By Charles & Chris: Doomers Anonymous

Un-denial regulars Charles & Chris (aka paqnation) collaborated on this essay exploring the psyche of doomers.

They discuss in detail characteristics common to the doomers they know. I have not observed the same common characteristics in the overshoot aware people I follow, and I elaborate a bit on this at the end of the essay.

It will be interesting to hear from others in the comments what they observe about doomers.

Introduction

Today, we are exploring a topic, which is rarely addressed in the doomosphere. We are not going to describe material limits and extraction trends, evaluate which DEFCON level is currently on, uncover the early and now increasingly advanced signs of collapse, speculate on the origin, mechanism or inevitability of our collective demise, attempt to predict the exact date of societal breakdown, lament over denial, wonder if Good(TM) and nature will prevail, or debate in which exquisite torments the human species will go extinct. But rather, for once, we focus on the personal: we observe the observer.

This is a topic Charles had wanted to explore for quite a long time but didn’t know how to. Following recent comments at un-Denial, Chris privately inquired if he was detecting some bargaining or desperation. This led to an interesting observation: we both recognize how precarious this fleeting moment is in human experience. However, we arrived at different accepting states: Charles tenaciously follows his heart, at his small scale, with faith, whatever the outcome, whereas Chris lives with kindness, relieved to witness the demise of this destructive species. So what would be the common characteristics of doomers? How does this impact their personal life, in particular in their social interactions? And what are some of the strategies that they can deploy to balance their nature?

Disclaimer: we are not trained psychologists. So, although we drew from our personal experiences and observations, there is no claim of any general validity. We still hope this may be of some use, especially, for those, increasingly numerous, who are just starting their journey down doomers’ lane: beware since this is a bumpy route. If not, then just read this piece lightly, on the beach as you would a summer article from Vogue magazine.

Birth and Discovery

Our study starts from the second best resource for any serious contemporary heavily funded research project: Wikipedia (the first one being some AI-powered scam-selling chatbot).

The page on doomers states that they “are people who are extremely pessimistic or fatalistic about global problems”. Well, that’s clearly the description of doomers from the external point of view of a normie. While it is true doomers think most exclusively at the global scale, they would disagree about having a pessimistic perspective. For them, the rest of society suffers from optimism bias, even denial. They would readily argue, some even ferociously, their outlook is realistic, if not the only possible outcome. There is a story behind this stance.

Nobody is born a doomer. Even if there may be some psychological predisposition, anyone can become a doomer. The typical doomer didn’t even willingly decide to become one, in the same way he would start tennis. This is a condition one develops when bitten by a radioactive spider: maybe he read some piece in a newspaper about the end of oil, or was shaken by some internet news about deforestation trends. With the impacts of climate change starting to be tangible, these animals can be encountered in the wild a lot more easily than they used to be. Most of, if not all of, these articles end on a positive note: how some substitutes are being worked on, or some politicians are about to regulate, or how anybody can participate in harm reduction by behaving as a responsible consumer. The soon to become doomer finds himself unknowingly at a turning point, he stands just before the gate which will eventually shake his world upside-down: he can accept the convenient conclusions at face value and forget, or start asking questions.

If he takes the red pill, a series of discoveries and shocks about the “true” nature of his world awaits him. This is the start of a long learning phase, a period of gradual uncovering and revelations. Unrolling the wool ball, teaches him rudiments in fields as diverse as mathematics, history, ecology, system dynamic, physics, evolutionary biology, geology, political science, sociology (and maybe even linguistics), psychology… Every day, he spends multiple hours reading books, listening to experts, skimming the internet in search for obscure blogs, hidden gems of knowledge. And gradually, piece by piece, he patiently assembles a small holistic inner “model of everything”, a mini-world comparable to a computer simulation. With this model, he hopes to understand the world, in its entirety, not only in its current state, but also its origins and future dynamic. He constantly refines the model, incorporates new findings. And he always comes up with the same, disappointing, but inescapable answer: 42. Scratch… Rewind… Sorry, wrong story… The Soon to Be All Ending Catastrophe.

Growth and Action

Once he is completely convinced of the folly of conventional wisdom, the doomer starts to act. In doing so, note that he is still following a very conventional cultural pattern: identify a problem then act in order to reach a solution.

His motivations vary according to his nature: inflect the global dynamic, avert the crash, if only for his group, lessen the blow, or deal with personal guilt or anger. He acts differently according to who he is and what he values: he may become an activist, teach other, learn to live thriftily, disconnect from the machine, travel, even follow a spiritual path. He tries to spread the word, finds his tribe. He may be learning new skills: growing food, doing preserves, managing a stock of perishable goods, metal-work, carpentry, communication, horticulture, bushcraft, homesteading, cooking, knitting, hunting… In some cases, this may go as far as to change him into an accomplished survivalist, a hermit, or even a pagan druid. He is forward-looking, cautious. He likes to stay on the safe side, keep margins of errors. Simultaneously, he is innovating, willing to take risks to explore non-conventional paths. He perceives the unexpected and plans for it. The doomer walks the talk, he is ready to step out of his comfort zone, experiment with activities he doesn’t necessarily (initially) enjoy. This all proves his tenacity, and that he is willing to make genuine sacrifices for the greater good. He is resilient, independent, autonomous. He does not need to rely and may even be defiant towards authority, central power.

This is a time of radical changes: the slow intellectual maturation process of the preceding phase is brought to fruition. This is also a constructive phase in the trajectory of the doomer. He has impacts, some he is unaware of. He can shock other people who may initially reject his perspective, but won’t forget. He rings the alarm bell, plays the societal role of the canary, shows alternative ways of living, out of the norm. Overall, he is able to nudge the collective perception of reality, instill doubt in the official narrative. But until it is the right time, this will not, this cannot scale up.

He thinks global, he expects to see global changes. So he eventually takes notice of the great gap between his efforts and expectations.

Stagnation and Isolation

At this point, he can feel pretty down. The beverage from the doomer’s chalice is about to turn sour. He may have paid, a sometimes pretty heavy, price for following this trail: maybe he lost all interest in his work and was fired, or he was abandoned by friends after repetitive bouts of anger, divorced his wife who couldn’t bear his constant mulling. Seeing the normies still going on with it, his life may not feel as enjoyable: the tasteless military canned food, the cold showers, the lack of finance, the crazy entourage, the aging and aching body, the absence of children’ laughter. Sometimes it feels all he achieved was only to travel down the social ladder and preemptively self-destruct. He may regret his sacrifices. All for nothing.

It seems the doomer is particularly vulnerable and obnoxious in his social interactions. Traveling for so long outside of the societal norm, having to constantly battle one’s beliefs in opposition to the group, is corrosive. It has forged his identity in a way that few can appreciate his company. The doomer is eternally focused on future and grandiose issues, to the point he may disregard immediate concerns or current concrete people’s suffering. This can easily and rightfully be felt as selfishness. It seems he eternally postpones the time he will allow himself to live, to be happy, to be. Instead, it is constant high alert: prepare, anticipate, protect, hide…

More importantly even, he feels he is not being listened to. If only they would follow his plan. If only they would all behave reasonably like himself. However, he never really acknowledges the other party either. He has only one channel of communication: verbal mental logic, within his own little “model of everything” at that. Maybe, he doesn’t understand the other modes of communication, doesn’t know they exist. He will invariably steer discussions towards collapse, like a reliable magnet. He feels it is his duty of explaining the world to other. So he often ends up sounding like a patronizing self-righteous bastard preaching from his ivory tower, a clear know-it-all. He stubbornly offers depressing tales of defeats without any room for breathing. He will not tolerate any difference of opinion or alternative views, about something which is, after all, to a large degree unknown and unknowable. It is never enough, no “solution” can work. No amount of preparation will do, no effort matters, it is never enough. Doesn’t it seem like the opposite, and very similar, side of the growth mentality? And then he rambles about his preferred course of action: the ultimate solution in a long list of solutions which all try to solve problems brought about previous solutions. Some kind of “final solution” of a new kind. Sounds totally reasonable to him. He has lost touch with society. He is now entirely engulfed in a handmade world of his own making, his precious.

If he can control it, a doomer with children can certainly not allow himself to dive, in their presence, that far within the depths of his dark psyche. This would be a sure way to crush them and repeat the curse down the next generation (in the small probability, there is a next generation ;). Are we seeing here a hint of what lies behind many doomer’s mask of cold-hearted objective thinking?

So he avoids social interactions, hides far away to protect oneself and others. His experience of the now, forever tainted by the future imagined catastrophe. A continuous mourning over that which has not yet happened.

Hitting diminishing returns, the doomer’s dynamic has gradually entirely morphed into a nihilistic descent, a downward spiral. The tryptic of fear, anger and sadness overwhelms him. Depression can hit. His activity, fueled by a now sterile obsession, turns compulsive. He keeps on beating the dead horse, eventually becoming a lone addict, fulfilling the prophecy before its time, a potent curse.

Elements of Doomer’s Psychology

Let us pause here for a moment. Being a doomer implies the bondage to a process of both light and darkness: it arises, grows inward, expresses outwards and decays. Why are some people more prone to become doomers than others? Is there some root cause, or is just fluke? And, more importantly maybe, is there life after death (of the arc of doom ;)? Before we attempt to answer these questions, let us recapitulate the psychological traits that seem common to most doomers.

Doomers have an unusual relation with spatial and temporal scales. They see far ahead. This makes them very patient when they need to reach any far-fetched objective. But they need some effort to be present to integrate what’s in their vicinity. They will easily switch off and ruin their immediate experience whenever they are enthralled in thoughts: they can miss many bright aspects of life, the multiple hints of love around them. Especially, since they tend to automatically filter everything which does not interest them. That which does not constitute a threat. They rarely stand still but always run “one step ahead”, thinking about the next move, making predictions. Paradoxically, they can be extremely sensitive to early warning signals, which for them, stand out amidst flows of data. At times, they experience information overload and that may be the real reason they need to isolate themselves. They will integrate in their mental models small details which may have large implications and be able to draw surprisingly accurate conclusions or sometimes turn out radically wrong.

Doomers are very cerebral: they think incessantly. Their inner monologue slithers unabated like a powerful tireless snake. They easily end up caught in obsessive mental loops. This grants them an exceptionally strong will, on the fringe of stubbornness. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to live in constant antagonism with most of society. Otherwise, they wouldn’t persevere in things they do not particularly enjoy just to prepare for a potential negative outcome sometimes in the far future (less far now).

Here the figure of Noah, building the gigantic ark on its own, with the help of God only instead of fossil fuels, may come to mind.

And they often excel at thinking: they are rational, logical, uncompromising, independent intellects, who do not trust nor rely blindly on figures of authority. Naturally, they respect people of high integrity, and are particularly skilled at detecting scammers, which they despise with a passion. Even if, sometimes, only the Trickster can allow irreconcilable demands of society to unfold, for better or worse. They work ceaselessly on an impossible project: their intellect wants to encompass even that which cannot, cage absolutely everything in the box of the mind. This is the ultimate quest for total knowledge, the final conquest of light over darkness. Their perfectionist control freak inner voice shouts: “Let them all be statistics, cells in excel sheets! I will make their life perfect. I have a plan.” In combination with their obsessive nature, this makes them inflexible figures easily drawn to dogmatism. Never face a doomer in a confrontational argument on his preferred topic.

Unfortunately for them, this rigidity affects them equally (You shall love your neighbor as yourself): they won’t easily allow themselves to live spontaneously, free from any clear pre-set goal. In that, they ironically have totally internalized the very core of industrial productivism. They have difficulties dealing with their emotions, sometimes even completely severed from them. This may be the key of one of their contradiction: the desire to protect an abstract entity, the whole species, while not noticing the immediate needs of the actual person just in front of them.

The next item on the list may be a consequence of their mental fixation, or just a characteristic prevailing in most dwellers of the modern world. Most doomers seem to have issues with their image of self. It might be incorrectly calibrated: either under or over-valued. Since they believe living conditions are about to become dramatically harsher than they already are, they feel natural to deploy more efforts and expect less rewards than the rest of the pack. Ironically this makes them an ideal target for ruthless practitioners of growth. You may hear them profess implacable credos of flamboyant macho bravado. Are these genuine expressions of their resilience or hints of a lack of confidence, of an underlying fear? “Hard times don’t last, hard people do” can be read in the doomer’s entry of Wikipedia. How much of a doomer’s rational rhetoric hides a self aggrandizing fantasy?

At the opposite end of the spectrum, some doomers display the arrogance of humanism dialed up to the end of the gauge. Isn’t the idea that the collective behavior ought to be controlled, the trajectory of the species planned in order to maximize survivability or minimize suffering, a delusion completely devoid of any humility?

Many doomers identify with a collective: the group of all humans or the whole living planet as a unique organism, Gaïa. Otherwise, how could the consequences of the activities of the whole species be a reason for personal shame? It can be suspected that some doomers have an even more unconventional notion of self: either setting only fuzzy boundaries, or simply considering it as an arbitrary construct of the mind. Who can say what’s what? Holobionts come to mind.

This is all surprising, isn’t it? We would have expected meeting a Cassandra-like creature instead, it’s the Carl Jung archetype of Apollo which seems to be emerging. According to Wikipedia the Apollo archetype:

“personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.”

Apollo, the bearer of light. The enlightenment. The statue of liberty. The Apollo space program. The template of a now bygone era. All his creations turned into a gigantic farce: advanced mathematics powered AI to generate pornographic images of lascivious beings endowed with cat or androgynous attributes (no, this sentence was not generated by a chatbot); extravagant expenditure of engineering, fuel and other resources only to send a few tons of metal into space at 0.00015% the distance to Mars; feats of programming, automation, slavery, life stripping exploitation to publish these words into the great silicon web of matter-less opinions, to reach you…

We can now better understand the doomers’ fascination with derelict places, decay, the morbid. His thoughts are crystallized on the edge of the observable, the end of his light. The fixation aimed at some imagined brief moment in the future: a turning point, a tipping point, the end times, the apocalypse, total annihilation, extinction. Before this point, the dumb masses rule. After, it the doomer won’t need to struggle anymore because all will be over. He is proven right, it’s a victory, a Pyrrhic victory, at last, just before the closing curtain. More importantly maybe, everybody will then experience the same discomfort he finds himself in right now.

Tentative Explanation: Unconscious Root Motivation

This section will be more hypothetical: it’s an attempt at finding some plausible root causes of the doomer’s dynamic.

On the surface, doomers seem to be disappointed idealists. Humanists who are not accepting the failed (in comparison to their own standard) experiment that either the species or this specific culture proves daily to be. They long for a world of reason, beauty or harmony. They simply can’t really get over the large gap between their expectations and reality.

But, really, maybe, idealism was born out of the necessity to compensate an even deeper issue, a trauma, in some form or another. Doomers are in a state of shock. It would explain the fear. It would explain the challenges with the self.

It would explain the addictive behavior. It would explain the propensity for seclusion. It would explain the dissociation from emotions. It would explain the tendency to preemptively put oneself in conditions harsher than needs to be. It would explain the elitism of placing oneself above and untouched, as a neutral observer. It would explain the constant assessment of danger. These are all habits and defense mechanisms adopted during past stressful circumstances. Doomers have been hard-wired, psychologically trained in tough times. What they imagine of the future, is a reflection of their past, now buried in the unconscious. In a way, they are optimized for survival in extreme situations and wither during lax times.

Let us not dwell too long on that, as this is highly circumstantial. Everyone will judge for himself the validity of this hypothesis. Let us just stress the fact that trauma comes in various degrees and does not correspond only to a one-time brutal event but may also be activated by a continuous feeling of danger during childhood.

Family history could play an important role here. We are almost all offsprings of horrors: genocides (Native American, holocausts), slavery, wars; killers, rapists, survivors. There have been so many tragedies in relatively recent human history, that almost no-one is psychologically untouched. So maybe it’s just the normality of life.

In contrast, the western middle class is materially extravagantly sheltered, while totally dependent on an overarching, psychologically oppressive system: replete with propaganda, disheveled morality, betrayals, tricks and manipulations of the mind. This fosters wild imaginations, delusions, various degrees of psychosis. A bit like industrial farm chickens on steroids (which they are not), many haven’t had the opportunity to grow up fully in balance. Diminished humans. Living in this unnatural, bullying society, considering the prospect of shortages, observing from afar, through the distorting lens of the media, the implacable destruction of multiple life forms on the planet is, in itself, enough for trauma. And we are back to a circular argument.

Maturation Out of the Loop of Doom

Are there happy doomers, content with their mental state? Probably.

But doomerism is usually a heavy load to carry. So one might reasonably want to mature past this state, grow out of the addiction and self-destruction. If doomerism is really a consequence of a form of trauma, then it is only natural, this will take some time to resolve. Hopefully, there are many strategies, which, in time, can bear their fruits. These strategies are not a rejection of the rational conclusion of the doomer about the state of the world. That’s one thing. It’s rather a movement of further expansion. It is about the recognition of other aspects, which can coexist with the certainty of collapse:

recognition of the destructive effect of doomerism on oneself,
recognition of the limits of individual power, to understand and control,
recognition of the bounded responsibility of oneself in global issues,
recognition of the load that one carries,
recognition of the diversity: of forms and beings, down to the way of seeing the world,
recognition of the emotions, past and current: anxiety, pessimism, shame, despair, fear, anger, sadness,
recognition of that which lies in one’s shadow,
recognition of all the things that are going fine, right now, the love around.

Habits and multiple rationalizations of the mind will naturally present themselves and prevent change. They protect the stability of the psychic equilibrium achieved in reaction to past circumstances. This equilibrium has served its purpose and has now become counterproductive. To break the deadlock, there are multiple small practices, which progressively, gently rectify our stance. There is a lot of activities we may choose from, here are a few non-exhaustive examples:

breathe, relax, meditate,
practice compassion, to others, to yourself,
treat yourself, care for yourself, listen to your needs,
focus on the small things you have control over, you can handle,
congratulate yourself, smile to yourself, pat yourself on the back,
cultivate gratefulness: note the things that go well,
appreciate the word “enough”,
find a safe zone, find your tribe,
express yourself,
perform service to others,
confront your fears by overcoming real world hardships, travel the world, gain confidence,
observe events, without tainting, without trying to anticipate,
study your thoughts: see their origins, differentiate between the group’s and yours, observe the repetitions, the patterns, the tricks of the mind,
keep a log of your predictions: write them down as precisely as possible and then compare with actual events,
study your emotions, dive in the darkness of the forbidden ones, do not block them, let them unfold, run their full course,
listen to other people’s viewpoints without jumping to conclusion, pause whenever you feel the urge to react automatically, compare with your viewpoint,
study family history,
bring things back to the concrete, root yourself, limit the habit of thinking in generalities,
consider therapy, follow some form of spiritual practice,
take the leap of faith, rely on higher intervention, a higher force, abandon control, let life be.

In a way, this is nothing new, already in 2012, Paul Chefurka talked about the inner path and the outer path. This all boils down to experimenting the “outside” while listening to the “inside” until there is no more friction.

