When Civilization Ends

Every few months, some new prophecy circulates — a warning that civilization is on the brink.

They say it like it’s the apocalypse.

Like the end of the world is something to be feared.

But sometimes I wonder:

what if the world has been waiting for this ending?

What if the collapse we dread is not destruction,

but a deep exhale —

the sound of something unnatural finally giving way?

The Great Forgetting

Civilization, at its root, meant “to make into a city.”

To gather behind walls.

To build borders and call them safety.

To name some people citizens — and others, not.

But before the walls, there were no “citizens.”

Only people.

People of rivers.

People of wind.

People of mountain and flame.

We were not separate from the world then.

We belonged to it.

And then came agriculture. Ownership. Patriarchy. War.

The enclosure of commons. The birth of the clock.

The myth that we could master nature instead of dance with her.

Civilization was the moment we forgot we were nature.

When we stopped asking permission before we took.

When we decided that growth — endless, linear, extractive —

was the same as life.

The Myth of Progress

We tell ourselves that civilization is progress.

That it’s what lifted us from caves into skyscrapers.

That it’s what separates “primitive” from “advanced.”

But progress for whom, love?

Because beneath the stories of innovation lie other stories —

of extinction, erasure, extraction.

Progress built on genocide.

On slavery.

On rivers rerouted and mountains gutted for gold.

On silence bought with fear.

Even now, in our glittering towers,

we call it advancement when we can’t feel the seasons anymore.

We call it efficiency when children never see stars.

We call it wealth when it costs the earth her breath.

Civilization has been a long forgetting of what wholeness means.

And maybe — just maybe —

the only way to remember is to let it fall.

The Crumbling

If you listen closely, you can already hear it —

the tremors beneath the polished floors.

Supply chains fracturing.

Systems buckling under their own weight.

Artificial lights flickering over tired faces.

People whispering, there must be another way.

And maybe the end won’t come as fire or flood,

but as fatigue —

a collective weariness with the constant noise.

A refusal to keep feeding a machine that devours what we love.

Perhaps the end of civilization won’t be a bang at all,

but a slow, sacred returning —

a remembering that we were never meant to live this way.

On the Other Side

What if the other side of civilization

looks less like ruin

and more like reunion?

Communities tending gardens instead of markets.

Children learning from elders again,

not from algorithms.

Songs at dusk instead of deadlines.

Trade that smells like trust, not profit.

Time measured in moons, not money.

A world not built on dominance,

but on devotion.

Maybe the end of civilization

is the beginning of belonging.

Not a regression — a re-rooting.

A re-spiriting of what it means to be human.

Because beneath all the systems and stories,

beneath empire and industry and empire again,

we are still animals.

Still breathing, soft-skinned, hungry for connection.

Still capable of remembering the language of rain.

The Great Remembering

If civilization ends, let it end like autumn —

a falling that feeds the soil.

Let it compost into something new,

something ancient,

something kinder.

Let us remember that we are not here to conquer.

We are here to care.

For each other.

For this earth.

For the miracle that we ever called life “ours” at all.

And when they ask what happened to civilization,

may we answer gently:

It grew tired of pretending to be separate from the world.

It laid itself down.

And in its place —

we grew gardens.

We sang again.

We came home.