I really enjoyed reading this post and can already think of a few people to share it with. It's clever without being pretentious, and explains our current reality by leaning on philosophy and science. It gets really interesting when you start exploring behavioural psychology, universal laws and other principles that help us realise why we're in this mess. My favourite parts are when the tone suddenly changes from serious to sarcastic. A little bit of dark humour will be needed — I think— if we're ever going to make it through! Thanks for shedding a light on this issue. We all need to understand it way better than we currently do.
Calm and well written truth. It's incredibly isolating to be collapse aware. At least, this online connections provide an outlet that many of us don't have in our "real" lives.
"Taken together with the rest of our predicaments, our baked-in climate change has already enshrined our collective doom, an indisputable fact almost no one recognises."
I'm sure I'm not along in finding the fact that so few people I know IRL are willing to recognise this is //really exhausting//.
In some regards I'm not even that much of a doomer... I respect the idea of a hospice Earth and believe some simple life forms migh survive. Even in concentration camps - rather during the Holocaust or in Gaza now - people are able to be kind to one another, write poetry and find moments of peace.
However, it's really clear that humans/ we have rendered the relatively near-term future planet uninhabitable for humanity and most life forms (as much of it already is, looking at extinction rates). There are certainly some social models that, continued underinterrupted, could have avoided ecological overshoot, but I don't see how - without near-magical foresight - other social models could have been prevented from catching on.
I was reading an article entitled The Collapse is already here. I, myself, also have an article The Imminent Collapse. Various other people talk about it too. Therefore, some people do want to talk about it. But, indeed, not the majority.
Sometimes, my sanity in this insane civilization is preserved just knowing there are other sane people out there who have the same awareness and are somehow preserving their sanity.
Perhaps I may contribute with an alternative perspective? One that gives me a kinda distorted viewpoint. One that helps me filter the news in a different way.
Firstly, and briefly, for some cred. I bought the Club of Rome book in 1972, (yes, I'm very old!), I read it several times and became justifiably depressed for a while. I planned for the worst, considered self-sufficiency, and instead bought a large sailing boat. I have subsequently repeated those last two for much of my life!
Along the way I have consumed John Seymour's Self Sufficiency Handbook and its derivatives (and talked with his daughter and son-in-law). I have worked with Rob Hopkins at Transition Town at their 'headquarters' in Totnes. I have built eco houses and taught people how to build them. Etc, etc.....
Along the way I came to Dr. james Lovelock and his Gaia Theory, back in the early 1970's, and followed the development of his ideas as he continued to work and publish through his 90's until his recent demise at age 103. His basic concept for those that don't know, long since demonstrated, is that the Earth is a self-sustaining and balancing system that provides the perfect conditions for life to flourish through a complex network of feedback mechanisms.
The point is, Lovelock's Gaian Earth has mechanisms to cope with excess humans that, like an infecting virus, are causing a fever in Earth's climate. Whether it is melting ice runoff that causes the turning off of AMOC currents plunging Europe (and it's food production) into an ice-age of chaos, or climate disasters causing mass migrations and conflicts at borders, or heatwaves and floods, or just the stresses causing young families to not have kids, the end result is likely to be a rapid fall in human population, and a collapse of the most polluting Western cultures in debt and economic collapse.
In a ghoulish way, and without dwelling on the desperation and hardships such a situation will cause, I do see hope for a natural world that recovers, and a much smaller human populations that survives, hopefully with a better understanding of their place in it!
I'm not saying it's ideal, or desirable, of something to work for. But it is an alternative path if all else fails. And at the moment, with CO2 emissions continuing to rise, and methane emissions rising fast, and fossil fuel mining getting far more investment than renewables, I find it the only hopeful path for humans. And it does give me an alternative, more philosophical view of the modern news of troubles and strife.
I read Lovelock's 'Novacene' last year and was blown away by how a clearly a centenarian like him was able to express himself.
