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Post by Admin on Jan 13, 2021 22:43:05 GMT
Tick Tock... 'Ecological Ponzi scheme': Dire scientific assessment warns humanity in denial of looming 'collapse of civilization'www.alternet.org/2021/01/ecological-collapse/In an example to the rest of the scientific community and an effort to wake up people—particularly policymakers—worldwide, 17 scientists penned a comprehensive assessment of the current state of the planet and what the future could hold due to biodiversity loss, climate disruption, human consumption, and population growth. "Ours is not a call to surrender—we aim to provide leaders with a realistic 'cold shower' of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future," according to the perspective paper, co-authored by experts across Australia, Mexico, and the United States, and published in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Co-author Paul R. Ehrlich of Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology—who has raised alarm about overpopulation for decades—told Common Dreams his colleagues "are all scared" about what's to come. "Scientists have to learn to be communicators," said Ehrlich, citing James Hansen's warning about the consequences of "scientific reticence." Hansen, a professor at Columbia University's Earth Institute and former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified to Congress about the climate crisis in 1988. Ehrlich was straightforward about how "extremely dangerous things are" now and the necessity of a "World War II-type mobilization" to prevent predictions detailed in the paper: "a ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health, and climate-disruption upheavals (including looming massive migrations), and resource conflicts." "What we are saying might not be popular, and indeed is frightening. But we need to be candid, accurate, and honest if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future," said co-author Daniel T. Blumstein of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement about the paper. "By scientists' telling it like it is, we hope to empower politicians to work to represent their citizen, not corporate, constituents," he said in an email to Common Dreams. The paper, Ehrlich and Blumstein pointed out, comes in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic—which, according to Johns Hopkins University, has killed nearly two million people. Over the past year, the Covid-19 crisis has provoked calls for humanity to end its destruction of the natural world to prevent future public health catastrophes. "We're all seeing the shocks to our global systems now from Covid and the rise of authoritarian leaders," Blumstein said. "Because our current ways of life are ecologically unsustainable (we're living in an ecological Ponzi scheme), we fully anticipate more—and more deadly—pandemics in the future. We expect civil unrest, wars, and famines. We are all shaken by the likelihood of the collapse of civilization as we know it." The new warning from scientists, Blumstein noted, cites over 150 other papers "documenting the diverse and shocking decline in biodiversity and planetary 'health' and their consequences." Among the cited sources is a World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) report that in September revealed an "average 68% decrease in population sizes of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and fish between 1970 and 2016." "In the midst of a global pandemic, it is now more important than ever to take unprecedented and coordinated global action to halt and start to reverse the loss of biodiversity and wildlife populations across the globe by the end of the decade, and protect our future health and livelihoods," WWF International director general Marco Lambertini said at the time. The co-authors—including William J. Ripple of Oregon State University, who last year led thousands of scientists in declaring a climate emergency and earlier this month led a call for "a massive-scale mobilization to address the climate crisis"—echoed Lambertini's message while also underscoring the importance of increasing awareness about what's actually needed. "Humanity is causing a rapid loss of biodiversity and, with it, Earth's ability to support complex life. But the mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilization," the paper says. "In fact, the scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms is so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts," said lead author Corey Bradshaw of Australia's Flinders University in a statement. "The problem is compounded by ignorance and short-term self-interest, with the pursuit of wealth and political interests stymieing the action that is crucial for survival." The paper explains that "while suggested solutions abound, the current scale of their implementation does not match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss and other existential threats tied to the continuous expansion of the human enterprise." According to its authors, "That we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now scientifically undeniable." "With such a rapid, catastrophic loss of biodiversity, the ecosystem services it provides have also declined," the paper explains. Consequences include "reduced carbon sequestration, reduced pollination, soil degradation, poorer water and air quality, more frequent and intense flooding and fires, and compromised human health." Highlighting estimates that the human population will near 10 billion by 2050, the scientists lay out how "large population size and continued growth are implicated in many societal problems," from food insecurity, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and an increased chance of pandemics, to crowding, joblessness, deteriorating infrastructure, and bad governance. The paper also details the planetary impacts of dirty energy and carbon-intensive food production, and says that "while climate change demands a full exit from fossil fuel use well before 2050, pressures on the biosphere are likely to mount prior to decarbonization as humanity brings energy alternatives online." A section on failed international goals declares that "stopping biodiversity loss is nowhere close to the top of any country's priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability." "The dangerous effects of climate change are much more evident to people than those of biodiversity loss, but society is still finding it difficult to deal with them effectively," the scientists note, while decrying "utterly inadequate" efforts by governments to even try to meet the targets of the landmark Paris climate agreement. They further decry the recent rise of right-wing, anti-environment agendas in countries including Australia, Brazil, and the United States—which recently denied President Donald Trump a second term. Ehrlich expressed hope that President-elect Joe Biden will work to deliver on the climate promises he made as a candidate. Biden's vow to rejoin the Paris agreement "is positive news," but "it is a minuscule gesture given the scale of the challenge," Ehrlich said in a statement. The president-elect "is moving in the right direction," Ehrlich told Common Dreams, pointing to the selection of former Secretary of State John Kerry as his climate envoy. However, "the Paris goals are increasingly looking inadequate," and "Biden's political opportunities to do anything major may be greatly constrained," he added. Blumstein stressed that "recycling, using less plastic, eating less meat, taking public transportation, and flying less, while all important, will simply not create the rapid change we need now to save much of the Earth's biodiversity and our lives." According to Blumstein, "We need rapid political change." He urged voters to elect leaders who will end fossil fuel use as well as "eliminate perpetual economic growth and properly price externalities so that the environmental costs are built into the price of a product." He also emphasized the importance of access to education and reproductive control, and the need to rein in corporate lobbying and enact campaign finance reform so politicians serve citizens' needs. "Ultimately," Blumstein added, "we must focus on making equity and well-being society's goals—not the constant accumulation of more junk." In their paper, the UCLA scientist and his 16 co-authors "contend that only a realistic appreciation of the colossal challenges facing the international community might allow it to chart a less-ravaged future." It is "incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to eschew reticence, avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges, ahead and 'tell it like it is,'" they conclude. "Anything else is misleading at best, or negligent and potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst."
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2021 4:30:23 GMT
What We’ve Lost: The Species Declared Extinct in 2020 Dozens of frogs, fish, orchids and other species — many unseen for decades — may no longer exist due to humanity’s destructive effects on the planet. Extinction Countdown January 6, 2021 - by John R. Platt A few months ago a group of scientists warned about the rise of “extinction denial,” an effort much like climate denial to mischaracterize the extinction crisis and suggest that human activity isn’t really having a damaging effect on ecosystems and the whole planet. That damaging effect is, in reality, impossible to deny. This past year scientists and conservation organizations declared that a long list of species may have gone extinct, including dozens of frogs, orchids and fish. Most of these species haven’t been seen in decades, despite frequent and regular expeditions to find out if they still exist. The causes of these extinctions range from diseases to invasive species to habitat loss, but most boil down to human behavior. Of course, proving a negative is always hard, and scientists are often cautious about declaring species truly lost. Do it too soon, they warn, and the last conservation efforts necessary to save a species could evaporate, a problem known as the Romeo and Juliet Effect. Because of that, and because many of these species live in hard-to-survey regions, many of the announcements this past year declared species possibly or probably lost, a sign that hope springs eternal. And there’s reason for that hope: When we devote energy and resources to saving species, it often works. A study published in 2019 found that conservation efforts have reduced bird extinction rates by 40%. Another recent paper found that conservation actions have prevented dozens of bird and mammal extinctions over just the past few decades. The new paper warns that many of the species remain critically endangered, or could still go extinct, but we can at least stop the bleeding. And sometimes we can do better than that. This year the IUCN — the organization that tracks the extinction risk of species around the world — announced several conservation victories, including the previously critically endangered Oaxaca treefrog (Sarcohyla celata), which is now considered “near threatened” due to protective actions taken by the people who live near it. “We can turn things around. We don’t just have to sit there and cry,” says conservation scientist Stuart Pimm, founder of the organization Saving Nature. But at the same time, we need to recognize what we’ve lost, or potentially lost. We can mourn them and vow to prevent as many others as possible from joining their ranks. With that in mind, here are the species that scientists and the conservation community declared lost in 2020, culled from media reports, scientific papers, the IUCN Red List and my own reporting. 32 orchid species in Bangladesh — One of the first papers of 2020 to report any extinctions announced the probable loss of 17% of Bangladesh’s 187 known orchid species. Some of these still exist in other countries, but even regional extinctions (or extirpations, as they’re called) tell us that we’ve taken a toll on our ecological habitats. A similar paper published just days later suggested that nine more orchid species from Madagascar may have also gone extinct. therevelator.org/species-extinct-2020/
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2021 13:16:34 GMT
Scientist Sally Goerner in 2016: "Scientifically speaking, oligarchies always collapse because they are designed to extract wealth from the lower levels of society, concentrate it at the top, and block adaptation by concentrating oligarchic power as well. Though it may take some time, extraction eventually eviscerates the productive levels of society, and the system becomes increasingly brittle. Internal pressures and the sense of betrayal grow as desperation and despair multiply everywhere except at the top, but effective reform seems impossible because the system seems thoroughly rigged. In the final stages, a raft of upstart leaders emerge, some honest and some fascistic, all seeking to channel pent-up frustration towards their chosen ends. If we are lucky, the public will mobilize behind honest leaders and effective reforms. If we are unlucky, either the establishment will continue to “respond ineffectively” until our economy collapses, or a fascist will take over and create conditions too horrific to contemplate.” Why Trump Phenomenon Signals an Oligarchy on the Brink of a Civilization-Threatening Collapse Oligarchies win except when society enacts effective reforms.evonomics.com/why-trump-phenomenon-is-a-sign-of-oligarchy-collapse/2016 April 29 By Sally Goerner “The collapse of urban cultures is an event much more frequent than most observers realize. Often, collapse is well underway before societal elites become aware of it, leading to scenes of leaders responding retroactively and ineffectively as their society collapses around them.” – Sander Vander Leeuw, Archaeologist, 1997 The media has made a cottage industry out of analyzing the relationship between America’s crumbling infrastructure, outsourced jobs, stagnant wages, and evaporating middle class and the rise of anti-establishment presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Commentators are also tripping all over one another to expound daily on the ineffectual response of America’s political elite – characterized by either bewilderment or a dismissal of these anti-establishment candidates as minor hiccups in the otherwise smooth sailing of status-quo power arrangements. But the pundits are all missing the point: the Trump-Sanders phenomenon signals an American oligarchy on the brink of a civilization-threatening collapse. The tragedy is that, despite what you hear on TV or read in the paper or online, this collapse was completely predictable. Scientifically speaking, oligarchies always collapse because they are designed to extract wealth from the lower levels of society, concentrate it at the top, and block adaptation by concentrating oligarchic power as well. Though it may take some time, extraction eventually eviscerates the productive levels of society, and the system becomes increasingly brittle. Internal pressures and the sense of betrayal grow as desperation and despair multiply everywhere except at the top, but effective reform seems impossible because the system seems thoroughly rigged. In the final stages, a raft of upstart leaders emerge, some honest and some fascistic, all seeking to channel pent-up frustration towards their chosen ends. If we are lucky, the public will mobilize behind honest leaders and effective reforms. If we are unlucky, either the establishment will continue to “respond ineffectively” until our economy collapses, or a fascist will take over and create conditions too horrific to contemplate. Sound familiar? America has witnessed a similar cycle of oligarchic corruption[1] starting in the 1760s, 1850s, 1920s, and 2000s: Economic Royalists infiltrate critical institutions and rig political and economic systems to favor elites. 