What if Nothing Mattered?
A Critique of Urgency in Impact Capital and Climate Action
Introduction: The Atmosphere of the Edge
The year 2025 has been characterized by a distinct, vibrating frequency in the rooms of global influence—a frequency composed of equal parts ambition and terror. This year I was lucky to attend two marquee convenings of the impact economy, specifically New York City Climate Week and the SOCAP2025 conference in San Francisco, where this frequency was palpable. It manifested in the frenetic scheduling of panels, the urgent networking in hallways, and the rhetorical gravity of keynote speeches. The prevailing sentiment was that humanity stands on a precipice, a “decisive decade” rapidly narrowing to a decisive year, where the mobilization of capital, the deployment of technology, and the reformation of policy are not merely important, but existential. The tone was one of “grounded optimism” shadowed by the looming specter of irreversible collapse.1
At NYC Climate Week, the themes underscored a narrative of breathless necessity, framing the transition not as a choice but as a survival imperative.1 Similarly, SOCAP2025, with its theme “The Future Is Collaborative: Taking Impact Mainstream,” utilized the urgency of “challenges like climate change, social inequality, economic and political instability” as a primary driver to mobilize the machinery of global finance.2 The subtext of every conversation, every pitch deck, and every blended finance vehicle was clear: This matters. This is urgent. If we do not act now, with maximum efficiency and scale, we lose everything.
This rhetoric mirrors the broader political landscape, where the 24-hour news cycle frames every election as “the last election,” every policy debate as a battle for the soul of the nation, and every geopolitical shift as a prelude to apocalypse. We are living in a culture of the “permanent emergency,” where the perception of existential threat is intentionally cultivated to drive behavior—to mobilize votes, to spur investment, and to enforce consensus. Urgency has become the primary currency of social change.
However, this article posits a counter-intuitive and potentially radical thesis: that this very sense of urgency, and the “mattering” it implies, may be a fundamental structural flaw inhibiting true transformation. By accepting the premise that certain things “matter” in a hierarchical, urgent sense—while implicitly relegating the rest of existence to the status of background noise or raw material—we inadvertently entrench the systems of separation, extraction, and objectification that created the polycrisis in the first place.
This analysis argues that a healthier, and ultimately more transformative, way to engage with the world is to rely on a deeper sense that “Nothing Matters.” This phrase is not deployed here in the service of depressive nihilism or apathy, but rather in the rich, paradoxical tradition of Mahayana Buddhism, the cinematic philosophy of Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the emerging phenomenology of “Waymaking” and “Dark Ecology.” When we embrace the truth that nothing possesses inherent, separate existence—that nothing “matters” in a fixed, isolated way—we are liberated into a reality where everything matters. By dismantling the hierarchy of importance that urgency demands, we align ourselves with the generative, non-linear processes of life itself, exemplified by the fungal networks of the forest and the insights of complex systems theory.
To navigate this argument, we must traverse the landscapes of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and political science. We will deconstruct the “scarcity mindset” that urgency instills in the human nervous system, inhibiting the very creativity and collaboration we seek. We will explore how the logic of “impact” and “metrics” reinforces a consequentialist worldview that blinds us to the present moment. And we will look to the wisdom of thinkers like Bayo Akomolafe, Andrea Hiott, and Timothy Morton to understand how “slowing down” and embracing the “mesh” of existence offers a path not just to survival, but to a life worth living.
Part I: The Architecture of Urgency and the Logic of Exclusion
1.1 The Rhetoric of “The Last Chance”
The events of 2025 were defined by a specific teleology: the narrative of the “final window.” At Climate Week, the sheer scale of investment required—USD 2.2 trillion in 2025 alone for renewables and grid modernization—was presented not just as an economic opportunity but as a requirement to avoid “dramatic increases in GHG emissions”.1 The language is martial and linear. It presumes a war against carbon, a race against temperature rise, and a battle for the preservation of economic stability. The “existential crisis” is the ultimate lever; it is used to justify the “making business sense of sustainability,” arguing that if we can align the survival of the species with the survival of the profit margin, we can leverage the massive machinery of global finance to save the planet.1
This narrative structure creates a binary reality: success or extinction. In this binary, “mattering” becomes a scarce resource. If climate adaptation matters supremely, it implies that other concerns—perhaps leisure, perhaps art, perhaps the quiet contemplation of a tree—do not, or at least, they matter less and must be sacrificed for the greater cause. This logic, while seemingly pragmatic, is the seed of the very problem it seeks to solve. It is the logic of exclusion.