There is no doubt, from any point of view even remotely based on reality, that humans are a passing thing and Mother Earth / Nature inevitably wins in the end. Life will go on without us pretty much regardless of what we do, even in worst-case scenarios such as nuclear Armageddon, dead oceans, and a world full of microplastic, radiation and forever chemicals. It's just a question of time - give it a few million years. Extinction events, whether they're asteroid impacts or volcano eruptions that take a couple of million years to end most species' lifelines as has happened before, simply make way for new lifeforms to emerge. We ourselves wouldn't be here if a totally random asteroid hadn't wiped out the dinosaurs (and, no doubt, countless other developments).
On a side note, barring extinction-level events (unfortunately a much more serious risk than almost anyone realises), humans will absolutely bungle their way through anything remotely survivable. If Stone Age humans can make it through ice ages, then we can make it through pretty much anything.
It just won't be 8+ billion of us, that's all. If one doesn't realise this, one simply isn't paying attention (or in denial).
Maybe this is written for average non-reader, but there has been an active subculture of doomerism for many years now. R/collapse has over 500k subscribers, with a good hard majority of commenters free of the hopium addiction that you allude to. Essays and books have proliferated over the years, though granted it’s not highly popular or lucrative.
And, it should be said, even hardcore, militant macrofutilists like myself have lived anonymous lives of pharaonic fossil fuel splendor despite our rational dyspepsia. Humans can manage to exploit many, many contradictions to their conscience as they make their daily way.
I stumbled into collapse awareness in 2012. For 12 yrs I've kept up with the data & watched a too slow awareness entering the mainstream, always with the hopium caveat or implicit denial attached. Now I just try to focus on continued deeper self-awareness. I see this as the ultimate antidote. Learning to fully embrace Reality including the isolation, the sadness & the deep existential pain that comes from realizing that most people intend to deny Reality & cling to their beliefs, opinions & thought systems. It's not just collapse or climate change that people deny. It's Reality itself. I'm also enheartened when I find fellow travelers on this journey.
I really enjoyed reading this post and can already think of a few people to share it with. It's clever without being pretentious, and explains our current reality by leaning on philosophy and science. It gets really interesting when you start exploring behavioural psychology, universal laws and other principles that help us realise why we're in this mess. My favourite parts are when the tone suddenly changes from serious to sarcastic. A little bit of dark humour will be needed — I think— if we're ever going to make it through! Thanks for shedding a light on this issue. We all need to understand it way better than we currently do.
That cookie was delicious. It's all I can think about!
Calm and well written truth. It's incredibly isolating to be collapse aware. At least, this online connections provide an outlet that many of us don't have in our "real" lives.
One can accept as much as one can bear. It is, to a high degree, a function of strength.
"Taken together with the rest of our predicaments, our baked-in climate change has already enshrined our collective doom, an indisputable fact almost no one recognises."
I'm sure I'm not along in finding the fact that so few people I know IRL are willing to recognise this is //really exhausting//.
In some regards I'm not even that much of a doomer... I respect the idea of a hospice Earth and believe some simple life forms migh survive. Even in concentration camps - rather during the Holocaust or in Gaza now - people are able to be kind to one another, write poetry and find moments of peace.
However, it's really clear that humans/ we have rendered the relatively near-term future planet uninhabitable for humanity and most life forms (as much of it already is, looking at extinction rates). There are certainly some social models that, continued underinterrupted, could have avoided ecological overshoot, but I don't see how - without near-magical foresight - other social models could have been prevented from catching on.
I was reading an article entitled The Collapse is already here. I, myself, also have an article The Imminent Collapse. Various other people talk about it too. Therefore, some people do want to talk about it. But, indeed, not the majority.
Keep these coming Jan!
Thanks, Leaf, I intend to!
Sometimes, my sanity in this insane civilization is preserved just knowing there are other sane people out there who have the same awareness and are somehow preserving their sanity.
Perhaps I may contribute with an alternative perspective? One that gives me a kinda distorted viewpoint. One that helps me filter the news in a different way.
