Headed for the Compost Bin (via the Pumpkin Carving Party)

We just finished this book called Hospicing Modernity, about how the interlocking systems (capitalism, science, colonialism, mass production, etc.) that have created so much wealth and opportunity for some of us while perpetrating so much harm for others (including the Earth itself), are reaching the end of their run.
 

Our task now, says author Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, is not to shore up Modernity, or reform it, or burn it down (tempting though that may be), but rather to be fully present as we witness its demise. To untangle ourselves from it, so we can see both its gifts and its horrors with clear eyes. To loosen its grip on us, so that we can let it go in turn. To learn from its mistakes. To mourn the things we’ll miss when it is gone. To decide what we want to salvage from its decaying remains.
 

This is no simple matter. Like patriarchy or white privilege, Modernity is so deeply embedded in our psyches (no matter who we are) that we can’t see it operating most of the time. We must learn to question our instincts, to practice picking out the threads of Modernity within us, perpetuating itself even when we think we are critiquing or resisting it. Looking for “solutions”? Craving “certainty”? Expecting “progress”? Assuming we human beings are somehow separate from the rest of the planet? That’s Modernity whispering in your ear. Take a step back. Breathe. Question that voice. Sit with that uneasiness. Listen harder. Try to connect with the deeper, often Indigenous ways of thinking and living that Modernity has dismissed, suppressed, or monetized… without appropriating or romanticizing them yourself. See? Not simple.

Jack-o’-lanterns were long ago co-opted by corporations selling plastic skeletons and cheap candy, but I suspect the basic concept predates Modernity’s onset. Just as eggs and bunnies got strong-armed into Easter, these vegetables carved into flickering faces are the remnants of ancient autumnal traditions honoring the dead, barely masked by a Christian framework of devils and saints. 

Perhaps they offer us a chance to reach back back and find the ancestors (we all have them, right?) who lived and died in times of cataclysmic change. People who knew in their bones that we are all connected, woven together in a vast ecosystem that spans millennia, and reaches the stars. People whose bodies returned to the earth to nourish new growth. 

Friends, it is time to gather once again to celebrate the fact that we are all headed for the compost bin, one way or another. Let’s not be afraid to get our hands dirty. Let’s cut away what’s no longer needed, keep the parts that give us meaning. And let our light shine through it all, guiding the way toward whatever comes next.

(The 31st annual Pumpkin Carving Party is Sunday, October 26th, 2025. Please come!)