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Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Rosa Fires
Anthropocene: relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.
The call came a little before 5 am, the morning of Monday, October 9. I stumbled toward the phone and retrieved the message.
A neighbor’s voice, “Get ready to evacuate!”
Huh?
A quick look at the computer reveals the firestorm that began the night before in a neighboring county, moving through the night, across mountains, east to west, propelled by 60 mile per hour winds, already burning through entire neighborhoods, headed in the general direction of our home.
My husband bangs on doors in our neighborhood, awakening those who are not already awake. He pulls out the hand-crank radio I had just bought, turns it to a local station, puts on water for tea.
I start piling things into cars, working in concentric circles of necessity – important papers, medical needs, cat food and litter (the cat in her carrier will go in the car when we do), hastily packed toiletries and clothes, photos, hastily selected memorabilia – all urgently tossed into bags and bundles.
Shortly after I begin packing the lights go out. Fortunately, I know exactly where my camping headlamp and a lantern are. I stumble in the dark until I reach them, then continue cramming things into our cars.
Outside is a dense smoky fog. Floating down from the night sky is something like a cinder rain. Cinders, some larger than my hand, are falling gently to the ground. I catch a couple in outstretched palms, like a child catching snowflakes, then return to my packing. Later, I will think, “If any of those cinders had still been on fire…”
The sun rises slowly – a deep red sphere in a salmon grey sky.
Evacuation
Our neighborhood is close to, but not within, an official evacuation zone. We decide to evacuate anyway, and “avoid the rush”. We head to a friend’s home in the neighboring town of Sebastopol, about 5 miles west of Santa Rosa.
As we are leaving, I pause to kiss the side of our home, feeling for a moment the enormity of the possibility that I may never again see anything that is left inside.
The fires will burn to within a couple of miles of our home. We are much more fortunate than so many others.
We return to our home the next day. The fires are still burning, yet they are no longer traveling toward our house. The sky is a smoky grey. Air filter masks are ubiquitous everywhere in Santa Rosa – like some kind of new, dark-themed fashion craze.
We keep our cars packed – as do many of our neighbors. At night we sleep with our smart phone by our heads. We’ve signed into a service that lets us know whenever a new alert is issued. For several nights our sleep is regularly broken by the pinging sound of a new alert.
For about two weeks after the fire, I will be unable to sleep through the night. I jolt awake in the early morning hours feeling that I smell smoke, long after the smoke has dissipated from the air. I toss and turn, trying one deep breathing practice after another, until sunrise lightens the sky outside my window.
A large part of our county, along with parts of several neighboring counties, has experienced a collective trauma. There are so many whose stories are worse than mine, so many who have suffered much greater loss.
Over One Terrible Night
Over one terrible night the physical and social landscape of our county was ripped apart – and will likely never be the same.
What will happen to those homeowners unable to afford the rebuilding costs that inevitably insurance won’t cover? What about the renters whose homes burned – in an area where housing is among the most expensive and least available in the country? Will they be pushed into homelessness, forced to try to move elsewhere? What will happen to all the people working paycheck to paycheck whose workplaces were destroyed in the fire? Will they meet the same fate? What will happen to the vineyard workers (many of whom are undocumented), whose work undergirds the tourism industry, from which many in our county directly or indirectly earn their living?
What will be the immediate and long-term impact of the giant hole ripped in the fabric of our ecology, economy and social functioning? How many personal tragedies will take place unseen and uncounted, long after the cameras and news teams have left?
Our community is generous and smart. Everywhere there are fundraisers – with an emphasis on those whose needs are greatest, especially the undocumented. Ecologists and permaculturists (abundant in our county) are urgently working on issues of soil and groundwater contamination (so many toxins are released when urban areas burn), and urging city and county authorities to consider more ecological approaches to rebuilding.
How the rebuilding will happen is a story still being written. Yet the questions hang in the air, like the smoke from the fires that until recently blanketed our area.
Things Fall Apart
Everything seems to be moving faster. In the weeks before these fires, we watched three supersize hurricanes decimate first Houston and surrounding areas (Harvey, Aug 17 – Sept 3); then large parts of the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, and southern Florida (Irma, August 30 – Sept 16), then a second devastation of Puerto Rico and large parts of the Caribbean (Maria, Sept 16 – Oct 3).
