Carmen Bailey<p>The Story That Should Not Have Been: </p><p>This was not how the human story was meant to end..<br>Not with melting glaciers and rising walls.<br>Not with billionaires escaping upward while the oceans crept in.<br>Not with the silence of forests drowned out by the hum of devices..</p><p>We began with bare feet and open hands,<br>curious, uncertain, staring into the dark with fire in our eyes..<br>We learned to grow, gather, and grieve.<br>We built homes, songs, and systems.<br>We touched the moon. </p><p>And then....we touched nothing.<br>Nothing real.<br>Just numbers on screens and dopamine loops,<br>algorithms tighter than the bonds between neighbours. </p><p>We called it progress.<br>We made gods of GDP and efficiency.<br>We grew the economy like it was a crop,<br>and burned the soil beneath it. </p><p>We built machines that outpaced our wisdom.<br>Tools without elders.<br>Profit without pause.<br>Comfort without community. </p><p>The Earth groaned,<br>and we handed out loyalty cards.<br>The sky cracked,<br>and we installed air-conditioning.<br>We did not adapt... we monetised the crisis. </p><p>Democracy?<br>We sold that, too.<br>Votes drowned in money.<br>Truth fragmented by code.<br>Fear rebranded as policy.<br>The strongmen did not seize power.<br>We gave it to them...for stability, for screens, for noise. </p><p>Inequality?<br>Designed, not accidental.<br>A system where five men own more than half the world.<br>While billions hustle for rent,<br>they own the future, the data, the air. </p><p>Let us not pretend everyone chose this.<br>Some resisted.<br>Some warned.<br>Many were silenced,<br>while the architects of collapse called it freedom<br>and moved their assets offshore. </p><p>And now...<br>the insects are gone.<br>The water is plastic.<br>The children are anxious,<br>and the gods are corporations. </p><p>So we ask..<br>Is this how it ends?<br>The great arc of human becoming..<br>from toolmakers to terraformers to a footnote in a geology textbook? </p><p>It did not have to be this way.<br>The warnings were clear.<br>The crossroads came again and again,<br>and still, we pressed the accelerator. </p><p>But even now..<br>if there is a fragment of clarity left,<br>if there is one ember unextinguished....<br>let it burn for this: </p><p>Not a return to what was,<br>but a return to what matters.<br>Not endless expansion,<br>but rooted kinship.<br>Not empire,<br>but ecosystem.<br>Not more,<br>but enough. </p><p>Let it be said that we stood at the edge...<br>saw clearly,<br>named the failure,<br>and turned.<br>Not to be saved..<br>but to begin again.</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/CollapseAware" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>CollapseAware</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/ClimateCrisis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateCrisis</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/SystemChange" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>SystemChange</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/DeepAdaptation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>DeepAdaptation</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/ClimateJustice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateJustice</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/Anthropocene" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Anthropocene</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/EcoGrief" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>EcoGrief</span></a><br><a href="https://aus.social/tags/PostCapitalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>PostCapitalism</span></a></p>