[Interfector]

I'm just wondering what is the mentality behind it. You could say people don't like to talk of doom and gloom, but it seems like it's more than that. Peak Oil is being lumped in with whacko conspiracy theories, rather than being seen as a scientific fact, which it is, and hence there has been up to now little (or not enough) serious discussion of it, because doing so gets one labelled as a whacko doom monger. How has this situation come about?

[wisconsin_cur]

I'm just wondering what is the mentality behind it. You could say people don't like to talk of doom and gloom, but it seems like it's more than that. Peak Oil is being lumped in with whacko conspiracy theories, rather than being seen as a scientific fact, which it is, and hence there has been up to now little (or not enough) serious discussion of it, because doing so gets one labelled as a whacko doom monger. How has this situation come about?

It is at odds with the dominant myth of the day...

The myth, essentially, tells us that we are in the midst of perpetual progress and growth... the idea of limits of energy and peak oil works against that myth.

[Nano]

I think it is because being concerned about Peak Oil implies that one doesn't have faith in human ingenuity or human compassion when dealing with scarcity.

People who are concerned about Peak Oil are invariably Luddites and/or misanthropists. And everyone hates a Luddite or misanthropist.

[Revi]

Peak oil is obvious and scary to most people. You can't talk about the obvious. It's like the Emperor's new clothes.

[Cashmere]

Biology.

It's the reason I'm such a doomer.

People are hard wired to be bad planners. Very bad planners.

Essentially, we evolved enough to plan for a year's harvest, but just barely.

Humans live mostly for the moment, with just enough providence included to ensure survival through the winter.

Darwinism.

Back on the plains of Africa, 200,000 years ago, planning for 20 years out would have been wasted energy. With life as tenuous as it must have been, the only goal would have been, (RIP Jimmy V), to survive and breed on.

Kill, eat, fornicate, gather, eat, fornicate.

The only reason that life expectancy increased beyond 35 years was, mostly, fossil fuels. Some people throw out that "germ theory" helped increase life expectancy. True, but, IMO, mostly in concert with FF use. Without fossil fuels, treatment and prevention of epidemics becomes extremely difficult, even if we know what's causing the problem.

So fast forward a few hundred thousand years. We're mostly hardwired in the same way, but we've adapted to modern life.

That hardwiring, however, ensures that we don't plan too far into the future. Not most of us, anyway.

What else explains destructive use of credit to buy crap, obesity, tooth decay, and so on?

Eat up and add that fat, because in a month you may not eat.

That worked until recently.

It will work again shortly.

So the answer is the biology. We're programmed to avoid consideration of such epic catastrophes.

People have lived in the shadows of active volcanoes since there were city centers.

Live for today. Live for now. Biology governs. Breed. Breed. Let the guy across the street plan for 10 years from now.

Your DNA has a secret - (what happens 10 years from now is irrelevant to you if you've meanwhile died childless).

[Daniel_Plainview]

According to James H. Kunstler, society is in a "consensus trance" -- the idea that everything's OK and everyone agrees that everything's OK; the idea that the world has always been stable and the economy will keep going no matter what.

According to Richard Heinberg, the reality of peak oil is "bad for business," so corporations have an incentive to refrain from discussing the realities of peak oil, and its consequences.

[Cashmere]

According to James H. Kunstler, society is in a "consensus trance" -- the idea that everything's OK and everyone agrees that everything's OK; the idea that the world has always been stable and the economy will keep going no matter what.

He's described it, but not explained it.

According to Richard Heinberg, the reality of peak oil is "bad for business," so corporations have an incentive to refrain from discussing the realities of peak oil, and its consequences.

I agree, and that explains why corporate interests don't talk about it. But it doesn't explain why consumers don't.

[ROCKMAN]

All very interesting insights. And I hate to be the one to bring in what I believe is a rather simple and possibly equally common problem: absolute ignorance. I do volunteer work at inner city schools (rock and mineral show and tells). I show kids and their teachers what common things around us are made from (dry wall from gypsum, pennies from copper, etc). If course this all new for the 4th graders. But the college educated teachers often tend to be shocked at how many common items are made from various earth resouce materials. It will be difficult to accept but many don't even understand the relationship between plastics and hydrocarbons. You would expect teachers to have a much better grasp of earth resources than some burger flipper. But they often disappoint me. Additionally, it's human nature to not want to advertise our ignorance on any particular subject. Thus, even though unsure of the facts, many won't explore an area lest they show their lack of understanding.