Conclusion

Being a doomer is a bit like being an alcoholic. Some are able to drink a few drinks and stop. Other will start with only half a drink and find 13 years of their life has passed by without notice. Although, it is most probably some form of escapism, like Bovarysme, doomerism is grounded in legitimate concerns.

Now, these concerns are reaching gigantic proportion. Everybody can see collapse at their doorstep. Everybody will soon have to deal with the consequences, envisioned by doomers. There are no easy answers, doomers can simply share their journey.

Chris

I was hesitant to team up with Charles for this experiment. I joke about him being my spiritual advisor, but him and I have been going in opposite directions for a while now. I guess my hesitancy was in thinking that this would be too pro human or too spiritual for my taste. I was relieved when he sent me his first draft. I was on board with everything he was saying. IMHO, his analysis about the typical doomer is spot on.

Now I also think we could flip the script and make this piece about the overshoot aware Spiritual person instead. Dive in to see what makes him/her tick. Try to see how they believe what they believe in the face of no evidence whatsoever. And yet they are very well versed to reality and our predicament. Have a feeling that story would sound very similar to the doomer. But that’s a different essay for someone else to tackle.

During this process of back-and-forth notes with Charles, a pattern was emerging. It was clear to me that he was worried about offending the doomer crowd. It was also clear to me that because of his experience of being one himself, he would be able to draw heavily on that, and rather than being offensive, it would be respectful.

On occasion I try to rattle Charles by sending him a shock jock belief of mine or a quote like this one from James at Megacancer. “The story of life: The quest for profit and growth will continue as it has since the first organic cell fissioned. The End.”

Nothing fazes him. In fact, most of the time he ends up liking what I said, or it gives him ideas to come back at me with something better. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Charles is tolerant to pretty much anything. And if you ever have a chance to interact with him outside of un-Denial, do it! He’s much more comfortable with one on one email.

Charles

Writing this piece, I didn’t want to gaslight the doomer: overshoot and collapse are real. Still, I also think, there is a psychological basis, an interplay between the macro and the micro, a link between individual psyches and collective dynamic. I believe material collapse will happen in synchronicity of a mass regulatory psychological event. I hope so: although extremely alluring, this culture is insane. It’s been hard to maintain integrity.

I have been a doomer, a part of me will always remain one. I slowly am retiring. Contemplating, as much as it is granted to me, life peacefully, joyfully, in awe.

I enjoyed very much working with Chris on this piece. More than anything else, I especially appreciate his accepting, encouraging presence, true to his first name as the carrier of Christ.

Rob here with a few thoughts.

I have followed quite a few overshoot aware people over the last 15 years including Gail Zawacki, Nicole Foss, Gail Tverberg, Alice Friedemann, Jay Hanson, Nate Hagens, Dennis Meadows, William Rees, David Korowicz, Jean-Marc Jancovici, Tim Watkins, Jack Alpert, Michael Dowd, Tim Morgan, David J.C. McKay, Tom Murphy, Tim Garrett, William Rees, Charles Hall, Paul Chefurka, Sam Mitchell, Jason Bradford, Andril Zvorygin, Steve St. Angelo, Simon Michaux, Hideaway, xraymike79, James, B, Mike Stasse, Irv Mills, and a few others.

I have not observed in these people many of the characteristics that Charles & Chris think are universal. I do lack visibility into the personal lives of most of these people so perhaps Charles & Chris have access to insights I do not have, or perhaps they follow different people. Hopefully examples of people with the common characteristics that Charles & Chris observe will be provided in the follow-up comments.

What I observe is that the majority (say 80%) of the tiny minority (say 1000 out of 8,000,000,000) people who have become deeply aware of our overshoot predicament tend to become obsessed with the topic and spend a lot of time discussing it. Very rarely an individual, like Paul Chefurka or Nicole Foss, breaks free of the obsession and retreats to live the balance of their life thinking about other things, but this is the exception rather than the norm.

Speaking for myself, I am unable to unsee a cliff we are accelerating towards, and I am fascinated why 8 billion minus maybe 1000 brains of an otherwise extraordinarily intelligent species are unable to understand the obvious, nor to take any actions to minimize the coming suffering of their beloved children and grandchildren.

I also do not think any normal person can easily become a doomer as claimed in the essay above. My personal experience has been that the majority of people are unable to understand the information necessary to become a doomer, regardless of their intelligence or education, or how simply and thoroughly the information is fed to them. In other words, no amount of data or logic is sufficient to explain the reality of overshoot to most people.

I think Dr. Ajit Varki discovered the answer to this mystery with his MORT theory, which also explains why only one super-intelligent species evolved on this planet despite the obvious fitness advantages of high intelligence, and why that species is also the only species that believes in gods.

Perhaps there is a better explanation than MORT for what we observe, but I have not yet found it.

976 thoughts on “By Charles & Chris: Doomers Anonymous”

Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 7:34 am

RIP Jimmy Carter. A rare leader that I respect.

I wonder why he went silent on energy in his later years? He continued to speak about everything else he cared about.

https://un-denial.com/2016/04/26/book-review-a-full-life-reflections-at-ninety-by-jimmy-carter/

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1. AJ says:
  
  December 30, 2024 at 11:29 am
  
  I agree. He is one of the few who after he left the Oval Office he didn’t cash in for personal gain. AND as much as I detest religion, he is a true example of how I believe a “true” Christian should live their lives.
  
  AJ
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 8:04 am

The bad actors are back with the same script. Will citizens believe them this time?

I bet a lot will.

No one in my personal life that transfected themselves with a novel untested ineffective and dangerous gene therapy has made a public mea culpa.

https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/come-offit

there is obviously a concerted push right now from the same gang that pushed the most unsafe and ineffective vaxx in human history during covid to jam h5n1 bird flu vaxx by manufacturing a crisis with “test with oversensitive assay until you find something that looks scary” then removing all the safeties from the system.

ironically, i’m actually all for people being able to make their own choices about drugs and not needing the approval of the state to decide what pharma they want to take. a free market of free choice would be great.

but this is not that.

this is the worst of both worlds, a total lack of testing with a total lack of liability given a false patina of science and trust by agencies like FDA and CDC who have not only so egregiously failed in their duties but actually inverted them going to great lengths to mislead the public and cover the tracks of pharma harm.

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1. AJ says:
  
  December 30, 2024 at 11:40 am
  
  Yeah, I agree completely. I moved to this area because there was a good university and town within a reasonable distance of my land. That town is VERY Blue. I occasionally shop at the Co-op in town for the good produce (and it not being a corporate machine). But, lots of the old clientele and almost all of the young workers are all still wearing masks.
  
  Plus, I can’t discuss anything with a single person in my family about Covid. They all got the shots and many of them are boosted. When I tried discussing with my son about the efficacy of ivermectin he immediately started giving my the stupid stuff that it’s “just for horses” or “only works on parasites”.
  
  All I can hope is that RFK can clean house on the FDA and CDC before Trump throws him out.
  
  AJ
  
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2. Simon says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 12:45 pm
  
  You’re likely right that bird flu is more bullshit, but just in case it’s not, Pierre Kory has a good piece about chlorine dioxide. Until earlier this evening I was of the opinion that “miracle mineral solution” was snakeoil, but Kory’s piece is well-researched, and he’s a decent man of high integrity.
  
  https://pierrekorymedicalmusings.com/p/trumps-bleach-conference-alluded
  
  I’ve recently learnt about iodine and its many applications as a general antimicrobial (and indeed I appear to have cured my decades long gingivitis in about 10 days with iodine), but that’s another story.
  
  Simon.
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    December 31, 2024 at 1:29 pm
    
    Hi Simon,
    
    I agree Pierre Kory is a very good man with high integrity.
    
    I have iodine spray in my covid preps but never needed to use it. I was sick last month for the first time in about 8 years with a strange respiratory illness that lasted 28 days before I finally took ivermectin following the FLCCC protocol and then promptly got healthy.
    
    It took me a long time to form an opinion on covid and I’m still forming an opinion on bird flu. My current belief is that bird flu was not created in a lab but is nevertheless man-made by our industrial chicken farming practices.
    
    I think bird flu has the potential to become a deadly problem for humans but we are not there yet and what eventually happens has a large element of genetic chance to it.
    
    I believe panic will be fomented for bird flu as it was for covid, for the same reasons, some of which we still do not understand, and I believe they will push mRNA as a “solution” to the “threat”, and that the new mRNA will be just as unsafe and ineffective as the covid shots, but nevertheless profitable for pharma. I think a lot of citizens will line up to be transfected and the current decline in the overall health of the population will accelerate.
    
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    1. Simon says:
      
      December 31, 2024 at 2:25 pm
      
      Evening Rob,
      
      One thing that got me to try iodine was that my son has been getting repeated respiratory infections over the past year or so. More than seemed reasonable. I’ve tried just about everything I could think of to help him (including ivermectin), and nothing did, apart from nebulized iodine (a single drop in 5ml of colloidal silver). I tried it at one point when I was coming down with something and it was effective for me, too, while my partner just got sick. I think she’ll try iodine next time, as she saw it worked for both me and our boy.
      
      I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re correct that mRNA shots will be pushed as a response to bird flu; I recall reading about new mRNA factories being built in at least the UK. That people’s overall health will continue to decline seems likely, too. Most people I know are sick at the moment.
      
      Simon.
      
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    2. Rob Mielcarski says:
      
      January 1, 2025 at 4:09 pm
      
      I am expert in influenza and have consulted with the WHO over the past two decades on the topic of flu vaccines. This is one subject matter I am extremely knowledgeable about.
      What is happening now with "bird flu" is another psyops campaign being conducted by the… pic.twitter.com/o5jjopIoce
      
      — Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) December 31, 2024
      
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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 8:30 am

Bingo. A beautifully clear explanation by HHH of why government spending everywhere in the world is out of control.

https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-december-2024/#comment-784399

During 2024 the US deficit was 8% of GDP. Should we believe that will continue on each year over the next 4 years?

If that kinda spending doesn’t continue we go into an economic contraction.

If it gets dialed back to 4% of GDP. We have a problem. A major problem.

Government spending really is the only game in town. Without it increasing at an ever expanding rate the money supply will absolutely contract. Which will lead to forced selling of assets because the demand for dollars to service debts goes up or remains the same. While the supply of dollars contracts violently.

Trump is going to get his $40 oil. But it won’t be a good thing. It will be because the economy imploded.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 8:36 am

Professor Hideaway’s Brandon-MORT experiment continues with remarkably consistent results.

#295: Beans on tech

Brandon, can you find a single politician anywhere in the world talking de-growth?

Can you find a central bank anywhere that talks about degrowth?

Can you find any mainstream media anywhere that discusses anything other than growth?

I can’t, so the default position is ‘to grow the economy’ all the way to the point when it can’t on a world wide scale. I’m not expecting anything to change radically in the outlook from those that believe really dodgy EROEI numbers and claim we can go to renewables to replace all fossil fuels. These people are not ever discussing de-growth, they are promoting further growth.

At some point you have to live with the reality of the world around you, and accept that a Jimmy Carter promising energy constraints will always be out voted by a Reagan that makes promises that physically can’t be kept.

People want to believe in the renewable miracle or the nuclear powering everything they have today, and more for their future. They are not interested in de-growing at all, so we head directly for collapse instead, where we go all out using more fossil fuels, until we can’t, to build all the ‘new’ whatever it is.

Eventually it will dawn on people they have been lied to about the future, but only after it’s way too late to do anything. If humanity as a whole were ever going to do anything positively for the future, we would have started 50 years ago and believed The Limits To Growth concept, plus started a serious campaign to reduce population and resource use all those decades ago.

Instead it’s been pedal to the metal full steam ahead, as people in every country will kick out any leader that tries to make the population’s lives worse off, or perceptionally worse off, in favour of those promising “growth”..

Given humanity as a whole, and the sheer rejection of anything less than growth, it’s obvious that the current system has to be maintained and the ‘new’ renewables or nuclear future has to be added on top while the economy still grows for any change to be accepted by the public, economists, elite, media, etc, as a whole!!

All your hand waving about what we ‘can do’, but clearly are not doing, nor planning to do, is pointless. Civilization only goes forwards, not backwards, with every prior civilization to our own collapsing due to the inability to unwind the internal complexity without collapsing. It will be exactly the same for our 6 continent supply chain civilization, once energy, especially oil becomes scarce, as in production has an accelerating fall.

When there is not enough energy to mine, move, and make all the products we currently use, then chaotic feedback loops kick in halting all sorts of processes and practices thought unrelated to oil, including wars over resources which will just accelerate the decline. Humanity as a whole is not smart enough to overcome our collective MPP, always believing that someone else has stolen our resources instead of the truth of not enough to go around, and certainly not buying the concept of degrowth.

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Charles says:

December 30, 2024 at 9:17 am
Hi Rob,

Thank you for putting the essay up, so quickly after our last conversation.
The captions for the last pictures are nicely done. And I like your end notes: it was a great idea to put a list of doomers. Maybe you could add rintrah.

I spotted a few remaining typos:
- Replace maximum with maximize in “Isn’t the idea that the collective behavior ought to be controlled, the trajectory of the species planned in order to maximum survivability or minimize suffering, a delusion completely devoid of any humility?”
- A right parenthese is missing after “which they are not” (and the link is about the fact there are not on steroids, so the link could be on “which they are not”), in “A bit like industrial farm chickens on steroids (which they are not, many haven’t had the opportunity to grow up fully in balance.”
- Replace “enough from trauma” with “enough for trauma” in “Living in this unnatural, bullying society, considering the prospect of shortages, observing from afar, through the distorting lens of the media, the implacable destruction of multiple life forms on the planet is, in itself, enough from trauma.”
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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  December 30, 2024 at 4:49 pm
  
  I made the fixes. Thanks again for contibuting.
  
  I do not recall rintrah discussing the reality and implications of fossil energy depletion. Are you sure he is aware?
  
  Ditto on why I did not include Canadian Prepper who is probably not aware because he never discusses the real reasons to prep, which probably explains why he has over a million subscribers.
  
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  1. Charles says:
    
    December 31, 2024 at 8:52 am
    
    Thank you for fixing the typos.
    
    Yes, that’s right, I do not recall reading rintrah about overshoot and/or energy. He is certainly aware of climate change, the impact of human behavior on the other species and industrial farming.
    
    I think there are more doomers from pre-internet times. Personnally, I am particularly fond of Alexander Grothendieck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck). But again, maybe this depends on the definition of doomer that is used to qualify… I guess we can include Malthus as a doomer, but maybe not in the most recent sense.
    
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  2. Charles says:
    
    January 1, 2025 at 1:32 am
    
    Hello Rob,
    
    I am replying here to group the remarks about typos/text modifications.
    
    As Ian correctly pointed in this comment https://un-denial.com/2024/12/29/by-charles-chris-doomers-anonymous/#comment-108481, mentioning only one doomer by name is putting a heavy load on just one person.
    
    Maybe it’s not too late to do something about it? If it’s OK with you, we can remove the whole sentence “Canadian Prepper is an example of this.”, and just put the link to CanadianPrepper channel in the preceding sentence on the words “constant high alert”?
    
    I hope Canadian Prepper is of the kind who thinks “there is no such thing as bad publicity” 🙂
    
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    1. Rob Mielcarski says:
      
      January 1, 2025 at 9:49 am
      
      Done.
      
      He gets lots of criticism from lots of people so he’s probably used to it. Most of the criticism however is focused on the wrong thing. The real issue is that he is not overshoot aware which means he is unable to connect the dots of the things he reports on, and doesn’t understand the real reason he is prepping.
      
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      1. Charles says:
        
        January 1, 2025 at 11:10 am
        
        Thank you.
        
        Yes. That’s too bad he is not aware of overshoot. Or maybe he is too smart a business man to touch some subjects.
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 1, 2025 at 11:29 am
        
        I’m not sure what Canadian Prepper knows. I watch for hints that he’s aware and stays silent to keep the ad revenue flowing but don’t see them. In fact I see the opposite given the high tech and fossil consuming toys he has recently invested in for his new doomstead. Nate Hagens is also silent so he can build subscriptions but drops hints every once in a while to let us know he knows.
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 2:54 pm
        
        Canadian Prepper is completely aware of fossil fuel and mineral depletion – I have heard him mention it enough times. But he focusses more on AI and robots and all that stupid shit – I guess for views
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 4:45 pm
        
        Thanks, I’ve been watching and not seen it. If he knows and speaks so little about it that casts doubt on his integrity. He does talk about the reality of climate change despite many of his audience thinking it is a hoax so I guess that compensates.
        
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Anonymous says:

December 30, 2024 at 10:19 am

The notion that only 1000 in 8,000,000,000 of us have become deeply aware of our overshoot predicament does not at all comport with my subjective experience, limited as it certainly is. On the contrary it is my experience that a significant percentage of people with even a modest understanding of basic math can see the problem quite clearly. It is also my experience that many of them have made a concerted effort to find evidence to challenge their own conclusions by looking quite deeply into what has driven them to those conclusions in a failed attempt to find a more palatable plausible outcome. Having failed, they simply choose, in the face of other perfectly rational conclusions that they have come to regarding their ability to predict the timing and the obvious limits on their ability to influence the global future, to ignore or accept them (at least not be consumed by them) and carry on living and working, knowing perfectly well that doing so helps ensure their predicted outcome. They might, to varying degrees, modify their own behavior and or try to modify the behavior of others in an attempt to postpone the inevitable or simply distract themselves to help quell the debilitating fear the realization can induce (perhaps driven by an unsupported hope that another path might at some point reveal itself) but that is a far cry from suggesting that they cannot or or have not done the math and inquiry necessary to clearly see the cliff and have a decent understanding of its implications.

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  December 30, 2024 at 3:58 pm
  
  May I suggest you pick a nickname for this site? I can see your IP but others here can’t and it’s hard to follow conversations with anonymous people.
  
  On there being more than 1000 aware people you may or may not be correct. We should probably start by defining “aware”.
  
  There are no doubt many millions of people that are aware climate change and pollution are serious problems and that fossil energy is finite and depleting. Most of these people however assume depleting fossil energy is a good thing because we need to switch to “green” energy anyway to “fix” climate change. Almost none of these people understand that all green energy, plus all of the metals and other materials, plus most of the food our modern civilization requires for survival are completely dependent on fossil energy. Nor that fossil energy depletion will take us out long before climate change does.
  
  So I don’t think we should call these many millions of concerned people aware. They are not even close to being aware.
  
  I listed above about 30 publicly aware people that I know of. I’m getting old and no doubt forgot some so let’s be generous and say there’s 100. But at least half of these people are not brave enough to publicly state the implications of overshoot so we can’t be sure they are truly aware which means we’re back to say 50. Now let’s assume that for every public aware person there’s another 20 in the closet. That’s how I guessed 1000.
  
  Even if I’m out by another order of magnitude it’s still a tiny percentage of 8 billion that understand the most important issue facing our species, this despite the data and evidence being obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of physics and math.
  
  Hence my fascination with MORT.
  
