"Quitting" Peak Oil

accept_death · Tar Sands Joined: May 02, 2005 Posts: 36

Ok this topic is going to seem kind of counter productive, but I want to throw it out their anyway. Has anyone considered "giving up" on thinking about peak oil? I don't mean ignoring it completely, but to move it to the back of their heads (like, the way back) as it seems most people are able to do? Is this really a bad thing if PO has become a major distraction in your own life? I think for myself personally, knowing about Peak Oil has made it harder to get through my routine tasks. It's just one more excuse I can use for myself to not do something. I sometimes wish I could go back to the "good old days" before I knew about the posibility of a massive die off. I know that's not possible, but I'm thinking of adopting a mindset that says "we'll figure something out, the technology exists, too many people which too much power/wealth have too much riding on our economy bla bla". It's denial I know, but I'm starting to think it might be an effective strategy for now. Millions of Americans practice it every day, there's gotta be a damn good reason. The thing is, they seem to practice it on a sub-conscious level. My question; can denial be effective on a conscious level? Where you know you are BSing yourself, but you just don't care/let it bother you? Is this a worthwhile strategy to persue in dealing with Peak Oil? (consider that if you are letting PO distract you too much now, you are probably not going to be able to plan for it as good as you could)

Jack · Moderator Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 4929

JLK · Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 10:52 pm Post subject:

I have to push it to the back of my mind every day at the office so that I can devote as much attention as possible to my professional obligations. Part of my game plan for Peak Oil is to make as much money as possible before it happens to give my family and I a leg up as things start to unravel. This means paying attention to business.

The key is pushing it to the back of your mind, not out of your mind for good. Wink

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www.searchingforthetruth.com

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

johnmarkos · Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 10:58 pm Post subject:

Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting time with Peak Oil; other times I feel as though it is a source of inspiration and knowledge. I have definitely learned a lot about issues I would never have investigated if it weren't for PO.

Also, my job (I'm a computer programmer/data munger) works in such a way that I have time to surf and write while I'm waiting for processes to finish. Sometimes I have to work (from home) late into the night. I start a process, then while I'm waiting for it to complete, I surf on over to peakoil.com and check on things. So it's not too much of a distraction, as long as it's asynchronous. PeakSpeak is usually out of the question for me. I would imagine your work doesn't have the same degree of synergy with your peak oil habit, JLK.

PonyBoy78 · Posted: Sun May 08, 2005 11:12 pm Post subject:

Hmm..

I tend to keep PO in the back of my mind for weeks at a time, then finally returning to the web to catch-up on reading materials I've missed. Of course, even though it's in the back of my head, it's a constant driving force for my future goals.

I've always wanted a nearly self-sufficient home in a rural area, even before I learned of PO a while ago. With this in the back of my head, there is added urgency to reach my goals more quickly, before this window of financial opportunity passes. I now have no excuse to mess-around with my financial planning, and my fiscal and academic disciplines are more focused than ever.

So yes, I think there can be a happy medium accomplished by pushing Peak Oil off of your mind's front burner. Just keep in mind the idea of being prepared for the future without being obsessed with it. That's the place where I (and I suspect others) have landed.

Cheers!

OilsNotWell · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 1257

The BLUE pill, you say? Denial a wonderful thing?

Go back to your regular life.

Nothing to worry about.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark Twain

Never underestimate the power of denial.
Wes Bently

How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.
Frank Herbert

The first step in the risk management process is to acknowledge the reality of risk. Denial is a common tactic that substitutes deliberate ignorance for thoughtful planning.
Charles Tremper

You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.
J. Donald Walters

Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
C. Northcote Parkinson

And I'll also tell you this: In denial, there is no freedom, only bondage. You deny truth, yet only it shall set you free.

bart · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 2:08 am Post subject:

I don't think I want to go back to unconsciousness about Peak Oil, but I do want to ease off on the obsessiveness with which I 've pursued it.

You read books and articles, talk to people, think about it. At a certain point PO becomes repetitive. You've gone about as far as you can in this phase, and it's time to move on.

PO or no, you are going to eat, sleep, have relationships, struggle, die.

PO doesn't answer the question of how you are going to have a meaningful life.

The hardships and changes that PO will impose are not unusual in history. Other people have lived through far harsher conditions that we in the industrialized countries will experience.

PO is a temporary detour from our customary lives, a time in which we look at things afresh, perhaps change course. But sooner or later, we need to get back to day-to-day life.

gg3 · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 3:10 am Post subject:

Like Johnmarkos, I often hang out on the site while I'm working on things that have wait-times; in my case waiting for batches of PBX data to upload remotely, so it's not a drain on my work time.

As far as daily mindfulness is concerned, the realities of sustainability haven't been far from my mind since, oh, about sixth grade. One can't exactly ignore a hippopotamus in the living room.

I think what happens is, people go through stages, where they first discover a problem, then read everything they can get their hands on, and go through shock, anger, grief, the usual progression. Ultimately one ends up accepting the realities at hand, and seeking to do what one can about them.

So then, I do things like retrofitting for conservation wherever possible, writing the usual letters to elected officials to support energy policies, driving less, and planning & saving for land acquisition and other measures to increase resilience for myself & those close to me.

