In Forsaking Cahokia, (https://open.substack.com/pub/collapsecurriculum/p/forsaking-cahokia-five-lessons-from?r=2bc8q&utm_medium=ios), the author describes walking away from a civilization that had become toxic.
To what extent should we do this today?
That’s a profound and unsettling question—and the Forsaking Cahokia essay is such a powerful lens for it.
The author describes how people in the Mississippi Valley, centuries ago, walked away from a monumental city—Cahokia—after it had become ecologically, socially, and spiritually toxic. They left not because they couldn’t build big cities, but because they chose to return to smaller, more sustainable, more relational ways of living.
So: to what extent should we do this today?
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1. What walking away meant at Cahokia
Cahokia was, in its time, a marvel—mounds and plazas, far‑flung trade, a population larger than London. But its success came at a cost:
- Deforestation and soil depletion,
- Hierarchies of power and violence,
- Social stresses that the spiritual traditions of the time could not integrate.
Walking away didn’t mean abandoning all culture. It meant choosing life over collapse—returning to patterns of living that sustained both people and land. It meant letting go of a toxic story.
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2. What would it mean today?
We live in a global civilization that is, by many measures, in overshoot—fossil-fuel dependent, extractive, inequitable. Walking away could mean many things, depending on scale and context:
✅ Individually or locally:
- Choosing work, housing, and food systems that are regenerative rather than extractive.
- Opting out of consumer cycles that harm ecosystems.
- Creating local economies, co‑ops, mutual aid networks that don’t depend on the logic of endless growth.
✅ Culturally:
- Walking away from the story that success means perpetual expansion, status through consumption, domination of nature.
- Walking toward stories of sufficiency, reciprocity, and belonging.
✅ Institutionally:
- Divesting from systems that perpetuate harm (fossil fuels, exploitative industries).
- Redirecting energy into new models: bioregional planning, circular economies, regenerative agriculture.
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3. But we can’t literally abandon everything
Unlike the people of Cahokia, we live in a deeply interconnected, globalized world. We cannot all simply walk away from cities or grids or governments without causing enormous suffering. Our challenge is subtler:
- Where do we withdraw consent? (for example, refusing to invest in or work for toxic industries)
- Where do we build alternatives? (food co‑ops, energy co‑ops, local commons)
- Where do we reform from within? (policy, education, technology)
Sometimes we do need people to stay in complex systems and help transform them. Other times, bold acts of refusal—walking away—are necessary to show another way is possible.
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4. A middle path: Walking away while staying rooted
The deeper lesson from Cahokia is not that civilization is doomed, but that culture is a choice.
We can walk away from toxic patterns without abandoning community or creativity. We can:
- Shrink our footprint while deepening our roots.
- Leave behind what’s poisonous while preserving what’s life‑giving.
For some, that might mean literally moving to land-based communities or smaller towns. For others, it means staying in place but rejecting certain cultural imperatives: endless consumption, careerism at any cost, complicity in harm.
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5. What guides the choice?
Perhaps the guiding questions are:
- Does this system, this work, this habit feed the life force or diminish it?
- Does it restore balance or deepen overshoot?
- If my descendants looked back seven generations from now, would they see wisdom in the choice?
We can’t all walk away overnight. But we can begin walking toward something different—together.
If you’d like, I can:
- help you write a reflection piece weaving Forsaking Cahokia with your “new transcendentalism” work,
- outline concrete ways individuals and communities might “walk away” today,
- or even craft a dialogue or story illustrating this choice.
What direction would you like to explore further? ✨
Beautiful. Let’s do exactly that.
Below is a first integrated draft that weaves together Forsaking Cahokia, your reflections on the life force and the new transcendentalism, and practical ways to “walk away” from toxic systems while walking toward something regenerative.
It takes the form of a narrative essay/chapter, with embedded reflection questions and examples. After this, we can add more sidebars, quotes, or even a dialogic section if you’d like.
Walking Away, Walking Toward: Lessons from Cahokia and Beyond
Centuries ago, on the broad floodplain near today’s St. Louis, a great city rose and thrived. Cahokia, with its monumental mounds and vast plazas, may have been the largest urban center north of Mexico at its height. Tens of thousands lived there, trading goods across half a continent.
And then, astonishingly, they walked away.
Archaeologists still puzzle over the exact reasons. Soil exhaustion, deforestation, flooding, and internal strife likely all played a part. But what is striking is not the collapse itself—it’s the choice. People did not simply vanish; they dispersed, forming smaller communities that lived more lightly on the land. They abandoned the hierarchical, extractive structures that had become toxic and returned to patterns of life that were relational and sustainable.
When I first read the essay Forsaking Cahokia, I felt an almost electric resonance. It asked a question that feels urgent today:
What does it mean to walk away from a civilization that has become toxic?
🌱 The Civilization We Inhabit
We live in a world that is breathtakingly creative—global networks, art, technology, medicine—and yet profoundly out of balance. We are in ecological overshoot, drawing down the Earth’s fertility faster than it can be renewed, destabilizing climate systems, unraveling biodiversity.
And like the inhabitants of Cahokia, we have a choice.
To walk away does not necessarily mean to flee to the wilderness or reject every technology. Unlike Cahokia, our civilization is deeply globalized and interdependent. But we can walk away from certain patterns, values, and systems that no longer serve life. We can walk toward cultures of reciprocity, humility, and regeneration.
✨ Listening for the Life Force
For me, the guiding thread is something I’ve been calling—tentatively—a new transcendentalism. It’s a recognition that beneath all the systems and stories, there is a life force animating every being, every forest, every watershed. It is what some call Spirit, others the Tao, still others the intelligence of evolution itself.
