100 conversations with others on a potential similar path. A four-way conversation in Ottawa was the spark. Michael, along with wife/mission partner Connie Barlow, author Paul Chefurka, and climate scientist Paul Beckwith gathered to chat. An included topic was Chefurka’sApproaching the Limits: Ladder of Awareness5 Stages*:

1. Dead asleep
2. Awareness of one fundamental problem
3. Awareness of many problems
4. Awareness of the interconnections between many problems
5. Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life
*6. added in a later writing:Finding the Gift

By the next morning, feeling greatly inspired, Michael and Connie had named the sixth stage forwhat exists beyond mere acceptance:Post-doom.Michael went into action, birthing this website and the Post-doom Conversations series. Connie and colleague Ivey Cone tackled the editing to add extra shine.Mike Rezl contributed his tech skills to host and build the website.

In an early 2022 conversation,the gift of passing through the tunnel of doom into the light of Post-doom was spelled out in a practical way: Karen Perry offered 15 Benefits she had experienced following collapse acceptance. Michael found thise approach very supportive in adopting a Post-doom mindset and started referencing them in his educational videos.

After Michael’s death, Connie reviewed, reordered, and detailed a deeper explanation of each Post-doom Conversation, available here and onThe Great Story website.This collection includes Connie’s suggested list of Michael’s own conversations that align most with a Post-doom perspective, and those from others he found personally inspiring. Additional conversations not here are onThe Great Story youtube channel. Visit theAUDIO section for audible recordings.

The unique wisdom shared in all of these Conversations is a huge contribution of Michael Dowd’s legacy. May the truth spoken here continue to meaningfully inspire love-in-action.

POST-DOOM HISTORY and LEADERSHIP

September 2019

The early history of the Post-doom concept is best conveyed in thisPaul Chefurka conversation. It was Paul’s blogpostFinding the Gift that convinced Michael Dowd thatemotional doom need not be the endpoint when one accepts that civilizational collapse and climate chaos are unstoppable.

December 2019

Michael Dowd initiated these Post-doom video conversations beginning summer of 2019. In December, he delivered his first sermon (in a Unitarian church) from this perspective. The sermon video is posted here to give the grounding of his ideas, which you will encounter regularly in his hosting side of all these conversations. (Dowd died suddenly October 2023.)

February 2022

Karen Perry became an early leader of the Post-doom community when she initiated a weekly zoom meeting for women: Post-doom Bloom with GRAC/E (Getting Real About Collapse/Extinction). When Dowd interviewed her in the “Conversations” series, he was inspired to make her perspective prominent among the ideas he had already launched. Karen offers15emotional “Benefits of Collapse Acceptance.“

GLORY and STORY

Carolyn Baker is one of the elders in the collapse community, having grasped the downward trajectory beginning in 2007. Aprolific authorand story teller, she is also a Jungian therapist, admired for her ability to help others find gratitude in being alive here and now.Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse is one of her most mentioned books, along withUndaunted.

Daniel Dancer has been very open about climate grief in hisArt for the Sky outdoor participatory projects that he leads at schools throughout the United States. Having understood ecological devastation (and its unstoppability) since he was a child, Daniel alwaysapologizes to the kids for the future they will be facing. A variety of these projects are edited into this inspiring conversation.

Shaun Chamberlin is not only inspiring, but practical asking “What story do you want your life to tell?” Shaun’s decision to keep his material needs minimal and to find a mentor outside of college is a path for other disillusioned young people to consider. A pile-up of navigating sudden deaths offers depth as well. Followthis link to Part Two.

WIDELY KNOWN ELDERS

Joanna Macy (recent bookActive Hope) conversed with Michael in ways that evoked the title for this video:To Collapse Well. Many of the Post-doom conversations offer a sense of equanimity about TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It). However, this oneextends the possibility of actually feeling gratitude for the gift of being alive at such a time.