Hurricanes and wildfires are not new – yet the ferocity and destructiveness of these hurricanes and our fire were fueled by conditions rooted in climate change.
All this, overlaid by the tsunami of the Trump regime (recognizing that Trump is the figurehead of the problem, and not the root of an extreme-right authoritarianism spreading across our globe).
How many people worry about the loss of their health insurance, while at the same time losing their home and/or work in one of these climate change fueled disasters? How many “mixed-status” families (with one or more undocumented members) live in fear of their families being torn apart by deportation, while also suffering the loss of home and/or work in one of these climate disasters?
What happens when (or as) things start unraveling so fast that more and more people, families, communities begin to crumble under the combined weight of multiple tragedies?
In this article, I am speaking about the pace of disasters within the U.S. This is amplified and magnified by multiple other fires, floods and other climate change related disasters around our globe.
It feels a bit like the words of William Butler Yeats poem The Second Coming:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;…
the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
Welcome to the Anthropocene
I’ve known about the dangers of human created climate change for more than a couple of decades. (Others were aware of this far sooner than I). For several years I’ve felt that the direct impacts of human created climate change were being felt NOW – that this was no longer an issue for sometime in the future. (Again, others were aware of this sooner than I.)
I’ve known this in my head and my heart, grieved deeply about this, and tried my best to do what I could to share my understanding with others, seek ways to slow its progress and mitigate its impacts.
Yet somehow I never really felt this looming danger would leap up to bite ME. It’s a human response, I suppose, to feel that a disaster can happen to others, but not oneself. Realizing otherwise – I mean deeply realizing this in your gut (as has just happened to me) – tends to shift the ground underneath one’s feet.
It’s a knowing, not just in your head but in your gut, that everything can change in one night, riding on a gust of wind. It’s coming to really know that I (and we) live in the age of the Anthropocene – human created climate change – and our lives are not going to be the story we are told to expect.
A couple of weeks after the fires, I took a long walk along a creek in the rural area directly west of our home (which is located on the far western edge of Santa Rosa). Everything was beautiful and green in the early fall; tree leaves just beginning to be touched by gold and crimson. Ducks and egrets moved lazily in the creek, hawks sailed overhead.
Along the path, I could see the fallen black cinders, some small and some large. What if one had still been hot enough to ignite the underbrush? Could our community have been trapped between two fires, as happened to other neighborhoods in our area?
Yet as I wandered along the creek, I felt a deep sense of calm grow within me. Now I knew, not just in my head, but viscerally, in every cell of my body, that life as one knew it could be snatched away in a moment. I lived in a time when everything seemed to be speeding up, and the only thing I could do was live in it as best I could. I welcomed myself to life in the Anthropocene.
A Time of Disorder
We in this country are taught to believe that things can more or less go on as they have been. Sure, there is tragedy and misfortune – a job loss, divorce, illness, a death in the family – yet one can grieve and recover and life will resume. Sure there are “natural disasters”, yet help will come, people can rebuild and life will continue.
What happens if, or when, disasters come so fast, from so many directions, that things cannot recover, that “return to normal” becomes a thing of the past. What happens if, or when, disasters falling one on top of another becomes the way of things, the “new normal”.
We tend to expect things to go slowly, in micro-steps, rather than dramatic drops or leaps. Yet when might dramatic drops and leaps become the “new normal”? Are we already there?
How can we live in these kinds of times?
Standing on the creek’s edge, surrounded by ducks and egrets and gently falling leaves, I felt into my bones the necessity of living each day fully and joyfully, walking with beauty, making meaning of every moment, acting and reacting with kindness and compassion.
All this has been said before by many others. Yet in that moment, I let it seep into my bones and spread through my capillaries until my fingertips tingled. The challenge I embraced was knowing, in my core, that I would have to live these values in what might become a constant state of unsettledness and upheaval.
Yet this was not all – there was something more.
How could I (and we) not only maintain our balance and equilibrium, live fully and meaningfully, in times of escalating upheaval – beyond this, how much can we save and protect in these times; and how can we gently guide the next generations as they move into a more turbulent future?
I was reminded of these words, from Bertold Brecht’s poem, To the Next Generation:
I came to the towns in a time of disorder,
when hunger was the order of the day…
I ate my bread between the battles.
