On Cookedness and the Fear of Needing Others
“We’re so fucking cooked.” It’s what people say when the news cycle cycles through another catastrophe—wildfires, economic collapse, rising fascism, another study confirming what we already knew about how bad things are going to get. It’s shorthand for resignation, a signal that the forces unraveling the world are too big to fight, that any attempt at collective resistance is too little, too late.
Some people sink into doomer fatalism, convinced there’s nothing to be done. Others pivot to enclave escapism, convinced there’s nothing to be saved. One camps out in despair, the other retreats to bunkers or gated communities. But they’re both running on the same core assumption: that dependence is weakness, that collapse is inevitable, and that the best you can do is make peace with the end of the world.
The problem is, this isn’t just an accidental misreading of history. It’s a manufactured belief. A useful one for those in power. Because a population that thinks everything is doomed is a population that doesn’t resist. A population that believes there’s no way out is a population that doesn’t try to build one.
If we want a future beyond collapse, we have to reject the idea that collapse is inevitable.
The Manufactured Stigma of Dependence
Neoliberalism has spent decades convincing people that self-sufficiency is the highest virtue. That needing public goods, relying on care networks, or depending on community is something to be ashamed of. The ideal capitalist subject drowns alone, blaming only themselves.
But that’s not how people survive. It’s never been how people survive.
Pandemics make clear that healthcare isn’t an individual consumer choice; it’s a collective necessity. Wildfires and floods don’t respect property lines. Even billionaires in bunkers still rely on global supply chains and exploited labor. Self-sufficiency is a fantasy—a story sold to keep us from realizing our real condition: that survival has always been collective.
It’s not a question of whether we rely on each other. It’s a question of who structures that reliance, and to what end?
Right now, under capitalism, dependence is managed as a form of control. Housing is only available if you take on debt. Healthcare is only accessible if you keep the right job. Stability is always delayed—through student loans, corporate vesting schedules, precarious gig work.
Real security doesn’t come from pretending we don’t need each other. It comes from organizing our interdependence around equity and care instead of profit and coercion.
Doomer Fatalism: Surrender Masquerading as Realism
Doomerism insists it’s just telling the hard truth: Climate collapse is locked in. Inequality is too vast to close. Every attempt at resistance—mutual aid, union drives, community-led disaster relief—is a rounding error in a system too big to be meaningfully challenged.
But this assumes history moves in a straight line. It assumes power is fixed, that there are no fractures, no leverage points, no moments when everything shifts. It’s bad analysis, but more than that—it’s useful to the people who benefit from inaction.
Karl Polanyi (1944) wrote that when markets become too destabilizing, counter-movements emerge to reassert care and cooperation. We see that now: in labor organizing, in community-led responses to disasters, in alternative economic models taking hold at the edges of the system.
Doomerism is not just resignation; it’s counterinsurgency. It tells us that mutual aid after climate disasters is pointless. That union drives at Starbucks and Amazon won’t scale. That community land trusts are too small to matter. It tells us, over and over, that nothing will ever work—so why bother?
The ruling class doesn’t need to crush resistance if enough people believe there’s no point in trying.
Enclave Escapism: The Illusion of Opting Out
If doomerism is surrender, enclave escapism is the fantasy that you can buy your way out. It’s the billionaire bunker. The libertarian seastead. The quiet little “bug-out” plan for when things really start unraveling.
None of them work.
Galt’s Gulch Chile, a libertarian settlement, collapsed under fraud and infrastructure failures.
Billionaire bunkers assume employees will stick around to maintain air-filtration systems instead of prioritizing their own survival.
Even Sealand, the famous offshore micronation, exists only because the UK government tolerates it.
No one opts out of society. Power grids, supply chains, healthcare networks—all of it remains interconnected. The dream of escape is just another form of giving up. It’s a retreat disguised as strategy.
There is no opting out. There is only choosing how we build what comes next.
Beyond “We’re Cooked”: A More Useful Framework
Saying “we’re cooked” feels honest, but it shuts down imagination. It implies that nothing we do will matter. That the future is already written.
A more useful framing is: we are at an inflection point.
If profit continues to trump care, if isolation continues to win out over solidarity—collapse will deepen.
But if resources shift toward communal well-being, if care becomes infrastructure—there is another path.
This isn’t naive optimism. It’s history. Every large-scale shift started as a fringe experiment. The difference between collapse and transformation is what people choose to build in the space where the old order is failing.
The Future Is Unwritten If We Choose to Write It
Both doomer fatalism and enclave escapism assume the story is already over. But history is shaped by movements, by choices, by intervention.
We are not cooked unless we let cynicism and isolation decide our fate. The turning point is now. Not in a decade. Not once we feel “ready.” Now.
If we stand by, those in power will gladly outline a grim future for us. But collectively, we hold the capacity to shape a different ending.
We are not cooked yet. The question is not whether change is possible. The question is whether we are willing to make it inevitable.