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Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD), Capitalism, Corporate State, Gross Inequality, Jason Box, Josh Ellis, Military Industrial Complex, Security and Surveillance State, The Precautionary Principle, Zenarchery.com
At some point in your life you realize that you’re running out of time, that your health and energy level are slipping, and that your time here on Earth is extremely fragile and transient. You begin to question and re-evaluate what’s important to you. Most still go to their grave with the belief that life will go on for their descendants in a world of never-ending technological “advancements” and improvements in society. A few reading this blog understand the myth of human progress and that mankind is sleepwalking towards a very dark fate. How could there be any other outcome when we have never really heeded the precautionary principle of environmentalism and, in fact, flagrantly disregarded it? Occasionally a scientist will candidly speak the truth. Recently, Jason Box did just that when he tweeted “we’re f’d” if just a small fraction of floor carbon is released from the Arctic. Some of us realize what dire straits we are in and all we can really do is watch with a sort of morbid fascination as this dystopian future unfolds before our eyes. A “grim meathook future” is the inevitable result of a society that worships money, materialism, militarism, and technology.
For an articulate and heartfelt expression of the angst of the modern age, I highly recommend reading the blog post Everyone I know is brokenhearted. The author, Josh Ellis, doesn’t mention climate change at all, but he does hit on every other aspect of capitalist industrial civilization and its soul-crushing, alienating culture. Judging from the number of Facebook “likes”, now at 21K and counting, he has really struck a nerve with people. Perhaps it’s fitting and somewhat ironic that Josh has spent much time in the desert megacity of Las Vegas, the ultimate man-made mirage of capitalist decadence.
All the genuinely smart, talented, funny people I know seem to be miserable these days. You feel it on Twitter more than Facebook, because Facebook is where you go to do your performance art where you pretend to be a hip, urbane person with the most awesomest friends and the best relationships and the very best lunches ever. Facebook is surface; Twitter is subtext, and judging by what I’ve seen, the subtext is aching sadness.
I’m not immune to this. I don’t remember ever feeling this miserable and depressed in my life, this sense of futility that makes you wish you’d simply go numb and not care anymore. I think a lot about killing myself these days. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it and this isn’t a cry for help. But I wake up and think: fuck, more of this? Really? How much more? And is it really worth it?
In my case, much of it stems from my divorce and the collapse of the next relationship I had. But that’s not really the cause. I think that those relationships were bulwarks, charms against the dark I’ve felt growing in this world for a long time now. When I was in love, the world outside didn’t matter so much. But without it, there is nothing keeping the wolf from the door…
Read the rest: http://zenarchery.com/2014/08/everyone-i-know-is-brokenhearted/
Collapse of Industrial Civilization 
Heh, I really ought to update that bio. I moved to Yakima, Washington about three months ago, because I couldn’t take Vegas anymore. 🙂
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HA, ha. I got confused because I saw two different cities for your hometown.
I’ve been thinking of Oregon as a place to relocate. I’m in Arizona at the moment.
Brilliant piece. Loved it.
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A few years back when Dr Guy McPherson said we’re fucked, he was ridiculed and attacked (and still is) by many who were paying attention to our predicament. Now Dr Jason Box says we’re fucked many are taking it very seriously. So whats the difference? The E word?
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I suppose the difference is that Jason is a scientist who has been out in the field collecting and observing the effects of ACD(anthropogenic climate disruption) on the Arctic firsthand for a couple of decades, whereas McPherson, as much as I admire him, is simply an aggregator of and commenter on other people’s work.
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Joshua – this was a great read. Honesty is powerful and is recognizable innately. This is indeed the dilemma we’ve created for ourselves socially. We were lead astray and now find ourselves at a dead end.
xraymike: I don’t think it’s all that “simple” to compile all the scientific evidence, keep it updated as more and more comes in every year, and actually disseminate it at great personal risk, be willing to debate people about it in public and both TELL THE FUCKING TRUTH and live life as best one can in accordance with ones beliefs.
We already had one person trying to make a difference decide it wasn’t worth it and take the lead pill to escape the pain.
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That’s certainly true that it takes a great deal of effort and conviction to compile, analyze, and interpret the mountains of information out there. Not a simple task in the least.
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McPherson is also a conservation biologist, so I think it’s worth listening to his professional opinion on the consequences of climate change and ecological destruction on the web of life. I feel we do not hear enough from the biology professions since they are the experts on living things.
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If you look at the sources Guy McPherson quotes some of them are, frankly, rubbish. That isn’t to say I totally disagree with his position (though I categorically reject the notion of inevitable human extinction in the near term as nonsense), but some of the information he pushes (and presumably bases his views on) is – junk.
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Denatured proteins at what? 3-5 c? Is that part junk? Lots of predictions claiming we will hit those temps this century.
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3-5C will not render the whole earth surface uninhabitable (a pre-requisite for inevitable extinction). Or do you have any science to the contrary?
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I believe McPherson’s point was we can’t grow our crops in those temps. As for NTE my opinion is that no one, no matter how educated or armed with science, knows for certain either way. We are going somewhere that no humans have ever been and it’s going to be a nightmare that we’re just waking up to.
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Nightmare? Certainly. Sooner and worse than expected? Probably. Billions dead? Not unlikely.
