[onlooker]

This makes me think about the whole gamut of reactions and responses by First World citizens to many issues to come in the future. It seems we in rich countries just do not have the perspective of trials and tribulations that poor people do. We have used to having many comforts and conveniences which poor do without. Well the future bodes a drop in our standards of living for sure. How will we adapt psychologically? That is a pertinent question that intrigues me for sure. In general I tend to be interested in psychology. I tend to believe that it will be quite an ordeal and quite a burden to most of us. In the forum about planning for the future, I wrote that my biggest preparation is the total unquestioned acceptance of whatever occurs to myself or my girlfriend in the future. A kind of peace with your fate.

[ennui2]

my biggest preparation is the total unquestioned acceptance of whatever occurs to myself or my girlfriend in the future. A kind of peace with your fate.

That's pretty much where I am, despite being a parent. Letting go of a survivalist response is my definition of acceptance.

There is a famous line in Babylon 5 uttered by Kosh the Vorlon. He looks out the window and says "I will miss this...when it is gone". For some doomers, the end of BAU is something they're really looking forward to. For me, it's a mixed bag. I will miss the ways BAU has made my life easier, more comfortable, more secure. The only thing I really look forward to with doom is the "I told ya so" validation. And the way we're headed, it may never happen, because people will be too busy reacting to short-term threats to be able to step back and understand what's really going on and why.

[onlooker]

Great point Ennui your last sentence. What is so sad is we are more and more locking in the worst case scenarios because people have responded to their immediate economic concerns rather then seeing how more and more we are trashing the planet and our future. Makes me think of the line "Their will be hell to pay". I think many here at least have become resigned to the collective fate of humanity. What else can any of us do really?

[Newfie]

Sadly, very little, if anything.

I know I made a pretty hard push to make some local effect, educate a few folks who otherwise pride themselves on their awareness. It failed.

I was talking to some crusader, I forget who, but she said "If you tell them the truth it is too bleak, you must give them some hope." I though that to be, by turns; cynical, dishonest, honest, sad, and depressing. I'm still struggling with that one. There is a certain self deception in that statement.

[onlooker]

Well first Newfie it is commendable your efforts. Also, the efforts that others have made to turn this ship around. That statement you cite is a bit frustrating. How can real change occur if we do not confront fully the predicament we are collectively in. I confess I have not done anything myself for the wider good. Just trying to take care of me and my loved ones. I always imagine being part of what is the term resiliency community. That is my ideal venue and pursuit. The only reply to that frustrating statement that may be possible is too inform anyone and everyone you can of the true gravity but also explain that we can do something about it if we all together decide too. Now is that being honest I do not know. The problem is can we really with full certainty believe we are doomed beyond hope, I do not think so. So hope always remains. What do they say Newfie, pessimistic of the mind, optimistic of the will.

[Timo]

Newfie, on what scale did your efforts fail? What were your expectations, and what were your results?

Failure can be deceiving when measured from within.

[ennui2]

I was talking to some crusader, I forget who, but she said "If you tell them the truth it is too bleak, you must give them some hope." I though that to be, by turns; cynical, dishonest, honest, sad, and depressing. I'm still struggling with that one. There is a certain self deception in that statement.

It's worse than that, in most cases. Years ago I pulled aside a woman who runs the local gardening group in this rich Boston suburb and tried to probe her on peak oil. She said she "got" it but that she couldn't just hit people over the head with it, so she has tried to just get people interested in veggie gardening as a hobby. This is kind of a bait and switch approach of trying to get people to do something for some other reason vs. what really matters most. Transition Towns also operate on a similar principle, very carefully controlling how much doom to dole out so as not to scare people away. I understand the rationale, but I find this approach to effectively be very dishonest.

[Ibon]

And the way we're headed, it may never happen, because people will be too busy reacting to short-term threats to be able to step back and understand what's really going on and why.

Short term threats will not occupy 24 hours of ones time. There will be camp fire moments, folks gathered, reflecting on what's going on and what has past, in fact, this will even be more the case as threats turn over to actual events. Folks will be drawn together in these hardships. If you happen to be there, at those moments, and you happened to be one of those who knew ahead of time what was coming, I can assure you that you will not be throwing out that " I told you so" line. The humbling affects of these upcoming events will orient you to draw together with those around you, awaken your compassion, and the last thing your are going to do is throw out that one line. You see, the incentive of that one liner, "I told you so", comes from where your orientation lies today, still entrenched and frustrated over the ongoing resiliency of the denial.

