Movement collapse scenarios

Abstract

It’s a prudent topic for a movement to be thinking about at any stage of its life cycle, but our small, young, rapidly changing community should be taking it especially seriously—it’s very hard to say right now where we’ll be in five years. I want to spur thinking on this issue by describing four plausible ways the movement could collapse or lose much of its potential for impact. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of scenarios, nor is it an attempt to predict the future with any sort of confidence—it’s just an exploration of some of the possibilities, and what could logically lead to what.