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Anonymous says:

December 30, 2024 at 10:24 am

I was with these guys, ticking off boxes, for the first general section, which was an excellent overview. Unfortunately, it soon became WAY too didactic and pedantic for my Doomer tastes once they got into the psycho-babble. I think Rob summed it up much more succinctly in his closing comments. Onward through the fog of 2025, fellow Doomers!

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1. Charles says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 9:19 am
  
  In any case, thank you for reading till the end. And thank you for your feedback.
  
  Some more random ideas, simply, for the pleasure of sharing 🙂
  
  The Apollo archetype was not planned beforehand, it emerged after careful examination of the traits we collected. For me, at least, it clicked.
  There was this book titled “The arrogance of humanism” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ehrenfeld#The_Arrogance_of_Humanism_(1978)). That was in 1978.
  
  There is a distinction between doomers we did not make in the essay, because it occured to us later. And anyway, any type of binary distinction has both value and limits. Roughly (it’s not that easy to articulate):
  There are doomers who fear the end of modernity and the impact it will have on human beings (collapse, extinction). There are doomers who mourn the ongoing onslaught on other life forms, and yearn for more harmony between the human species and other sentient beings on the planet.
  
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Stellarwind72 says:

December 30, 2024 at 3:25 pm
Does anyone have predictions for 2025?

Here are some of mine:
- U.S. shale oil starts its permanent decline. There are desperate attempts to stop this, but those attempts are futile.
- Due to energy and data limits, the Generative AI Bubble pops.
- We start seeing human-to-human transmission of Bird flu.
- The IPCC or some other scientific body announces that we have passed 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
- Civil unrest in the U.S. due to the actions of the incoming administration.
- Israel continues its Genocide in Palestine nearly unopposed
- A Black Swan Event
What are yours?

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1. paqnation says:
  
  December 30, 2024 at 7:22 pm
  - phoenix, az shatters record for consecutive days at or above 100°F (2024 – 113 days)
  - phoenix, az shatters record for days at or above 110°F (2024 – 80 days)
  - profits from professional sports will be at all time high
  - a successful assassination of Trump and/or RFK
  - several Luigi Mangione copycats
  - Mangione will mysteriously die in prison
  - the world’s first trillionaire
  - the looming threat of aliens will intensify. Senate hearings, etc. No false flag yet
  - the most Category 5 hurricanes in one year (record is 2005, with four)
  - suicide rates will set records
  - legalizing and accessibility to euthanasia will pick up steam
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2. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  December 30, 2024 at 8:25 pm
  - meat/fat inflation will be brutal, stock up now
  - the economy will try to roll over and bird flu will be used by Trump as an excuse to ditch Elon-DOGE and print trillions
  - bird flu might kill enough people to sideline RFK Jr. so pharma can “save” us with mRNA
  - no one will go to jail for the covid crimes
  - Trump will quickly achieve Ukraine peace by giving Russia everything it wants but will claim victory by “saving” Odessa and western Ukraine
  - a Chinese black swan will land to distract its citizens from economic problems
  - Iran will be attacked by Israel/Trump but will still successfully build an atomic bomb
  - the west will begin to regret taking over Syria
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3. monk says:
  
  January 5, 2025 at 3:05 pm
  Great predictions by everyone. I would add:
  - More universities close / lose money. Ditto for mainstream news and media.
  - Streaming services and internet services (eg Google storage) will get a lot more expensive.
  - Maybe some unexpected mergers of very big corporates. For example, looks like the Japanese government is forcing Honda to buy Nissan.
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 5, 2025 at 4:48 pm
    
    Interesting predictions. What’s your thinking on streaming services? Is the age of “it’s ok to have no profits as long as you grow losses” coming to an end?
    
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    1. monk says:
      
      January 5, 2025 at 5:06 pm
      
      Yea it just seems to be heading that way, like I am seeing a trend reversal but I can’t explain why. I saw a funny meme that went: streaming platforms need to remember their whole reason for existing is that they are slightly more convenient than piracy.
      
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      1. Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 5:26 pm
        
        That’s funny.
        Also true is the fruits of piracy work after the internet goes down.
        I’m going to make a living post collapse charging my neighbors $0.25 to watch a movie.
        
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        Stellarwind72 says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 7:27 pm
        
        After a collapse, no one will give a crap about IP laws…
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 7:37 pm
        
        With the exception of a few TV series and live sporting events no one cares now.
        
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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 5:34 pm

The 40% of young people that support the recent murder of a health insurance CEO would jump to 90% if they watched this interview.

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1. AJ says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 11:19 am
  
  This was eye-opening. Being a retired attorney who worked in the workers compensation healthcare delivery system, I knew a little of how the system worked. I was aware of the warfare between providers and the insurance company with regard to bills. The provider tries to up code the bill to get more money whereas the insurance company tries to down code the bill to pay less.
  
  BUT, this interview enlightened me as to the way the insurance companies and pharma attempt to screw the consumer and ultimately hook them on pharmaceuticals and into an unhealthy lifestyle. Looks like there is a lot for RFK to attempt to fix.
  
  The only redeeming thing about collapse is that anyone who survives will be eating healthier (if they’re not starving) and be much more physically active.
  
  AJ
  
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Kira says:

December 30, 2024 at 6:31 pm

Really nice summation of the process that many overshoot aware people go through. I agree with Rob that intelligence seems irrelevant when it comes to seeing the truth. He posted a snippet of a Reddit AMA of Sean Carrol who is a famous physicist a few years back. At the end of the exchange he was asked about the link between economy and energy and his reply was essentially an incoherent word salad with not an ounce of logic in it. Clearly he has never thought about it ever before or has he?

Einstein was not just a formidable intellect but also wise but there is no guarantee that even he would be able to see the truth. Even he might have bought into the renewable non sense.

The human mind is absolutely remarkable and is always doing everything it can to protect itself even without the person knowing it. Seeking new information or experiences require motivation and if the brain believes that it would not be in its best interests then it will not generate that motivation through neurotransmitters. This happens subconsciously and is nearly impossible to overcome, hence the difficulty in using logic and reason to use someone to see the reality. On the other hand when information does make it though or impossible to avoid (climate change for instance) the brain will use everything at its disposal to generate optimism using mental gymnastics. We see this in Hideaway’s interactions on other sites regularly.

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1. Charles says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 9:37 am
  
  Thank you. I like your insight about the human brain. Do you work in the field of neuro-science? That would really be great to have some knowledgeable and unbiased guests from this field debate brain and overshoot…
  
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  1. Kira says:
    
    January 1, 2025 at 5:55 am
    
    I don’t have a background in neuroscience but started taking an interest and do some light reading after sometime into my overshoot journey. I find it fascinating as to why some people can see the truth so clearly while others have no interest to even think of it. It is also quite fascinating to see people like Dennis from POB and others that Hideaway debates who know the facts but their brain has managed to take them and twist it to reach an optimistic end.
    
    I think most overshoot aware people including myself have been in all the categories with the final one being complete awareness of where we are and where we are headed. People like Dennis are stranded in between and may or may not come out. Most people will never make it out of first. What is interesting is that intellect seems completely irrelevant to the equation here. Then what is the differentiating factor here? Is there some genetic factor and if so then what is it? I think answering these questions becomes little easier with understanding of how our brains are reacting to information like limits to growth.
    
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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 9:57 pm

Hideaway’s elevator speech is getting crisper.

#295: Beans on tech

Brandon …. “You are not a doomer, you just believe that there are no solutions”.

I’ve worked it out from maths and physics, not a belief. What you have is a belief..

In the big picture it’s really simple. Entropy and dissipation do their work in the long term to every man made structure, no exceptions.

Any civilization that is based upon metals and minerals has to fail in the longer term as lower grades of every material required by the civilization has to be replaced over time using more energy to do so, because of the lower grades, therefore any civilization based on metals and materials is not sustainable in the long term. Growth of energy use forever is not possible on a finite planet.

We are shortly going to have an accelerating decrease in our number one type of energy, oil, which clearly means we can’t maintain our existing civilization as we rely upon it to grow, and gather, food and materials, and get these to the cities.

You are the one with belief systems, to overcome your denial of a bad future for civilization as we know it.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 30, 2024 at 10:27 pm

Dr. Tim Garrett is following a path similar to that of his intellectual peer Dr. Tom Murphy, by adding some philosophy to his overshoot story.

I suppose this is to be expected from great minds that tried without success to improve the destination by educating those that cannot be taught, thanks to MORT.

Exponential growth must ultimately yield to the natural forces of depletion and decay.

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Anonymous says:

December 31, 2024 at 7:36 am

Well. Am I really that predictable? I check almost all the boxes. I’ve passed through and continue to experience nearly all the transitions and dynamics described in the essay. I’m cycling between irritation, amusement, and acceptance…..and, as a parent, grief.

Best time for Fire by friction, with a bowdrill is 36 seconds. Grasshoppers have a mild vaguely vegetal flavor reminiscent of green beans. Mileage logged on foot a couple of years ago was 2100 miles, with a 30lb. base load. Home is far from the city, the land and house and vehicles paid for.

The suspicion that this is not the best of all possible worlds began with some very early, profoundly wounding betrayals and the habit of hyper-vigilance led to a ceaseless investigation of possible causes early on. It became a survival practice to spot and deconstruct false narratives…..at least those I was intellectually capable of spotting.

I thought, perhaps, if we could emulate Derrick Jensen’s, John Zerzan’s, Daniel Quinn’s thoughts and bring down Global Industrial Civilization everything would be fine. Maybe. But I do believe that’s gonna happen anyway.

All this has lead to an odd sort of life, that, while eccentric by most people’s standards, has ultimately been satisfying and worthwhile, for which I am usually grateful.

Thank you for mentioning Paul Chefurka. His perspective continues to give value.

I wander erratically into a “Postdoom” mindset. Accepting and grateful….part of the time.

Great, provocative essay. Thanks.

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1. Charles says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 11:21 am
  
  Thank you very much for your testimony. It’s a gem. I’d like to express all my respect.
  
  Yes, grief.
  
  Yes, Derrick Jensen. The fall of global industrial civilization. Yes, it’s going to happen anyway. I hope/feel soon. It’s past due.
  
  In addition to Ted Kaczynski, already cited in the text, other recent hermits seemed to somewhat fit the profile: Alexander Supertramp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless), Christopher Thomas Knight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thomas_Knight). (Maybe they wouldn’t like me saying this: there are some things that should be better not put into words)
  I find it telling that the word hermit, was initially a Christian term for those who seeked to replay the 40 years of wandering in the desert to finally accept God in their heart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermit).
  
  Thank you. I am grateful to know there are people like you.
  
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Stellarwind72 says:

December 31, 2024 at 7:48 am

Happy New Year, Everyone.

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Ian Graham says:

December 31, 2024 at 7:54 am

My first reaction was dislike, I didn’t like the caricature of typical doomerist psychology portrayed by Charles and Chris. I describe myself as a postdoomer, in the Michael Dowd sense. But I didn’t go to the extreme depth you decribe before realizing it was a deadend. Maybe it was the sort of dislike one commonly feels when the truth hits a little too close to home?

Maybe this next idea is the essence of MORT and so I am making this observation in unintentional support. Unwillingness to look at collapse, TEOTWAWKI, is the same as unwillingness to look at my own death. I know it will happen but I don’t live every day with that as the overwhelming reality. That’s not quite the same as denying its reality. And I’m one who took a year and did Stephen Levine’s A Year To Live course. (My fingers mistyped A Year to LOVE; a freudian biological slip if I ever saw one!)

To really slow down and consider one’s own death is indeed a spiritual practice worth doing because, inter alia, I have found it brings me full throated gratitude and marvelous awe at the reality of being alive amidst all of Life, even in adversity and collapse.

I’m trying to integrate here. Many thoughts are swirling. The main one is that human evolution is open-ended; it includes an evolution of consciousness which includes choice and discernment and action to care for all of Life. That is love, that is spiritual, Thou Art That.

The word ‘spiritual’ snuck into my commentary and it bears some clarification. The best I have found recently is Bill Plotkins’ Wild Mind and Soulcraft. This is because it is the first I have found that is grounded in an intra- and interpersonal frame that is informed by natural patterns. Natural patterns are missing from most every assessment of human culture in this Western civilization and so we make fatal errors. One exception might be the gnostic gospels and explored by Elaine Pagels.

Spirit is parsed as one of 7 dimensions: “the vast consciousness or imagination that infuses and animates everything in the Universe”. We humans have the capacity to enter into a personal relationship with this original intelligence, perchance being blessed with a conscious merging with Spirit, an extraordinary experience. I concur with this after studying religious education MA sat Baptist seminary, been a convinced Friend (Quaker} for 35 years, and studied Ken Wilber’s spectrum of consciousness model, and trained as a pastoral counsellor, and attended many yoga residential courses (Yasodhara Ashram, BC}, and most recently explored neuroplasticity, lucid dreaming, trauma recovery, bioelectricfrequency modulation for healing, and …

Additions to list of overshoot aware or wary people in the public arena: Michael Behls, Gabor Mate, David Fleming, Shaun Chamberlin, Rob Hopkins, David Holmgren, Peter Bane, JH Kunstler, Dougald Hine, and the novelists Aric McBay, Octavia Butler, KS Robinson, and journalists Dahr Jamail, Roy Scranton, all on my bookself and read. (Maybe a master list will emerge here on un-denial? I’d like to see if we overshoot1000)

In closing this first commentary, you only mentioned one doomer, CanadianPrepper, by name, which is a pity as he has to bear the weight of your negative characterization by default. Not that I know the man but I do read his posts, if Nicole Foss has shared them.

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1. Charles says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 11:50 am
  
  Hello Ian,
  
  Thank you for a very rich commentary. With a lot a references, many of which I am unfamiliar with. So I have a very hard time understanding all of it (for me, there is also the language barrier). I will take some time to study your words and references, especially that which resonates with me. Thank you 🙂
  
  Just to clarify, in this sentence “But I didn’t go to the extreme depth you decribe before realizing it was a deadend.”, does the word “it” reference the fact of being a doomer, or the fact of being a postdoomer in the Michael Dowd sense (notion which I am not sure to be familiar with)?
  
  Yes you are right, we shouldn’t have mentioned only one doomer by name. Either none or many. I apologize to CanadianPrepper. I think the reason it didn’t really strike us is that, we didn’t do it with bad intent, but rather in a clinical and lovingly way (ourselves being doomers and prone to this behavior).
  
  To Rob: maybe it’s not too late to do something about it? We can remove the whole sentence “Canadian Prepper is an example of this.”, and just put the link to CanadianPrepper channel in the preceding sentence “constant high alert”?
  
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  1. Ian Graham says:
    
    December 31, 2024 at 12:53 pm
    
    Hi Charles, nice to hear back so soon. there’s 32 comments already so likely to be a rich sharing.
    
    re your question what does ‘it’ refer to, that was meant as the deadend of extreme doomerism which I feel I have avoided.
    
    There is lots of content on postdoom.com leading from Michael Dowd’s early work and now kept up by likeminded people.
    
    A Doom definition
    
    1. A normal feeling of disgust or dread upon realizing that technological progress and economic growth and development are the root of our predicament, not our way out.
    
    2. A name for the anxiety and fear called forth when living in a corrupt, dysfunctional civilization causing a mass extinction.
    
    3. The mid-point between denial and regeneration . . . with or without us.
    
    Regards
    
    Ian g
    
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    1. Charles says:
      
      January 1, 2025 at 1:43 am
      
      Thank you.
      
      You are lucky to have been able to get off the mechanistic beast early on.
      
      Thank you for the definition of Doom by Michael Dowd, I like how he frames doom as a mid-point in a journey rather than a final destination.
      
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Jack Alpert says:

December 31, 2024 at 10:22 am
Rob,

Chris and Charles are brilliant in their perception of how different communities (individuals) deal with:
1. various direct views of local reality
2. indirect views of distant (in space and time) reality and
3. views that are cultural personal fantasy not related to physical reality.
Theses views mixed with levels of cognition and culture produce a life path that ranges from Paul Chefurka who got out of the doomer’s kitchen 30 years ago to preserve his sanity, to John McKibben who still shows up at COP’s to save his sanity if he has any left. In between is almost everyone else with views, thoughts and coping mechanisms to guide lives with various views of human existence from hurry-up let’s get to the ball game, to humankind is circling the drain.

I found it hard to read the lengthy article because with all the brilliant prose they failed to see the content and the paths that content produced were inside a silo.

Content, just outside of their silo, produces different views, different behavior, a path through Catton’s bottleneck to a viable civilization.

What view and what behavior are they missing?

Consider that there are maybe 1000 bio-genetics grad students in 1000 different labs. With the bio-genetics science progressing at break neck speeds the probability that one if them can engineer a virus that can make 8 billion people sterile (that is have no babies) is very high.

The decision to release the virus or not release it is now not a public or a group decision. One person has to weigh the injuries of not allowing 8 billion people to have kids against the injuries on the present course. I have computed those injuries to be 13.4 billion starving to death or dying in conflict this century with the remaining survivors dropping into an unrecoverable dark age living like 17th century serfs. Computationally the virus holder should feel less guilt for the action of releasing the virus than the guilt for not releasing it.

If he or she can’t do it there are 1000 other grad students one of whom can. And if not next year then soon.

Assume there is a way to produce half a million births a year after the virus is released. That would result in a global population of 50 million at the beginning of the 21st century.

If the population load is removed from earth at the rate of 100 million a year and each member of the remaining 8 billion knows no one will be left to inherit their wealth it initiates a whole new set of views.

The doomer community has a whole new set of challenges:
- deliveries 50 million
- energy deliveries and
- living spaces and services and
- management systems and a
- new social contract that will prevent the 50 million from recreating the present mess.
The 8 billion, leaving through old age death, have to understand they play a role in this transition:
1. build out the cities that house and support 50 million new people, not themselves
2. load the cities with all the materials required to survive 300 years
3. transfer all the art, science, and technology
4. do not transfer any of existing culture
5. clean up their toxic residue throughout the world before leaving.
There are many more details but the important part Chris and Charles left out is that the vast array of problems caused by too many people are removed from the playing field.

Nobody has to do anything to implement a very steep contraction of population. That part has a high probably of happening without us lifting a finger – so go get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow we can start designing the 50 million person civilization and the transition to it.

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 11:54 am
  
  Thanks for stopping by Jack.
  
  I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again. You are the ONLY person with a technically feasible plan for retaining SOME of our best accomplishments for a few hundred years until fusion or some other energy source can be developed. EVERY other plan being discussed leads to unimaginable suffering for billions and a medieval lifestyle at best.
  
  Hideaway has taught us that a few hundred or thousand years is all that can be achieved due to modernity’s dependence on depleting minerals (to replace decaying materials), and their dependence on increasing diesel to mine and refine them.
  
  But a few hundred years more without billions suffering is still a worthwhile and noble goal.
  
  Especially since with the human population capped at 50 million the planet will recover the resources necessary to support 50 million in comfort with medieval or hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
  
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2. Charles says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 3:46 pm
  
  Hello Jack,
  
  Thank you for your positive comment on the essay.
  
  I think you already know my feelings about such plan. I want to start with an apology, because I am going to be blunt and honest about it.
  
