Hard core doomers -- lacking in imagination?

rogerhb

People's stupidity always outruns my imagination.
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"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken

Aaron

To which I'll add:

Simmons on Peak Oil
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Praise HawkMan

Ludi

LadyRuby

LadyRuby

Ludi

Macsporan · Last edited by Macsporan on Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:15 am; edited 3 times in total

Some people have come pretty close to "the extinction of the human race" in the Doomer camp so LadyRuby's statement, though exaggerated, in not a straw man.

Doomers lack imagination in six areas:

First they can't seem to envisage any intermediate state between SUVs and super-highways and miserable wretches camped in ravaged ruins eating each other's grandmothers. It is a childlike "everything or nothing" mentality.

Second they do underestimate the technical proficiency and ingenuity of the Human Race. After all we haven't even really tried to solve the problems of PO. It is a little early to declare them insoluble. Let the West spend a third on alternate energy research as they do on weaponry for a few years and let’s see what happens.

Thirdly, they fail to appreciate that once the Great PO Depression hits consumption of all manner of things, including oil, will plummet creating a pool of resources available for creating a post PO world.

It will be a terrible shock: all will suffer, some will die but failing a nuclear holocaust we will muddle through somehow, even if we find we have to do a generations work in a decade.

It would have been better if we'd been preparing for this for a generation just as it would have been better if Czarist Russia had industrialised in the late 19th century; but when the need became dire (hey, we just got beaten in WWI) the Communist regime in the early 20th century was able to quadruple industrialisation in the single decade 1929-39.

I don't advocate this, I post it as an example of what people can achieve when they're really committed and totally freaked out, as we will be.

"Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

Fourthly people can actually survive on a small fraction of "the American Way of Life" which is historically speaking a decadent grotesquery.

Fifthly people can act swiftly to dismantle defunct systems peacefully.

The winding-up of the USSR and its empire was achieved with negligible bloodshed and confusion. To the best of my knowledge not a single babushka ended up on the dinner table.

If those downtrodden slaves of communist tyranny could do that is there any reason why we enlightened Westerners cannot do the same?

Sixthly, however traumatic this may seem to the present generation who knew "the nights of Nero", subsequent generations will take it all in their stride. You don't miss what you never experienced. In fact they will probably scorn us as depraved reprobates and be glad to see the end of us.

The fact is that to cope with PO a lot of very spoiled people are going to have to cope with radical change, relative impoverishment and work very, very hard with their hands for long hours and little reward for themselves. The will have to sacrifice themselves for future generations and the continuity of human civilisation.

And having had their intestinal fortitude surgically removed by a generation of capitalist decadence and self-indulgence they don't like the sound of this and would prefer all to perish in a universal catastrophe while they wax eloquent in sado-masochistic self-pity.

Doomerism is the coward’s way, a Vichy-style betrayal of all that is best in Humanity.

My advice to all is to cultivate courage, determination, selflessness and ingenuity. They've saved us before and they'll save us again.
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Son of the Enlightenment

Jack · Dark Lord Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 4970

turmoil · Last edited by turmoil on Wed Oct 05, 2005 9:07 pm; edited 3 times in total

We'll see won't we. Rolling Eyes

"I'd put my money on solar energy... I hope we don't have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that." ~ Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, March 1931

"We have only two modes - complacency and panic." —James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977, on the country's approach to energy

"Pessimism of the Intellect; Optimism of the Will."
—Antonio Gramsci
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"If you are a real seeker after truth, it's necessary that at least once in your life you doubt all things as far as possible"-Rene Descartes

"When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth"-Sherlock Holmes

trespam

Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah. I love it when people refer to themselves as "doomers." Or "cornucopians." I also find it strange that people refer to themselves as "peak oilers." My god. That is cult thinking. I'm a "doomer." I'm a "peak oiler."

Strange stuff folks. I believe in peak oil. But I'm not so simplistic to start slapping labels onto myself willy nilly.

Doomer. Peak Oiler. hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah.

Silly children.

Dingbat · Tar Sands Joined: Apr 11, 2005 Posts: 24

MacSporan: here here!

I've been lurking here for a while and although labels like "doomers" and "cornucopians" have a certain use, I think the terms are a bit too black and white for me. To paint all doomers identically is as much a mistake as branding any person with some optimism as a cornucopian.

That being said - like anything, I think the truth on how things will pan out is going to be somewhere in the middle.

My personnal feeling when I first read what "doomers" were writing on this forum is that they tend to be more of the individualistic mindset that many americans seem to share it would seem -- if this was another epoch (say, the 1960s), they would probably be the same types building fallout shelters on their property, stocking up food , absolutely certain that the world will come to an end any day now (tm) in a global nuclear Armageddon (tm).

I haven't seen many true cornucopians on the other hand here much, they seem to get shouted down pretty thoroughly when they manifest themselves strongly enough.

My personnal view is that - not being such a raw raw individualist, somehow alot of people (maybe with the help of government) will get together, analyse the problem rationally at some point and act on the problem collectively. How likely is this going to happen? In the US, I have some serious doubts. The individualist streak is deeply embedded in the american psyche and I really don't know how well that would play out. In the rest of the world - depends on the nation.

The whole point I'm trying to make is that whatever happen, it won't be a homogenous thing. Some nations/states/provinces will fare better than others. Nations where people are more socially-minded will probably do better but that's my opinion.

- Dingbat.

LadyRuby

Ludi

So, if people are going to pull together to solve the PO problem, what are you doing?
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Macsporan

Refusing to despair.
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Son of the Enlightenment

Ludi

That's good start, but in what way is it directly addressing the problem?

I think it's great that you point out what people can do. For myself, I'm more interested in what people are doing now t address these problems. I think it's important that we begin to deal with the situation before it gets dire. But that's just my way of approaching things.

I don't think people should despair, but neither do I think they should just sit there saying "Don't worry, be happy!"
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"...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow..." - jboogy