I don’t think I’ve ever met a collapsitarian. At least if I have, they’ve never admitted it to me. It’s possible that some of my best friends may be collapsitarians in the privacy of their own homes, just as they may also be, in their own time and strictly in confidence, devotees of bestial porn or the novels of Jeffrey Archer. But it’s never come out in public. The same is true of doomers. I keep hearing about these people. Apparently they’re all around us. From what I can tell they’re a sort of political goth. They’re terribly difficult and probably socially inadequate. In a world free of austerity they would be entitled to psychiatric help, but these are straitened times.
But then I probably just don’t get out enough. These days I spend most of my time closeted on my hill farm reading Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and oiling my shotgun. For this reason I have never run into a nimby or a nihilist either. Self-declared reactionaries are also thin on the ground. Fascists are certainly in evidence here and there – I have one as my MEP – but they do seem to be considerably fewer in number than some would have me believe.
This is odd, because in the last year I have been called all of these things and more. I never knew it was possible to be, for example, a utopian nihilist. I would have thought that the varying political demands of being a fascist, a Romantic, a conservative and an anarchist all at the same time would be simply exhausting, not to mention contradictory. Apparently not.
When we wrote the Dark Mountain manifesto we knew that, if anyone read it at all, some people would hate it. Quite a lot of people, in all likelihood, given the challenges it laid down. ‘If you want to be popular’ we wrote, ‘it is probably best not to get involved, for the world, for a time, will resoultely refuse to listen.’ If we’re right about nothing else, we were right about that. Extreme reactions, from all over the spectrum, have been a feature of the response to Dark Mountain. For every email we get from someone telling us they’ve been waiting for us all their life, there’s a blog post by someone else calling us names. I find the name-calling very interesting, and have been musing on it a lot.
What we are dealing with here is what we might calls Terms Of Dismissal – let’s call them ‘TODs’ for short. TODs are a crucial feature of all political and cultural debate. Humans are social creatures and tribal animals. We exhibit a need, apparent in every human culture, both to band together with others and to mark ourselves out from other, opposing tribes. This behaviour spills over into politics daily, where it is disguised, often very thinly, as rational disagreement about policies or positions.
The function of TODs is to delineate tribes, so that other tribes may be easily dismisssed without the need to respond seriously to any arguments they might be making. TODs are, in effect, the grown-up equivalent of the kind of names you called each other in the playground. Remember when being called a horrible name at school would stop you in your tracks? Remember the inadequacy of that old saying about sticks and stones? Being called names is nasty. Calling people names, conversely, is very effective. We’ve all done it. It’s easier, and far more common, than engaging seriously and decently with people whose worldview you don’t share.
Take, for example, the increasingly polarised world of US politics: it’s almost the perfect example. The USA seems to me at present – as an admittedly outside observer who gets most of his information from various imperfect media sources – to be a land in which even pretences of rational disagreement are being abandoned in favour of angry tribal entrenchment. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the end of the American republic in any meaningful sense in my lifetime, and I wouldn’t be surprised either to see its slide to the hard right continue until it becomes something very nasty indeed. After all, this the most powerful and heavily-armed empire in world history, and it’s in increasingly precipitate decline.
But anyway: the point is that this country is currently so angrily polarised that TODs almost count as political debate. If you support Obama’s healthcare package, for example, you will be dismissed as a ‘socialist’ by millions of people. There is nothing objectively socialist about anything Obama does, but objectivity is not the point. This is a term of dimissal, remember. It’s dog-whistle politics: calling someone a socialist signals to millions of other people that they are not to be listened to. They are on the Dark Side. They are not One Of Us.
The same function is served on the left by the word ‘fascist’ (or, over here, the words ‘Thatcherite’ or ‘neoliberal’, which seem to be interchangeable.) Call someone a fascist and it’s pretty much debate over: after all, who wants to be seen having polite discussions with someone who wears jackboots and glorifies the master race? If you don’t like environmentalists, you call them ‘sandal-wearers’ or ‘Romantics’ or ‘hippies,’ or maybe just ‘communists.’ If environmentalists don’t like you they might call you a ‘corporate stooge’ or even a ‘nimby’ (ironically, since this is a term dreamt up by a corporate PR machine with the express purpose of discrediting environmentalists.) And so on.
Dark Mountain has had plenty of TODs thrown at it over the last year. We can’t really complain, and we shouldn’t blow our own trumpet too much either. Anyone who writes or speaks about the likelihood of a depleted future, and the false hope peddled by those whose various schemes for avoiding it are looking more ragged by the day, will be showered in TODs. TODs come into play when things are being said that are a threat to the inherent psychological assumptions of the listener. If you talk about the likely crumbling of our way of life, and ongoing crumbling ecosystems of the Earth on which we depend, you will have TODs thrown at you like rocks. Some of them will be from the business-as-usual crowd, but others will be from people who consider themselves campaigners for change, mainstream (albeit corporate) greens, and even radicals. Sometimes their tone will be mocking and sometimes it will be pious: they will huff and puff and call you ‘irresponsible’ for daring to publicly discuss what you believe to be the facts. You will find that your very desire to discuss these things, precisely because they are difficult, is not only called into question but is violently attacked.
