Coping with Awareness

Stellarwind72 proposed we write an essay on how to remain in good mental health while being aware of our overshoot predicament.

I have assembled here ideas from thirteen un-Denial participants plus my own.

If any reader would like to add their own list of tips, please send me a message and I will update the essay with your contribution.

14-Jun-2024 Friend Jack Alpert, who has developed the only viable plan to minimize suffering and retain some of our species’ best accomplishments, has contributed to this compilation.

ABC

The insights of yours truly, on how to engage with the predicament. 

“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”
– Richard Dawkins

“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
– Thucydides

Both statements are correct, philosophically one might describe them followingly. 

Natural selection:

  • “Dao; The Way” 

Maximum Power Principle:

  • “Nietzsche; The Will To Power”

How to perceive the predicament?

  • Strive for power, as an act of self-preservation.

Death is indifferent.

  • What is there to lose?

Charles

We are waiting for the barbarians while getting a free ride and think we are in charge. 

It’s time for a doomer’s jubilee.

Yes, I am happy with what’s happening in the world. Whatever the outcome. Whatever the way it unravels. (Which doesn’t mean I don’t have problems which come and go and need to be solved, up and downs, fears and obsessions probably like many.)

I so wanted to share with you the ticket out of thinker’s hell, out of humanist’s hell. It turns out to be hard. It all seems so simple now, that I don’t even remember what exactly triggered a change of state.

I could try to recount my encounter with non-duality. I could list some of the leads I followed: Ramana Maharshi, UG Krishnamurti, Swami Prajnanpad, Ramesh Balsekar, Paul Hedderman. And, how one day, the whole mental edifice crumbled. The whole indoctrination of science, layers upon layers painstakingly acquired during years of learning, repetition and practice, nothing but rumbles. Not to be replaced.

Would it be understood (comparing science to a belief system is anathema to many: sometimes the only way to notice we are wearing a pair of glasses is to try wearing another one)? Would it be of any use? Isn’t one of the points that no generalization is possible, that every one’s experience is fiercely unique.

Maybe it’s the realisation that there is a limit to our ability to predict the future, or that the worst already happened (more than once) in the past (the Shoah, Native American genocide, …), or witnessing so many experts defending tooth and nail their own version of truth, or noticing that imagination of a dreaded outcome has nothing to do with the actual experience, or going through some hardships and realising that things just go on, or that the world is 1 without 2 (it is as it is and not some imaginary else), or seeing how tough life is on most people yet they somehow manage, or that it’s always all an experience, good or bad, it’s entertaining (like I am the station in front of which trains come and go and I have no agency on which type of trains or the schedule. So I might just as well enjoy the show), or realising the shallowness of the myths that have been stacked one upon each other (by religion, by science, by the self, by the mind, …) and for which we deploy so much fervour and energy.

Maybe it’s simply the recurring small encounters with beauty, with life. Gardening does that for me, fearlessly exchanging with people to reach the depths and truth of an aspect of their mental shape too (as we are doing now), or just greedily inhaling every small details reaching my small field of consciousness.

Or, it may just be getting bored of negativity.

As much as I had wished to share this state, it seems not to be really communicable. It will dawn on you, I am sure. And some day, you will be suddenly laughing out loud in the middle of the fields. If anybody sees you then, they will think all that worrying ended up getting the best of you. 🙂

Anyway, thank you for finding and periodically bringing to our attention smart people doing original thinking on this topic of collapse. I am grateful for your clear eyesight, your ability to separate the chaff from the wheat. Especially, it has been a great support during covid.

To conclude, here are the most important ideas I want to share:

Redemption, betterment, moksha, liberation, self-realization, illumination, enlightedment, progress, self-improvement, planet rescue… As if the world could be any different than it is. As if it could be improved upon. As if we had control. As if the dynamic of life were a math problem with an optimum solution. If you meet the Buddha, kill him. I say burn them all, Fahrenheit 451 style: Buddha, Jesus, Darwin, Einstein, Malthus, the Meadows. They clutter our souls. Time for renewal. Snap out of any form of idealism, absolutely any kind of indoctrination. Now the earth was formless and empty. Go back there and start anew.

To me, it’s thinking which shapes our experience by arbitrarily slicing, labelling everything, arbitrarily picking a perimeter to focus on (identification), a start and an end, creating concepts: birth, death, progress, evolution, species, collapse, NPK (chemistry), MPP, MORT, you name it… That’s all delusional. There is no way anything can be understood. It is not meant to. And that’s fine. There is nothing to be either fearful, angry, saddened or cheerful about. It is just as it is. And that’s awe-striking.

As far as I understand, this is UG Krishnamurti, this is non-duality (not 2, which does not imply 1 either).

And then, there is all that matters, that which can’t be put in words…

el mar

el mar´s approach:

Take care!

  • Be friendly and balanced, don’t believe every bullshit.
  • Be peaceful, self-critical but don’t put up with everything.
  • “Come down”, think “small”, for species-appropriate human husbandry.
  • Buy regionally, support local producers, manufacturers and craftspeople. Eat healthy, fresh, unprocessed food
  • Start a kitchen garden. Start small.
  • Learn something crafty and practical.
  • Cooperate and share with like-minded people.
  • Listen to your inner voice – not to ideologues and pied pipers from the right and left.
  • Avoid mass consumption and mass media.
  • Inspire other people to join this movement.

Saludos

Florian

It’s pretty funny to me, I’m a “young person” (< 40 years) and I’m not following a single of Robs points.

I live in a big city (I was born here) and work in tech (which I enjoy within reason) and I can afford to only work 30h. In a slow collapse scenario I will have to trade my database knowledge for food lol but, personally, this is not the future I envision.

My own version of the future is a lot more bleak so I live my life of pleasure, sitting comfortably in my office hardly working knowing that it could end next month, year or decade. Which also has it upsides because I don’t need to worry about my retirement.

Gaia

Do you remember my post on suffering that you decided should be a guest essay (and that quite floored me to see my words the next day front and centre!)? My core outpouring then, and even more now, is the question, was it all worth it? That so few have benefited so much at the expense of so many? Even to the point of the destruction of our biosphere, endangering life systems at the macro and molecular level through our hubris in thinking we can grasp power and control far beyond our reach. In my darkest hours I feel that deepest, helpless, purging sorrow is the only true emotion we can justifiably claim; all other feelings and reactions to our existence are derivative of our denial that allows us to continue living so. It’s denial that keeps me as positive and equanimous as I seem to all around, if anything I feel an imposter as I should be more depressed and grieving for the world and humanity as a whole.
I consider this recent post a continuation of that lament on suffering and even more a personal outcry of remorse and regret that I was not as conscious of my role and responsibility in the greater good and suffering as I could have been, or if I was aware, I certainly was not courageous as I know is rightful in failing to use my one life boldly to declare justice as others have done.

As children, we naturally understand and feel injustice aggrievedly, possibly because we are otherwise helpless and dependent upon the goodness of others, but also in our naivete and innocence we trust that others know and care how we feel, and would treat us as we and they wish to be. Through a thousand thousand cuts of disappointment and breaches of trust, cog-turning assimilation into the culture and society into which we were born, it comes to pass that we throw off that banner of righteousness and justice in exchange for a yoke of resignation and complacency. We carry our burden with hardly a murmur, willingly or not, wittingly or not, so we can stake our claim of existence in this society upon which we are wholly dependent. To conform with the dominant tribe is our survival strategy, and the more complex our society becomes, it is clear that for the masses there is little choice but to continue the status quo or be cast out. We come to realize our relative individual unimportance to the system, so it is not much of a step to endorse anothers’ insignificance, especially those outside of our tribe. Then it is no matter at all to deny their right to existence, and all manner of injustices become justified. For all my complicitness of inaction, I shall bear my own guilt. It is through recognition of myself in the majority that will lead to my release of judgment for them, and if by grace I can come to some measure of forgiveness, I hope to absolve myself a little, too.

Truth to tell, at some level we know we are here because someone else is not, we have because someone else does not. My ancestors survived at the cost of another, and now I have my material life at the expense of another. There is no way else to balance this equation, however we try to reconcile it. It is all justified because we are who we are, and they are who they are–as in the developed world, complete and worthy, still deciding if the “developing” ones have a right to exist. The colour of our skin, the language we speak, the land we find ourselves, and most expediently, the exchange rate we decided upon, keeps everyone in their own respective domain and hierarchy of who shall have and not have. We call it fair trade to keep us in the West living in our high standard whilst those whose labour and resources we have stolen through our inflated dollars can only keep living in their degraded standards. Any child can see through this unfairness which we have called our globalised world. Genocide still may be abhorrent, but slavery, as long as it is at arm’s length, has its merits. I am a beneficiary of this and cannot and will not erase that stain upon my conscience. We need not wait for AI to overcome our humanity; we have already given away a greater part of that when as a species we chose to continue following the algorithms of power as a method for survival instead of allowing our still small voice of conscience to heed the golden rule. Until we embrace the earth as our village and kinship with all life, we are quite alone on this blue-green planet, spinning alone in this corner of the universe.

I contend that we all have the possibility of a Hitler as well as Mother Theresa–the only difference is quantity of intention and scope of action, but the quality is already in us. It must be so if we are a species together, the family trait of both runs deep and will out given the right circumstances. Our continued survival as a species has depended on at times dominance and exploitation, and at other times, cooperation and altruism. Daily we balance between the spectrum in all our decisions, whether consciously or not. As a species, we perhaps could never have evolved differently, but gifted with the birthright of consciousness and conscience, individually we could have chosen differently. We know it can be done because it has been done, we all have done it–have risen to the occasion of defending the defenseless, be it a rescued bird or standing for a friend against a bully. Courage in those moments is a direct line to our hearts, bypassing our brains working out what is in it for us. I daresay those are the times we felt most alive and sure of our purpose, the moments when we consider anothers’ well-being before our own. This quality of beneficence is every bit a part of our species as well, all we lack is consistency, which is the mark of mastery. Whilst some rare few may achieve instant enlightenment, the other path, however long and arduous, will also reach the goal through awareness and effort. We must be able to practice our kindness and goodness; it matters not how small the task before us as we have the quality already, it is merely the quantity we can choose to increase or withhold. We can choose kindness and rightfulness again and again, until it is no longer a choice but defines us.

Despite these physically, mentally, and emotionally draining times, I am going along as well as I can be, seizing the joy and wonder in every day as I know how precious life, and the passing time that unravels life, are. I now understand clearly why Cicero (considered a Skeptic, not a Stoic) stated that gratitude is the greatest of and the parent of all virtues. I find comfort in managing the daily tasks that so many wish they could do with as much freedom and ease as I have enjoyed all my life, and in helping others by being more generous with my time through practical action or listening ear. Giving back is the choice I am hanging onto for having the privilege of receiving so much. Knowing now as I do that our life of continued ease will be greatly foreshortened due to our own making, crystalises for me the certainty that my remaining days and choices are fast becoming last chances to consolidate what I have learned as a human being on this planet. And even more importantly, to prove to myself that my life has been an examined one and the highest version of what I can be. Whilst I cannot save humanity, I can still save the part of me that can be more grateful, kind, compassionate, accepting and forgiving. It is the only and true thing remaining for me to do, and for which my entire life was preparation.

