Staring at the tsunami

https://donotpanic.substack.com/p/staring-at-the-tsunami

"We are wired to ignore the apocalypse."

#optimism #hope #doomerism #depression #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #COVID

I pledge to reduce the amount of #doomerism in my posts by 50% by 2030.

#ClimateChange #ClimateDiary

I think it works like this:

Maybe people like Obama, Bernie, AOC etc start off earnest and good.

Then one day, a gray man in a forgettable gray suit sits them down in a quiet room.

He probably says something like:

"I know you'd like to see major things change for the better, but the truth is, it's already too late. Here are the numbers we've been suppressing. No environmental efforts can stop it now. Life as we know it is already over, and if you try to tell anyone, you will only be causing a panic. Hundreds of millions of people are going to die. It's inevitable. Meanwhile, our enemies are focused on building power and they won't be slowing down to help people, so we can't afford to slow down either."

Very calm, very matter of fact.

"The best you can hope for, is to do what good you can while you're supporting the power structures that will allow us to protect a few chosen survivors. If you want your friends and family to have a safe place to go while the world burns, you'll do as you're told and keep your mouth shut. This is no time to ro rock the boat. We don't have the luxury for real democracy or progress. And if you're tempted to encourage any sort of uprising and it actually starts to get anywhere, just remember we don't mind tossing some false flags or kicking off WWIII a little early so we can declare martial law and keep the rabble in line."

"So. Just tell people what they need to hear in order to live out their lives in relative calm for whatever time they have left, and we'll let you look like heroes."

That's how I figure the establishment convinces otherwise basically decent intelligent humans to keep coming to heel like good little sheepdogs. This is what I believe we're dealing with.

A lot of folks talk about it as if the betrayals and sellouts are a matter of simple selfish grifting, but the thing is... We're up against the most powerful war profiteers on Earth here-- what wouldn't they do to protect their power? Let's not pretend they have scruples. Any change to the status quo threatens the purse strings of the same kinds of companies that have been building their empires from profits off of genocide, slavery, and environmental devastation for centuries. They let nations run around wearing a facade of sovereignty, rule of law, democracy etc like quaint decorations. Like the kiddy wheel you attach to your toddler's car seat so they can pretend they're steering.

They learned their lesson in the 60s-- overtly assassinating people in the streets makes us angry, so they have much more sophisticated techniques now. There's no sense massacreing protesters when you can just patiently torture and mutilate them while making sure the news tells everyone what unfocused useless violent failures they are. Why shoot someone when you can discredit them, break them, co-opt them, lock them up, suicide them, use them as an example-- there are many fates worse than death, and many many cracks for people to fall through.

It doesn't even really matter what specific cartel/mafia/gang/tycoon etc is responsible for what. I'm not going to get bogged down in those intricate conspiracy weeds wondering which people are pulling which strings or leaking what emails or what friggin hats they wear while dancing around in the Bohemian Grove eating babies and so on. This is a system, a hydra whose many many heads will always have thousands of ambitious replacements eagerly waiting in the wings, until conditions no longer support its growth.

This is how I think our world currently works. It's dark. Really fucking dark. The people who want to assume I'm just not scared enough of the Republicans or whatever, are fixating on a few small corners of a bigger picture full of horrors much worse than they can imagine.

But I want you to know, I still firmly believe that nasty gray man is LYING his vile, sociopathic ass off.

It doesn't have to be like this. Things CAN change for the better. It's a long shot, and it'll get worse before it improves, but solutions exist. There are always things we can do. The right things-- unexpected things, new things-- could set off chain reactions bringing in major paradigm shifts that can carry us to a better future.

The one certainty is change, and things are changing faster now than they ever have in the history of the world. This cruel system will fail-- its own nature is to destroy itself. We can still affect how much of the world it takes down with it as it goes.

We may as well keep trying to make something good. Ain't like we've got anything better to do.

#MineshaftGap
#Collapse
#ClimateChange
#WWIII
#Doomerism
#Sheepdoggery
#Corruption
#CorporateFeudalism
#LateStageCapitalism
#DontLetTheBastardsGrindYouDown

Very important video from Sophie From Mars on #ClimateChange, #Doomerism, how capitalism is a wyrm eating itself up, and how that may not mean the end of the world as we know it, but explores where it might go. And where we should go, and that we shouldn't do nothing about it.

If you've got a few hours to spare, make yourself a pot of tea and sit down

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalnJ-isI5A

#ClimateCrisis #Anarchism #Socialism #SophieFromMars

@norakroeger

I very much agree with your various points here, which are nicely articulated.