There are all sorts of undercurrents at play here. One of them is that many people who consider themselves to be radical opponents of the status quo are nothing of the sort. George Orwell famously wrote, with typical over-statement, that ‘every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed’ and there’s certainly some of this going on today. It’s easy to rail against ‘the system’ if you think the system will always be there to rail against. If you start to believe that it might actually crumble, exposing you and yours to something much more uncertain and horrible, you may, in a very short time, find yourself converted into a reluctant but stout defender of the strength and vitality of the status quo. I’ve seen this happening to a few prominent green voices in the last couple of years, and there’ll be more of it to come.
But the main point, I think, is this: that when you are called a ‘doomer’ or a ‘collapsitarian’ or a ‘miserabalist’ or any of the other playground names that are currently doing the rounds, it is not you that is being attacked: it is the facts which are piling up to illustrate what is happening around us. I am currently reading Bill McKibben’s new book Eaarth, which I strongly recommend: it’s an important book, not least because it’s the first time that a prominent mainstream green writer has broken ranks. I’ll write more about it here when I’ve finished it, but McKibben’s essential point is that decline is already with us and that our task now is not to try and prevent the decline of industrial civilisation but to do our best to manage the descent.
The first third of McKibben’s book wraps up all the evidence you could possibly need to make this case, with hundreds of references. He explains the over-complexity of industrial systems, makes a strong case for peak oil and the inability of alternatives to fossil fuels to sustain anything like current levels of western comfort, looks at the likely retrenchment of economic globalisation and, most of all, scares the shit out of you with the ongoing realities of climate change which, in almost every single studied case, is moving much faster and more alarmingly than scientists had imagined. Climate change, says McKibben is not, as so much empty rhetoric would have it, a scary legacy that will face ‘our grandchildren’ if we don’t ‘act now.’ It was a problem for our parents: they didn’t tackle it, neither will we and the result is to all intents and purposes a new planet: one which will not act the way the Earth has acted for the 10,000 years in which we built our various civilisations. All bets on the future are off. It’s too late to go back.
I read and talk a lot about this stuff, but Eaarth still scares me. Part of me would like to be able to insult McKibben: throw some TODs at him and hope he goes away. But he’s too canny a writer and too good a researcher for that. That won’t stop some people trying. The ironic thing, for me, is that both ‘doomers’ and anti-doomers seem to want certainty. Doomers apparently long for the apocalypse. They want revenge on the world, or they want poor people to die, or they want to lead a revolution to erase the memory of their teenage acne (the tenor of the cod psychology at this point will depend upon the imagination and personal background of the name-caller.) Their critics, conversely, long to be told that everything will work out fine: that the life they know will keep on keeping on, that the tech will save us as it always has, that those who think it won’t are motivated by sour motives, or are just idiots.
The third possibility – that of a decline, painful and in many ways horrible, but far from unprecedented and also presenting opportunities – is the hardest notion of all to consider. It requires hard thinking, and action to negotiate challenges, and it doesn’t offer up any easy answers. It means that there’s no ‘cleansing catastrophe’ and no voyages to the stars. It might not work, and we don’t know how it will pan out. Neither pieties nor rude words can help negotiate it.
it is very evident that climate change is already taking effect in this decade”~
@wolfbird
Big questions.
To me there is no magic bullet as many would like to believe. We’ll have to muddle through, making it up as we go along.
Humans love to dress things up and complicate it. Especially the crazies. Keep it simple. Does it serve us and our world?
This whole business will evolve. At the end hopefully there will be some good people left holding the torch.
@ Lauren
“…in our current cultural climate, people will do almost anything to distract themselves from the issues and the facts that ought to matter. The great majority of people spend almost all their time discussing issues about which it is close to impossible to obtain a complete version of the facts, issues which are largely irrelevant in any case — when facts which are staring them in the face, and which carry unmistakably significant implications, are completely ignored.
If you have followed me along thus far, I think you might agree that this phenomenon is one worthy of note. One might well wonder at this point: what could possibly explain this studied refusal to acknowledge what is staring one in the face? Why would so many people be so resistant to facing what is plainly right in front of them? And the majority of people will not even acknowledge the existence of this problem: they will not admit that they are ignoring a crucial topic that is lying in plain view.
Nonetheless, they are. When the world continues to hurtle to what may well be its destruction, and when people refuse to even acknowledge what is happening, you are witnessing a worldwide version of The Big Lie: the lie is so huge, that its very size prevents people from identifying what it is right there in front of them, screaming the fact of its existence in their face.”
http://thesacredmoment.blogspot.com/2004/02/roots-of-horror-instilling-obedience.html
@freewilie
“Big questions.”
“Keep it simple.”
