Introduction and Exercise Reflection

This summary starts with an exercise, prompting readers to reflect on changes in their relationship with stories and their worldview since engaging with an earlier chapter titled "Warm-up: Into the Future." This retrospective approach sets the stage for the chapter's subsequent deep dive into the unfulfilled promises of modernity and encourages a personal internal audit of the transformations in the readers' perspectives.

Promises and Complexities of Modernity

The chapter reflects on a post-World War II era, where aspirations of fair governance, scientific progress, economic prosperity and universal human rights seemed attainable. These goals form the bedrock of modernity's charm, yet upon deeper examination, they unravel, burdened by the ecological and relational costs of their pursuit. Modernity, under scrutiny, reveals its inability to deliver on these promises, further complicated by recent societal changes that erode the public good and promote hyper-individualism.

Mental Health Crisis and Plastic Certainties

As foundational elements of modernity crumble, the author argues we collectively face a global mental health crisis brought on by our dependency on certainty and predictability. In a world where modernity’s assurances falter, people grasp for 'plastic' certainties—easily digestible, packaged ideas offering comfort without the need for substantive change. These certainties come in various forms, including ideologies, hero figures, universal solutions, and nostalgic or utopian visions of order. The consumption-oriented mentality that drives this pattern threatens the genuine value of marginalized knowledge as it becomes commoditized and distorted.

Decluttering and Severance for Genuine Change

Acknowledging the allure of plastic certainties, the chapter advocates for a radical decluttering—an initiation into the unknowable that breaks free from the shackles of craving certainty and control. This initiation is a form of 'severance,' a prerequisite to rediscovering lost insights and preparing to engage with deep systemic issues. Modernity's programming, however, resists this direction, and our visions for change often revert to superficial solutions that ignore the complexity of the challenges we face.

The Eye of the Storm: Hospicing and Midwifery

The author introduces the 'eye of the storm' metaphor to encapsulate the tension between hospicing the dying aspects of modernity and midwifery for emerging ways of being. This space requires balance-in-movement, intellectual accountability, existential surrender, and the challenging task of decolonizing our unconscious. The work is antithetical to modernity's incentivization structures and is fraught with false starts and failures. The process unfolds in four dimensions: intellectual accountability, existential surrender, existential accountability, and intellectual surrender, each demanding a surrender to the land and a relinquishing of colonial imprints.

Walking on a Tightrope and Composting Shit

Balancing the tasks of hospicing modernity and fostering the new requires a delicate navigation likened to walking on a tightrope, where honesty, humility, humor, and hyper-self-reflexivity are essential. The author also employs a compost metaphor, highlighting the necessity of working through individual and collective 'shit'—the challenges, failures, and systemic issues that pervade our lives. The COMPOST acronym suggests capacities and dispositions necessary for this endeavor.

The Gifts of Failure and Next Steps

The chapter concludes by addressing the inevitability of failure in the process of gesturing towards decolonial futures. These failures are avenues for profound (un)learning, calling for intellectual and relational rigor. The author emphasizes the value in honestly confronting failures and leveraging them for growth, providing a protocol to navigate the 'potholes' of decolonial work.

In its closing, the chapter resists offering traditional conclusions, opting instead for an invitation to explore metabolic intimacies—complex, multidimensional engagements with the realities of life and the world, without the promise of guarantees or simplified resolutions. This open-ended departure encourages readers to continue the work of hospicing modernity and nurturing new forms of existence beyond the confines of the book.