My feeling is that just as we are asked to look past individual bits of weather and consider climate as an aggregate over the globe and over time to have a peoper gestalt to assess, likewise we must look past individual conversations to aggregate public opinion over time.

Doing so immediately clarifies that, notwithstanding some talk that gets pejoratively labeled doomerism, the public (or at least media representation of it) is way too optimistic and oblivious. I take part of your point to be that different conversations are needed by different individuals in order to move the needle in the aggregate.

And, as well, people sometimes have that Schroedinger way of carrying incompatible thoughts of doom and hope as they assess the actual truth.

So let's leave them to their respective ways of discussing and persuading and absorbing and make sure there is a rich repository of truth available in each of these more subjective modalities.

And let's respect that climate science is not the only science needed. It establishes some bounds on timetables. It's better at telling us "at least this bad" than it is at saying "at most this bad", fir example, as recent surprises in heat and melt have shown. But psychology is a different credential, so beware the Peter Principle and the desire sometimes to speak beyond one's area of expertise.

Public policy, too, if done right, is its own credential, though prone to corruption that complicates that. So that's a messy area. But this is a big topic and such things will get messy if one wants public particioation at scale.

I guess I'll close by agreeing further with your implicit plea that people who are mostly politically aligned don't bleed away energy bickering about micro approaches. Assume good faith on the part of others and spend energy moving forward instead where that's feasible.

#Climate #ClimateMessaging #hope #doom #doomerism

Weil gerade wieder viele Untergangsvisionen in meiner TL unterwegs sind, hier ein Artikel, der bei allem Realismus Mut macht: https://www.klimareporter.de/gesellschaft/der-weltuntergang-naht-oder-vielleicht-auch-nicht
#klimakrise #Doomerism #Hoffnung

#Anarchism #Revolution #Doomerism #Capitalism #Colonialism #Cisheteropatriarchy #Hierarchy #Internationalism #State #Solidarity #Hope #Climate #MutualAid #Resist #Individual

Something that's been on my mind for a while:

Yes, there is an overwhelming amount of violence being done by the capitalist colonial cisheteropatriarchal hierarchical state system. Yes, we as individuals can only be aware of the tip of the iceberg. Yes, what we do to resist, what we see others doing to resist, is small in impact and won't be enough.

But there's so, so much more resistance going on, by millions of anarchists all around the world, that we'll never know about as individuals. Accumulations of small things, spontaneous things, as well as organized, sustained, revolutionary efforts by anarchists whose names we'll never know. And we won't always ever see the impacts they're having on the world, either, especially if it's in a community far away. But even in you own community, you might not know what other anarchists are doing if it's not safe for them to be public about it. Every time we learn about a new movement or action, it's proof: our experience of resistance, too, is necessarily the tip of the iceberg. On it's own, your or my spreading of radical understanding, guerrilla gardening the neighborhood, or building a mutual aid system isn't going to end domination and establish an anarchist society. But the sum total of everyone's actions of resistance over time, developed into a plurality of cohesive revolutionary struggles, might very well.

This is not an excuse to do nothing, and leave everything to everyone else. This is a reason to do something, and know that there's real hope. So, instead of resigning myself to doomerist thinking about the trajectory of the world, I'm choosing to be inspired by my comrades I'll never get to know about. And, I'm choosing to do what I can to learn about revolutionary struggles I don't know much about, and lend my support in whatever ways I can, while resisting in my own community however I can.

#Doomerism is both an easy and effective way to resolve the cognitive dissonance related to how you benefit from the destruction of nature.

When you get yourself to believe there is no way to prevent a complete ecological breakdown, you effectively get a carte blanche to not change anything.

If you still get doubts, you can add mental fortification by believing in a hobbesian war of all against all, and reject all hope of cooperation between people.

It's one hell of a drug.

choose carefully 👀

#meme #funny #notFunny #collapse #doomerism #wine #humpday

Rebecca Solnit writes today about the need for new stories on #climate . Climate #doomerism is a failure of the #imagination , and one we can not afford to allow to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
"People without much sense of #history imagine the world as static. They assume that if the present order is failing, the system is collapsing, and there is no alternative. A historical imagination equips you to understand that change is ceaseless."
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/jan/12/rebecca-solnit-climate-crisis-popular-imagination-why-we-need-new-stories

#Doomerism as inspiration

Watch or listen to this interview. You will be less #depressed.