Life. Death. Beans. Forest gardening. I think it’s good to cultivate inner spiritual strength, Qi Gong or similar related techniques, to develop resources to cope with shock and adversity.
@ Lauren
Gavin Schmidt supports your line. IMO, he’s one of the best climatologists and I respect his integrity.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100812/ap_on_sc/us_sci_climate_breakdown
“The U.N.’s network of climate scientists — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — has long predicted that rising global temperatures would produce more frequent and intense heat waves, and more intense rainfalls. In its latest assessment, in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning panel went beyond that. It said these trends “have already been observed,” in an increase in heat waves since 1950, for example.
Still, climatologists generally refrain from blaming warming for this drought or that flood, since so many other factors also affect the day’s weather.
Stott and NASA’s Gavin Schmidt at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said it’s better to think in terms of odds: Warming might double the chances for a heat wave, for example. “That is exactly what’s happening,” Schmidt said, “a lot more warm extremes and less cold extremes.”
The WMO did point out, however, that this summer’s events fit the international scientists’ projections of “more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming.”
More transhumanism.
Personally, I think those people ( Kurzweil, et al ) are mentally deranged. They have no respect for the Universe, or life on Earth which produced us, or for what may be in the interests of sentient beings, they are totally obsessed with their own egomania, their self-important hubristic fantasies, and they assume they have a right to inflict all that crap upon the rest of us…
I rewatched the Zeitgeist stuff the other day. That’s the same. A slick, expensive, polished marketing spiel, for a techno-utopian fantasy, makes the whole planet into a meaningless plastic Disney theme park .
“Images of transhuman and posthuman figures, hybrids and chimeras, robots and nanobots became uncannily real, blurring further the distinction between science and science fiction. Now, no one says a given innovation can’t happen; the naysayers simply argue that it shouldn’t. But if the proliferating future scenarios no longer seem like science fiction, they are not exactly fact either—not yet. They are still stories about the future and they are stories about science, though they can no longer be banished to the bantustans of unlikely sci-fi. In a promise-oriented world of fast-paced technological change, prediction is the new basis of authority.
That is why futurist groups, operating thus far on the margins of cultural conversation, were thrust into the most significant discussions of the twenty-first century: What is biological, what artificial? Who owns life when it’s bred in the lab? Should there be cut off-lines to technological interventions into life itself, into our DNA, our neurological structures, or those of our foodstuffs? What will happen to human rights when the contours of what is human become blurred through technology?”
http://maisonneuve.org/pressroom/article/2010/aug/2/intelligent-universe/
And re freewilie’s previous point, about environmentalist’s naive inability to see where they’re being led… you know, we want clean power, to limit global warming, so what happens ? It’s used as an excuse, greenwashing, to clear even more virgin rain forest for palm oil monoculture, it’s used as an excuse to force people who are already living with low eco-footprints off their land, to build more meg-dam hydroelectric projects…
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/08/giant-hydroelectric-dams-pushing-tribes.html
It’s the logic of the system. That’s why unciv is the way to go.
IMO, transhumanism is just another way to do denial. There are so many of them nowadays. We all hurt from all the destruction of life. So some people go… bring it on! Destroy it all and turn it all into machines! Kinda a perverse way to mourn…
@ mr wolfbird
Are you using semantic issues about the definition of truth to avoid pursuing it? You make some interesting points, but it was you who in the first place professed to be speaking of “hard scientific insights”. I think careful reasoning, precise scrutiny of arguments is important. “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters” etc. You give a lot of links, but no really solid, sound arguments. I don’t like Adam Curtis’s documentaries for exactly this reason.
If we are simply in story wars; how am I to separate the good stories from the bad. I presume you don’t think all stories are as good as each other?
How would you define ‘truth’ Dan ?
Yes, if we want to deal with something where science is applicable, then fine, science is the best approach. An example would be the discovery of bacteria. Science can establish causal relationships which are solid, testable and repeatable.
But science can only address a limited area. That is, stuff that can be measured. Much of what is most important to human beings is not quantifiable by any scientific methodologies. Beauty, fun, fulfillment, alienation, desire, wisdom, etc, all evade scientific analysis. Science can tell us ‘how’ things in the universe work, but cannot offer any insight into why it exists, what meaning or purpose it may have, or how we should relate to it. Why is there anything at all, when it might be more logical for nothing whatsoever to exist ?
As I said before, this whole DM thing is about human culture. If you watched Adam Curtis review of Russia and America during the 20th C. both put their faith in science and attempted to apply it to social issues and human culture. I suggest both produced grotesque results. Did we learn anything ? Not if what you seem to be saying is anything to go by. That’s why I gave you a hard time earlier in these comments. I think it’s pathetic to repeat the same mistakes all over again.
Story wars ? Well, let’s think about that. We’re not going to settle it here, in this tiny text box, because folks have been hammering away at it ever since Protagoras and Plato. I take Nietzsche’s position, perspectivism, there is no ‘truth’, only many interpretations. You can select your favoured interpretation according to your purpose. I suggest American culture is dominated by pragmatic utilitarianism, that is, it selects interpretations that ‘work’. But just because something ‘works’ that doesn’t mean it’s ultimately true or right.