Firstly, and briefly, for some cred. I bought the Club of Rome book in 1972, (yes, I'm very old!), I read it several times and became justifiably depressed for a while. I planned for the worst, considered self-sufficiency, and instead bought a large sailing boat. I have subsequently repeated those last two for much of my life!
Along the way I have consumed John Seymour's Self Sufficiency Handbook and its derivatives (and talked with his daughter and son-in-law). I have worked with Rob Hopkins at Transition Town at their 'headquarters' in Totnes. I have built eco houses and taught people how to build them. Etc, etc.....
Along the way I came to Dr. james Lovelock and his Gaia Theory, back in the early 1970's, and followed the development of his ideas as he continued to work and publish through his 90's until his recent demise at age 103. His basic concept for those that don't know, long since demonstrated, is that the Earth is a self-sustaining and balancing system that provides the perfect conditions for life to flourish through a complex network of feedback mechanisms.
The point is, Lovelock's Gaian Earth has mechanisms to cope with excess humans that, like an infecting virus, are causing a fever in Earth's climate. Whether it is melting ice runoff that causes the turning off of AMOC currents plunging Europe (and it's food production) into an ice-age of chaos, or climate disasters causing mass migrations and conflicts at borders, or heatwaves and floods, or just the stresses causing young families to not have kids, the end result is likely to be a rapid fall in human population, and a collapse of the most polluting Western cultures in debt and economic collapse.
In a ghoulish way, and without dwelling on the desperation and hardships such a situation will cause, I do see hope for a natural world that recovers, and a much smaller human populations that survives, hopefully with a better understanding of their place in it!
I'm not saying it's ideal, or desirable, of something to work for. But it is an alternative path if all else fails. And at the moment, with CO2 emissions continuing to rise, and methane emissions rising fast, and fossil fuel mining getting far more investment than renewables, I find it the only hopeful path for humans. And it does give me an alternative, more philosophical view of the modern news of troubles and strife.
Hi Az; thanks for your comment!
I read Lovelock's 'Novacene' last year and was blown away by how a clearly a centenarian like him was able to express himself.
There is no doubt, from any point of view even remotely based on reality, that humans are a passing thing and Mother Earth / Nature inevitably wins in the end. Life will go on without us pretty much regardless of what we do, even in worst-case scenarios such as nuclear Armageddon, dead oceans, and a world full of microplastic, radiation and forever chemicals. It's just a question of time - give it a few million years. Extinction events, whether they're asteroid impacts or volcano eruptions that take a couple of million years to end most species' lifelines as has happened before, simply make way for new lifeforms to emerge. We ourselves wouldn't be here if a totally random asteroid hadn't wiped out the dinosaurs (and, no doubt, countless other developments).
On a side note, barring extinction-level events (unfortunately a much more serious risk than almost anyone realises), humans will absolutely bungle their way through anything remotely survivable. If Stone Age humans can make it through ice ages, then we can make it through pretty much anything.
It just won't be 8+ billion of us, that's all. If one doesn't realise this, one simply isn't paying attention (or in denial).
We just have no clue at all what starvation will feel like do we?
Maybe this is written for average non-reader, but there has been an active subculture of doomerism for many years now. R/collapse has over 500k subscribers, with a good hard majority of commenters free of the hopium addiction that you allude to. Essays and books have proliferated over the years, though granted it’s not highly popular or lucrative.
And, it should be said, even hardcore, militant macrofutilists like myself have lived anonymous lives of pharaonic fossil fuel splendor despite our rational dyspepsia. Humans can manage to exploit many, many contradictions to their conscience as they make their daily way.
I stumbled into collapse awareness in 2012. For 12 yrs I've kept up with the data & watched a too slow awareness entering the mainstream, always with the hopium caveat or implicit denial attached. Now I just try to focus on continued deeper self-awareness. I see this as the ultimate antidote. Learning to fully embrace Reality including the isolation, the sadness & the deep existential pain that comes from realizing that most people intend to deny Reality & cling to their beliefs, opinions & thought systems. It's not just collapse or climate change that people deny. It's Reality itself. I'm also enheartened when I find fellow travelers on this journey.