If one has to begin the discussion by explaining that oil isn't found in giant underground lakes formed by dead dinosaurs it's unlikely you'll hold their attention through an expose on the Export Land Model.

[happychicken]

Governments want constant growth and progress.

Consumers are brainwashed by advertising into believing that having more and more is good for them and will make them happy, even though plenty of studies show that you don't get "extra" happiness above a certain level of GDP.

The thought of losing all they have and going back to a simpler way of life terrifies people.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is my all-time favourite book and even though he wrote it in 1932 it is probably more relevent now than it was then. For anyone who's never read it, it's set in a future when people worship Ford (the car manufacturer) and they are brainwashed constantly from before birth with phrases like "Isn't progress lovely?"

The majority of people can't climb off what I've heard described as the "hedonistic treadmill", constantly wanting to be better than their neighbours or friends with the bigger car, the better holiday etc.

I'd like to see a trend towards onedownmanship. I'm perfecting the art. Whenever someone boasts about their holiday this summer, for example, I've said "I had a staycation, it was great. I don't need to go away to enjoy myself". My colleague at work got a new flashy car. I replied and said I'd got a new bike.

[Ludi]

People who are concerned about Peak Oil are invariably Luddites and/or misanthropists.

False.

[Ludi]

I'd like to see a trend towards onedownmanship. I'm perfecting the art. Whenever someone boasts about their holiday this summer, for example, I've said "I had a staycation, it was great. I don't need to go away to enjoy myself". My colleague at work got a new flashy car. I replied and said I'd got a new bike.

I love it!

[ReverseEngineer]

To state what should be obvious, 99% of the population of human beings are INCREDIBLY stupid. They can't discuss Peak Oil, they don't even grasp the concept of scarcity. Reminds me of trying to teach the concept of Density to a bunch of 9th graders in a nice middle class school. "heavy thnigs sink" was what 27 out of 30 kids held onto as a concept, no matter WHAT I did to demonstrate that the volume with respect to the volume of water displaced mattered in this (to my mind) very straightforward analysis. Forget trying to get them to make a simple division of Mass/Volume, they couldn't grasp the representation of the variables by letters. 9th GRADERS I am talking about here! Dumb as ROCKS!

These are the folks that become Political Leaders and Oil Company Executives. They are just seriously stupid people.

You wonder why I am such a strict Darwinist? People this stupid DESERVE to be dead. Its just unfortunate the stupidity swamps out anyone who has a clue.

Revrse Engineer

[happychicken]

"People who are concerned about Peak Oil are invariably Luddites and/or misanthropists. And everyone hates a Luddite or misanthropist."

I would argue the opposite.

Anyone who is not concerned about peak oil is a Luddite. Of all the peak oilers I know personally, including myself, none are Luddites.

Anyone who is not concerned about peak oil hates not only themself but the rest of mankind.

happychicken

[Ludi]

People this stupid DESERVE to be dead. Its just unfortunate the stupidity swamps out anyone who has a clue.

This from a guy who claims to be a pleasant person, a nice guy.

99% of us DESERVE to be dead, he says.

Take note.

[ReverseEngineer]

People this stupid DESERVE to be dead. Its just unfortunate the stupidity swamps out anyone who has a clue.

This from a guy who claims to be a pleasant person, a nice guy.

99% of us DESERVE to be dead, he says.

Take note.

You make the grade as having enough common sense to Plan for the Future Put yourself in the 1% who deserve to live

I would also put you on my team Ludi. You are a fighter. You just haven't had to make the choices yet that will bring out your toughness, but I think you will be as tough as you need to be when TSHTF.

Reverse Engineer

[Roccland]

I'm just wondering what is the mentality behind it. You could say people don't like to talk of doom and gloom, but it seems like it's more than that. Peak Oil is being lumped in with whacko conspiracy theories, rather than being seen as a scientific fact, which it is, and hence there has been up to now little (or not enough) serious discussion of it, because doing so gets one labelled as a whacko doom monger. How has this situation come about?