The political sphere amplifies this. The framing of the “last election” or the “most important decision of our lives” creates a state of perpetual high-stakes anxiety. This anxiety drives a non-systemic focus to survival. When survival is the only metric, the quality of life, the integrity of relationships, and the health of the social fabric are treated as secondary luxuries. We become willing to sacrifice the “process” of living for the “outcome” of surviving.
1.2 The Hierarchy of Mattering as Violence
To say that X matters is a linguistic act of separation. It distinguishes X from the background of Y and Z, which presumably do not matter, or matter less. This is the root of what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called “Enframing” (Gestell). Heidegger argued that the essence of modern technology is not machines, but a way of revealing the world where everything appears as “Standing Reserve” (Bestand)—resources waiting to be used.3
When we designate a specific outcome (e.g., Net Zero 2050) as the only thing that matters, we reduce the complexity of the world into a tool for achieving that outcome. A forest is no longer a community of living beings (a “Thou”); it becomes a “carbon sink” (an “It”). A river is not a flow of life; it is a “hydroelectric resource.” Even human beings are reduced to “human capital” or “beneficiaries” of impact.5
This is the slippery slope that brings us to focus on some aspects and disregard others. It is the logic that drives our disregard for nature. By valuing nature only for its “ecosystem services” (i.e., its utility to us), we reinforce the anthropocentric worldview that created the ecological crisis. We are saying that the forest matters because it sequesters carbon, implying that if it did not sequester carbon, it would not matter. This logic leaves the natural world vulnerable to any technological substitute that can perform the same function “better, cheaper, faster”.1 If a carbon capture machine is more efficient than a tree, the logic of “mattering” dictates that we should replace the forest with the machine.
1.3 The Trap of Consequentialism
The drive for “impact” and “metrics” in the social sector is deeply rooted in consequentialist ethics. Consequentialism evaluates the morality of an action solely based on its outcomes.6 In the context of SOCAP and Climate Week, this manifests as a relentless focus on “measurable impact”—lives saved, tons of carbon reduced, dollars mobilized.
While this approach seems rational, it suffers from the problem of “incommensurability”.8 Values are often “apples and oranges.” How do you measure the value of a sacred Indigenous site against the value of a lithium mine that provides batteries for electric vehicles? How do you compare the “impact” of saving a life today versus preventing climate change in 100 years?
Metrics try to flatten these incommensurable values into a single scale (usually money or “social return on investment”). This flattening erases the unique, qualitative reality of the things being measured. It is a form of epistemological violence. It says that the unique history of the sacred site doesn’t matter; only its utility matters. By attempting to establish which approach is “better” via a defined metric, we remove the core meaning of existence. We fall into the trap of analytical thinking, which struggles to grasp the infinite and overwhelming interconnectedness of reality.
Part II: The Psychology of Scarcity – Why Urgency Fails
2.1 The Neurobiology of Threat
To understand why the rhetoric of urgency might be counterproductive, we must look at the physiology of the human nervous system. Polyvagal Theory, developed by Stephen Porges, describes how our autonomic nervous system responds to cues of safety and danger.10 The system has three phylogenetic stages: the Ventral Vagal (social engagement and safety), the Sympathetic (mobilization/fight-or-flight), and the Dorsal Vagal (immobilization/shutdown).
The rhetoric of “existential threat” and “urgency” actively triggers the Sympathetic nervous system.12 It floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline. While this state is effective for running from a predator (or a short-term crisis), it is chemically incompatible with the Ventral Vagal state required for nuance, collaboration, creativity, and complex problem solving.13
When we as attendees of SOCAP and Climate Week are bombarded with messages of imminent collapse, our physiology shifts toward mobilization. In this state, the brain prioritizes immediate survival over long-term flourishing. We become reactive rather than creative. We lose the capacity for “social engagement” in its deepest sense—the ability to listen, to empathize, and to connect with the “other”.11 Instead, we view others as competitors for scarce resources or obstacles to our survival. The irony is palpable: The theme of SOCAP was “The Future Is Collaborative,” yet the mechanism of urgency undermines the biological substrate required for true collaboration. Urgency creates a neurophysiological environment where deep connection is impossible because the body is preparing for war.