Remember, we’re not talking science now. We’re talking stories. We can’t apply rigorous double-bind tests for verification.
Selecting between stories used to be much easier, because you probably only heard one, the meta-narrative that was taught by parents and local soceity, e.g. the Bible. In this post-modern world, it’s become almost impossibly difficult. Where do you stand on UFOs, for example. Or chi ? Or homosexuality, or human cloning, or ghosts, or hiphop ? or any of the anomalous contentious phenomena on the borderlines of acceptability ?
They are all stories. They all have some sort of cultural impact. The arguments are interminable because they cannot be resolved by any final arbiter, in the way that scientific or legal disputes can be settled. It’s simply impossible to ‘prove’ that say, Cinderella is a better story than Little Red Ridinghood, or that Yeats is a better poet than Keats or that The Third Man is a better movie than Casablanca.
This problem, hermeneutics, was clear to philosophers in the 19thC. and people struggle with it all the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics
If you seriously want to know how I resolve it, personally, I can tell you, FWIW.
I’m a zen buddhist. I suggest that zen is an ideology for gaining liberation from all ideologies. That is, liberation from ALL the stories.
There is a danger here of adopting a victim mentality, if it hasn’t happened already. Let’s not bandy acronyms here, you are saying those throwing “TODs” are deniers, which is the same type of labelling you are talking about.
Your premise is that you are correct, and they are wrong. Therefore the reason they throw insults must be to hide their lack of counter-argument.
You base your argument on the likes of McGibben, what if he is plain wrong? The feeling of being sure you are right is what leads to entrenchment of views. It’s only when people ask “am I wrong?” that barriers to communication are broken down. That applies equally to the “pro” or “anti” side.
It’s true that unpalatable truths are often met with insults. However, that does not necessarily imply that if you get insults, what you are saying must be true.
@ Bob Cousins
McGibben ? You might at least try to get the name right, or am I wrong ?
And what if he’s plain right ? You willing to bet the planet, the future of life on Earth, the future of everyone’s children ?
“McGibben ? You might at least try to get the name right, or am I wrong ?”
LOL, relax dude, typos happen.
“And what if he’s plain right ? You willing to bet the planet, the future of life on Earth, the future of everyone’s children ?”
I guess humans are making thousands of species of extinct, but we have seen such events before. It’s a philosophical and moral question as to whether those species have an inherent value, and that is it wrong to knowingly destroy them. I can’t really get into that, but as a scientist I would observe similar extinctions events have happened before, and life is pretty good at adapting.
I also find it interesting the framing of the question, it attempts to cover all bets. Surely everyone cares either about Nature or humanity, or both? Similar framing comes up frequently when discussing green issues. “if not for it’s own sake, we should care about Nature because people depend on it”
As it happens, I can’t really care about either. What happens will happen, and I am certainly powerless to cause or prevent such global events. I’m afraid your Jedi guilt trip won’t work on me
The problem I have with these apocalyptic predictions is that many have been made before, and they have all proved to have been based on faulty assumptions. I also think anyone claiming to predict the future of a complex system with any certainty must have impeccable grounds or is very probably mistaken. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
The IPCC are probably the only group able to claim sufficient grounds for their findings, but their predictions are still somewhat uncertain and limited to climate.
People who have studied carrying capacity and concluded that we are due for imminent die-off are no where near close to providing sufficient proof, at best it’s scientifically based speculation.
I think in general though, people are willing to bet the planet. Industrial civilisation is a gamble (as intelligent life itself is an evolutionary gamble). “Going apocalyptic” is not going to persuade them of anything, even if it was provably true. Look at how people react to AGW. It looks like AGW will inadvertently ended the current Ice Age. We might be back to conditions when dinosaurs lived in the Antarctic.
Sitting on my rock, I am thinking “this’ll be interesting, I wonder what happens…” Unfortunately I won’t be around for the next million or so years to find out.
“As it happens, I can’t really care about either [nature or humanity].”
And how does that feel, Bob? Or do you figure you are a psychopath?
I am with you on general predictioneering. McKibben is doing a big “yank your chain” and frankly, I don’t see any indication that this strategy is working to wake most humans. Surely there are other strategies apart from pummeling people with horribleness and fear?
@Bob Cousins
“I guess humans are making thousands of species of extinct, but we have seen such events before.”
No, “we” haven’t. We were not there. This time it’s different because it’s the direct result of our human activity. It’s a choice.
“It’s a philosophical and moral question as to whether those species have an inherent value, and that is it wrong to knowingly destroy them.”
It’s also a practical choice. The ecosystems, composed of the various species, provide services upon which we depend.
It’s also a philosophical and moral question whether you have any inherent value. Would you object to your own destruction ?
“I can’t really get into that, but as a scientist I would observe similar extinctions events have happened before, and life is pretty good at adapting.”