Extinction though is a whole different ball game – even if the majority of existing agricultural croplands become useless, it’s a long shot to suggest that literally nobody can grow anything literally anywhere? At least – even though I lean towards the worse case end of the spectrum – I’m unconvinced extinction is especially likely (while I grant it is possible), let alone inevitable.
Personally I think the collapse of modern civilisation and the death of billions (a majority of all people) is the future we face. Accordingly it is to that outcome I focus my meager efforts (per my occasional blog and forum).
In any case those parroting the inevitable extinction line are annoyingly defeatist. It just becomes another excuse for inaction – and those people are as bad as the deniers.
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Guy McPherson says that we’ll be dead in a few decades and that’s an absolute nailed on certainty. Jason Box says that we’re fucked (not that we’re dead) IF …. There’s quite a difference between the two.
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The “if” is the requisite hope.
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In response to predictions of global warming impacts on California, in 2006 I sold my home in Sacramento CA, closed my business, and moved to the southern end of Oregon’s Willamette valley. The “best case” predictions made circa 2004 to occur by 2050, are happening now in CA. Plenty of clean water and farm land, and in my area a remarkably polite community with low crime rates.
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I don’t doubt the sincerity of Josh’s lament, or the solid facts he cites as heartbreakers. There was a time when I too tasted despair on a daily basis, and meditated long on suicide as the only answer… Until I realized one day in the midst of my dark contemplations that I had routinely tortured myself for a long time, and that I had it in my power to simply stop doing that. I got up and walked out of the house without a clear sense of where I was going, but I walked away from the part of me that was doing this hurtful thing to the rest of me. From that day on I refused to listen to that dark part of myself, and just told it to shut up whenever it tried to get my attention. In time it died away from lack of attention, and so it has been all these many years later. It was really like an obnoxious “friend” who I had not had the good sense to tell to get lost.
Occasionally in the intervening years I have tried to share my insight into this simple method for turning one’s back on depression, negativity, anxiety (I had all of those unfriendly parts of me too). Initially I was surprised at the ferocity with which folks rejected my advice. “You just don’t understand, what you suggest won’t work, mind your own business, etc.“ Then I recalled how doggedly I had defended my “problem” from the well meaning attempts of others to help. I kept trying to tell those I was trying to help, “You won’t know whether it will work unless you give it a try.” But none of them ever did. Their sadness had become their religion…
By the way, my method has not caused me to ignore the dark side of reality. Paradoxically I can look deeper into it now than I could in the days of my depression. Now I can look but not buy into the despairing (and self pitying) game that part of my mind once tricked me into.
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Neat trick, but perhaps easier said than done. How’d you bring it off? Just literally, physically walking away, destination unknown? (I’m in no position to do that, as I’m a forest fire lookout, a gov’t salaried hermit, chained to my mountain like Prometheus, one of Josh’s “Amish Luddite cavemen.”)
The most intriguing part of your post, for me, was your assertion that you now “can look deeper into [the dark side of reality] … but not buy into the despairing (and self-pitying) game..” The only way I can imagine this is if you’ve somehow managed to dissociate from your own “darker” insights and just observe them dispassionately.
But is that the same as simply dismissing them? Or have you found some other, more constructive way of acting upon them? At least Josh, here, holds out the wan hope of some sort of mutual support group of like-minded souls.
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Hello Ironside. Thanks for your comments. Of course it’s easier said than done. But it was so clear to me after my initial insight that this would work to silence my negative self, that it was much easier than I could have imagined. The key was to notice immediately when that sad, tired, depressing stuff would come up – and it did quite often in the beginning – and reject it at once. Not argue with it or reason with it, just reject it! At first I did walk out sometimes and walk up to a park a few blocks from my house – as a forceful move to assert that I was determined not to give that negativity an inch, but this soon became unnecessary.
One of the reasons people have been incredulous of this simple method is that they are all too familiar with the standard forms of psychotherapy which may take years, and even then does not work to relieve their depressive symptoms. Then there are the drug solutions, both legit and street medicines. I tried both in spades, including years of therapy, psychoanalysis, etc. No relief from any of it. Suicide still beckoned, but something held me back from that final solution.
Josh is right on when he speaks of support groups of folks with his same problem. It took AA to help me get off booze and dope; I don’t know if I could have come up with my saving insight if I hadn’t been sober for about a year when it came to me. I seriously doubt it. It would be great if depressives got together on the same basis as alcoholics do in AA, but of course to do so goes against their tendency to nurse their troubles alone, and even hide them from those that might help. I was a typical loner of that type.
I could write a lot more about it, and I am open to questions. But what I have to share is so basic and effective, I don’t want to complicate it. The proof is in the pudding. If you have these kind of depressive/anxiety problems, try it and you will learn all you have to know from just doing it. Remember, don’t cut that side of your mind any slack – it’s like shunning a really unpleasant person, just cut them off immediately no ifs ands or buts!
OK one more footnote. Modern psychology has alerted us to the potential dangers of repressing difficult feelings. This is true. But what I am suggesting is not repression. I am suggesting conscious suppression. Repression is an unconscious process outside your awareness, this is what makes it potentially toxic. Suppression is more like taking out the garbage in full awareness. Indeed being conscious of this shit is the whole basis of deciding to dump it.