1760s:Royal governors run roughshod over colonial farmers; The East India Company, whose investors were primarily wealthy aristocrats, is given monopoly trading rights in the colonies. (The Tea Act was basically a corporate tax break for it.)2000s: Vice President Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton is given no-bid contracts to handle military services in Iraq; American taxpayers bail out failed banks; Billionaire Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary; America’s medical system is dominated by profit-maximizing, health-minimizing insurance companies. Rigged systems erode the health of the larger society, and signs of crisis proliferate. Developed by British archaeologist Sir Colin Renfrew in 1979[2], the following “Signs of Failing Times” have played out across time in 26 distinct societies ranging from the collapse of the Roman Empire to the collapse of the Soviet Union: Elite power and well-being increase and is manifested in displays of wealth; Elites become heavily focused on maintaining a monopoly on power inside the society; Laws become more advantageous to elites, and penalties for the larger public become more Draconian; The middle class evaporates; The “misery index” mushrooms, witnessed by increasing rates of homicide, suicide, illness, homelessness, and drug/alcohol abuse; Ecological disasters increase as short-term focus pushes ravenous exploitation of resources; There’s a resurgence of conservatism and fundamentalist religion as once golden theories are brought back to counter decay, but these are usually in a corrupted form that accelerates decline. The crisis reaches a breaking point, and seemingly small events trigger popular frustration into a transformative change. If the society enacts effective reforms, it enters a new stage of development. If it fails to enact reforms, crisis leads to regression and possibly collapse. 1776: Lexington and Concord’s “shot heard round the world”; the Declaration of Independence; America becomes unified nation aimed at liberty and justice for all. 1933: Under huge public pressure, FDR turns from a standard New York politician to a champion of social and economic reform; government work-programs revitalize the nation’s infrastructure, and reforms such as the Glass-Steagall Act reduce bankers’ ability to abuse the system; Post-FDR America witnesses the longest surge of cross-scale prosperity and the largest increase in the middle class in history. Over time, transformed societies forget why they implemented reforms; Economic Royalists creep back and the cycle starts a new. 1980-2000s: Reagan removes the Fairness Doctrine and stops enforcing antitrust laws; Economic elites argue we need to modernize finance by getting rid of Glass-Steagall; Tax rates on the wealthy plummet while infrastructure crumbles; The Supreme Court supports Citizens United and guts the Voting Rights Act; Gerrymandering increases. We have forgotten the lessons of the 1760s, 1850s, and 1920s. We have let Economic Royalists hijack our democracy, and turn our economy into their money machine. Now the middle class is evaporating, infrastructure is crumbling, and pressure is reaching a breaking point. Anti-establishment candidates are on the rise, and no one knows how things will turn out. What then shall we do? The first step is to remember that our times also hold a positive possibility – a transformation akin to those which followed 1776, 1865, and 1945. Honest reformers from education and agriculture to energy and finance are already reinventing their fields. Regenerative, resilient “New Economy” experiments are bubbling up everywhere. Thanks to the Internet, communication is faster and more effective than at any other time in history – so word is getting out. The second step is to remember that the vast majority of people participating in today’s economic system are not corrupt, they just believe today’s dominant belief system is some combination of good, right, necessary, or inevitable. In today’s case, most of our political-economic elites – both Republican and Democrat, right and left – genuinely believe that today’s neo-liberal economic frame is the path to prosperity, a kind of “win-win” strategy of competitive markets that, in the end, will benefit both elite and global interests as a whole. So, for the most part, we are not dealing with evil people, but what sociologists call a “social construction of reality.” Over time, human beings construct their everyday systems and practices around a set of widely held beliefs. They do this by creating a matrix of rewards and punishments that keeps everyone in line with the society’s dominant beliefs, for example, incentives to compete, and rewards for maximizing profit. Unfortunately, this matrix holds even as people begin to realize that the system is not working. What we’re now facing is a combination of: 1) people who still believe; and 2) people who doubt, but: a) would have to sacrifice their livelihood to act on it; or, b) are willing to leave the system but don’t necessarily know what comes next. Today’s big challenge is twofold. First, we need to find a way to unite today’s many disjointed reform efforts into the coherent and effective reinvention we so desperately need. This unity will require solid science, compelling story, and positive dream. Secondly, since hierarchies are absolutely necessary for groups beyond a certain size, this time we must figure out how to create healthy hierarchical systems that effectively support the health and prosperity of the entire social, economic, and environmental system including everyone within. In short, our goal must be to figure out how to end oligarchy forever, not just create a new version of it. This is a topic I will take up in my next blog. The last step is to keep our eyes on the prize. As Peter Drucker explained in 1995[3]: “Every few hundred years in Western history there occurs a sharp transformation. Within a few short decades, society ─ its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structures, its key institutions ─ rearranges itself…Fifty years later, there is a new world, and people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived…We are currently living through such a time.” Ours is not a simple task, but we can take hope from the fact that our ancestors succeeded under much harsher conditions. [1] This cycle has occurred every 80 to 90 years throughout American and much of world history. It is detailed in books such as Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning, and Thom Hartmann’s The Crash of 2016. See Strauss, W. & Howe, N., (1996). The Fourth Turning: What the cycles of history tell us about America’s next rendevouz with destiny. [2] Renfrew, Colin. 1979. Systems collapse as social transformation: Catastrophe and anastrophe in early state societies. In Renfrew C. and Cooke, K.L. (eds.), Transformations: Mathematical approaches to culture change. New York: Academic Press, 481-506. [3] Cited in Drucker, Peter. 2009. Managing in a Time of Great Change.
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Post by Admin on Jan 29, 2021 19:31:55 GMT
Twelve Characters in Search of an ApocalypseMuch of the original work Dark Mountain has published is held between the covers of books that are now out of print. This month we showcase a series of treasured pieces from the archive, introduced by people who have been at the heart of the project for many years. For our second post, Dark Mountain's co-director Nick Hunt chooses climate activist Andrew Boyd's 'Twelve Characters in Search of an Apocalypse', first published in spring 2017. dark-mountain.net/twelve-characters-in-search-of-an-apocalypse/‘Without gallows humour,’ writes Andrew Boyd, ‘all we have is the gallows.’ The Twelve Characters he has created – excerpts from a wider series that has been described as ‘The Vagina Monologues for climate apocalypse’ – give voice to the complexities and contradictions of our climate predicament, using the activist-prankster humour that has become a hallmark of his work. When I first came across this piece in submissions for Dark Mountain: Issue 11 I was struck by its no-bullshit honesty and by the uncomfortable laughter it provoked. I’m delighted to bring it back from the archive almost four years later. Andrew’s reading at the Issue 11 book launch in Bristol’s Wild Goose Space, on a fortuitously timed visit to the UK, was a particularly memorable one, ending with him leading the audience in a raucous call and response: ‘What do we want?’ ‘A better catastrophe!’ ‘When do we want it!’ ‘As late in the century as possible!’ The publication in the book later inspired a series of events hosted by Jason Stewart, ‘Twelve Characters in Search of an Apocalypse (On the Road)’, using the Characters as a platform for gritty conversations on the subject of climate catastrophe. You can find out more about the evolution of this project here. Andrew is currently putting the finishing touches to a book, I Want a Better Catastrophe, as well as working all hours on the Climate Clock project. (NH) I did the math Idid the math. But I wish I hadn’t. It was right after Hurricane Sandy. Over a week-long binge I read everything I could find. I work downtown, you see. And they’d lost power, but uptown I still had it. So I had this string of days. It was a time out of Time: the storm had stopped the world, but I was still moving. The city was wrecked. Well, a few parts of it – The Rockaways, Red Hook, Staten Island. The rest of us were a bit stunned, but fine. The Exchange was down; the Jersey guys who normally run the gym couldn’t make it into the city. My normal routine was a mess. I went for a run in the Park, and camped out at Starbucks with my laptop and just started reading everything I could find – about Sandy, extreme weather, climate change; the deniers, the doomsayers and everyone in between. One link led to another, which led to another. I couldn’t stop; I was in a kind of trance, doing the math as I went. 2°C: the baseline maximum increase in aggregate global temperature that the planet can handle without tipping into total catastrophe. Everyone – the UN, the US, China – everyone but the most fringe deniers – agreed on that. 565 gigatons: the maximum additional CO2 we can safely emit and still stay under the 2°C limit. 2,795 gigatons: the total amount of carbon in the reserves – and on the books – of the world’s fossil fuel companies. Five times the safe amount. Ergo 80% can’t be burned. Choice: extinction or a $28 trillion write-down. I’m no scientist, but I am a numbers guy. A stock analyst. I’ve got a head for numbers, and numbers for me are realities you base decisions on. But those numbers hurt my head. They hurt my everything. ‘I want the truth!’ shouts Kaffee. ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ Jessup spits back. All that week, chest clenched, I played host to that spittle-flying scene from A Few Good Men, each one shouting each other down, till it felt like no one was left standing. The following Tuesday the power came back on, and I was at my desk early the next morning. The subway station downtown was pretty trashed – and would be for months to come – but the office was quickly back to normal. Normal? Nothing felt normal anymore. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not picking up a protest sign, and I’m not signing any of those dumb petitions. Far from it. But that McKibben guy is right: all that carbon simply can’t come out of the ground, and those Oil, Gas and Coal stocks aren’t worth what the market says they are. Sure, in the short-term they might be an OK bet, but in the medium and long-term, they’re just a bad portfolio waiting to happen. The industry, however, hadn’t caught up to this yet. At the first department meeting after Sandy I circulated a memo where I laid it all out, along with some revised criteria to take the ‘carbon bubble’ into account. A lot of puzzled looks at that meeting. My boss took me aside later that day and basically told me to cut the crap. I never brought it up again at work, but later that month I called my broker and told him to dump every last fossil-fuel stock from my own holdings. Wall Street could play the fool with other people’s money, but I wasn’t going to do it with mine. It’s been a couple years now since Sandy. The subway is repaired, grand plans for coastal berms are underway. The city is mostly back on track; but I can only pretend to be. I try not to think about it too much, but some days it catches up with me. I’ll be on the treadmill at the gym, my mind chugging along with the iPod and the fake hill I’m going up and down. In a silence between tracks, a truck backfires on the street below, starting a chain of thoughts: truck… exhaust pipe… 400+ ppm atmospheric carbon… and in a cascade of associations, this horror comes over me. A horror that’s by now all too familiar. I imagine the slow plink! plink! of Greenland’s glaciers melting (49% recession of Arctic ice since 1979). I can almost smell the diesel fumes of Amazon earthmovers ripping out the lungs of the world (78 million acres of Brazilian rainforest lost every year). And because I’m a numbers guy, I follow in my mind’s eye the asymptotic curve of ocean acidification as it creeps along the graph paper, bending relentlessly upwards. I know where all this is heading if we do nothing – and almost nothing is what we seem to be doing. What I don’t know is where to go with this dreadful feeling. It feels like I’ve been told a terrible secret. A secret that could poison the happy days of everyone I know. A secret (sshhhhh; 2; 565; 2795) no one wants to hear, least of all me. Let’s party like it’s 2099 The apocalypse is coming and we have no one to blame but ourselves. We’ve screwed up the planet and we’re never gonna turn things around in time, there’s just no way. So fuck it. I don’t have any kids. I’m gonna be dead by the time the worst of it happens. Why not just party? Just have the best time I possibly can. Dancing, drinking, jet-skiing – whatever I want – and to hell with global warming. The apocalypse is coming regardless. If, thanks to me, it comes five seconds sooner, who really cares? I mean, really, what else am I supposed to do? Knock on doors, go to meetings, try to convince people to scrap their SUVs? Seriously? That’s just sad. Almost a sin. A pathetic way to spend the little time we have left. No way. Not for me. Before the oceans roll in, before they jack up the price of oil, I’m heading out to Thailand, Machu Picchu, New Zealand, Paris, wherever – to see the world. I’m gonna scratch as many things off my bucket list as I can. