6 ways to become more miserable about climate change and peak oil
It’s bad enough that most middle-class people still have to struggle to keep their jobs and homes in today’s Second Great Depression.
But if you’re even a little bit awake, then you also have to worry about longer-term threats: climate change, Fukushima, peak oil and the impending collapse of industrial civilization.
There’s plenty of reason for anyone to be depressed these days. Yet, somehow, some people still manage to keep calm and carry on.
So, for the ordinary person who thinks that happiness is for dopes and who needs a little help finding their way to the bottom, therapist Cloe Madanes offers “14 Habits of Highly Miserable People.”
Here, for those who are energy- and climate-aware, I offer my own adaptation of Madanes’s six top points to succeed at self-sabotage:
Be afraid, be very afraid, of economic loss. If you know that fiat currency is about to collapse and take the global financial system down with it, then you certainly won’t bother changing jobs, trying to start a new business or helping make your community more resilient. Just buy some gold and wait for the inevitable. Meanwhile, keep showing up at that soul-sucking cubicle job.
Practice sustained boredom. Convince yourself that your city is full of mainstream fools too stupid to dodge the can of whoop-ass that’s about to hit them in the head. And don’t forget that people are utterly predictable and will always let you down.
Give yourself a negative identity. Why not start telling others that you’re a Depressed Person, or at least a dissenter against everything that Western Civilization, patriarchy and capitalism stand for?
Attribute bad intentions. If you disagree with someone on climate change or energy, it must mean they’re a greedy bastard or just a dupe of the system. No need to listen to anything they say — except to mock it later on.
Always be alert and in a state of anxiety. The ultimate doomer-prepper stance. Be like Noah and make your home an ark. You don’t want to be caught napping when the whole house of cards comes down.
Glorify or vilify the past. It really doesn’t matter whether you think humanity made a wrong turn at the Industrial Revolution, in the Fertile Crescent or with the election of Ted Cruz. Maybe the time in which you were cursed to be born is the ultimate dark age. Or it could be that today’s world, whose ecological awareness and freedom from ancient superstitions gives us so much promise, is the victim of the flawed Weltanschaung of previous generations. Either way, the fix is in and you’re screwed!
In the Dark Ages, the benighted peasant worried that Satan was always at his back.
In today’s scientific era, the eco-doomer is way past that. He knows that an industrial-strength climate disaster, energy crisis or financial panic is just around the corner. Society has got to collapse by the end of the first quarter of next year at the very latest.
OK, let’s get serious folks.
Nobody can say how much time humanity, industrial society or any one of us has left. Even without world-threatening catastrophes, you or I could get hit by a bus while crossing the street to work tomorrow morning.
So it makes good sense to follow the advice of religious teachers and secular sages alike. That is, to live each day as if it were our last. And then, to make the most of that day. Part of that is being grateful for the pain of just living.
As John Keats said, “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
– Erik Curren, Transition Voice
H/T PO.com
Philosophically I like what James Dean is rumored to have said,
"Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today."
I guess in the PO/CC world, lots of us are somewhere between the incapacitated depressive on one hand and the single-minded prepper/transitioner on the other, maybe on a daily basis, LOL.
Like someone commented on the front page, as a kid I practiced duck and cover (just like today's kids practice "Hide from the Shooter") but various other childhood experiences and of course the Tales of the Olden Days; the Great Depression, Life In General Before Happy Motoring, etc, led me to believe things are anomalously easy right now.
Since we moved to Missouri with it's very variable weather we came up with a saying for when it's nice: Soak it up now, Suck it up tomorrow! That is kinda how I view life at the Peak, enjoy it now because it is the exception not the rule.
I admire the Tranny Town folks like Erik and the Local food people and organic gardeners and the "Slow" everything folks – all the latter day sweet-smelling, well-heeled hippies who I read on Resilience.org. But I have to say I feel they are struggling to put a happy face and picnic attitude on the stark reality of a future of declining surpluses and fewer energy slaves.
I think we should take a longer view.
We've talked in the past on this board about when the US Empire Peaked. This first little chart has lately been on my mind, it shows percent of total primary energy and oil peaking in 1970.:
This second plot is a longer view, absolute heat content (EIA):
Per capita energy consumption showing the initial peak and the China Coal Blip (Gail):
This one showing primary energy consumption per capita vs the Debt/GDP ratio (Bardi):
And just one more:
I don't expect us all to be hoofing it to the work camp come next August. In fact I think worrying about overnight armageddon masks the fact that while we've been iWalking staring at our iWhatsits, we've fallen into the Center Court Fountain of slow motion collapse. The long decline appears to me to be firmly in place as indicated by the inflection point around 1970 in each of those plots above. There is no doubt in my mind that Big Data and instant communication (plus containerized transport and high-speed trading) have added much more "productivity" (read "less wage overhead") to the system than energy efficiency these last 40 years.
My point then is simply that we're like a frog looking over the pot-rim fretting about the butcher knife. No use being miserable about impending doom, it isn't just around the corner. As Madge said:
"You're soaking in it."
.
A weeks work and we can invest in more money saving. It's unusual being poorer than ever, but feeling richer than ever!
