[Narz]

I see after so many years Narz is still promoting a false view of what I posted about. Here's a post of mine from Sun Jul 17, 2005:

I just interpret what I read, just like everyone else, communication is fallible, you can quote yourself in one place but your other responses spoke otherwise. You had a vision & everyone who had a different view was wrong, seems like you're still seeing the world that way. Sorry your still upset. Glad you're doing well & have projects going.

[Narz]

I don't need more knowledge. I just want quality of life, and at the top of the list is love. I need to feel loved and to be able to give love. If I can have that, I can deal with anything, like poverty, and even Cormac McCarthy dystopias. Love is the #1 doomer prep, and one nobody here ever talks about.

Love is complicated & chasing it often causes more pain than it's worth.

Also you can stock it like canned beans & learn it like growing beans. One of our few differences in opinion is my deep suspicion of the ideal of romantic love. Trying to give love to/get love from a woman has caused me more grief than almost anything. I suppose because I am a damaged male attracting damaged females. Honestly, I can see where the wannabe-stoic posturing comes from & why it appeals. Putting your heart in a woman's hands is, well, scarier than zombies.

I'm still a romantic @ heart but what you posted kind of reminds me of the thread I posted on a raw food forum back in '05 that landed me my future (then)/current (now) mother-of-my-child. The forum is now gone forever but something along the lines of "I want a woman who wants to give love & be loved, to grow together, etc."... all that typical stuff. Thing is, it's never that easy. The word "love" means a million things to a million people. Like the Eurorhythms song which I never understood as a child (why would people want to abuse or especially be abused my innocent lil' mind would wonder). Putting your salvation in the hands of another person is asking for trouble. Of course we're social animals & being lonely sucks but being lonely is better than being abused. People put up with abuse for love & money & chase both to avoid the hurts within. I dunno, I'm rambling, I just hope my daughter can have healthy relationships than me when she grows up whatever happens to this world.

[SeaGypsy]

We in the west have an overly romanticized view of loving relationships, extremely high and unrealistic expectations of others, ourselves and love itself. "I believe in the institution of marriage." a dear old survivor of the great depression told me, when I asked him if he 'loved his wife'. When two people get together and make commitments and keep them through thick and thin, nomatter what; that is a very different creature to what hollywoodised romantic relationships have us attempting to find and maintain.

[The_Toecutter]

Mos, for all of our ideological differences, we have a surprising amount of similarities. While I am much younger than you and do not share similar life experiences, I can relate to having no social life in the real world, feeling isolated, and feeling guilty about my impact upon this Earth.

I didn't realize until adolescence that I was virtually incapable of reading others' emotions, and this has attracted me to online forums for interaction. Here, there are no non-verbal cues, and for the most part, being anonymous is as easy as choosing to remain so and taking the proper precautions. There is freedom from others judging me from external appearances or idiosyncrasies in person, and instead I am only judged on what I choose to write. I found social interaction to be much more fulfilling and tolerable online as a result. My family and the few friends I have had during my pre-adult years considered me reclusive in the extreme(I have worked on that; more on that later in this post). My pre-adolescence was spent in isolation, and at the time, I never thought there was anything unusual about it in the least.

I've never had to go to any extreme to remove my presence from the internet, but I don't know if it is honest to say whether or not I have become addicted to it. I've never had a problem leaving it when the desire arose, yet at the same time, I could easily spend 20 hours straight researching subjects of interest or conversing with other intelligent people out there, wherever I may happen to find them or whether or not I do at the time(I've had much better success online than in the real world for the most part), even to the extreme of forgetting to eat or sleep. Without the internet, I was every bit as bad with this regard when it came to researching subjects of interest at the university library, even to the detriment of my studies.

I came here looking to exchange information with regard to our society and its potential futures, and the mechanisms by which our society functions as a system. To me, there are many obvious paths we can take to mitigate what we as a species are doing to our planet, even though they may not be so obvious to others, or seem unrealistic or absurd. I also like identifying what I see as problems that need addressing. As a result, I have had many discussions, some enlightening, most not so much. The former, however, have largely kept me around and have been worth the wasted time elsewhere.

I have met some people on this site(not in person) that I have no regrets meeting. Vision Master, Mesuge, Montequest, Aaron, Ludi, gg3, and enough to list that I could keep typing for 10 more minutes(and don't have a desire to do so). I have spoken with gg3 2 months ago, and he is working on some exciting projects, in case you are wondering.

Ideological differences frustrate me just the same. That being said, they have sometimes served to challenge my worldview, which is a much needed thing in order to learn. I don't recall ever needing to insult someone to get my point across(barring of course, dub_scratch, who's behavior at one point I perceived to be exceptionally callow and insulting).