Thanks for asking, I really like to try to share my “discovery’ with anyone interested or needing it. All anyone needs to do is try it to experience the simplicity and finality of its results. I’ve never been depressed since, and that’s been close to fifty years now.
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I think Mike is saying it’s possible to practice choosing our reaction to thoughts. One option is to drop them immediately and pay them no mind.
This is not easy. I think it takes practice and willingness to make effort. “Noting” is a fine way to practice working with thoughts (and emotions). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B_Jdu8k-OE Noting out loud is great, because it keeps your mind from wandering, as does the iPhone app the teacher in the video is using.
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Yeah. It’s like who’s in charge in your mind? Can any negative part of your mind just decide to impose itself and take up your attention for as long as it feels like it? It would be like leaving your house door open for anybody to wander in and start spouting a lot of garbage. Put a latch on that door to control the traffic. And if the unwelcome visitors get too intrusive, get yourself a mean looking watch dog to run ‘em off.
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When we became standard specification, replaceable and interchangeable cogs, ready for shipment across the state or worldwide, we lost our families and/or tribes, the ones we could really trust and the ones we knew for sure we could not trust. Now we’re alone, without support, and by all appearances civilization will be coming to an end. Strangely I think this conclusion can be made subconsciously, before a complete model of the situation is held within the mind. Many of us knew things weren’t right from an early age but we couldn’t say just what wasn’t right. Now we know what wasn’t right, but it makes no difference now. No one was listening then and few are listening now and it appears to be too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
As the climate goes haywire and drought and heat destroy crops or make them susceptible to pathogens, I believe proactive attempts at population reduction will be made to avoid chaotic struggle as carrying capacity is diminished. And that’s depressing. Sort of like an open air gas chamber and we’re already in it. There is no way to sustain long-term carrying capacity world-wide for more than a few hundred million humans, IMO. By the time we get done trashing everything and wet-bulb temperatures over the Northern Hemisphere exceed survivable limits, we may only have a sustainable population in the United States of less than 10 million on residual technological life-support. Now, I’m sure those in charge will not want to have a fifty year “shoot-em up” with a supremely armed populace to end up with a sustainable population. I would speculate that we will see wave after wave of pandemic to accomplish the reductions as guns remain safely locked in their cabinets.
They’re already chiseling the capitalism tombstone at the quarry, but it won’t be any relief when it’s done. After capitalism’s death comes a period of disintegration and a long exhausting journey back to whence we came. RIP. Otherwise, cheer up, be stalwart and experience each day fearlessly, as best you can, because each one of us holds an exit ticket to be punched some time, some place in the not too distant future. Nothing lasts forever, thank goodness. Josh really captures what a lot of us are feeling these days. Thanks, XrayMike for bringing it to our attention.
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It’s not a great article. It’s soaked in a personal nostalgia for childhood which gets completely confused for some set of objective facts about the world. Take this
“The end of the 90s looked like revolution. Everybody was talking about Naomi Klein and anti-consumerism and people in Seattle were rioting over the WTO. Hell, a major motion picture company put out Fight Club, which is about as unsubtle an attack on consumer corporate capitalism as you can get. We were poised on the brink of something. You could feel it.”
He was poised on the brink of adulthood whilst the world was poised on the brink of the outbreak of turbo-capitalism. So which is it that he’s looking back at so wistfully? And revolution? You’ve got to be kidding – unless you mean the financial revolution.
And this
“And the music sucks. Dear God, the music sucks. Witless, vapid bullshit that makes the worst airheaded wannabe profundities of the grunge era look like the collected works of Thomas (he means John, presumably) Locke.”
Absolutely by-the-numbers growing-old reaction to the world.
That’s not to say it’s an awful article. We all feel like this and saying it is no great crime but repeating such well-worn complaints is hardly insight.
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In retrospect, the WTO riots were naive. And so was OWS and the Keystone pipeline protests. They’re all minor nuisances to the corporate state. Nonetheless, this reality doesn’t invalidate the author’s feelings, however out-of-touch they may be. Most still think we live in a democracy.
On the second point, yes I think he meant John Locke.
So it’s soaked in childhood nostalgia. I think this represents the state of mind of most adults in America.
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“In retrospect, the WTO riots were naive. And so was OWS and the Keystone pipeline protests. They’re all minor nuisances to the corporate state. Nonetheless, this reality doesn’t invalidate the author’s feelings, however out-of-touch they may be.”
His idea seems to be that the 1990s represented a revolutionary time because he and his teenage friends were reading Naomi Klein. That’s an impressive level of narcissism; as an indicator of the pathologies of contemporary society, his article may be of some interest, but perhaps not in the way you seem to think.
“I think this represents the state of mind of most adults in America.”
Most Americans are nostalgic for their childhood? Sure, why not. Is that some kind of radical change in society? Hardly. I’m a generation older than him and I have said and heard all of this many, many times before. And I’m not even American. That doesn’t mean the world is fine, because it’s not but this article is really nothing special.
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Reading Naomi Klein is narcissism? You’ll have to explain that further. It makes no sense.
As far as most Americans being nostalgic for their childhood, that’s not what I was implying. Rather, they live in a coddled First World, eyes closed shut to the violence and destruction of neocolonialism.