I lay me down to sleep with murder all about…
That is how I would spend the time which was given to me on earth.
Berkeley Firefighters and the Line of Sorrow
A couple of weeks after the fire, my husband showed me a YouTube video made by firemen from Berkeley as they drove into the fire, not knowing what they would find. You hear a fireman softly whisper “Oh, my God!” as they enter Santa Rosa and realize the fire is so much bigger than they expected.
When they arrive at the Kmart parking lot that they had been told was to be their staging ground, the 100,000 square foot building was already fully in flame. Heading west, they drive through the already burned Coffey Park neighborhood. “It looks like a bomb went off,” a firefighter says.
They continue driving, searching for something they can save. “There must be houses at some point that are still salvageable,” says one. Finally they find a street dividing burned houses from homes that were not yet burned – and get to work.
On that morning, they saved 30 houses. They “drew a line” and stopped a fire that just happened to be heading in the general direction of my home. Who can say, and count, the ripple effect of the homes and lives that they saved.
The firefighters called the place between what was saved and lost, “The Line of Sorrow”. Perhaps we will all be called to work in the space between what is already lost and what can still be saved in these increasingly tumultuous times. Perhaps each of us, and all of us together, must learn to walk our personal and communal “Line of Sorrow”.
These firemen drove straight into a firestorm that was much larger than they expected. Once there, they looked around for something they could save – and set to work saving it.
We live in the age of the Anthropocene, a firestorm that is likely to be so much larger than we expected. How can we, in an analogous way, find our own “Line of Sorrow” and work to save what can be saved?
About Dianne Monroe
Dianne Monroe is a Life Mentor, Experiential Educator, writer and photographer, living in Santa Rosa, CA. She offers programs and personal mentoring using a blend of arts, creativity and nature connection practices to support people in finding soul path and purpose, knowing their deepest life story for this world, navigating times of transition and more. Visit her website and email her (Dianne@diannemonroe.com) or read more of her articles (http://www.diannemonroe.com/articlesinterviews).
40 Comments on "Life in the Anthropocene, Field Notes From The Santa Rosa Fires"
makati1 on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 8:40 am
“We in this country are taught to believe that things can more or less go on as they have been. Sure, there is tragedy and misfortune – a job loss, divorce, illness, a death in the family – yet one can grieve and recover and life will resume. Sure there are “natural disasters”, yet help will come, people can rebuild and life will continue.
What happens if, or when, disasters come so fast, from so many directions, that things cannot recover, that “return to normal” becomes a thing of the past. What happens if, or when, disasters falling one on top of another becomes the way of things, the “new normal”.
We tend to expect things to go slowly, in micro-steps, rather than dramatic drops or leaps. Yet when might dramatic drops and leaps become the “new normal”? Are we already there?”
Yes, we are already there. We are at the hockey stick point on the chart. Too late.
Dredd on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 8:46 am
Thank you Carolyn.
Someone has to grasp the big picture (Trumpeting While Straining Out A Gnat).
deadlykillerbeaz on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 9:51 am
Did Go Speed Racer get carried away with his sofa and tire nightly fire rituals?
It’s life in the fast lane for those California fires. Everywhere, all the time.
Revi on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 10:32 am
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;…
Great quote!
TheNationalist on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 10:40 am
Elon Musk has dropped GSR from the Mars station team. He was considered but Commander Aldrin wanted a sofa in the finished station.
On a side note, GSR was last seen with a 6 pack of bud (pisswater compared to our proper Aussie beer), and an old sofa on the back of his ute (pick up). He was seen travelling up a mountain road in Santa Rosa!
Cloggie on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 11:00 am
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;…
Great quote!”
http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
P.S. I realize that this poem is “too white” for US universities, but since Soros-BLM has not yet taken over this forum (although apneaman is working on it), I post it anyway.
Cloggie on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 11:13 am
On a side note, GSR was last seen with a 6 pack of bud (pisswater compared to our proper Aussie beer), and an old sofa on the back of his ute (pick up). He was seen travelling up a mountain road in Santa Rosa!