Margaret (Meg) Wheatley was interviewed by the late Terry Patten, and is so good that Michael cross-posted it here, choosing the title:Opening to the World. For decades, Meg’s career was teaching leadership skills within corporations, NGOs, and even once for the US military. Accepting that civilizational collapse is unstoppable shifted her approach toWarriors for the Human Spirit.

Richard Heinberg recounts his journey from reading the 1972 bookLimits to Growthfrom its original year of publication through hisseveral decades of sustainability writings. He also spent many years in a Hindu ashram in the USA, wisdom from which he shapes into the final story of this conversation. He points to the Bhagavad-Gita and speaks the philosophy that keeps him writing, “Do good for good’s sake and don’t be attached to the result.“

NATURAL CONNECTIONS

Ganga Devi Braun opens this new row as a young person with the experience, wisdom, and speaking ability of a true elder. As with the previous interview (Heinberg) Braun has experience living on an ashram. She speaks of a personal conversation she had with Ram Dass just before he died, but explainsmy guru is the Earth. From a young age she apprenticed in grief work and the art of deep listening. Now she is drawn towardhospicing humanity.

Frank Forencich shares his life experience of living and teaching the physical and outdoor capabilities ofthe human animal within a worldview grounded in his 1970s reading of the bookLimits to Growth.

In addition to his huge accolade as survival showAlone Season 9 winner,Juan Pablo Quiñonez gets the dubius distinction of being Michael’s last (and most feral) Post-doom Conversation. Not a prepper manual, this is an honest dive into collapse acceptance by becoming more closely connected to thecreature in each of us born wild and free.

WOUNDED LANDSCAPES

Trebbe Johnson is a prolific writer, whose life experiences range from guiding wilderness quests to her current focus on sojourning in wounded landscapes, as depicted in her bookRadical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places.

Living along the industrial south shore of Lake Michigan, John Halstead necessarily communes with nature via a wounded landscape. He offers his personal story of deep involvement in climate activism (to the point of arrest) and speaking authentically with his young adult children about the future. His book (and blog)Another End of the World Is Possibleis grounded in a Post-doom perspective.

Beginning with Heartbreak is the title of this conversation with Deena Metzger. She is referring both to wounded landscapes and to wounded habitats for animals whom she encountered during her many decades ofprojects and writings on her life path as storyteller and healer.

DEEPLY ADAPTING

Michael Dowd credits the 2018 paperDeep Adaptation byJem Bendellas one of the foremost writings that launched his own quest to read the scholarship underpinning how we can know that climate catastrophe and civilizational collapse are already in runaway mode.

In 2023,Jem Bendell invitedKaren Perry into his own conversation series to discuss the inclusion of her 15 Benefits of Collapse Acceptance in chapter 13 of his bookBreaking Together. Having renamed themDoomster Characteristics, the two discuss whether this is actually fitting, as well as diving in personally on each Benefit.

Rupert Read was a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia, U.K. when he stepped into activism: first in the Green Party and then Extinction Rebellion. After this episode was recorded, he reported on his website“that after 26 years in the academy, I’ve taken voluntary severance…to dedicate myself to theClimate Majority Project.”

ACROSS GENERATIONS

Bill Kauth is an early leader of the men’s movement in the USA, co-founding theMankindProject and the New Warrior Training Adventure in 1984. He tells the story of how he realized that moving beyond doom is crucial, and toward the realization that, “no matter what befalls humanity, the world will be okay“.

Dave Pollard is a well-known Canadian blogger who has been helping readers since 2002 understand why this civilization cannot be sustained andhow our species’ domestication is at the root of our predicament. This conversation is placed here because Bill Kauth mentions Dave as important in his own learnings about collapse.

Award-winning writerVanessa Blakeslee’sessayOur Permian Paradox about a road-trip she and her partner took through the major oil production region in Texas, caught Michael’s attention, inspiring him toaudio record it. The two discuss the importance of not judging others for denial and the importance of Catton’s bookOvershoot. Recognizing the centrality of cycles in the universe has helped her accept the inevitability of collapse.