Rob here, I’ve added to Gaia’s contribution a powerful paragraph she wrote as a comment a month ago:

The on-going genocide of the Palestinians really nailed it for me. Now we know that given the opportunity, we would act just the same way the majority of Germans did, in turning a blind eye to what we know is morally unjust and thinking we can continue with our own lives. We will watch the slaughter and deplore it, but why don’t we have the courage to upend our lives by doing something radical in effort to stop it? It’s the same for the response to Covid. It seems the most radical thing a Westerner can do (and more power to the pro-Palestine youngsters at universities who still have heart and guts) is publicly protest but why are we not all walking out of our jobs or going on hunger strikes and the like? What does it take to really take a stand, to deliberately override every instinct of survival by choosing suffering and even death (like Aaron Bushnell, who conflagrated himself) for an ideal? The drive to protect ourselves and just keep living the lives we are accustomed, especially us in the West is overwhelming–we have too much to lose and we know we cannot survive outside our system. We are workers in the hive, and we are programmed for only the hive. Knowing this, we finally come to understand that we are not free beings and never have been, but that does not mean we do not still have choice and our internal world can be closer to what we want to make it. That’s why the Stoic philosophy is particularly attractive to me; I have succumbed to relinquishing any hope of changing the outer world but I can still find meaning, purpose and joy in life by improving my inner self.

Hamish McGregor

There are no specific actions I take, to help with coping – unless being constantly negative, whining, passive aggressive and excess criticism (of everything) counts.

Hideaway

In working out where we are headed, I cope via a variety of mechanisms. We are a close family, my wife and our children, and we come from close families, so there is always the following of everyone’s progress through life as a positive to look forward to. We are financially well off, as I’ve invested well by predicting the way the world would try to head, given what I know of resources, which has allowed our children to have a much easier path. They are well aware of my findings and none of our children, in their 30’s, have chosen to have kids, so no grandchildren to worry about. They say they will just return to the farm when civilization collapses.

I have native areas of bush (forest for non Aussies) on our property that are regenerating from before we bought, 40 years ago. Taking a long walk through these areas gives a regenerative feel for the world overall. Life will go on after us, until it can’t, but will spring up somewhere else in the universe. Life is for living and I enjoy spreading the word of what’s happening in reality, so it doesn’t get me down at all. We have plenty of food, heat when necessary and great shelter that we built with our own hands. I cut wood from our bush for heating the house, mostly from storm damage, or dead/dying trees as the bush goes through it’s natural succession, so providing our own heat source in winter is also cathartic.

I get a type of internal peace knowing that there is no purpose to life, it just exists, so making the most of it with as many different experiences as possible in great company is what counts. being part of a like minded community of thinkers at un-Denial also helps with sanity as it clearly shows I’m not ‘out of my mind’ with my findings on the direction of the world, so thanks to all contributors at un-Denial and especially to Rob for hosting the site..

Jack Alpert @ https://skil.org/

I am not going to prep for the down slope for four reasons:

  1. There is no protection from the roving hoards. Both, preppers and non-preppers, will end up with nothing to eat but each other very quickly — probably in the next 50 years and most certainly in a hundred years.
  2. Running, hiding, and being the last man eating the last can of corn in the last cupboard is not what I want to work toward.
  3. I cannot drink a good glass of wine and watch the sunset without guilt.
  4. That I am old and I might make it out of here before tragedy strikes brings me no joy.

I will feel bad every day if I do not try to fix things I can see are broken.

Some fixes I do not care to work on. I am done being distracted by efforts to fix the miss perceptions and dysfunctional behaviors resulting from our limbic brain which evolved too slowly to keep up with our cognitive capacities to create civilization’s momentum.

My work focus each day:

  1. Define a viable Human Earth system in terms of behavior that controls  mass and energy flows that can exist continuously without degradation of the earth’s productive capacity.
  2. Define the collective behavior required to transition to this Human Earth system.
  3. Implement the required behavior:
  • i) Extracting bad behavior takers from the population:
    • a) Old age deaths
    • b) Starvation deaths
    • c) Deaths from violence
  • ii) Coerce the required behavior from the remaining population:
    • a) Physical enslavement
    • b) Social contract enslavement
  • iii) Create universal upgrade in cognitive processes in every living person.

Some milestones on this journey:

The existing 8 billion people living today will not be living in 2100. They will have died from:

  1. Old age
  2. Starvation
  3. Violence

The human population that exists in 2100 will be the sum of births after today. If the system that is viable under the above definitions is only 50 million that means births will have to be limited to about 500,000 a year.

If we have only natural births, not test tube babies, that will initially be only 1 birth for every 140 woman, but will increase until it reaches 2.00 in 50 years.

Implementing this will be a challenge.

At one extreme it will require immediate sterilization of 8 billion people with some mechanism for refertilization to get 500,000 annual births.

This path creates great injury and can only be selected when compared to the worse alternative of an estimated 13.4 billion people dying of starvation and conflict during the next 80 years on the present path.

The rest of the transition is equally painful and difficult to implement.

I expect that existing cultural machinery will struggle and probably fail in making a transition to the defined viable civilization. It is more likely to descend into a dark age — probably with little chance of recovery to present science and technology.

Some other more powerful transition mechanisms may be applied by groups or individuals to our predicament. Individuals may soon become powerful enough to sterilize the 8 billion. Others may become capable of culling any portion of the 8 billion.

These options may be implemented (not abiding current ethics) with much lower total lives or environments injured.

These alternative paths forward for the human experiment on earth may be selected and implemented  independent of existing organizations.

I have worked my entire adult life understanding the creation of cognitive processes that if they were universal among the 8 billion, the collected behavior to implement a viable earth system would be possible. Each individual behavior would result with the same reliability as that individual selecting to not step off the curb in front of a rushing bus.

I have made much progress but lacking a quick and universal way of inserting these cognitive abilities into a whole global population over night I imagine the individual-produced interventions of sterilization and culling to be implemented to avoid the unrecoverable dark age on our horizon.

marromai

As far as I can see, it always comes down to the same thing: oneself is powerless when it comes to the big picture, you can only make sure that you and your loved ones are doing well. That’s also what I try to do as best as I can (like the closing words from my first guest post – carpe diem).

My coping methods are:

  • I am present at work because I need the money, but I only do the minimum required. I know that our economic system is doomed, but I cannot survive without it because I am inevitably a part of it.
  • I avoid the mass media and scrutinize any news.
  • The state is not my friend. I avoid contact wherever possible. State rules and laws are interpreted as flexibly as possible to my advantage (of course only where they don’t harm other people).
  • Most people don’t know what I know or dismiss it as nonsense. I keep my knowledge to myself and don’t try to “convert” anyone.
  • Current “Science” is just another religion – I know that I know nothing. However, (old) science offers us models and techniques that explain many things well or have made them possible in the first place. I use these where it makes sense to me.
  • I am not afraid of death, because I will return to the big picture – only dying could be unpleasant…
  • We will never understand the big picture, because as long as we are alive we are a split-off part of it, and can therefore never observe it in its entirety.
  • “I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief because there will be so much to look forward to.” (Donnie Darko)

But nonetheless:

  • Try not to worry too much – as long as I can survive this day, the next one will also be possible. It’s like an incremental approach on living 🙂

To conclude with a quote from “A Book for No One“:

We should stop sinking into depressive moods we have created and start enjoying life in the here and now. The doomsday fantasies are due to the phase of prosperity, in which the human brain looks for new problems because our fundamental needs have already been satisfied. Even in ancient Rome, doomsday prophecies and the proclamation of new ages were booming – and yet the Romans lived relatively well for centuries without apocalyptic upheavals.

nikoB

nikoB’s farm

1993 was when I first became aware that progress (as we in the west generally think of it) was not really leading us to this consequence-free wonderful utopia in the not too distant future. The first was witnessing first hand, the clearfell logging occurring in forests across Australia. The second event that got doubts flowing in my head was my uncle casually remarking – what are we going to do when oil runs out?

Over the next decade I was a rampant greenie, studying ecology and horticulture but not really putting much of the bigger picture together. Climate change was a problem but still so far away – so fixable. That was all to change when a friend invited me to a lecture by Richard Heinberg and David Holmgren. Peak oil came and put a stop to all my illusions. The door was opened and I stepped through.

It was 2006 and I was in my mid-thirties with a young family just starting out. It wasn’t long before I was aware of the Oil Drum, Nate Hagens, Jim Kunstler, Dmitry Orlov, The Druid JM Greer, the Chris Martenson crash course and many, many other places of ideas and discussion. To say this altered my thinking on everything is a massive understatement. Priorities changed overnight and I launched myself into a personal crusade to bring the truth of the peril that awaited us to anyone who would listen.

So fast forward to today, to cut through what is really a fairly dull story with maybe a few juicy details, I basically learnt that no one gives a “solidly digested meal” about resource depletion and overshoot. No matter how many ways you approach the subject. For it became a passion to try and work out the magical key that will unlock humanity’s thinking. All it did was result in the loss of close friends and family. I was mostly just a downer to people when I used to be one of the funniest people in the room (thanks to class clown training).

So where does this leave me now nearly 20 years later of being a peak oiler and recent anti-vaxxer. Reevaluating everything I do because what I have been doing hasn’t yielded results in changing minds.

I am lucky to be blessed with a partner who shares much of the same view of overshoot and its consequences. We spend quite a substantial amount of time discussing all the issues it brings bubbling to the surface. I am also blessed in that she shares the same passion for self sufficiency living that I do and together we work our little farm in the hinterlands of the northern rivers area of New South Wales Australia.

What I am slowly coming to the realisation of, is that we must not lose our passions, humanity and connections. For too long they were side lined and sacrificed for the greater virtue of telling everyone just how it is. The loss I felt was immense but that was balanced by the anger that I felt that nobody could see that what I think is so bloody obvious and that no one cares to do anything about it.

So in order to repair broken relationships (because I miss them) I have had to change my priorities and my thinking as well I suppose, so that I don’t just naturally clash with most people. This is difficult, especially not judging people for their ignorance and self destructive behaviours. But as it turns out I have all my own ignorant self destructive behaviours.

Maybe time is short before collapse makes living a nightmare, Hideaway makes many compelling arguments that this complex system is exceedingly brittle and can only withstand so many spanners thrown into the gears. Or perhaps the druid is right and that the collapse is catabolic, step by step, some big, some small but pretty much all down hill. Either way my thinking has changed on how to deal with it, though I must say the covid saga produced a huge detour and removed many friends from my circle and I would venture to say that most are not destined to return. But now I am getting back on track to living while compartmentalising the potential horror of a potential future.

I have decided to let go of the major criticisms I have of the human condition which are beautifully spelt out here in Rob’s blog over and over again. I don’t know if any of it really matters as we are all dead in the end. It is the journey as they say that matters not the destination. If we really think about it we know that is true as the destination is a hole in the ground.

So now I look to seeking the connections I can find with people that are easy to build on and see where it leads. Time to encourage rather than discourage. Soak up the interpersonal transactions and notice when something deeper occurs. But at the same time I won’t gladly immerse myself in exchanges full of bovine discharges.

