Your angst is palpable. When you grasp that human exceptionalism is a myth, and that we are on auto-pilot as are all species, perhaps you will relax a bit and accept the self-cull were have entered as inevitable. Between wars over resources and ideologies, and the increasing negative feedback from our explosive population growth with fossil fueled technologies, weak links are breaking in many places globally. There is no avoiding this I can envision. Jay Hanson saw it coming two decades ago. See: jayhansonsdieoff.net
Thanks for your comment. It’s good that I am transmitting some emotion through this thing. I would say I have a fair grasp of what I often refer to as “the tidal wave of history”, but I think there is more to this than just “auto-pilot”, as there’s still a lot we can do to choose the paths we walk down, individually and in groups. I had a crack at the whole Zen resignation thing a while back and found I preferred to be in amongst things as the human I am. Personally, and as I touched on in this piece, if I wasn’t responding with something like angst from time to time I would be checking my heartbeat, and my privilege.
Thanks Andy, more thought provoking stuff. I'm not sure I see the functional division of science and indigenous knowledge as quite so didactic, I think it's conflaited with cultural norms and the power dynamics of our times. Look how western civilization exercises it's religeous beliefs. Generally speaking they're a gross corruption of the written instructions outside of Amish communities and their equivalents. I think this mangling of intent is the same basic process that allows peer reviewed science to continue to contribute more to our doom than our future if we just look at the near-term. I too have more hope than is probably wise for the degrowth movement, mostly because I can't imagine a scenario where the observable facts of our predicament don't make a shift in that direction inevitable but that's hopelessly naive and overlooks the zero-sum logic most of our society leaders subscribe to. The question I am now asking myself with increasing frequency is one you touch on repeatedly: if you know that catastrophic climate change is already locked in (let's face it, we've sailed merrily past 1.5 with no evidence whatsoever of actually attempting to reduce gross carbon emmissions or reign in any other the other drivers of our poly-crisis) and that our ecological overshoot is starting to bite with the societal and ecological consequences that come with that, what is the most sane course of bahaviour? It feels antisocial to stop waving the warning flags but there's also the need for a social statement of rejection of the status quo. The more I think about this the more I wonder if it's not a critical aspect of giving ourselves a sense of functional hope that might extend to the wider population and contribute to signaling that a growing minority are rejecting current norms. Of course it's a fraught concept, tangled up as it would be with the disaffected that reject all authority regardless and the growing diaspora of conspiracists. What do you think?
Thanks James. I think you're definitely in the space that makes most sense to me. I tend to default to something like "pursue life". I have things I need to do now around family commitments etc, and limitations that come with that. Then I have things I need to do personally at some point to throw myself into the mix of pushing for the kind of revolutionary change that will come with enormous risk factors. The trick is ensuring I can switch roles at the appropriate time. I'm trying to educate and train myself into these more ecologically sound and emotionally stable ways of being, but I'm alive to my limitations and that a lot of this is going to be a multi-generational journey. I'll probably continue to get a lot wrong. I guess what I'm saying (mostly to myself) is "make the best possible contribution that your heart of hearts tells you to make, and then don't worry about the rest." Essentially, its something like the Serenity Prayer approach, grounded in whatever place we call our spiritual home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer or Frank Turner's Eulogy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6Yw5mU0PY
Hi Nathan, until this blog is paying my family's bills, there are certain specifics I won't be dishing out. But I've DM'd you on Facebook to gossip. :-)
Indeed. Have also been chatting to Manu Caddie on that one. Wasn't able to attend but can't comment. Like a lot of things I pick holes in, I'm still interested.
Andy,
Your angst is palpable. When you grasp that human exceptionalism is a myth, and that we are on auto-pilot as are all species, perhaps you will relax a bit and accept the self-cull were have entered as inevitable. Between wars over resources and ideologies, and the increasing negative feedback from our explosive population growth with fossil fueled technologies, weak links are breaking in many places globally. There is no avoiding this I can envision. Jay Hanson saw it coming two decades ago. See: jayhansonsdieoff.net
Thanks for your comment. It’s good that I am transmitting some emotion through this thing. I would say I have a fair grasp of what I often refer to as “the tidal wave of history”, but I think there is more to this than just “auto-pilot”, as there’s still a lot we can do to choose the paths we walk down, individually and in groups. I had a crack at the whole Zen resignation thing a while back and found I preferred to be in amongst things as the human I am. Personally, and as I touched on in this piece, if I wasn’t responding with something like angst from time to time I would be checking my heartbeat, and my privilege.
Thanks Andy, more thought provoking stuff. I'm not sure I see the functional division of science and indigenous knowledge as quite so didactic, I think it's conflaited with cultural norms and the power dynamics of our times. Look how western civilization exercises it's religeous beliefs. Generally speaking they're a gross corruption of the written instructions outside of Amish communities and their equivalents. I think this mangling of intent is the same basic process that allows peer reviewed science to continue to contribute more to our doom than our future if we just look at the near-term. I too have more hope than is probably wise for the degrowth movement, mostly because I can't imagine a scenario where the observable facts of our predicament don't make a shift in that direction inevitable but that's hopelessly naive and overlooks the zero-sum logic most of our society leaders subscribe to. The question I am now asking myself with increasing frequency is one you touch on repeatedly: if you know that catastrophic climate change is already locked in (let's face it, we've sailed merrily past 1.5 with no evidence whatsoever of actually attempting to reduce gross carbon emmissions or reign in any other the other drivers of our poly-crisis) and that our ecological overshoot is starting to bite with the societal and ecological consequences that come with that, what is the most sane course of bahaviour? It feels antisocial to stop waving the warning flags but there's also the need for a social statement of rejection of the status quo. The more I think about this the more I wonder if it's not a critical aspect of giving ourselves a sense of functional hope that might extend to the wider population and contribute to signaling that a growing minority are rejecting current norms. Of course it's a fraught concept, tangled up as it would be with the disaffected that reject all authority regardless and the growing diaspora of conspiracists. What do you think?
Thanks James. I think you're definitely in the space that makes most sense to me. I tend to default to something like "pursue life". I have things I need to do now around family commitments etc, and limitations that come with that. Then I have things I need to do personally at some point to throw myself into the mix of pushing for the kind of revolutionary change that will come with enormous risk factors. The trick is ensuring I can switch roles at the appropriate time. I'm trying to educate and train myself into these more ecologically sound and emotionally stable ways of being, but I'm alive to my limitations and that a lot of this is going to be a multi-generational journey. I'll probably continue to get a lot wrong. I guess what I'm saying (mostly to myself) is "make the best possible contribution that your heart of hearts tells you to make, and then don't worry about the rest." Essentially, its something like the Serenity Prayer approach, grounded in whatever place we call our spiritual home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer or Frank Turner's Eulogy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6Yw5mU0PY
Which session at the conference did you attend?
Hi Nathan, until this blog is paying my family's bills, there are certain specifics I won't be dishing out. But I've DM'd you on Facebook to gossip. :-)
Fair. I was hoping you weren't referring to the weekend's Beyond Growth convergence, hosted by the www.degrowth.nz guys! You weren't.
Indeed. Have also been chatting to Manu Caddie on that one. Wasn't able to attend but can't comment. Like a lot of things I pick holes in, I'm still interested.