2.2 The Scarcity Mindset and Cognitive Tunneling
Closely related to the sympathetic response is the psychology of scarcity. Research by Mullainathan and Shafir demonstrates that when people feel a scarcity of time or resources, their cognitive bandwidth shrinks.14 This phenomenon, known as “tunneling,” forces the mind to focus exclusively on the immediate lack (the unmet need) while ignoring the periphery.15
In the context of climate action, urgency creates “time scarcity.” We feel we do not have enough time to solve the problem. This leads to tunneling: we focus maniacally on the metric of carbon reduction (the immediate lack) and ignore the broader systemic context—biodiversity, social equity, spiritual health, and the quality of human relationships.16
This tunnel vision explains why we might pursue “solutions” that are technically effective but systemically destructive, such as geoengineering or massive monoculture tree plantations that sequester carbon but destroy local ecosystems. The scarcity mindset (”we are running out of time!”) blinds us to the collateral damage of our “solutions.” It prevents us from seeing the “adjacent possible”—the creative solutions that lie just outside the tunnel of our immediate anxiety.17
2.3 Urgency Culture vs. Deep Work
The “urgency culture” prevalent in these spaces is characterized by a constant state of fire-fighting, where “everything is a priority”.18 This leads to burnout, cynicism, and bad decision-making. When everything is urgent, nothing is truly important. The ability to engage in “deep work”—sustained, focused, and reflective effort—is sacrificed for the dopamine hit of “doing something” now.19
This “bias for action” often masquerades as productivity, but it is frequently a defense mechanism against the anxiety of the unknown. We rush to apply technical fixes because sitting with the complexity of the problem is terrifying. As Bayo Akomolafe suggests, “The insistence on ‘being pragmatic’ in the face of calamity is itself a kind of violence. It anesthetizes. It converts the wild ache of the moment into manageable problems with efficient solutions”.20
Part III: The Philosophy of the Everything Bagel
3.1 “Nothing Matters” – From Nihilism to Liberation
The movie Everything Everywhere All At Once (EEAAO) -one of my favorite movies- provides a potent modern mythology for this tension. The antagonist, Jobu Tupaki, experiences the multiverse in its totality and concludes that “Nothing matters.” She creates the “Everything Bagel”—a black hole of collapsing reality onto which she has put everything.21
At first glance, this is the void of nihilism. If there are infinite universes and every choice spawns a new one, then no single choice has weight. Morality, legacy, and survival seem like cruel jokes. This mirrors the “doom” felt by many in the climate space—the feeling that the problem is too big, the entropy too high, and individual action too small.
However, the film flips this narrative. The protagonist, Evelyn, eventually reaches the same realization—that nothing matters—but she interprets it differently. Instead of despair (the “negative” nothing matters), she finds liberation (the “positive” nothing matters, or “optimistic nihilism”).23 If nothing matters in a grand, cosmic, fixed sense, then we are free from the terror of getting it “wrong.” We are free from the crushing weight of “the most important election” or “the last chance.”
3.2 Buddhist Emptiness and the Totality of Mattering
This cinematic resolution is deeply rooted in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, specifically the concept of Sunyata (Emptiness). Sunyata does not mean “nothingness” in the sense of a vacuum. It means “emptiness of intrinsic nature”.21 Nothing exists independently; everything exists only in relation to everything else (Interdependence or Pratityasamutpada).
When we say “Nothing matters,” in the Buddhist sense, we are saying “No thing matters as a separate, permanent, self-existing entity.” This is because no such thing exists. Everything is a fluid process of becoming.
This is the crucial pivot. The urgency of Climate Week is based on the illusion of things that matter: The Economy, The Nation, The 1.5 Degree Target. These are treated as solid, independent realities that must be protected. Buddhism argues they are empty concepts. When we realize they are empty, the anxiety of losing them dissolves.