With regard to ecological footprint, I've gone in a different direction than you. I live in a ghetto, with no furniture, sleep on the floor, use a bicycle for all of my local transportation needs, all on an engineer's income. I hardly ever buy anything. I haven't procured new clothing since obtaining what family has bought me during high school, although it may be time to given that it is starting to get a little rough and is more than a decade old(I'm not fond of the idea of giving sweatshops my hard-earned money for ridiculously overpriced goods relative to the cost that went into them). I used less than 80 kWh of electricity per month while living in my first apartment away from home, and use less than 120 kWh a month now that I have upgraded to the luxury of a window air conditioner. I have a moderately fast luxury car, but I spend less than $700/year on fuel, I use it so little.

I know what it is like to save water in buckets in case the slumlord doesn't pay the bill. I'm rarely ever bothered when the power cuts out. I have helped others in dire straights just because I would want someone to do the same for me if I needed. Living the way I do, I know what I really need and what I don't.

I still practice the philosophy of as you do "eat, drink, and be merry", but do it in a much different way, in spite of what you may be thinking about the above writings. I eat the best food I can afford; that is one thing I do spend money on as I value heavily my health. It is mostly fruits and vegetables of good quality, and I avoid GMOs or factory farmed meat. I practice that philosophy with the following list: books, puzzles, art, bike riding/exercise, sometimes liquor, and often much cherished substances. The latter do not prevent me from functioning in real life by any stretch of the imagination, nor do they consume much of my money, and they have greatly enriched my experience in this crazy world since starting them during childhood.

During times when I could not afford the last item on that list(mainly during college), I simply did without, and used what little money I had at those times for more useful purposes. Because of these substances, I have become less reclusive in adulthood. I get along with the ghetto rats quite well, even if they may have many of the "truck-nutz" crowd and lowest common denominator types within them. I share some interests with them, including weapons, combat, politics, survivalism, video games, and also have an intellectual curiosity for the criminal mindset. I used to do things as a child that could potentially get me locked up in gitmo today as an adult, all for the fun of it, and without harming anyone or their property. I don't regret it one bit. I've stopped that as an adult, fortunately. It was very dangerous. I have no criminal record whatsoever, nor deserve one(I find the whole concept to be vile anyhow; innocent people get labelled all the time in this country and it impacts their life choices in a huge way).

These substances have removed the trauma that comes with interacting with people, and not being able to figure out what they might be thinking, or why something I said offended them, or any other relevant concerns. It makes me somewhat of a zombie, but in a desirable way. I can hold a conversation without becoming frustrated, or without boring the listener, or without offending anyone. Otherwise, I'd likely return to a state of seclusion.

I am very physically fit since I bike everywhere. I can maintain more than 20 mph on flat ground pretty much indefinitely now, and top out at 35 mph for a block or two. It is liberating to be free of fossil fuels for transportation, and I have more energy than I have ever had at any other time in my life.

I don't like it when men with guns use threat of force or intimidation to tell me to live differently; they have no business doing so when I do no harm to anyone or pose anyone any risk. This mindset I have and subsequent negative experiences I have had with law enforcement during times where I was doing nothing wrong or illegal at the time of harassment have shaped my worldview tremendously during recent years(police once illegally impounded my car and planted cocaine in it at the impound lot). It is one thing if I am actually caught breaking the law, fine(I haven't ever been). It is another when I am innocent and am being harassed by some prick with an axe to grind or quota to meet. I don't like it when society is set up to where others could potentially ruin my life for me; I've already taken enough risks where my actions could cause the "justice" system to desire to ruin it for me, let alone it being done without my input and risk taking. I have become disgusted with this heavily-structured society and those who think they are fit to run it. Then again, I value liberty and autonomy, and more importantly, I live it. If I didn't, I would be miserable. I wouldn't see this life worth living any longer.

I really don't need much in the way of material things to keep me happy. I'm in the process of getting out of student loan debt hell, and have more than enough money saved up to complete my EV conversion that I first started designing when I was a teenager, and due to life circumstances, never got around to actually finishing. It has been a learning experience, and progress has sped along during my limited time to work on it after obtaining employment in my field thanks to a friend I had met with many similar interests and views, who also had the tools and provided plenty of assistance to speed the process up. My interest in electric vehicles is now stronger than it has ever been even though my opportunities to work on my project are at a nadir, and I've been far more busy researching advancements within this field than discussing it over the last few years, as there is now so much to learn that I will never know it all, try as I may. Completing one is icing on the cake, and a way to demonstrate what I have learned, whenever that time will be. It is certainly close. My battery pack will be installed in the middle of 2013 if all goes as planned, after saving up an additional week of vacation time to return to work on it. I will hopefully be able to use that car once finished to bring my career in a different direction; I went into electrical engineering because of my interest in EVs, and really want to work in that field.

