Sarah Wilson: “worry about your intestinal bioma when the world's burning is too forgiving” | Books

TIl vacluser the foreshore is the kind of place where you will forget your problems. In this quiet pocket of the eastern suburbs of Sydney, the trees form a protective canopy above the head, tiny beaches interrupt the bush and the port unfolds on the horizon in all its glory. It is here, on a day of bright blue, that Sarah Wilson tells me that there can be no hope for the future.

Over the past three years, Wilson is looking for a book on the collapse of systems, the first chapter of which is called Hope – on “how there is no hope, and we have to face this”.

As we go along the walking track here, Wilson guides me through what she learned. In short: each – “EachWithout exception ”- a complex civilization of Roman Empires and Mayans on Easter Island, ends up collapsing, generally in the 250 to 300 years. Our post-industrial civilization is now at 270 years old and that, associated with climbing the climate crisis and a multitude of other factors, suggests, according to which we, once the systems are found, the interconnected nature of the nature of the world.

“It is not a question of can happen or not,” she says. “He will arrive. It's just a question of speed at which it will happen. »»

Despite the nature of the subject she is here to talk about, Wilson is energetic and optimistic, always carrying the sunny disposition that made her a television host in a past life. She is dressed in colorful sports clothes, suitable for our walk, but also one of the few outfits she had in her suitcase during her return visit to Australia. Wilson moved to Paris two years ago on an artist visa to work on his book. The subject of collapsology is the one that the French are “really at the top” – the collapse experts make morning television, and the books on the tables of the subject's bestsellers, which makes it a more suitable place to go to work than Sydney. “This is a subject that I would say that the Australians are simply not yet alive,” she sighs.

Wilson took a roundabout path to the subject of the collapse of systems. In the 2000s, she spent almost five years as editor-in-chief of Women's Cosmopolitan magazine, before becoming a wellness columnist and the host of a show called Eat Yourself. In 2013, she wrote a revenue book entitled I Quit Sugar which has become a cultural phenomenon and became a company employing more than 20 employees – only for Wilson to move five years later. She sold I leaving the sugar, gave the product to charity and wrote two very contemplative books, one on her life struggle against anxiety and the other to live, let's hope, in the midst of the climate crisis.

Going from diet to mental health to climate and collapse “meaning” in Wilson, because she feels that she has always plunged into spaces that had not been on the time, which included the sugar industry at the time. Now, however, she considers her passage as a hero of accidental well-being with an uptop of shoulders.

“I did it and wanted to go out, that's why I sold it and gave all the money: I didn't want to continue to do it,” she said. “It's not my thing. I don't like to make money. ”

And she does not like where the culture of well-being has disappeared since her departure.

“It's narcissism,” she said with the roller with an eye. “Worry for your intestinal biome when the burning of the world is too indulgent … I think it is particularly widespread in Australia, where opulence is such that this is what people now spend their time doing.”

Today, says Wilson, she does not have furniture or a car, does not buy things and lives largely from a suitcase. Anxiety remains something that it must actively manage, including regularly entering nature when hiking like the one we are today. Perhaps paradoxically, which has helped his anxiety the most to immerse himself in the subject of the collapse of systems. Anxious people, she says, feel at a visceral level “that something is wrong”. The search for this subject was a proven balm, well, something No Right – and brought him his own kind of peace.

Wilson found his way to the domain of collapse after finishing his book in 2020 on the climate – then watched with horror an increasing horror during the continuous inaction of the crisis. Then came the failed vocal referendum, the acceleration of AI, the nuclear threat divided, the clock of the day of the day of the day more and more close to midnight and, later, the return of Donald Trump. She realized that “the problem was much larger than the climate” and began to read on the collapse of systems. “Once I dug, I couldn't see it,” said Wilson.

Although it can be at the extreme end of the spectrum, the theory of collapse – and it is, at this stage, that a theory – is not out of step with a growing global concern of what the future has in store for the planet. The precarious position of our global systems is an alarm that academics and scientists have sounded in recent years – an analysis of the sustainability of populations from 2020 has put the risk of catastrophic collapse at 90% or more – but it is a subject which is often communicated in complex and inaccessible terms. Wilson wanted to write a book that would help people on a daily basis sail in the imminent collapse, “while being very clear that there is no solution for that”.

To get her words out as quickly as possible, she chose to avoid traditional publishing and rather serialized the chapter of the book by chapter on her substitution, where she now has 60,000 subscribers (actor Liam Neeson, who loves Wilson's ideas, is one of them). Every 100,000 words are available now. After the re -election of Trump, Penguin Us bought the rights of the world and will publish it in a format “Main -Nour at de de de de de de de de de de de de de de de de pasimitone:” But I suppose that it remains to be seen if there will be bookstores at the time of the exit “, Wilson increases his shoulders.

But despite the end of the world as we know it, the book is not entirely woe and dark. Wilson thinks that breaking with hope, as she did, can actually be an invitation to live here and now.

“Really, nothing changes, because none of us knew when we are going to die. And it is the absolute absurd of our existence, ”she says, as casual as we could tell time. “It is therefore really an invitation to live fully – not narcissistic, and not nihilistic – but also beautifully and as fully human as possible, because it is what brings us our greatest happiness.”

With Wilson leading the charge, we have now traveled the power to return to his rental car (the “most economical” manner to move while it is in town, despite its reluctance on its environmental impact), which is parked in front of a school. Before she became her next meeting, I can't wait to know where Wilson sees the world in 50 years.

“Oh my boy,” she expires. “I am very prudent not to put the predictions on this subject, and I am very prudent to say to people, to anyone who says to know what will happen, do not believe it, because the point – we are in an abject uncertainty. This is the real knot of all this. ”

But basically, she said, it will be “the shitification of life.” Things will become more and more shitty ”.

A best case scenario, says Wilson, would be a massive decline of the population and an extreme gap between the wealthy and the non. “The billionaire ensemble will probably be in bunkers”, and the rest of us will have to learn to use the remaining resources in a cooperative manner. To this end, Wilson recommends what she calls pro-social preparation. “Form communities. Get to know your neighbors – you will have to count on them. In the future, you will have to share things. ”

You don't need hide's hobbying, she says, but he could pay to try to get used to life without technology.

“It does not bring me any joy to say this,” adds Wilson. “I am devastated. I accept it, and I am ready for that … but I am devastated for young people. It is not their fault. “

As if it is, when these words leave his mouth, the school in front of us begins to play a piece of dark music on his system of sound system, before a choir of students joins Song. It is too perfect and cinematographic moment and Wilson can only answer by laughing. “Hilarious!” She said, throwing her hands in the air.

But Wilson wishes to emphasize that she does not think that all means that we should stop having children. It is for the same reason that she thinks that we should continue to be climate activists, continue to defend Gaza and continue to create art: we must continue to be human.

“We are going to be forced to put ourselves in our full humanity, because it is the only thing we are going to remain,” she says, the schoolchilding choir still singing behind it, and the bright blue sky is mocking with its beauty.

“We should fight for humanity and for human values, because discouragement, moral injury not to do this, will destroy us more quickly than any other type of thing. This will produce massive disorders and despair at a level that we cannot understand.

“So, yes. We are fighting because that's what we do.”