Ultimately it's all just common sense. Like when a kid discovers that Superman is a fictional character and people can't fly by leaping into the air. So you don't go jumping off buildings, and when you want to fly you get on an airplane (as long as there are still airplanes!). Sustainability issues are like that, only longer-term.

vegasmade · Tar Sands Joined: May 01, 2005 Posts: 85

Procrastination is just lying to yourself. We've known since the first barrel was pumped that there would be a last. Now we have an ability via technology to actually begin to see that last barrel. But hey, the last isn't coming this year, so i'll put it off till then. That process has created the fervor some are now experiencing. The converse would be to grab ahold of the situation now and fix it permanently. WHAT SHALL WE DO?
_________________
remember-we don't inherit the earth from our parents, we lease it from our children

bobbyald · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 6:04 am Post subject:

heyhoser · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 6:08 am Post subject:

Like many of you, I spend time on Peakoil.com while at work waiting for a process to finish. I list things every day that I need to accomplish or do, and then I work on those things afterwards. I feel pretty at peace with it all, except when I think about my son growing up in a harder world.
If PO is 'killing' you and destroying your ability to be yourself, then, yeah, you may just want to push it back and bring it out only when you have the time to deal with it.
No one here knows what's going to happen, so this is all kind of a gamble anyway. But life is always a gamble.
My two cents.

Doly · Expert Joined: Dec 03, 2004 Posts: 4031

Pops · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 7:30 am Post subject:

If accepting death is your plan then ignoring the future is the perfect strategy! Smile

Seriously though, we are doing things somewhat different from JLK in that I still try to make money, but we are striving to live a far simpler life today than we have for the last 25 years. We don’t sleep on the ground and eat bugs, but we don’t have cable TV either. Like ponyboy, we’ve wanted to get off the merry-go-round a long time.

Though our day-to-day lives are different in many ways than only a couple of years ago, I don’t find myself obsessing about PO, die-off or mutant zombie bikers. Many times I think I spend too much time on this site, but my focus is more on the low-tech alternatives to expensive / limited energy and how to become a little more independent. In the beginning I posted a lot because I thought a site exploring not only the problem but actual ways to get through it was important – hence this forum. I look at it as my bit of community service – like GG3’s letters.

I guess it comes down to whether one is actually going to make changes in their life. The only way to decide what changes to make is to research the possibilities, then make a guess how to deal with what seems the most likely outcome. If on the other hand, one isn’t willing to make any changes, and doesn’t enjoy flagellating themselves with fantasies of doom just for fun, it seems only sensible to ignore the whole thing.

Of course none of this answers your question of whether one can actually convince themselves that everything is going to be OK - because I have no idea! Smile

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accept_death · Tar Sands Joined: May 02, 2005 Posts: 36

Hmm, to give some additional background on my condition; I've always been a pretty depressed person. Even in the booming Clinton years, I entertained thoughts of suicide on a daily basis. While I wasn't particularly serious about going through with it (After all, I was only an adolescent, I'm 22 now), getting through those years was very difficult. Upon graduating High School and finding a college I was excited about, I had a couple years of extreme hope. I felt I'd paid my dues as a depressed youngster, and now was ready to go about my life as a member of this society. I'd found an interest (film) that while it wasn't "lucrative" in its own right, our wealthy society made it possible for me to do it even if I wouldn't make tons of money. I could get by on the table scraps (by taking a minimum wage job here and there, living frugally). The cheapness of digital video and the internet made a satisfying life on a low income seem possible and appealing to me. Coincidently this was also about the time I learned to drive, and recieved a car. I loved the freedom this gave me, and I began taking an extreme interest in our infrastructure, as I could now tour it with such ease. The visual landscape fascinated me to no end, and I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself to making films about it.

I guess there is still time to go about doing what I want. In fact, I now believe filming our landscape today is a more noble activity than I first thought, considering how it's likely to change drastically (not so much the buildings themselves, but rather how we use them, AKA a traffic jam on the highway, people in the future might forget what those looked like). But it comes at the expense of my own personal future benefit in that I doubt filmmaking will be around in a low energy future. The skills I'd acquire as a filmmaker would be useless come post peak. In that sense I feel as if I'm wasting my time, even though I'm doing something I love.

I'm probably rambling on too much but it seems that while I certainly take an interest in sustainability matters, they aren't something I want to participate in to a massive degree. I still want to live in a city, but a relatively sustainable one though, like Portland, OR. I still want to drive, but not in my daily life, just the occasional trip out into the wilderness, I'll bike locally. I still want to own a house eventually, but a modest (by today's standards) 1,000 sf well-built bungalow in a dense neighborhood. I'll do what I can to make it sustainable, grow a garden on my small patch of land, put up solar panels, etc. Basically, while I'm willing to do some things to reduce my consumption, I don't know if I'm willing to go "all out" and do something like join an eco-village in the middle of nowhere, or "live of the land" . It's hard to tell if the changes I'm willing (or not willing) to make are enough to warrant full fledged denial of a potentially far more serious crisis that will make my "American Dream" unattainable. Even if I consider my dream to be pretty modest compared to some people's.

In the meantime I'm holding onto the above dream in order to get myself through what's turned out to be a rather difficult semester of college that's making me somewhat bitter, considering the ridiculously high tuition my parents paid to send me here. Next year should be much better though, where I can do a thesis film on whatever I want... If only I can hang on and deal with the current anxiety a couple more weeks. I think one of the biggest reasons for my recent depression is how disillusioned I am with leftist politics in academia. Growing up in a right-wing household, I thought I might have found a group of people more to my liking. Instead I find myself pandering to my proffessors their PC politics so they will sign my pass forms. It makes me ill.

But that's my basic story. As far as how it relates to me original question, I think it puts me on a middle ground. I want to acknoweldge peak oil - lite, but not peak oil - "oh sh*t, this is serious".

bruin · Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 12:54 pm Post subject:

Realistically, there is not a lot you can do in 5 years, which should be into the PO years by many forecasts.

Mostly, you can start paying down debt and getting rid of the gas guzzler before it is worth nothing.

If you happen to work in a very oil dependent job, it would be wise to switch before your coworkers are looking for a job with you.