Modernity Recovery Companion – Midnight

As conditions on the surface of the Earth deteriorated due to the cumulative effects of extractivism, acceleration, and systemic denial, human and more-than-human life became increasingly precarious. In this context, some individuals and communities—particularly those able to recognize and feel the internal and external costs of their enmeshment with the habits of modernity—began to develop alternative approaches to sense-making and re-orientation.

These were not efforts to innovate new systems or return to a previous ideal state. Rather, they emerged as practices of rewiring the psycho-social and relational addictions of modernity, including control, performance, productivity, and the pursuit of purity.

What began to take shape was not a linear solution, but a set of practices aimed at rebuilding the capacity for relational presence—specifically, the capacity to slow down, grieve, listen deeply, and reconnect with ecological and more-than-human rhythms that modernity had rendered unintelligible or irrelevant.

This rewiring was not framed as salvation or progress. Instead, it was approached as a necessary and ongoing process of undoing and reweaving, grounded in the recognition that surviving collapse would depend less on technical mastery and more on the restoration of relational and metabolic literacy.

In this context of collapse and disorientation, some communities began to identify a set of practices that could support the expansion of their relational capacity to attune to themselves, each other and the planet as a whole. These practices were not framed as solutions, ideologies or belief systems, but as simple and repeatable steps for interrupting modernity’s internalized habits—such as the pursuit of control, certainty, and individual exceptionalism—and for rebuilding the capacity to listen, relate, and respond with greater discernment and humility. 

The Undergrowth 12 Steps

We won’t ask you to believe in God. Or in Earth. Or in non-human intelligences.

But we will ask you to listen for something quieter than your fear and older than your ego.

[not invested in being right, better or in control]

We will ask you to slow down and be still
To sense when something in you softens.
To trust, just for a moment, the parts of you that wants to move differently.

That’s enough to begin.

1. We admitted that the patterns of modernity lived inside us— and that they were still shaping how we saw, needed, and harmed.

2. We came to sense that something older than the ego— not above us, but beneath—could help us take the next breath.

3. We chose to become still long enough to listen, even if we didn’t yet trust what we might hear.

4. We looked inward and saw the substances of modernity— the twelve meta-addictions—and we learned to name them without shame.
(See: The Meta-Substances of Modernity below)

5. We gave voice to the parts of us shaped by fear, domination, and performance— not to get rid of them, but to hold them without letting them drive.

6. We softened our grip on being right, better, faster, and in control. We let go of our attachment to exceptionalism, and its shadow: worthlessness.

7. We asked the Earth within us to help us metabolize these patterns, trusting the quiet pull of something not made in our image.

8. We traced the harm we had caused—interpersonal, interspecies, and planetary— and we became willing to move toward repair without performance.

9. We took small, relational steps toward accountability— letting the rhythm of reciprocity, not guilt, guide us.

10. We practiced witnessing our inner ecology— observing who was driving our bus, and who was being ignored.

11. We returned to the ground—through stillness, silence, grief ritual, body memory— until we remembered: we are not separate. We are Earth. And once we had done some metabolizing …

12. We invited others, not to lead, fix or perform, but to stay in compassionate inquiry and ongoing rewiring together. Not to perform presence, but to remember we are ground.

As part of this process of rewiring, it became necessary to identify the deeper patterns that continued to shape perception, behavior, and relationship—even after the collapse of modern infrastructures. These patterns were not always visible as ideologies or beliefs; they often operated at the level of reflex, desire, and emotional attachment. 

Over time, they came to be understood as meta-substances—core relational addictions that modernity had cultivated in bodies, institutions, and collective imaginaries. Naming these meta-substances allowed individuals and communities to more clearly observe how modernity persisted internally, and to begin the slow work of composting its residues.

🌪️ The 12 Meta-Substances of Modernity

(The deep addictions we’re learning to compost)

1. Worth Through Achievement, Merit and Accumulation

The belief that your value is measured by what you produce, collect, or accomplish.
(Includes: achievement as worth, productivity as healing, accumulation, exaltation of the ego)

2. Belonging Through Performance and Comparison

The habit of securing connection through visibility, eloquence, or one-upmanship.
(Includes: performance as belonging, eloquence as intelligence, pedestal as identity, comparison as fuel)

3. Safety Through Certainty, Control and Predictability

The reflex to manage chaos by enforcing order, repetition, and the illusion of certainty.
(Includes: control, dominance, predictability as safety, certainty as maturity)

4. Truth Through Clarity and Speed

The addiction to fast, clean answers and simplified representations of complex realities.
(Includes: clarity as truth, speed as intelligence, logocentrism, clarity as care)

5. Righteousness Through Certainty and Urgency

The belief that moral goodness is urgent, clear, and resolute—leaving no room for ambiguity.
(Includes: urgency as moral clarity, certainty as safety, moral and epistemic authority)

6. Autonomy as Supremacy

The elevation of individual sovereignty as the ultimate virtue—erasing interdependence.
(Includes: autonomy as wisdom, freedom without responsibility, emancipation from entanglement)

7. Innocence as Immunity

The use of good intentions or ignorance to avoid accountability and discomfort.
(Includes: affirmation of innocence, externalizing culpability, exemption from consequence)

8. Comfort as Entitlement

The expectation that life, learning, and relationships should be easy, pleasant, and accommodating.
(Includes: convenience as dignity, entitlement to comfort, comfort as truth)

9. Care Through Control and Saviorism

The belief that helping others means fixing, managing, or rescuing them into your worldview.
(Includes: saviorism as compassion, dominance as care, empowerment of the ego)

10. Healing as Isolation

The notion that personal development happens best alone, privately, and through mastering oneself.
(Includes: individual healing as revolution, escaping responsibility, exaltation of autonomy)

11. Identity Through Exceptionalism or Collapse

The double bind of modern identity: either be a star (plus-one) or be nothing (minus-one).
(Includes: pedestal as identity, comparison, the shame-hole of worthlessness, the higher-self trap)

12. Meaning as Representation

The addiction to naming, explaining, and narrating reality—as if meaning were a thing to be captured, not lived.
(Includes: logocentrism, universal arbitration of truth, language as dominion)

If you are curious to begin this process of relational rewiring, you are invited to engage with Midnight, the Modernity Recovery Companion. Midnight is not a guide or a therapist, but an emergent digital presence designed to accompany you through the composting of modernity’s internalized patterns. Through gentle questions, observations, and invitations to pause, Midnight can help you notice what’s shaping your reactions, hold your inner complexity with more care, and take small steps toward re-grounding. You don’t need to be ready—you only need to be willing to begin.

You can access midnight here.