On the career front, my employer is none the wiser to my lifestyle choices, and my performance is unmatched between me and about 40 co-workers. I got a nice fat raise last year as a result, and if I keep this up(with a little more good fortune my way), I will be far richer than I had ever desired or hoped to be(I'll probably end up donating most of it once out of debt and once I have my doomstead and projects out of the way). I find my current job to be extremely boring, in spite of excelling in it by leaps and bounds ahead of my peers. At least I learn something new every day while working that job. I'd be more content using those 8 hours a day researching my areas of interest though, and will be glad when I never have to work a job like that again.

I have no significant other and have yet to desire one. I just don't perceive a need for one at this time and am content to research things that interest me instead. Perhaps the right one will come my way, perhaps not. I have especially no desire to procreate. There are already too many people, and it would be a financially imprudent decision for me at this time anyhow, as it would put a halt to my primary goals. If I get settled, I might changed my mind, but a lot of variables would have to change to convince me that having a child wasn't a stupid, short-sighted, or selfish thing to do with the type of future staring us in the face.

I also share the outlook of a "slow crash" scenario, albeit with the potential for a fast crash to be caused by one or a series of black swan events. What happens, for instance, if Iran is attacked and the Straight of Hormuz is shut off? We are destroying our planet, and all of us are culpable, but it would be silly not to acknowledge that some of us are much more responsible for this than others. Those at the top of the hierarchy are the worst offenders, and account for so much of it that if their consumption goes unaddressed, it will matter not whether everyone else's consumption is reduced to zero, as the resources do not exist to sustain this privileged class and the overly complex society that has facilitated their accumulation of wealth.

As far as stages of grief go, I've been at the stage of acceptance for a very long time. But that doesn't mean our situation is pre-determined, either. We can change the outcome, even if the range with which we can influence it may not be as wide as hoped. Even fruit flies and cockroaches have free will.

I don't expect to become a regular poster again either. The among of discussion and information sharing has declined a lot. I suppose I am partially responsible because my contributions have dropped, but at the same time, I've been living life as I see fit. I don't need the internet to enjoy it, even if there may be periods where I spend way too much time on it. It has served its purpose when I needed it.

I don't expect to change the world. i realize, however, the potential to do so exists, and I am not going to ignore that, either. Changing myself is the most important step, and is not the easiest thing to do. I like to think that I am moving in the right direction; I am certainly the happiest I have ever been right now. I like to think that at some point I am going to do something with myself, but nothing is guaranteed in life.

[ennui2]

One of our few differences in opinion is my deep suspicion of the ideal of romantic love. Trying to give love to/get love from a woman has caused me more grief than almost anything.

Vision-master would probably appreciate this anecdote, Narz, but last year my sister convinced me to have a phone session with an astrologer. She told me my mission in life was to find out what love is. This astrologer is a believer in multiple-lives, and she thinks my stage in life is to figure it out, not to experience it in its perfection or to make it all the way to nirvana. I don't see myself as a new-agey person, but since I now define myself as a storyteller rather than just a computer nerd, I have to determine the theme of my own story. So I think the pattern in my life backs up the idea that I am struggling to discover what love is.

It's hard for me to articulate what I feel I've learned without coming across like Dr. Phil. It's something you have to learn (and validate) through life-experience. I can just say that I have what I feel is a more balanced and mature outlook on relationships now than I did two relationships ago, and that even if and when my current relationship is over I will have an easier time bouncing back than I did before.

It is infinitely harder when kids are involved, though. That is really the kicker.

[Narz]

It is infinitely harder when kids are involved, though. That is really the kicker.

That's an understatement.

Really, relationships are easy before kids. It's over? Move on. If you need to, move out. With kids it's not that easy unless you're willing to be an absentee parent which I'm not. The parental actions (not to mention genetics) of your partner (the one you bred with) are going to reverberate thru the rest of your life, like it or not.

Oh, and I forgot to mention gg3. He was actually the first peakoiler I met, but it was so long ago it slipped my mind, I don't think he's been on here in five years or more.

[Ibon]

When a relationship stops focussing on the relationship and concentrates on companionship and teamwork then real harmony happens. It isn't fireworks or passionate, which are wonderful moments but really have nothing to do with love.

How is this oddly related to peak oil? Well, many of us conceptualize sustainability as an ideal but when it actually comes to executing the physicial work and life style changes, the reduction of consumption and adapting to using less energy, it can then become challenging.

Relationships are also often conceptualized as an idealization of sweetness and romance and harmony when the execution to making a relationship work is often a very different matter.

Less conceptualizations and less preconceptions and expectations around what a relationship has to provide is a first step in making one work.
It is dangerous to over examine this.

[ennui2]

I think a big theme we all struggle with is the notion of control, Toecutter, but it's certainly more pronounced with the doomer demographic.