[ennui2]

You can also make the case that these stresses will pull people apart. It's really both at the same time, tribalism. People will break off into their own groups for collective protection. I'm not really looking forward to the breakdown of larger civic society.

[Ibon]

I understand the rationale, but I find this approach to effectively be very dishonest.

Yes, we have to name it to fix it. And we are parasites on the planet at this point in time. Period. No wonder folks prefer dishonesty. Humans do have an innate sense of purpose, many have a desire of a higher calling of service, of contributing to the whole. To be honest about our current ecological role as parasite on the planet confronts the very essence of our identity as a species with an exceptional destiny.

[Pops]

It is way too easy to say...

"Oh, I'll just roll over"
"who wants to survive anyway"
"no plans will make a difference"

... while sitting at your keyboard, latte at hand, bank account full, safe and secure.

Dying ain't easy. First worlders who have never once had an empty belly or a hungry kid or couldn't make the rent or been on the street make me think of folks who "just go for a drive" and wind up broke down 30 miles from anywhere in flip flops and die of exposure. It just never sunk in "it" could actually happen to them.

The folks to worry about are the one's who say they'll just roll over. They diligently do nothing because to do something means admitting vulnerability and pierces the whole bubble we build around ourselves so we can walk around with our face in our phones.

They would be the first to freak out when the cappuccino machine breaks down.

Look at my avatar. Just a friendly puppy, right?

.
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[Ibon]

You can also make the case that these stresses will pull people apart. It's really both at the same time, tribalism. People will break off into their own groups for collective protection. I'm not really looking forward to the breakdown of larger civic society.

In reference to this thread I can imagine these forces bringing about a reversal of sorts. During the past 30 years the cohesion is related to globalization and humans homogenizing in their dependence to global capitalism, interests of multi national corporations and consumption. Aided by cyber space. It is local communities that have suffered from this cohesion whether you are a small farmer unable to compete with industrial agriculture or a blue collar worker out of a job or small village fisherman watching giant purse seine fishing boats dredge every living thing out of the ocean. Or fracking companies polluting your water, etc. etc. Or on the social side an elder feeling irrelevant looking at a crop of youngsters all with their heads in their smart phones.

The resource wars, unemployment, break down of international alliances, discredited national governments etc will all be part of the break down of the larger civic society. But the reversal in all of this will be cohesion moving toward the local level, toward local communities as the over arching globalization starts to break down.

There will be more civil unrest, a less secure world, more wars, more strife, more disease and famine and in places more violence. But there will also be greater cohesiveness within communities. Less assumptions about security means more appreciation as well about good food, good times. It will be a lot more like the world we evolved in during most of our history.

Another point. During the threat stage fear dominates as ones mind imagines all of the things that will go bad. The paradox is that fear actually disappears when you are living through real events. Real tangible events you deal with. Threats allow the mind to conjure up all kinds of frightening scenarios. This is one of the hardest times at the moment. BAU is still resilient but we are fearful about upcoming consequences. Once these consequences come fear will recede as reality forces us to deal with physical issues.

[Ibon]

The folks to worry about are the one's who say they'll just roll over. They diligently do nothing because to do something means admitting vulnerability and pierces the whole bubble we build around ourselves so we can walk around with our face in our phones.

They would be the first to freak out when the cappuccino machine breaks down.

.

You cant help but look forward to the return of natural selection.

[ennui2]

Pops, you had your plan, you worked it, then you abandoned it. And you have diabetes that can't be dealt with in a pure World Made By Hand lifestyle. That ties into what I was saying before about lack of medical care probably being what does you in rather than a lack of calories.

There is this condescending finger known as "should" that circulates among doomers. I've used the analogy before, but it's the Dodos in Ice Age saying "Doom on you!" when they themselves wind up tripping and falling off cliffs, ala the guy who shot his finger off on that cable show on survivalists.

There's what doomers do and there are fools who blissfully believe that BAU will last forever who will have such a hard time dealing with their fantasies being crushed.

This is a feeling that I constantly try to beat back when I see the old capes get torn down and replaced with swollen McMansions here. To most here, my lifestyle may seem extravagant, and yet when I compare it to these yuppie neighbors, their conspicuous consumption dwarfs mine.