  I find this kind of ideas repulsive. For three main reasons, which all boil down to hubris in various forms.
  
  First, why should anyone’s computation be correct? I have seen many models come short. Personnally, I am not that convinced anymore (not about collapse not happening, but about the way it unravels). We will see.
  
  Second, it seems to me, no set of values are universally shared (despite the western world’s best effort to laminate, format, propagandize mental and cultural spaces). You seem to prioritize “progress” of civilisation and the minimization of premature deaths. I’d rather have shorter lifespans and some possibility to reproduce. Especially in a changing environment. I do not particularly cherish a form of progress which antagonizes life and favours centralisation of power. I accept suffering and death. This is part of the experience of this frail envelope.
  
  And then, this part “Assume there is a way to produce half a million births a year after the virus is released.” Who is going to have the antidote? On what basis will the happy few be selected? That’s gonna be a hell of a battle royale. I already sense some rigged dices. If I were to talk like a biologist, I would say there is a great chance, any selection means coming from the human intellect would severely injure the species chances of survival in the long run. We just don’t know enough.
  
  In any case, even though, there may seem to be the illusion of being able to manufacture such a product (and maybe it has already been administered), whether it works as expected, is totally out of control.
  
  This paragraph in the essay, was specifically written with this in mind:
  
  Isn’t the idea that the collective behavior ought to be controlled, the trajectory of the species planned in order to maximize survivability or minimize suffering, a delusion completely devoid of any humility?
  
  I know I will probably not change your mind, nor of anybody else who is willing to open Pandora box. Nor, can you prevent me from opposing this kind of plans with my meager means (be it only prayer). For better or worse, the only path is forward. I have made my peace with that 🙂
  
  Again, I am sorry for coming at you with such harsh words. Because I know, in your mind, by your definition, you are doing “good”. But your best case scenario may be my worst nightmare.
  So, for now, Happy new year!
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    December 31, 2024 at 5:00 pm
    
    I’m hoping Jack comes back to respond to your concerns, however based on past comments, he may not.
    
    I believe Jack’s proposal is that the half million births be allocated to applicants wanting children via a totally fair annual random lottery. This would prevent the rich from corrupting the process, and because of the randomness, would prevent unnatural evolutionary selection pressures.
    
    I’d like to hear Jack’s ideas on how to implement the lottery because I think it would be very hard given many people and cultures would need to collaborate on a supercharged political, moral, religious, and emotional issue after the grad student launches her invention.
    
    I share your concerns about the feasibility and safety of the virus Jack envisages. A trillion dollar industry after several decades of research was unable to produce a safe and effective vaccine for corona viruses. Protection against a mild disease seems a much smaller hurdle than permanently blocking biology from achieving it’s primary goal: replication. Doubly so since we are counting on a rogue grad student to invent a safe technology when a trillion dollar industry failed on a lesser challenge.
    
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    1. Jack Alpert says:
      
      December 31, 2024 at 6:49 pm
      
      let me reply to 50 million replacement for the 8 billion with a technology that does not yet exist.
      
      assume everyone of the 8 billion submitted skin cells and 50 million babies were made from the dissociated genes in the pool. Then everyone would be the parent of all 50 million and have an equal stake in having the 50 million and the best parts of our civilization slip through Catton’s bottleneck.
      
      jack alpert. http://www.skil.org Jackalpert@me.com
      
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      1. Charles says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 1:20 am
        
        Dear Jack,
        
        I have been thinking about you.
        
        For all that’s worth to you, my hunch tells me, it will turn out unexpectedly and interestingly fine. Although, not necessarily as the intellect would prefer.
        I say this eyes wide open.
        
        I wish you the best.
        
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Anonymous says:

December 31, 2024 at 10:36 am

Charles & Chris,

Interesting essay. I like the description of the doomer transformation process which was also mine experience, like probably most of the un-Denial commentariat. I must admit many of the mechanisms, behaviours and reactions look familiar and were also part of my past. Not all of them. I assigned the task of this analysis to my wife who is experienced psychotherapist and long time ago identified these personal traits in me. 70% is her diagnosis 😉

Entering this path is demanding, difficult and sometimes depressing. No doubt. On the other hand what is missing in this piece is lack of benefits from being a doomer. Considering current state of the world, people around me (us?) confront the impending chaos. They are confronted with the collapse as we have. They go through “denial / anger / bargaining / depression / acceptance” process,, just in slow motion manner. They mostly do not fully understand the causes and it creates a lot of frustration, anger and shock. They blame politicians, oligarchy class, banksters or whoever is guilty in their current paradigm. We see this live in our democratic elections. And it is painful and exhausting.

I on the other hand, am totally calm. I have seen this with eyes of my soul 12 years ago. I do not panic. I am not shocked and even not frustrated. I am mentally prepared for today and for the future. This gives me strength and resilience. I feel gratitude for the chance of consciously experiencing “the end of the world”. It is a blessing. It gives me my inner peace. In my own narcissistic mind I am the elite of wisdom thinkers (as you all are with me), who overcame resistance of our minds to accept the inevitable. Be conscious. It is the most noble human endevour.

I am a doomer and I am proud of it!

All the best in 2025 and Happy New Year.

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 11:20 am
  
  Nice.
  
  My awareness (and preps) also make me feel calm most of the time. I vividly remember when the covid panic started in my community and I was already done and ready for the worst.
  
  An exception to the calm for me are the covid murders which still make me very angry because these crimes were totally within our control to have prevented. So what if pharma is corrupt and/or Fauci and the US deep state had some dark plan. My Canadian government (and the Canadian citizens that supported it) could and should have done the right thing, but did not.
  
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2. paqnation says:
  
  December 31, 2024 at 1:38 pm
  
  LOL. We should make bumper stickers of “I’m a doomer and proud of it!”
  
  Thanks for the feedback. Great point about the calming effect. And I’m right there with you on, “In my own narcissistic mind I am the elite of wisdom thinkers…”
  
  On most of my older posts I would make massive edits nowadays or delete it all together. But some stand the test of time and require no edits. Here’s one where I’m kind of touching on the calmness (or being the most sane person in the room when SHTF).
  
  https://un-denial.com/2024/01/21/by-hideaway-energy-and-electricity/comment-page-2/#comment-93739
  
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3. Charles says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 2:03 am
  
  It’s nice to have been read by an experienced psychotherapist 🙂
  
  Thank you for pointing this out. Yes. It is a blessing.
  
  For me, the year started with a pair of birds lovingly circling the eldest and highest tree of my city next to the town hall.
  Happy New Year.
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 31, 2024 at 12:15 pm

If geopolitics and how the US empire actually operates interests you, this interview is quite remarkable.

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Simon says:

December 31, 2024 at 1:40 pm

Agreed with others that this is a thought-provoking essay. I find a lot I’m in agreement with in the various comments. I’ll join that group of doomers mourning the mass slaughter of other life. The astonishing hubris of humanity as it wipes entire species from the Earth just to gain a little more comfort, another consumer gadget…

“What is known is that Leviathan, the great artifice, single and world-embracing for the first time in His-story, is decomposing. From the day when battery-run voices began broadcasting old speeches to battery-run listeners, the beast has been talking to itself. Having swallowed everyone and everything outside itself, the beast becomes its own sole frame of reference. It entertains itself, exploits itself and wars on itself. It has reached the end of its Progress, for there is nothing left for it to progress against except itself. Being above all else a war engine, the beast is most likely to perish once and for all in a cataclysmic suicidal war, in which case Ahriman would permanently extinguish the light of Ahura Mazda. People waste their lives when they plead with Ahriman to desist from extinguishing the light, for such a deed would be Ahriman’s final triumph over Ahura Mazda, and the pleaders might learn too late that they are the ones who put the idea into the monster’s head. Leviathan is turning into Narcissus, admiring its own synthetic image in its own synthetic pond, enraptured by its spectacle of itself. It is a good time for people to let go of its sanity, its masks and armors, and go mad, for they are already being ejected from its pretty polis.”

Simon.

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1. Charles says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 2:16 am
  
  Great quote 🙂
  
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paqnation says:

December 31, 2024 at 5:13 pm

I like this bit in Steve Bull’s newest post about whether humanity will ever “face a major reconciliation with hard, physical limits”… No way! I think it was Rob who said something a while back like; humans will turn to nuclear war just so that we don’t ever have to admit we were wrong about limits.

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXCIV–US Peak Shale Oil & Gas: When the Walls Come Tumblin’ Down. | by Steve Bull (https://olduvai.ca) | Dec, 2024 | Medium

With the narrative management and distractions our ruling elite will employ, combined with the denial and bargaining that will take place amongst the masses, it may be that the notion gets buried in the stories of pending ‘saviours’ and hidden by the proliferation of distractions to keep the hoi polloi in ignorance and compliant.

‘Renewables’ will save us. Look over there, a war. Nuclear Fusion will save us. Look over there, aliens. A new ‘leader’ will save us. Look over there, another pandemic. Artificial Intelligence will save us. Look over there, enemy drones. ‘Free markets’ will save us. Look over there, Taylor Swift is performing again. Technology will save us. Look over there, it’s the first billion dollar contract for a sports player. Space travel will save us. Look over there, ‘democracy’ is at risk from within. Something will save us.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 31, 2024 at 8:11 pm

Wishing you all a healthy, often pleasant, and mostly uneventful 2025.

Thank you for helping to make un-Denial a nice place for aware people to hang out.

Do any of you have any New Years traditions?

Mine is a long walk on the beach and then adding the top 100 songs of the previous year to my library. I have top 100’s for every year going back to 1946.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

December 31, 2024 at 10:31 pm

I posted a New Years rant into the vacuum on X.

No one will read it but it makes me feel good to yell at the idiot citizens of my country.

So what if pharma is corrupt.

So what if Fauci and the US deep state created and/or leveraged covid for some dark plan.

The point is my Canadian government could and should have done the right thing.

Instead they saluted south, remained silent on the illegal and/or unethical source of the virus, remained silent on effective preventions, blocked safe and effective treatments, and coerced injections of a novel, inadequately tested, unsafe, and ineffective gene therapy, including into children and others that had zero risk from the disease.

Then as data emerged proving mRNA was dangerous with zero benefit, they hid the data, and doubled down on their errors.

Most Canadian citizens are blind to the crimes and the damage they have done to themselves and their children.

All opposition parties are silent.

Most doctors are silent.

No one has gone to jail.

Shame.

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1. Charles says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 5:53 am
  
  Incomprehensibly evil, coward and… human, isn’t it?
  
  Or maybe, we are the ones in delusion 🙂
  
  Happy New Year, Rob!
  Thank you for this site and the numerous content of quality.
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 10:20 am

HHH says they are on the hunt for a crisis they can use to print and spend government money.

Which one will they pick? Enemy drones, Putin bad, Iran bad, domestic terrorists, war on drugs, bird flu, ???.

https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-december-2024/#comment-784450

We are adding $1 trillion to the deficit every what is it, every 100 days now? Think that is about right. What is the interest rate on that debt currently?

I’m just going to point out that they need a crisis in a bad way to not only crush what inflation is still left. But also so they can pin interest rates back at zero.

So we are looking at adding another $15 trillion or more over next 4 years. $50 trillion in debt by the end of 2028. That’s if spending continues as is.

If you are a bank and you see the writing on the wall. You’re only going to be lending to your very best clients. Eventually you’ll stop lending to them as well.

When the banks stop lending it’s game over. Tax receipts fall through the floor.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 10:31 am

Nice year-end wrap up by Simplicius the Thinker.

His opening paragraph beautifully describes THE most amazing thing about covid: the synchronized (and incorrect) responses by ALL western governments.

Silence or support for the Gaza genocide is another example.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/onward-ho-end-of-year-wrap-up-and

Given the bizarre coordinated nature of every Western nation’s mirrored crack downs on fundamental freedoms like freedom of speech, the total delegitimization of democracy and elections, the absolute spiteful disgust that our ruling elites have shown to the common man, the farmer, the blue collared laborer, the wage slave—given all these things, and how remarkably coordinated they have been across the governments of the West, 2025 has taught us that the entire Western order must necessarily be taking direction from a centralized node of governance somewhere. That somewhere may be in the backrooms of the WEF or Bilderberg or what have you, but the rule by fiat from above is now clearer than ever.

I proposed a couple articles ago how the world is now entering a period of strongman lawlessness due to the systemic breakdown of previous international institutions and guardrails which have held some semblance of ‘order’ across the globe. Now it’s becoming nearly passé to speak of, and actually carry out, illegal seizures of land, occupations, etc. From Israel’s demarche on Syrian territory, to Turkey’s brazen calls for revanchism, to Trump’s sudden and inexplicable rousts around the annexation of Greenland and Canada—the lack of international order, the lack of spine in ‘rule of law bastions’ has become nearly surreal.

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el mar says:

January 1, 2025 at 10:45 am

This are bad news, again 2028 – 2030 as starting points for big depetion trouble.

https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/01/la-produccion-de-petroleo-en-eeuu-batio.html

Saludos

el mar

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 11:01 am
  
  The problem is that in the period of the green line we are going to experience a global collapse and the feedbacks in all the variants are indecipherable, with a world crisis like we have never seen before. The money printer works with a sufficient energy contribution, but as soon as we enter a deficit, the whole system will jump through the air, if you don’t do it before.
  
  The moment of truth arrives and although we have two years ahead of a certain tranquility in the world of oil (while the projects started a few years ago end), the instability of the markets is evident, because we have stretched too much debt abuse to cover all the holes. The combination of unsustainability of the trust system and the depletion of resources (not just energy) provide a desperate future. The “absolute blindness” of most of the population, immersed in day-to-day “nadapasadismo”, as if making money out of nothing, was the “final solution”, rather than a mere gain of time, is incredible.
  
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ariggle says:

January 1, 2025 at 11:40 am

Well done, and a special shout out to my honey, paqnation. 😉

Reflecting on this essay brings to mind my 92-year-old mom-in-law, who has lived through the most radical, bizarre, and anomalous period in human history.

To me it is a small miracle that any human can experience joy, calm, or relative peace in light of the traumatic conditions we have created on this planet. But we do. Billions of us do. I guess that’s worth celebrating as we move into another remarkable year?

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1. paqnation says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 2:04 pm
  
  Hi Ali. Appreciate the shout out wifey.😉
  
  I like to look at us as clones. So your 92-year-old mother-in-law was born around 1933. That would mean her prior 92-year-old clone lived from 1841-1933. The start date of just two clones back from your mother-in-law would be 1749. (the industrial revolution had not even started yet). And the end date of her second future clone will be 2209.
  
  Sorry if this clone thing is too elementary. But it helps me see how insane it is that we humans always think the current era has been this way forever.
  
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  1. ariggle says:
    
    January 1, 2025 at 3:02 pm
    
    I like the clone concept. I often think about the millions upon millions of humans whose life circumstances and surroundings were virtually the same from birth to death.
    
    Like you said, the last few hundred years, and especially the last century, have brought almost unfathomable change, yet people adapt as if it’s all normal. Imagine even just for a moment a world without the tyranny of the clock.
    
    What a strange time to be alive. Even some of my favorite doomer intellects and sages suggest we can at least have gratitude for the (unearned) abundance of industrial civilization, despite its horrors. But I, for one, am not amused. 😉
    
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  2. monk says:
    
    January 12, 2025 at 3:21 pm
    
    My 90 year old grandfather can’t remember if he had electricity or not when he was kid. I find that amazing that it is not a detail worth remembering.
    
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2. Charles says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 1:46 am
  
  Yes. Thank you.
  
  (Chris has been hiding things from us? 😉
  
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  1. ariggle says:
    
    January 4, 2025 at 9:51 am
    
    Haha, he hasn’t, it’s an inside joke. 😉
    
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  2. paqnation says:
    
    January 4, 2025 at 2:04 pm
    
    Didn’t you know? I’m the Don Juan of the doomasphere…. I get around.🤭
    Don Juan – Wikipedia
    
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    1. ariggle says:
      
      January 4, 2025 at 2:34 pm
      
      I love his come-hither expression in that portrait on Wikipedia. Ooh la la! 😂
      
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      1. paqnation says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 3:08 pm
        
        😊😂😊
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 3:22 pm
        
        Geez get a room you two 🙂
        
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        paqnation says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 4:10 pm
        
        Haha. We will but you’ll have to join us. Don Juan requires lots of attention🤭.
        
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 1:06 pm

Damn I love Ray McGovern.

In this discussion he speaks to German citizens and recaps all of the relevant history that triggered the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the nuclear war risks our leaders are playing with.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 1:44 pm

Yowzer!

Casey & Calley Means, who triggered the MAHA movement, might be agents inserted to distract us from the pharma mRNA murders.

Despite overwhelming data proving their danger, when pressed, Means refused to say if mRNA should be withdrawn from the market.

MAHA except mRNA.

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1. paqnation says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 3:03 pm
  
  I knew we had a thread from that Means/Tucker interview. I just spent 45 min looking for it. (would’ve sworn it was from a couple weeks ago, but it was 4 months ago… time flies when you’re having fun😊)
  
  https://un-denial.com/2024/07/20/by-paqnation-aka-chris-humans-are-not-a-species/comment-page-2/#comment-105507
  
  Casey & Calley definitely tricked me. Might be best if I go back to hating Tucker Carlson. I tried that Brigham Buhler interview from up above… Made it 20min. Hated Buhler the entire time. Big time salesman vibes. That dude is scheming somehow. Not gonna be tricked by him.
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 1, 2025 at 3:44 pm
    
    I haven’t formed an opinion yet on Means, but I’m going to pay attention now.
    
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  2. AJ says:
    
    January 2, 2025 at 10:44 am
    
    So, did you listen to the Darkhorse podcast in its entirety?
    
    If you did, then don’t you agree with Bret that you are being a purist and want to throw out those in the MAHA movement that have not bought into the narrative (reality) that “mRNA is bad/Covid pandemic was a fraud”? Are you letting those who may be trying to fraction the MAHA movement get away with it (as Bret & Heather suggested)?
    
    I for one understand that there are plenty of people who might personally understand the whole Covid/mRMA fraud/crime but because they don’t want to (or can’t for personal survival reasons) come out and say it.
    
    I think Tucker also interviewed Mark Hyman in addition to Buhler and they both had something to say about people taking control of their health and healthcare. Are they all selling something – YES. Does that make everything they say false? No, not necessarily. I think Buhler had a good message – the health insurance system in the U.S. is only interested in keeping you sick (or killing you) and one of the things that system uses is Pharma. Buhler is selling something – independent medical testing so maybe you can take charge of your health. He is also selling supplements, but so is Darkhorse podcast. Is Buhler perfect no, but then none of us are.
    
    Darkhorse hasn’t articulated that they are collapse aware that I know (??) Tucker is religious (tries to sell a prayer app) and overshoot/collapse unaware. Just as the Means, Hyman and Buhler appear to be collapse unaware. But part of the reason that I stay here at Un-Denial is that Rob et al attempt to pick the best rational information from multiple places and make sense of it in a rapidly collapsing world.
    