You admitted that your worldview was shaped by negative experiences you have had with corrupt authority figures abusing their power. You sound like a really smart guy, and you should be humble enough to concede that building an entire worldview out of personal trauma may be generalizing a little too much. For instance, do you object to the idea that not all police are corrupt? If you do, I think it's a rather prejudicial attitude to have. Or for Narz. He's had bad experiences with women, as have I. Would it be fair to generalize that "all women" are nothing but trouble? I don't think so. And yet it's totally human nature to make these easy generalizations as a form of primal self-defense. And my sister. I told everyone here that my sister has fallen into the conspiracy theory trap. I attribute this in part to troubles she's had with the IRS. She works for herself and created her own problems in not paying taxes. But it is comforting to her to construct a narrative in which "the man" is out to get everyone. The Diary of Anne Frank is exceptional for how she managed to resist a misanthropic worldview even within a concentration camp. That is a big reason why she's such an important historical figure.

The problem with the human mind is that, at our core, is a few slogans that we subscribe to. Every judgment and decision we make about the world revolves around these simple phrases. I understand that these phrases really fail to adequately describe how the world works, and that is why we as human beings kind of flounder around in our lives never quite answering the fundamental question, but instead clutching at one, getting disillusioned, and clutching at another. This failure of broad perspective is also part and parcel of tragedy of the commons, why we can't see at the macro scale in time and space.

Because I feel we're so ill-equipped to understand the world, I have a hard time ever accepting anyone who comes across like they have all the answers. Even if their theory resonates with me a lot, there's always a fly in the ointment somewhere, and people always used to get annoyed when I brought this to their attention. Questioning someone's world-view is the most frustrating thing you can do, which is the #1 source of conflict in the world, which plays out most often within the sandbox of the internet because it's a lot safer than the water-cooler. We're one big hive-mind arguing over things like left vs. right vs. libertarian vs. moonbeam conspiracies. Go read the comments that rage under any online news outlet and you'll see this play out.

No matter what worldview you say you have, who you are as a person will be defined more by your own actions and the general attitude you project. While it's true that if you live a virtuous life, you can be taken advantage of, if you react to being hurt by projecting negativity or withdrawing into isolation, it will only make things worse.

The failed theory I was holding a couple years back was Field of Dreams. "If you build it, they will come". If I posted the fliers to start the Transition town here, they would come. If I behaved like a good and loving person, then love would come to me. If I worked really hard and long on my animation projects, helped people out with my software extensions, that it would translate into opportunities, starting with finally getting a job offer at Xtranormal itself, or to at least build a big viewership on Youtube. None of these things turned out as well as I thought they would.

And so where I've updated my slogan to something more like this: "If you build it, they might come. If they come, they might not stay. But if you don't build it at all, they definitely won't come."

This accepts that you can not engineer the outcomes you want in life to perfect certainty. This is true in relationships, career, or doomer prep for that matter.

Part of reaching the point of "acceptance" is to give up the illusion of control. That's why the debates here about city vs. country and what not ultimately turned me off. It's the attempt that people here are making to predict the future with absolute certainty and to game the system to be the last-man-standing when they might just get hit by a car passing the street tomorrow.

So for me, doom merely opened the door to thinking about the uncertainties of life in general, and about mortality. I'm sure somewhere in the past I mentioned the movie quote from Braveheart "Every man dies. Not every man really lives." That is another catch-phrase that I subscribe to.

Perhaps a better analogy would be It's a Wonderful Life, a movie I used to love growing up. Life to me is about a series of influences you make on others. The biggest tragedy to me is not the impermanence, not to have been dumped or laid off, but to feel like nothing I did ever mattered. The pain I feel from my first breakup revolves not so much from being dumped as feeling as if I made no lasting contribution to her life such that if you remove the entire experience from her brain, nothing would have changed. Feeling fulfilled in my career comes from the need for what I do to make a difference somehow in the lives of others. If I feel what I'm doing is too frivolous, it feels empty. That is what I felt in my last job, like it was one step removed from the guy in the movie Brazil who is shoving the desk back and forth with the guy on the other half of the cubicle. But it's really hard to know how you may have impacted the world unless you could wave a magic wand and erase yourself and see how different it would be. It requires a leap of faith to believe that you still matter in some subtle way, and to keep plugging at it, rather than feeling like just another worthless yeast cell in the petri dish.

The reason why I get depressed with online interactions is that most often the person you're sparring with is not really listening to you, and they never learn anything from the interchange. That is the main source of frustration with Planty in particular, that feeling that he never opens his mind. It makes you feel that you really aren't communicating with a human being at all, but a chat-bot or something. So you look back at all the precious time you've spent trying to offer them a different perspective which winds up feeling like a total loss. This is, in its own way, a microcosm of the pain I feel from the first relationship. Just now I've probably invested a good hour or more in dumping my deep thoughts into this message and do I really expect people to get anything useful out of this? It would be best for me not to, so that I don't regret blowing time I could otherwise spend doing something more productive.

[vision-master]

One of our few differences in opinion is my deep suspicion of the ideal of romantic love. Trying to give love to/get love from a woman has caused me more grief than almost anything.