@EliotJacobson on "Soft White Underbelly" few days ago.

youtu.be/0Nui67G-g2Q

It’s tomato time in my veggie patch… these are Cherry Ripe and golden yellows, all grown in my IBC wicking beds.
#KangarooIsland #gardeningmastedon #veggiepatch #growyourown #tomato #tomatoes #sustainability #selfsustainable #selfsufficiency #doomer #Doomerism

Welcome to 2023 everyone! Glad you could make it!🥳

While we all try to #StaySafe, we must also safeguard our future.🤔

Keep taking #ClimateAction: call out #BigOil's #fossilfuel #disinformation.⚠️

Show the public we CAN solve the #ClimateCrisis with the tools we already have today!✅

This can be a BIG year for solving #climatechange, if we keep pushing back against #doomerism, #greenwashing and sundry #trollnoise on #socialmedia.

#ClimateHope needs to keep rising in the public mind in 2023! 😊

Welcome to 2023 everyone! Glad you could make it!🥳

While we all try to #StaySafe, we must also safeguard our future.🤔

Keep taking #ClimateAction: call out #BigOil's #fossilfuel #disinformation.⚠️

Show the public we CAN solve the #ClimateCrisis with the tools we already have today!✅

This can be a BIG year for solving #climatechange, if we keep pushing back against #doomerism, #greenwashing and sundry #trollnoise on #socialmedia.

#ClimateHope needs to keep rising in the public mind in 2023! 😊

1/ Die @tazgetroete hat heute Beiträge zu #Doomerism. In einem langen Interview erklärt @hausfath, warum nicht das Ende der Menschheit bevorsteht. Das ist schön und es mag in der Tat Menschen geben, die davon ausgehen, dass die Menschheit aufhören wird zu existieren, und dann in Depressionen versinken oder es eben noch mal richtig krachen lassen. In der Personenbeschreibung steht, dass er davon ausgeht, dass auch in Zukunft Kinder glücklich sein werden. #Doomer

https://www.taz.de/!5902230

New post on existential angst going on right now called “Call me a Globalist Alex Jone: I’ll take it”:

https://medium.com/@jonathanzwexler/call-me-a-globalist-alex-jones-1dfbea72e8fb

#doomerism #climatecrisis #infowars #alexjones

"The #MSM has a huge part to play in combatting #climate #Doomerism. It's our job to be #truthful and accurate in #journalism, not trying to downplay the severity of the #ClimateCrisis or #greenwash reality. But it's ALSO our job to show there is #hope!"

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/11/24/here-are-all-the-positive-environmental-stories-from-2022-so-far

"The #MSM has a huge part to play in combatting #climate #Doomerism. It's our job to be #truthful and accurate in #journalism, not trying to downplay the severity of the #ClimateCrisis or #greenwash reality. But it's ALSO our job to show there is #hope!"

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/11/24/here-are-all-the-positive-environmental-stories-from-2022-so-far

I have an extreme susceptibility to #doomerism so I occasionally have to do a full social media detox.

If I haven't posted it doesn't mean I'm gone or I don't care, it just means I need a break.

I’m on the fence still on whether I should give into #doom / #doomerism as an accurate reflection of reality vis-à-vis the #ClimateCrisis.
(Covered in my perhaps already dying Spotify podcast Doomer Maybe)

Of course there is an ever increasing battle going on online about how pessimistic we really should be and #elonmusk taking a bite out of the town square can only hinder good debate on the topic in my opinion.

It seems like COP 27 is kind a cop out and COP 15 in #montreal coming up about biodiversity (70 percents of animals dead on earth in the last several decades) is perhaps as important and may neither be a serious attempt at real solutions.

The last best hope does still seems to be coming from #ExtinctionRebellion and #juststopoil and others based in the UK.

I worked for the #CanadaGreenParty in the last Canadian Federal Elections but the party was a shambles unfortunately, as was my state of mind at the time as the election was called in the middle of Covid just to give the ruling liberals a boost with very little lead time.

My point in this quasi-rant is if the COPs don’t work, and protests movements don’t work, and neo-liberal goverment’s are in cahoots with big business and the oil companies and petro-states still, should we all be doomers?

Perhaps I will try and tackle this some more on my podcast Doomer Maybe, or maybe not.
(Listen? https://open.spotify.com/show/2rGCvZrO0AmCbkZfjU5Hsy?si=CUnWXjEpRIuARArpLRc5Ag)