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Mount Polley mine tailings pond breach called environmental disaster
Complete water consumption, swimming, cooking ban in effect for Quesnel and Cariboo Rivers
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mount-polley-mine-tailings-pond-breach-called-environmental-disaster-1.2727171
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Nothing I have said about Josh and his sharing should be construed as a negative judgment on him or what he has written. Neither am I trying to do an armchair psychological analysis of him. I have been in the dark space he speaks of, and know how hard it is to bear or understand or grow beyond. Compassion for him (not pity as it is usually understood) is my response to his sharing. I do not feel superior to him or look down on him in any way. What I said about dealing with unhelpful mental components was not meant as “advice” aimed at him specifically, but rather as just sharing a method that worked for me. If he or anyone hearing of it should pick it up and try it, let me know if it works or not for you, and if I can be of help in any way. Good luck to all of us – we are going to need it in the days ahead!
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Since I started sharing about my encounter with negative inner states, it has stimulated more thoughts about it. So I want to tie up one possible loose end – which is the objection that all I have done is to numb myself from being able to experience normal human feelings of anger, sadness, or anxiety. Kind of a self performed lobotomy? Actually I have become better able to experience all these feeling with more depth and clarity than I could when they were polluted with all kind of untrue beliefs and reactions to those emotions. Initially I was rigorous in blocking all dark feelings without exception. In retrospect I can see that I needed this degree of ruthless suppression to get some distance from the inner negativity that was ruining my life.
As time went on and I continued to practice blocking negative thoughts and feelings, the insistent pressure of all that slackened, and my new born ability to be the master in my own house increased, and a point came where I could begin to check the credentials of those elements seeking admission to my inner space, and issue some of them a temporary pass to enter – with conditions. I found I could in this way admit these formerly disturbing and dominating ideas/feelings as long as I was aware of their presence and monitoring them so they didn’t start claiming again that they owned the place, and me. This all evolved as a natural consequence of the initial practice without a lot of planning and analysis on my part….
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mike k: good stuff here – I appreciate how you compartmentalized the (overwhelming, cascading) negative so it doesn’t start the internal avalanche of woe, regret and loathing (self and everything) that comes from the depressed state (at least the one I had) upon coming upon “negative” news, honest mistakes, inexperience or ineptitude in life. Believe it or not, I’ve come across people from the OTHER side where, no matter what information is presented, it’s always upbeat, happy, oh, maybe “a challenge” but absolutely non-negative no matter what! This is equally deluded thinking, and it’s just as hard to get them to see things as they are (a possible threat, perhaps). The point is, obtaining equilibrium is the goal and most don’t even examine their worldviews or stances on anything internal (or external for many).
Nice comment.
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“The emerging Ebola epidemic, California drought, and Middle East civil strife are all indicative of what occurs when planetary ecological boundaries remain unrecognized and are surpassed. It is my hope this paper illustrates the absolute necessity of protecting and restoring large, connected old-growth forests and other natural ecosystems, buffered by agro-ecological ecosystems, to ensure Earth remains habitable,” states Dr. Barry.
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Nice try Dr. Barry, but no cigar. Where’s the political beef in that sandwich needed to overthrow the military industrial capitalist empire that stands in the way of the pleasant dream you are proposing. For one described as a political ecologist you seem to be ignoring the enormous elephant in your living room. It’s like telling a man dying of thirst in the desert that he needs to get hydrated, without giving him a way to get water.
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Unfucking-believable. You just can’t escape this shit…
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Heh, and the funny thing is that you know none of the common brands in that segment would have appeared without the blessing of the owners of those brands. Everyone’s on a short leash in this game.
I used to be a graphic designer and it was a lot of fun for a while, until I just didn’t care anymore about whether the clients I worked for did well (except to the extent that they were solvent enough to pay me). I began to despise them and their products. I didn’t understand why anyone would continue playing the marketing game. One of my first clients was a pet cemetary, and one of my last was Siemens. 90% of it is Shit You Don’t Need, of course. In fact, I think there is an inverse relationship between the amount of advertising employed to sell something, and its intrinsic value.
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OK. I noticed Chomsky had an article on Tom Dispatch. I didn’t know what it would be about, but I pulled myself together a bit for a straight dose of truth medicine such as he usually delivers. I didn’t realize that Hiroshima Day was tomorrow. Chomsky didn’t forget. Tears came in my eyes as soon as I began to read. I didn’t try to stop them – I knew this truth medicine was something I needed to be fully open to.
I was in a movie theater when the news was announced about the bomb. People in the theater didn’t know how to react. We were awed, and left the theater after the film with the feeling that something huge and impossible to grasp had happened. We were right.
I was a teenager that day, but I had studied Einstein and nuclear physics as best I could. I had known for a long time that a nuclear bomb was possible, and that people would seek to create it. I was also full of WW2 propaganda. Saturday movies about the evil “Japs” coupled with heroic stories of our brave men. So I applauded what I did not fully understand that day. How could I do that!??
I felt such a devastating wave of shame and guilt as I looked back at my younger self.
And then it hit me with full force; HOW COULD WE!! do this awful thing. To put this horrible atrocity alongside the death camps, and all the other atrocities we had proved ourselves capable of. And the deep soul-searing despair for our human race struck deep in me. If we don’t somehow turn from our madness, what awful things will we do in our final Gotterdammerung???