Vision-master would probably appreciate this anecdote, Narz, but last year my sister convinced me to have a phone session with an astrologer. She told me my mission in life was to find out what love is. This astrologer is a believer in multiple-lives, and she thinks my stage in life is to figure it out, not to experience it in its perfection or to make it all the way to nirvana. I don't see myself as a new-agey person, but since I now define myself as a storyteller rather than just a computer nerd, I have to determine the theme of my own story. So I think the pattern in my life backs up the idea that I am struggling to discover what love is.

It's hard for me to articulate what I feel I've learned without coming across like Dr. Phil. It's something you have to learn (and validate) through life-experience. I can just say that I have what I feel is a more balanced and mature outlook on relationships now than I did two relationships ago, and that even if and when my current relationship is over I will have an easier time bouncing back than I did before.

It is infinitely harder when kids are involved, though. That is really the kicker.

Love is a higher vibration frequency..........

[SeaGypsy]

Love is being able to accept the other even when they act in ways you find unacceptable. There is a somewhat politically incorrect term: 'pussy whipped'; where men feel they must act sensitively at all times to women, even when the woman is being totally abusive. Something to do with convoluted feminism, this attitude is actually patronizing to women; suggesting they are less than equal in their capacity to 'fight' and therefore must be coddled into staying in the relationship. Reality is that sooner or later every couple fights and the fighting is part of making the relationship work.

(I am not for a moment advocating abuse, either way. There are still women who feel trapped in abusive, violent relationships, with men who really don't deserve to have a life partner. My post here is not referring to this kind of male, but to the more sensitive guys such as we mostly probably are here.)

[vision-master]

Love is being able to accept yourself. lsol

[Rod_Cloutier]

So many people have changed their avatar's. Who's who anyways?

Missed you Mos! Also miss Montequest, Cid yama rarely posts here anymore but he is active on the other site. Call it vanity, but I feel Tom Murphy (whatever his avatar was), is still posting on his site 'Do the Math'. His now famous article 'Why not space' is a rude and impartial reply to my 'Import methane from Jupiter' thread that I started here in 2004.

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... not-space/
the-titan-thread-merged-t2649.html

Just browsing through the 'Merged Titan thread', which I started in 2004; showers us with a host of Avatar's from the original posters on peakoil.com; like Jato and Frank the tank. As a retrospective, I think someone should make a movie about peakoil.com, its members, its history and its comical flaws. (Its been and it continues to be a part of my life- even if I'm perpetually only regarded as a 'lurker' or as a 'troll').

When the TSTF I hope this site will be one of the last to go!

[AAA]

Hey Everyone. AAA here. Its been a while.

After the election I thought I might check to see what people thought and found this thread. Don't get on PO or TheOilDrum much since most of the conversation is just gibberish. However I still enjoy the threads where people are actually doing something to prepare.

Have a good one.

[AAA]

Some of you might also remember me as joeltrout.

I have had 2 different usernames in the past.

[Narz]

Or for Narz. He's had bad experiences with women, as have I. Would it be fair to generalize that "all women" are nothing but trouble? I don't think so.

If you find some counter-evidence feel free to give her my #.

Because I feel we're so ill-equipped to understand the world, I have a hard time ever accepting anyone who comes across like they have all the answers. Even if their theory resonates with me a lot, there's always a fly in the ointment somewhere, and people always used to get annoyed when I brought this to their attention. Questioning someone's world-view is the most frustrating thing you can do, which is the #1 source of conflict in the world, which plays out most often within the sandbox of the internet because it's a lot safer than the water-cooler. We're one big hive-mind arguing over things like left vs. right vs. libertarian vs. moonbeam conspiracies. Go read the comments that rage under any online news outlet and you'll see this play out.

I try to be objective, I really do. But I feel like being objective is depressing because reality, well, kind of sucks. There's a reason religious people are generally healthy & happier & it's not because they're right it's because there are such things as healthy, comforting delusions.

I think people would be better off worrying less about being correct & more about whether their beliefs actually served them. Obviously if you're dealing with chemicals or navigating traffic it pays to be exact & precise but perhaps in some ways ignorance is bliss (as long as you choose your Gods/slogans carefully).

No matter what worldview you say you have, who you are as a person will be defined more by your own actions and the general attitude you project. While it's true that if you live a virtuous life, you can be taken advantage of, if you react to being hurt by projecting negativity or withdrawing into isolation, it will only make things worse.

I'm happy to selectively avoid bad circumstances & people that are likely to do far more harm than good to me & merely frustrate the hell out of me, I'm sure just about everyone reading this feels this way about certain family members. That said, it's important to keep a little openness within yourself but I don't think there's anything wrong with wariness as long as you're aware of it & can turn it off when it's truly safe.