    AJ
    
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    1. paqnation says:
      
      January 2, 2025 at 2:01 pm
      
      Very good points AJ.
      
      No, I didn’t listen to the entire podcast. And I know I’m flawed with my logic of not wanting to get any slimy salesman vibes. 8 billion fire apes all trying to sell something just to survive in this concrete jungle… I mean, what would I expect. It’s similar to that stupid argument with a doomers carbon footprint… “oh he still drives a car, or she still flies on planes… so that means they aren’t serious about climate change.”
      
      I think with Buhler it was just his selling techniques were too basic (not sure what word I’m looking for here). I’m exaggerating but it was like, “You’re not going to believe this Tucker, but the healthcare industry has killed more people than all wars combined!!”… and then he stands back, nods and says “pretty amazing isn’t it”. And the audience is supposed to be shocked and outraged. But then I’m left saying, “No, not hard to believe at all. Are you gonna say something interesting or just keep trying to ‘wow’ me?”
      
      LOL. It’s getting so hard to know what’s genuine and what’s agenda driven. And your right, that’s one of the main strengths of Rob’s site. Prior to un-Denial I probably averaged going down a couple incorrect rabbit holes per week. With un-Denial guiding me, it’s now more like a couple incorrect rabbit holes per year.
      
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 7:53 pm

I don’t know how Hideaway does it. I get exhausted just watching. The denial module in normal people will not disengage. Better arguments and persistence will not work.

Please shoot me if you ever catch me refusing to admit I’m wrong.

#295: Beans on tech

Brandon … “”you should have said “the industrial system, plagued by economic ignorance, and under the idiotic ideology and mechanics of unconstrained-finance and corporate-controlled consumer-fascism, has reduced wild mammals …””

How much of an industrial system would there have been without humans?? ZERO!!!

It’s humans and our belief in exceptionalism, that we are above nature and can do as we want on the planet that’s the problem, which has led us into massive overshoot.

We are where we are, because of humanity and the maximum power principle that led to those not wanting to partake in modernity being totally overrun by those with the power and might to do so!!

You are blind to the reality of the world you live in. Instead of researching overshoot, energy, materials, and complexity power laws, you have faith in markets and economics, that take no account of the real world we live in.

Markets and economics work in a world of seemingly unlimited resources, while in growth mode, that we’ve been in for 200+ years.

They do not work in a world of less while 80% plus, of all people on the planet strive for a “better” perceived lifestyle of the wealthy others, without care for limits, and 99% of the wealthier lot, don’t believe in limits as they have been educated to believe in a bright abundant future, based on human exceptionalism. The poorer 80%+ want their share of the perceived good life, which has been denied to them as the wealthier sections of humanity have collected the majority of resources for themselves to live better than kings of old.

None of this is close to sustainable, by orders of magnitude, which is another blind spot of yours. Markets, economics and vague voluntary agreements are not going to change the course we are on and have been on for the last 10,000 years.

We (humanity as a whole), are in the plague phase, where the damage to the surrounding environment is massive, but instead of our plague phase being limited like a locust plague to local areas, our plague phase encompasses most of the world.

Our problem is not just carbon emissions, nor is there any answer to that one predicament, without collapsing our civilization for all the reasons many of us have explained to you over many months. Just because you don’t want to study reality, is no reason to go on and on about your one trick solution that simply is never going to happen and has zero chance of working in the world we live in..

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1. paqnation says:
  
  January 1, 2025 at 9:30 pm
  
  It never gets old Rob. Thanks for continuing to feed us the entertainment. And it’s worth going over there to read the full threads. You’ll get a great course on limits/energy from Hideaway and Jan. Couple other people are good too. But the fun stuff comes from Brandon. Also from James who is struggling like hell with the absoluteness of the MPP. LOL, I was right there with em like 8-9 months ago. Oh, the good old days.
  
  That leads me into your 1000 aware. Not sure what the correct degree of awareness is but let’s just go with accepting/understanding the MPP. Well, I’m obviously in that elusive 1000 club now, but less than a year ago I wasn’t. How did I do it? I was taught, plain and simple. I don’t know which order or even which topics were most crucial. Finding un-Denial and now having “denial” as one of my top categories of importance was the main thing, I’m positive. And then Hideaways insane knowledge of scale/complexity is probably next most important.
  
  Not sure what else was crucial for me but I should be a textbook example for how to overcome denial… Sticking with it was a big one. I wanted to bail from un-Denial many times in the first few months… But I think there are other factors that are harder to see. For example, maybe my knowledge (and hatred) for how the last 500 years have played out had something to do with it… Like it was easier for me to conquer my denial because of that stuff? I don’t know… but it does feel like you guys taught me how to see the MPP.
  
  ps. I left a comment on Erik Michael’s newest post to plug our essay. But I wanted to share this because I like what I said about doomers and CFM’s being on the same page. (LOL, I might start “liking” my own comments)
  
  Nice one Erik. It seems there are two important destinations that a good overshoot journey will take a person to. Most only make it to the first stop which is understanding that civilization needs to go away. The 2nd stop is a much harder destination to get to. Because it requires the person to have major control over their denial. But if you can get there, it then becomes just as obvious as civilization needing to go extinct…. humans need to go away as well.
  
  Being stuck at the first destination puts you in the same camp with the ignorant masses who don’t even waste one minute of their lives with this doomerism. Both camps will be in agreement that the most important issue at hand is for the human race to make it through the upcoming bottleneck and continue on in the history books. Boy, that’s a lot of hard time served in the doomasphere just to end up on the same page as 8 billion clueless f’ing morons. I wouldn’t trust it just for that reason alone.
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 1, 2025 at 11:10 pm
    
    Thanks for the tip on Jan. I’ll watch for him/her. I use a feed reader so only read Hideaway’s and HHH’s comments. I don’t even read Brandon because I know what he will say without reading it.
    
    It’s interesting you think MPP acceptance is a big hurdle. It’s the core foundation of life. Should be obvious to anyone with a few minutes thought. A tougher pill to swallow is how do we prevent our super-smart intelligence from overriding our destructive MPP behavior? I think MORT is the answer but I guess it could be something else.
    
    I was careful to say “in normal” when I said “The denial module in normal people will not disengage.”
    
    I know I’m not normal. Are you sure you are normal? No offense, but I sense you are not. Maybe you just needed to stumble on the information like I did and your brain was able to accept the unpleasant reality.
    
    I’m not in the same place as you wanting humans to go away. I think we are a pretty amazing and rare invention of the universe. I am sad about the possible loss of our knowledge and brains. I would like to keep things going at a MUCH smaller scale. I know it probably won’t happen but that’s how I feel.
    
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    1. paqnation says:
      
      January 2, 2025 at 1:39 am
      
      No, I’m definitely not normal. But I also know that I go out of my way to avoid normalcy… so I don’t trust it. Reeks of human supremacy and ego. But I do totally buy into “Maybe you just needed to stumble on the information like I did”.
      
      For me, MPP is easily the most important yet hardest piece of the puzzle to get. Two years with Dowd and company and all I’m learning is the opposite of MPP. “We are collapsing because we don’t live in right relationship to reality anymore. The only chance of the human race continuing is by reverting back to these wise ways.” (To be fair, Dowd knew humans were done. But nothing about MPP)
      
      And ya, Jan knows his shit. He posted here a couple months ago. I think I scared him away. I get too excited with the new names. Especially ones that I recognize (I’m still waiting to see TennesseeJed here). My new years resolution is to not reply to an audience member’s first couple posts.😊
      
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    2. Charles says:
      
      January 4, 2025 at 2:20 am
      
      normal: according with, constituting, or not deviating from a norm, rule, procedure, or principle.
      
      Ah ah ah. Who is normal? Who decides the norm? Who says the majority is normal? What’s the norm these days? What was it in the 70s? Are we the same we were 50 years ago? Does the norm fluctuate? Do we?
      
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  2. Charles says:
    
    January 4, 2025 at 2:15 am
    
    Change and continue. That’s a possibility.
    
    Stay the same and go extinct. That’s a possibility.
    
    The “material” world is only the tip of the iceberg.
    
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    1. Charles says:
      
      January 4, 2025 at 2:24 am
      
      To make it clear: when I say “change”, I am not talking abstractly about “humanity”. I am talking about you and me and him.
      
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  3. Charles says:
    
    January 4, 2025 at 2:22 am
    
    I was taught, plain and simple.
    
    Teaching: a form of hypnosis?
    
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2. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 2, 2025 at 10:03 am
  
  #295: Beans on tech
  
  Brandon, you just deliberately keep missing the big picture in the discussion.
  
  Climate is one aspect of overshoot, trying to solve it while ignoring the massive overshoot of humanity on this planet and the destruction we are causing in multiple facets of the environment, is no solution at all.
  
  Leaving out the complexity of our civilization and the energy and material constraints, is also no solution. It’s the combination of the lot, energy constraints, material constraints, size/complexity power laws that give us modern efficiencies that are all going to reverse direction soon, when oil production declines start accelerating, that leave us unable to change voluntarily as an invasive species on this planet, where the huge majority of humans reject any limits and want/demand a modern lifestyle.
  
  We keep the lie going that we can do anything about it, and your plans are just more of the lies we tell ourselves. Proper regenerative agriculture, cannot get the calories to people in cities, only hybrid seeds, fertilizers, diesel tractors and diesel trucks can do this for the over 4B people that live in cities!!
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 2, 2025 at 10:44 pm
    
    #295: Beans on tech
    
    Brandon, you are a person that understands most of the constraints of exponential growth, judging from your web page..
    
    However you continue to overlook the large constraints, as is evident from your wish list….
    
    “I, for one, want to see continued advances in energy efficiency, medical technology, and everything else that modern society can offer.
    
    I want my children to have reasonable and fulfilling jobs, and I personally would vastly prefer to live in a world of happy and prosperous individuals”
    
    The continued advances can only come from greater complexity and greater size of our system of civilization, which you continue to argue against without any research. It’s not physically possible, yet we need this increasing complexity to maintain economies of scale in all our gathering of food, metals and materials..
    
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.02318
    
    From the above link….
    
    ” Complexity Theory is highly interdisciplinary, therefore any regularities must hold on all levels of organization, inde- pendent on the nature of the system. An open question in
    
    science is how complex systems self-organize to produce emergent structures and properties, a branch of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. It has long been known that there is a quantity-quality transition in natural systems. This is to say that the properties of a system depend on its size. More recently, this has been termed the size-complexity rule, which means that to increase their size, systems must increase their complexity, and that to increase their complexity they must grow in size. This rule goes under different names in different disciplines and systems of different nature, such as the area- speciation rule, economies of scale, scaling relations (allo- metric) in biology and for cities, and many others. We apply the size-complexity rule to stars to compare them with other complex systems in order to find universal patterns of self-organization independent of the substrate.”
    
    There are hundreds if not many thousands of peer reviewed papers about the size complexity power law relationships. If you don’t want to believe any of it, and ignore the overwhelming evidence, then it is you that are out of sink with reality..
    
    A smaller system of civilization, which is what you desire, means a lot less energy and materials as the complexity has to unravel, it’s a universal law based upon physics. No amount of human machinations or changes to pricing can change any of this, despite how much we wish it could.
    
    The unwinding of complexity will be a huge reduction of energy and materials available as they are all highly complex operations by necessity, which seems to be an aspect of our modernity that evades you. Lower ore grades mean not just more energy and materials, but also more complexity in the entirety of the operation, from discovery to financing to building to operating.
    
    We simply don’t have the high grade ore to use simple methods of mining, which means all the renewables, batteries and EVs you envision for the ‘simpler’ world can’t happen.
    
    Your children are not going to have reasonable, fulfilling jobs as these are only available in a world of growth using lots of discretionary economic activity, in a world of increasing energy, materials, and complexity. Everything modern society offers comes from the increasing complexity of greater size, materials and energy use, none can come from less energy, less materials and less complexity.
    
    You are the one in denial about our future, yet you see most, not all, of the predicaments. We don’t have a problems, we have a predicament, just like a star that runs out of energy, then implodes, with the largest star systems collapsing the fastest. Our civilization will be no different to any other large complex system on the downside, where the downslope happens much faster than for smaller complex systems.
    
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    1. Rob Mielcarski says:
      
      January 3, 2025 at 11:14 am
      
      #295: Beans on tech
      
      Brandon, why do you keep refusing to look at size/complexity power laws?? In these lies the answer of why your concepts have zero chance of working.
      
      You state “smarter” which means more complex, not simpler!! It’s the way of universal laws of physics!!
      
      Brandon ….”I envision pumped hydro, limited and sustainable volumes of biofuels, and electric transport and logistic systems”. What exactly powers all this, if not solar, wind, and nuclear? All of which totally rely upon fossil fuels, for their mining, manufacture and distribution with short lifespans!!
      
      If not EVs for transport and logistic systems, then what? Do you plan to build a whole lot of rail with electric lines everywhere to cater for the 8.2B and still growing world population? Just a quick calculation on the steel rail required should put those thoughts to rest. How much metallurgical coal will that take?
      
      There will be no biofuels available and none of them are sustainable, as they all rely upon fossil fuel inputs for growing, harvesting and transporting. To think we can go to “regenerative agriculture”, then produce a lot of biofuels as well as food, transport it all to cities, without fossil fuels, is just wishful thinking, but again betrays the laws of physics.
      
      Brandon … “the production of consumerist crap”.
      
      How about a list of all this ”consumerist crap”, which I’ve asked you before, and how that frees up the required resources?
      
      Brandon ….”Your view, repeated over and over, is that we must maintain the system as it is”
      
      No it is not!!. My view is that if we try to do major change, as in forced change on our complex system of civilization, we just collapse it now, while trying to maintain our existing complex system, also leads to collapse for the very simple reality that it is a complex system that follows the laws of physics. All complex systems collapse at the end of their lives, which is when the energy to maintain the complex system declines rapidly.
      
      There is no choice, the greater the complexity of ANY complex system, the more unstable it is at the end of it’s lifespan and will unravel much more quickly than any simple system.
      
      As civilizations go, ours is easily the most complex ever by orders of magnitude compared to prior complex civilizations, so the collapse has to be faster due to the laws of physics.
      
      Economics, markets and belief in human exceptionalism do not and have any chance of overcoming the laws of physics, period!!
      
      No prior civilization, of much less complexity than ours, has ever been able to become simpler, downsize and become sustainable, they have all collapsed due to the complexity unwinding with reductions of energy inputs.
      
      Your views of maintaining any type of modernity, smarter than current, based upon a whole lot less energy use, defies the laws of physics, yet you refuse to even research size/complexity physical laws!!
      
      Why are you so scared to research reality?? It is what it is, no more and no less.
      
      Hideaway to Brandon….
      
      “why do you keep refusing to look at size/complexity power laws??“
      
      Brandon response … “Because they are irrelevant.”
      
      LOL, you’ve just outed yourself as foolish in not wanting to understand the reality of our situation, and instead want to believe in fantasies…
      
      Physics power laws of size/complexity exist everywhere where systems grow. Thinking the laws of physics don’t apply to humanity is akin to jumping out 50th storey window and thinking you can fly. It works for a while, but the landing will be rough.
      
      If you are not prepared to do the research to truly understand our predicament, because physical reality doesn’t suit your arguments, why should anyone bother reading your work?
      
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      1. Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 10:41 am
        
        #295: Beans on tech
        
        Brandon …. “OK, why don’t you post a link that you think supports the conclusion that a smarter and smaller economy is impossible”
        
        For goodness sake, I’ve already supplied links to size complexity power laws, which the authors give plenty of references about, yet you don’t bother to do the research for yourself..
        
        The answer is easy and clear to any thinking person. You can’t make computer chips in a civilization of 150 people. Those people have to look after every aspect of their own civilization, from food, water and waste to whatever specialities the village can afford. To get more than a medicine man, a leader and one or 2 other specialities would be difficult. There would need to be a lot of excess food coming into the tiny civilization to allow it to have more people in non hunting or small agricultural pursuits, hence why smaller size of the community means less complexity.
        
        These types of size complexity power laws are throughout the universe, not just here on Earth with living systems, they also apply to non living systems like storms and stars!!
        
        Your “smarter” world is just a different term to the scientific term complexity, as doing anything “smarter” will involve more ‘rules’ taxes or whatever, that then requires policing of the rules, which equals more complexity of the system than now exists.
        
        You need to do the research on size complexity laws in a range of different fields, from stars, to natural world, to economics to work out for yourself why a smaller system cannot be more complex, and in fact has to be much less complex than what we currently have.
        
        We cannot maintain the complexity of mining fossil fuels, minerals, metals or anything else with a smaller less complex system, as we need the complexity because of the lower grades of all of it. Likewise for complex transportation systems that move food around the world to cities in our overpopulated planet. Without oil the entire global transport system falls to pieces. It starts to come apart with just lower quantities of oil available, often manifesting itself as financial crises, or debt crises, or supply chain crises, as it’s all interconnected as one highly complex system, that turns resources into waste by diffusing heat and energy in the process.
        
        You can’t just take out certain ‘bits’ of a complex system and replace them with other ‘bits’ that you want more of, then make it ‘smaller’, due to an expectation or wish, as all systems are self organising in chaotic ways. Your plan to deliberately re-organise complex civilization is a failure to understand the underlying dynamics of complex systems.
        
        It’s akin to taking out a predator from an ecosystem then watching as the ecosystem falls apart from lack of control over the herbivores that totally destroy all the vegetation, because you didn’t understand the relationship between the different predators and thought changing one would make the system better. Perhaps it was taking out one plant from the ecosystem and adding another, then getting predators dying off and not understanding why etc. It’s all human hubris thinking we can change self organising complex systems.
        
        You need to spend months researching size complexity relationships, not a quick read of one or 2 papers that you then disagree with, because you don’t understand the full implications of the research.
        
        You think you know and understand how our highly complex system of civilization will react to a change here and there. Whatever you think will happen is incorrect because it’s impossible to account for all the complex feedback loops that will happen and the massive unexpected outcomes from deliberately changing a self organising complex system.
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 11:38 pm
        
        #295: Beans on tech
        
        Brandon, it seems the link and comments I made have not passed muster..
        
        There have been entire conference on complexity and the self adaptation of social and economic systems, so as I’ve repeatedly stated you need to become educated in this field before offering simplistic non workable ‘solutions’.
        
        You also need to research all this in an open minded way, not with preconceptions of how you can get around the reality.
        
        All ‘economies of scale’, in economics are due to size complexity power laws, so it’s a bit unrealistic to state it doesn’t apply to human systems, which means you haven’t researched the topic!!
        
        I’ve only come to my conclusions after many decades of research into solutions to keep civilization going, since learning about limits to growth in 1975.
        
        Even up to 5-6 years ago, I was trying to work out how ‘renewables’ or ‘nuclear’ could be the future, in a world where we no longer had access to fossil fuels as they cannot continue forever due to depletion, irrespective to climate issues, but the numbers just would not add up, despite the high EROEI given by hundreds of papers I’d read on the topic.
        
        I set about my own methodology to work out the realistic EROEI of every energy source. In my research I found huge holes in all the EROEI papers as they set ‘boundaries’ for what they would include and exclude as energy inputs.
        