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not happy about all this. But the way I see it, there’s nothing I can do, and we’re the last generation that gets to let it rip full throttle. When I hit the clubs with my friends, apocalypse is in the air. You can almost smell it, heady and voluptuous. I breathe it in. I feel fierce; I feel free. I’m a warrior of the now. I’m running down the clock, jonesing for more life at the twilight of all things. We’re the last ones, after all. We have to make it count. Apocalypse is in the air. You can almost smell it, heady and voluptuous. I breathe it in. I feel fierce; I feel free. I am prepared It’s all going to hell, but I’m prepared. The rest of you can try to stop the disaster. Go to your protests, your fancy international treaty-meetings, and all that. Not me. There’s no fixing this. It’s all falling apart – and soon. Some of us are going to be ready; some of us aren’t. My family and I are going to survive this, even if we’re the last ones on Earth. I’ve got the bunker all provisioned: enough canned food for two years. Ten guns. Lots of ammo. A generator and an underground tank of diesel. There’s a couple of us in the same county. We’re all self-reliant units, but we’re in touch. The cities are going to be hell, a total race war. We have to be prepared to protect our own when the exodus comes. I’ve got the entrances booby-trapped and the exits camouflaged. I’m ready for things to get ugly. And, mark my word, they will. It’s gonna happen – but to somebody else ‘Only the little people pay taxes,’ said notorious billionaire socialite, tax-dodger and lover of little dogs Leona Helmsley. It’s a gross and elitist sentiment, but I realise that’s how I feel about the apocalypse. It’s gonna happen, but it’s going to happen to somebody else, not me. It’s gonna happen to those poor fuckers in the Pacific whose islands are disappearing. It’s gonna happen to old people in the inner city with broken air conditioners when the next ‘unprecedented’ heat wave comes. (I think they’re gonna have to retire that word soon.) It’s going to happen to all those folks who live on the low-lying coasts – whether in Bangladesh or the Mississippi Delta – who don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s gonna happen to Africans. Why does everything bad happen to Africans? They’re already half starving. Just wait till their farmland dries up and their crops fail and there’s food riots in the cities and millions teem across the Mediterranean in teetering boats. Fortress Europa is going to go right-wing in a flash and turn all those boats back. To where? I don’t know where. All I know is I’m not the one who’s going to be doing all the drowning and starving. Do I think justice is at work here? Hardly. It’s pretty much the opposite of justice. I’m just telling you how it looks from where I stand. When I imagine the climate apocalypse, when I play out the nightmare scenarios, I’m never in them. When the final storm comes, I’ve always got someplace to fall back to. And the means to get there. And friends to be there with. In my post-apocalyptic future, somehow I’ve always made it out of the City to a nice farm in Vermont. The rest of the world is a living hell, but I’m OK. What will the future think of me? I took Jean and my two boys to Normandy last year. We went to the sprawling graveyards at Colleville-sur-Mer, just above Omaha beach. You’ve seen the photographs, but it’s quite different to actually be there. White crosses stretched in ordered rows literally for a mile. We walked and walked. It was beyond sobering. It took a while, but we finally found him. James Davies, 1922-1944. My great uncle. Third Infantry. Killed in action around Bayonne three weeks after the invasion, just before the breakout across France. We’d brought blue ribbons, and each of us placed one on the grave. My youngest first. Then Jean and I. Then my eldest. I stood there on the grass and gazed down at this man my dad had named me after. I envied him his place of honour, and – at least from where I stood – the moral clarity of his short life and death. This James Davies came of age at a heroic time. He’d stepped up, and made the ultimate sacrifice. The country still honours him. His family still remembers him. It doesn’t say ‘Hero’ beside his name, but it might as well. One day they’ll lay me down. James Davies, 1962-2050-ish. Probably in the city plot, alongside Jean, back in Akron. Will my as-yet-unborn grandkids and grandnephews come visit me? Maybe. Though not with blue ribbons, I suppose. What will the future say about me? He lived a full life, he was a good father, but he was asleep at the switch when we needed him most. We live in an age of soft comforts and distractions, sprinkled with some vague doom-dust. No one would call this a heroic time, but maybe it never feels that way when you’re actually living it – it’s always just a slosh of headlines and noise. And yet we are a critical link in the chain of generations. Because before I die, if we don’t get 90% of the global economy off carbon, we’re toast. We don’t need to be another Greatest Generation, we just need to not be the Worst Generation, the generation that blew it for all the generations to come. Jean and the kids were looking the other way, so I don’t think they saw me – and this is going to sound corny to most of you – but as I was standing there, I gave a tiny salute to this fallen young man who bore my same name, and I swore to him I’d do my part. For starters, when I get back home, I swore to him I’d finally sign that contract and install rooftop solar on the house. And I’d dig out that email from my old fraternity brother – maybe if enough of us make a fuss, we can get Ohio State to divest its fossil fuel holdings. In the scheme of things, none of this felt particularly heroic, but I realised: I don’t need to be a hero. I just need to try to do enough decent things so the future won’t think I’m a dick. The apocalypse is my gravy train I’m not going to bullshit you – or myself: climate change is a natural and social disaster of unprecedented proportions and it’s heading our way. I’m an engineer. I oversee large construction projects. I can be part of the solution here and, frankly, make some money along the way. I’ve got to put food on the table like everyone else, and this isn’t war profiteering we’re talking about. Our firm doesn’t blow stuff up, we build things. And this is going to be the biggest construction boom in history. Bigger than the Marshall Plan. Bigger than the New York skyscrapers, Eisenhower’s Federal Highway System, and the Beijing Olympics all rolled into one. We’re talking large-scale terraforming here. We’re talking coastal berms, sea-walls, you name it, whatever it takes to keep our cities safe. No offense, but it won’t be about the folks in New Orleans’ 3rd Ward this time. We’re looking at Manhattan, Miami’s Gold Coast and Boston’s Financial District, for starters. Now that’s some property there. I’m guessing the government is going to come up with the cash needed to do the job right this time, and our firm is well positioned to help. We operate on a long-term time horizon, and the sooner we can get started the better. Some folks still don’t realise this, but you always have to win the battle twice: once over the problem, and again around the solution. All you deniers – and all you enviros trying to prove them wrong – go on and have your silly votes in the Senate. Keep on arguing about the problem. That’s all just a sideshow at this point, because us big boys have already moved on to the solution. That’s where the big money is, and we sure don’t want the kind of solution they’re rolling forward in Germany or Boulder, CO, with municipally-owned renewables and every farmer with their own wind turbine. We’re running out of time. This is a big crisis, and we need big solutions. On the energy production side: clean coal, concentrated solar thermal, massive wind farms, biofuels, and the next-generation nuclear – they’re zero-carbon and we won’t build them on top of an earthquake fault-line this time. On the remediation side: carbon-sequestration sinks, heat-shielded residential, you name it, we’re just getting going. I’m planning for my firm’s – and my family’s – future. I’m honoured to bring my skills and my company’s global expertise to the task. If we succeed, what greater legacy could I possibly ask for than having helped save the planet? If we fail, well, gated communities are going to be in high demand, and we build those too. Bring it on! We are living in sin, in a kind of hell, in what the Buddhists and Hindus call Maya. We recognise fewer than ten plants, but over 1,000 corporate logos. We’re so lost in the supermarket, kids keep on killing each other over sneakers. The corporations have sweet-talked the FDA into letting them put so many chemicals in our food and air that we don’t even know what things are supposed to taste or smell like anymore. A carbon disaster will free us. A disemboweling of industrial civilisation is what we need to bring us back to our true selves. Everyone’s all gaga for green capitalism, but that’s just a kinder, gentler way to destroy the planet. You want a ‘green roof’? Just wait for it to cave in. Let the seed pods land in the cracks in the concrete, they’ll sprout, and take it all back. That’s the only kind of green roof I want. When Nature finds its own rhythms again, we can, too. The only way forward is backwards. The only way forward is collapse. Right now, I’m living in a squat and dumpster-diving my food. Any SUV that parks in the neighbourhood, we let the air out of its tyres. Small fry stuff for sure, but we’re just biding our time. After the collapse, we’ll make campfires in abandoned office buildings, smashing up the cubicles for kindling. We’ll hunt deer with bow and arrow through the hollow, echoing ruins of downtown. After the collapse, the rest of you had better know how to do these things too. Most people find this pretty far-fetched, but you’ll all see. Every civilisation before us has collapsed, and we’re far more precarious and out of kilter than they were. We’re literally consuming ourselves into oblivion; it’s only a matter of time before the system implodes from its own exhaustion, fury and hollowness. My job? To help push things along. There was a meeting last night in the basement. We all took the batteries out of our phones so they couldn’t hear us. All kinds of things were floated: breaking animals out of the zoos, hacking the genetic trials at the university, even blowing up the dam up north. We’ll see. No matter what, it ain’t gonna be pretty. Millions, maybe billions, will die. I can’t say I’m not anxious about it, I just know the sooner it happens, the better – for us and the planet. So: Bring. It. On. Better to be hopeful For me, it’s not about the future. It’s not about what’s going to happen or not happen. The science is dire, that’s obvious. And I know humans have a long bloody track record of being our own worst enemy. I also know we sometimes pull it out in the clutch. But I’m not banking on one outcome or another. I’m not hoisting my flag over any particular narrative of history or view of human nature. I just know how I want to be in the world. And I want to have hope. I choose hope. It makes me feel better. I get fewer colds and stomach aches. I’m happier and more focused; I feel right with the world. I’m going somewhere. We’re all going somewhere, and we’re going there together. Oh God, some of you are thinking, please don’t pair me up with this Pollyanna-ish bore at group therapy. Don’t wet yourself. I’ve got the full Cards Against Humanity box set. I’ve got my share of black moods and I do irony just fine, thank you. I won’t reassure you that everything is going to be OK. It most certainly won’t be. I’m not over-bubbling with enthusiasm and cheerfulness, I’m just quietly, soberly hopeful. The world is fucked up. Anyone can see that. War, religious hatred, rape, thousands of square miles of swirling plastic in the ocean. The list is long. But life is beautiful. And that list is longer: the Chrysler building at twilight. Bill Murray. A mother cradling her newborn. The intoxicating smell of my girlfriend’s armpits. Snow. The world is fucked up. So, so fucked up. But life is beautiful. And that is enough. Defend this ground I grew up here: Iron Mountain, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula. Twenty street lights, three churches. I sang in the choir at Her Lady of Redemption until I was fourteen. Back then the town was ten-thousand-strong, mostly Germans and Swedes, along with some Italians, my folks included. Now, we’re down to barely 7,500. The mining and timber companies ravaged the place, like they did the whole region. Took everything, left a few broken backs, and scars all over the land. My cousins worked in the mines. My step-dad was a cop. When he died I left the state. Came back decades later to take care of my mom. She’d gone blind those last years, and had no one else. By the end, the place had become home again, and I’ve stayed on. I have my dog, my garden, and pipes to patch after the winter. I’ve got things to take care of. I still battle the same old demons – the depression comes and goes – but I’ve developed some new disciplines: canning, pressing flowers, painting. I’m seventy now, I’m slow. I’ve got arthritis. My left leg is effectively lame. But I work on the things I can. What keeps me going is this patch of ground, this sacred bit of