The failed theory I was holding a couple years back was Field of Dreams. "If you build it, they will come". If I posted the fliers to start the Transition town here, they would come. If I behaved like a good and loving person, then love would come to me. If I worked really hard and long on my animation projects, helped people out with my software extensions, that it would translate into opportunities, starting with finally getting a job offer at Xtranormal itself, or to at least build a big viewership on Youtube. None of these things turned out as well as I thought they would.

And so where I've updated my slogan to something more like this: "If you build it, they might come. If they come, they might not stay. But if you don't build it at all, they definitely won't come."

I like that. There are no guarantees but if you don't try you're guaranteed to fail. "Fortune favors the bold" is a favorite of mine (one I often forget).

This accepts that you can not engineer the outcomes you want in life to perfect certainty. This is true in relationships, career, or doomer prep for that matter.

Part of reaching the point of "acceptance" is to give up the illusion of control. That's why the debates here about city vs. country and what not ultimately turned me off. It's the attempt that people here are making to predict the future with absolute certainty and to game the system to be the last-man-standing when they might just get hit by a car passing the street tomorrow.

Mostly I just enjoy the interchange, getting people stirred up & discussing things. Honestly, I'm not sure where I really stand on some of the matters I start threads on but noone wants to hear that (or admit it) so I take a side just to get things moving.

So for me, doom merely opened the door to thinking about the uncertainties of life in general, and about mortality. I'm sure somewhere in the past I mentioned the movie quote from Braveheart "Every man dies. Not every man really lives." That is another catch-phrase that I subscribe to.

Perhaps a better analogy would be It's a Wonderful Life, a movie I used to love growing up. Life to me is about a series of influences you make on others. The biggest tragedy to me is not the impermanence, not to have been dumped or laid off, but to feel like nothing I did ever mattered. The pain I feel from my first breakup revolves not so much from being dumped as feeling as if I made no lasting contribution to her life such that if you remove the entire experience from her brain, nothing would have changed. Feeling fulfilled in my career comes from the need for what I do to make a difference somehow in the lives of others. If I feel what I'm doing is too frivolous, it feels empty. That is what I felt in my last job, like it was one step removed from the guy in the movie Brazil who is shoving the desk back and forth with the guy on the other half of the cubicle. But it's really hard to know how you may have impacted the world unless you could wave a magic wand and erase yourself and see how different it would be. It requires a leap of faith to believe that you still matter in some subtle way, and to keep plugging at it, rather than feeling like just another worthless yeast cell in the petri dish.

Well you're a parent so you at least have a significant impact at home. Ultimately we'll all be forgotten though, which is why I think it's important to enjoy the moment, your moments in the sun.

The reason why I get depressed with online interactions is that most often the person you're sparring with is not really listening to you, and they never learn anything from the interchange. That is the main source of frustration with Planty in particular, that feeling that he never opens his mind. It makes you feel that you really aren't communicating with a human being at all, but a chat-bot or something. So you look back at all the precious time you've spent trying to offer them a different perspective which winds up feeling like a total loss. This is, in its own way, a microcosm of the pain I feel from the first relationship. Just now I've probably invested a good hour or more in dumping my deep thoughts into this message and do I really expect people to get anything useful out of this? It would be best for me not to, so that I don't regret blowing time I could otherwise spend doing something more productive.

Yeah, that's why I gave up certain forums like one called "CivFanatics" (for fans of a computer game call Civilization). I felt compartmentalized there & people weren't really responding to me but what they thought I represented. I always tried to actually talk as if I was speaking to a human being, complete with, actually acknowledging the other person, lightening the mood, using humor but it didn't seem to work most of the time. The other side preferred to see me as a caricature of what they imagined me to be (an environmentalist, hippie, doomsayer, whathaveyou) and couldn't actually hear me because if they did they'd have to redefine themselves to include those labels within them.

That's also why I got fed up with MonteQuest. He refused to let himself be seen as human. Talking about overpopulation as if humans truly were yeast.

[Narz]

Love is being able to accept the other even when they act in ways you find unacceptable.

How do you define "accept" though? How many people just accept unacceptable things because they're afraid to be alone. I know I did. How much of acceptance is really just laziness? If I held out 'till I found someone truly compatible my daughter would never exist. Makes me think of the quote "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". How much of our aspirations are pure fantasy, where is the fine line between mental masturbation of ourselves as Rambo (or President or life of the party or Olympic Athlete or whatever) and in just ourselves for the lazy, underachieving slob we are?

I guess love is accepting the other person... kinda, but always pushing them. That's what I try to do for those I love anyway. My style of course, is not necessarily ideally suited for some of them (my daughter's mom, who says I'm too gruff).

[SeaGypsy]

The keyword is 'compatible'; in my view there either is no such thing or it's fake/ imaginary/ a construct or fabricated view of some fairytale land where we always have the right amount of serotonin, adrenaline, endorphin, sugar and oxygen in our blood.