GRIEF and GRATITUDE

LaUra Schmidt & Aimee Lewis-Reau had already launched theirGood Grief Network when Michael recorded this video in September 2019. They offer a 10-step approach forpeer-to-peer supportcircles for those overwhelmed by collective injustices, eco-anxiety, climate grief, and eco-distress.

Barbara Cecil, especially in her 2019essay-writing collaboration with Dahr Jamail, played a big role in Michael Dowd’s decision to shift his own life work into what he came to call Post-doom. Barbara co-hosted three episodes in this Conversation series.

Stephen Jenkinson, a.k.a.Griefwalker, uses his social work experience in a hospital palliative care wing to correlate how alack of wisdom in dominant culture’s handling of individual death carries over into an unwillingness to face what’s coming for this society.

CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, foundedThe Center for Action and Contemplation in 1987, based in New Mexico. He describes his journey shedding the myth of progress as“slow because I held onto my Franciscan optimism and romantic sentimentality about the beauty of the Earth.”

Damaris Zehner teacheswriting at a community college in Indiana and also devotes time to her home gardening and goat. She learned the joy of simple living while in the Peace Corps in the 1960s. Echoing Stephen Jenkinson, she reflects on Eastern Orthodox doctrine:The root of all sin is a fear of death.Michah 6:8 is a good practical foundation, summarized asLove justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

Gail Worcelo is a Passionist nun who is carrying forward the teachings of Father Thomas Berry. She co-foundedGreen Mountain Monastery in Vermont and is a leader ofSisters of Earth.

RADICAL EARTH ACTION

Max Wilbert is an activist, author, and profound critic of civilization, currently attempting to defend Thacker Pass from lithium mining. The book (and documetary of the same name)Bright Green Lies reveals the harsh truth of false solutions to our energy predicament.

Derrick Jensen is an eco-philosopher,prolific author, and co-founder ofDeep Green Resistance. His work to maintain as much of the living world as possible while civilization continues to collapse is a prime directive.

In 2018Roger Hallam stepped beyond his career as an organic farmer in the U.K. to co-foundExtinction Rebellion. Roger also wrote the bookCommon Sense for the 21st Century.

ECOLOGICAL SCIENTISTS

William Rees is a Canadian population ecologist best known for theEcological Footprint concept and tool. Co-hosted with science writerConnie Barlow, this hour-long conversation is a superb review of the basic ecological, sociological, and systems science principles underlying thecivilizational and biospheric unraveling.

Michael was eager to converse withTom Wessels about his bookThe Myth of Progress,and volunteered his voice for theaudiobook. Key to Tom’s science trajectory was readingBlack Elk Speaks,Sand County Almanac, andSilent Spring during his first year of college in 1969.

Stanford professorPaul Ehrlich has writtenpopular books laying out the severe ecological consequences of human overpopulation and overconsumption since the 1960s.

VISIONARY YOUNGERS

Mike Garfield, podcast host ofFuture Fossils, spent 13 years as a professional musician and visual artist before becoming a parent. His day job now is in communications at the Santa Fe Institute, NM where he says “I live at the intersection of art and science, and philosophy and spiritual practice.”

Britt Wray pulls no punches about how the older generations have left a bleak future for the youth. She began in 2020 with a newsletter titledGen Dread,which morphed into the title of her 2022 book,Generation Dread. The subtitle is expressly Post-doom:Finding Purpose in an Age of Eco-Anxiety.

Rory Varrato makes clear he was not a privileged American from growing up in a Pennsylvania collapsed coal-mining town. Nonetheless, he found a way to pursue graduate scholarship in existentialism, human nature, the foibles of this form of civilization, and how education might be transformed to serve students in a declining world. He was noticed as a young visionary in 2018 for his essayWe Are the Threat: Reflections on Near-Term Human Extinction (audio recorded by Michael). During the early days ofExtinction Rebellion, Rory served as media liaison for USA activists.