Paradoxically, when we realize that nothing exists separately, we realize that everything is interconnected. Therefore, everything matters. Not in a hierarchical sense (where X > Y), but in a total, holographic sense. Every action, no matter how small—doing laundry, paying taxes, being kind to a confused husband (not just referencing the movie but in case my wife is reading) ripples through the entire web of existence.25
When we embrace that “Nothing matters” (no-thing has separate existence), we are paradoxically saying that “Everything matters” (everything is the whole). Analytical philosophies struggle to grasp this because they are built on distinction and categorization. “Everything matters” is overwhelming and infinite; it breaks the spreadsheet. It requires a different mode of engagement: phenomenology.
3.3 The Googly Eye vs. The Bagel
In the film, the symbol opposing the black bagel is the “googly eye”—a plastic, silly, third eye placed on the forehead. It represents the choice to see things differently, to bring presence and kindness into the chaos.21 Waymond Wang, the embodiment of this philosophy, fights not with force but with kindness. He says, “The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on”.23
This is the antidote to urgency. Urgency says, “We know exactly what is going on (crisis), and we must fight.” Waymond admits, “We don’t know what is going on,” and chooses kindness. This is a shift from consequentialist action (acting for a future result) to phenomenological action (acting correctly in the present moment). If nothing matters ultimately, then the only thing that has reality is the quality of the present interaction.
Part IV: Ecological Waymaking – Fungi, Dark Ecology, and the Politics of Slowing Down
4.1 Fungi and the Non-Urgency of the Wood Wide Web
Nature itself offers a model that contradicts the human obsession with urgency. Consider the fungi. Mycelium acts as the “wood wide web,” connecting trees, sharing nutrients, and maintaining the health of the forest.26
Mycelial growth is not “urgent” in the human sense. It does not “tunnel” toward a single goal. It is explorative, adaptive, and distributed. As Merlin Sheldrake notes in Entangled Life, fungi embody a form of intelligence that challenges our concepts of individuality and decision-making.28 They grow through “waymaking”—feeling their way through the soil, responding to local signals, expanding where there is food, and retracting where there is not.
When a forest faces a threat (e.g., pests), the network responds, but it does not panic. It utilizes the resilience of the mesh. Urgency, as defined in human politics, is a non-systemic focus to survival. Fungi focus on the system. They build resilience through redundancy and connection, not through efficient, linear speed.
If we were to act like fungi, we would focus less on “mobilizing capital” for a silver bullet solution and more on weaving thick, redundant networks of community care, local resilience, and resource sharing. We would trust in the “emergent” properties of the system rather than trying to engineer the outcome from the top down. As Bayo Akomolafe suggests, “The times are urgent; let us slow down”.29 This paradox highlights that rushing only reinforces the existing pathways of the system (the “pits” we have dug), whereas slowing down allows for the emergence of something truly new.30
4.2 Dark Ecology and the Mesh
Timothy Morton’s concept of “Dark Ecology” provides a philosophical framework for this fungal worldview. Morton argues that “ecological awareness is dark, uncanny.” It is the realization that we are not separate from the “sticky mess” of the biosphere.31
Urgency is an attempt to “clean up” the mess. We want to solve climate change so we can go back to “normal.” Morton argues this is impossible. We are already “Hyperobjects”—entities so massively distributed in time and space (like global warming or Styrofoam) that we cannot grasp them.32
Dark Ecology suggests that instead of trying to master nature (Enframing), we must accept our complicity and intimacy with it. It calls for a “solidarity with nonhuman people”.32 This is consistent with the “Nothing Matters” philosophy. If we stop trying to be the “savior” of the planet (a hierarchical role), and realize we are the planet (interconnected emptiness), we act differently. We act with the “sweetness” and “darkness” of true intimacy, which includes grief, joy, and decay.
4.3 Bayo Akomolafe and the Politics of Fugitivity
Bayo Akomolafe connects the fungal/ecological view directly to political action. He argues that “urgency is a function of the status quo.” When we rush, we are usually rushing to restore the comfort of the familiar.