Earth. Lake Superior, that God, is the heart and lungs of the continent. The Devil is the mining companies and the real estate developers. I don’t have a lot of strength left, but I’m still putting up a fight where I can. I choose my battles carefully. I look for smart places to intervene, no matter how small. I find things I can do to keep these lungs breathing. There’s a development they’ve been trying to put in ten miles west of here. Summer home resort for down-staters: golf course, the works. We know what that means: dozers, clear cutting, chemical run-off, you name it. Our little group – two students, a retired lawyer, me – has had ‘em gummed up in court for two years now. And that pipeline coming down from Canada – we pulled up the surveyor stakes from a three-mile stretch last spring. They know it was us, but can’t prove it. They stormed into the county commissioner’s office but he just shrugged. That was fun to watch. I know what we’re doing is just a sideshow of a sideshow of a sideshow – small rearguard actions in a centuries-long war. But you fight where you stand. You do what you can. You defend your little patch of ground. I’m not going anywhere. I know what we’re doing is just a sideshow of a sideshow of a sideshow – small rearguard actions in a centuries-long war. But you fight where you stand. You do what you can. You defend your little patch of ground. Despair is our only hope I used to believe. As a kid I trusted everything was more or less OK, that progress happened, that the people in charge were trying to make things better, and the good guys would eventually win. Hawaii 5-0 was my show. As a young man I realised that the people in charge were not trying to make things better for everyone, just for themselves. And so – because I’m a hopeful kind of guy – I came to believe that the people not in charge could get together and change all that. I loved the movie Hair. I used to believe the revolution was just around the corner, that before I turned thirty, we’d be celebrating in the streets. Well, that didn’t happen. Into my forties, I still had faith in humanity. Not blind faith, not even a faith in our essential goodness. But I believed that we would somehow stumble through, that the small acts of kindness among people would somehow make up for the evil and folly of the gangland of States and capital. I could still see a future, maybe not a better one, but no worse, either. I’m now in my fifties, and I’ve lost even that meagre faith. Now I binge-watch Game of Thrones and House of Cards. I have no illusions about how power operates. People talk about ‘intersectionality’, but it isn’t so much movements that are intersecting, as catastrophes. I see no way forward. I am filled with a dark, desolate despair. And then a strange thing happens: I feel fierce. I feel clear. I feel free. I don’t give a fuck anymore. I’ve got nothing left to lose. I’m willing to take risks that I wasn’t before. I say true things, things you’re not supposed to say. And people notice. Hell, I notice. It turns out despair is its own kind of power, its own kind of freedom. And then I think: if enough of us fall into a dark enough despair, who knows what we can do together. This is the only hope I have left. This means war At first everything happened so piecemeal – a tragedy here, a little catastrophe there – I didn’t know I was under attack. It felt like the rumble of far-off gunfire in somebody else’s war. It took a while for it all to come into focus. If it had been an army of Orcs led by the Eye of Sauron, or gangly robots from Mars, or jackbooted Nazis and their henchmen marching into town, then I would have known. I would have seen it plainly. I would have taken up arms, joined the Resistance. But our 21st Century Lords of Carbon, in their suits and pipelines and feel-good logos, blend in better. Their ultimate designs, however, are just as evil. They plunder the land, poison the water, slaughter our animal brothers and sisters. With five species lost to eternity every day, and the slow-drip of carbon dismembering the planet, they’re driving us all to extinction. What else is this if not war? My enemies, it turns out, have names: Exxon. Peabody Coal. BP. Shell. David Koch. And addresses: with a few clicks on Google I can find their homes and headquarters. They are driven by a logic of endless growth regardless of the limits of nature. They can do nothing else. As such, my foe is implacable. I accept this without illusions. They will not – can not – listen to reason; only power. We must raise an army to save the world. And so, I cross over. I become an instrument of resistance, a vessel of necessity. I find my unit and train in the strange arts of civil war: encryption, encyclicals, sabotage, message discipline, persuasion, science, disobedience, justice, courage, love, mass action. Maybe I will not survive; maybe none of us will survive. So be it. I prepare myself for battle. Hopelessness can save the world We have broken Nature. We have broken the world. Even the moral logic of struggle has been broken. Gandhi said ‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.’ But in the shadow of climate catastrophe, we’d have to update that to: ‘First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then a 6°C increase in the Earth’s temperature wipes out all complex life forms.’ Martin Luther King said ‘The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.’ But from where we stand now, it’s more accurate to say, ‘The arc of the moral universe might be long, and it might bend towards justice, but we’re never gonna find out because: total ecosystem collapse.’ I used to run on hope. I used to sign those petitions, show up at those demos, knock on my neighbours’ doors – because I believed we could change things. But I don’t know anymore. As a good friend of mine recently said, ‘So what if we’re making progress on police brutality. Given the climate math, the police might as well shoot us all now.’ It breaks my heart, but it seems our situation is hopeless, and our cause – all our causes – are impossible. Then again, hasn’t this always been the case? Look across the full sweep of human history, with its wars and rebellions, its dark and shining moments: every revolution is replaced with the slime of a new bureaucracy. Every time you manage to overthrow slavery it seems there’s a new Jim Crow waiting for you. I used to think it was two steps forward one step back, now I’m not so sure. Things don’t seem to change much for the better, and with the tick tock of carbon slowly poisoning the world, you just stop pretending that they will. Now, instead of fearing this loss of faith, I welcome it as a revelation: our situation is hopeless. Our cause is impossible. Which leaves us with a stark choice: do we dedicate ourselves to an impossible cause? Or do we pull back and look after our own? The choice – once you’ve sat quietly with this question – is clear. Because, as Archbishop Oscar Romero said when asked why he was attending to the sick at a hospital for incurables: ‘We are all incurable.’ Because solidarity is a form of tenderness. Because the simple act of caring for the world is itself a victory. We must take a stand – not because it will lead to anything, but because it is the right thing to do. We never know what can or can’t be done; only what must be done. I dedicate myself to an impossible cause.
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Post by Admin on Jan 30, 2021 0:06:26 GMT
Everything Is Broken And how to fix itBY ALANA NEWHOUSE JANUARY 14, 2021 www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/everything-is-brokenIn the summer of 2014, I gave birth to a baby boy. He was born with a perfect Apgar score, after a very easy delivery. But my labor had not been smooth—in fact, throughout the day and a half of contractions, I believed there was something decidedly wrong. I also felt that way as I held him for the first time, and he writhed violently under my hands. In a video taken about 10 minutes after he was born, he can be seen lifting his head up off my chest. “Ooooh, look at how advanced he is!” someone can be heard trilling in the background, before her voice is overtaken by my own. “Don’t do that, love,” I say. Then, to the camera: “Does he seem like he’s in pain to you?” It took my husband and me three years to understand that in fact I was right that day in the delivery room. Our son was hurt. And it will take him years to heal—longer than it should have, and that is on top of the injustice of the original wound—though I thank God every day that we figured it out. The first breakthrough came when my husband David remembered a book about brain science he had read a decade earlier, by a doctor named Norman Doidge. It changed our lives, by allowing us to properly understand our son’s injury (and to understand why we couldn’t manage to get a straight answer about it from any of the “experts” we had seen). It’s been a tough road, but from that moment on, we at least knew what to do—and why. A year or so later, we met Doidge and his wife, Karen, for dinner, and it is here that the story may become pertinent for you. After we ordered, I told Norman I had a question I’d been wanting to ask—and that I wanted his honest answer to it, even if it meant that I had done something wrong. I proceeded to relay to him the entire tale, from the very beginning to that very moment, of what felt to me like our Kafkaesque medical mystery journey. How was it, I then asked, that it took my husband and me—both children of doctors, both people with reporting and researching backgrounds, among the lucky who have health insurance, and with access through family and friends to what is billed as the best medical care in the country—years to figure this out, and that in the end we only did so basically by accident? Norman looked at us sympathetically. “I don’t know how else to tell you this but bluntly,” he said. “There are still many good individuals involved in medicine, but the American medical system is profoundly broken. When you look at the rate of medical error—it's now the third leading cause of death in the U.S.—the overmedication, creation of addiction, the quick-fix mentality, not funding the poor, quotas to admit from ERs, needless operations, the monetization of illness vs. health, the monetization of side effects, a peer review system run by journals paid for by Big Pharma, the destruction of the health of doctors and nurses themselves by administrators, who demand that they rush through 10-minute patient visits, when so often an hour or more is required, and which means that in order to be ‘successful,’ doctors must overlook complexity rather than search for it ... Alana, the unique thing here isn’t that you fell down so many rabbit holes. What’s unique is that you found your way out at all.” I had barely started processing this when Norman moved to change the subject: “Now, can I ask you two something? How come so much of the journalism I read seems like garbage?” Oh, God. David and I looked at each other, simultaneously realizing that the after-school special we thought we were in was actually a horror movie. If the medical industry was comprehensively broken, as Norman said, and the media was irrevocably broken, as we knew it was ... Was everything in America broken? Was education broken? Housing? Farming? Cities? Was religion broken? Everything is broken. Let’s say you believe the above to be hyperbolic. You never fell through the cracks of the medical system; as far as you understand it, there are plenty of ways for a resourceful person to buy a home in America these days; you easily met a mate and got married and had as many children as you wanted, at the age you wanted to have them; your child had a terrific time at college, where she experienced nothing at all oppressive or bizarre, got a first-class education that you could easily afford and which landed her a great job after graduation; you actually like the fact that you haven’t encountered one book or movie or piece of art that’s haunted you for months after; you enjoy druggily floating through one millennial pink space after another; it gives you pleasure to interact only with people who agree with you politically, and you feel filled with meaning and purpose after a day spent sending each other hysteria-inducing links; maybe you’ve heard that some kids are cosplaying Communism but that’s only because everyone is radical when they’re young, and Trump voters are just a bunch of racist troglodytes pining for the past, and it’s not at all that neither group can see their way to a future that looks remotely hopeful ... If this is you, congratulations. There’s no need to reach out and tell me any of this, because all you will be doing is revealing how insulated you are from the world inhabited by nearly everyone I know. If, on the other hand, the idea of mass brokenness seems both excruciatingly correct and also paralyzing, come sit with me. Being on a ship nearly 4 million square miles in area along with 330 million other people and realizing the entire hull is pockmarked with holes is terrifying. But being afraid to face this reality won’t make it less true. And this is the reality. For seven decades, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc. Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as “American”—conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country. This wasn’t a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part. But, beginning in the 1970s, the economic ground underneath this landscape began to come apart. Michael Lind explains this better than anyone else: The strategy of American business, encouraged by neoliberal Democrats and libertarian conservative Republicans alike, has been to lower labor costs in the United States, not by substituting labor-saving technology for workers, but by schemes of labor arbitrage: Offshoring jobs when possible to poorly paid workers in other countries and substituting unskilled immigrants willing to work for low wages in some sectors, like meatpacking and construction and farm labor. American business has also driven down wages by smashing unions in the private sector, which now have fewer members—a little more than 6% of the private sector workforce—than they did under Herbert Hoover. This was the tinder. The tech revolution was the match—one-upping the ’70s economy by demanding more efficiency and more speed and more boundarylessness, and demanding it everywhere. They introduced not only a host of inhuman wage-suppressing tactics, like replacing full-time employees with benefits with gig workers with lower wages and no benefits, but also a whole new aesthetic that has come to dominate every aspect of our lives—a set of principles that collectively might be thought of as flatness. Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives—jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets—have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors. Flatness broke everything. The reigning aesthetic of the 20th century was modernism, which articulated in one word the values of the industrial revolution. Modernism and the Machine Age brought with them their own features: Anti-classicalism; anti-Victorianism; the power of science; the absence of filigree; an emphasis on the future over the past, and the valorization of machine production and engineering as the highest forms of human creativity. This new aesthetic soon began to transform all parts of cultural and material existence, from visual art and poetry to fashion and the built environment. Starting in the second decade of the 1900s, certain Communists began seeing in modernism a potential advertisement for the values of a mass society of industrial workers laboring under the direction of a small group of engineers. In other words, this aesthetic—which whole swaths of the Western world were already in the process of quickly adopting—could also be the perfect delivery mechanism for their political ideology. One hundred years later, we find ourselves in the middle of a similar cultural and political struggle. Today’s revolution has been defined by a set of very specific values: boundarylessness; speed; universal accessibility; an allergy to hierarchy, so much so that the weighting or preferring of some voices or products over others is seen as illegitimate; seeing one’s own words and face reflected back as part of a larger current; a commitment to gratification at the push of a button; equality of access to commodified experiences as the right of every human being on Earth; the idea that all choices can and should be made instantaneously, and that the choices made by the majority in a given moment, on a given platform represent a larger democratic choice, which is therefore both true and good—until the next moment, on the next platform. Here’s a description of the aesthetics of Silicon Valley (emphasis added): It’s the realm of coffee shops, bars, startup offices, and co-live/work spaces that share the same hallmarks everywhere you go: a profusion of symbols of comfort and quality, at least to a certain connoisseurial mindset. Minimalist furniture. Craft beer and avocado toast. Reclaimed wood. Industrial lighting. Cortados. Fast internet. The homogeneity of these spaces means that traveling between them is frictionless, a value that Silicon Valley prizes and cultural influencers take advantage of. Changing places can be as painless as reloading a website. You might not even realize you’re not where you started. “You might not even realize you’re not where you started.” The machines trained us to accept, even chase, this high. Once we accepted it, we turned from willful individuals into parts of a mass that could move, or be moved, anywhere. Once people accepted the idea of an app, you could get them to pay for dozens of them—if not more. You could get people to send thousands of dollars to strangers in other countries to stay in homes they’d never seen in cities they’d never visited. You could train them to order in food—most of their food, even all of their food—from restaurants that they’d never been to, based on recommendations from people they’d never met. You could get them to understand their social world not as consisting of people whose families and faces one knew, which was literally the definition of social life for hundreds of thousands of years, but rather as composed of people who belonged to categories—“also followed by,” “friends in common,” “BIPOC”—that didn’t even exist 15 years ago. You could create a culture in which it was normal to have sex with someone whose two-dimensional picture you saw on a phone, once. You could, seemingly overnight, transform people’s views about anything—even everything. The Obama administration could swiftly overturn the decision-making space in which Capitol Hill staff and newspaper reporters functioned so that Iran, a country that had killed thousands of Americans and consistently announces itself to be America’s greatest enemy, is now to be seen as inherently as trustworthy and desirable an ally as France or Germany. Flatness, frictionlessness. The biological difference between the sexes, which had been a foundational assumption of medicine as well as of the feminist movement, was almost instantaneously replaced not only by the idea that there are numerous genders but that reference in medicine, law or popular culture to the existence of a gender binary is actually bigoted and abusive. Flatness. Facebook’s longtime motto was, famously, “Move fast and break shit,” which is exactly what Silicon Valley enabled others to do. The internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up the value from local businesses, national retailers, the whole newspaper industry, etc.—and no one seemed to care. This heist—by which a small group of people, using the wiring of flatness, could transfer to themselves enormous assets without any political, legal or social pushback—enabled progressive activists and their oligarchic funders to pull off a heist of their own, using the same wiring. They seized on the fact that the entire world was already adapting to a life of practical flatness in order to push their ideology of political flatness—what they call social justice, but which has historically meant the transfer of enormous amounts of power and wealth to a select few. Because this cohort insists on sameness and purity, they have turned the once-independent parts of the American cultural complex into a mutually validating pipeline for conformists with approved viewpoints—who then credential, promote and marry each other. A young Ivy League student gets A’s by parroting intersectional gospel, which in turn means that he is recommended by his professors for an entry-level job at a Washington think tank or publication that is also devoted to these ideas. His ability to widely promote those viewpoints on social media is likely to attract the approval of his next possible boss or the reader of his graduate school application or future mates. His success in clearing those bars will in turn open future opportunities for love and employment. Doing the opposite has an inverse effect, which is nearly impossible to avoid given how tightly this system is now woven. A person who is determined to forgo such worldly enticements—because they are especially smart, or rich, or stubborn—will see only examples of even more talented and accomplished people who have seen their careers crushed and reputations destroyed for daring to stick a toe over the ever multiplying maze of red lines. So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators. Anyone actually concerned with solving deep-rooted social and economic problems, or God forbid with creating something unique or beautiful—a process that is inevitably messy and often involves exploring heresies and making mistakes—will hit a wall. If they are young and remotely ambitious they will simply snuff out that part of themselves early on, strangling the voice that they know will get them in trouble before they’ve ever had the chance to really hear it sing. As with Communists and modernism, there was nothing inevitable about the match. Most consumers don’t know that by using internet-based (or -generated) platforms—by buying from Amazon, by staying in an Airbnb, by ordering on Grubhub, by friending people on Facebook—that they are subscribing to a life of flatness, one that can lead directly into certain politics. But they are. Seduced by convenience, we end up paying for the flattening of our own lives. It is not an accident that progressive ideas spread faster on the internet. The internet is a car that runs on flatness; progressive politics—unlike either conservatism or liberalism—are flatness. I’m not looking to rewind the clock back to a time before we all had email and cellphones. What I want is to be inspired by the last generation that made a new life-world—the postwar American abstract expressionist painters, jazz musicians, and writers and poets who created an alternate American modernism that directly challenged the ascendant Communist modernism: a blend of forms and techniques with an emphasis not on the facelessness of mass production, but on individual creativity and excellence. Like them, our aim should be to take the central, unavoidable and potentially beneficent parts of the Flatness Aesthetic (including speed, accessibility; portability) while discarding the poisonous parts (frictionlessness; surveilled conformism; the allergy to excellence). We should seek out friction and thorniness, hunt for complexity and delight in unpredictability. Our lives should be marked not by “comps” and metrics and filters and proofs of concept and virality but by tight circles and improvisation and adventure and lots and lots of creative waste. And not just to save ourselves, but to save each other. The vast majority of Americans are not ideologues. They are people who wish to live in a free country and get along with their neighbors while engaging in profitable work, getting married, raising families, being entertained, and fulfilling their American right to adventure and self-invention. They are also the consumer base for movies, TV, books, and other cultural products. Every time Americans are given the option to ratify progressive dictates through their consumer choices, they vote in the opposite direction. When HBO removed Gone with the Wind from its on-demand library last year, it became the #1 bestselling movie on Amazon. Meanwhile, endless numbers of Hollywood right-think movies and supposed literary masterworks about oppression are dismal failures for studios and publishing houses that would rather sink into debt than face a social-justice firing squad on Twitter. This disconnect between culturally mandated politics and the actual demonstrated preferences of most Americans has created an enormous reserve of unmet needs—and a generational opportunity. Build new things! Create great art! Understand and accept that sensory information is the brain’s food, and that Silicon Valley is systematically starving us of it. Avoid going entirely tree-blind. Make a friend and don’t talk politics with them. Do things that generate love and attention from three people you actually know instead of hundreds you don’t. Abandon the blighted Ivy League, please, I beg of you. Start a publishing house that puts out books that anger, surprise and delight people and which make them want to read. Be brave enough to make film and TV that appeals to actual audiences and not 14 people on Twitter. Establish a newspaper, one people can see themselves in and hold in their hands. Go back to a house of worship—every week. Give up on our current institutions; they already gave up on us. At the lowest point with my son—the moment when I was convinced something was deeply wrong, and that I would never be able to fix it—my husband found himself on a reporting trip, where he encountered the head of an illustrious yeshiva. I had been sending David desperate texts all afternoon, and at one point his own anguish became obvious. “What’s your son’s name?” the rabbi asked, and David told him it was Elijah. “Ah, the prophet of unlikely redemption,” he said, smiling. “With them, the good news is almost as hard as the bad.” It took me a while, but I eventually figured out what he meant. Sometimes the task of rebuilding—of accepting what has been broken and making things anew—is so daunting that it can almost feel easier to believe it can’t be done. But it can. newlifeworld@protonmail.com
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Post by Admin on Feb 7, 2021 16:28:55 GMT
The Power of Catastrophic Thinking Jim Holt Should we value human lives in the distant future as much as present ones? February 25, 2021 issue www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/02/25/power-catastrophic-thinking-toby-ord-precipice/T. S. Eliot, in his 1944 essay “What Is a Classic?,” complained that a new kind of provincialism was becoming apparent in our culture: “a provincialism, not of space, but of time.” What Eliot had in mind was provincialism about the past: a failure to think of dead generations as fully real. But one can also be guilty of provincialism about the future: a failure to imagine the generations that will come after us, to take seriously our responsibilities toward them. In 1945, not long after Eliot wrote that essay, the first atomic bomb was exploded. This made the matter of provincialism about the future all the more acute. Now, seemingly, humanity had acquired the power to abolish its own future. A decade later Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein issued a joint manifesto warning that nuclear weaponry posed the risk of imminent human extinction, of “universal death.” (In a letter to Einstein, Russell also predicted that the same threat would eventually be posed by biological warfare.) By the early 1980s, more precise ideas were being put forward about how this could occur. In 1982 Jonathan Schell, in a much-discussed series of articles in The New Yorker (later published as a book, The Fate of the Earth), argued that nuclear war might well result in the destruction of the ozone layer, making it impossible for human life to survive on earth. In 1983 Carl Sagan and four scientific colleagues introduced the “nuclear winter” hypothesis, according to which firestorms created by a nuclear exchange, even a limited one, would darken the upper atmosphere for years, causing global crop failures, universal famine, and human extinction—an alarming scenario that helped move Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to negotiate reductions in their countries’ nuclear arsenals. Neither Schell nor Sagan was a philosopher. Yet each raised a philosophical point: with the advent of nuclear weapons and other dangerous new technologies, we ran the risk not only of killing off all humans alive today, but also of depriving innumerable generations of the chance to exist. Humanity’s past has been relatively brief: some 300,000 years as a species, a few thousand years of civilization. Its potential future, by contrast, could extend for millions or billions of years, encompassing many trillions of sentient, rational beings yet to be born. It was this future—the adulthood of humanity—that was now in jeopardy. “If our species does destroy itself,” Schell wrote, “it will be a death in the cradle—a case of infant mortality.”