CLIMATE COMMUNICATORS

Dahr Jamail is the author ofThe End of Ice(2019). Acclaimed as one of the best books of climate science for a popular audience, each chapter also delves into the emotional impacts of the science upon the scientists themselves. A core topic of this conversation is the contrasting values between indigenous cultures and those of dominant culture, as explored also in his most recent collaboration bookWe Are the Middle of Forever.

Robert Hunzikeris a well-known climate journalist in alternative media. This conversation is titledAbrupt Climate Change: The World Tour. Although recorded in 2020, the grounding science operative in 6 distinct regions is always foundational: Antarctica, Australia, Amazon rain forest, Oceans, Greenland, and Arctic.

John Englander, former CEO of the Jacques Cousteau Society, is widely recognized as one the world’s foremost experts on the rapidity and unstoppability of climate-induced rising sea levels. Here both of his books provide the focus:High Tide on Main Street and Moving to Higher Ground.

Paul Beckwith has a graduate background in climate science. Michael Dowd guides this conversation as an opportunity for viewer education in the behind the scenes nuts and bolts.

Jennifer Hynes offers a fascinating story of how she became a trusted climate communicator. Of the three in this grouping, she is the only one who was ready and eager to talk about fully acceptingdoom enroute to aPost-doom perspective. Jennifer is co-host of the climate episodes of theEnvironmental Coffeehouse on YouTube.

Nick Humphrey has a graduate background in meteorology. This conversation offers opportunities for viewer education in climate science.

COLLAPSING ECONOMICS

Sid Smith is a mathematician who chose to learn, write, and advocate about humanity overshooting the ecological limits to growth. Notoriety came his way when, upon the 2018 invitation of the Greens at Virginia Tech, he delivered a talk titledHumanity: The Final Chapter.

Alan Weisman recalls touring the world as a top-level environmental journalist. His brief visit to post-meltdown Chernobyl surprised him with the fecundity of plants and animals who reoccupied the buildings and grounds in the absence of humans. Thus was born his best-selling bookThe World Without Us.

Gail Tverberg used her mathematical gift to earn a living as an actuary: helping finance, insurance, and other businesses calculate risks when considering shifts in their endeavors. Along the way, she volunteered her time as one of the early contributors in thepeak oil community, via her blogOur Finite World.

LIVING in a TIME of ENDINGS

Gauthier Chapelle trained as an agricultural engineer in Belgium. He is among the French-speaking leaders of the new field calledCollapsology.  A young parent himself, he speaks of how his generation in France is deeply questioning the ethics of becoming parents. (See alsoWikipediaCollapsology)

Dougald Hine speaks about his personal shift into localism while writing for audiences scattered around the globe. Well-known as coauthor of theDark Mountain Manifesto (2009) andAt Work in the Ruins (2023), this 2019 Conversation is titledLiving in a Time of Endings.

ProfessorKrista Hiser identifies religiously as a Gaian. Trained for university administration, she leads theSustainability Education and Key Competencies Framework at the Global Council for Science and the Environment. She speaks poignantly of how the grief journey following the suicide of a loved one gave experience for her coming to terms with a foreboding future for all.

REGENERATIVE DESIGN

Joe Brewer explores and practices regenerative design scaled to bioregions. This work entails attending to the social needs and opportunities as much as those that the regional ecology calls forth. His 2021 book isThe Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth.

Having just experienced one of California’s biggest wildfires, the calm and community mindedness ofDenise Rushing exemplifies the values of a Post-doom worldview: personal emotional wellbeing in a time of crisis and cultivating practical love-in-action. Her 2012 book highlights this blending as well:Tending the Soul’s Garden: Permaculture as a Way Forward in Difficult Times.

Daniel Christian Wahl works in regenerative design. The interview is co-hosted with Ganga Devi Braun, offering an in-depth, ideas-rich conversation. Accesshis essays as reposted on the Resilience website.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

AuthorJames Howard Kunstler inspires Michael Dowd to begin this Conversation with a listing of all Kunstler’s nonfiction and fiction books he has read (some even twice) during his journey to grasp the causes and consequences of civilizational collapse. Of note areThe Long Emergency (2005) andToo Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation (2012). Kunstler points to hisWorld Made By Hand fiction series as his own realistically possible best-case scenario:that here in America conditions would go back to what prevailed in the early 1800s.

