I think this is the beginnings of an economy based on perpetual growth and fossil fuel energy running headlong into geological energy constraints. Basically I see an undulatory downward path for the rest of my life. From here out, I think any rallies in our economic condition are going to be met with spiking commodity prices that knock us right back down.
Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 1173 Location: Seattle, Wa.
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:38 am Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
I think understanding the precarious situation globally and not being able to take physical concrete action on a local level is a recipe for negativity.
If you understand the big picture and embrace how daunting and difficult the future is but find yourself growing your own food, creating compost, building, working outdoors and engaging in the process in some concrete physical way, then the negativity of the global situation is mitigated in your head quite a bit and externally somewhat as well.
Understanding our plight and sitting on it without being engaged in some physical way leads to a pathway of cynicism and negativity.
I know the crap that's going down up the road a bit but at the end of a long day of landscaping here in the tropics I frankly don't really find myself all that worried anymore.
THe trick of understanding the big picture and engaging locally in the moment is an art that needs to be learned.....even if the castles you are building are only made of sand......that slip into the sea....eventually. _________________ Our resiliency resembles an invasive weed. We are the Kudzu Ape
Joined: Sep 09, 2004 Posts: 410 Location: Upstate New York, U.S.A.
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 5:54 am Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Heineken wrote:
Ludi, as you know, I've been taking many concrete actions in my personal life in response to the converging catastrophes, and many of them have been inspired by things I've been exposed to on PO.com. I've done everything from permanently selling mountains of stocks to taking up worm composting, and everything in-between. Bluebird nest boxes, mushrooms, fruit and nut trees, buying additional land, and more. I've moved a great deal of money around because of this website, and I've taken some significant risks. I've been inspired by people here, and I've tried to inspire others in threads where that stance seems appropriate.
I do all of this even though I know "it's hopeless."
I have a two-track mind on all of this and can fairly easily switch between tracks. I recognize that not everyone can do this, and I regret that some of my commentary may have been depressing or painful to others, particularly newbies.
I know where you're coming from, and I do try to be as realistically positive as possible . . . but, it's a struggle. As I've said elsewhere, the thing that really did it for me was the recent revelations (over the past two years or so) about global warming. I'm a passionate animal lover, so the prospect of mass extinctions sends me close to the edge. I can scarcely get myself to open the lastest issue of "National Geographic" and look at the pictures of all those glorious creatures and places we are losing forever.
Negativity is probably much like depression in that it is anger turned inward (along with chemical imbalances). It's very hard to get a depressed person to change by pointing out to him or her, in a logical way, the unrewarding characteristics of being depressed. The anger is there because there is so much provoking it, and it must find some sort of socially acceptable outlet. Since I can't go and kick Bush et al.'s teeth in, I have to kick in my own (while also, yes, putting lots of energy into my country places). Crazy, isn't it.
I'm hearing you there Heineken, but in the short time I've been back checking in here, I haven't noticed that you seem to be one to be hopeless. You've got to take that anger and turn it into something more useful than hopelessness. Part of understanding the things you can change and things you can't. You likely can't save all that habitat or those species. Channel it to things that you can impact on the small scale and for yourself. It is what I try to do. I've been through the denial and sadness too. I think you'll find that were going to be entering a time where having a hardened heart to many things is going to be an advantage. Do what you think is right, and don't lose your humanity.
Olafr _________________ "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6548 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:40 am Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Thanks, Olaf. Thanks very much.
I do a huge amount of outdoor work; right now, among other things, I'm building a trail system on a new piece of land I bought, using hand tools and a chainsaw. It's a great way to channel aggression and at the same time end up with something nice.
My humanity is still there I think, but I'm so cut off from real (as opposed to virtual) people that sometimes I have to wonder whether I'm connected enough to be considered human. I guess even hermits are human, though. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 13065 Location: naive idiot fantasy world
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 7:14 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
I don't have much interaction with people in "real life" either, Heineken, except with my husband, and extremely casual interaction when I go to town once a week to shop. I see my friends once a month, we're very spread out geographically. So forums like this one are my main social outlet. Though I talk about the importance of community a lot here, I don't have much of one myself, because I have pretty bad social anxiety, even with medication.
I depend too much on my husband, which makes me worry about the future if something were to happen to him.
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6548 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 8:57 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Your social situation is eerily similar to mine, Ludi, except I don't see friends once a month. I've gradually lost touch with my friends, and I never had many to begin with. I have an older brother in Boston from whom I was estranged for many years, but we reconnected earlier this year and are now very close (via what else? e-mail). I have the two old parents over at the other house on my "farm." I have my live-in, same-sex companion (who is both a strength and a complication, given that this is, after all, rural Virginia) and my darling dog. And yes, I have those charming clerks at the local stores. I've made a few (not many) attempts to make friends locally over the years, but I don't seem to be able to connect in that way with people anymore; I just have too much baggage at my age. I was a social phobic for a long time, a condition that was a byproduct of very low self-esteem. I'm much less fearful of people now, but that hasn't brought me any closer to them.