At the end, you have to tend your own garden. Everyone thinks they have their life under control, that the path they are on will bring them happiness. More often than not, it doesn't, but they have to figure this out on their own, unfortunately. And what works for one person won't necessarily work for others.

[onlooker]

Okay guys as we mull over the different dynamics that may play out, I will ask everyone to consider this. In the midst of the collapse or correction will we recognize that only via cohesion can we move forward or will we succumb to fear and distrust. All humanity living at this time is privy to the more base and primitive aspects of our past history and evolution. Do we now collectively possess the faculties to evolve into better human beings. To me that is just as an important question as any to be answered in the future. If we gain a reprieve and are able to move forward with those who survive it will be as much to do with our conscious decision to work together in cooperation as anything else. So whatever techno or logistic hurdles we must climb will pale before the crucible of having to chose the right path cohesion over isolation or cooperation over competition.

[ennui2]

People will not evolve into better human beings when they're starving or dying of thirst and they feel they can survive if they just fight another group for what they need. They'll fight over the scraps. AFTER the die-off then we can talk about working together. Until then, the only working together will be at the tribal/feudal/isolationist level.

The math of overshoot dictates that there be evolutionary winners and losers in a very cruel and base way. People are not going to all join hands and collectively eat and drink less and less and less to avoid conflict. People are going to get thrown off the lifeboat based mostly on a might-makes-right principle.

[Ibon]

The math of overshoot dictates that there be evolutionary winners and losers in a very cruel and base way. People are not going to all join hands and collectively eat and drink less and less and less to avoid conflict. People are going to get thrown off the lifeboat based mostly on a might-makes-right principle.

Let's look just a little deeper into this. Yes, overshoot does dictate some winners and losers with the squeezing of constraints. If you study the evolutionary theories around altruism in humans you will come across a number of publications that postulate that there was group tribal selection at work. Competition between tribal groups resulted that those that cooperated for the good of the tribe and collective had selective advantages. And thus altruism evolved. I would say this will still be at play during the contraction of the human population.

It does all depend on how severe the consequences. When thing get down to raw survival I would agree that even altruism breaks down. It is by the way an effective if not eloquent way to quickly bring us back down to carrying capacity.

Humans are an amalgam of primitive selfishness and altruism based on both of these being selected for in our ancestry. I would assume that this genetic heritage is going to express itself quite forcefully during human overshoot whereby what you state above will be just as true as the sentiment Onlooker expressed in his post in support of collectivism.

This dynamic between selfishness and altruism will vary based on a number of factors already discussed.

You cant help but think of some severely over populated regions of the world in bioregions with very low productivity like the Middle East. The fact that this was the worlds greatest source of fossil fuels that enabled human overshoot in the first place almost seems like a cruel joke.

[Pops]

Pops, you had your plan, you worked it, then you abandoned it. And you have diabetes that can't be dealt with in a pure World Made By Hand lifestyle.

Ike said, "Plans are nothing, planning is everything."

I miss my little farm, I'd planned to putter there until I keeled over, good, bad, or BAU. Luckily, I never did have big fantasies of being a loin-cloth-clad, knife-in-teeth Rambo — since it's hard to keep insulin cool in a breech-cloth. I've opined from day one here that Overnight Armageddon will present as a pink slip rather than Mad Max. And further, that a person should do what they are adept at rather than what someone tells them.

I assume the reason you didn't post for so long mos, is that you really thought something bad was about to come down and were just holding your breath since you couldn't bring yourself to make a move — you were trying to ignore the whole thing as hard as you could, right? Since Collapse didn't happen as you envisioned and in the time frame you were freaked out about, you've convinced yourself it won't ever happen. Now you come around like a reformed whore and talk down to us girls still working the corner, LOL. Does it makes you feel better about how you felt then? Or maybe about how you still feel now?

The difference between you and me, mos, is I've kinda been this way since about, forever. I wasn't some freak-out, post-Y2k, "found it on the Inter-webs" doomer convinced we were about to tip over into the Gorge (although I admit to Cheney, Alberto Gonsolas, Rummy, et al scaring the bejesus out of me). For me, distrust of The System is kind of inherent and so I always have thought about it breaking down. Not much has changed since I was first married and working seasonally in construction and kept enough food in the basement to see us through the slow times. And even before that as I was growing up. My parents were unreformed Okies who did all the old timey stuff; the growing/preserving/making-do/DIY kinda stuff like Mother Earth News rediscovers every month or two. So maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it's the rat in the overpopulated cage syndrome. I don't know.