Don’t think that I can’t open myself to the full horror of our situation. I still do so because it is essential to my spiritual health and sanity. But I do so selectively, consciously – and with the knowledge that I have the means to return to some level of sanity that permits me to go on in spite of all this reality – and even continue my absurd gestures towards a better world…
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Hiroshima Day
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Why National Security Has Nothing to Do With Security
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Happy Hiroshima Day!
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This video reminds me of mankind’s relationship with technology. If you’ve been reading this blog for a long time, you’ll know what I mean. Just waiting for the last minute techno-fixes to be pulled out of our labs for mending anthropogenic climate and ocean acidity disruptions…
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The current average atmospheric methane concentration is somewhere near 1830ppb, the highest level by far in the last 400,000 years. This level of methane in the atmosphere correlates with an average global temperature 16F higher than today. If methane and CO2 levels were to stabilize and begin a slow retreat, then if your average summer high is 85F, you may have to put up with an average summer high of 101F for a few decades contingent upon the shut-down of civilization. But a couple of years ago we (Kentucky) had a temperature of 111F or maybe a little higher. Add 111F to 16F and you get 127F. A lot of plants and animals are going to die in that kind of heat, like the bats dropping out of the trees dead in Australia a year or two ago.
Now, on top of the priming we’ve already done, consider that we’re getting ready to have the greatest methane belch in millions of years which will create a positive feedback (we’re already in it) to release even more methane and carbon into the atmosphere. How high do the temperature extremes go? 135F – 145F – 160F? Obviously no one is going to survive those temperatures. Being near the ocean may turn into a haven, although there is a risk of catastrophic hurricanes, typhoons, willy-nillys and so forth. The earth’s oceans will be slower to warm, but the balmy sea breeze at 90% humidity and 110F will be problematic too. If the inland to coastal temperature difference is great enough, there could be some rather robust sea breezes for evaporative cooling.
You’ve probably heard that there’s not enough fossil fuel for humans to use to theoretically cook the planet, but there is enough sequestered tundra carbon, methane and fossil fuels to cook the planet and we’ve lit the fire on the stove. Now all we have to do is sit back, turn on the AC and enjoy the befuddlement of the uninformed masses and their elected government buffoons, at least until the electricity goes off. We have some caves here in Kentucky that blow cool air all summer, but there may not be much to eat once our first heat storm wilts the landscape.
Study (2010) by Stuart Staniford on future temperatures.
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2010/05/odds-of-cooking-grandkids.html
Methane Graph Reg Morrison
Extinction and Beyond
http://news.discovery.com/earth/methane-gas-extinction-110722.htm
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James – I live on a farm in Estill county Ky. What you are saying got to me more sharply than the usual abstract numbers – Do they mean me!? Thanks for your research and commentaries, they are right on the money. After all scary is the new reality (new when you wake up to it). Thanks for your wake up calls, some of us keep hitting the snooze button. I don’t even set the alarm anymore, I don’t need it -reality is alarming enough without it…
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@ mike k
Not more than 60 miles from you as the bird flies. I like to imagine all of the homes, roads, factories, schools and humans in the U.S and there seems to be only two insignificant molecules in Kentucky vibrating at a different frequency that bother to comment on their perception of the situation. Say “Go Big Blue” and they all start humming. I think Wendell Berry has a farm on the Ohio river, but I’m not sure, and Estill county has the Kentucky River which would be a nice feature to be near.
I’m not sure what it will take to wake people up. Probably never will. I really am empathetic, but I have an obligation to always search for the best situation for my family, like a CEO searches for profits for its shareholders. Not sure I’ll stay in Kentucky as things are supposed to get rather hot here and besides, we’re just about at the bottom of every quality of life index.
Here’s another little article about the natural consequences of too much heat.
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2022635072_batsfalldownxml.html
These won’t be isolated events in the future and it will be just one more stress for ecosystems already overrun with the cancer of civilization. Forests will be weakened, proteins denatured, pathogens will find new opportunity. You can see the fear in the expressions of the top climate scientists in that video XrayMike posted. Positive feedback is well beyond any technological remediation. You have to wonder if they’ve known all along, the Svalbard seed bank was established in 1984 within the Arctic Circle.
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Can’t blame you if you pull up stakes from ky. I was born here, and able to afford some acres in the forest, so I’ll make my last stand here come what may. To old and settled to start running now.
What’s your opinion of JMG’s latest post? He seems to give a lot of weight to the positive feedback loops in climate change giving us a longer chance to hang around as a species. When I start trying to research all that, my impression is that nobody has a clear read on how all of that will play out. We are just not advanced enough in our understanding to solve all those indeterminate equations biting each other’s tails like a modern snake pit. Don’t hear much about anything positive, including feedback loops from those sold out to NTE…
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Who knows, on the farm in Estill county may be the best place to be when all of this unravels. I thought the coast would be a great place to pick up some sea breeze, but JMG (Archdruid) seems to think tsunamis are more of a risk than the heating of continental interiors. Maybe we’ll have both. Stoneleigh and Illargi (theautomaticearth.com) emphasize the greater risk of financial collapse and that’s undoubtedly the case. Without any money or resources, a person could starve or freeze to death waiting for the methane burp. Apneaman provided a link below to an article describing the methane scenario. Seems about right to me and the methane cannons are already going off in Siberia.