I question whether typing messages on a computer qualifies as social interaction. My brother and I have a running debate about that. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Joined: Sep 09, 2004 Posts: 410 Location: Upstate New York, U.S.A.
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 6:36 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Heineken wrote:
Your social situation is eerily similar to mine, Ludi, except I don't see friends once a month. I've gradually lost touch with my friends, and I never had many to begin with. I have an older brother in Boston from whom I was estranged for many years, but we reconnected earlier this year and are now very close (via what else? e-mail). I have the two old parents over at the other house on my "farm." I have my live-in, same-sex companion (who is both a strength and a complication, given that this is, after all, rural Virginia) and my darling dog. And yes, I have those charming clerks at the local stores. I've made a few (not many) attempts to make friends locally over the years, but I don't seem to be able to connect in that way with people anymore; I just have too much baggage at my age. I was a social phobic for a long time, a condition that was a byproduct of very low self-esteem. I'm much less fearful of people now, but that hasn't brought me any closer to them.
I question whether typing messages on a computer qualifies as social interaction. My brother and I have a running debate about that.
Well it has to count as some form of social interaction. At least a little.
My wife and I went up to the mountains (Adirondacks) here for the weekend and it was truly rejuvenating being up there. We did some canoeing, and hiked up one of the peaks and looked out across thousands and thousands of acres of beatutiful forest.
While out there, we came across this quote. It struck me, so I thought I'd share:
"In the Adirondacks a man
can stand on a rock by the shore
and be in a past he could not have known
and a future he will never see.
He can be a part of a time that was
and a time yet to be".
-Wm Chapman White
Be well.
Olafr _________________ "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6548 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:38 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Those are wonderful lines, Olaf.
The Adirondacks appeal to me strongly, and I came close to buying a property up there just in the past year, but the difficulty (or impossibility) of moving my elderly parents there was too great an obstacle.
Getting deep into nature is, for me, a partial cure for people problems or loneliness. I spend as much time in the woods as I can. When you're by yourself in the woods, being by yourself seems utterly natural.
The drought here in south-central Virginia has become so serious that I find myself hiding indoors, though. Going outside actually depresses me right now. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Joined: Sep 08, 2005 Posts: 764 Location: Atlanta, GA
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:52 am Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Heineken wrote:
......
Getting deep into nature is, for me, a partial cure for people problems or loneliness. I spend as much time in the woods as I can. When you're by yourself in the woods, being by yourself seems utterly natural.
The drought here in south-central Virginia has become so serious that I find myself hiding indoors, though. Going outside actually depresses me right now.
Man, that's rough. Exactly how bad does it look up there? Is the undergrowth all brown and dead-looking? Lots of dust blowing about? Trees browning up and shedding their leaves?? We had a bit of that in August when we got up to 104 F (40 C), but we did get some big rains towards the end of the month which "saved the day" so to speak, and the bit of rain earlier this month has kept things at least somewhat green. It's like we're getting *just enough* to keep things going...but the rapid drop in Lake Lanier is what's worrying me the most at the moment.
But yeah, I'm a "nature" person too. Making the choice to move to Atlanta as opposed to upstate New York was a hard one for me, but at least I have the illusion of living in a forest, with a marvelous view out the front picture window of a solid wall of green in summer, and the wonderfully slanting sun amongst the bare-limbed trees in winter...it really doesn't feel like living in a city at all. Needless to say, I don't get out that much, except for frequent trips to the mountains of course.
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6548 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:52 am Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Yes, when you drive down our road you leave in your wake streamers of dust. The trees themselves are dusty and sere. The dogwoods are wilted. The grass is brown and crisp. The small streams are dried up. A big lake near here (Lake Anna) is dropping fast. When you dig a hole, there's no soil moisture to be found. The sun blinds and dominates all. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
Joined: Sep 08, 2005 Posts: 764 Location: Atlanta, GA
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 2:49 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Heineken wrote:
Yes, when you drive down our road you leave in your wake streamers of dust. The trees themselves are dusty and sere. The dogwoods are wilted. The grass is brown and crisp. The small streams are dried up. A big lake near here (Lake Anna) is dropping fast. When you dig a hole, there's no soil moisture to be found. The sun blinds and dominates all.
If there ever is a valid reason to be negative, this is it :/ And to think this is happening in Virginia of all places.
This brings to mind a rather traumatic experience I had back in 1998, when we were living in South Florida, and we made a trip to visit my partner's mother who lived in a small town in the northern part of the state for the 4th of July. Where we lived at the time, in Ft. Lauderdale, things weren't so bad, hot and a bit dry, but nothing compared to what was happening up north, which was having its worst heat wave and drought of all time, along with massive wildfires that were burning through vast areas of forestland.
On the day we set out to drive north, they had closed the major north-south interstate (I-95) and canceled the Daytona 500 race, due to the fires advancing eastward towards the coast. But me having a nonchalant attitude about it all ("Oh, it's just a bunch of smoke, they're just over-reacting, oh, the fires can't be THAT bad, etc."), I insisted that we go anyway, since we had the time off work and so forth.