Yes, 99% of species that ever lived, are extinct, isn’t that right ? But still no justification for causing the extinction of species which have survived. Yes, life is good at adapting, but the changes we are causing are to fast to permit adaptation.
“I also find it interesting the framing of the question, it attempts to cover all bets. Surely everyone cares either about Nature or humanity, or both? Similar framing comes up frequently when discussing green issues. “if not for it’s own sake, we should care about Nature because people depend on it”
As it happens, I can’t really care about either. What happens will happen, and I am certainly powerless to cause or prevent such global events. I’m afraid your Jedi guilt trip won’t work on me ”
I think I’m rather glad I don’t know you. You seem to be somewhat callous, complacent, smug, no sense of moral responsibility. As for ‘Jedi guilt trip’, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
“The problem I have with these apocalyptic predictions is that many have been made before, and they have all proved to have been based on faulty assumptions. I also think anyone claiming to predict the future of a complex system with any certainty must have impeccable grounds or is very probably mistaken. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
They are not extraordinary claims. The extraordinary thing is that people are persuaded that the extraordinary geo-engineering we are doing is somehow normal and acceptable.
“The IPCC are probably the only group able to claim sufficient grounds for their findings, but their predictions are still somewhat uncertain and limited to climate.”
In many cases have been shown to have underestimated the speed of the effects.
“People who have studied carrying capacity and concluded that we are due for imminent die-off are no where near close to providing sufficient proof, at best it’s scientifically based speculation.”
So, you want to wait until it’s too late to avoid, and when the die off has happened, you’ll be satisfied, ‘case proven’ ?
In any case, ‘proof’ is a philosophical and mathematical concept, not a scientific one. Carl Sagan’s ‘extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof’ is obsolete.
“I think in general though, people are willing to bet the planet.”
Seems so. Do they realise that though ? Do the appreciate there is a choice ? Seems you don’t believe in free will or that the future is decided by what we do know now, and how we respond.
” Industrial civilisation is a gamble (as intelligent life itself is an evolutionary gamble).”
Is it ? You’re speaking from a God’s Eye view, I presume ?
“Going apocalyptic” is not going to persuade them of anything, even if it was provably true.”
I have said, I don’t think that there is anything that can be done, other than witnessing. However, I still try, as a matter of self-respect.
“Look at how people react to AGW. It looks like AGW will inadvertently ended the current Ice Age.”
What current Ice Age ? We are in the Holocene, between Ice Ages.
“We might be back to conditions when dinosaurs lived in the Antarctic.
Sitting on my rock, I am thinking “this’ll be interesting, I wonder what happens…” Unfortunately I won’t be around for the next million or so years to find out.”
Well, I have maybe 20 years to watch this mess unfold. There were some scientists with PhDs predicting exactly what we are seeing, (extreme weather events, Russia burning, loss of phytoplankton, methane from melting permafrost, etc, etc) 30 years ago, and they met exactly the kind of responses you make. if action had been taken then this whole climate chaos mess could have been avoided.
“I think I’m rather glad I don’t know you. You seem to be somewhat callous, complacent, smug, no sense of moral responsibility. As for ‘Jedi guilt trip’, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
LOL, there we go with the name calling. Great way to win people over. You seem to be arrogant, stupid, blinkered and ill mannered, so I’ll leave it there.
Good luck with the doom thing
And how does that feel, Bob? Or do you figure you are a psychopath?
Like a visitor from another planet. Detached, and therefore totally objective.
I do have a sense of morals, but I don’t feel responsible for the actions of 6 billion other people. If humans want my advice, I would suggest we stop screwing up the planet, but people don’t ask. Their problem, not mine. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people absolutely sure they are right and will call you names if you tell them things they don’t want to hear… you know the drill.
wolfbird writes:
What current Ice Age ? We are in the Holocene, between Ice Ages.
“Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres;[1] by this definition we are still in the ice age that began at the start of the Pleistocene (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist)”
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
You might at least try to get your facts right.
@Bob Cousins
“LOL, there we go with the name calling. Great way to win people over. You seem to be arrogant, stupid, blinkered and ill mannered, so I’ll leave it there.”
Well, thanks for the, erm, constructive contribution to this discussion, Bob Cousins. I may well be all of the above. At least I know we are not in ‘the current Ice Age’, which leaves me wondering what sort of a scientist you think you are.
You haven’t said anything new or interesting, you’ve just come across as the typical ‘detached, objective’, the living dead, no ability to empathise, Cartesian psychopathology, you know, the scientific tradition of that brilliant genius Descartes who cut up live dogs while insisting to his neighbours, who complained about the screaming and howling, that they couldn’t possibly feel any pain because they were just machines without any soul.
I’d say you are part of the problem, not part of the answer. Why would i want to waste energy to win you over ? It would take a miracle, or years of therapy, but it’s not for me to judge you, the readers can take their own impression, and you’re the one who has to live with you, so good luck with that, kid.