I thought the right thing to do was to figure out just where humans went wrong, point it out, and then try to encourage reform. But for most it’s just not an acceptable reality or narrative, it’s not what they want to believe, so I hold much of the human race in contempt. You’ve heard the phrase “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it”, and they have made their bed, but I have no interest in laying in it with them and listening to their regurgitated mental pablum as things go belly up. On the other hand I’d probably help anyone that showed up at the front door. I just don’t want to be here when they start lining up.
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Apparently Gia is a long time meth addict who has overdosed a number of times in her past.
Click to access Methane,%20the%20Gakkel%20Ridge%20and%20human%20survival.pdf
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That’s really a nice summary of the methane situation. His statement in bold, “Either give up our luxurious lifestyle based on fossil fuels or give up our lives altogether.”, is an emotional plea to change our behavior to alter our fate. But it seems we have already “fired the clathrate gun” as Guy McPherson likes to say and we have done so based upon the warming effects of carbon released forty years ago and before. If we were to give up our luxurious lifestyles, we would still have forty years worth of even greater heating with which to shoot ourselves in the head over and over again with the clathrate gun. And people are going to need fossil fuels now more than ever for their adaptation to climate change and to cover-up their feeling of misery with as much pleasure and luxury as possible, and there you go, another positive feedback. Stop luxury? What for? We’re flying out over the chasm already and all we have to do now, at some future date, is hit bottom.
Now, if there was a significant negative feedback that, with a little human help, could swing the pendulum back in the other direction, I would be all for it. But I havn’t seen anything that can counteract the positive feedbacks until long after they have exhausted themselves, and civilization is basically long deceased.
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Inefficient, bloated, overly complex, international bureaucracies riddled with corrupt careerists. This reminds me of Joseph Tainter.
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And that complexity arises out of, and derives its power from – a wealth gradient. It’s applied thermodynamics.
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Regarding the NBC Ebola story below.
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I don’t have the numbers at hand,but the facts are,as far as I remember,that we have ample fossil fuel reserves to give a very impressive ppm CO2 level. The CO2 and CH4 from permafrost and hydrates are icing on the cake.(Very thick icing)
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I just typed a long comment on the essay on a tablet .The comment disappeared, and I’m not up to doing it again.Anyway,thanks for the essay,Mike and Josh,and thanks to all for your comments.We’ll all have to hold on tight,it’s going to be a wild ride.
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What an unbelievably crazy world. Climatologists,with the long history of the scientific method behind them, issue warnings about the seriousness of the situation. Then a fundamentalist politician says there is nothing to worry about because the bible says there is not going to be another flood. And large sections of the populace regard this statement with equal or greater respect. Then yesterday, I read about a proposal to counter arctic sea-ice melting with a mass meditation event. Another person saying no, it’s not a good idea, because we could overdo it and trigger an ice age.Another person worrying about the condition of their aura, whether it has a hole in or not.
There is no hope, too many people have scrambled eggs where their brain should be.
Paul Ehrlich was asked a few years ago what he felt about the world population reaching. Seven billion. He replied: ‘Great Sorrow.’ I knew exactly what he meant.
A change of subject. For anyone interested in reading a well executed dissection of intellectual fraudsters, I can recommend ‘Fashionable Nonsense’ by Sokal and Bricmont. A nice mix of laughter and head-shaking wonderment at the craziness of it all. No doubt many here have read it, but there may be some who have not.
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Too many competing interests, too many clashing world views and ideologies, too many disagreements, too many lies, too many weapons, too many delusional people. When has the world ever given up a “preferred” and inculcated way-of-life in unison for the greater good of mankind and all living things? Deceit and exploitation will carry on to the bitter end.
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Yes.we’ve run out of time and the carnival of clowns continues,urging us on in our universe of madness.
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They (citizens) don’t know what they’re a part of, a cancer eating the planet. All they want is a good job to get some more of that green and white paper that will keep them relatively comfortable and buy them the discretionary dopamine of choice. That’s all, the Bible explains everything else, and by God you’ve got to believe because believing provides a slow drip, all problems solved, lifetime dopamine high.
Who wants to believe in cancer and final damnation? Not me. 🙂 But unless you’ve truncated your prefrontal cortex or never used it in the first place, there it is, and those aren’t visions of sugar plums dancing in your head.
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Britain’s food self-sufficiency is in long-term decline, warn farmers. Despite the prospect of a decent harvest this year, Britain’s ability to feed itself is in long-term decline, with self-sufficiency falling from 78% to 60% in the last 30 years.The Guardian
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From NBC news an hour ago, the stark truth about Ebola…
Charity Leader: Response to Ebola Outbreak ‘Has Been a Failure’
“THIS IS A VERY NASTY, BLOODY DISEASE… THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE TO THE DISEASE HAS BEEN A FAILURE. IF WE DO NOT FIGHT AND CONTAIN THIS DISEASE IN WEST AFRICA, WE WILL BE FIGHTING IT AND CONTAINING IT IN MULTIPLE COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD. AND THE TRUTH IS, THE CAT IS MOST LIKELY ALREADY OUT OF THE BAG.”
