I originally published this post as one long article, but decided to divide it into two slightly more bite-sized pieces. In Part 1, we considered two questions anyone wanting to survive the 21st Century must answer for themselves:

• What predictions can you rely on?
• What will give your life meaning?

In this second part of the post, we dive into practicalities:

• What skills and mental habits will you need?
• How will you live?

What skills and mental habits will you need?

So how do you go about creating a life of autonomy, competence, and belonging? You plan your life around goals and activities that make you more self-sufficient, knowledgeable, and socially connected. In a world of cascading climate crises, shortages, and social and political unrest, people who can think for themselves, have useful practical skills, and are connected to a like-minded community, are going to have significant advantages over the cult followers, the totally-unprepared, and the socially isolated.

I have five suggestions for skills and mental habits worth acquiring as our fossil fuel-dependent civilization stumbles into the rest of this century:

Develop a resilient mindset

Probably the most important capacity you will need to survive the 21st Century is resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, to keep going in the face of obstacles and setbacks. Psychologists have found is that resilience is closely related to the three traits of self-determination described in Part 1. Resilient people tend to be self-sufficient (autonomy), confident in their skills and abilities (competence), and surrounded by resilient families and communities (belonging). In addition, they tend to be more optimistic, proactive, creative, deliberative (vs. impulsive) and curious than individuals who display less resilience under stressful circumstances (source).

Your capacity for resilience and your ability to identify resilient communities will be important determinants of how well you are able to live in the coming decades.

Hone your capacity for evidence-based reasoning

You will be surrounded by cults, lies, and conspiracies. You already are (source), and it will only get worse as things continue to unravel and governmental responses continue to be inadequate (source). If we have learned anything from the Trump years, it is that people are actually much stupider than we previously imagined. As far back as Aristotle, we believed that humans were reasoning creatures who sometimes got sidetracked by their emotions. But we now know, thanks to Trump, the GOP, and the infamous “MAGA base”, that we are actually emotional creatures, always ready to embrace feelings over facts, who occasionally display a capacity for reasoning. This capacity is clearly not innate and must be taught through education.

To survive the 21st Century, you will need to become a member of the relatively small community of people willing and able to engage in evidence-based reasoning. Within that community, you will find many (but not all) scientists, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who have gone through years of rigorous training to literally learn how to think. You don’t need to become a scientist or doctor, but you should learn to think like one. As a first step, I suggest you read and internalize the lessons contained in Jonathan Rauch’s superb book, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Engaging in evidence-based reasoning is a skill that will be in short supply in the coming decades, but may well the defining skill that separates climate change survivors from climate change casualties.

Develop competence in practical skills

Recently there was an opinion piece in the Washington Post praising the virtues of two institutional fixtures of rural America — the 4H Club and Future Farmers of America (FFA). It begins:

“Raising and training animals. Growing food. Fishing. Archery. Sewing clothes. Making preserves. These are some of the skills that humanity is going to need if one of the many fictional post-apocalypse narratives ends up coming true.”

The author may be revisiting her youth through rose-tinted glasses, but her basic argument is sound. Other than a few 4-H and FFA kids, who in the Global North is learning these skills today? Here are a few additional skills you might want to consider acquiring. As the saying goes, it couldn’t hurt, and it could save your life one day:

• First aid
• Multi-crop gardening
• Food preparation and preservation
• Wood-working
• Water collection
• Appliance repair
• Fire-building
• Hunting and preparing game

Stay fit

This pretty much goes without saying. It is another part of resilience. We all know the weak and frail are the first to get culled from the herd. You don’t want to be among them. Should you find yourself in the middle of one of the many natural disasters we can expect over the next decades, you may find your physical strength and endurance to be your greatest assets, both to get yourself out of danger and to help others (children, the elderly) as needed.

Avoid declining industries and toxic people

Don’t waste your time learning a trade or profession that is likely to go away in a world buffeted by climate change and resource depletion. Here are some professions that are deeply intertwined with the pro-growth, pro-consumption modern capitalist world and are unlikely to survive the collapse of that world: marketing, advertising, accounting, tax law, any business catering to the super-rich, Wall Street finance, professional sports, and of course, oil and gas. There are probably many others that will become “buggy whip industries” in the 21st Century. Don’t get trapped in a dead-end occupation.