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Post by Admin on Feb 19, 2021 13:46:25 GMT
Year after year, decade after decade, the trends have been generally clear. Future generations are pretty much screwed unless radical economic change occurs, no doubt transcending the entire capitalist, market-based horror show of a system.
It doesn't matter what your ideology is. It doesn't matter what you like or don't like. Doesn't matter what you believe in. Science and principles of sustainability don't care about your political affiliation, your religion, what your hobbies are or what you like to eat.
Either society changes or it perishes. And guess what? There is literally no viable framework for a new economy being developed anywhere on this planet, at least in terms of needed mainstream, highly influential circles. Just lame, weak-minded, capitalist apologists - moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic.
“Our children and their children will inherit a world of extreme weather events, sea level rise, a drastic loss of plants and animals, food and water insecurity and increasing likelihood of future pandemics,” said report lead author Sir Robert Watson, who has chaired past UN science reports on climate change and biodiversity loss.
“The emergency is in fact more profound than we thought only a few years ago,” said Watson, who has been a top level scientist in the U.S. and British governments. This year “is a make-it or break-it year indeed because the risk of things becoming irreversible is gaining ground every year,” Guterres said. “We are close to the point of no return.”
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Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2021 2:37:09 GMT
Should we discuss our anticipation of collapse?Posted on February 18, 2021 jembendell.com/2021/02/18/should-we-discuss-our-anticipation-of-collapse/This is the foreword to “The Responsibility of Communicating Difficult Truths About Climate Influenced Societal Disruption and Collapse: An Introduction to Psychological Research” which provides a synthesis of some relevant peer-reviewed literature within the field of psychology. Professor Jem Bendell, University of Cumbria, UK. Your anxiety or even emotional distress about the situation with the climate is normal, sane, healthy and even righteous. Those difficult emotions you have been feeling may also be a painful gateway to a different expression of who you are, depending on how we support each other in that process of change. People who do not share your anxiety or distress, despite being exposed to the information on the situation, might be experiencing something psychopathological. Their avoidance of normal yet difficult emotions might be an instance of something termed ‘experiential avoidance’ in psychology and which is correlated with mental health problems, such as depression, panic attacks and aggression (Chawla and Ostafin, 2007). They may tell you to be more positive, or stop upsetting other people. They may begin to see you as the problem, rather than our predicament as the problem. They may tell you that you are being manipulated by bad people, so that you can blame them for your difficult feelings and shift that energy. Some of those people may even claim psychological expertise. However, those opinions can be difficult for you to accept, as you want to stay present to reality, take responsibility for your emotions, and communicate without fear of judgement. Because you care about people and do not want to hurt people unnecessarily, you have probably wondered how best to communicate both your analysis and your emotions about that. If so, then you are in the same situation as many thousands of scholars, educators and activists engaged in climate issues who have been wondering how best to look after our own emotional wellbeing while responsibly engaging other people on the evolving situation and our perceptions of that. Over 500 of us, from 30 different countries, signed a public Scholars Warning letter calling for more sober public engagement with the potential for societal disruption and collapse due to the direct and indirect impacts of climate and environmental change (www.scholarswarning.net). The letter notes that there are many perspectives on the concept and nature of societal collapses, past, present and future. In my work I have defined it as an uneven ending of normal life, meaning the normal modes of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning. The term collapse implies that there is an ending, and then something new, rather than a breakdown and possible repair back to normal. The reasons why hundreds of scholars are calling for more attention to societal collapse include, are not limited to, the following seven reasons. First, honesty. Being true with each other is an important reason for people to discuss their anticipation of collapse. Related to that is enabling more honesty in society, through the expression of what people are privately believing or considering. Research shows that not only climate anxiety is widespread but also the anticipation of collapse in our lifetimes has exploded in recent years (Cassely and Fourquet, 2020). Second, mutual self-help. To help ourselves and each other cope better with this outlook, including our emotional wellbeing in the short and longer-term as we live into a destabilising future. Dialogue and community are an essential first step for that. Third, blame reduction. To reduce the potential psychopathological behaviours arising from emotional suppression of this topic, which have been identified as delusion, depression and aggression by researchers of ‘experiential avoidance’, as described earlier. These behaviours can arise from attachment to narratives of self and society, known as ‘worldview defense’ in the ‘terror management’ literature, due to a lack of other ways of being able to respond to feelings of confusion and vulnerability, which are associated with death aversion (Wolfe and Tubi 2019). However, the way people respond to increased awareness of their mortality is not set. For instance, there is evidence that reflection on death can lead to greater environmental commitment in the form of philanthropy (Fa and Kugihara, 2020). By discussing collapse, there can be an opportunity to transmute awareness of mortality and vulnerability into prosocial ways of thinking and acting. Deliberate processes for death reflection are well known in both spiritual traditions and philosophy, while also resulting in therapeutic benefits and pro-social implications in contemporary contexts (Arena, 2020). Inviting emotional expression and non-judgemental exploration of our situation is already proving helpful for reducing the likelihood of people responding in anti-social ways as they anticipate mortality (Carr and Bendell, 2020). Fourth, self-transformation. For people who are ready for it, to support each other in processes of deep reflection, positive disintegration of old stories of self, and thus emergence of new ways of being (Laycraf 2020).This can happen as we explore what really matters to us once our old stories of self, necessity and respectability are loosened by the realisation of the destructiveness and impermanence of mainstream societies. Some people are not ready for that, or they have already reached a place of self-construal where they do not prioritise this reflection anymore. Fifth, cause identification. This reason builds upon all of the previous ones, as the work on those then allows a deeper exploration of why modern humans created this predicament. This includes looking at the ways that various forms of othering enable oppression and exploitation within and between countries (Carr and Bendell, 2020). That is more than an intellectual exercise, because it informs a sixth and seventh reason. Sixth, path finding. This reason is to explore what to do next and why, at all scales from local to global, including how to not make matters worse, how to slow or soften societal disruptions and collapse, how to ensure that the most marginalised communities are not affected first and worst, as well as how to create more possibilities for the future (if that is what we believe is possible). That then brings our attention to how some parts of society are already responding away from the limelight, such as the world’s militaries, authoritarian elites and hedge funds, as they prepare for disruption and collapse in ways that civil society may rightly object to (Bendell, 2020). Seventh, solidarity actions. Running in parallel to these reasons, a seventh reason to talk about collapse is to become better able to discuss effective responses to the societal disruptions and breakdowns that are occurring now and to participate in significant solidarity efforts. These include humanitarian action, alongside work on social and trade justice, reparations and reconciliation. The question of whether we should discuss collapse is therefore more than a pure question of psychology, but insights from psychology could help us to learn how and when to discuss it and with whom. Some of the 500+ signatories to the Scholars Warning are psychologists, but most like me, are not. To help us better understand how to engage on this matter in future, we commissioned a review of relevant psychological research, to support current and future signatory scientists and scholars. The result is this paper, as our small contribution to the growing field of work on climate anxiety and climate communications. In this literature review, the psychological research that is relevant to some of the concerns raised about the psychological implications of anticipating collapse is summarised and discussed. Rather than review the sub-field of psychology on climate change, or on environmental action, the review looks across all areas of psychology to find insights on the anticipation of disruption, decline, disaster and collapse. Therefore, I believe it points towards a step change, or focus-shift, for the way people are talking about climate psychology. It offers a psychological research dimension to the new fields of ‘collapsology’ (Servigne and Stephens, 2020) and ‘deep adaptation’ (Bendell, 2018). The aim is to provide information to help scholars, campaigners and politicians learn more about how better to communicate on this matter. Perhaps the centrality of behavioural psychology in previous work on climate psychology has limited our understanding of our current predicament. The main focus has been on the individual as a consumer, and what makes them choose pro-environmental behaviours, rather than what radicalises them as citizens contributing to societal and political change, at whatever level (Adams, 2021). In the introduction to the literature review, psychologist Jasmine Kieft discusses a few examples of where behavioural psychology has been publishing claims about negative implications of either anticipating or talking about disruption and collapse that are neither theoretically grounded nor empirically supported. Such studies may suit the dominant narrative of optimism, reform and progress within its sister discipline of behavioural economics. In addition, the ideology of psychology researchers may have led to biased and limiting interpretations of the role of narratives of hope and agency in supporting action and avoiding mental health difficulties. For instance, hope and agency are typically understood to mean stories of reform and betterment of current socio-economic systems, within a paradigm of material progress (as an example see Marlon et al, 2019). That ideological limitation means that some psychologists have not even considered how hope, whether a wish, expectation, intention, or deeper faith, could be expressed while also anticipating societal disruption and collapse within one’s lifetime. To do that requires the courage to allow oneself to feel very difficult emotions and the dissolution of some existing stories of self and society (Bendell, 2019). Since I communicated my own anticipation of societal collapse in a Deep Adaptation paper (Bendell, 2018), and it has been downloaded over a million times, I have witnessed a wide range of responses to this topic. Sometimes scholars backtrack in public on things they have said in private. This may be for a mix of reasons, including the conservative culture of scientists, alongside not wanting to upset people or become the target of criticism (Hoggett and Randall, 2018). That is understandable, as many people experience difficult emotions when first hearing of how bad our climate situation has become. Some scientists have recently begun arguing that to suggest we will see massive disruption or even collapse in our lifetimes is demotivating and psychologically damaging (Mann, 2021). Some people who listen to such an argument might hear it as ‘common sense’. However, on closer inspection, this view does not hold up so well. It is a matter of public record that the Deep Adaptation paper radicalised many people to then change their lives and join a new kind of climate activism, involving non-violent civil disobedience (Humphrys, 2019; Financial Times, 2019). It is an open question whether such activism will have an effect on systems and, ultimately, either emissions cuts, drawdown or adaptation. However, it shows that the claim that apathy is the main response can be easily questioned. Further research will be necessary to determine the wider impact on apathy and agency. There is very little research on the wider forms of pro-social action that arise from people anticipating societal collapse. In one survey of members of the Deep Adaptation Forum, almost half of respondents said they considered themselves to be taking leadership in new ways as a result of their new anticipation of collapse. Their range of actions included work on practical and emotional resilience within their communities and professions (Bendell and Cave, 2020). One of the labels used to malign the scholars who speak out about the likelihood of societal collapse is that they are ‘doomers’. If ‘doomism’ is to believe in a negative view of the future, despite the evidence, then it is doomist to believe that people will only respond to a recognition of our climate calamity and forthcoming disruption with apathy, confusion, depression, selfishness, xenophobia or bigotry. Such a view ignores evidence from the new kind of climate activism that has arisen