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The U.S. now is forced to fight the very monster it helped to create:
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Just like the US created Osama Bin Laden, and numerous other terrorists both domestic and foreign. It’s a business.
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Yes this factors into my Gaza post that I’m slowing working on.
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Gaza shows that there are still SS men ready to commit collective punishment, employed by a criminal organization intent on genocide. In my opinion, governments that willingly deploying such an organization deserve a similar fate as to what happened in Nuremberg.
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Gaza shows nothing that we haven’t known for ages. The monkey is a vicious beast, especially when cornered. Expecting Jews to behave more nobly than anyone else is absurd. The mechanics of survival cannot be ignored. The realities of democracies cannot be wished away. In Israel-Palestine, neither side can control those who don’t want an equitable solution, as a consequence both behave as desperate gamblers. The rest of us can only moralize from the sidelines. Those who imagine a soft approach exists are either echoing the monk who fed himself to the hungry tiger or are living in a state of delusion.
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Very funny takedown of FOX corporate stooge Bill O’Reilly on poverty in America:
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I don’t have the answer to, “How Come?”.
Click on link.
Click on Red button with arrow to left on title, connects to YouTube audio.
http://www.elyrics.net/read/r/ray-lamontagne-lyrics/how-come-lyrics.html
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The circle jerk of “economic recovery”…
(Click to Enlarge)
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8-6-14
SWERUS C-3: More Arctic Methane Found – and Something Worse
The Arctic waters are becoming a net CO2 emitter which is counter to what scientists once thought would happen when the sea ice melted.
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Everything Old Is New Again
…………………………………………………………………………………………
Against Forgetting: “The Phoenix Program” and the Awakening of Historical Memory
The republication of Douglas Valentine’s The Phoenix Program as the first installment in a series of repressed, forgotten books by Open Road Media offers the opportunity to observe the continuity between the CIA’s secret war against civilians in Vietnam and our own “Homeland Security” apparatus.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25428-against-forgetting-the-phoenix-program-the-war-on-terror-and-the-awakening-of-historical-memory-and-the-bureaucratization-of-evil
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http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/new-stock-market-crash-pattern.html#disqus_thread
Mr. Grommen was a teacher in mathematics and physics for eight years at secondary schools. The last 15 years he studied transitions, social transformation processes, the S-curve and transitions in relation to market indices. Articles about these topics have been published in various magazines / sites in The Netherlands and Belgium.
The paper “The present crisis, a pattern: current problems associated with the end of the third industrial revolution” was accepted for an International Symposium in Valencia: The Economic Crisis: Time for a paradigm shift, Towards a systems approach. On January 25 2013, during the symposium in Valencia he presented his paper to scientists.
New stock market crash, a pattern?
[concludes]
At the end of every transition the pillar Prosperity is threatened. We have seen this effect after every industrial revolution.
The pillar Prosperity of a society is about to fall again. History has shown that the fall of the pillar Prosperity always results in a revolution. Because of the high level of unemployment after the second industrial revolution many societies initiated a new transition, the creation of a war economy. This type of economy flourished especially in the period 1940 – 1945.
Now, societies will have to make a choice for a new transition to be started. Without knowledge of the past there is no future.
Wim Grommen
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“One thus gets an impression that civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means to power and coercion.” – Sigmund Freud – “The Future of An Illusion”.
And look at us now. Possession of pot by the average coerced and manipulated man will result in arrest by the enforcers of societal prohibition, but launder some money for some drug dealers and your penalty is but to share the profits with government in the form of fines. What is your credit score, slave. Only those with good scores will find employment. We shall not lend good money to the trash of society as they cannot repay with interest, but we will lend billions to the uber-wealthy trash and repayment, if ever, is on the most generous terms. The average man will some day discover that his “money” entrusted to their system is already irretrievable, beset with endless inflation or scooped up in one swoop when the derivative mountain collapses. The consolation prize goes to the religiously devout whose covenant with an illusory God guarantees everlasting life.
What’s their answer for the discontent they know is coming? Homeland Security, NSA, Bread and Circuses, the Home Guard, border control, gulags. Even more coercion and control placed upon the resisting majority. Unfortunately, once they have shown themselves as duplicitous schemers, the reaction will be ISIS-like with a corn pone Christion twist, and they will be swept away just in time for the triumphant to enjoy the fruits of civilization – a dying planet.
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(1) The prime aim for a human being should be to help create a world of love, truth, and beauty for all living beings. Any aim opposed to the prime aim should be discarded, or combated.
(2) It is our human duty to fulfill the prime aim. No higher being or reality can do this without our active cooperation. We cannot wait for help from beyond, but must initiate work towards the prime aim immediately ourselves.
(3) Whatever opposes the prime aim is evil, whatever helps realize the prime aim is good. The struggle between these two forces is the meaning and purpose of life in the Universe. To fail to realize the good inevitably leads to destruction and death.
(4) For an individual, to work on the side of the Good is to be successful and to die fulfilled.
(5) To serve the good-true-loving-beautiful is the true vocation of human beings. There is no higher calling.
(6) May all human beings realize this truth and work to fulfill it.