        Just about the entirety of the research leaves out most of the required energy to build any renewables, plus if you dig deep enough into the references, or the references of references, you find a dollar number that has been converted to an energy number to explain some energy cost of the background system.
        
        My research and findings also clearly explain why no-one is setting up Aluminium smelters off-grid, based on using renewables anywhere in the world, it’s too energy and dollar expensive to do!! Money being a claim on energy.
        
        The fossil fuel system, that we know can provide extremely high EROEI, because the system of civilization we have where well over 90% of people work outside farming and mining, despite all the damage to the environment, because our system EXISTS!! We know fossil fuels can power our existing system, until they are depleted, speaking strictly ‘economically’, with zero regard to ‘other’ damage.
        
        None of the renewables or nuclear come close to the EROEI of fossil fuels, being mostly around a 1-2 EROEI all without any ‘back-up’ from batteries, or pumped hydro and also not taking into account any of the products we get from fossil fuels, that are mostly ‘by products’ from the energy we obtain, but totally and utterly necessary in our modern world.
        
        If you have a low EROEI, then most people in any civilization have to be involved in gathering food and materials, which means the complexity of any part of the modern world becomes impossible, as we can’t have factory workers, managers, accountants, public servants etc not involved in collecting food and materials.
        
        All of this, is a part of understanding complexity in regard to the energy and material collection of our system of civilization, which is totally related to the size. There are massive efficiency gains in the scale of doing everything that’s required to just maintain modernity.
        
        If you can’t look at the research in an unbiased way, then you will never have an understanding of what’s actually happening in the world as it falls to pieces in the future when we have rapidly declining energy availability due to oil production declines, sometime in the near (a few years) future.
        
        It’s size complexity power laws that occur in EVERY self organising system that allow us to have the modernity we have. These power laws are what allows the efficiency of modernity, which is why we have one conglomerate factory making the high end wafers for computer chips in Taiwan (TMSC). We don’t have 200 of these facilities around the world as that’s too inefficient. The factory needs to be the size it is, because it’s such a complex specialist operation., and can only exist because of the size of the market.
        
        Size, complexity power laws, with the physical reality of entropy and dissipation, plus the lowering grades of everything mined, all combined with the exponential increase in energy required, clearly show that modernity as we know is not sustainable in any way, and has to collapse once we have an accelerating energy decline, which in our case will be led down by oil depletion.
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 3:50 pm
        
        New Zealand has an off grid aluminum smelter. It uses 11% of NZ’s total electricity. They threatened to close it.
        
        From Wikipedia:
        
        In July 2022, NZAS signalled that it would once again offer to remain open if it could secure new power agreements on favourable terms.^[14] In May 2024, new twenty year electricity contracts were agreed with three suppliers, allowing the smelter to remain open until 2044.
        
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        Hideaway says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 6:59 pm
        
        Monk, the NZ off grid Aluminium smelter runs off hydro electric power.
        
        My claim about the Aluminium smelters, is that no-one is starting any on solar power off grid, not just off grid. The comment is always in response to someone claiming that solar is the cheapest form of electricity.
        
        Simple economics dictate that the cheapest form of electricity will be used for Aluminium smelters, because they use around 14-15MWh/tonne of Aluminium produced.
        
        If solar was really cheaper than other forms of electricity, then companies like Rio would be setting up off grid Aluminium smelters in sunny locations, based on solar power.
        
        They are not doing this, nor are they planning to do so, because it’s not the cheapest electricity!!
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 7:26 pm
        
        True true! Our NZ smelter is probably a helpful example, even with it’s own dedicated and cheap electricity source, they were still struggling
        
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3. Charles says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 2:07 am
  
  Is it belief in exceptionalism, humans, humanity or MPP?
  
  So why can’t it be industrial system, economic ignorance, unconstrained-finance and corporate-controlled consumer-fascism, too?
  
  In a complex interlocked system with feedback loops, it’s hard to find a root cause, assign blame, isn’t it?
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 8:43 pm

An appropriate video to replay on the 1st day of a new year.

Never forget until justice is delivered.

Mistakes were not made.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 1, 2025 at 10:09 pm
I started following Dr. J.J. Couey at the beginning of covid and I check in on him once in a while. He’s a smart, well informed, articulate, angry, hurt, PhD biologist who has lost everything, including soon his home, fighting against both the mainstream and dissident covid narratives. He may or may not be crazy, I don’t know.

Couey is ignored by all the people I respect. But I still listen to Couey because I have this nagging voice in my head that something is not right in the story I currently believe to be true. For example:
- If China was embarrassed about a leak from Wuhan, why did China help US foment panic by foaming the streets and welding doors shut?
- Did US coerce mRNA and China non-mRNA because it didn’t matter what you injected?
- Why is there no evidence of normal infectious spread in the early days?
- If RNA is stable enough to pandemic in the wild, why do they have to convert it to DNA in a lab to make it stable enough to study or replicate?
- Has nothing been done to prevent a recurrence because there is nothing to recur?
- Has no one paid a price for lying or making obvious mistakes because they did exactly what they were supposed to do?
- Did every single policy worsen public health because public health was not the goal?
- Did every western country do the identical wrong things because that was the plan?
- Does no one care about rising all-cause mortality because that was the goal?
- Why have no policies been changed in response to data that shows the policies are harmful?
- Why would you coerce risk into children that have zero risk from a disease? And continue to do it after harms to children became obvious?
- Why are all political opposition parties silent?
- Why are geopolitical enemies like Russia and China not making hay to discredit and embarrass western incompetence?
- Why are they still silent on vitamin D to this day?
If none of the stories sit right with you, and you trust no one, and you have nagging voices in your head, you should check out Dr. Couey.

This is a banging must watch presentation he made to Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics a week ago. He attacks the integrity of pretty much everyone, including all the dissidents I respect.

Would love to hear your take on this.

We at un-Denial might be the first to unpick the puzzle since Couey and most of the other covid dissidents are not overshoot aware and so will miss possible motivations of our elite string pullers.

https://stream.gigaohm.bio/w/1tDYkEynHoimge4JeZwF5u

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1. AJ says:
  
  January 3, 2025 at 3:42 am
  
  I watched him early on in the pandemic, but thought he went down too many rabbit holes.
  
  He basically started here by saying here the all of biology is wrong, really? And then he doesn’t follow up. AND he keeps shouting obscenities at everybody. Sorry he’s like the “string theory” guy. Maybe he has some good points but I think he has gone crazy on some level and I don’t have enough time or interest to try to separate the good from the bad. There will probably be lots of unanswered questions, unless Trump truly gives RFK and Bhattacharya free room to run.
  
  AJ
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 3, 2025 at 9:29 am
    
    He’s angry because he thinks the dissidents are paid by pharma to focus on problems that can be fixed and do not threaten the long term viability of mRNA, and are silent on the core issues that he knows they know:
    1) transfection is inherently dangerous and cannot be “fixed”
    2) covid was a manufactured emergency because the type of RNA in covid cannot pandemic, some sickness may have been seeded (with a virus that can be manufactured but cannot self-replicate) and/or other normal diseases like flu and pneumonia (which disappeared during covid) were misdiagnosed with inappropriate PCR tests that detected normal background signals, and were not treated causing death attributed to covid
    3) some countries deliberately murdered old people with inappropriate treatments.
    
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    1. Rob Mielcarski says:
      
      January 3, 2025 at 9:53 am
      
      For example, if you encounter a dissident with a huge following yelling about the dangers of DNA contamination in mRNA, but NEVER discusses the inherent dangers of transfection, then you know they are a paid shill. In the future pharma will say, you’re right, we found some problems in our manufacturing process that we fixed and this new mRNA (for say bird flu) is now safe to be injected in billions.
      
      Or another shill focused on the toxicity of the spike protein to which pharma will say, you’re right, we chose the wrong protein for covid but have fixed the problem so you can now safely transfect your child.
      
      Or another shill focused on the dangers of gain of function research to which authorities will say, you’re right, we’ve improved the regulations so it won’t happen again, when in fact there is no evidence that a man made contagious RNA can be engineered and a portion of the bioweapons story exists to create a reason for a trillion dollar grifting industry to exist.
      
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      1. Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 3, 2025 at 10:35 am
        
        An interesting idea for those of us at un-Denial to contemplate:
        
        Does our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities as explained by Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory explain what we observe with both the mRNA transfection threat and the climate change threat?
        
        Tens of thousands of climate scientists, most of which are intelligent people with good intentions, are blind to our core overshoot issue and the more pressing threat of energy depletion, and promote solutions that have zero probability of making the future less bad, and remain silent on actions that might reduce future suffering, because it’s simply not possible that the only “solution” is to reduce our population and consumption.
        
        Do we similarly have millions of healthcare “professionals” that deny the dangers of transfections and believe they are just as beneficial as traditional inactivated vaccines because Fauci and pharma can’t possibly be evil enough to murder children to grow profits?
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 3:17 pm
        
        Doctors are in a cult of sorts. They are all selected for medical school by older doctors in an esoteric process to find the most suitable candidates. They are inDOCtrinated with the “scientific method” and then shell-shocked through residency (sleep deprivation and trauma exposure). Then they are finally ready to follow the instructions from above, without question. Intelligent robots who distribute pharma products following pre-approved assessment methodologies.
        
        If a doctor does anything the cult doesn’t want, they can easily be thrown out of the cult by being struck of the register. In NZ, that meant go along with Covid or lose everything. How is this different from scientology?
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 4:02 pm
        
        I just remembered something an academic friend told me. He had a lot of friends who were working on climate change things. Basically, what his friends would tell him about climate change and its implications was much, much worse than anything these people would say publicly. He was often shocked by what he heard directly from them.
        
        I think some of these issues just come from people’s nervousness to stand up and publicly talk about the uncomfortable truths.
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 4:12 pm
        
        The profession of climate scientists should hang its head in shame. Only their rogues that they fight against like James Hansen and Kevin Anderson speak the truth. They aggressively ignore the tiny number of their colleagues like Tim Garrett and Richard Nolthenius that actually understand what is causing climate change. All of their prescriptions make our our overshoot predicament worse. Most of them set horrible examples for low carbon lifestyles.
        
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        Hideaway says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 8:00 pm
        
        A very good friend of mine, that I’ve known for 50 years, but catch up less often these days, is the professor emeritus (now retired) of an Environmental science at a large Australian university. I had a chat with him last year about how civilization itself is near an end point.
        
        To my surprise, he just agreed entirely with me, despite lots of his underlings doing PhD’s on Climate related issues. He even added bits before I had a chance to chime in. He knows about all the energy limits, material limits and the unwinding of complexity as we get to shortages of energy, and agrees nothing will be done about climate nor overall pollution, species extinction.
        
        I would suggest there are lots of university professors around the world, very well aware of our situation, but will not come out until after retirement, as their jobs rely upon offering hope and a future. Look at how negative Bill Rees, or Tom Murphy have become since leaving their tenured jobs as 2 examples. I’m sure there are plenty others that just enjoy their retirement on govt pensions and say nothing, but know about our reality..
        
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2. Charles says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 11:17 am
  
  All excellent questions.
  
  I too would really like to find out the truth about covid…
  
  I’ll risk a crazy hypothesis. Maybe, the covid simulacre was indeed related to the end of growth and the prospect of collapse. Either, because the powers behind the curtain anticipate it, or had early dangerous warnings on their dashboards.
  If there really are people in control at the top of the societal pyramid, maybe they are playing the really long game. They have an ideology and they have powerful means which let them be and remain at the top (it doesn’t matter that it’s always the same person as long as it’s the same ideology).
  Maybe, they thought collapse could prevent them from reaching their goals, so they had to speed things up. (Which may be the reason why we are suspecting something: their intervention was much more apparent this time than just the usual nudge)
  If that is the case, then the ideology is some form of evolution of the species through the means of science. Because the way it looks to me, mRNA is basically genetically modified humans. Darwin X Club (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Club), X-men, Musk’s X. Maybe some Strangelove figure is playing Russian roulette with the whole population to increase the probability of some enhancing mutation. Damn the risks.
  
  (This hypothesis is only a particular way of seeing things, as I am pretty convinced, at some level, this reaction was an emergent behavior of the societal structure: to try to understand why things happen, we often antagonize the emergent behavior of the human blob against the will of the powers that be, when it could be both. One being the incarnation of the other)
  
  If that is the case, then on one hand, we have got the religious fundamentalists expecting the second coming of Christ and the scientific fundamentalists aiming at the emergence of the next evolutionary step 🙂
  
  If that is true, then it also means there is some tentative from some members of the species to influence the direction of the whole species. Which is maybe quite a logical step, once the theory of evolution and competition between species is formed by a control-obsessed form of science.
  
  I apologize for the paranoïa and for those who don’t enjoy science fiction 🙂
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 4, 2025 at 12:04 pm
    
    Thanks Charles for engaging on a topic I know everyone is tired of.
    
    Your speculation about our elite having a plan to genetically modify us aligns with Jack Alpert’s apparent new confidence that our overshoot problem will be solved by a genetically engineered virus.
    
    I was thinking about what “covid truths” can I genuinely conclude at this time given:
    
    1) I have with an open mind spent a lot of time trying to understand and explain what happened and am still not confident.
    
    2) A lot of smart high integrity people with a lot more infectious disease knowledge than me don’t agree and have wildly different theories.
    
    Maybe the answer is that the biology of life is much more complex than any of us can imagine, and we simply don’t understand diseases or the interventions we employ.
    
    Which means we should avoid injecting any combination of substances intended to “improve” health, and instead should focus on the basics like healthy food, exercise, and sufficient sleep.
    
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    1. Charles says:
      
      January 4, 2025 at 2:02 pm
      
      Thank you.
      
      I would really like to make sense of what happened during covid. I think the reason is that I can’t accept such a strong and coercitive global response might emerge just by habit of the system (the ordinary intersection of greed, conformance and idiocy). I guess I have a hard time accepting the banality of evil (and the fact that, to this day, so many people just don’t seem to take much issue with it). So I tell myself, there must be some ulterior motive. When truth is, it may have just snowballed that way.
      
      I hope we will know more with the next administration. If mRNA is forbidden and the people that matter are sent to prison, then I will conclude it was a societal error. Otherwise, it will probably reinforce my paranoïa (I have always been a fan of Philip K. Dick).
      
      Maybe the answer is that the biology of life is much more complex than any of us can imagine, and we simply don’t understand diseases or the interventions we employ.
      
      Which means we should avoid injecting any combination of substances intended to “improve” health, and instead should focus on the basics like healthy food, exercise, and sufficient sleep.
      
      Definitively yes to that.
      
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      1. Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 2:31 pm
        
        💖
        
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Linda Aspey says:

January 2, 2025 at 3:24 am

Thanks for this really thought provoking piece and some great new learning rabbit holes to go down for me. I haven’t come across your blog before and I’m grateful I have.

From a climate psychology perspective I’ve seen collapse denial and its various forms in similar ways – existential terror, feelings like shame and guilt that are intolerable, use of group and individual defences like socially constructed silence, distancing, projection, splitting and more. And so I found it really interesting to read of Ajit Varki and Danny Brower’s evolutionary psychology work and will dig deeper.

I’m interested in what Chris says at the end “I believe material collapse will happen in synchronicity of a mass regulatory psychological event”. Could you say more about that please? You may have done so before but as a newbie here I couldn’t find anything.

And secondly, I have noticed that the large majority of people talking, thinking and writing about collapse are men, with some notable exceptions like Sarah Wilson, Margaret Wheatley and Rachel Donald. Is this others’ experience too, and any thoughts about it?

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 2, 2025 at 9:57 am
  
  Welcome Linda.
  
  I assume Chris or Charles will probably answer your synchronicity question.
  
  We’ve got some excellent female minds here at un-Denial including monk, Kira, and Gaia.
  
  Some of my favorite overshoot aware writers are female including: Gail Zawacki (RIP), Gail Tverberg, Alice Friedemann, Nicole Foss, and Donnella Meadows (RIP). I wrote about them here:
  
  https://un-denial.com/2016/07/04/on-the-quantity-and-quality-of-women/
  
  Be aware the Dr. Varki is not proud of his book on denial because it was rushed. I quite liked it and have read it several times.
  
  This is my short summary of the MORT theory:
  
  https://un-denial.com/denial-2/theory-short/
  
  This paper is the best and most up to date description of the MORT theory:
  
  https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25466-7_6
  
  This video is an easy introduction to MORT:
  
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2. paqnation says:
  
  January 2, 2025 at 2:47 pm
  
  Hi Linda, thanks and welcome aboard.
  
  That line was actually from Charles, so I’ll let him explain. (he really was the brains behind this essay😊)
  
  Regarding more men than women in the doomasphere… Yes, no doubt it’s way too one sided. But I totally agree with Rob’s line from his 2016 link: the quantity of women is lower than men, but the quality is higher
  
  I’ve been a typical misogynistic pig for most of my life… but I’m starting to believe Rob’s quote applies to pretty much everything about our culture.
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 2, 2025 at 4:10 pm
    
    Except in the realm of politics. Female leaders seem to be as bad as male leaders.
    
    “We never had any intention of living up to the terms of the Minsk agreements.” – Angela Merkel
    “We came, we saw, he died.” – Hilary Clinton
    “The price of 500,000 dead Iraqi children is worth it.” – Madelaine Albright
    
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    1. paqnation says:
      
      January 2, 2025 at 10:25 pm
      
      Agreed, but there’s something weird about women with that kind of power. Like most of em were already indoctrinated into thinking like a man, many years prior.
      
      Or maybe I’m falling into a trap here and giving too much credit to women. After all, they are fire apes so by default they’re evil.😊
      
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3. Charles says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 5:07 am
  
  Hello Linda,
  
  Thank you for taking interest in our essay.
  
  “I believe material collapse will happen in synchronicity of a mass regulatory psychological event”. Could you say more about that please?
  
  Ah ah ah. That’s a tough question. I am not sure I will be able to satisfy your curiosity. I guess, it will depend on how you hear the answer, more than anything else.
  
  It’s just an intuition. I will try to elaborate, put words on it. But this may take me away from truth, as it is revealed only when it should. The rest is mental interpretation, narration. It is still fun, so I will try.
  
  As evidenced during covid, this society has a pyramidal structure and behaves pretty much as an entity. A sense of scarcity, fear, greed, antagonism are very deeply ingrained in the culture to perpetuate its structure.
  
  As a result, individuals are put under enormous pressure. Pressure to conform, to perform, to exploit, to ignore. It creates a conflict between what they are told and their personal deep truth. Many learn to forget themselves, shut the voice from within and become undeads, cogs in the machine, machines themselves. Since there is a structural imbalance there are myriad compensation mechanisms provided, addictions in various forms (accumulation of capital, consumption, drugs, alcohol, sex, screen…). Who needs status symbols when one is truly happy?
  
  Once growth stops, this structure dissolves. If only for material reason: who is going to follow a general in battle when there is no spoils of war? Isn’t life as a whole forever in search of homeostasis? The pressure is removed, the addiction becomes unnecessary, the voice is heard again. Usually, there is some decompression, purification time for this to occur. Since, we together form some kind of a field (notice how people tend to attract other people of similar “vibe”), this can spread relatively quickly. I think this has been happening since after the peak of covid insanity.
  
