As the implications of the referendum result kick in, all you want to do is go back to bed and emigrate. You can’t do those things – definitely not simultaneously – but not even one or the other. It turns out you actually love your country; it just took a bunch of narcissistic chancers to vandalise it before you realised that. As Guardian readers, you are the most likely to feel despair, being the nation’s most fervent remainers; yet 48% of the country felt the same way; three quarters of the young felt the same way; if this position is the preserve of the metropolitan elite, it is not very elitist. So what can you practically, physically do? What can you do today?

1 Stop calling for a second referendum

In the surreal political landscape, where nobody is in charge and all the colours are way too bright, the results don’t seem real. It feels as though the contest could just as well happen again. Referendums – because they are stupid, and parliamentary democracy evolved for a reason – often do feel like this, and often are held twice. Denmark rejected the Maastricht treaty, then accepted it on a rematch. The Irish are always rejecting treaties.

A second referendum would be a bad idea for exactly the same reason the first one was: let’s say the regrexiteers were numerous enough to be decisive, and the decision was reversed by the same margin, give or take. Those 48% of people would be exactly as angry as we are now, and have no recourse to anything unless we carry on this torture forever.

The leave case was won on a series of lies – that immigration would be curtailed, that the economy wouldn’t suffer, that EU funding for deprived areas of the UK was but a trifle, that free trade and closed borders could logically coexist. The remain case was lost because we never articulated what we loved about being European. Leave’s lies will unravel, practically and observably. We need to change the terms of the debate, rather than just try to make it un-happen.

2 Forget about the Conservative party

We have wasted months watching this pychodrama; spent months ruminating on the personal chagrin between David Cameron and Boris Johnson; spaffed away months pondering the inner workings of Boris’s psyche – whether it really was as simple and cynical as personal ambition, or some hangover from his schooling that holds as the highest quality the callow, shallow ability to argue either side of a point equally well. We failed to make our case because we were too busy gaping at their excesses, their nonsensical rejection of reason, their embarrassing reach for jingoistic grace notes, like fat men trying to clip their own toenails. We could spend another six months watching their leadership battle, and it would be just as dispiriting, as enervating, as distracting. We need to have our own conversation.

3 Show solidarity with immigrants and refugees

It is good to show support on social media, to retweet racist incidents, to heap disapprobation upon them, to stand up virtually and say what Britishness means to you: fellowship, solidarity, openness, creativity, the intoxicating cross-pollination of cultures and jokes and hopes and ambitions. All that is great. But be a joiner, not a dabbler: get involved with refugee charities, with migrants’ rights groups, with the apparatus of inclusion and love that decent people have been building for decades. I have residual liberal embarrassment about saying this, because that’s what being a liberal is: but these are dark times. People who are being called “Paki” for the first time in their lives, or are being told to go home for being Italian, need you as surely as you need them; if we’re going to keep sight of what was so great about Project Human in the first place, we need each other, we need to see each other up close.

4 Insist upon a snap general election as a matter of common sense

Not necessarily tomorrow, but a long time before 2020. It may seem obvious to you that no government could lumber on to such a monumental journey in such disarray; that a party whose leader has resigned because he didn’t want to do the hard stuff has neither the capacity nor the legitimacy to invoke article 50 without going back to the country. It seems to me as plain as day that a government in which both sides openly admit to not having a plan cannot simply blunder on without one. Yet already, government officials are trying to create their own common sense, in which a general election would be another distraction we can’t afford, and they’ll marshal every fresh catastrophe – expect many – to shore up this point. Resist it: resist it hard, with public meetings and demonstrations; resist it soft, in every conversation, every email, in every workplace, over every drink. Assume that a general election is essential; proceed as though it is a foregone conclusion.

5 Get on and build

The ultimate goal is to meet that electoral moment with a progressive alliance: Labour, the greens, the SNP, the Lib Dems, united on one programme – to arrest this pointless catastrophe. Many people are talking about starting a new party, but by far the more radical act would be to demand the existing parties find a way to work together in the service of the fundamental principles of international cooperation and creative solidarity. In the medium term, this will take open primaries, the discovery and support of new candidates, involving but not limited to Crowdpac, a crowdfunding idea that funds candidates to extend possibilities beyond existing party machines. The immediate necessity is cohesion, impetus and energy. Consider what your networks are, whether professional, virtual, social or political; join them up and find new ones. Explore the practical ways in which other movements were built – Podemos, for instance, used D.Cent, an online platform for collaborative decision-making. When it came to transmuting into a parliamentary force, their ideas were ready. The Scottish independence movement spored its vision through hundreds of public meetings and used that momentum to remake the SNP. There is no such thing as an impermeable political institution.

6 Turn up

When you see an event based around ideas that you share – London Still Stays, March to Parliament against Brexit, Picnic Against Brexit – go to it.