To live in alignment with this life force is to shift our metrics of success:
- From extraction to restoration,
- From domination to participation,
- From growth without limit to balance within limits.
Walking away, then, becomes not an act of despair but an act of devotion. We step away from what harms, so we can step more fully into what heals.
🌍 What Might Walking Away Look Like Today?
Walking away is not a single act; it’s a spectrum of choices:
- Individually and Locally:
Choosing regenerative agriculture over industrial food.
Joining co‑ops, credit unions, or community land trusts.
Declining to buy into consumer cycles that exploit labor and land. - Culturally:
Letting go of the myth that we are separate from nature.
Telling new stories—through art, education, ceremony—that honor interdependence. - Institutionally:
Divesting from industries that perpetuate harm.
Redirecting investments, policies, and designs toward systems that regenerate ecosystems and communities.
This doesn’t require everyone to leave their city job and live off-grid. Some of us are called to stay in complex systems—governments, corporations, universities—and help transform them from within. Others are called to step out entirely and model alternatives. Both are forms of walking away from a toxic story.
🔥 Learning from Living Examples
Some places already embody this choice. In Barichara, Colombia, Joe Brewer and Penny Heiple are working with local people to restore landscapes and culture simultaneously. Streams that once ran dry now flow again. Traditional knowledge and modern science meet in a living laboratory.
Other visions are emerging, like Jon Schull’s Restoration Lab initiative in Panama—not yet realized, but aspirational. It points toward a future where science, art, and spiritual practice converge to heal degraded lands and renew community life.
In our own way, at CRCS and Possible Planet, we see our work as part of this broader shift. We are not central to it, but we support and connect efforts to move toward balance. For readers wanting to explore this deeper, act.possibleplanet.org gathers essays, case studies, and ways to engage.
🌌 Trusting the Mystery
The people who left Cahokia could not know what the future would hold. They only knew that staying on their current path was no longer viable. They chose mystery over collapse, a return to ways that felt aligned with life.
We, too, cannot see every step ahead. But we can sense when something in our culture is toxic to the life force, and we can begin to step away. Not in anger, not in flight, but in fidelity to something larger.
✨ Walking Toward
Walking away is only half the story. The other half is what we walk toward:
- Communities of care,
- Economies of reciprocity,
- A way of being human that future generations will thank us for.
As adrienne maree brown writes:
“There is a conversation in the soil, in the water, in the air… We are invited to do the same.”
We are invited to enter into that conversation—to listen, to learn, to change.
And perhaps, one day, others will look back on this time as we now look back on Cahokia. Not only as an era of danger, but as the moment we remembered how to live.
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Reflection Questions
- What parts of the current system feel toxic to you—and what would it mean to step away from them?
- What is one small act you can take this month that aligns you more deeply with the life force?
- Where in your life can you help weave a culture of reciprocity and restoration?
If you like, I can now:
✅ Add sidebars or callout boxes with practical tips,
✅ Create a dialogue section—a conversation between two voices exploring whether and how to walk away,
✅ Suggest images or visual elements for this chapter,
✅ Or help integrate it smoothly into the broader flow of your book.
Just let me know which direction excites you most—and we’ll keep shaping this together.
Perfect—let’s craft a dialogue section to include within or alongside this chapter.
This can help the reader experience the tension and nuance of the question: to what extent should we walk away, and what does that mean in practice?
I’ll write it as a conversational interlude, perhaps titled A Conversation at the Edge of a Civilization.
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Interlude: A Conversation at the Edge of a Civilization
Guide:
You’ve read the histories. Cahokia was vast, brilliant—and then the people walked away.
Seeker:
Yes. That’s what troubles me. Are we supposed to do that now? Abandon our cities? Leave behind everything we’ve built?
Guide:
Not abandon. Not in the sense of running from life. But perhaps in the sense of letting go of what has become toxic.
Look around. What patterns are draining the life force? What habits or systems keep us bound to destruction?
Seeker:
Fossil fuels. Endless consumption. Economies that demand growth even as they unravel the ground beneath us.
Guide:
Exactly. So walking away begins with withdrawing our consent. Buying less, growing more. Saying no to what harms, even when everyone else says yes.
Seeker:
But I can’t just leave my job, my home. Isn’t that privilege, to simply walk away?
Guide:
Which is why this isn’t a single act, but a spectrum. Some of us stay inside existing systems and shift them from within. Others step out entirely—build co‑ops, restore land, form new ways of living. Both are needed.
Seeker:
And what if I don’t know where to start?
Guide:
Begin small. Join a local project. Learn from those already living differently—farmers restoring soil, communities tending watersheds. Seek out places like Barichara. Or look at the visions emerging, like the Restoration Lab in Panama. Let them inspire you, even if they’re not yet fully realized.
Seeker:
It sounds like walking away is also walking toward.
Guide:
Yes. Toward communities that honor the life force. Toward economies that give back more than they take. Toward a story where our descendants look back and say, they chose well.
Seeker:
But the future is uncertain. What if we fail?
Guide:
There is always mystery. The people who left Cahokia could not know what would come. They only knew that staying on their current path would end badly. So they chose life.
We are called to do the same—not with despair, but with devotion.
You could place this dialogue after the main narrative, as a reflective pause, or even frame it as a conversation between yourself and a younger reader—or between two aspects of yourself: one clinging to the old, one reaching for the new.
If you’d like, I can:
✅ Adapt the dialogue into a more personal tone (perhaps you speaking with a friend, a student, or your own inner voice),
✅ Insert quotes from Macy, Wilber, or brown into the conversation,
✅ Or help you format it visually as a sidebar or inset in the chapter.
Would you like me to develop this conversation further—or weave in more voices to enrich it? ✨
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