PeakOil is You
Main Doomer Fallacy
Re: Main Doomer Fallacy
by Carlhole » Wed 11 Aug 2010, 02:12:43
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'C')ornhole. Shut up why don't ya'
This is what the doomers all about folks. Brain-dead moronic crap every time.
Do you have an opinion as to the "why"?
I think that there is strong Judeo-Christian meme or belief or tenet or whatever you want to call it - that Man is distinctly separate from Nature. And this tenet has affected people in a deep way even if they are not religious. The doomers see Man as a virus, something that has infected Planet Earth. They don't see Man as being created by the Earth's evolutionary forces as I do.
I can only guess that the Peak Oil Theory has inspired a doom-fantasy in certain types of people. If you read this site or Malthusia.com (former PO.com members). They clearly are in love with doom. Those that are attracted to a vision of doom tend to stay at sites like PO.com whereas those who do NOT entertain any such notions might read the site but not return or post anything ever. So sites like this one have a skewed consensus.
A former doomer recently wrote about this in The Doomer's Curse
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Doomer is motivated by much more than a perverse sense of altruism. He mainly desires to see everyone brought down to his level. His fondest wish is for everyone to be as emotionally crippled as he is, and, if they could also be paralyzed fiscally, that would be great too. The argument for the necessity of disaster is merely an excuse for his vindictive fantasies. This is the Doomer's Curse: to wallow in despair, to sneer at the happiness of others, to revel in schadenfreude and to believe that he has humanity's best interests at heart. The Doomer honestly thinks that a universal depression (in the emotional sense) would lay the foundation for a better world, but this belief is rooted in his own selfishness, not in a rational socioeconomic analysis.
The Doomer wants this world to end, because in this world he is a failure. He has failed to achieve his goals personally and/or professionally, but he lacks the maturity to take responsibility for his failure. He blames the rules of this world for his defeat, to the point of judging this world irredeemably corrupt. This belief makes a virtue of his failure, for only the corrupt could succeed in such a world. His moral integrity precludes his success in this den of iniquity. With a better perspective, he could see that it's not the world's corruption that condemns him to failure, but rather his failure that leads him to condemn the world. Therefore, instead of taking steps to improve his chances of success, he throws up his hands, picks up the remote (or the mouse) and eagerly awaits the end of the world that (he believes) is dead set against him.
The Doomer confuses his personal collapse with the "inevitable" collapse of society. ("Inevitable" is the keystone of the Doomer vocabulary and, as such, should be avoided whenever possible.) He suffers from a severe case of tunnel vision. Like a horse with blinders on, he can only see what's immediately in front of him. Anything indicating that other people's experience contradicts his world-view is dismissed as false or a lie propagated by the corrupt elite. He doesn't want his dogma tested, because then it might be refuted, and the emotional consequences of that would be too much to bear. He would have to accept that he has failed due to his lack of merit and not by his refusal to make some moral compromise.
I probably wouldn't have written the essay exactly this way. I have other thoughts about the matter. It's seems clear that a lot of folks who post around here simply hate civilization and its ills. They hate the de-speciation and environmental degradation, etc. They've heard about pollution all their lives and felt powerless about it. They witnessed the rampant development that has wrecked the countryside. They see powerful people capitalizing on the poor and weak while off-loading costs onto the environment, etc. So, you can hardly blame them for finding surcease in the company of other doomers.
However, someone like myself who sees evolutionary forces in the driver's seat, and sees ideas like The Technological Singularity as having validity - I'm not very popular with doomers. And they come to recognize me as someone who is outside the doomer-loop and so they attack en swarme.
I don't particularly care though because I'm an argumentative bastard. That's why I chose my username. But I don't want to be an out-and-out troll. I just have a different point-of-view. And I certainly don't believe that ANYONE can accurately predict the future. The world is just too chaotic (in the sense of Chaos Theory) a place to allow accurate prediction. Anything can happen. Science is not at the End of All Knowledge.
I laid out my viewpoint here, second post down.
- Carlhole
) but I do not observe that you are an argumentative one.