Also, it is important to stay away from toxic people — the whiners, the bullies, the thugs, the racists, the haters. They will drain your energy and your optimism. They will try to ensnare you in their schemes and boondoggles (source). You can go around them, under them, over them, or through them, but you can’t let them block your path to a life worth living.

How will you live?

Toward the second half of this century, if not earlier, the global economic order will begin to unravel as climate catastrophes and resource depletion start disrupting food production, manufacturing, and transport around the world. Humanity will probably first experience these disruptions in the climate-vulnerable Global South, but soon in the rich Global North as well (source). This is a train wreck you should be able to see coming from a mile away. If you know what to look for.

Some organizing principles

A life well-lived is purposeful. Here are some principles that might help you live a purposeful life while surviving the 21st Century:

• Think global, act local: You cannot change the world, but you can influence your local community. Stay aware, alert, and informed about what is happening around the world, but always ask “how do these events affect my community, here, where I am right now?” Either help your community prepare or …
• Stay mobile: Be prepared to move. Have your bug-out bag ready to go. Today’s climate oasis may be tomorrow’s pile of ashes. Know your escape routes and when to use them.
• Embrace simplicity: Get used to doing more with less. How much junk do you really need?
• Learn how to repair/reuse/recycle: Our age of planned obsolescence will soon come to an end. Learn how to fix things, because throwing them out and buying another one may no longer be an option.
• Don’t tie your happiness to material accumulation: Climate change and resource depletion are going to take that off the table. Your life will be richer and more satisfying if you focus on intrinsic goals over extrinsic goals like wealth and “keeping up with the Joneses”. The Joneses are part of the problem, not the solution.

Find, join, and grow supportive communities and groups

The social world will become meaner, more adversarial, and more prone to lawlessness as the globe gets hotter, disasters escalate, and both renewable and nonrenewable resources become more scarce or vanish altogether. With adversity comes competition and conflict. As life becomes harder, satisfying that third innate need, belonging, will only get harder to achieve.

In the United States, there are more guns than people (source), and the regions where those guns are most likely to be used are Red States filled with racist, alienated, and heavily-armed MAGA Republicans. These locations will become dangerous, combustible powder kegs as global warming and resource depletion become more acute. You should avoid them if at all possible.

Seek out collaborative, climate-aware, activist communities capable of preparing for, withstanding, and surviving the waves of climate-driven crises lining up before us. These communities may be few and far between, but they will exist, usually operating on a small scale and often under the radar. Here is how to find them, or build them. (source, source, source).

A final thought on belonging. You no longer have the option to be apolitical. If you are among the apathetic, the complacent, or the socially isolated, you will not fare well in the coming decades.

Right now, the most impactful thing you can do is join a community of allies focused on political action.

Join resistance groups, there are many and their numbers are growing (source). If you live in the US, focus on helping to defeat Republicans wherever you can (source). If you are too young to vote, you can still volunteer to help defeat reality-denying candidates. If you are eligible to vote, make sure you and everyone you know exercises that crucial right … or you just might lose it. Focus on promoting and electing a new generation of leaders who share your values.

Accelerating generational change in political leadership is one of the most important things you can do to increase your chances of surviving climate change and resource depletion.

Like a long-distance runner, you must prepare yourself in mind and body to confront the challenges and dangers ahead. The world you will be facing in the 21st Century will be unlike anything humanity has faced before. Survival will require flexibility, resilience, and preparation. Preparation means engaging: learning, practicing, and sharing. Your most important immediate task is to find others who share your views and are equally committed to surviving the 21st Century. Build communities of resilience and resistance to fight inertia and business-as-usual. Organize and engage in political action, even if your efforts seem at first to be achieving little. Remember that our energy descent is probably going to follow the Hemingway bankruptcy model, “gradually and then suddenly” (source).