“Do we as a society really care about anything but our own lives ? Are we capable of seeing further into the future than tomorrow ?”
http://www.countercurrents.org/steve150810.htm
To Wolfbird and others of similar persuasion.For goodness sake shut up!!! It seems to me that a few people are going to wreck the whole Dark Mountain thing by indulging in a series of self indulgent rants, “articles”, etc which to my mind are not discussions.
@Dorothy Keys
Hahaha, have you decided to appoint yourself as moderator, Dorothy ? What would you like to discuss ?
Bob: “[I feel...] Like a visitor from another planet. Detached, and therefore totally objective.”
But that’s an evasion, right, along with the wink? So… how do you really feel about the planet and nature?
Wolfbird, we are still in the Pleistocene, technically speaking, so Bob is right. Pleistocene = epoch of the Ice Age. Holocene is simply one of the interglacials. (I know that the scientists have decided by a fiat that Pleistocene ended 12,000 or so years ago, but it didn’t really, geologically speaking. The epoch of the Ice Age continues… unless something new and abrupt happens, we have another ice age heading our way.
@vera
I’ve been through the ‘totally objective scientist’ crap more often than I care to recall. It’s junk. We’re humans. Some people think that by ‘being objective’ they are somehow getting purer insight into reality ( whatever that is ), but all they have really done is denied and repressed a part of themselves, making themselves into some sort of crippled version of what it means to be truly human…
I don’t accept Bob is right about anything, hahaha, the glaciers have covered this mountain where I live, many times, and there’s no sign of them here tonight, so I’m not living in the middle of an Ice Age, this was the Holocene, but something new and abrupt did indeed happen, we burned all that oil and coal and cut down all those forests, so we’ve upset the cycle, and it’s now the Anthropocene…. the climatologists can tell us when the next Ice Age would have been due, if nature had followed it’s course, but now all bets are off…
http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2010/08/ice-sheet-in-greenland-melting-at.html
I’ve been told I’m stupid, ill mannered, self-indulgent, etc, hahaha, whatever next ? Good thing I’m not a fragile, tender plant, eh.
Wolfbird: read my lips. Nothing happened to usher in the Holocene, apart from the last ice age finally letting up. Civilization’s hubris said, oh, this is “us” so let’s pretend that this is an altogether different thing from the Pleistocene; we deserve to name our own age! Bunkum, my friend.
Will burning all that oil etc. bring the end of the Ice Age Epoch? Maybe. Maybe not. Trying to outguess the future is an unrewarding undertaking.
Well, I don’t know, vera, we seem to be viewing this Ice Age thingee in very different ways… I’m going on what I have read about written by the climatologists. The Holocene was/is a remarkably stable benign period, between Ice Ages, which permitted humans to move northwards, and to develop agriculture and cities, which lead to the present situation, so-called civilization.
It’s not that hard to guess the future, is it ? much of it is simple cause and effect. The Greenland ice melts, the sea level rises, etc. That can all be predicted with some precision.
Where do we differ? Yes, Holocene is what you say it is. It is also what I say it is. (?)
Yes, global warmings and melting ice and seas rising… it happens all the time in the history of Gaia. It was damn hot several times in the Holocene. It was brutally hot in the interglacial before this one… hippos swam in the Thames. That’s how the planet goes. Whether humans cause it, or volcanoes cause it, or the sun flares, or some other thing, it has been happening with regularity.
Can we please move on? We have an agreement about the general mess. Why this temptation to keep on dwelling on one facet of it, and demand exact agreement?
Oh, I think the apparent disagreement is only looking at in through different time scales…
Yes, Snowball Earth, Pangaea, Gondwana….
I think that this ‘thing’, we call it world or Earth or planet.. or, looking outward towards the heavens, Cosmos or Universe… is unutterably, inexpressibly, awesome and mysterious. We know *nothing*. All that we have are the descriptions of certain processes, gleaned by science over a few centuries, which give some insights into some aspects of what surrounds us. If anything, that little that we do know, makes it even more weird and peculiar. So, why don’t we all wonder around zonkled by the wonder and strangeness of it all ? How do we manage to make that staggering magnificent miraculous ‘thing’, where we live, into a drab boring dull place where we need tv and computers and movies and holidays to make life ‘interesting’ ? It’s like a kind of disease that afflicts people and turns them into zombies…
“Snowball Earth, Pangaea, Gondwana….”
I don’t want to create a misunderstanding. I am talking 100,000 years ago. Continents in place, several species of humans roaming about. You know… our world. It was so hot there for a while that hyenas and lions hunted all over Europe along with the neanderthals.
Anyways. Zombies. You know, I prefer to think of them as little as possible. I am finding myself thinking a *lot* about the dicks, though.
@vera
Erm, ‘dicks’, as in the male organ, or as in a term of dismissal for stupid people, vera ?