As a focus for my own passions, I am back to making music, finding the humour in most things without resorting to be overly sarcastic or caustic. Observing and appreciating absurdity is great for that. Giving love as much as I can and forgetting the anger and the hate. I won’t pretend that it is easy but it does seem to be the most beneficial path and I must remember to forgive myself if I stray from it at times.

Paqnation (aka Chris)

Surprisingly, our story was more depressing to me when I was in full Daniel Quinn sustainable/wisdom mode. The whole “where did we go wrong” thing haunts you when you know humans “can” get it right. Now that un-Denial has set me straight on some of these core issues, our story is less depressing in that respect. I do think denial is at the heart of the matter, but I bounce around on how much emphasis to put on MORT, eToM, and MPP. And I am now slowly shifting to a new state of mind where it’s all about energy constraints and you can pretty much throw everything else out the window.

Society can be full of Quinn type worldviews or full of overshoot, MORT aware citizens. It doesn’t matter. Once those sacred constraints are broken, there is no way out of the madness. And there is no way to resist using this new energy technology because if you don’t, someone else will, and you will be conquered and/or killed. By the time your civilization has enough EROEI to start understanding concepts like overshoot and sustainable vs unsustainable… it’s too late. You are now way too addicted to the comforts of this energy surplus to voluntarily decrease usage. And you’re already in massive overshoot because of all the self-induced damage to your environment (mining and domestication of plants/animals). Ditto for your worldviews too. Separation of nature along with a superior way of looking at your own species are unavoidable default worldviews that come along with busting through energy constraints. The most depressing thing for me nowadays is the realization that this kind of modern intelligence (cleverness) has no purpose in the entire universe.

I have two techniques for my sanity. One thing is trying to accept the inevitability of it all. Understanding that the best-case scenario for Mother Earth is NTHE, helps me to go with more of a “I might as well partake in the Peak before it’s all gone” mentality. But the most important technique is hanging out on this website. When I first came onto the scene of un-Denial, I was shot out of a cannon. The two years prior that I was learning about overshoot, etc., I never had a reliable outlet to ask any questions. That all changed when I got here. I cannot talk to anyone in my personal life about collapse, but now I have an online support group. The following is more of a love letter to you guys for how much you’ve given me and my appreciation for being part of this Tribal Connection.

Here are some quotes I collected from un-Denial comments that caused me think and increased my awareness:

Monk: Something that helps me a lot is when I see dumped rubbish, which happens a lot in “magical NZ”. And I just think to myself how excited I am for collapse, because spoilt brat humans don’t deserve everything that we’ve got when we can’t even do something so basic for nature as pointing rubbish in the bin.

Rob: For the last 10,000 years we broke through normal resource constraints with agriculture (bigger share of solar energy) and fossil energy (ancient solar energy) and became a destructive unsustainable species, that is smart enough to know better, but denies what it is doing.

Mike: In a climax ecosystem, the system appears to be in balance with all species living in harmony. But it’s an illusion and no species intended it that way. Quinn probably got it wrong, in that respect. (Chris here, Mike calling out Quinn like that was the beginning of my internal temper tantrum)

Gaia: So over time, the ascendancy of lighter skinned humans in the cooler climates prevailed and these were the climates where agriculture and feudal living flourished, cementing the dominance of this culture type rather than the nomadic style of earlier hunter/gatherer societies which matched well with the grassland/savannah fauna of equatorial Africa.

Rob: The probability of getting 100% of things wrong by mistake is 0%.

Monk: They dug up a lot of roman prepping gold in villas in the UK. Funny to think of them prepping all that gold and never getting to use it.

Hamish: Too many people treat dogs like fashion accessories and discard them immediately when they have health issues.

NikoB: I always think of it in terms of give and take. What did you take from this world in order to live and what did you give back?

AJ: …reinforcing my opinion that the grandchildren of the victims of genocide are now the perpetrators of genocide.

Charles: I love watching the activity in a compost bin, on the surface of a decomposing carcass, the eerie colours of mushrooms feeding off dead logs… Death doesn’t really feel like an end: there is so much activity going on, and (in good temperature and moisture conditions) recycling happens so fast one can almost witness the migration of energy.

Rob: I envy people who obtain comfort from believing there is some form of spirituality in the universe that cares about us. Unfortunately I see a flow of electrons looking for a home.

Gaia: That’s just it, Rob! I identify best with being a bunch of electrons looking for a home! …Then the electrons I borrowed can go do something else for the rest of eternity.

Stellarwind72: What if intelligence over a certain level is inherently maladaptive on long timescales, because it allows you to destroy the very ecology you depend upon.

Hamish: If I ever have to turn away people seeking help, I will offer them my thoughts and prayers – that seems to be the solution to all calamities from the shit stains in Washington DC and state capitals.

ABC: “Progress” equals to mental regress in many if not most aspects, nothing short of “wickedness”.

Florian: If you are happy with what you have or even downsize then you are, from an evolutionary perspective, a defective individual and the chance is very very high that you will be thrown on the genetic trash heap. There is this saying, To understand all is to forgive all and while it can be hard to not show emotion in this absolute cluster-fuck there is absolutely no point to attach yourself to an outcome.

Charles: Life, to me is a constant invitation (sometimes quite painful) to open up to possibilities.

Rob: I’m still fascinated by denial. I see it every day in every single person I interact with. No one speaks reality, except the few that hang out here.

AJ: The lack of humility and stating that one could make a mistake, always makes me suspicious of a person’s conclusions.

Monk: Without fossil fuels the planet would have become a frozen wasteland. It looked like earth was heading for permanent ice age because too much carbon got lock up.

Rob: I believe one of the reasons we had so much coal is that large plants were enabled by the evolutionary invention of lignin and it took quite a while for fungi to figure out how to digest lignin. Today coal would not accumulate in the same quantities.

Notabilia: Remember, none of us fossil fuel colossi have to stick around when our inherited profligate way of existence hits the ground below the cliff. That will become the one remaining “civil right”. (Chris here, this one got me focused on writing my exit strategy article)

ABC: Wisdom has no inherent value in a world of energy, and never stood a chance against unhinged violence.

NikoB: Perhaps having a good spice rack will put those cannibalism fears to rest.

Stellarwind72: Our leaders seem to think that if Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine, he will invade several other countries, similar to what Hitler did after the Munich agreement.

Gaia: Maybe we can even say that MORT (denial) has been our species’ only true religion, for through it we almost became like the gods, or more poetically, it was the way in which the gods could become human.

Charles: I believe Quinn/Murphy’s story will propagate because it shows a possible way ahead for survival. It is becoming useful in this world of limits, of civilisation/technology collapse.

Hideaway: Crocodiles have existed in pretty much the same form for 200 million years, that’s long term sustainability.

Monk: Anthropologists do think pre-historic people had a lot more sex than their civilized counterparts.

Charles: I find the terms reincarnation and “life after death” misleading. They are too loaded. One should perhaps use “informational remnant through structural reorganization”.

Hamish: I’ve given up on the idea of saving people, society, knowledge, culture, wisdom. If I can help nature that will be enough.

Rob: The problem is our citizens, not our leaders.

Hideaway: Increasingly I’m thinking most major solar and wind installations are nothing more than a scam paid for by subsidies from the government, then quickly sold to whatever pension fund that wants ‘green’ credentials in their portfolio.

Stellarwind72: If MORT is true, the story of humanity will turn out to be a tragedy. The species intelligent enough to realize it is in overshoot doesn’t do much about it due to denial.

Rob: Life is not some spiritual mystery, but rather a predictable outcome of the fact that the universe abhors an energy gradient, and life is its best mechanism for degrading energy. (and) “If life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest, death is nothing but that electron come to rest.” (Rob here, I think that’s a paraphrased quote from Dr. Nick Lane)

Chris here. These next two get me emotional and make me think about what could’ve been (Closest to me ever having my own family was in 2003, but we both agreed on abortion. One of my biggest regrets).

ABC: I’d like to have a family, rear children and experience being a father. I know it is extremely selfish if not cruel by all definitions knowing our predicament, however I cannot shake this primal biological urge of self-interest and naïveté of having a “sense of meaning”.

CampbellS: We saw the southern lights, aurora astralis, here in the Far North of NZ. First time for me in my 53 years. Pretty spectacular and awe inspiring. Was nice to share it with my teenage kids.

And this is a nice little moment between the young, cocky Skywalker and the much wiser Obi-Wan Kenobi. They could both see the magic early on:

Paqnation: I actually think he/she is Art Berman, Simon Michaux or someone like that. I have a hard time with energy (which is why I love Sid Smith), but Hideaway is like an energy oracle.

Rob: Hideaway is better than both Berman and Michaux. Berman is deeper on oil but shallower on other energies and overshoot. Michaux has some worrying woo-woo.

One final note. While going through all my comments, I came across what is by far the most MORT thing on this entire website = My anti-pornography article. 😊

scarr0w

My journey to tranquility ( 🙂 ) is as follows:

I’ve known for as long as I have memory that I was “different”. Not exactly on the spectrum, not genius, not sociopath, but maybe a dash of each. I was in parochial school my first four years, and it was not a good fit for me. To get along, one should just fill in the answer blanks in your Baltimore Catechism workbook, not ask the nun to explain grace. Questioning the pablum we are spoon fed is not a way to be one of the gang.

Anyway, from childhood experiences, I over time built a mental outlook that more or less has evolved to be expressed best by the Niebuhr/Wygal serenity prayer. I generally kept my own council, especially when I fully realized the overshoot predicament we are in while working for a company that builds stuff for the fossil industry. I guess you could say I was “in the closet”.

Serenity, or at least equanimity is not an easy thing to maintain all the time, but I’ve gotten better over time. Raising kids, staying on the treadmill even after realizing that’s what it is, etc… can test your resolve. While I follow collapse progress and analysis at sites like Rob’s and several others, it is more to keep current, not to perseverate on (and let’s face it, being witness to this huge event in the human story is fascinating). Mostly I am grateful that I was lucky enough to be born in a location and time that will never be again.

Currently, some mental energy is on local political issues (I’m on the county board, trying to see opportunities to shift policy into more future ready states), but primarily I try to slowly make a few acres of land more in tune with what the local biome wants to be. That will be enough.

I liked a lot of what others said, especially Gaia, but since my emotion circuits were partly burnt out as a kid, I just don’t get wound up over the path out culture has chosen, or my role in it. I know others suffer and indirectly I benefit, those of us aware just have to live with a foot in both worlds, slowly reducing our complicity as best we can. Not much help for others, but that’s where I am.

Stellarwind72

Being overshoot aware constantly weighs on me. Given my young age (I was born right before the turn of the millennium), I know that the sh*t will hit the fan in my lifetime. From time to time, I feel existential dread. I know that there is a substantial risk of me dying early due to the effects of overshoot and collapse.

Sometimes just being able to talk about this issue with other people helps me with anxiety, knowing that there are other people who are aware of what is going on.

I sometimes like listening to classical music and taking hot baths to calm my nerves, but given how those are both dependent on large amounts of surplus energy (I mostly listen to classical music on YouTube), I don’t know how long I will be able to keep doing that.

