Wherever we are situated in this society, our future boils down to two options: accepting our fate and trying to reduce the harm to our bodies and the environment on a piecemeal basis—or actively resisting in order to interrupt the disaster and implement our own solutions. If there is anything that scientists, sociologists, military strategists, and day laborers all agree on, it is that we are headed for global collapse.
Those who hold power seek to take advantage of hurricanes, forest fires, and pandemics to impose more and more invasive forms of control on us. Their responses to crises always prioritize protecting their own privileges and profits while they treat the rest of us as expendable. We can’t trust our survival to their expertise.
If we resign ourselves to the future implied by catastrophic climate change, widespread pollution, and ecological collapse, sooner or later, the disaster will come for us. In some parts of the world, people are already forced to wear masks when they leave the house just to protect themselves from poisoned air, toxic waste, or infectious conditions.
If we do not accept the destruction of our lives, our land, our food, and everything that connects us with each other and the biosphere as a whole, we have to fight to regain control over the conditions of our lives and the decisions that determine our survival. In a world of police, prisons, surveillance cameras, we will have to wear masks that conceal who we are so we can fight for what we really want.