From this side of the ocean we are quietly following what is happening in Odessa-Texas regarding renewable energy developments with tires and sofas:
http://tinyurl.com/ya5q8ohd
dave thompson on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 12:53 pm
So in this California area the whole place is dry as a bone, even though the drought was declared over, the underbrush and trees are so thick that a fire sweeps through. The result being that urban houses are burned to the ground. So much for human forethought.
Apneaman on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 3:15 pm
California insurance agency: wildfires losses at $3.3 billion, rising
“The number includes claims for 10,016 partial residential losses, 4,712 total residential losses, 728 commercial property losses, and 3,200 personal auto losses, California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said on a media call.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-california-fire-insurance/california-insurance-agency-wildfires-losses-at-3-3-billion-rising-idUSKBN1D02UT
Apneaman on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 3:37 pm
B.C.’s lumber trade suffers in wake of vicious summer wildfire season
“Damage that the worst forest-fire season in B.C. has done to the province’s forest industry is showing up in trade statistics that show overall exports down 14 per cent to the end of August, according to B.C. Stats.”
http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/b-c-s-lumber-trade-suffers-in-wake-of-vicious-summer-wildfire-season
Even if the masters of the universe somehow manage to prevent the global debt bomb from blowing up, the consequences of these AGW Jacked events will break the bank. They are growing in intensity – records smashed to shit – and the price keeps going up up up.
On a brighter note, retard POTUS and his Cancer crew are doing all they can to keep as many as they can in denial, because that’s what great men do right?
Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires
Critics are accusing the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/government-scientist-blocked-from-talking-about-climate-and-wildfires/
Even if there is not one more AGW Jacked disaster in the US for the rest of 2017 it will still go down as the most expensive year to date. What is Trump N crew answers? Deny and censor. Not unique other than the enormity of the consequences. This is typical of end times non leadership. Like I’ve been saying when it come to AGW the only option left is to protect you & yours and that appears to be on the local level at best and whatever measures you take on your own. There are some cities throwing money at it, but it’s just buying 5 minutes for the coastal ones. All the human ingenuity and effort cannot engineer their way out of what is coming.
Apneaman on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 6:33 pm
Alfred McCoy: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power
“Prize-winning historian Alfred W. McCoy first came to prominence with his 1972 book, “The Politics of Heroin in South East Asia”. His latest book “In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power”, explores America’s rise as a world power–from the 1890s through the Cold War–and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century through a fusion of cyberwar, space warfare, trade pacts, and military alliances and analyzes the marquee instruments of US hegemony–torture, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance. McCoy exposes a military and economic battle for global domination fought in the shadows, largely unknown to those outside the highest rungs of power. Professor McCoy was in Seattle when he gave this rousing talk. Thanks to Elliott Bay Books Recorded 10/25/17”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GygmGSwvcI
Boat on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 7:10 pm
ape,
The Changing Geopolitics of Energy
Nov 1, 2017 JOSEPH S. NYE
In 2008, US policymakers worried that increasing dependence on energy imports, together with rising prices, would severely constrain American geopolitical influence. Instead, the revolution in shale energy has brought about a tectonic shift in international relations, one that promises to boost US global power in the long term.
Shale-energy production boosts the economy and creates more jobs. Reducing imports helps the balance of payments. New tax revenues ease government budgets. Cheaper power strengthens international competitiveness, particularly for energy-intensive industries like petrochemicals, aluminum, steel, and others.
There are also domestic political effects. One is psychological. For some time, many people in the US and abroad have bought into the myth of American decline. Increasing dependence on energy imports was often cited as evidence. The shale revolution has changed that, demonstrating the combination of entrepreneurship, property rights, and capital markets that constitute the country’s underlying strength. In that sense, the shale revolution has also enhanced American soft power.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., a former US assistant secretary of defense and chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is University Professor at Harvard University. He is the author of Is the American Century Over?
He’s gotta be right, eh? Look at those credentials. Educated, an elite and wrote a book.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/shale-energy-geopolitical-consequences-by-joseph-s–nye-2017-11
Go Speed Racer on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 7:19 pm
Killer Bees,
Looks like we gotta quit having
those Saturday night sofa fires.
NASA says the air is up to 404 ppm.
When they find out half of that came
from my place…. hope they don’t find out.
Don’t tell em. Countin on ya.