Rob Mielcarski

In no particular order of importance, here are some things that have helped me remain partially sane with overshoot awareness.

Collapse Early and Avoid the Rush

There is no way to predict which of the many paths we will take (inflation, deflation, war, confiscation, theft, etc.), however we know with certainty that the destination of fossil energy depletion will be less material wealth, less food abundance, a lower energy lifestyle, and much less help from governments.

I think it is a wise strategy to voluntarily downsize your lifestyle and learn to live happily with less so that when everyone else is shocked and losing their minds due to loss of wealth and entitlements, you are already happily living the new normal.

Some things that have worked for me include:

  • Pretend you can’t buy gasoline and see how little driving you can get by with.
  • Stop flying. Find ways to vacation locally like camping.
  • Monitor your electricity consumption in real time and practice using less.
  • Practice food storage and preparation without refrigeration.
  • Practice low energy cooking like one-pot meals and pressure cooking.
  • Practice living at lower temperatures in the winter.
  • Shower when dirty, not every day.
  • Change clothes when they are dirty, not every day.
  • Stop eating out. Cook all your food from scratch.
  • Cut your own hair.
  • Maintain your vehicles yourself.
  • Practice fixing things that break.

Local Food

I think we face 5 main threat vectors and it is unclear which will strike first:

  • nuclear war (due to resource scarcity)
  • accelerating warming (due to aerosol reduction)
  • asset bubble crash (due to extreme debt and degrowth)
  • energy scarcity (due to depletion of low-cost non-renewable reserves)
  • deadly covid variant a la Bossche (due to our idiot unethical leaders)

The most important common denominator is likely to be food scarcity.

I once had a dream to buy a farm and build a doomstead. I took a small scale farming course and after about 5 years of employment as a farm laborer I learned that I lacked the money and the passion and the time to pull it off successfully. So I switched to plan B. I now assist a local farm with construction and maintenance in return for a source of local food. I still buy the majority of my calories at the grocery store but I know we can ramp up calorie production when SHTF.

Prepping

I work hard at being a wise frugal prepper which means I stock things that:

  • I like to eat and have a good shelf life so they won’t be wasted
  • are likely to become scarce first like protein, fat, and caffeine
  • are essential for good health
  • are purchased when on sale to save money

I maintain a detailed spreadsheet of consumables with quantity, cost, date of purchase, best-by date, storage location, date opened, date finished, and predicted duration the item will last. This allows me to:

  • track my consumption of each item so I can accurately predict how long each will last, and to adjust inventory levels based on my assessment of world events
  • track price inflation and to stock more of what is expected to inflate fastest
  • rotate inventory so I always eat the oldest first
  • conduct shelf life tests and record results so I know when a best-by date can extended or ignored
  • calm down – reviewing my spreadsheet reduces my stress

I have methodically gone through every durable item and service I use and asked what will I do if that item breaks and cannot be fixed or replaced, or can’t be fueled. For those items that I consider essential I have purchased a spare, or I have plan for accomplishing the same thing a different way, or I know I can do without. Here are a few examples:

  • my town water supply is not gravity fed and depends on electric pumps so I installed a hand operated pitcher pump on an old shallow well on my property
  • I can light my living area with 4 different types of energy
  • I can cook with 7 different types of energy
  • I can heat my living area with 3 different types of energy and I have practiced living with the thermostat at 15C
  • I have 4 different modes of transportation and I have some spare parts
  • I can keep my refrigerator operating, which is the main thing I care about in a power outage, for a couple weeks
  • I have spare parts to keep my computer, which is my main indoor hobby, going until I’m dead
  • I have spare hiking boots, which is my main outdoor hobby, to last until I’m too old to hike

Doing something to prepare provides a sense of agency over things out of my control which improves my mental well-being.

Prepping is of course not a fix to permanent scarcity or a catastrophe, but it might sustain life during a temporary shortage, and it might make life more enjoyable when non-essential but highly valued items like coffee become unavailable.

Prepping can be a good use of limited savings given that inflation is a likely outcome of energy scarcity. I smile every time I see price increases on things I have in inventory.

Health

When things get tough, good health will be one of our most important assets.

Most available employment will require manual labor, and if you’re out of shape and overweight you may be unemployable.

I expect pensions and safety nets to vaporize so many will be forced to work until they die.

I expect the availability and affordability of health care services to decline as governments become impoverished.

Covid taught me that I do not want to use our unethical and incompetent healthcare system if I can avoid it.

So I try to maintain good health by:

  • eating healthy unprocessed, low sugar foods
  • fasting 16 hours every day
  • getting some exercise
  • sleeping 8 hours
  • taking a few critical supplements like vitamin D and C
  • no alcohol or tobacco

Gratitude

Someone wise said something like “the foundation of happiness is gratitude”.

I believe it.

The lifestyle of the poorest Canadian is better than a pharaoh. It is easy to forget how lucky we are in the rich western countries at this point in history.

The majority of my good fortune came from being born in Canada, not from my skill or hard work.

So I try to be grateful.

A few things that work for me include:

  • cook deliberately: I plan my meals, and I think about the path the food took to get to my kitchen, and I try to show respect to the food by cooking it nicely, and wasting nothing
  • eat deliberately: I try to slow down and appreciate what I am eating
  • drive deliberately: when I press the accelerator I think about the miracle of fossil energy
  • shower deliberately: I think about the path the water took to get to my house, and the energy it took to heat the water, and what a luxury a hot shower is

Learn to Enjoy Your Own Company

I spend quite a bit of time alone for several reasons:

  • I find it easier to “collapse early and avoid the rush” when I am not surrounded by people competing for status
  • nobody likes being around a doomer, I’m invited less these days
  • I struggle to chit chat about things that do not matter
  • I have become less tolerant of people who believe nonsense and are incapable of changing beliefs regardless of evidence – yes I know MORT is often the cause, but I still don’t enjoy the company of people in denial

So I have learned to enjoy my own company.

I have conversations with myself, and I listen to interesting (and sometimes aware) people via podcasts and audiobooks, and I interact with a few nice and aware people at un-Denial.

MORT

When you become overshoot aware you realize there is near zero awareness and zero discussion in society about anything that matters, and not only are we doing nothing that a wise species should do, we are doing everything possible to make our predicament worse. This can be crazy making.

Understanding Dr. Ajit Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory has been a big help to maintaining my mental health because it provides a scientific explanation for why almost everyone in the world, including our brightest intellectuals and all of our leaders, are oblivious to everything that matters.

If I Was a Young Person

If I was a young person, knowing what I know now, and wondering what to do, I would:

  • not live in a big city
  • avoid occupations that depend on discretionary spending (except maybe brewing beer and distilling alcohol)
  • learn a useful skill that poor people will need and value
  • learn a skill that can be performed with today’s complex power equipment, and yesterday’s simpler manual equipment
  • I’d personally lean towards a trade like carpentry, plumbing, masonry, electrician, roofer, mechanic, etc. but I’m sure there are many other viable occupations
  • farming would be good but land is too expensive for most people to buy today; a good compromise is a skill that generates income and a home garden or rented community garden plot that you tend after work; or if you are passionate about farming, join a good farm as a laborer and work up to a position with responsibility

386 thoughts on “Coping with Awareness”

  1. Well, been rather busy lately, so just now trying to pitch in, but collapse waits for no man……….

    My journey to tranquility ( 🙂 ) is as follows:

    I’ve known for as long as I have memory that I was “different”. Not exactly on the spectrum, not genius, not sociopath, but maybe a dash of each. I was in parochial school my first four years, and it was not a good fit for me. To get along, one should just fill in the answer blanks in your Baltimore Catechism workbook, not ask the nun to explain grace. Questioning the pablum we are spoon fed is not a way to be one of the gang.

    Anyway, from childhood experiences, I over time built a mental outlook that more or less has evolved to be expressed best by the Niebuhr/Wygal serenity prayer. I generally kept my own council, especially when I fully realized the overshoot predicament we are in while working for a company that builds stuff for the fossil industry. I guess you could say I was “in the closet”.

    Serenity, or at least equanimity is not an easy thing to maintain all the time, but I’ve gotten better over time. Raising kids, staying on the treadmill even after realizing that’s what it is, etc… can test your resolve. While I follow collapse progress and analysis at sites like Rob’s and several others, it is more to keep current, not to perseverate on (and let’s face it, being witness to this huge event in the human story is fascinating). Mostly I am grateful that I was lucky enough to be born in a location and time that will never be again.

    Currently, some mental energy is on local political issues (I’m on the county board, trying to see opportunities to shift policy into more future ready states), but primarily I try to slowly make a few acres of land more in tune with what the local biome wants to be. That will be enough.

    I liked a lot of what others said, especially Gaia, but since my emotion circuits were partly burnt out as a kid, I just don’t get wound up over the path out culture has chosen or my role in it. I know others suffer and indirectly I benefit, those of us aware just have to live with a foot in both worlds, slowly reducing our complicity as best we can. Not much help for others, but that’s where I am.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  2. Hideaway slaps Dennis, again. You’d think it would sting, but it doesn’t seem to. MORT again?

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-june-2024/#comment-777406

    Dennis, do you read the papers you link to? The assumptions in the one above are ridiculous, and of course if you use such non sensical assumptions you can attain any solution desired…

    Using one aspect you continually repeat, about overbuilding solar and wind capacity 3-5 times. Why would anyone do it? Why would anyone build extra solar when there is no market for a new plant?

    If solar were capable of providing 100% of energy requirements in the year 2027 in grid XXX, then why would anyone build an extra plant?

    Economics 101 means no-one would, because there is no payment for when the sun shines as existing solar would be providing all the power needed. However when the sun is not shining no-one has power, but building another plant by itself makes no economic sense, because there would be zero returns..

    Any new build after 100% of grid capacity and use was reached, would require batteries or pumped hydro to store all the excess energy. This would greatly increase the cost of any new plant. A 100MW new solar array would need 800MWh of batteries attached, greatly affecting the cost of the operation, as all energy would need to be stored until night time, even in summer with longer sun hours.

    They would not be selling this, much more expensive power, at zero dollars, at any time.
    No-one with half a brain is going to build an expensive industrial plant, based on a theoretical zero electricity price. They would want/need contracts to purchase the required electricity. No-one is going to sign a contract that guarantees they get zero dollars for the electricity they are selling..

    Other ridiculous assumptions, that the cost of all the equipment needed to build these industrial scale operations, based on lots of specialised equipment like electrolysers and methanation plants, requiring mountains of specialist metals and experts, will get cheaper in the future, when the ore grades mined get lower, requiring more fossil fuel energy to mine, as the newer mines are more remote on average..

    Plus the biggest weakness of the entire paper, not a cent allowed for payment of any labor or expertise in the building and operating of the plant, zero, nada… Plus there is no cost in obtaining the CO2 either, yet they claim to be buying in the CO2, not taking any out of the atmosphere, so someone else has to be burning fossil fuels, then paying for the capture of the CO2, then delivering it to site..

    The fact that you cite such nonsense as these types of papers, means you just don’t understand. As I keep asking you. How about you do the numbers yourself, from real existing examples, where we can find actual real world costs. It’s the only way to prove to yourself that it’s all viable, or not, on a worldwide scale..

