Thursday, December 3, 2009

How can you think that even for a minute?

(The stage directions for the actor uttering these lines are to feign a look resembling revulsion mingled with pity)  Usually the line is delivered in little more than a shriek.

I get this a lot when I mention my firmly held belief that we just might get through all of this shit OK.  Not easy, not without pain, but OK.

You see, when you are talking with true believers in the collapse scenario, they are all 100% convinced that things are going irreversibly to hell (BTW, I give this scenario a sixty-percent chance, with thirty percent going to painful change of government and ten percent chance of working things out).  They cannot comprehend the idea that someone could think that things aren't completely and irredeemably fucked.

The same thing is true with the global warming issue.  The subset of folks who are married to the idea of catastrophic climate change cannot understand why us unwashed lumpen cannot understand the desperate need or the truly desperate straits we navigate. 

You see, we navigate into the furture blind.  What is really happening is that some folks are claiming gnosis with the future and are willing to do anything to lead us into the promised land.  But as with prophets in general, most of them really don't know where or what we will become, they just have blind faith that they are correct.  Anyone who carries the taint of doubt must be less than pure in their eyes.

So be careful in the next little bit of time.  Whether your prophet was Roubini or Panzer or Erhlich or Obama or Mann there is going to be a need to think for yourself and ignore the invective and sloppy thinking that dominate the extremes.

Simply saying that you suspect the conclusions of some practitioners of abtuse and fuzzy fields (population biology, climate research, and politics) is not a mark of stupidity in a lot of cases, but rather a mark of a healthy skepticism.

Which in my mind is the hallmark of all true science.

2 comments:

Jacob Gittes said...

I've been thinking the same thing. The future tends to surprise everyone. EVERYONE.
For example, a "collapse" or crisis might take so long to appear, that everyone has given up on the possibility, except the hard-core prepper. The system might struggle on for years, or slowly change for the better (or worse).
More likely, some unknown event will push things in some unknown direction.

But being prepared, especially mentally, is still essential. But that's always true in life.

Mayberry said...

Very insightful... I'm one of those who recognizes the fact that we're in collapse, but I see the light on the other side. Some folks just see doom eternal, but the human spirit will prevail methinks. It's just a natural correction to the rampant excesses that have been artificially perpetuated. Otherwise, what the hell is the point in prepping? If life is gonna be nothing but a living hell, I reckon I'd rather be dead anyways....

As to Gorebal Warming, I just see it for the power and money grab that it is.