Cloggie on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 7:24 pm
“Alfred McCoy: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power”
Perhaps Davy will take it from McCoy. Difficult to accuse McCoy of “anti-americanism”.
45 minutes into the lecture and still McCoy has not refered to this mysterious financial collops China is bound to suffer.
makati1 on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 7:54 pm
Cloggie, That “Chinese collapse” is a wish of our resident 1%er who appears to be blind to the massive debt his own county is drowning in. He compares a government with a surplus, and the ability to command its citizens, to his government with the world’s largest deficit ever and a chaotic mob citizenry that listens to no one and is also deeply in debt, and still he thinks China will go down first. Amazing! I bet his grandfather was one of those who rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic as it was sinking.
Davy on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 7:55 pm
Dumb n Dutch, woop tee do, I am concerned with our mutual condition not your stupid great game competition.
Davy on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 7:59 pm
Mad Kat and dumb n Dutch have been flirting a lot lately. Lol. China and Europe are a mess but you two blind men refuse to see this reality.
makati1 on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 8:36 pm
78 Percent Of U.S. Workers Are Living ‘Paycheck To Paycheck’ And 71 Percent Of Them Are In Debt”
When the SHTF in the US it ain’t gonna be pretty. Many millions will lose their homes. Many millions will lose their jobs. Most, if not all, will lose any possibility of a retirement, ever.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/78-percent-of-u-s-workers-are-living-paycheck-to-paycheck-and-71-percent-of-them-are-in-debt
“The cost of living is rising at a much faster pace than our paychecks are, and more families are falling out of the middle class with each passing month.”
The Great Leveling continues…
Go Speed Racer on Wed, 1st Nov 2017 9:54 pm
What’s kind of interesting, is the rich
will have the money, so they can
buy everything. So 1 person will
own the homes of 10,000 others.
That’s the Amerika they dreamed for us,
all along. Now their plan is reaching
it’s completion. All they need is their
decision to bring on the mother of all
recessions, and their penultimate plans
will reach final completion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfUM5xHUY4M
Sissyfuss on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 12:18 am
Mak, that 78% is a result of what this site declaims on an ever reduced regularity, the consequences of peak oil. Without the 100 to 1 high potency super juice there is not enough to sustain a healthy middle class. You know, an LTG sort of happening. It’s not as noticeable in the developing countries, they just develop slower if at all.
makati1 on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 12:34 am
Yes, as the price of oil increases, the Western middle class shrinks. We pay $3.50/gal here for gasoline. It has never been lower in 10 years, and has been as high as $4.50/gal, but most here never buy gas so it is not important. The Ps is supposed to be growing at about 6-7% per year. More Filipinos are moving up but most will never reach anywhere near US middle class levels because the whole system will collapse at some point. Or, at least, stop growing.
Again, most here will not even notice. Some Americans on here seem to not understand that fact. When you never had something, you don’t miss it. That will be true for a billion or more in Asia.
Cloggie on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 12:51 am
“What’s kind of interesting, is the rich will have the money, so they can buy everything. So 1 person will
own the homes of 10,000 others.”
The top US 8 owns more than the bottom half of humanity.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/16/worlds-eight-richest-people-have-same-wealth-as-poorest-50
I am against communism but this is pushing it. Max 50 million per individual should be enough.
Cloggie on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 1:04 am
“China and Europe are a mess but you two blind men refuse to see this reality.”
It is difficult to see things that are not there:
https://www.politico.eu/article/psst-europes-economy-is-doing-well/
Davy wants to see the entire world cosily collapsing together and is intellectualy stuck with Heinberg.
Cloggie on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 1:20 am
“Mak, that 78% is a result of what this site declaims on an ever reduced regularity, the consequences of peak oil. Without the 100 to 1 high potency super juice there is not enough to sustain a healthy middle class. You know, an LTG sort of happening. It’s not as noticeable in the developing countries, they just develop slower if at all.”
Currently most of the planet is on a robust growth path. Could we please stop inserting this nostalgic peak-oil thingy at every occasion. At an age of 10 you are supposed to stop believing in Santa.
https://youtu.be/PM9_PrBoq9Q
makati1 on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 1:33 am
Cloggie, your “Davy wants to see the entire world cozily collapsing together” comment is spot on as you know. He is unable to even consider that much of the world will not suffer as much as the US when it happens. Some will barely notice.