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    1. https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-june-2024/#comment-777356

      Dennis … “And not as ridiculous as suggesting the price of coal should be considered to be zero, now that was ridiculous.”

      The price of coal to humanity as a whole is zero, just like solar, wind, oil and gas. We build machines to turn any of them into useful energy.

      We agree to pay others for access to these resources, but energetically they are there for the cost of building the machines to take advantage of them.

      This is an area that economics is totally wrong, in not understanding the world economy runs on energy, not money.

      When it comes to working out what’s the cheapest form of new energy, all sorts of rules and assumptions are placed, for example the Lazard LCOE type calculations. If you apply enough assumptions, you can make anything look good..

      An immediate example is the assumption that 100% of the energy from solar and wind get used while coal, gas, nuclear are all limited in their capacity, when in reality the latter can operate 90% of the time.

      In this country where solar and wind are often 40%+ of the power in the grid, the utility plants have to be turned off a lot of the time in summer months, because the wholesale price of power has gone negative, so are not operating anywhere near their capacity. Likewise coal and gas plants are having a similar reduction in capacity.

      We’ve ended up with a very inefficient system with lots of capacity sitting idle, but still suffering from entropy, so their is a long term cost to this idleness.

      Now in the middle of winter, we have had a dearth of wind over the last couple of months, and often cloudy days, so the coal and gas plants have had to be running at pretty much maximum power, with diesel generators often added to the mix for peak times..

      So tell me, in economic terms, who is going to build extra solar capacity, when we already have utility solar plants often turning off when the sun shines and prices are negative??
      Adding solar does nothing for the system in times of low sunshine, while existing solar is already above what the system can cope with when the sun shines most of the year!!
      Already the only new large solar plants planned for the country are those with direct contracts with an industry to supply power when the sun shines, but ‘the grid’ is expected to make up the power supply the rest of the time…

      Why are solar, wind and batteries having subsidies around the world if they are cheaper?? The answer is they are NOT cheaper in the real world!!

      AS I keep stating, no-one anywhere is building an off grid Aluminium smelter based on solar, wind and batteries, because it’s too expensive to do!! It’s uneconomic, would lose money compared to cheap coal fired power running Aluminium smelters around the world.
      This is precisely why the new Aluminium smelters in Indonesia will be running on coal fired power!!
      It’s not good or bad, it’s just reality, and lying to ourselves over and over and over that solar, wind and batteries are cheaper, doesn’t change reality at all!!

      Again my question to you is how does anywhere get to 3-5 times too much solar, in an economic environment, where already there are negative prices for solar, when the sun shines most of the year???

      Economics 101 is that no new utility scale solar should be built in Australia and that’s exactly what’s happening, we built too much, so negative prices prevail during most of the year when the sun shines, but we need enormous ‘other’ power for the rest of the time.

      Dennis …”Just skimmed the paper, to properly analyze it would require a reading of the papers referenced as well, I have not done that.”

      Exactly, which is why all these types of proposals look sound until you go into details, where they clearly are extend, pretend and distract.

      The Haru Oni plant was thought to be proving synthetic fuel was ‘viable’, instead it’s clear evidence it’s not viable at all from intermittent power, despite their 70% capacity factor in the best location in the world for wind.

      It was really all about having the European commission drop rules banning new ICE vehicles by 2030 or 2035 date, paid for mostly by Porshe, Exxon etc..

      The entire concept of synthetic fuel, gas or just hydrogen is totally flawed by using enormous quantities of built materials (built from fossil fuels!!), in an extremely inefficient way to make some energy available when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun not shining. It’s all extend, pretend and distract…

      The longer you just skim some papers that show nice answers, while not doing the full calculations on all of this yourself, the longer you will stay in the dark about the reality of our situation.

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  5. Pre-covid I was certain anti-vaxxers were dangerous whack jobs.

    Now I don’t believe anything health “experts” say, and I think RFK Jr., who I used to assume was a nut job, is the best presidential candidate ever offered to the American people.

    Today’s essay by Endurance is a really good detailed history on vaccines with references that argues nothing we are told about vaccination is true.

    https://endurancea71.substack.com/p/deja-vu-all-over-again

    Fifty years ago, prior to the campaign of hyper-vaccinating children, the autism rate in the US was around 1 in 10,000. Now it’s 1 in 36. Back then a kid received 5 shots. Now they receive 180.(101) I’ve even seen a case where triplets all developed autism on the same day, within hours of their pneumococcal vaccine.(102)

    “Contrary to popular belief, there is actually a great deal of compelling evidence linking vaccines to autism. For example, regressive autism always develops shortly after vaccination—but never before, something that cannot happen unless one causes the other.”(103)

    Evidence suggests that most SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) cases (probably 75% or more) are also due to childhood vaccination, usually within 48 hours of a ‘routine’ jab. Pediatric clinics which avoid vaccines have zero (or near zero) rates of both autism and SIDS.(104) Vaccine injuries in general are far more common that the establishment is prepared to acknowledge and not simply limited to SIDS and autism; one in five children have neuro-developmental disabilities, one in ten have ADD or ADHD, one in eleven has asthma and one in twenty under the age of suffers with seizures.(105) There are numerous mechanisms of harm, well-documented. Only a fully paid-up member of the hard of thinking club could fail to make the connection.

    And while adjuvants such as aluminium are undoubtedly a large part of the problem, the entire concept of vaccination is built on lies. The answer isn’t to clean up the jabs, remove harmful ingredients, rationalize the schedule. The answer is to go back to basics, to understand that there never has been any evidence that any vaccine is necessary. That’s after 225 years of trying; you’d have thought there’d be some by now. What we find instead is that either vaccines are introduced when diseases are already on the verge of being eradicated or that the ‘disease’ isn’t a disease at all and the vaccine does nothing but harm, often producing the very same symptoms that the ‘disease’ itself presents.

    “For 60 years, the CDC has propagated vaccines as the holy grail of medicine, like a magic pill that keeps everyone from dying of scary infectious diseases that nothing else on earth can save anyone from. Yet, billions of people survive without having any vaccines at all their whole lives, and on average, these folks are much healthier than the “fully vaccinated” droids and zombies who seem to be fighting mysterious disorders most of their lives.”(106)

    We might also learn some lessons about the nature of our opponents, the credentialed class which populate Big Pharma and government. From the beginning of the vaccine era, they have lied to us. In the dim and distant, they also mandated inoculation, a practice that is enjoying a revival. They simply cannot be trusted to be honest and altruistic on any matter. The conniving and dishonesty is pathological. Any group that can inject the healthy with AZT, use orphans as pin cushions or preside over our latter-day CVS is comprised of monsters, but we should have known that already given their enthusiastic support for the clot shot. And they’re not done yet.

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    1. Sorry Rob, I don’t know how to take off my “Like” for the above article (I hit the wrong key instead of hitting reply.

      This “article” is the quintessential example IMHO of what makes many things on the internet suspect. I for one believe that vaccines are efficacious (at least the ones I had as a kid were) and would not want to not have a tetanus shot up to date (or smallpox for that matter). Maybe all the vaccines that kids get now days are overdone and should be investigated for adjuvants that are causing unintended consequences (i.e. there is room for serious research).

      However, if you look at the article it appears light on the science of immunology/virology and heavy on “statistics” (which can be made to show anything). I don’t have the time to read the dross such idiots produce (a true conspiracy theory) but I did appreciate his/her numerous citations. When you are citing to Zero Hedge, Mises institute, Expose News, Brownstone, Off Guardian, Viroliegy.com, and other web sites rather than the fundamental scientific literature, everything you (the author) say is suspect. I realize that much of “science” has been subverted by Pharma/Medicine and current Scientific Journals, but true rational falsifiable science still exists and their are some practitioners.

      If someone like Dr. John Campbell came out and said this I might listen a little more closely, but not to someone hiding behind “Endurance”.

      AJ

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      1. I’ve also accidentally clicked like (in the past) and found that clicking it again did the opposite. Of course, things are always changing, so that might just be a thing of the past.

        Like

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      2. I can’t unclick your like but I believe you can as Hamish explained.

        Fair criticism. I’ve read a bit by Endurance over the last few years and my recollection is positive but maybe my memory or judgement is failing.

        Did you read any of the essay? I don’t think he discussed Tetanus which skeptics like Dr. Bret Weinstein would agree with you are effective and valuable.

        He focused on other vaccines with dubious stories like polio.

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        2. I have such problems on your website with WordPress, hence the only time I read un-denial is when I’m on Chrome, otherwise I use the Epic browser (behind their free VPN) and I leave no trail. (I hate the Chrome browser but WordPress will let me post something without logging in ). WordPress hates me everywhere and won’t let me log into the multiple accounts, I have made with them over the years.

          I read some of what Endurance wrote, and I didn’t buy much of it from what I knew having taken immunology years ago. He cites statistics and studies without discussing basic immunology, in my opinion. Hence, I go to his long list of citations at the end of the article to see if he is really quoting science. He is not!! IF 90% of your sources are dubious, as I put in my response above, then you are dubious as a writer and I don’t see any sense in trying to parse the little bit of wheat from the vast chaff.

          I would never read anything from Endurance, or even skim it. What time I have left is too valuable.

          AJ

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          1. I have used Edge and now Brave with no WordPress problems. Maybe another reader here might be able to provide tips since I’m an administrator and may not have the same browser experience as you.

            The damage our trusted institutions like health departments, regulatory agencies, family doctors, and universities have done to themselves by lying, hiding data, and not publicly correcting themselves when they made mistakes is a disaster.

            Even the best journals like Nature and the Lancet were caught being corrupt during covid and so we can’t even trust peer reviewed papers any more.

            Who can we trust now?

            It’s tragic what they’ve done to public trust.

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  6. Maybe Dr. Tom Murphy has been lurking here. His latest on population has a little more reality .

    https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/06/stubborn-expectations/

    We have no modern precedent for declining global human population, so cannot confidently predict what happens in such a scenario.  In the short term, I can imagine more positive feedback mechanisms that accelerate the plunge than corrective negative feedback mechanisms—as it won’t feel “safe” or ethical to bring children into a period of great uncertainty.

    Firstly, the economic house of cards—essentially a Ponzi scheme predicated on unsustainable growth—will likely collapse.  Since we foolishly based most of modern life on this inherently shaky economic foundation, its implosion will be felt far and wide, potentially setting off violent conflict and famine as nations struggle to maintain their expected but unsustainable material and energy flows.  Even without this unfortunate development, how many of the factors itemized above would be reversed?  Many are only exacerbated, which could lead to a faster population decline.

    My best guess is that whether the process is quick (famine, war) or moderate (demographic factors alone, let’s hope), the process will remain in a positive feedback condition until most of the unsupportable complexity has melted away.  At this point, the period of positive feedback might self-terminate as groups of people find themselves enjoying locally self-sufficient lifestyles that are ecologically stable and disconnected from the complexity that once bound modernity together in the same trap.

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    1. Cancer is the other big lie that medicine and pharma are intent on keeping going because it makes money.