We are imperfect creatures, but we so seldom accept this essential fact in ourselves, others and in our lives generally, we are in many ways our own worst enemy; charging into predestined failure of our own making.

I don't have a close friend or family member I have not sworn at at least once. I would say every close relationship eventually has moments of cataclysm, ugliness, conflict. The best relationships are not those without conflict, but those where the conflict is easily put aside for the greater good.

[Pretorian]

let me remind to those who complaints on loneliness, there is an old saying , if you want to have a friend-- be one.

[ennui2]

Or for Narz. He's had bad experiences with women, as have I. Would it be fair to generalize that "all women" are nothing but trouble? I don't think so.

If you find some counter-evidence feel free to give her my #.

You're still on a dating site, right? Keep your eyes open. You're younger than I am. Time is on your side, even if the odds aren't (for any of us misfit red-pillers).

I try to be objective, I really do. But I feel like being objective is depressing because reality, well, kind of sucks. There's a reason religious people are generally healthy & happier & it's not because they're right it's because there are such things as healthy, comforting delusions.

Suspension of disbelief that comes from reading a book or watching a TV show or movie serves a similar purpose. The only difference is when you're done with the escapism you're capable of stepping back in the real world. So that explains my interest in animation. I have no faith whatsoever that we will invent warp drive and do all the stuff in Star Trek. It used to be considered "hard sci-fi" but now I see most of the genre as an offshoot of fantasy. I think it's part of the human condition to dream. Art can't exist without the capacity for imagination. It's healthy, as long as you always know the difference between the real and the imaginary. I understand that our predicament has a lot to do with applying false myths (like that of infinite progress) to the real world.

I think people would be better off worrying less about being correct & more about whether their beliefs actually served them. Obviously if you're dealing with chemicals or navigating traffic it pays to be exact & precise but perhaps in some ways ignorance is bliss (as long as you choose your Gods/slogans carefully).

Well, it depends on how you direct your attention. I have suffered from tinnitus since I was a senior in college. On my own, without telling anyone about my condition, I had to slowly develop the mental discipline to cope with constant ringing in my ears. The only well-accepted "treatment" (if you want to call it that) is known as habituation. Habituation is a mental discipline in which your mental focus shifts away from the ringing. When other sounds are in the room, you focus on those other sounds (like the whirring of the hard drive in my computer). Sometimes just concentrating on an idea can be effective even when a white-noise masking source is not available. If I do not follow these disciplines, and allow myself to fixate on the ringing, I will fall into a pit of depression/anxiety.

To me, taking the red-pill is exactly like that. If I hang out on this forum or do all the other things I used to do, what I am essentially doing is focusing on my tinnitus. I am being reminded of a terrible situation that I have no control over and which is painful. Obsessing on doom got me in the hospital a few years ago with an anxiety attack. If I sit down and rewatch "What a Way to Go" or "Earth 2100" or "Home", I know I will backslide to where I was a few years ago. I will not be able to function in the real world.

The fantasy I had was to think that if I "do stuff" (aka preps) that I could juggle having doom on the forefront of my brain and being able to function at the same time. While I think preps would have helped, I don't think I can cope with the Anthropocene Extinction Event(TM) in the forefront of my thoughts 24/7. I need to stop and smell the roses, at which point, my day-to-day life and how I come across will not be that different from a latte liberal who recycles and drives a small car and grows some boutique tomatoes in the flower bed but otherwise doesn't think we're gonna crash.

Yeah, that's why I gave up certain forums like one called "CivFanatics" (for fans of a computer game call Civilization). I felt compartmentalized there & people weren't really responding to me but what they thought I represented. I always tried to actually talk as if I was speaking to a human being, complete with, actually acknowledging the other person, lightening the mood, using humor but it didn't seem to work most of the time. The other side preferred to see me as a caricature of what they imagined me to be (an environmentalist, hippie, doomsayer, whathaveyou) and couldn't actually hear me because if they did they'd have to redefine themselves to include those labels within them.

Once you label someone you deny their humanity and it paves the way to hurt them without feeling guilty. This us vs. them mentality is one of the worst parts of our evolutionary heritage. We break off into tribes. I'm not immune from this, by using terms like "the truck-nutz crowd".



When I see this picture, I can't help but make lots of assumptions about this person. Because they think it's amusing to pose in this manner, because he's overweight with the Kevin Smith beard, etc... The end result is I do not respect this person and would not want to hang out with him. There are all sorts of instant judgments that I myself make like this which I would not want others to make of me. Last time I visited Vermont I went to Hardwick, The Town That Food Saved. I stopped by an icecream shop and a guy drives up and steps out of his truck with no shirt on. He looked like a typical redneck, and it cracked my rose-colored-glasses. (Ironically, little did I know the woman who was with me probably was more of a redneck than I was willing to admit.)