Yes, I know about the lions and hyaenas and so forth…
I think It’s interesting to think about the Earth, prior to any humans, say, 10 million years ago. What was it then ? In the absence of human mental conceptions. Did it have meaning, any meaning, or was it meaningless, until we came along and created a meaning for it ?
How could it be correct to say that it had no meaning, when it had the potential to produce us ?
Or, perhaps it is correct, if our own existence is meaningless. Which, I suppose, is the point that Sartre and Camus arrived at, some half a century ago….
I don’t share that viewpoint. For me, it’s deeply meaningful, I’m not separate, I’m comfortably embedded. But that’s because this area is not densely populated, has been relatively poor and remote, for a long time, so there’s not been much reason, or the resources, to make the changes that have obliterated the ancestral traces, the workings of previous generations, in other areas. It’s a scruffy neglected corner, where the marks and remnants of some seven thousand years of human activity are a reminder of this period, since the glaciers melted away.
Maybe that’s the story which invokes, conjures up, some of the meaning…the palimpsest.
If I look out of my window at the panorama of countryside, hills, houses, woodland, sky, the falling rain…
Nobody knows what that is. All we have done is to apply labels to particular features. Those labels, names, descriptions, are useful to allow communication amongst ourselves. But they don’t explain anything whatsoever… do they.
We overlay a patchwork of words, symbols, sounds, to re-present the character of the landscape in an intelligible fashion. We forget the artificial expedient imposition of our mapping, mistake the finger pointing for the actual moon that it is pointing towards. Ultimately, ‘it’ remains a total and inexplicable mystery.
Contemporary culture seems to have completely lost sight of that fact, the mystery. Anything out there is seen as, well, just ’stuff’, and we unconsciously assume we are free, indeed, have the right, to alter or change it in any way we wish…
“Erm, ‘dicks’, as in the male organ, or as in a term of dismissal for stupid people, vera ?”
Heh. Not a term of dismissal… more like a term to wake up and smell the coffee… and no, dicks are not necessarily stupid at all. There are many very smart dicks. I think I’ll have to write a post about it.
I never did buy the whole thing about no meaning… It’s amazing and sad how much philosophy is self-indulgent armchair babble…
Oh, I love reading good philosophy, I think it’s sad how little of the understandings of philosophers has filtered out into mainstream soceity where so much rubbish is spoken…
I mean, philosophy is just thinking, trying to think rigorously, about life and what’s good and what’s bad, and so forth, isn’t it ? Everybody does it, only some people are better at it than others and get called philosophers… some of ‘em get a bit carried away, that’s for sure, but it’s a hard, dangerous task, to think about what has not been thought of before… epistemology, ontology, ethics, hermeneutics, I love it
Some favourites…
“We all perform actions. And whether or not we reflect on the kinds of actions we think we should perform, the kinds of principles we think we should live by, or the kinds of persons we think we should be, we will end up performing some actions and not others, living in accordance with certain principles, and developing a particular character. It will be true of one person that she ruthlessly pursues her own interests; of another that she drifts along, allowing her actions to be determined by the preferences of those around her; of another that she tries to preserve her image of herself as ‘virtuous’ only as long as it is not too inconvenient to do so; and of another that she tries to respond to others with generosity and honesty and respect, even when this is difficult. Even someone who tries to live by no principles at all — say, by flipping coins instead of making choices — still lives by the principle of allowing her actions to be determined by chance.
This being the case, it makes sense to try to figure out which principles we think should try to live by and which sorts of persons we think we should try to be, just as the fact that we will probably have to earn our living by doing something gives us reason to try to figure out which job we want and to try to get it. If we don’t think about which job we would like to end up with, we might find ourselves spending eight hours a day doing something we hate, when a little forethought would have prevented this. Similarly, if we do not try to figure out which principles should guide our actions, we could wind up needlessly living by principles we find odious.”
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/03/about_morality.html
Gödel
http://www.slate.com/id/2114561/
Mary Midgely
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Midgley
Krishnamurti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvz3BdB2EE
Wittgenstein, ” What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
That’s one of the best lines in all of Western philosophy, IMO. There’s only so far that thinking thoughts can take you… after that, what ? Well, that’s where zen comes to our rescue, to take us beyond the limitations of language and thinking, to go much, much deeper…
http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Zen.html
So now I’ll shut up….
( for a little while, anyway
)
Gotta look all that up?! Brother…
Meanwhile, check out my strike against dickery.
http://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/dickology/
@ vera
Don’t think I go along with your dickology analysis and argument, vera. Did it arise from my exchange with Bob Cousins ?
Seems that there’s a good argument to be made, that, if you wish to persuade people to change their mind, then some methods work better than others, sure. And a polite, respectful conversation is preferable to flinging insults, at least amongst friends.