Nothing has really changed from 10 or 15 years ago in the picture — except your outlook. The trend lines continue unchanged (as the title of this thread (that I'm derailing) lists). We have burned a few hundred billion more barrels, birthed a few hundred million more babies, added a few trillion to our collective credit card balance (not to mention global pollution load), increased our reliance on a global infrastructure predicated on cheap energy and of course increased our gross "productivity" by teaching computers to create money from nothing... but aside from that, pretty well nothing that would justify your newly discovered confidence in BAU.

So anyway, while you are proud of your newfound comfort somewhere between doomer and corny, I'm still kind of in the same place as ever. I'll leave this thread alone now with this little gem from april of 2004:

My advice to anyone is a “No Regrets” policy: prepare for anything to happen - including nothing happening.

[onlooker]

I agree ennui to a certain degree. Their is already a cruel weeding out. Look at the desperate migration from Africa and Middle East occurring as we speak. Yet the point I made while yes more applicable after the die-off will still be applicable in the process of die-off. The very process of surviving will require people to marshal their efforts and intelligence to insure their survival. So again will we revert to a primitive response in doing this by thinking in a survival of the fittest manner or will we comprehend that we need to pool together in resilient communities to best adapt and eventually and hopefully thrive. Now this in turn will depend on how chaotic and extreme the particular situation in a given area and time is. If their is no other alternatives and resources are truly scarce then yes the likely outcome is a Mad Max scenario. But the scenarios will be varied in time and space. See Greer post. In most scenarios I still believe cooperation is preferable to competition.

[ennui2]

you've convinced yourself it won't ever happen.

Wrong. I believe it will happen. I don't think it will happen as quickly as the die-hards here do. But on the flipside, I'm more pessimistic long-term than, let's say, Ibon. You're free to define me any way you like, but that's my position.

How I grew up vs. you, the social class I belong to, what I do for a living, my region, my ideology, yes, all these things influence me. But I don't want them to define me.

One of the most hurtful things you had to say about me was when you were reading my blog and you said you didn't want to "piss in my cheerios" but I had to sh*t or get off the pot. I've never forgotten that, Pops. It might have seemed like tough love at the time, but it made an indelible impression.

I got off the pot (for now at least). And I know that some people will attribute this to weakness or failure, but it was a deliberate choice on my part based on all factors.

It appears I'm going to have to relate this personal anecodote yet again...

Suffice to say, I managed to convince my sister that the S was going to hit the F about 5 years ago and we went so far as to pull out a flip-chart and talk through the issues with both my parents with the intention of convincing them to sell this house in the burbs and build a family compound up north.

It seemed like no matter what we said, there was no convincing my parents to change their retirement plans, and to this day my dad still hasn't retired from selling cars (and for the record, I hate the fact he sells cars).

It was around this time that I had my anxiety attack, brought on by a feeling like I was not in direct control of my fate and my daughter, because I felt I didn't have the time or resources to go it alone. I needed total buy-in from the extended family and I couldn't get it.

I realized at the bottom of this pit that for me, and I can't say one size fits all here, the survivalist response has its downsides, in the sense that it causes a lot of turmoil in the only real safety net I have, which is my family.

Once I saw oil prices tank in 2008 and never reach similar peak pain points since, and then saw the economy recover (at least within my industry of IT) I realized that my timetable for doom was off. This is NOT the same as thinking doom won't happen, though. But at the end of the day you have to make short, medium, and long-term plans.

The best solution for me, given what my earning potential is, combined with the family constraints I'm under, is not to drop out of IT and join a commune, but to stay out of debt and keep moving up the tech industry ladder while the ladder is still there, because I know it probably won't be eventually.

It's very different from someone whose whole life is wrapped in BAU to the point where they can't conceive of what it will be afterwards. I know full well what it will be when it's gone, and when that time comes, I'm well mentally prepared for having the rug pulled out from under me. But hopefully by then this house WILL have been sold and I will be able to put my share of the proceeds to more strategic use.

So while I don't have diabetes (I hope at least) I am on the hook to tend for my parents in their old age, not to mention wrestling with college bills, regardless of the odds of my daughter ever really putting that college education to use before TSHTF.

This thread isn't meant to be for people to post their life stories, but if I'm going to be reduced to the proverbial "you're just a ____ who ___ and then ____" then it deserves a substantive rebuttal because I'm not afraid to fill in the blanks.