Whereas Toecutter admitted to having issues with authority, I have issues with masculinity. (This is a big reason why the characters I write for are almost all women.) I view men who celebrate their masculinity by driving big trucks and following professional wrestling with disdain. This is because of my own baggage, having been the typical nerd who got beaten up in school while the captain of the football team was getting all the tail. As a beta-male (or gamma, heh) I have a grudge against the Alpha Male.

Where that rubs off on doomerism is me having a visceral revulsion towards people who teeter towards the weekend-warrior Militia types, and by extension, libertarian/anarchists who are still bitter about Ruby-Ridge and Waco and who think the jack-boot-thugs(TM) are gonna bust down their door. Too many men value their self-worth based on their competitive ability, whereas I am wired for cooperation.

The only saving grace here is that I have the humility to acknowledge my biases. Most people are unwilling to even admit they have them, and so when you point them out, it goes in one ear and out the other. If you want to identify the main role I served on this forum, it was me gate-crashing echo-chamber threads and trying to get people to stop and question whether they were just circle-jerking rather than actually getting towards some deeper truths. That's why you have the phrase "preaching to the converted".

There is a certain comfort in being within like-minded people, but it does get stale. There's also a certain "fun" in fighting the endless battle with rivals who will never change, just like battling endless waves of Space Invaders, knowing it will never end. But for me, the greatest sense of accomplishment is to feel like I actually DID get someone to think of something they wouldn't have otherwise thought, and it caused them to grow or make a different life-decision.

I think relationships in the broadest sense exist in order for us to grow as human beings. But I think a lot of us, maybe even most of us, treat other people solely as objects. Others are obstacles to push away or tools to use for advancement or temporary amusement.

So for me, love in its most general sense is in fact an acknowledgment of the other as a whole person. Me not feeling at home here has a lot to do with the petty infighting and cliquishness. You start out as a red-piller feeling very alienated from the rest of society and then you feel even MORE isolated after you realize that there are all these angry divisions even within doomerism itself.

That's also why I got fed up with MonteQuest. He refused to let himself be seen as human. Talking about overpopulation as if humans truly were yeast.

I love nature, and grive for it, but those who put nature first and who almost look forward to population crashes as ecological right-sizing come across as misanthropic. Certainly the other species who are being driven to extinction deserve to live. If there ain't room on this planet for the weight of humanity and the rest of the biosphere, then what is the proper response? If it's someone like Monte, then it's the cognitive dissonance of issuing a lot of screeds about population overshoot on the one hand, and building raised beds that would keep sustain overpopulation on the other. Then he leaves when people talk about his own caretaker situation. (long forum veterans know about that, I won't dredge it up)

I really think the macro issues are unsolvable, and hence not worth the time for an individual to constantly mull over. We are not Gods who can guide humanity to do our bidding. We've already had people like Al Gore assemble worldwide events like Live Earth to no avail. There's nothing any of us can do individually that could significantly change the math. It's too much of a burden for any of us to handle. I do not have the statistics to show it, but I would bet you that the vast majority of doomers (and by doomers I mean doomers that are hardcore 24/7 doomers like the type who were constantly posting on LATOC) are miserable with their life. They are miserable not just because they took a red-pill, but because of the outlook on life they adopted in response to it.

The closest analogy one may draw is the terminal cancer patient. Once you know you're doomed, the quality of your life will be determined based on whether you fixate on the disease, maybe go on a wild goose chase for a miracle cure, or you just kind of make yourself comfortable and live more in the moment.

Focusing mostly on climate change here (since peak oil is kind of on the backburner for now). I think I turned the corner on activism after Nopenhagen. People simply prefer ignorance. I am on Facebook with other red-pillers and I see the sort of stuff they post in order to somehow convert the denialists. You know, mocking cartoons about Hurricane Sandy and stuff. Even Bill McKibben does all this sort of stuff on the 350.org page, draw parallels between weather and climate. Year after year, people keep pointing to more signs of doom and say "Look, NOW do you believe us????" I see all of this as a waste of time. I'm glad that people are out there doing this stuff, but I have no illusions whatsoever that we will collectively accept the situation for what it is, and we will simply adapt in lock-step with the problem (as it manifests itself through the economy and in cost-of-living) and not a minute sooner. So the frog will boil in the pot.

This kind of fatalism doesn't have the same drama nor provide the same crusader sense-of-purpose that activism does, however. That is why I think some people press onward. They do it because it helps make them feel important, or their conscience won't allow them to sit on their hands while Rex Tillerman and company continue issuing propaganda. But I think the jury is in that, even left to their own devices, people will construct their own realities even when the truth is staring them in the face. It's at times heartbreaking and infuriating but in the end I have to let all this stuff go and just get on with life as best I can.

[SeaGypsy]

I think it does credit to admit some fallibility, but also to still be adapting in your adult life; sometimes at some pretty deep levels.