In the 1970s,David Holmgren cofounded the approach to food-growing known as permaculture. Applying that now to an already collapsing global civilization,his newteachings and writings begin with localism and entail “retrofitting what we already have in the built, the biological, and the behavioral.”

Peter Russell, well known for his 1983 bookThe Global Brain: Speculations on the Evolutionary Leap to Planetary Consciousness,doesn’t quibble with the certainty of civilizational contraction and a scaling back to previous technological constraints. Where he uniquely differs is his emphasis on meditation, while pointing tothe evolution of consciousness continuing in a progressive way, despite theunraveling of the material world.

AROUND the GLOBE

Kevin Hesterhails from New Zealand where his career for hire as a master sailor and diver offered him direct experience of marine biological decline over decades. Heroes in his youth included Rachel Carson and Jacques Cousteau. Assisting Guy McPherson in theNature Bats Lastpodcast series offered Kevin a foundational understanding of climate change as presented in academic papers.

Fabian Scheidler is an independent journalist and writer in Germany, best known for his bookThe End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization. This is an ideas episode, as the book has been endorsed by the likes of Bill McKibben, Noam Chomsky, and Vandana Shiva.

Jessica Canham is a leader in the globalDeep Adaptation community. Locally, she focuses onhelping her community on the Caribbean island of Dominica recover from hurricanes and become more self-sufficient in growing food. This conversation is unique in also featuring the ethical importance of privileged nations sharing wealth as climate change reparations for ecological justice.

COLLAPSE SUPPORT

Dean Spillane-Walkerhas been hostingimpossible conversations for those struggling with collapse awareness. Trained in counseling, Dean’s websiteLiving Resilience features“Transformative tools, support, and practices for people bravely facing human-caused collapse of Earth and human systems.”

David Baum ofCollapse Club interviews author-organizer-mentorPeter Melton and Val Christensen, leaders of theCollapse Acceptance Alliance,a Post-doom affiliated discussion group.

Sandy Schoelles is well known in thecollapse andPost-doom communities for founding a YouTube channelEnvironmental Coffeehouse that discusses the science and various perspectives on our global predicament. Her viewers find a home with her for support and community building.

ANOTHER ROUND of LEADING VOICES

Karen and Jordan Perry appeared in 2022 on David Baum’sCollapse Club podcast, and it is crossposted here.Getting Real About Collapse is the title and offers just that: a hard look at our global predicament.

In 2021, Barbara Cecil and Michael co-hosted this Conversation with Joanna Macy titledChildren of the Passage. (The sequelTo Collapse Well hosted by Dowd appears inWIDELY KNOWN ELDERS and was recorded exactly a year later, during which time collapse became even more evident.)

This 2022 Meg Wheatley Conversation titledBeyond Hope and Fearis actually the first time Michael recorded with her for a wider public audience. (The other Post-doom Conversation with Meg hosted by Terry Patten is found inWIDELY KNOWN ELDERS.)

POST-DOOM LEADERS NOW and THEN

In 2021, Karen Perry was evacuated for five days during theRiver Firein California, which burned within feet of the home she shares with Jordan Perry. Every day they can see theburn scar that those flames left behind. The following 2022Mosquito Fire got as close as 15 miles away. Collapse ClubDavid Baum discusses with Karen how her wildfire experience has affected her feelings about collapse.

Terry Pattenhosted an audio conversation with long-time friend Michael Dowd in September 2020. Following Michael’s death in 2023, Connie Barlow edited and reposted the conversation in video format, adding educational and evocative image overlays of both Terry (1951-2021) and of her beloved husband. Connie retitled their conversationPost-doom Shifts in Death and Identity.She regards it as Michael’s best.