  Sorry, that’s the best I can do. There is so much more:
  
  About the feminine/masculine, I think some mind shapes are gifted to diagnose and perpetuate the current “evil”, other to alchemize it into something else.
  
  Some art by Ingo Swann:
  
  (Feminine rising)
  
  (The Light Bringer)
  
  All the answers are in you.
  
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Kira says:

January 2, 2025 at 6:16 am

Looks like Google is running computations in parallel universes now. This should be satire but unfortunately in the world we live in it is not. No wonder everything and everyone have become content creators. Scientists are running paper mills publishing worthless papers masquerading as genuine research. Tech companies revv up the content mill and advertise their “groundbreaking” product to pump up their stocks and so-called journalists are happy to push their garbage for a few clicks and eyeballs. Truly inspiring times to live in!

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 2, 2025 at 10:44 am
  
  Science does seems to be in trouble: little progress with low integrity. Physicist Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is the best chronicler of this trend.
  
  Dr. J.J. Couey, in the Q&A after his presentation above, gave a couple recent examples of the Nobel prize being awarded to people for minor research not related to their main work because their main work threatened the pharma narrative and they needed a way to shut them up.
  
  I recall that the Nobel was awarded for an mRNA feature that extended the lifetime of the transfection, which directly contradicted the safety claims being made about mRNA. You can’t make this shit up.
  
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  1. Kira says:
    
    January 3, 2025 at 12:21 am
    
    I have watched Dr Sabine’s videos occasionally, especially as it pertains to stalling of progress in physics. All evidence points to the inescapable fact that we have reached the peak of what is possible by an intelligent species handed down a virgin planet. Our hubris will never allow us to accept this ofcourse,and we will keep fantasizing about interstellar travel, fermi paradox and other such things to validate our own greatness while we are trashing the paradise we inherited. But it’s very likely that even if we had 500 more years of industrial civilization we would still be more or less where we are. Our phones would be faster, our engines a little more efficient, our batteries a little more dense, everything would be a little bit better but not fundamentally different and we would still be trapped in our own solar system.
    
    As far as corruption of science is concerned pharma industry does seem to be the most egregious offender. Even before Covid they were pumping out many drugs that were dubious at best and have had a problem with diet and lifestyle based interventions that would be far more effective in treating many prevalent disorders. I don’t have enough background to fully understand the details of the problems with mRNA based vaccines but even an uninformed individual can see that something is wrong. There has been a rise in heart attacks among people in twenties and early thirties despite being healthy and no history of heart disease. There has also been a sharp increase in cancer rates in young people. Even on a personal level I have seen people in 30s and 40s succumb to heart attack or cancer. There must at least be a transperent investigation to ensure that the technology is as safe as being advertised as opposed to being awarded the Nobel Prize and printing puff pieces like this one-
    
    According to a report in The Washington Post, Weissman gets fan mail from people all over the world, thanking him for his work that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible — one said “You’ve made hugs and closeness possible again” — and asking him for a picture or his autograph.
    
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    1. Rob Mielcarski says:
      
      January 3, 2025 at 1:03 am
      
      I agree with you. All the easy discoveries are done.
      
      The main problem with mRNA is not hard to understand. You insert genetic code into your cells so they produce a desired protein. In the case of covid they wanted the protein to stimulate antibodies that would provide protection against the disease.
      
      They assured us the mRNA would remain local to the injection site and would have a short life time. Both were lies. Cells that produce a non-self protein are attacked and killed. In an organ like the heart that cannot repair scar tissue that’s a big deal and can cause heart attacks.
      
      There are many other problems with mRNA but the problem I explained is plenty for a competent ethical regulator to refuse approval. Those regulators to this day still recommend transfecting children who have zero risk from the disease. Why? Because having a “vaccine” on the childhood vaccination schedule provides a layer of immunity from harms caused to anyone of any age.
      
      It’s murder. People need to go to jail.
      
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      1. Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 3, 2025 at 1:37 am
        
        By the way, I deliberately use the word “transfection” instead of “vaccination” because:
        
        1) It reinforces the fact that mRNA technology has nothing in common with the old vaccines we grew up with.
        
        2) Transfection is a decades old technology pharma was unable to make safe or effective and they used the fomented covid emergency to dust off and rebrand it as a new miracle technology so they can refresh their patents, and they blocked other safe & effective treatments so they could get emergency use authorization for mRNA without having to do rigorous testing, and they coerced 6+ billion people to transfect themselves, including children and people that did not need protection, in an attempt to eliminate the control group so there would be no way to prove the crime.
        
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        AJ says:
        
        January 3, 2025 at 3:52 am
        
        I would not call it transfection, it was attempted gene therapy plain and simple. Moderna had been working on gene therapy for 10+ years on cancer. It was considered appropriate because the cancer patients were already dying. They failed at it. The FDA stopped all human trials of gene therapy because it killed the first recipients (can’t remember when that was but quite some time ago).
        
        AJ
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 3, 2025 at 9:11 am
        
        Do you know what is the difference between gene therapy and transfection? I use them interchangeably.
        
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        AJ says:
        
        January 3, 2025 at 10:42 am
        
        After researching it more there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference. However, gene therapy had a bad reputation in the 80’s/90’s and the research/biopharma industry had to move away from it so transfection is what they settled on.
        
        If the shots had been labeled as gene therapy I knew enough to have not gotten it. Since it was pushed as a vaccine (which it was not) I succumbed to the propaganda (stupid me!!).
        
        AJ
        
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      2. Kira says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 7:54 am
        
        I understood the problems with the spike protein generation when you and Gaia had explained it to me. There are so many things that I found to be weird even when they launched these vaccines.
        
        Firstly these did not stop infection and transmission like traditional vaccines are supposed to do. All that would do is give the virus a chance to jump from vaccinated person to person until it finds a way to defeat it simply by brute force.
        
        Second was the vaccines that Russia and China used (Sputnik and SinoVac) were traditional vaccines which were different from the spike protein based ones. These had lower efficacy and were mocked for it. China and Russia could have easily made similar vaccines to west if they wanted to, they clearly had the expertise or they could simply reverse engineer it. But they went their own way.
        
        If I am not mistaken their vaccines took a lot longer than the western ones who were the first to the market with theirs. So in the end it was all about getting the first mover advantage with a half baked,unproven and flawed technology since there were billions to be made by being the first.
        
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    2. paqnation says:
      
      January 3, 2025 at 8:52 pm
      
      I like your concept of what 500 more years of industrial civ would look like. I used to have major hopium about aliens and even galactic wars going on out there. One of the first phrases of Rob’s that bugged the hell out of me when I got here was the peak of what’s possible in the universe. I was like, “What? This shitshow on earth is the best it gets? No way”. Funny now but at the time I thought Rob was foolish for thinking this way.
      
      But that was just another delusion of mine that needed to be stomped out. I can’t blame MORT or Rob for that one though. Hideaway and his energy voodoo killed that hopium for me. So now I understand that there can’t be any peak in the universe that doesn’t look somewhat like ours. Maybe the species can look drastically different. Four arms, or two heads… but not their peak.
      
      And let’s say it’s a planet twice the size of Jupiter with almost unlimited accessible resources. And they’re going through their industrial revolution phase. Maybe their peak is much more complex than ours. 300 billion population, 100 continent supply chain, etc… just changing your quote a little bit here: Their phones would be faster, their engines a little more efficient, their batteries a little more dense, everything would be a little bit better but not fundamentally different than humans on earth and they would still be trapped in their own solar system.
      
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      1. Kira says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 8:06 am
        
        Your Jupiter analogy is quite right. The problem is physics itself. We have come as far as we can and without a major breakthrough we are not going anywhere. It seems as though all species regardless of where they are in the universe are destined to be born,live and die in their respective pape blue dots. This is quite a depressing and unpleasant idea as it puts a hard limit on us and hence we create fantastical ideas like fermi paradox and hypothesize about why aliens have not contacted us when in reality aliens are probably just stuck in their solar system just as we are.
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 10:00 am
        
        I repeat the glass half full analogy. It’s true there are many big questions we may never answer such as the relationship between gravity and the quantum. On the other hand there are MANY big questions we do understand. In the past when I heard the words “standard model”, which is our physics explanation for how the world works, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Then read Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder’s book and I became aware of how much complex knowledge is buried in those simple words “standard model”. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Our species with its rare brain enabled by denial has accomplished an amazing amount. If we accomplish nothing more we should still be proud.
        
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        Kira says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 8:22 pm
        
        Its true that what we have accomplished is nothing short of extraordinary and something to be proud of but that also makes what is coming equally tragic as we will pass no knowledge of our accomplishments down to our descendents. All of our triumphs will become folklore and fairytales told to kids around fire at night after a busy day ploughing the field or hunting and forging.
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 9:07 pm
        
        Yes I agree. The loss of with be tragic.
        
        That’s why I support Alpert’s plan which would save some of our accomplishments and is feasible from an energy/materials perspective but impossible from a political perspective.
        
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        paqnation says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 2:10 pm
        
        I’m the first to admit that some of my cheering for human extinction has something to do with me trying to be a tough guy about unpleasant realities.
        
        but that also makes what is coming equally tragic as we will pass no knowledge of our accomplishments down to our descendents.
        
        I see that sentiment a lot. I can’t get down with it. And it has nothing to with me trying to be a tough guy.
        
        I look at it the same way as I look at an extreme case of an old man bigot, racist. That old man and his ideology needs to die off. And even though he might have had some impressive triumphs and accomplishments over the years… the world is a better place if all of his knowledge vanishes forever… ditto for the last 10k years of humanity’s knowledge.
        
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Kira says:

January 2, 2025 at 7:06 am

Just rewatched Chernobyl TV series after a long time. It’s a must watch in case you haven’t. The first episode is an absolute masterclass in denial 101. The plant workers are trying to pump water to the core even though the core doesn’t exist and they know it. When the junior workers try to say this they are shut down by their superiors simply to avoid the horrifying reality. This is exactly how our civilization will go down.

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 2, 2025 at 9:39 am
  
  It’s a really good series. I rated it a rare 10 out of 10.
  
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  1. J. Doe says:
    
    January 3, 2025 at 12:24 am
    
    I rated it above average, but not perfect, due to some inaccuracies – one thing that annoyed me, for instance, was that a woman was not allowed to see her radiation-sickened husband in hospital, even though the patient had already gone through decontamination procedures. After that, there would not be a radiation hazard anymore. This presentation is harmful to irradiated patients, as it reinforces an incorrect assumption. The series further doubled down on this, as the woman later lost her unborn child because of seeing her husband irradiated the child, which is not physically possible.
    There’s a lot more of these in the series, but I can forgive it on the grounds that it’s not trying to be a historically accurate documentation, but a drama spiced up for an audience affected by reality denial.
    
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Stellarwind72 says:

January 2, 2025 at 8:30 am

B’s predictions for 2025.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/what-comes-in-2025

TLDR; The Energy crisis in Europe continues. The Ukraine war ends either via negotiations or military collapse. The Shale revolution in the U.S. ends. More trouble in the middle east.

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 2, 2025 at 12:15 pm

A brilliant scientist in denial laments other scientists in denial.

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder reviews the evidence that climate scientists are too optimistic about the predicted rate of climate change. She’s worried because this means there might not be time for the green energy transition. 😦

I’ve followed climate change science for a long time and the recurring theme most obvious to me is that reality is always worse than the climate scientists predict. And all of their prescriptions for what to do about climate change have about a 0% probability of improving the future.

Hence, again, my fascination with MORT.

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1. J. Doe says:
  
  January 3, 2025 at 12:16 am
  
  The joke is that one of the few climate scientists who predicted an accelerated rate of warming in Nature in 2018 ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5 ) is real-life friends with Dr. Varki. It seems that being friends with him improves the accuracy of one’s predictions! xD
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 3, 2025 at 12:45 am
    
    Another humorous thing is that Varki was worried that denial would prevent us from moving away from fossil energy fast enough to solve the climate change problem. I tried to educate him on the reality of energy and overshoot. I think I succeeded but have never had a follow-up conversation on that topic so don’t know if it stuck.
    
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    1. J. Doe says:
      
      January 3, 2025 at 1:09 am
      
      Just like physicians are not immune to the diseases they describe. Just because one realizes the role of denial does not make oneself entirely immune to it, it seems.
      
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 2, 2025 at 6:58 pm

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Stellarwind72 says:

January 3, 2025 at 7:52 am

Is British Columbia or anywhere in the Pacific Northwest ready to handle a magnitude 8~9 earthquake?
Are the buildings in places like Vancouver, Seattle and Portland built to withstand seismic events of that scale?

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 3, 2025 at 9:16 am
  
  I don’t know but I’d guess new buildings yes, at least for horizontal earthquakes. There are two types of earthquakes, horizontal and vertical. Vertical are much harder to protect against. My friend the fire chief explained the uncommon things they had to do build a fire hall that could withstand vertical quakes.
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 3, 2025 at 12:37 pm

I missed this when Matt Orfalea published it 4 months ago. It’s an amazing demonstration of the integrity and intelligence of mainstream news today. And an inspiring vignette of the world’s most powerful country that protects democracy and free speech.

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paqnation says:

January 3, 2025 at 4:33 pm

I’ve read this book twice now. I love it. I wanted to write up a good review for you guys. I can’t do it. It just ends up with me quoting the entire book and saying, “This stuff makes sense to me, so you guys should like it too”. LOL. I give up.

I know some of you hate these philosopher types, but if you can give it a chance, I bet your experience will be similar to mine in that you will be plugging in your knowledge of MORT, denial, human supremacism, energy, and the MPP into everything Ligotti is saying, making it even more convincing.

This link is the first chapter. I like the reader’s voice. If you’re skeptical, start at the 12:20 mark (already queued up) and give it at least five minutes. Then try the 28:40 mark for another five minutes. If that doesn’t pique your interest, then no harm no foul. At least I can say I tried.😊

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 3, 2025 at 5:14 pm
  
  My recollection is that Ligotti’s messages are essentially 1) “there is no purpose to life” and 2) “life is filled with suffering so it is best not to be born”.
  
  Is this summary correct?
  
  1) is sort of true but you can choose to spin it in a negative way as Ligotti has done, or in a positive way as I prefer to do. The “purpose” of life is to help the universe achieve its goal of degrading energy gradients as fast as possible. This is not very inspiring however our species won the lottery and has an extremely rare and powerful brain capable of understanding some of what the universe is up to. That’s plenty good enough to savor the miracle of our existence for our few years of life.
  
  2) has been true for some people in some periods of history but for me in middle class Canada there is no suffering and comfort is abundant. I try to live light but my life is still very comfortable and I’m glad I was born.
  
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  1. paqnation says:
    
    January 3, 2025 at 6:19 pm
    Yep, that about sums it up.
    
    1) I think the only spinning going on is when we try to make it positive. And it usually ends up with us focusing on what a “miracle” we are.
    
    2) These damn nihilists are so hellbent on suffering, that they’ve got me looking at boredom as a form of suffering.😊
    
    Screw it, I’m gonna add a little bit more. Some of this is from the book and some from a review of the book that I was using to try and write my own review:
    
    Consciousness is the parent of all horror.
    
    Death–or more accurately the awareness of death–is the parent of supernatural horror.
    
    Pessimism is not a popular philosophy.
    
    People naturally resist the idea that life is not okay.
    
    Our sense of self, or our sense of “being someone,” is illusory.
    
    There is not really any such thing as free will.
    
    The burden of proof rests on those who claim that life is good.
    
    In the absence of any such proof, the default position is that reproduction inflicts harm on the one who is born.
    
    Only human extinction can end human suffering.
    
    Supernatural horror is commonly about encountering a paradox in the flesh, something that is but ought not to be–the living dead vampire, the self-mobilized puppet. We are willing to believe almost anything about ourselves–that we are apes or angels–but not that we are puppets.
    
    The fact that we are always and continuously searching for meaning is a sign that something is not right. Because there is no meaning inherent to the universe, this is a hunger that cannot be authentically satisfied. We maintain our sanity by suppressing our awareness of death, and finding meaning in things is a kind of self-hypnosis. To distract ourselves, we look for metaphysical sureties or securities like God and patriotism. These are things that are larger than ourselves, in which we can lose and delude ourselves, believing anything but that the world is MALIGNANTLY USELESS.
    
    Also worthy of mention is a clique among the suicidal for whom the meaning of their act is a darker thing. Frustrated as perpetrators of an all-inclusive extermination, they would kill themselves only because killing it all is closed off to them. They hate having been delivered into a world only to be told, by and by, ‘This way to the abattoir, Ladies and Gentlemen.’ They despise the conspiracy of Lies for Life almost as much as they despise themselves for being a party to it. If they could unmake the world by pushing a button, they would do so without a second thought.
    
    and I like this excerpt about blaming nature:
    
    As appealing as a universal suicide pact may be, why take part in it just to conserve this planet, this dim bulb in the blackness of space? Nature produced us or at least subsidized our evolution. It intruded on an inorganic wasteland and set up shop. What evolved was a global workhouse where nothing is ever at rest, where the generation and discarding of life incessantly goes on. By what virtue, then, is it entitled to receive a pardon for this original sin – a capital crime in reverse, just as reproduction makes one an accessory before the fact to an individual’s death?
    
    We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along. A world where all organisms are inexorable pushed by pain throughout their lives to do that which will improve their chances to survive and create more of themselves. Left unchecked, this process will last as long as a single cell remains palpitating in this cesspool of the solar system, this toilet of the galaxy. So why not lend a hand in nature’s suicide? For want of a deity that could be held to account for a world in which there is terrible pain, let nature take the blame for our troubles. We did not create an environment uncongenial to our species, nature did. One would think that nature was trying to kill us off, or get us to suicide ourselves once the blunder of consciousness came upon us. What was nature thinking? We tried to anthropomorphize it, to romanticize it, to let it into our hearts. But nature kept its distance, leaving us to our own devices. So be it.
    
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    1. Rob Mielcarski says:
      
      January 3, 2025 at 7:47 pm
      
      Don’t you think there really are 2 ways to view a glass half full? It’s not spinning. It’s just accepting the universe as it is.
      
      I respect you have a different view and I’m not trying to change your mind.
      
      Curious to know what others think about Ligotti.
      
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      1. J. Doe says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 6:24 am
        
        The glass is always full, as any liquid drained from it is replaced by a corresponding volume of gas (assuming that we are talking about a glass that is not in a vacuum) ;D
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 2:47 pm
        
        True, but the reason you have a glass is to hold the water you need to survive, not the gas you breathe. Should you be content or depressed because your glass is half full? The reality is what it is, but you can choose how to feel about it.
        
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    2. monk says:
      
      January 12, 2025 at 4:12 pm
      
      Fark I hope AI never reads this book. Don’t want to give it any ideas
      
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      1. paqnation says:
        
        January 12, 2025 at 6:58 pm
        
        LOL!!
        