However, this is ‘teh internets’, millions of rabid egos shouting, the epitome of the Tower of Babel… There are some obscenities that people *should* get furious about, like the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, like the Israelis killing Palestinian children with white phosphorous, like Monsanto trying to control the global food supply, like the Arctic ice cap melting… swearing and cursing people you hate and loathe and despise is appropriate sometimes, etc, etc… but throwing language at another person is basic human stuff, and if you think that another person’s mind can be changed by a rational, logical, reasoned explanation… well, good luck with that, it’s worth a try…
IMHO, Bob Cousin’s fundamental world view is mistaken. Is he going to change it because of anything I write in a text comment ? Doesn’t work like that, does it.
I can explain *why* I believe he is mistaken, if that helps, but, of course, it doesn’t.
FWIW, it’s a fundamental premise of the deep ecology platform that belief in an objective comprehension of nature ( as Bob indicated, ‘detached and objective’ ) is like belief in a flat world seen from above, without depth, and that such cool, disembodied detachment is an illusion, and a primary cause of our destructive relation to the world. ( That’s taken from Arne Naess ).
In other words, to be ‘objective’ makes the person into an object, less than fully human…
In other words, the Enlightenment project, since Bacon and Descartes, which believed that ‘truth’ is dis-covered via reason *alone* isn’t capable of fixing the mess we are in.
Even if Bob, or some other person, found those lines persuasive and convincing, all they are is a few intellectual pointers, easily forgotten. Really, to understand what deep ecology is about means some discovery of a deeper transformation of outlook, something that stirs or shakes the whole being, the reward for a long, profound, arduous quest towards what it really means to be a human being.
I looked at some of your reference links…
“I used to believe telepathy was real, or at least plausible. I remember being frustrated that the county library didn’t have any books on developing one’s telepathic talents. What started me down the road to not believing in telepathy anymore was my science teacher in Junior High telling me it didn’t work. He didn’t insult me or anything, he just told me that it didn’t exist. Here was someone I respected, an authority figure, telling me my belief was wrong. I didn’t believe him right away; it would take a year or two more, but he gave me a push in the right direction.”
http://www.ooblick.com/weblog/2010/07/14/the-dont-be-a-dick-heard-round-the-world/
That’s a good example.
I completely disagree with the conclusion. I also followed that path. Then I learned what telepathy really is, and I make use of it . I also learned that trying to discuss it with anyone is a total waste of time. The best response, if I must make one, is to say ‘It works for me..’ and leave it at that.
The idea that the *only* way towards understanding is via rational thought, is a delusion, a fundamental mistake. I could add ‘IMO’, but it’s NOT opinion. It’s practical experience. It’s beyond words, really, beyond thought, perhaps could be expressed by the idea ‘a change of heart’… which leads to a change in one’s sense of identity, one’s place in the scheme of things…
What causes such a change ? What could cause such a change ?
Consider the questions Theresa Kintz raises in her foreword to Zerzan’s Running on Emptiness :
“It is in this context that we are then forced to consider the following questions: What are
the origins of this estrangement ? Why do we ignore the nature of our own bodies and
minds ? Who decided we needed mechanization, electricity, nuclear power, automobiles
or computer technology ? Has one single man-made item been a necessary improvement
on the earth ? Why do we put the survival of all species on the planet in peril for our
exclusive comfort and gratification ? How did we come to dedicate our lives to
maintaining this mad tangle of supply and demand that we call civilization ? And finally,
what will it take for us to give up on the artificiality of our grim modern lives and cleave
instead to what is natural ? ”
http://www.archive.org/stream/RunningOnEmptiness_564/ROE_djvu.txt
What a lovely rant, wolfbird. Sweet. Little to disagree with, though I am rather heartbroken you did not agree with dickology! Sniff, double sniff!
Gosh no, it was not precipitated by your exchange with Bob, which was quite mild mannered. It is part of my larger project, which intends to look at the world run over by dicks, trolls, psychopaths and other denizens of the netherworld and figure out what to do. Recognition seems to me the basic first step, eh?
Anyways, I quite agree with your take on the “objective” God eye’s view that has proliferated the last several hundred years.
Is attacking persons sometimes appropriate? Yes. I would call it a strategy of last resort. Because it’s war, isn’t it. And if we want to build a world where war on other people — even in words — is not readily resorted to, don’t we have to cultivate an exchange that builds another way to relate, even within despicable situations?
You bring up the issue of trying to get people to change their minds. I am in the middle of rethinking this as well. It seems to me that “trying to change other people” is part of the domination paradigm. I am starting to back away from it to see what may evolve, where I am available to those who are ready to change their own minds. Eh… wolfbird, if I had a penny for each instance where over the years I have spent arguing with someone, trying to get them to see what seemed obvious to me, I’d be a rich woman. It was fun, sometimes, and taught me a lot about argumentation itself, but looking back, I doubt that it accomplished much for the other person.
So to answer your challenge: I don’t think reasoned argument works very well to change people’s minds. Neither, however, does biting the other person’s head off.
I think Theresa Kintz’s paragraph would be a worthy catalyst for a whole future volume of Dark Mountain Journal. Did “we” decide all those things? Or were individual human beings forced into it by the logic of the system? Fascinating stuff.
@ vera
This covers the argument topic rather well…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y
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