There will be degrees of collapse, but, if Russia and China have their alternate systems in place and functioning with a gold backing, they may actually gain. The One Road – One Belt is to tie the island continent together for trade that does not rely on, or even include, the US. A few more years…
I watch current events closely. Better than any movie or TV show.
Boat on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 1:34 am
clog,
The EU at 1.7 percent growth, the US at 3 percent last quarter. Last fillup $2.19 per gal, not liter. 11 cents per kw. Whats yours. Not much collapse anywhere.
China took 20 plus counties out of poverty recently, good for them. Russia even grew gdp 1 percent. With oil up a few bucks, Russia and the frackers will be happy.
makati1 on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 3:56 am
“Life in the modern, capitalist west is tedium. It is an exhausting bore. Without any substantial sense of belonging or meaning, stripped of spirit and tasked with an endless quest for money that buys less and less, people are miserable. Life has been shorn of all of the ceremonies and customs that once bonded a people and gave them a sense of purpose, and they are left with mere commerce. If a person out in public is not engaged in some act of buying or selling, they are loitering, they are a nuisance to be moved along. Most of the public has come to understand this unspoken premise, and they enforce it with vitriol at the sight of the homeless, the panhandler, the protestor. “Get a job!” they yell, but what they mean is “participate,” by which they mean “succumb, as I have, and call it virtue, as I do.”
The malaise of existence in this world where the wild is all but extinguished is felt far and wide, whether it is understood as such or not. Absent community and a deep sense of both autonomy and personal value, people become damaged. This damage expresses itself in myriad ways, as each individual filters the abuse of the dominant culture through their specific experience and biology. For many, self-medication is the obvious solution. People drink away the boredom and the sorrow. They smoke away the frustration and rage. Some turn to harder drugs, those with money buy them from a doctor and stay on the safe side of the legal apparatus. Those with less acquire their narcotics from a street dealer. Both buy their way out of feeling the depression, the pointlessness, the pain. The former boost pharmaceutical stock prices, the latter boost the share values of private prison enterprises.
For others, it is all too much to bear, and they kill themselves. In rare cases, the desire to kill turns outward.”
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2017/11/01/boldly-through-the-darkness/
“It’s actually strange that this outcome is seen as strange. We are a people who isolate themselves in personal domiciles, personal cars, individual cubicles. From others we hide under headphones and behind screens communicating without voices or faces, just curt text and childish pictographs. By and large our hands never touch soil, our noses never smell wood smoke, our muscles don’t pump with lactic acid, our brows do not know sweat, our eyes do not know starlight. We have hammered the circle of time into a straight line, and bent the circles people used to sit in while they sang and laughed into single file queues in which we are silent, eyes cast down lest they meet another’s.
We do not live. Living is active. We are only active in the pursuit of making someone else rich while we earn just enough to make it until the next paycheck, and then we are passive. We sit and stare, trading entertainment for experience, hoping that watching others pretend to live will suffice by proxy.
Of course, there are outliers. There are some who recognize the ugliness of this existence, who with blood pumping in their veins take to the streets against the police and politicians who hem us all in with laws, with the confiscation of the commons, and with the baton and gun that back it all up. These people are too few, and the great proportion of the public spits at them. Any mention of the great crimes and shortcomings of civilization indicts all who refuse to act, and most prefer not to act, knowing that to act against power is dangerous. Further, most know that acquiescence of conscience and soul is far easier when one’s fellow downtrodden don’t ever talk about it. If we all agree to call the cage freedom, then it is freedom. If we call the plantation the country, or the economy, then we cease to be exploited and can through the power of linguistic device instead be the citizen.
Of course, the heart and the head can only be fooled so much. So the cracks in the veneer are filled with alcohol, drugs, shopping, watching, and occasionally a foray into homicide.”
Nuff said, America.
DerHundistlos on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 4:50 am
Interesting perspective on the whaling ship, Essex. You may recall the story in which the tables were turned on the whalers. Little known is how the survivors torched one of the Galapagos Islands to such an extent that, according to one of the survivors, “a blackened wasteland that neither trees, shrubbery, nor grass have since appeared.” The raging inferno exterminated numerous species not yet discovered as well as the Floreana Island tortoise.