      They don’t want it known that it is a metabolic dysfunction of the mitochrondria and the genetic mutations are a secondary side effect. Thus treating it as a genetic disease is not a good strategy even though it does yield results.

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  8. The Nuremburg Code prevents doctors from claiming they were only following orders.

    Any that survive need to go to prison.

    54 year old Dr. Philip Boll, nephrologist at Trillium Health died suddenly Mar.24, 2024.

    He is at least the 5th Canadian doctor to have died suddenly at same hospital.

    COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated doctors not doing well.

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    1. In New Zealand you would literally get fired if you didn’t follow orders. So the Nuremburg Code creates a paradox – any doctor that doesn’t follow orders gets de-registered and then can’t be a doctor.

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  9. This is one reason inflation is the more probable path to poverty than deflation.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/kenya-protesters-storm-parliament-police-fire-live-rounds-after-lawmakers-unleash-eco

    The Kenyan capital of Nairobi has descended into violence and mayhem as large street protests by Kenyans outraged at new tax policies and a harsh ‘Eco-Austerity’ program imposed by the government have resulted in the parliament building being set on fire.

    The new taxes were tucked away in Kenya’s Finance Bill 2024, and directly impacts imports, prices, and sales of diapers, batteries/dry cells, smartphones, earphones, clocks, radios, TV sets, cameras… staplers, printers, calculators, photocopying machines, keyboards, mice, projectors and LCD monitors.

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  10. Col. Larry Wilkerson’s becoming a full on doomer without being overshoot aware. 🙂

    Really good wide ranging discussion.

    Among other things, the MIC killed Kennedy, Ukraine is screwed because Russia has a better military, the US is going to implode due to it’s debt, Israel is evil, the world sees that the US is backing terrorists.

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    1. Excellent discussion by Wilkerson. The U.S. is so screwed, militarily and economically. How we’ve survived this long I don’t know.

      AJ

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    1. The semiconductor industry has placed most of its eggs in one basket, because only 3 companies can to afford the manufacture the most advanced chips: TSMC, Intel and Samsung. The costs of building new fabs (and therefore chips) is rising quickly. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/firm-predicts-it-will-cost-dollar28-billion-to-build-a-2nm-fab-and-dollar30000-per-wafer-a-50-percent-increase-in-chipmaking-costs-as-complexity-rises

      This is evidence of semiconductor scaling running into the law of diminishing returns.

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  12. Sarah Connor went the guest essay route this week. Prior to un-Denial, I would have loved and been inspired by it. But now all I see is another Daniel Quinn fan who is blinded by the hopium of humans “getting it right”. The tag line of the article is: Humanity is acting like a disease. But humanity isn’t a disease; humanity has a disease.

    Same thing as me crying about how humans aren’t a failed experiment, it’s our culture that is the failure. LOL. Funny how much (and how quickly) I have changed on this issue. The Quinn view is dangerous because it implies that humans can get it right even if sacred energy constraints have been broken. Also implies that there is some good or purpose for complex intelligence. Both implications are dead wrong of course. 

    The author’s main point in the article is “I would like to propose that the disease is a certain idea that humanity began to embrace 6,000 years ago. It’s the idea that humanity is separate from and superior to nature and other forms of life.”

    We were already thousands of years embraced with breaking the solar energy constraints. Those separation & superior worldviews that come attached to the hip of “busting through” were already brewing hardcore by then. The better you get at performing evil (agriculture, mining & domestication) the more entrenched those worldviews become which means you get a guaranteed exponential increase of evil over time.

    The only reason we got to agriculture was because we conquered fire. So not even fire is an acceptable energy constraint to break. (which is hard to imagine, but certainly correct when compared to how many other species have used it and how much of an advantage it gives you). 

    The author’s last line annoys the hell out of me because of how much I used to buy into it. “The good news is that there’s a cure. If the disease is separateness, then the cure is to end the separateness.” 

    Humans are the disease. Including hunter gatherers. The only human not diseased is pre-fire homo. The pro-Quinners need to do a better job of explaining what they mean when they say, “the cure is to end the separateness”.

    To truly end the separateness, you’d have to go back to pre-fire times and live with a max EROEI around 1.5 (quinn fans always leave this part of the equation out of their story).

    Guest Post: What’s Our Disease? (collapse2050.com)

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    1. I understand love and light solutions from people who have never had to get their sustenance from the land directly can be annoying. But do you need to be so harsh on humans?

      The first life on earth, Cyanobacteria (bluegreen algae), grew in such abundance when it evolved a new oxygen-releasing ability. They feasted and turned the earth into a frozen ice ball. Scientists suppose that a thin line around the equator stayed warm enough to allow some cyanobacteria to survive. From those survivors, all life on earth evolved.

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      1. LOL. Sorry for being such a scrooge but yes I do need to be so harsh.

        I can’t stand the fairy tale that I was sold. It reminds me of Nazis sitting around talking about the few decent qualities they possess and equating that to being an overall good person.

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      1. I think too clever for your own good is another feature that’s baked into the cake of busting through an energy constraint. We know the worldviews that automatically come with the energy breakthrough, so there is an added bonus that the extra time you free up with the higher EROEI will be dominated by separation and superiority thinking. 

        And this just guarantees that you will be a walking tsunami of bad information. To the point where when you finally get to anything like modern human EROEI levels everything you do and how you do it is wrong (evil).

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    1. It’s always the plebs fault isn’t it! Never the capital class that has to give up something or do something different

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  15. I’ve always liked the argument that Hideaway uses here that if it were possible it would already exist.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-june-2024/#comment-777532

    Hickory, …. “Its all going to cost a hell of lot of money”…

    This is the criteria that economists use, thinking that there is no limit on money, yet in reality, energy, materials and expertise is what’s needed. We use money to represent all of these things and economists have convinced most of the world to think this way (as in it’s all unlimited).

    It has worked in a world of continuing growth of all the resources necessary, especially energy that makes both materials and expertise available. The energy has been in the form of fossil fuels over the last 200 years, with everyone alive, their parents and grandparents all existing in a world of ‘more’ on average for everyone..

    In the future, once past peak oil, for real, no matter what the spend, then the price to build everything goes through the roof. None of the electric world survives without constant input of plastics and polymers, every new electrical wire, solar panel and wind turbine totally relies upon plastics and polymers, every mine relies upon chemical ingredients from fossil fuels as well as the fossil energy to run it…

    Fossil fuels are not just energy, though that’s how everyone counts it in terms of XYZ TWh… It’s useful energy AND products all wrapped up together that we ‘ refine’ (one word for a huge variety of processes), to separate all the products gasoline, plastics, diesel, fertilizers, bunker fuel, polymers, kerosine, tar, explosives, coke etc.

    We need to mine 100% of it to get all the fractions for the necessary purposes we’ve put them to, in the world we’ve built. We haven’t built a different world and if we tried to now, it would take a lot of new materials to do it..

    We can’t just mine plastics and polymers, fertilizers, explosives, chemicals for mines, farms, industry etc. We need high grade coke to make Aluminium and steel, both coking coal and pet coke, likewise for thousands of products.

    Trying to swap, one energy form for another that doesn’t produce the products we need for modernity, doesn’t work and can’t work. Sure in the short term while we continue to use MORE fossil fuels to make all the ‘alternatives’ it all looks possible, but take the fossil fuels out of any part of system of renewables production and deployment and the concept instantly becomes unviable.

    Every single paper written about the ‘renewable’ future looks at bits in isolation, never ever the entire system, because it only looks doable if we treat everything as separate, like the rest of the system acts normally as we multiply solar by magnitudes or batteries by magnitudes etc, then look at current prices of all the components, extended into the future as cheaper… ( A simple example of the absurdity of the ‘research’ ; if we used 600% of world silver production for the silver paste in magnitudes more solar production, then solar and silver will get cheaper because of economies of scale). Ask any ‘hydrogen future’ expert, about Molybdenum and the reply will probably be “what’s that got to do with it”….

    We can’t do the mining, the processing, the transport, the refining of materials, nor the manufacturing of any of them without using fossil fuels at every step. What’s worse, is that despite all the talk of transition for several decades now, no-one anywhere is trying to build any of it without fossil fuels. Why not??

    If a future of modernity was possible without fossil fuels, then why aren’t we building any of it without them?? Why aren’t new mines and factories built to operate on only renewable energy using only materials gathered by, using, and made from electricity?

    Why isn’t there at least one demonstration plant somewhere in the world showing it’s possible??

    If it was at all possible, and having solar panels for over 5 decades and wind turbines longer, then we’d be doing it. We’d be building the future with electricity and multiplying up everything from the huge excess energy from this electricity.

    The plan is not working, and cannot work, so we need a better plan. So far all we are getting is extend, pretend and distract.

    If we can’t work out a better plan then the best thing to do is power down, reduce population and degrow as fast as possible before we turn the planet into having an unlivable climate, with huge starving populations destroying the remainder of the natural world.

    Go and read the paper Dennis provided above, the one he didn’t read in detail. It makes all sort of assumptions about how improvements in technology will make doing A, B and C much cheaper in today’s dollars (2017 dollars to be precise), and somehow assumes all the materials to build it also become cheaper and less energy intensive, all because of the magic of technology…

    The current system of fossil fuel use can’t last, because of pollution, climate change and depletion, it has never been an answer, as it was always a temporary short term way to produce modernity. As we haven’t worked out how to maintain modernity without them, let alone ‘grow’, the extend, pretend and distract model just guarantees we continue on the same path we’ve been on, until it all collapses.

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    1. https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-june-2024/#comment-777539

      Dennis, as per usual it’s one hand wave after another….
      “That is where stored hydrogen would be used,”

      OK, so do the calculations on that, how much hydrogen would be needed to be stored, plus all the extra equipment that needs to be mined to build it all, plus all the extra workers in both construction and O&M.

      None of it is a hand wave, it’s extremely expensive, and if ‘everyone’ around the world needs to do it we run into shortages of all sorts, like molybdenum that we mine in the ppm range but is needed in the 2.5-3% range in all the stainless steel pipes needed in all the stages of hydrogen production and piping to storage.

      The other ‘alternative’ is lots of long distance HVDC transmission lines in the many GW range and lots of batteries elsewhere in the country to send the solar from outback Queensland South for maybe only 5%-10% of the time…

      All the hand wave solutions you offer are extremely inefficient when it comes to material use, with all these materials (mostly metals) having an extremely high energy cost to produce, which is mostly from fossil fuels…

      YOU are advocating the burning of a lot more fossil fuels as your solution to burning too many fossil fuels, because you refuse to look at the details of your suggestions, preferring the hand wave as it sounds easy…..

      Another example of the hand wave…
      Dennis …”Industrial operations do not have to be continuous.”

      Anything using high, which is most heavy industry, would be wildly inefficient if they had to wait for everything to heat up again before commencing, only for the power to go out again soon after resumption, plus there is a lot of equipment that must be heated slowly and cooled slowly so the machinery is not damaged. It’s often not something that can just be stopped because the power is suddenly low..

      It’s interesting that both Carnot and myself totally destroyed the argument about using stored hydrogen from ‘excess power’ a month or 2 ago, but you didn’t learn anything, and just repeat the same rubbish.

