what I'm learning about collapse from the moon

In January 2019, at my daughter’s suggestion, I attended the NewKind Conference in Marion Bay on the south east coast of Tasmania. On that extraordinary summer long weekend, my soul got awakened to a number of things. They weren’t new things, but there is a difference between knowing something, even knowing something well, and being awakened to it in your bones. And your soul.

One of those things was the cyclical rhythms of nature. I was in a memorable workshop/extended conversation where we delved deeply into wholeness and sexuality. I can’t recall the exact flow of discussion, but I do recall women exhorting each other to tap into their natural monthly cycles as a constant reminder of the cycles of nature. And some men lamenting they didn’t have that opportunity.

It wasn’t a lightning bolt moment, rather a seed planted. I knew that the dominant stories that had shaped my life (Christianity, capitalism, even environmentalism) had the planet framed as a resource to be stewarded, rather than something of which I was a part, to which I belonged, not the other way around. I slowly began to appreciate the wisdom inherent in the earth and how much I needed to learn from nature, not just about it.

And so, as is my inclination, I started to become more aware of natural patterns, and in particular repeating patterns, cycles. Of course they are everywhere. Our calendars are cycles within cycles: millenia, centuries, decades, years, seasons, months, weeks, days, hours etc. I found myself gravitating to the moon cycles as a meaningful and digestible rhythm. (A year is too long, a week too short. There is something about the cadence of the moon cycles that feels engage-able.) There are probably readers for whom my insights are elementary, but I find it intensely interesting how the moon rhythms interact with seasonal changes, tides, star light, moods, etc.

Two things have fuelled my interest in the moon. Firstly, my early ocean dipping habit means the moon features heavily (or not as the case may be) in my everyday experience of nature. Secondly, through the intentional inner development journey that has been a dominant feature of my living in the last two years, my experience gels with the sentiment that the ‘sun lights our bodies while the moon lights our souls’.

But a deeper appreciation of natural rhythms is helping me navigate a bunch of other things these days too. Over the last few years I’ve been interested and have learned a lot about the burgeoning recognition that society as we have known it, is collapsing. It’s not coming, we’re in it now. That many of the pioneers of climate activism (David Suzuki, Clive Hamilton, Paul Hawken, to name a few) have stopped campaigning for measures to reduce global warming and have turned their research and work to radical adaption, indicates just one of many significant shifts that we’re in the middle of, but about which most people are unaware (yet). The disintegration of the post WWII international rules based order is another obvious one. It seems every infrastructure system that has supported democratic capitalism is breaking. This realisation has affected me deeply and as I said to someone recently, I feel like 2026 has been characterised by an underlying grief.

As leading edge thinkers are at pains to point out, the decay of our civilisation won’t be as dramatic as Hollywood might portray, but is a gradual unravelling that is accompanied by forceful exertions of legacy thinking and behaviour that seek to maintain the decaying systems. Our nervous systems haven’t evolved to sense the risks because we can’t perceive them with our senses (yet). We have a developed sense of risk when it comes to sharks, crocodiles or snakes, not so much to slow moving behemoths like collapsing political, social and environmental systems. Let alone, of course, that most of us (SubStack readers) live in privileged communities that are currently mostly insulated from the impacts.

The trigger for this post was an incremental evolution in my grief journey based on applying the ideas associated with natural cycles (as per above), to social and economic systems. The communities within which I have belonged in the last couple of decades, have generally identified as ‘change-makers’, people who have advocated for our economy to become more accessible to those currently marginalised, and for social systems to be more just. I have digested material in the last few years that references the patterns of civilisation collapse over millennia, suggesting that our, now (for the first time in human history) global, civilisation is not immune and will disintegrate like all the others have. It’s a well worn and documented path. OK.

But the thing that hit me hard as I was reflecting the other day is that it won’t be ‘successful’ change activists or revolutionaries that bring down the obscene excesses of late stage capitalism, it will be the system itself. It is simply the natural cycle of things. It’s not simply the natural consequences of unregulated greed and selfishness that will usher the wreck, it is the ‘beautiful’ cycle of growth and decay. And then the shift for me, is the seed of a recognition, that not withstanding the pain that accompanies breakdown, something wonderful is likely to germinate in the compost.

Today, as it happens, is a full moon. I feel the life and promise of a fully waxed moon deep in my chest. It penetrates into my soul, somehow. But it’s fleeting, as tomorrow, even at 98%, it’s later setting and slightly shaved edge, signal another cycle has already begun.

The first five months of 2026 have felt washed with an underlying grief. In these musings I feel a shift towards positivity as I ponder what might emerge.