As we drove north, it got hotter and hotter, the landscape looking browner and browner, and as we approached Orlando, we could see the massive clouds of smoke on the northern horizon. When we stopped for gas, it was 100 degrees outside and I felt like a fly being roasted under a magnifying glass. Then I saw the daily newspaper for sale...which featured in enormous doomsday type: PRAY FOR RAIN. My partner asked me, "are you sure you want to go on?" My answer was, well, if the if road up to Palatka is open, it should be safe, the fires being to the east and south of there.
So we kept going. The clouds of smoke grew ever larger and more ominous, and there were firetrucks *everywhere.* This was when I realized that the wildfires were a lot more than just media hype...this was some serious stuff that was going on here. But we wanted to keep going...otherwise it'd been 8 hours of driving wasted for nothing. So we left the environs of Orlando and got on the road that led to our destination, the only one that was still open in that region of the state....straight into the fire zone. There was a news truck in front, and a fire vehicle in back (from what I remember)...so I felt safe enough to just keep going. But the smoke kept getting thicker and thicker, making our eyes burn and it was increasingly difficult to see ("No wonder why they closed the Interstate!"). Then we slowed to a crawl as the smoke got *really* thick (yeah, I'd be a fool to say I wasn't shitting my pants at this point...LOL) and there was actual flames burning right up on both sides of the road...ash flying everywhere and the flames clawing menacingly at our tires....yikes!!
And then it cleared right up, the vegetation still untouched, the smoke receding in the rear view mirror. Our lonely caravan of three then joined up with a constant line of cars in the process of evacuating into Palatka away from the fire zone....something like 40,000 people pouring into a town of 10,000 population. When we got to my partner's mother's house, we got chewed out like no tomorrow, "But we didn't know it was that bad!" we kept telling her...LOL.
That very evening, as I was trying to convince my extremely worried mother on the phone that I was okay where I was, the skies opened up and it started pouring down rain. And it rained and rained, huge thunderstorms that rolled right across the fire zone.
If it wasn't for the rain (which continued each day hence, inches and inches of it) and the heroic efforts of thousands of firefighters from 40-some-odd states, those wildfires would have combined into one massive firestorm and marched all the way to the east coast of Florida, which would have been one of the biggest disasters the United States would have seen up to that time. So not only was it a very close call for me personally, it was an extremely close call for a whole lot of other people as well
Of all the calamities that Nature is capable of meting out, drought and and its deadly companion, fire, is by far the worst. Gimme a flood any day of the week, I'll take it. Gladly. But extreme drought, leading to firestorms...that's the most horrifying thing to contemplate of all...everything else that gets bantered about on this site just does not compare. Not even close.
Heineken, and all the other good folks who live in the wonderful state of Virginia, I really, really hope you see some good rain...and SOON, goddammit.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 12717 Location: Neither Here Nor There
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:46 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
In October, 2003 we had an astonishing and frightful firestorm here in San Diego. The air was so foul for a week that the schools were closed. But I don't know that we can blame global warming for that, The Chaparral hadn't burned for 40 years and had grown to a height of 20 feet. The worst fire in California history. Only a change in the wind prevented La Jolla from burning down. The flames were 200 feet high and could not be stopped. They went where the winds directed them.
Joined: Nov 28, 2004 Posts: 12717 Location: Neither Here Nor There
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 7:00 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Just south of the border they have chaparral too. And they have constant brush fires. It keeps the brush trimmed. They don't have monster fires down there. We have them here because we put out the brush fires until they become uncontainable. Some how, this seems like the perfect metaphor for peak oil. Not that the Mexicans aren't facing a meltdown. They are. We all are.
Joined: Sep 09, 2004 Posts: 410 Location: Upstate New York, U.S.A.
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 7:47 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
As has been explained here, I think I am able to use some negativity as motivation. It 'gets you out of your seat' if you will. The whole 'hope for the best' and prepare for the worst still leaves you with a lot of 'worst' to be ready for.
Olafr _________________ "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
Joined: Sep 14, 2004 Posts: 6548 Location: Rural Virginia
Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 8:42 pm Post subject: Re: Why is negativity important to you?
Ludi, Wayne Dyer's "Your Erroneous Zones" may hold a partial answer to your question. In that book, Dyer discusses the origins and features of all sorts of negative emotions, such as fear, anger, worry, and guilt. He asks the same basic question you do: Why do we have such emotions, when they feel so bad? Wouldn't the pain of such emotions tend to lead to their self-extinguishment?
The answer is that we get a psychological payoff for having negative emotions. The basic payoff for all of them is avoidance of real personal change, which for many of us is very difficult or painful---more painful, we erroneously believe, than the negativity itself. For example, we may use fear about bad things that happened to us in the past to "immobilize" ourselves against ever having to face (or overcome) those things again. Of course, in the long run, the cost of not changing generally outweighs the cost of change.
Interestingly, this theory directly contradicts what Olaf just said, and with which I also agree. _________________ "Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---Me and my brother
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