      The water used for electrolysis is heated to a nominal temperature, needs to be very pure and often is a weak alkaline solution, with no energy allowance for the huge quantity of water used (the pure water magics itself to the electrolysis plant for free). Like most things it’s most efficient when in a continuous operation, so having these giant electrolysis factories sitting idle most of the time waiting for excess electricity from the grid, is a non starter economically and another waste of resources in building it.

      So when do the workers turn up at these giant electrolysis plants waiting for electricity to become available?? Do they sit there twiddling their thumbs getting paid to do nothing when there is no power??

      The world can only be this nice bright green future providing you don’t look at any details of it, hand wave every aspect into existence, then year after year wonder why it’s not really happening, and we are only tinkering at the edges. It’s because reality gets in the way of ill thought through dreams.

      BTW after 2 years of back to back 25-30% power price increases, while the percentage of renewables in the grid has gone up, we now find we need a whole lot more transmission lines that will add another 22%-30% in real terms to prices over the next few years, for this power that is meant to be cheaper…

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      1. https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-june-2024/#comment-777563

        Dennis, you don’t get it at all…

        “Let’s look at electricity generation as we won’t have to get into the fact that 60% of fossil fuel used to produce electric power is just wast heat so counting that waste heat as TWh as if they are useful is silly, the exergy is what is important unless the fuel is being used as a heat source only.”

        Dennis that ‘waste heat’ is not part of the EROEI calculations at all, which is the important aspect to run a modern civilization. It never comes into it..

        The EROEI calculations look at the energy used in the construction and O&M of the operation.

        We built the system of modern civilization by placing the power stations next to the coal pits, those closest to cities to start with, then transmission lines to those cities. The amount of coal burnt was irrelevant, only the power output was counted.

        The cost of building the power plants and transmission lines was relatively cheap, and through time we had efficiency gains at these plants by using bigger machines to mine the coal fed into the plants via conveyor belts etc, using less labor in the processes..

        This cheap power allowed us to build all sorts of machines cheaply. We thought it could go on forever, so as we grew, we built the power plants further away, using less desirable coal, then even further away buying coal from elsewhere if the close by coal ran out.

        It became less efficient in some ways while overall efficiency in other ways improved, by using more efficient generators, more automation, larger machines at all the coal pits, larger machines transporting it all etc. All the extra materials and machines being provided by other fuel mostly cheap oil and gas and operated by them..

        The system of civilization we set up, relies upon power at night, so while coal and gas have waste heat, they provide electricity when needed and used by the civilization we have.

        Can you for once work out the actual material and energy cost of providing batteries and hydrogen or whatever backup for the times when the sun isn’t shining in winter and the wind isn’t blowing, instead of the wave of the hand you usually do..

        It’s only going into this detail, that you see the ‘hand wave’ of solutions don’t work, unless most people are slaves and very few get to enjoy modernity.

        I keep telling you it’s an entire system we have, not lots of separate bits that can only grow massively if the rest of the system operates normally. When you want to massively increase A and B it comes at a cost to C, D, and E.

        We do not have the unlimited resources to build it all, and by trying are in the process of making the planet unlivable, destroying most of the ecosystem in the process, while we only have a 2-3% penetration of renewables.

        Dennis …. “If wind(12.6%) and solar(21.2%) annual growth rates of the past 4 years continue in the future,”

        OK do the calculations on this, how many more Adaro type of Aluminium smelters running on coal are needed to produce the Aluminium for the frames of all these new solar panels? Plus of course the EV panels, plus of course all the new transmission lines, plus more, plus more, more, more….

        How many new factories are needed to be built to keep up this growth rate? Do these new factories need power ,water, roads, gas, coking coal? Or do they just magic into existence? Do they use concrete in these new factories buildings? Do all the new workers, mostly in developing countries use the new higher wages to power their homes, buy appliances. Do you think we need more of these? Or is all from slave labor?

        You never think through the entire argument of building MORE, of growing anything.. It’s all just more of the same that we’ve had for over 200 years, more growth leading to more environment destruction, and getting closer to the point of collapse where oil production declines at an accelerating rate…

        The only choice we ever had was to go down the path of industrialization, guaranteeing collapse when the major energy went into depletion, or not building an Industrial civilization in the first place.

        Your method of making statements of we can do this, that, and all sorts of other things, while never doing the exact calculations on the energy and materials to build it, is just a belief system to help you sleep at night. It’s not a part of our reality…

        The simple reality is we have added fossil fuel use by 10 times more energy in the last 20 years as we have added from renewables. Plus renewables are not replacing anything, they are being added to all existing energy use, all to the detriment of the ecosphere.

        Advocating for more just means more fossil fuel use to build it, because we can’t build it with just electricity from renewables, as it’s uneconomic to do so. The EROEI is too low (and probably negative when ALL energy building them is taken into consideration)!!

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        1. The question isn’t “how do we replace fossil fuels?”, but “how do we soften the landing as fossil fuels deplete?”

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        2. Thanks Rob, for always plucking the good stuff from POB.

          I just spent over an hour lurking around on that site. People are asking Dennis questions like he has credibility. Aren’t they reading Hideaways gold? Funny if Hide is a pain in the ass over there and most dislike him because he’s too dark for their MORTness. Or maybe it’s just dumb blind loyalty to their leader Dennis. But if they’re pretty well versed with overshoot & collapse, MORT would have to be what it’s all about. They just can’t let go of that final (but huge) piece of the journey called hopium. 

          Maybe you’re right about our denial genes being defective and your audience being mostly made up of the few freaks on earth (maybe universe) who can actually handle the top of the collapse mountain with the crazy info about how horrific, hopeless, and inevitable it’s gonna be.

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          1. I get why an uninformed or uneducated person might believe the energy transition story.

            But I don’t get Dennis unless it’s MORT. Facts and evidence do not penetrate his skull. It’s fascinating to watch.

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  16. I’m still hung up on Campbell’s coming out party. I watch that 12min video of his family every day. Never fails to put me in a good mood.

    Last night I watched a movie called Sliding Doors (starring Gwyneth Paltrow). The film alternates between two storylines, showing two paths the main character’s life could take depending on whether she catches a train. I kept thinking about Campbell during the movie. He is my Sliding Doors. 

    I was reflecting on a few decisions I made in my younger days that completely changed my life. The main one revolves around me turning away a person who would have had a tremendous positive impact on me. Instead, I embraced a relationship with someone who had a horribly negative impact on me. I mean you could not choose the more incorrect path if you tried.

    Not that I think I would have had Campbell’s life if a few decisions went the other way. Like living in New Zealand driving around in little miss sunshine 😊.  No, I just think I would have had a family, and been more of a nature loving outdoorsman. She was very family orientated and a total hippie tree hugger. My vainness and shallow appetite chose the girl with supermodel looks and not a caring bone in her body (and when I say “supermodel” I dont mean it in a complimentary way. More in a fake Barbie doll way. Gross!!!). By the time I woke up, it was too late, tree hugger was happily married with kids.

    Supermodel never really loved me. Tree hugger loved me more than I will ever experience again in my lifetime. Incredibly, that is one of the main reasons things turned out as they did. I always had a problem with the balance of love. If you like me too much, I’ll end up liking you less. If you dont love me (and if you are a little cruel to me), I will end up falling head over heels for you. What a fucked-up way of doing things!

    So crazy how those little decisions in our life have such a lasting effect. It reminds me of humans and technology. In Mesopotamia there is no way I would have said no to the plow when it was invented. Five thousand years later and it’s easy to see what a crucial mistake it was.

    p.s. Sorry if this post is weird but it’s 110F outside and 89F inside because our A/C is having issues. I think I might be losing my mind due to wet-bulb syndrome. Gonna get a motel room tonight if the A/C is not fixed soon.

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    1. I am truly sorry for your loss of what could have been. How I wish everyone was taught to work through their childhood wounds before making important life decisions in love and marriage. So much of being attracted to the wrong thing/person stems from something in our childhood, particularly in how our parents loved or didn’t love us.

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      1. Thanks monk. Your words are so true. When I got into Robert Sapolsky and Gabor Mate, they made me see how important every little thing from your childhood is (including the stress level of your mom while she’s pregnant with you). And how you can’t just go blaming your parents for your baggage because they probably had their share of trauma when they were children. And so on and so on. Such a delicate balance to “get it right”. 

        If I had kids, my main goal would be to have a strong support system within the family. Over here in USA, it’s very common for siblings to be rivals and hate one another. My brother and I had that growing up, and all of my friends did as well. I only knew of one brother and sister who were actually tight (and they were twins so that doesn’t really count 😊). Would like to think I could buck that trend with my kids.

        Also, I would encourage emotions and feelings. After I ask my kids how their day at school was, I would not allow a one-word answer (like I used to give to my mom). Actually, I would want to be home-schooling them. And cell phones… forget it, not allowed. Oh man, I would be a monster in their eyes. LOL. Good parenting has probably never been more difficult than it is right now in our current digital age. 

        p.s. It got up to 92F in the house (and thats with 4 ceiling fans and 5 standing fans on high with ice cold water towels from freezer). A/C is pumping like brand new now (knock on wood). All is right in my world (except the fact that its 104 outside right now at 930pm).

        Our thermostat is set at 77 all the time. At 85 it was getting very very uncomfortable. What a soft sapien I’ve turned into. Can’t handle an 8 degree bump. I can definitely handle a bigger bump in the opposite direction. In winter we keep it at 68F. But if it was up to me, I’d have it set around 50.

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        1. Cool and raining here today. Spent the day studying how to program my new handheld ham radio that arrived from China in 6 days with free shipping! It’s an amazing piece of gear for $22 Canadian.

          I think I’ve figured out what frequencies I can use for communication without (really) breaking the law since every I do will be dodgy without a license. Also figured out the important channels to scan all the time.

          The rumor I heard seems to be true because 1 week later the price jumped $10 and almost no one ships to Canada now.

          I’m thinking the time to prep is now. If it’s too good to be true it probably won’t continue.

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        2. If I have kids, I will be a pretty strict parent as well. I know Gaia said it has been cold in Australia, but we have been having a very warm winter. Next year is the solar maximum, plus it has been El Nino. But I feel so concerned about if we are reaching a new baseline that’s hotter, with climate change. It’s scary noticing a difference in real life

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    2. Habits, here cultural ones, can be stronger than feelings (not in the sense of emotions, but just what is felt). Our pleasure/pain dashboard is here for a reason.

      About the temperature: time to lose weight, dig underground shelter, harvest water, plant trees… Forget the air conditioning.

      You don’t do it now, it’s your choice. Ultimately, it means choosing death or migration. That’s OK too. Just know what you are choosing, in full conscience.

      🙂

      I forgot where you live exactly in the US, but trees can grow in more places than we think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_greening, https://www.editionsfavre.com/livres/regreening-the-sahara/, https://reverdirlesahara.org/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCli0gyNwL0.

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      1. Good advice Charles. And yes I am fully conscience for the only real choice that matters: Nitrogen or Helium?

        I’m so far away from digging an underground shelter in order to survive that I’m almost offended you suggested it 😊. My plan for nuclear war, migration, water issues, grid failure, etc is one month of survival. (only 2-3 days max if electric grid goes down during summer). The perfect amount of time to appreciate the moment and prepare for the end. 