Akomolafe introduces the concept of “fugitivity” or “marronage”—escaping the plantation of modernity not by fighting it on its own terms (which reinforces it), but by slipping away into the cracks.33 This is “Waymaking.” It is finding the “minor gestures” that disrupt the major key of urgency.
Slowing down allows us to “question our questions”.34 Urgency asks: “How do we reduce carbon to zero by 2050 to maintain GDP?” Slowing down asks: “What is this economy that requires the destruction of the earth to function? What does it mean to be human in a web of life?” The latter questions lead to transformation; the former leads only to “better, cheaper, faster” destruction.
Part V: Waymaking and Phenomenology – Navigating the Infinite
5.1 Andrea Hiott and Constellation Thinking
If we abandon the roadmap of urgency and metrics, how do we move? Andrea Hiott’s work on “Waymaking” offers a navigational alternative. Waymaking is distinct from “path-following” or “engineering.” It is the process of moving through a landscape by constantly sensing and adjusting to the terrain.17
Hiott draws on research into the hippocampus, the brain’s navigation center, to suggest that cognition itself is a form of waymaking. We do not just process data; we orient ourselves in a landscape of meaning. Hiott argues for “constellation thinking”—holding multiple, contradictory points of data (paradoxes) without trying to collapse them into a binary choice.36
Urgency demands binary choices: “Environment OR Economy,” “Action OR Extinction.” Waymaking allows us to hold the paradox: “The situation is dire AND we must slow down.” “Nothing matters AND everything is sacred.” This approach moves beyond the binary of “mental” vs. “physical” or “self” vs. “world,” recognizing them as different assessments of a common movement.17
5.2 The Problem of Comparison
If we say, “The ‘Nothing Matters’ approach is better because it produces 20% more effective climate outcomes,” we have destroyed the philosophy. We have turned “Nothing Matters” into a tool for “Mattering.”
Instead, we must argue from the perspective of health and wholeness (phenomenology) rather than effectiveness (consequentialism). We rely on the “deeper sense” of grounding and balance not because it is a “hack” for productivity, but because it is the only state in which we are truly alive.
If we attempt to establish which approach is “better” via metrics, we are essentially asking, “Which method is more efficient at Enframing the world?” The answer will always be the method of urgency. But if the goal is to stop Enframing the world—to stop treating it as standing reserve—then the question of “better” (in a metric sense) is the wrong question. The clarity needed for transformation today is the clarity that comes from dropping the need for metric superiority and embracing the qualitative reality of being.
5.3 A Phenomenology of the Present
Phenomenology asks us to return to the “things themselves”—to our direct, lived experience.37 When we are in a state of urgent panic, our lived experience is one of contraction, fear, and separation. When we are in a state of “Nothing Matters” (grounded emptiness), our lived experience is one of expansion, connection, and peace.
This peace is not passive. It is the fertile soil from which “right action” emerges. It is the state of the fungi building the soil, the mother tree feeding the seedling, the person choosing kindness in a chaotic universe. It is an action that does not need to justify itself by the future, because it is complete in the present.
Conclusion: The Transformation of Presence
The tone of NYC Climate Week and SOCAP2025 was a tone of “Mattering”—loud, urgent, and heavy with the weight of the future. It was a tone that, in its desperate attempt to save the world, risked reducing the world to a set of variables to be managed.
The alternative proposed here—the tone of “Nothing Matters”—is a radical departure. It is a tone of lightness. It is the realization that the weight of the world is not ours to carry, because the “world” and “us” are not two separate things. We are the mesh. We are the bagel.
By releasing the urgency, we do not release the care. On the contrary, we release the fear that blocks the care. We move from the “scarcity mindset” of the Sympathetic nervous system to the “social engagement” of the Ventral Vagal system. We move from the linear engineering of capital to the adaptive waymaking of the mycelium.
In this space, we do not need to “mobilize” anything. We simply need to be. And in that being, we find that everything we touch—the person next to us, the tree outside the window, the breath in our lungs—matters infinitely. Not because it is important for the future. But because it is here.
This is the clarity needed for transformation today. We do not need more force. We need more presence. We do not need to run faster toward the cliff. We need to stop, look at the view, and realize that we are already flying.
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