[NEOPO]

Let's start it off by looking at what the encyclopedia galactica has to say about it:

Fear - Wikipedia

An interesting definition.
This part in particular deserves a quote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')Terror" refers to a pronounced state of fear, which usually occurs after the state of horror, when someone becomes overwhelmed with a sense of immediate danger. Also, it can be caused by perceiving the (possibly extreme) phobia. As a consequence, terror overwhelms the person to the point of making irrational choices and non-typical behavior.

[Stratovarius]

“A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place.”

~ Paulo Coelho

“...courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.”

~ Rollo May

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'L')et's start it off by looking at what the encyclopedia galactica has to say about it:

Fear - Wikipedia

An interesting definition.
This part in particular deserves a quote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')Terror" refers to a pronounced state of fear, which usually occurs after the state of horror, when someone becomes overwhelmed with a sense of immediate danger. Also, it can be caused by perceiving the (possibly extreme) phobia. As a consequence, terror overwhelms the person to the point of making irrational choices and non-typical behavior.

[NEOPO]

What are you trying to do? steal my weirdness!

Its about fear ya freaky frenchman!
I dont play golf!
I dont read newspapers!

But some more toast and sleeping in does sound good - I will let you know how I feel in the morning

[Revi]

I used to wake up in the night thinking about peak oil and it's ramifications. It spurred me to make some changes. We use about half the fossil fuels we used to. I am still afraid sometimes, but I have begun to accept the inevitability of it. It really is scary.

[Ibon]

Look deep within to what remains of that animal cunningness that somewhere deep down still lies dormant but waiting. Access those memories of the tangible fears, the grizzly bear you surprised around the bend, the whitewater you canoed through that shot adrenalin in your veins and gave strength to your arms as you paddled. And now look at your modern disconnected life full of the intangible fears of phantoms, myths and illusions that you ponder as your muscles lie inactive................. except for that big nuerotic brain muscle.

[NEOPO]

Yes but these things are real!!!
Real I tell ya!!

[Revi]

Fear can motivate after a while. I have known about peak oil for over 5 years. The first few years I was paralyzed. The next few it got me moving. Here are a few things we've done to our house to save half the fossil fuels we used to use:

http://www.msad54.org/sahs/appliedarts/ ... /index.htm

click on the pics for more explanation.

Fear drives commodities. Here's a snippet from the 321 energy editorial about the fifth wave:

“In contrast to the stock market, commodities most commonly develop extensions in fifth waves within Primary or Cycle degree bull markets. Fifth wave advances in the stock market are propelled by hope, while fifth wave advances in commodities are propelled by a comparatively dramatic emotion, fear: fear of inflation, fear of drought, fear of war.”……
Elliott Wave Principle

[NEOPO]

Yes I was paralyzed for a while as well and because we want to just give it all up and find an ecovillage to move to we are still abit uncertain about our next moves.

My fear isnt really for me and my family.
We own some very nice acreage and could fall back on that if TSHTF but who wants to be alone in this struggle when it takes a village? it really does

We have purchased a ton of preps but we do not own our current home so we are not going to invest in preps for a rental home.

I have viewed your pics several times Revi.
You are doing what anyone who cares, owns a home and is financially able should do.
We want to build an earthship.
A dug-in home that actually makes contact with the earth.
Use the earths mean temperature to regulate the temp inside the home - and a bunch of other nifty ideas I have learned since finding peak oil

Thank you for the comments as they were well received.

The real point of this thread is to try and analyze how people come to peak oil, why they do what they do after learning about peak oil and what prevents them from looking deeper and finding all of the things I have found that seem very interrelated with PO.

I didnt believe 911 was a mihop/lihop until I dug into the subject deeply.
I didnt believe peak oil until I attempted to debunk it!
Alex jones was a mad man IMO until I started listening without my previous bias.
Heck Monte and the others who believe a die-off is coming seemed perfectly and completely insane to me initially yet after a while I see what they are saying.

how, why do people cross these very scary thresholds to another level of thought?

I believe that the same fear that motivates people to investigate Peak Oil also prevents them from going further - at least until they are over the paralyzation of the initial realization.

Perhaps that is it.
A mental Paralyzation.
I made it out in 6 months or 12 months while others may take many years before they can come to grips with Peak oil and then maybe they will take a closer look at all the subjects I am now staring at.

Funny how many people realize that the official story concerning peak oil is a bunch of crap yet when it comes to other subjects they desire to believe the official story even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Can anyone tell me why that is besides fear?