To understand PO - one needs to understand Overshoot.

One does not want to believe their son or daughter further taxes an already broke system.

We all think we are too important and "special"...

It is the "other guy" who must go.

[Byron100]

To state what should be obvious, 99% of the population of human beings are INCREDIBLY stupid. They can't discuss Peak Oil, they don't even grasp the concept of scarcity. Reminds me of trying to teach the concept of Density to a bunch of 9th graders in a nice middle class school. "heavy thnigs sink" was what 27 out of 30 kids held onto as a concept, no matter WHAT I did to demonstrate that the volume with respect to the volume of water displaced mattered in this (to my mind) very straightforward analysis. Forget trying to get them to make a simple division of Mass/Volume, they couldn't grasp the representation of the variables by letters. 9th GRADERS I am talking about here! Dumb as ROCKS!

These are the folks that become Political Leaders and Oil Company Executives. They are just seriously stupid people.

You wonder why I am such a strict Darwinist? People this stupid DESERVE to be dead. Its just unfortunate the stupidity swamps out anyone who has a clue.

Revrse Engineer

And why might this be? All that high-fructose corn syrup that parents feed their kids by the truckload? All those hours of mindless TV watching, the so-called "universal babysitter"? Or is it due to lack of "family time" like they used to have in the old days, due to the paradigm of the 2-income family? Or is it how our educational system is currently structured as to virtually guarantee to squelch any desire for learning by the time kids reach the 4th grade?

I say it's a combination of all the above. No wonder why high-schoolers today are so stupid...as we made them that way. It's our damn fault, and we're going to have to live with what we've sowed.

The stupid kids don't deserve to die...it's the Idiot Generation of the 20th Century that made them that way that deserve to go the way of the Dodo bird. Left to their own devices, I bet 90% of these kids would just do fine in the post-peak era. It's the rest of us that are going to have to answer to the spirit of Charles Darwin. Just wait and see...it'll not be long now...

[sittinguy]

Most people want to keep their heads in the sand. The IT guy I work with, is VERY smart, and he literally sticks his fingers in his ears, and goes lalalalal. When I talk about it

Its a big fat What If thing. Yes we all know its fact but, when? It could be 10 more years of more who knows.

So you can't exactly tell someone, this is it! buy food and guns NOW.

Most older people believe everything will work out, Its just like the 70s or 80s or 90s or whatever.
I kinda believe it will work out somehow also. Everyone is just going to get poor.

Look at the example our gov is sending everyone, Bailouts, stimulas checks. FREE MONEY FOR EVERYONE.

So why would the sheeple think any differently.

[RonMN]

From my perspective, it's not simply that people are dumb...They resist bad news (doom) with a passion.

My first experience with this was when I was in computer programming school in 1991 & was told about the Y2K problem. I explained the sitch to my friends & they found it quite interesting, & were all willing to discuss it...after all, it was 9 years away so there was no immenant threat.

As we got closer (say 1998) they started to refuse to hear of it any further...so for the most part, I stopped talking about it.

By mid 1999 (after NOT talking about it for quite a while) my friends & family members would bring up the subject just in order to verbally attack me...the closer we got, the more hostility came my way (even though I was still NOT bringing up the subject).

I can't tell you how many people quoted me as saying "it would be the end of the world"...no, I never said that...not even close.

This again changed in the last 2 weeks of 1999...people of all sorts (friends, family, even co-workers) said (with fear in their voice) if anything bad happened, they would just come to my house They still had no intention of filling up a single gallon of water...they would just "come to my house".

Even my sis called me up & told me that the news stations had really let her down...They were all saying that you were a fool if you were preparring, then in the last week the news was saying that you were a fool if you had not prep'd already...she just couldn't believe how irresponsible the NEWS STATIONS had been.

That all changed back to ridicule & laughter once Y2K ended up to be a non event.

So what would you call this? Stupidity? Lazy? Denial? I do agree that it's totally bizare behavior, yet very common.

I don't discuss P.O. with anybody (except here)...why put myself in harms way? Y2K taught me this lesson well!

[Ludi]

I would also put you on my team Ludi.

I wouldn't be on your team even if you paid me.

I despise and abhor your attitude.