‘How a 19th-Century Whaleship Can Save the ‘White Working Class’’ @ https://www.truthdig.com/articles/19th-century-whaleship-can-save-white-working-class/
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:10 am
“The Ps is supposed to be growing at about 6-7% per year.”
Remember, mad kat, these numbers are completely fake per your own words on official growth numbers. LOL
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:15 am
“The top US 8 owns more than the bottom half of humanity”
Hey, dumb and dutch go to your article and check your references you intellectually dishonest dumbass:
“World’s eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%”
Where in the reference do they say US top 8?
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:19 am
“It is difficult to see things that are not there:”
The problem with you is you, like mad kat, believe the good news on MSM and dismiss the bad news. You are telling me these numbers mean everything is good? LOL. You have no financial education and it shows. At least you finished post-secondary. Mad Kat dropped out.
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:21 am
“Currently most of the planet is on a robust growth path.”
Sure it is dumb n dutch, then why the massive debt amounts and ultra-low rates? Why no normalization. Why can’t your golden Europe walk away from a huge amount of QE? Because the robust growth path is not real. It is a mirage for fake growth the kind that is actually unhealthy
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:25 am
“Cloggie, your “Davy wants to see the entire world cozily collapsing together” comment is spot on as you know. He is unable to even consider that much of the world will not suffer as much as the US when it happens. Some will barely notice.”
Mad kat, if you are so sure of yourself please reference with the words that support your assertion. Your opinion means little. You are lying to yourself and that means you are lying to everyone else. It is kind of funny how dumb n dutch is walking you across the street these days. Your gang is pretty lame these days. Ask yourself why because many see the lies.
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:28 am
“but, if Russia and China have their alternate systems in place and functioning with a gold backing, they may actually gain. The One Road – One Belt is to tie the island continent together for trade that does not rely on, or even include, the US. A few more years…”
LOL, what does gold backing mean mad kat? You have no clue how gold backing would be done. China is in no position to issue a reserve type currency with gold backing. It manages its currency. It is used in 2% of global trade transactions now. One belt BS is just fantasy. Remember the Bric Bank? Lol you crowed about that for months.
Davy on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 5:30 am
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2017/11/01/boldly-through-the-darkness/
“Nuff said, America.”
Mad kat, where is America referenced there. Don’t you think they are talking about the world? It looks like they are talking about your world mad kat.
makati1 on Thu, 2nd Nov 2017 9:06 pm
Now who would have thought…
“New Zealand’s supply of fresh fruit and vegetables is falling short of demand and Horticulture New Zealand is warning there could be shortages of domestically grown food in the future.”
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/horticulture-nz-warns-fresh-food-shortages-could-common-in-future
“Changes in weather patterns and extreme unseasonal weather events are becoming more frequent and damaging, impacting the supply and consequently, the price of fresh, healthy food.”
Even the wealthy will starve. lol
makati1 on Fri, 3rd Nov 2017 3:09 am
Monsanto strikes again! LMAO
“Monsanto Co put on hold the launch of a chemical designed to be applied to crop seeds on Wednesday following reports it causes rashes on people, in the latest instance of complaints about a company product that was approved by U.S. environmental regulators.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-11-02/another-monsanto-pesticide-draws-fire-farmers-break-out-rashes
Monsanto, the gift that keeps on killing ..er..giving.
Dylan on Fri, 3rd Nov 2017 7:03 am
Wow! Someone out there actually believes that humans are the greatest influence on climate and the environment? This garbage is getting really hard to stomach. It must be those government schools. The ability to think is going bye-bye.
makati1 on Fri, 3rd Nov 2017 8:27 am
Dylan, and you obviously lost that ability long ago.
What happens if you burn a ton of coal in one day in your fireplace. Does it heat your house up to deadly temps?
What does burning a few million years of captured sunlight (coal/oil/NG) in less than 200 years do? Answer: Heat up the earth to unbearable temps. Not to mention changing the very composition of the air and oceans.
How about the billions of TONs of poisons that humans dump into the ecosystem every year? Do you even think?
Hello on Fri, 3rd Nov 2017 8:37 am
>>>>> Answer: Heat up the earth to unbearable temps
makati logic at its best. *chuckle*