since 2018, where the motivation includes doing what is right because people have a heightened sense of their own mortality and that of the people they love (Extinction Rebellion, 2019). It also ignores evidence of people engaged in the Deep Adaptation Forum. I have not met many people who accept information about the possible, likely, inevitable or unfolding collapse of society and then respond with pure apathy. Rather, the fatalistic people I meet tend to be people who do not actually feel the threat to their own wellbeing or that of the people they love. I look forward to seeing some more research on this topic. However, if researchers bring assumptions that people will only act when they think they will achieve solutions to environmental problems, and ask biased questions as a result, they will miss the more fundamental existential and spiritual motivations that may be key to contemporary environmentalism. It could be that these negative views on how people react to anticipating collapse are based on assumptions about human nature being selfish or requiring promises of material or status gain to be motivated toward pro-social action. It is important to note that the view that human nature is basically selfish, which derives from the field of economics, has started to influence societal discussions of wellbeing. They also bring with them utilitarian and modernist assumptions of what constitutes the good society. Consequently, the field of wellbeing economics incorrectly assumes that the lesser a population experiences any negative emotions the better it is, rather than its capability for equanimity (for instance, see Piekałkiewicz, 2017). There may be a particular problem with the climate anxiety of senior leaders and media commentators that scholars could help with. Research on leadership has found that typical psychological traits that lead people to seek positions of power or influence relate to insecure identity structures (Harms, et al 2011). That means they may be more likely to suppress painful emotions associated with an awareness of vulnerability. The climate predicament presents both material risk and psychological risk, as the predicament undermines the legitimacy of societal structures that have provided the means of buttressing insecure identities. Therefore, senior leaders and media commentators may be more susceptible to ‘experiential avoidance’, and the psychopathologies that result. That would be a problem at a time when we would benefit from more kind, wise and creative leadership. Therefore, there may be use in targeted engagements with senior leaders on their climate anxiety. One challenge for senior leaders is that the discourse in our society tells us that to lead one needs to use stories of hope. Even in the psychology literature, there is widespread confusion about what ‘hope’ means. It can mean a wish, expectation, intention or deeper faith (Bendell, 2019). As mentioned earlier, some researchers assume hope on climate involves a belief in material progress and human control. Yet hope can be about people responding positively to difficulty, disruption and death. As ‘Experiential Avoidance’ of emotional pain is found to be psychopathological, when hope is narrowly conceived, an emphasis on finding cause for hope could be an effort to swiftly exit difficult emotions, and prove to be unhelpful. Therefore, we need to be careful in our discussion and use of hope, and be alert to whether any ‘experiential avoidance’ or ‘worldview defense’ in ourselves as researchers is influencing our analysis of this matter. One avenue for hope that is not avoidant, could be the deeper faith that the goodness of humanity is planted deeper than any surface level conflicts, and will help us to express solidarity and reduce suffering, come what may. This literature review is only a beginning. It does not explore all areas of inquiry that could inform a better understanding of responses to anticipating disruption and collapse. Might we learn from people with degenerative disease and those who love them? Or from studies on ageing, or on being childless as adults? Might we learn from studies of people who have been through traumatic situations due to famine, conflict or violence? There is much to learn about emotional resilience and even emotional thriving in situations that are neither stable, safe, nor improving materially. Neither does the literature review explore the range of means that we can develop and employ for helping ourselves and each other with our climate anxiety, or to become radically present to the predicament as it unfolds both locally and globally. In my own life, I have benefited greatly from discovering a number of means of support for my emotional health. For instance, participating in a regular men’s group, using processes from the Mankind Project, have been useful for my ability to process difficult emotions without blaming others. Mindfulness, and the particular approach of Vipassana, or insight meditation, has also been useful. In addition, the practice of open-hearted dialogue that we call ‘Deep Relating’ has been useful to me. It involves people interacting where our emotional curiosity, acceptance, honesty and expression is combined with ‘owning’ our emotions (avoiding blame when experiencing an emotional charge or trigger), so that there can be newfound connection and trust with another on difficult topics (Carr and Bendell, 2020). It is also helpful in becoming more aware of how our own insecurities and hurts lead to us projecting negative intentions onto others, so we might lessen our judgements. It also means we can lessen our negative reactions to people when they negatively project onto us. That has been invaluable to me as I became the object of multiple projections as people process their own thoughts and emotions about the climate tragedy. The Senior Facilitator of the Deep Adaptation Forum, Katie Carr, describes some of their work in the following way: “[When people first begin to anticipate disruption and collapse they can] feel overwhelming panic, powerlessness, fear, sometimes depression and anxiety. Having a sense of community, belonging, a space of unconditional positive regard in one’s life, where it feels ‘safe enough’ to share freely and openly about emotions that can feel unbearable when they’re only existing inside us, is pretty much the most powerful source of healing that humans can provide for each other. It’s our magic power. Being held and heard, non-judgmentally, is what can allow those overwhelming feelings to rise and fall, to be processed in the moment, and not stored in the body as future trauma.” I recommend the Deep Adaptation Forum as a way of finding resources, people and a community to offer that kind of support. There is also a database of practitioners who offer support: guidance.deepadaptation.info By focusing on the academic research in psychology in this paper, our intention is not to suggest that this is where the ultimate truth on the human psyche is to be found, or that the best ideas on community engagement for enabling loving kindness will come from such research. There are limitations from the paradigm of mainstream psychological research for how we learn about our predicament. These limitations are due to the individualist and Western bias of much research in this discipline (Adams, 2021). That means the socially constructed notions of normality, safety, comfort, and choice, which rely on and maintain oppression of others, are not often questioned in the research. For instance, this literature review provides examples of where an uncritical questioning of societal norms has allowed theoretically and empirically weak arguments to be published and then influence subsequent condemnations of discussing collapse. Therefore, this literature review is offered as merely one contribution to a field of discussion and experimentation, which can also draw on and be informed by ancient spiritual traditions and other forms of knowing. Which returns us to the thankfully unavoidable matter of the nature of human existence, which lies in the background of any discussion of societal collapse. Some of the difficulty people have with engaging in the possibility of societal disruption and collapse is because most cultures today are death avoidant, particularly Western Euro-centric ones (Solomon, et al 2017). By that, I mean that we ignore death, rather than recognising it as a constant ongoing complement to life, where one requires the other. Such death avoidance is heightened by anxieties about death, which in turn are heightened by an absence of either an understanding or experience of ourselves as being one with a greater life force (Thich Nhat Hanh, 1987). With that greater sense of separation as an individual mortal being, we can become more attached to our culture’s stories of safety, worth and legacy. That means we can hold on to those stories more tightly when sensing greater vulnerability and become more critical about anyone challenging those stories (Solomon, et al 2017). Yet, if detached from either an understanding or experience of our oneness with all life, we are less connected to sources for vitality, creativity and courage, just at a time when the turbulence invites us to be radically present to what is occurring (Abhayananda, 2002). This literature review does not give evidence that the general public will or will not, on average, react positively and compassionately to a growing sense of vulnerability. Rather, the extent to which more of us respond in curious, kind, and compassionate ways is up to each of us. So yes, it is time for more of us to discuss collapse, but when and how is something to keep learning about. I concur with psychologist and Scholars Warning signatory Dr Susanne Moser (2020), who concludes that we must move beyond the not-too-late versus too-late dichotomy and now engage in “the political, policy, and practical work, as well as the deeper, underlying socio‐cultural and psychological work, that the paradoxical tension between endings and possibilities demands.” The climate tragedy is the most difficult situation we have had to face, so we will need to keep experimenting, and forgiving each other for mistakes of understanding and communication. That is a challenge in itself, as a mixture of personal anxieties and political tactics will increasingly pollute our dialogue with invitations to moral outrage and condemnation, rather than maintaining a sober focus on what might build towards the peaceful revolutionary change that our situation now requires. I hope you find the literature review an interesting opening up of this agenda for your future work. One means of engaging further is to join the Holistic Approaches discussion group on the Deep Adaptation Forum, or the Climate Psychology Alliance in the UK. I have also opened the comments function below. References Abhayananda, S. (2002). The History of Mysticism: The Unchanging Testament. London: Watkins Publishing. Adams, M. (2021) Critical psychologies and climate change, Current Opinion in Psychology, doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.01.007Arena, A.F.A (2020) Authenticity and the Non-Defensive, Growth-Oriented Processing of Death Awareness, PhD Thesis, School of Psychology, University of Sydney ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/23403/Arena_AFA_thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=yBendell, J. (2018) Deep adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy. Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Papers Volume 2. University of Cumbria, Ambleside, UK. insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/4166/Bendell, J. (2019) Hope in a time of climate chaos. In: UKCP Conference 2019, 19th October 2019, London. (Unpublished) insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/5463/Bendell, J. (2020) If guys with guns are talking about collapse, why can’t we? JemBendell.com Blog, Posted on November 11, 2020 Bendell, J. and D. Cave (2020) Does anticipating societal collapse motivate pro-social behaviours? Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS). Blog posted Monday, 8 June 2020. Carr, K. and J. Bendell (2020) Facilitation for Deep Adaptation: enabling loving conversations about our predicament. Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Paper 6. insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/5792/Cassely, J-L. and Fourquet, J. (2020). La France: Patrie de la collapsologie?. [online] Fondation Jean Jaures & IFOP. Available at: jean-jaures.org/nos-productions/la-france-patrie-de-la-collapsologie . Chawla, C. and B. Ostafin (2007) Experiential Avoidance as a Functional Dimensional Approach to Psychopathology: An Empirical Review, Journal of Clinical Pyschology, Vol. 63(9), 871–890 Fa, H. and N. Kugihara (2020) Does Concern About Death Help To Increase Donations For Environmental Charities? Examining The Impact Of Mortality Salience On Pro-Environmental Behaviors In East Asia, The International Journal of Organizational Innovation, Volume 13 Number 2, October 2020 Financial Times (2019) “Extinction Rebellion: inside the new climate resistance” 11 April www.ft.com/content/9bcb1bf8-5b20-11e9-9dde-7aedca0a081a / Extinction Rebellion (2019) This Is Not A Drill, Penguin, UK. Harms, P. D., Spain, S. M., Hannah, S. T. (2011). Leader development and the dark side of personality. Leadership Quarterly, 22, 495-509. Hoggett, P. and R. Randall (2018)Engaging with Climate Change: Comparing the Cultures of Science and Activism, Environmental Values, Volume 27, Number 3, June 2018, pp. 223-243(21) Humphrys, J. (2019) Extinction Rebellion: Noble and Necessary or a Pointless Nuisance? YouGov, April 17, 2019 Laycraf, K.C. (2020) The Theory of Positive Disintegration as Future-Oriented, Annals of Cognitive Science, Vol 4, Issue 1, Pages 118-126 Mann, M. (2021) The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, Public Affairs Books. Marlon, J. R., et al (2019) How Hope and Doubt Affect Climate Change Mobilization, Frontiers in Communication, Vol 4. Moser, S. M. (2020) The work after “It’s too late” (to prevent dangerous climate change), WIRE Climate Change, Volume 11, Issue 1, January/February 2020 Piekałkiewicz, M., 2017. Why do economists study happiness? The Economics and Labour Relations Review, 28: 361- Servigne, P. and R. Stephens (2020) Another End of the World is Possible, Polity Books, UK. Solomon, S. et al. (2017) Clash Of Civilizations? Terror Management Theory And The Role Of The Ontological Representations Of Death In Contemporary Global Crisis, Source: Tpm: Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology In Applied Psychology . Sep2017, Vol. 24 Issue 3, P379-398. Thich Nhat Hanh. (1987). Interbeing. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press Wolfe, E and A. Tubi (2019) Terror Management Theory and mortality awareness: A missing link in climate response studies? Wire Climate Change, Volume 10, Issue2, March/April 2019