        The Coen brothers got it so right with their take on nihilism. (in case the audio sucks, text is below)
        
        Bunny: Uli doesn’t care about anything. He’s a Nihilist.
        The Dude: Ah, that must be exhausting.
        
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    3. Renaee says:
      
      September 28, 2025 at 5:04 pm
      
      My regret is that I am late to the party of sharing your enthralment with this book and wished we could have been reading it in-synch. It is ironic that I find this meaningful (ha!), and yet I really understand Rob’s comment below as well. But I will continue listening today. But in some ways I think I can only tolerate reading such a book because I am not looking for answers any more, after reading all 4 Saltzman books, it’s not a quest or a seeking to understand, but just getting the full depth of this existence and leaving no stone unturned. I appreciated the summary bullet points, and I am already there in being a ‘puppet’ and have so many thoughts about this often, that arrive unbidden, given i am not making them happen 😉
      
      Significant re the human obsession with horror and the supernatural. I *never* watch psychological thrillers or horror, I just can’t do it. But understanding why it is so appealing to so many is very interesting.
      
      Laughed when I read your reason for not being able to do the review, as I so get that, and you end up just quoting huge chunks of the book and think, what’s the point.
      
      Also to say that our tendency to anthromorphise nature is relentless. I recently listened to a YT channel called ‘sleepy science’ for those who like to listen to science shows as they drift off to sleep lol. It was about how scentists are discovering how plants can learn, remember, cooperate, anticipate etc, and how this is a kind of intelligence or intention which means science has got it wrong and we must rethink what it means to be sentient. That they are always trying to find a demarcation to show that ‘we are in charge’ or making decisions and are not just operating as ‘the blob’ as you put it.
      
      And a quote for you that sums this up from a movie 😉 😆
      
      “You can take my life but you can never take my freedom!!”
      
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      1. paqnation says:
        
        September 28, 2025 at 11:10 pm
        
        I so wish you were on this site back then so that we could’ve been pushing Ligotti together. It was hard for me to bring some of this stuff up… but with a partner in crime, we would’ve probably gotten banned from un-Denial for being too scary.😂😂
        
        I recently watched Gladiator. Your quote might make me watch Braveheart tonight.
        
        I have a movie recommendation for you. The thumbnail makes it look like a horror flick, but I promise it’s not. Read my description but also read Rob’s comment after he watched it.
        
        https://un-denial.com/2024/01/21/by-hideaway-energy-and-electricity/comment-page-4/#comment-93769
        
        In his comment, Rob mentioned his late friend Gail Zawacki. That reminded me of what might be the best interview in the entire doomasphere. In case you’ve never heard it, this is a must:
        
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        Renaee says:
        
        September 28, 2025 at 11:37 pm
        
        Thanks on both accounts, apparently we have got Tubi and can watch, though there may be a couple of ads. I actually saw this thread and thought this movie sounded good! The scenery does look incredibly beautiful – the hills are alive country. And Rob’s comments made me think worth a watch as well.
        
        I have not listened to Gail and did not know of her until recently when I heard a few people mention of her passing, so will give this one a listen.
        
        And I will get the Lagotti book, need a print copy – we can still be partners in crime 🤣
        
        If you watch Gladiator, then think of the bit in the book about libertarianism and their loathing of determinists. I am finding it just so juicy and just got up to the bit about what’s the point of arguing about no free will.
        
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        Renaee says:
        
        September 28, 2025 at 11:48 pm
        
        *If you watch ‘Braveheart’ I meant, not Gladiator.
        
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2. AJ says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 11:07 am
  
  Don’t care for his position . . . too nihilistic for me.
  
  I tend toward empiricism and epicurean philosophy (simple life with an absence of pain). All of course tempered by physical reality being all that there is and an awe at being alive in that reality with an appreciation of the transitory nature of personal existence.
  
  AJ
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 3, 2025 at 8:17 pm

Steve St. Angelo reviews the insane energy used by bitcoin mining.

It takes 1,100 MWh to produce 1 bitcoin today and it’s growing quickly.

He predicts this will increase electricity prices and cause citizens to demand bitcoin mining be shut down.

He missed what I think is a key issue.

The process of mining does not just produce new bitcoins. Mining is also required to enable the network for transacting bitcoins. In other words, if you shut down mining you don’t just stop producing new bitcoins, you send the value of existing bitcoins to zero.

Ditto if the internet becomes unreliable, say for example, due to an EMP strike by North Korea.

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1. Stellarwind72 says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 10:02 pm
  
  Bitcoin is so profligate. I wonder if the EU will ban bitcoin mining, like China did?
  https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/countries-say-no-to-bitcoin-mines/
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 3, 2025 at 10:41 pm

Sad thing is people are so stupid these days it will probably work.

These attacks are connected to each other through Fort Bragg, and to the NJ drones, which are connected to gravity manipulation, which connects it all to UAPs for the alien inclined. And it’s all happening between the election and inauguration.

It’s clearly designed to be irresistible to “conspiracy theorists.”

The smart money is on the Deep State and its partners preparing to vacate their offices and switch modes.

They want us chasing our tails, and we are obliging them. We should instead be figuring out what they’re trying to distract us from with all this conspiracy catnip.

These attacks are connected to each other through Fort Bragg, and to the NJ drones, which are connected to gravity manipulation, which connects it all to UAPs for the alien inclined. And it’s all happening between the election and inauguration.

It’s clearly designed to be…

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 3, 2025

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 3, 2025 at 10:57 pm

Is it me or is big change in the air?

It feels like chaos is breaking out everywhere.

Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years.

Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2025

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 4, 2025 at 10:56 am

After recently stepping out of the “transfections are good” closet, Berman steps out of another closet.

This is why we need to stop trying to solve what cannot be solved @acidiclemon2 @danbjones4

Instead, let’s start building small communities of people trained in wisdom, relationships & processes to lead us after the inevitable disaster. https://t.co/BFphGENuAI pic.twitter.com/G6GC6AeKl6

— Art Berman (@aeberman12) January 4, 2025

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1. paqnation says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 3:16 pm
  
  Imagine that Art & Hideaway are equal in their knowledge of everything… same IQ and all that. Both are great sources, but nothing stands out between them.
  
  Now let’s add denial into the picture. With each of their denial levels being exactly what they are today. Now something will stand out. Art will still qualify as a great source, but Hideaway will run circles around Art as far as getting to the heart of reality.
  
  Mastering your denial is criminally undervalued in the overshoot community. Shame on them, they should know better.
  
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  1. Rob Mielcarski says:
    
    January 4, 2025 at 4:47 pm
    
    Good points. The problem is that denial is aggressively denied. I’m not sure you can master it.
    
    How many more failures will it take for climate scientists to admit their prescriptions won’t work?
    
    How bad must the all-cause mortality data and increased illnesses get before my health minister admits she screwed up?
    
    Brandon will passionately believe he is correct until he dies, regardless of the evidence.
    
    If anyone sees any evidence that denial can be overcome, please let us know.
    
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    1. Kira says:
      
      January 4, 2025 at 8:38 pm
      
      There is an interesting point that I came across so just wanted to mention that. I saw a video on dreams and how they affect us and why nightmares can be so effective. Even though the video was not about denial it did touch upon how the fear of unpleasant things is somewhat heightened in dreams than in real life. Is it possible that denial is suppressed or inactive when in dream state as there is no real danger to the body?
      
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      1. Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 4, 2025 at 9:13 pm
        
        I don’t know. I have a fuzzy recollection that when dreaming all of our normal cognitive constraints are relaxed which is why we frequently dream about doing physically impossible things. Maybe one of the psycho people here has a good understanding of sleep.
        
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        paqnation says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 12:10 pm
        
        Qualified psycho here. But no knowledge about sleep/dreams. I like the topic though.
        
        This is usually where monk or Gaia would chime in with their expertise. Where ya at ladies? (especially Gaia… it’s been a while. Hope everything is ok.)
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 12:27 pm
        
        Gaia and monk are probably annoyed with me for taking so long to publish essays they submitted. I succumbed to the pressure from you and Charles to pre-empt them. I’ll fix the problem soon and hopefully they will forgive me.
        
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        paqnation says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 1:06 pm
        
        Pressure, lol. How dare you try and pin the blame on me and Charles.😊
        
        That’s actually great news though. Ever since Sam Mitchell left the doomasphere, I start getting worried when I haven’t heard from a regular in a while. If I have to remain in this cesspool, I want all of you guys in it with me. Haha
        
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        Rob Mielcarski says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 2:00 pm
        
        I didn’t realize Sam had left. I knew he was threatening to do so. He seemed very unhappy.
        
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        paqnation says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 2:22 pm
        
        Ya, it’s a bummer. I had this exchange with him about a month ago.
        
        Me: Don’t worry people. I’m gonna hold down the fort with my new channel (hopefully within a couple months). If Sam’s not back by the time I go live, I guarantee he’ll be back soon thereafter. He’s way too narcissistic (like myself) to be watching some jerk steal all his glory. LOL.
        
        And Sam, thank you for doing what you do. I was late to the party. Took me a while to break free of the noble savage bs and finally become a nazi doomer. Both of your channels are the best thing on yt. Take care brother.
        
        Sam: The baton is all yours.
        
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        monk says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 3:36 pm
        
        LOL I have just been on holiday and busy doing family and house stuff 🙂
        
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      2. monk says:
        
        January 5, 2025 at 3:59 pm
        
        Kira this idea is interesting. If you are interested in doomer topics from a purely academic fascination, maybe it turns off some sort of fear response that triggers denial?
        
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        Kira says:
        
        January 7, 2025 at 12:14 am
        
        I think even for people who have nothing to do with the collapse or overshoot awareness in general the fear of mortality or harm seems more intense or heightened in dreams than it would be consciously. It is sometimes enough to even snap us out of it. According to Dr Varki the denial originates from the fear supression module of the brain. Since dreams pose no physical threat it’s possible that the brain doesn’t see the need to supress anything.It would be interesting to hear what Dr Varki would have to say about it.
        
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 4, 2025 at 11:13 am
Chris Martenson’s predictions for 2025.

If he’s right, Europe is going down fast. But will the pompous pricks leading the EU just roll over and die or will they nuke Russia to get the gas?

https://peakprosperity.com/my-top-predictions-for-energy-interest-rates-and-the-economy/
1. US oil production tops out, and smart investors quickly puzzle out the implications. Oil prices rise, defying all expectations.
2. Alternative energy is revealed to be unfit for the leading role, lacking the ability to match the performance of fossil fuels leading to …
3. A rapid resurgence in and appreciation for nuclear energy, especially 4^th generation modular designs.
4. Natural Gas production will be surprised by too much demand from a bevy of LNG and gas electrical power plants being slapped up without anybody having done the macro math on it all. Prices in the US will end 2025 a LOT higher, and as they approach actual world prices for LNG, the Trump administration will keep those exports at home. This means Europe gets stiffed.
5. The bond markets finally figure out that, in terms of respectability, believing in infinite exponential economic growth on a finite planet ranks barely above believing in Santa as a 30-year-old. This means interest rates go up in 2025, not down, surprising 103% of the financial media (because some of them will be surprised twice).
6. Because it’s been kept propped up with fake pre-election statistics and all-too-real government deficit spending that D.O.G.E. will cut, the tired economy will tip over into a pretty sizable recession.
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1. CampbellS says:
  
  January 4, 2025 at 12:23 pm
  
  “.. believing in infinite exponential economic growth on a finite planet ranks barely above believing in Santa as a 30-year-old.”
  
  I like that line I’m going to use it on LinkedIn 😀
  
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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 4, 2025 at 11:28 am

Mission accomplished, again. The US has restored democracy and justice to Syria.

1/ Confirmed: Syria's current interim Minister of Justice, Shadi Al-Wais, appears in 2 videos from 2015 in which he oversees the public executions of two women accused of prostitution.

The face of the lady is blurred when they shoot her in the head.pic.twitter.com/kDUuuONY6w

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) January 4, 2025

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Rob Mielcarski says:

January 4, 2025 at 3:02 pm

If they would publish clean transfected vs. un-transfected all-cause mortality data we could put this issue to bed.

If that data validated mRNA it would be sprayed everywhere. The fact they keep it secret tells us everything we need to know.

How should we react to an alarming and persistent elevation in “excess deaths?”

Retrace our steps?

Scrutinize events at the inflection point?

Don’t be absurd. The obvious way to prevent unexpected deaths is to expect more deaths! Case closed. Problem solved. Get your… https://t.co/lpRf4mMyeq

— Bret Weinstein (@BretWeinstein) January 4, 2025

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scarr0w says:

January 4, 2025 at 4:22 pm

regarding the essay:

I am wired differently than the doomer profile Chris and Charles have put together. Their description had much more sturm und drang than I have experienced in coming to understand the overshoot/collapse we are observing.

(brief explanatory flashback)- I was raised on a farm, and we raised hogs. One evening, some of them got out of the fenced feedlot, and were enjoying themselves out in a nearby pasture. It was getting toward dark, and being late fall, was chilly and muddy. I was pissed that I had to get them in by myself. I don’t recall what the other kids were doing, but it was all on me. My temper flared, as the hogs were nonchalant and ignoring me as I tried to herd them back. I started running and kicking at them, but just got myself tired and frustrated. As I stood there panting, I looked up at the stars, I watched the pigs just being pigs, and got a very strong feeling of the immensity of the universe, our minuscule role in it, and especially the indifference of the universe AND the pigs to my emotional state. With slowing heartbeat, I slowly began applying what I know and should have done in the first place, and slowly worked them up to the barn.

That, among other things, has led me to have a pretty even temper. No big night or lows, and more of a 30,000 foot level and wide view of things. So today, having been on the awareness track for over two decades, I’m in a place of acceptance at the macro level, and investment in personal resilience at the local level.

That said, my full understanding of the huge repercussions and extent of the impending fall has grown over that time, so still follow things here as well as several other sites to improve my understanding, but also to better witness this huge discontinuity we are on the cusp of.

I’ve been lucky enough to move out into the country, work on healing a bit a of land, and so feel like I’m at least doing something. (my guest post back in March covers some of that). If I was still trapped on a wage treadmill in the city, I’d be a lot less happy, but no less able to see where things are going.

I feel bad for those that had a slap in the face quick jolt of collapse awareness, as it does take some time to recalibrate your life expectations and still find a reason to get out of bed. Hopefully, the emotional journey will get them to a better place and even to truly, deeply appreciate what we have right now. Just being alive is pretty amazing.

“The significance of man is that he is that part of the universe that asks the question, What is the significance of Man? He alone can stand apart imaginatively and, regarding himself and the universe in their eternal aspects, pronounce a judgment: The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.”

Carl L. Becker

How this quote interacts with MORT I’ll leave for others to mull over.

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1. Charles says:
  
  January 5, 2025 at 10:56 am
  
  That was great. Thank you.
  
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Stellarwind72 says:

January 4, 2025 at 4:26 pm

The US stock market is in the biggest bubble in history. The entire economy is at risk.

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el mar says:

January 5, 2025 at 4:28 am

theluckycountry:

https://peakoil.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1497028#p1497028

“Now laying aside the obvious connection between copper production and Diesel usage (conventional Oil), just ask yourself why the concerted global government push for EV in the first place? Back in the 2000’s before the financial crash, when PeakOil was discussed widely, it was assumed that government’s needed to do something to mitigate the impending peak and decline of oil production. Because as far as everyone was concerned they weren’t. This is understandable when you consider how governments run and the (lack) of real power they have to make big changes. I believed there was a plan in the wings, but at a higher level of oversight, one the instigators didn’t want made general knowledge so that the markets wouldn’t be spooked. Even today that’s considered a conspiracy theory isn’t it. But is it really that much or a stretch of the imagination? We’re talking about elite planners influencing the OECD, the World bank, people that operate outside the laws of nations, like the BIS that is housed in Switzerland but is an enclave of it’s own negotiated by treaty, like a foreign embassy. The Davos meetings, the Bilderberg meetings, there are many and these are just the public ones, what’s discussed behind the scenes? Whose idea was it to lower interest rates “globally” after the GFC? Whose idea was it to implement subsidies for EVs worldwide and the total Global lockdown response to Covid? You don’t get that level of cooperation between governments, ever! No, it’s clear there is a group or groups behind the scenes with inordinate power that can agree on important issues and get the job done. Not necessarily for our benefit, but certainly for the stability of the major nations and the ongoing profits of the elite classes.

As far as oil depletion goes the EV was basically that plan, and with it rebuildable wind and solar too. A plan doomed to failure of course but one that took the pressure off governments and higher ups. All they had to do was Green light the technology and it looked like they were taking action. But nothing changed, oil consumption kept increasing as did electricity consumption. Whatever extra wind and solar have added to the World’s grids has been more than negated by the explosion of air conditioner usage, bitcoin transacting, EV charging and now A.I. In other words it’s been squandered. And more than that, they and all the other new tech has only added to the demand for copper. A mineral which doesn’t row on trees and would make things like the EV and other electric-tech more and more expensive as time passed and mines depleted. Decades, think decades! Not next year, not by 2030.

Now it’s not a case of “we’re running out of oil what are you going to do!”
It’s a case of “You can buy an EV, what’s wrong with you”

It doesn’t matter that the EV was a failed product, too expensive for the average “consumer”. It threw the ball into the consumers court, just like the mass distribution of recycling bins that were designed to save the Planet for waste and pollution, if only the consumers did their part. How well did that work? The crunch with Copper will come sooner rather than later now and the folks writing the Limits To Growth will no doubt have already incorporated this in their latest update. But either way, once the oil goes, so does the Diesel and so goes mining in general. When we get close to that point these hopium cover stories and facades will no longer be needed.”

Saludos

el mar

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1. Rob Mielcarski says:
  
  January 5, 2025 at 9:44 am
  Thanks el mar, that’s a good essay. I’ve never previously seen the author “theluckycountry”.
  
  He discusses a mystery I think a lot about. Is anyone steering the bus? He thinks yes. I’m not sure.
  
  Here’s a spin on his arguments that suggest no elite group is steering.
  - Interest rates follow economic growth and inflation and are not set by the central banks (except at the short end for short periods). After the GFC every country went into a recession and so the interest rates everywhere fell in synchrony.
  - Availability and cost of lithium batteries eventually reached a point that EV’s were technically feasible. One country decided to subsidize EVs to help their industry grow and other countries followed suit to stay competitive. There was no plan, except maybe the discouragement of diesel cars “to reduce pollution” when in fact they were reserving diesel for the machines that feed us.
  - Every country needs growth to enable the deficit spending that funds their standard of living. Growth industries are hard to find today. When something new like PV, EV, or AI looks promising for growth, everyone jumps on board regardless of the underlying fundamentals. Ponzi dynamics can keep an unprofitable industry going a long time.
  - Everyone knows there’s no need to worry about copper scarcity because the Simon–Ehrlich wager proved the Malthusians were wrong. Let the markets sort it out.
  - Recycling bins were implemented with good intentions by leaders who were misled by the plastics industry and their own optimism. Leaders never bothered to study the underlying economic and technical feasibility of recycling plastic, which is very poor.
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