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I cut my eye teeth as a rational scientific atheist materialist on Freud’s Future of an Illusion, Bertrand Russell’s Why I am not a Christian, etc. when I was twelve years old. That rock hard stance persisted until I reached thirty, with my life in a shambles. Amazing how complete defeat can open one to new possibilities. To make a really long story short, I now wonder whether we have not sealed our doom by a misplaced faith in principles that contain a fatal seed of hubris and dehumanization that will destroy us by the very proud accomplishments we sold out to.
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I had never read “The Future of an Illusion”, saw it in a thrift shop and bought it. Many good insights and observations. I was watching this Vice News video http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-09/obama-launches-another-iraq-assault-here-undercover-look-inside-isis about the ISIS group in Iraq and it’s really a useful psychological study. It seems to me, more and more, that humans are enmeshed in a social organization (civilization) which is not only damaging to their ecosystem, but also does not comport with their underlying neurobiology. The emotional parts of our brains, what Paul MacLean called the Paleomammalian brain or limbic system are in many ways superior to the cerebral cortex and it’s interpretations. This sounds counterintuitive, that the last evolved cortex would be inferior to the paleomammalian and reptile brains, but it seems so. The scientific models of reality built in the cerebral cortex with scientific data are anathema to the emotional centers that are very closely allied with the reward system. Which vision of reality results in a dump of dopamine in the limbic system: 1) atoms, molecules, cells and Neitzsche or 2) and approachable father figure with unlimited power and heaven with virgins or other suitable reward?
To soothe our emotional needs, even technological advance and the sacrifices we make to participate in civilization, must promise more and greater forever. Whether it be religion or technology, a human creates an emotionally satisfying belief that falls short of the truth. IMO neither are true, no heaven, no Gods and technology is just the systemic infrastructure of a curious cancer always on the look-out for something new to invade and devour and is completely self-destructive. Perhaps the best solution is to have no ideas at all and simply respond to the environment in a Pavlovian way, doing what feels good and avoiding what feels bad without much thought at all. But we evolved to use language, remember, make comparisons, experiment, pick up tools and we’re so far down that path, it seems there’s no going back. The omnipotence of technology (a false belief) justifies unfettered conversion of the ecosystem into human utility. If problems arise, it is believed that technology itself will address and solve the problems of its own making. I’ve never encountered a cancer, bent on exponential growth and consumption, that would stop growing so it could address the damages it was causing to the parent system. No. It just continues to grow and spread until death. Even efforts to fix the damage will be growth and only add to the damage. Our emotionally satisfying denial and delusion will continue right up until the planet is no longer hospitable to humans.
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“The omnipotence of technology (a false belief)”
Reminds me of the singularity disciples and their conviction that they will be among the chosen to be cyber raptured. If you ever watch one of their conferences/masses you can almost see the oxytocin vapors emanating from their brains as they bond with messiah Kurzweil proselytizing on stage………..Take us home Daddy!
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“…what Paul MacLean called the Paleomammalian brain or limbic system are in many ways superior to the cerebral cortex and it’s interpretations…”
This insight is similar but not identical to Iain McGilchrist’s thesis in his book The Master and His Emissary. That book goes far beyond the simplistic ideas of previous hemispheric dominance investigators to show how our whole culture and the individuals that make it up are victims from and imbalance in hemispheric dominance by left brain ways of seeing and experiencing reality over the earlier orientations of the right hemisphere.
Too Smart for our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind by Craig Dilworth(Dec 21, 2009) This book makes a similar point from an examination of the disastrous consequences of our so-called intelligence.
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Too Smart for our Own Good – Craig Dilworth
“Consequently human civilization – primarily Western techno-industrial urban society – will self-destruct, producing massive environmental damage, social chaos and megadeath. We are entering a new dark age, with great dieback. The only question that remains is whether
we will survive this dark age, and if so, for how much longer” (p.454)
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Homo neocortexus is certainly able to use his newly evolved circuitry to discover time and the inevitability of death. This sets the amygdala and associated structures ringing and in search of some dopamine water to throw on the death fire. They find it in religion, especially the ones that dispense with death in favor of everlasting life. Funny, death does not take place in time, only life is embedded within it. That death should not occupy time is satisfactory, at least to me. I haven’t read Dilworth’s book, though I’ve heard of it, so I ordered it. I’m sure they’ll be giving them away soon and then tossing them into garbage cans or fires or similar methods of disposal.
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Today is Aug 10th and for the past few weeks here in the greater Vancouver area there have been dead yellow/brown leaves falling from many of the trees. My back yard is covered in them…. as if it were Autumn.
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I’ve read Dilworth’s book and also’A short history of Progress’ by Ronald Wright.
Want a quick summary? A hunter-gatherer system was sustainable in time frames of 500,000 years plus. An industrial civilisation has unavoidable systemic flaws that limits its sustainable time frames to around 300 years max.
If anyone is interested in more details as to why this is so, I made 3 comments a few days ago under the ‘Thanks for the comments’ thread over at Nature Bats last.
(I don’t feel up to typing it all again at present.)
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The Future of Sex
What changes does the 21st century hold for human sexual expression?
Published on May 5, 2014 by Christopher Ryan in Sex at Dawn
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201405/the-future-sex
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2014 – List of 45+ Negative Global Tipping Points
http://agreenroad.blogspot.ca/2014/04/2014-list-of-45-global-tipping-points.html
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