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Post by Admin on Feb 20, 2021 23:37:24 GMT
Many Americans view their country through rose-colored glasses and envisition its in-progress demise in a romanticized fashion. America's collapse will be slow, confusing, and far more destructive than anyone can imagine. The Collapse of American Democracy Will Mirror the Weimar RepublicThe American experiment in democracy is slowly succumbing to the vices that overwhelmed the Weimar state fordhamobserver.com/60009/opinions/the-collapse-of-american-democracy-will-mirror-the-weimar-republic/By NICHOLAS SCOTCHIE January 25, 2021 For over two centuries, a multitude of poets, politicians and philosophers have regaled the nation with the ideals of American exceptionalism and excellence. With the guiding principles of life and liberty, they told us that the violence, decadence and inequality that plagued the outside world could not touch our shores. Well, they can, and recently, they did. On Jan. 6, 2021, we saw the myth of American exceptionalism laid to rest once and for all when wannabe revolutionaries nearly couped “the greatest democracy in history” in under two hours. Many Americans view their country through rose-colored glasses. More often than not, they envision its demise in a similarly romanticized fashion. America is supposed to collapse like the Roman republic it is still seeking to emulate, with factions seceding, the military taking sides and cabals of politicians scheming their next moves. However, America in practice is a more modern and ungainly rendition of the Weimar Republic, Germany’s doomed experiment in democracy in the 1920s, which was plagued by violence and political instability before falling to Adolf Hitler. Much like that ill-fated nation, America’s collapse will be slow, confusing and far more destructive than anyone could imagine. Like Weimar Germany, the United States has experienced a growing list of economic and social calamities over the past decades. Income inequality was growing even before the pandemic and is only accelerating as poor and minority workers bear the brunt of the economic turmoil. Basic needs like food, housing and health care have become increasingly unattainable for a large number of people. just as the Weimar government proved ineffective in dealing with its economic catastrophe of the Great Depression, our leaders have also proven cold and distant as they fail to approve deeply needed economic assistance. There are certainly differences between the current state of American politics and the Weimar Republic. Our institutions are older and more tested. While the 1920s never allowed for a genuinely peaceful political scene in Germany, the United States, for all of its many faults, was able to champion the peaceful transition from one administration to the next since 1800, even surviving a dramatic civil war. However, like the Weimar Republic, there has been an increase in political violence and extremism in 2020, as noted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Just as the presence of right-wing paramilitary organizations like the Freikorps and Der Stahlhelm led to the erosion of civil and democratic norms in Germany, our far-right groups, with the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys among the more prominent factions, have grown in number and ferocity. It was often the case that Germany’s extremists were related to the military or law enforcement, and modern-day insurrectionists followed suit by infiltrating police agencies across the country, a pattern that proved disastrous at the Capitol. We must also deal with unique dangers that other states which have failed in the past did not have to consider. Chief among them is the capacity for conspiracy theories and propaganda to disseminate across the internet on online message boards and platforms. Another problem we must face are the loose gun laws that have contributed to terroristic violence in the past. With the match lit by the former president and his accomplices, who incited their supporters at the rally in Washington that preceded the storming of the Capitol, the earlier chaos was all but inevitable. I cannot undersell the danger posed by the mob that stormed into the chambers of Congress. While many of those who broke into the Capitol seemed listless once actually inside the building, there were many among them with weapons and flex cuffs, chanting threats of violence against former Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. Yet even after five people died in connection to the riots that engulfed the very building they debated in, several Republican senators and over 100 Republican representatives voted against certifying the results of Arizona and Pennsylvania, feeding into the narrative of the rioters that the election of Joe Biden was not secure or legitimate. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of our political destabilization is the fact that many Republicans and conservatives, like the forces that toppled Germany and other failed states in the past, have embraced anti-democratic ideas, with multiple polls showing a significant percentage of the population supporting the actions of the insurrectionists. While senators and representatives reassured their constituents that the republic was strong as the mob was being cleared from the Capitol late that Wednesday night, we shouldn’t give in to knee-jerk optimism. Even if the storming of the Capitol building proves to be a one-off occurrence, that day’s events still validate the use of violence and obstruction to overturn the results of democratic elections for many Americans. While the inauguration of Joe Biden was conducted peacefully, albeit under the presence of a heavily armed National Guard, the radicalization runs too deep to be dealt with so easily, as seen in the removal of 12 National Guard members over extremist warnings. As America steps back from the brink of chaos and reflects upon the damage and destruction, there is little doubt that without drastic reforms that address both the present dangers and their underlying causes, the republic may be compromised for years to come.
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Post by Admin on Feb 24, 2021 18:07:43 GMT
Even if some radical global approach was adopted - it's too late now to avoid catastrophic systemic ecosystem / civilization collapse (imo) - Loads of near term human extinction evidence & support groups out there.
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Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2021 14:13:15 GMT
If the UK government won't stop industrial fishing from destroying our oceans, activists willHugh Fearnley-Whittingstall www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/26/if-the-uk-government-stop-industrial-fishing-oceans-activists-greenpeaceOur oceans are in crisis. I saw it for myself while I was making my television series Hugh’s Fish Fight for Channel 4 over a decade ago. I saw the most destructive fishing practices first-hand, as I dived over the sea floor within minutes of fishing boats dragging their metal-toothed gear along the bottom and scraping everything in their path. And I witnessed the desert they created. I have also dived in one of the few tiny areas where these methods are not allowed, and seen how they teem with life, and with fish, that could and should be multiplying to rebuild the health of our marine environment and replenish the stocks of fish that our fishing industry relies on. I’ve also interviewed government ministers who promised to protect the waters which surround our islands, with a “world-leading” network of marine protected areas (MPAs), which would safeguard some of the most sensitive and ecologically diverse parts of our seas. They have not kept this promise. They might claim otherwise, pointing out that more than 300 MPAs have been designated in UK waters and that they do indeed cover some of our most precious, diverse and productive marine habitats. Unfortunately, the reality is that in these so-called protected areas next to nothing is being protected. They are left open to all sorts of destructive human activities, the most significant of which is industrial fishing. Investigations by Greenpeace and others have revealed over the last year that some of the most destructive fishing boats spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours fishing inside places that are meant to be protected. Bottom trawlers and scallop dredgers regularly stalk our protected areas, ripping up protected seabeds with impunity. The government does nothing to stop it, because despite its claims to have created protected areas, ministers have not made it illegal to destroy the seabeds. How can we let this happen? When you hear the word “protected”, it conjures up images of pristine natural environments, free from human activity and extraction. Or at the very least, the promise to restore habitats to such a state with meaningful intervention and enforcement. Yet the government stands by and allows the fishing industry to destroy our most sensitive marine areas, and endanger the health and productivity of our oceans for generations to come. But we are not all going to stand by. That’s why I’ve been out at sea with Greenpeace this week, supporting their action to put giant boulders into the Channel. Activists are building their second “underwater boulder barrier” in a protected area off the coast of Brighton. This area, known as Offshore Brighton, is one of the UK’s most heavily bottom-trawled MPAs, despite it being set up to protect the seabed. Boulder placements will stop bottom trawlers from ploughing up this valuable seabed habitat with their heavy fishing gear. This action should put almost one-fifth of Offshore Brighton off-limits to these destructive vessels. I support this action precisely because it is action – to protect our marine life in a pragmatic and effective way – as opposed to the woeful inaction we have seen from our government so far. Our hope is that the government finally turns words into action and protects our oceans, by properly banning destructive fishing from our most precious marine environments. If they do so, they can ensure healthy oceans, full of fish, for every generation to come. And they can safeguard our fishing communities long into the future. They can – and should – do both these things. If they don’t, their “world-leading” plan will mean nothing and their promise to protect our seas will be a lie.
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Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2021 18:04:48 GMT
The environmental infrastructure that sustains human societies has been a target and instrument of war for centuries, resulting in famine and disease, displaced populations, and the devastation of people’s livelihoods and ways of life. Scorched Earth by Emmanuel Kreike traces the history of scorched earth, military inundations, and armies living off the land from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, arguing that the resulting deliberate destruction of the environment—”environcide”—constitutes total war and is a crime against humanity and nature. Available now in hardcover and ebook. Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare as a Crime against Humanity and NatureEmmanuel Kreike A global history of environmental warfare and the case for why it should be a crime Series: Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691137421/scorched-earth
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Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2021 18:45:32 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2021 23:02:19 GMT
Does anyone care? Attenborough gives stark warning on climate change to UN Climate change could, within a lifetime, destroy "entire cities and societies", Sir David Attenborough has told the UN Security Council. "I don't envy the responsibility that this places on all of you," the naturalist said. www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-56175714
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Post by Admin on Mar 3, 2021 22:03:21 GMT
MIT PROFESSOR: I FEAR IMMINENT HUMAN EXTINCTION "WE NEED DRAMATIC CHANGE, NOT YESTERDAY, BUT YEARS AGO."futurism.com/the-byte/mit-professor-fear-imminent-human-extinctionFinal Countdown According to MIT mechanical engineer Asegun Henry, humans are running out of time to stop our own extinction. The challenge comes down to physics: Almost all of our energy consumption involves generating or transferring heat. Coupled with the greenhouse gas emissions that come with that energy use, Henry warns that we are very near the point of no return that would send us on a path toward inevitable destruction of the climate and ourselves, according to a press release. Bold Vision But that doesn’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel. Henry, along with engineers from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, published research in the journal Nature Energy last week that lays out five grand challenges for how we can reverse course. They’re big challenges — the first one alone is developing thermal storage systems for the global power grid — and will take serious effort to solve. But given that our survival is on the line, it seems to be the right time to launch extremely ambitious endeavors. “Time is running out, and we need all hands on deck,” Henry said in the release. Ticking Down Particularly concerning, Henry added, is how long it could take to switch from a fossil fuel-dependent energy infrastructure to clean energy. By then, we may have passed that point of no return. “We need dramatic change, not yesterday, but years ago,” Henry said. “So every day I fear we will do too little too late, and we as a species may not survive Mother Earth’s clapback.”
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