[threadbear]

Woops double post.

[threadbear]

The other night, we had some friends over and we were discussing how pilots respond to extreme crisis, in the air. One of our friends is a lawyer and has spent a long time analyzing the contents of black box recordings compiled during the last hours, or minutes of airline crashes.

From his observations, the best pilots, had fantastic innate skill with planes, but they also had the capacity to act calmly and wisely in emergency situations. In other words, they appreciated the magnitude of the problem, but refrained from knee jerk reactions.

Not only did the pilots have to control their own fear, they had to instill their own confidence in every one around them. Our friend said it was awe inspiring that these pilots maintained their control of the situation and had everyone around them working like parts of a well oiled machine. When thing around you are breaking down, the worst thing to do is break down along with them.

I would say that this applies to Peak Oil too. The --'we're going to get through this no matter what', attitude is the best one. If you tell someone about peak cheap oil and they don't see that there is a problem, move on. You've done your job. If they become alarmed, try to instill confidence, not complacency, or hysteria.

Seeing the problem as a grizzly bear or something horrific on the horizon, is really counter productive. You want to deflect all fear into appropriate action.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', '.')

Perhaps that is it.
A mental Paralyzation.
I made it out in 6 months or 12 months while others may take many years before they can come to grips with Peak oil and then maybe they will take a closer look at all the subjects I am now staring at.

Funny how many people realize that the official story concerning peak oil is a bunch of crap yet when it comes to other subjects they desire to believe the official story even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Can anyone tell me why that is besides fear?

[Revi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'T')he other night, we had some friends over and we were discussing how pilots respond to extreme crisis, in the air. One of our friends is a lawyer and has spent a long time analyzing the contents of black box recordings compiled during the last hours, or minutes of airline crashes.

From his observations, the best pilots, had fantastic innate skill with planes, but they also had the capacity to act calmly and wisely in emergency situations. In other words, they appreciated the magnitude of the problem, but refrained from knee jerk reactions.

Not only did the pilots have to control their own fear, they had to instill their own confidence in every one around them. Our friend said it was awe inspiring that these pilots maintained their control of the situation and had everyone around them working like parts of a well oiled machine. When thing around you are breaking down, the worst thing to do is break down along with them.

I would say that this applies to Peak Oil too. The --'we're going to get through this no matter what', attitude is the best one. If you tell someone about peak cheap oil and they don't see that there is a problem, move on. You've done your job. If they become alarmed, try to instill confidence, not complacency, or hysteria.

Seeing the problem as a grizzly bear or something horrific on the horizon, is really counter productive. You want to deflect all fear into appropriate action.

[PrairieMule]

These are really great posts from everyone. This is why I spend so much time here. Over the last year and a half I have watched so many move from disbelief to paralysis to being proactive, including myself. As for my philosophy, I approch it the same way I would eat a elephant-one bite at a time.

[mercurygirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('NEOPO', 'T')he real point of this thread is to try and analyze how people come to peak oil, why they do what they do after learning about peak oil and what prevents them from looking deeper and finding all of the things I have found that seem very interrelated with PO.

[jupiters_release]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', 'T')he other night, we had some friends over and we were discussing how pilots respond to extreme crisis, in the air. One of our friends is a lawyer and has spent a long time analyzing the contents of black box recordings compiled during the last hours, or minutes of airline crashes.

From his observations, the best pilots, had fantastic innate skill with planes, but they also had the capacity to act calmly and wisely in emergency situations. In other words, they appreciated the magnitude of the problem, but refrained from knee jerk reactions.

Not only did the pilots have to control their own fear, they had to instill their own confidence in every one around them. Our friend said it was awe inspiring that these pilots maintained their control of the situation and had everyone around them working like parts of a well oiled machine. When thing around you are breaking down, the worst thing to do is break down along with them.

I would say that this applies to Peak Oil too. The --'we're going to get through this no matter what', attitude is the best one. If you tell someone about peak cheap oil and they don't see that there is a problem, move on. You've done your job. If they become alarmed, try to instill confidence, not complacency, or hysteria.

Seeing the problem as a grizzly bear or something horrific on the horizon, is really counter productive. You want to deflect all fear into appropriate action.

[gg3]

Re. Threadbear, inertia and paralysis:

In fact cognitive science / consciousness studies has developed quite a good understanding of many aspects of human mental functioning. We still haven't got an answer to whether "monism" or "interactionism" is the correct theory for the existence of consciousness itself, but that is after all the "hard problem," not the easy problem.