        I’m at true acceptance with this plan. I know I can carry it out. And I know I won’t crack under pressure. I think that’s why my tone lately is even darker than usual. Like an actor getting too deep into character (Heath Ledger’s Joker), I’ve been too focused on the plan because I think it’s coming soon. I need to balance that out with appreciating the “Peak” while it’s still here.

        I’m at a point now where I see humanity the same as I see colonialism, nazism, or any other ism. Yes, if you look hard enough you will find plenty of good, but it’s all saturated in immense evil. (Hamish’s breakdown of the smart phone below is a good example of this). For the sake of Mother Earth, I am rooting for the extinction of humans. Even though it seems that after civilization crumbles, it will be impossible for sapiens to do any major damage to the environment. Just give it time, we will find a way, we always do.

        My Nate Hagens magic wand would involve everybody doing the right thing, right now and opting out of life. But it’s the same concept as willful energy reduction, we’ll have to be forced into it. So when SHTF, I know I’ll be ready.

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        1. Great 🙂

          And I forgot to mention passive cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_cooling, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKbEOMCsqaI…

          It is not my intent to offend you: my suggestions only reflects who I am 🙂 I have given up on this culture, but not on the continuation of life on this planet, and even not on humans. The dichotomy human vs. nature doesn’t make much sense to me. So I don’t really have remorse either. In simple times, it’s easy to deny the murky, messy nature of reality which is mirrored in our souls. We are not in simple times anymore.

          Thank you. I enjoy this conversation.

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          1. Hey Charles. I know you do not intend to offend. I love when you speak up. And your good at making me think. 

            I’m glad you’re ok with us not being on the same page here. I am going full dark on humans because it’s easy for me to get lured back into the trap of “we’ll break the cycle”. The new kick I’m on about energy constraints is helping to yes simplify things, but also just clicking. 

            No way to keep it light (like permaculture only) when you finally break through with agriculture. The universal rule seems to be a never-ending desire to increase EROEI. And no way to stop the built in worldviews of separatism and superiority from constantly getting stronger over time as you get more efficient. And no way for this to play out and not have tremendous negative effects on all life forms and Mother Earth.

            Fossil fuels are just the final solution for anyone who gets this far with agr. No way to be using the ancient sunlight shortly after breaking through with the current sunlight. Few thousand years minimum.

            The first contraint of fire is what gets it all started. One or two million years seems like we took longer than the average fire to agr moment. But I could also believe that the road to the “Peak” for any other lucky planets out there is in the ballpark with our trajectory. 1,000,000 / 12,000 / 200

            “It cant go any other way” which I hated about MPP, makes sense now. And yes, live for the now and the good in the world, but no. Not when the evil far outweighs the good. That person needs to go. There’s a perfect equilibrium for the diversity of life thriving on a planet and it does not involve breaking sacred energy constraints. Sooner we go, sooner life finds that perfect balance.    

            If my ramblings sound like a depressed person who needs help, or a tough guy projecting his fear. I assure you I am neither. 😊 Just a new focus and like I said, it’s clicking for me.

            And thank you, I enjoy this conversation too. 

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    3. I understand the sliding doors analogy. I was the sports jock whose true self chose the hippy tree hugging artist who didn’t know the rules of rugby. We’ve traversed the road somewhat less travelled. It has been a roller coaster because the sports jock part of me who wants to fit in and look good to his peers has tried to undermine that choice at times. It’s only in the last few years I have finally been able to leave him behind completely. Nikki is indeed a saint for putting up with me and helping keep us on course towards this awesome life we have today.

      In making the choice I’ve let go of quite a few friendships and a lot of potential income but I don’t regret it for a second. I totally agree with Monks comment. I was lucky enough to find a space to deal with some childhood stuff and be at peace with my parents just prior to meeting Nikki. If I hadn’t then…. the door would probably slid open to another path.

      I’m glad our video gives you good vibes. I really enjoy and appreciate your presence here Chris. Have a great day.

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  17. Videos like these are always fascinating to watch if you want to turbo charge your denial circuits and feel optimistic. I can’t believe there was a time when I used to revere this guy and believe his predictions. He is a big shot in the tech community who is highly respected.

    So according to him we are few years away from AGI and then its on to the stars from there on. A bunch of doomers on some remote corner of the internet believe civilization is going to crash hard within the next few decades. I wonder who to take seriously.

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    1. He’s a good example of why I became so interested in Varki’s MORT theory. Kurzwell is a bright well educated guy and yet he believes things that are obviously impossible due to energy and material constraints.

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      1. Ray Kurzweil : Holds up a “smart” phone and claims “that makes us more intelligent”.

        All of the evidence contradicts him. The phone is obviously much more than just a phone. More properly, it is an immensely powerful, battery-operated, computer – that enables high quality digital photography, portable media player, flashlight, phone, texting, secure messaging, navigation, calendar and more. It also fits in your pocket and runs for days. Practically the stuff that was science fiction two decades ago.

        If anything it has made people dumb, with no need to be able to read a map, remember things, or attempt to actually develop an understanding of life’s issues. It has largely destroyed normal social interaction and the innate social intelligence required. For some people, losing their phone is akin to losing a limb.

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        1. Yes. To me, the whole industrial civilisation enterprise is the production of crutches for masses of people who don’t need them. Debilitating.

          To me, the worse aspect of the phone is the mental addiction: the immediate feedback loop it creates between mental obsession and pleasure center.

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      2. I used to think that MORT is probably wrong and all that is needed is exposure to right information and a lack of investment in the survival of civilization which will allow that information in. My reason for thinking so was simple- If it was so easy for an average individual like me then it should be easy for anyone provided the latter two conditions are met.

        Now I think denial may be like a mountain with awakening on the other side and varying gradients depending on each individual. Information is your horse and investments are obstacles. You may lose your way and tumble back down but if you persist you can reach the other side and see the truth.

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        1. Well said.

          All of the famous overshoot aware people like Rees, Meadows, Hagens, Martenson, Murphy, Alpert, etc. think more information and education is required for a better path.

          A few, like Meadows, gave up.

          Not a one embraced MORT awareness as the first step. Despite overwhelming evidence that information and education does not work.

          They don’t even engage in a discussion on why MORT is wrong. They simply ignore or deny MORT.

          The only big name that engaged with me was Jay Hanson who attacked MORT and me for a year before I eventually caught him being unethical by hiding the fact that the whole time he had a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the theory. If I was religious I’d be comforted to know he’s in hell.

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    2. Thanks for the memories.

      I read Kurzweil’s book on the Singularity some 20+ years ago and was a firm believer for a couple of years. When nothing happened (as far as nanotechnology) I started to have doubts. Soon thereafter I came across Guy McPherson and figured we were going to overshoot planetary carrying capacity and became a doomer.

      AJ

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  19. Good short video about why music sucks nowadays. It got me thinking. Was gonna write something about how society (not just music) falls into this category. But then I saw this comment that sums it up perfect.

    “This is a fantastic bit of social commentary. Speaks to something beyond just music. Our whole culture is increasingly 1) Easily produced, 2) Easily consumed, 3) Easily forgotten”

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      1. From “das gelbe Forum” “Ashitaka” – translated: https://www.dasgelbeforum.net/index.php?id=656872

        What very few people realize is that today’s 25-year-olds have been completely psychologically reprogrammed in the last 15 years. And this also applies to all migrant daughters and sons. For today’s 15-year-olds, it is even more dramatic: almost none of them are capable of making social contacts with the opposite sex, of having sexual experiences in the coming years and then of fulfilling their desire to have a child in a relationship. The ever-increasing development of social media will make it impossible to escape into the desert of reality. They have lost any potential to gain a foothold in a society that makes relationships and children possible in the first place. This development will rob us of our ideals and hopes at such a tremendous speed that today’s society will be unrecognizable in a few years. There will then be no need for primary schools. What comes next, here as in all other EU states (especially the eastern ones), will no longer be able to deal with this curriculum content.

        Very few people are aware of the extent of the population destruction and the inevitable destruction of today’s welfare state. The population figures, and even the birth rates of the last few years, do not reflect the exponential dimension of the collapse. This is why corrections on the markets are always so sudden and unexpectedly severe. Because we do not want to be aware of the shortest exponential equivalents of the waves preparing for the big change.

        Saludos

        el mar

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      2. Yes I tried to explain the difference to my 16 year old daughter about experiencing music from the longing to buying and then listening while absorbing the visuals of the record.

        She is quite keen on vinyl but really has no money to buy it. At least she gets the idea of listening to an album though doesn’t do it regularly. She does note though that spotify is mostly feeding her crap and is now looking for new places to get recommendations.

        I quite liked Pandora. It introduced me to some great music such as A fine Frenzy and her album The pines.

        Look it up on You tube. For some reason it won’t let me link it.

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  20. Sarah Connor says what I’m feeling.

    https://www.collapse2050.com/the-future-we-deserve/

    That was not the presidential debate I hoped for.

    Here we are, civilization entering the abyss, and this is the best America has to offer? Bickering over golf and growth?!?

    I really don’t know what the fuck to think anymore. It’s like the officers of the Titanic arguing about the dinner menu as the ship sinks in the Atlantic. I shouldn’t really expect much else, I suppose. But something definitely broke tonight.

    We’re on the precipice of world war 3. People are actively planning to turn America into an authoritarian state. The biosphere is collapsing. This could be the last free election. Yet these are the presidential choices on the menu?

    It’s clear that voters don’t care, candidates don’t care and moderators don’t care. We’re fighting for our lives yet these existential risks are essentially a non-issue to those given a podium to speak.

    What do the 20-something year-olds think about all this? They must think the old folks are losing it. It’s embarrassing, assuming they’re paying attention at all. I hope they are because they have yet to experience life.

    I guess we’re about to get the future we deserve.

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  21. The west’s disconnect from reality is breathtaking.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/06/28/the-real-threat-to-our-security/

    The UK is a basket case in this respect, importing half of the food consumed (and around 60 percent of the calories) together with 20 percent of its electricity.  And things get far worse when it comes to agricultural and energy supplies.  A major reason for the high UK food inflation in 2022 and 2023, was that our elites in their infinite wisdom decided we did not need Russian gas or Russian fertiliser – the former being used extensively in greenhouses both for heating and for additional carbon dioxide, the latter being essential to maintaining UK crop yields.  Less obviously, the Cameron-Osborne 2010-2015 UK government closed the UK’s last diesel refinery because Russia could provide diesel cheaper – so that the cost of operating agricultural machinery is now also prohibitively high… it is no accident that farmers’ protests are mushrooming across Europe as costs rise even as affordability plummets.

    If we manage to avoid nuclear Armageddon – which, given the USA’s neocon leadership, is far from certain – it will be the BRICS who come out controlling the food, the energy, and the money.  But hardly anyone in the western political class is prepared even to mitigate the ensuing shock.  Indeed, in the UK, we are allowing fundamental steel, transport, agricultural land, and energy to close despite having no idea from where we will replace it… just the vain hope that our increasingly discredited currency will continue to buy it from elsewhere… making the political elite the real threat to our security.

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