Inertia is fairly easy to understand.

First of all, the human organism is basically homeostatic: it has numerous mechanisms to maintain the value of critical variables between fairly narrow limits. Body temperature is the obvious one. Dark adaptation and its auditory equivalent are examples along the borderline between the mechanics of the senses and the functioning of the brain.

The brain itself maintains a complex neurochemical homeostasis, whose most obvious observable is that each individual's emotional makeup tends to be stable over long periods of time. Psychological tolerances to mind-altering drugs are an obvious case: the brain adjusts to the presence of the compound and so the individual requires more and more to achieve the desired high. Bipolar disorder is an example of what happens when certain homeostatic systems fail to operate or when their stabilizing feedback systems interfere with each other.

With regard to fear, keep in mind that fear is nothing more than the subjective feeling produced by certain very well-known neurohormones and neuropeptides, for example adrenal compounds such as adrenolutin and adrenochrome. There are even stimulus-specific fear-compounds such as scotophobin, which in rats produces "fear of bright light." Normal rats avoid brightly lit areas, and doing so has an obvious evolutionary advantage. Rats dosed on an "antidote" to scotophobin will go right out into brightly lit areas as if nothing at all is the matter. Rats dosed on scotophobin itself not only avoid bright light but over-react and display all the signs of being absolutely terrified by it.

As with rats, so with humans. Humans dosed on propanolol, an "antidote" to adrenal hormones, experience reduced levels of fear: thus, propanolol is widely used, in combination with strategic counseling, as a bridge therapy to help people get over phobias. One dose before exposure to a phobia-related stimulus, repeated over the course of seven to ten sessions, is sufficient to do the job in most cases. That is, you don't have to keep taking the medication over a long period as with antidepressants; instead, as with psilocybin and religious experience, it produces effective results on a session-by-session basis. On the other hand, humans who are dosed with adrenochrome experience terrible fear, paranoia, anxiety, and so on.

---

I originally composed this entry last night, and lost track of it until now; so I don't know what I was planning to write after the above paragraphs, but I'm posting it anyway since the information may still be useful.

[threadbear]

gg3, I agree with your post, but consider it incomplete. The brain is a physical/chemical organ with many physical/chemical interactions, but these are only physical manifestations of a deeper metaphysical reality. The world of serious transparent science is taking babysteps in understanding mind in a more holographic way, but the fact that I have to refer to it as 'metaphysics' and not hard science, is telling.

The Freudian, Skinnerian models are limited, the chemical reaction neurological models are limited too, but they form a very important part of the picture without which, science shouldn't attempt to go farther. Covert science, I am sure has gone much further and is now 50 years ahead of science that is in the public domain.

[gampy]

I never really felt any discernable fear after coming across the idea of imminent peak oil and the end of the oil age.

If anything, I felt like I had just discovered a secret, and the feelings that discovering secrets brings.
You know..."hmmmm...interesting...who else knows this?"
It was more an affirmation of something I have felt all my life.
A sort of peace came across me. Since I can remember, I have had the feeling that "in the grand scheme of things", our society and culture is just a phase, a point on a timeline.

I walk around and can't help but feel like an observer on the outside looking in. Not part of the rat race, but an interested observer.

If anything, I have felt a kind of detachment from it all. Just a patient observer waiting for the punchline at the end of the experiment.

Anyone else have these feelings of detachment? I hope I am not a sociopath, or something. I do have empathy for people, but it is shared with the other living things on this planet. I do not see human life as more valuable than other forms of life. Is that bad?

I value my own life and the lives of my family and friends, but the empathy starts to slide a little after that.

Perhaps I am desensitized, and after all the horrors that humankind inflict on themselves and their environment, I just can't come to love them as much as others.

[WildRose]

I have fear which is based on my own indecision. Sometimes I feel a sort of paralysis about which way to jump. For example, for a while I'm content with the idea that life could continue to be manageable in the big city, but then fear grips me about whether this is the best decision. I'm afraid I may have to face regret about this when it's too late to change my mind.

Gampy, I can relate to your statement about feeling like our culture is just a blip in time, a dot on a timeline. The way I see it, why should our way of life be any more permanent than that of societies before us? I think generally, in NA, we find it very difficult to imagine life any different than the way we've known it, what with the years of relative prosperity and good health we've enjoyed. If the converging problems predicted for the next however-many years come to pass, we'll learn that our western culture is not impervious to significant societal change.