[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
')Perhaps using some adjective "hopeless doomer" or "defeated doomer" or "depressed doomer" would help clarify.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', '
')
Doom does not necessarily refer to extinction. It can also refer to much suffering and death. Although people generally acknowledge mortality, it is highly likely that most would like to avoid passing away due to suffering caused by crises discussed in this forum.

[SeaGypsy]

Regarding care of the dying, there is such a thing as too much compassion. From personal & professional experience I can assure you of that. The best palliative support workers are the most self aware, the most sensitive to group dynamics, the most self controlled, not the most compassionate people. Acutely compassionate people tend to fall to pieces, turn to blubbering messes right when they need to be resolute & affirmative, tend to be overly focused on the individual most obviously in trouble, when they need to be supporting the people who will be left behind.

[onlooker]

Great post Ibon. I had my father who languished with cancer recently at the end of last year and eventually succumbed. I saw first hand the care of the hospice worker. I interpret the thrust of what you say is people unable and unwilling to face the realities of life. This applies to death, to suffering and to the end of the modern lifestyle. It is my impression that like you said this causes needless consternation. It is taught in various philosophies and religions to accept the inevitable. This is a wise attitude. So in light of this, I believe most on this site are accepting this. This in contrast to I believe former posters when this site began who were "survivalists" "preppers" etc. I do not criticize others for preparing for the future but this seems in line with what you are saying that people especially in the West are conditioned to seek to avoid all hardships. Nobody wants to feel needlessly pain or suffering or for that matter die. However, it is the wise person who accepts the possibility of this and does not live in perpetual fear of these possibilities. When people are less afraid then maybe they will be freer to embrace the unknown including unknown people and groups.

[SeaGypsy]

Suffering & death are not possibilities Onlooker, they are inevitable facts. They may be reduced, staved off, but they happen eventually to all of us.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'S')uffering & death are not possibilities Onlooker, they are inevitable facts. They may be reduced, staved off, but they happen eventually to all of us.

[SeaGypsy]

BTW one key definition of Buddhism is indifference. This is not easily understood by western definitions, as the implication is callousness. Indifference in Buddhism is about mindfulness, another easily mistaken position, implying a state of ego. Indifferent mindfulness is about observing states of being as they come & go, about being the observer, even of the apparent 'self'. For poetic descriptions read the first few Upanishads, believed to be among the oldest surviving written documents, produced around 5,000 years ago, based on recorded observations by individuals who had undergone extreme sensual deprivation, spending years alone in deep dark caves, fed by silent servants- a practice which continues in the far north of India to this day.

[onlooker]

Sea, can I ask you a question about Buddhism. Is a major tenet of Buddhism that suffering is necessary for enlightenment?

[Timo]

Pardon me Sea, but i'd like to take a stab at answering that question. I'll acknowledge ahead of time that i might be completely wrong.

Is suffering necessary to gain enlightenment? No.

Suffering can be used to help your self become enlightened, but only in the same sense of joy and compassion. Enlightenment (this is where i might go wrong, because i haven't yet discovered enlightenment, myself) is the discovery, acceptance, embrace, and separation from cyclic existence. Ignorance is the sense that all of us inherently exist. Ignorance is the sense that everything inherently exists. Not true. Everything that appears to exist is a construct of an infinite assemblage of minute sub components, many of these components being time and circumstance. Nothing exists in and of itself. We are all inherently dependent on the world around us, and everything around us is also inherently dependent on the same phenomena that give us our own dependent existence. Ourselves consist of body, mind, and what could be called the "I". The mind does not exist without the body, and the body does not exist without the mind. One without the other disintegrates into its minute component parts. I'm still trying to determine what is meant by the "I." "I" is not the mind. The "I" is a third dependent of the mind and body. "I" does not exist independently from mind and body. Therefore, when mind and body die and disintegrate, so goes the "I". Is "I" the spirit? Perhaps, because Buddhism does believe in the karmic rebirth of all living beings, but i'm not making this assumption for myself. I don't know yet. I'm still a newbie to Buddhism. But back to your original question, suffering is not a requisite to enlightenment, or nirvana. Suffering is only a part of life. Understanding the dependent phenomena that result in suffering, and understanding the chosen path to end that suffering through the dissolution of cyclic existence is a part of achieving enlightenment.

Needless to say, someone could easily spend their entire life trying to achieve enlightenment, and never get there. I'm sure many people do.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'S')ea, can I ask you a question about Buddhism. Is a major tenet of Buddhism that suffering is necessary for enlightenment?

[ennui2]

We can talk about what kind of mindset leads to the least amount of human suffering, but there's really no vehicle to take these philosophies into the wild, since nobody wants to deal with it, and probably won't accept the advice even after they realize we're screwed. This was supposed to be the hearts-and-minds aspect of Transition, the Joanna Macy self-help mantras. It's a catch-22 because you need to prep people in advance of doom, but in advance of doom they don't want to accept that it can or will happen, so they're left having to confront it last-minute, dealing with all their hopes and dreams collapsing at once.

[onlooker]

Well then Ennui, I hearken to what Ibon stated " As many of you know I am a great believer that external consequences will be our greatest teacher and greatest force in molding culture going forward." So what I see is basically most of us here are now resigned to the fact that drastic consequences are going to happen inevitably. So, we are left wondering and pondering what will we and our surroundings will be like afterwards. I stress afterwards. I think then that we in the here and now can pave the way for those who come afterwards. We can do so by the simple act of not giving up hope. By not simply despairing and resigning to this despair. That mirrors what Ibon is saying. We owe it to future generations considering how much we have mucked up this planet and our circumstances on it. Accepting consequences is not the same as accepting doom.

[Timo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'A')ccepting consequences is not the same as accepting doom.

[onlooker]

Well therein lies the crux of the matter. It is the differential between your outlook Timo and Ibons. Ibon believes pretty much that consequences are inevitable but is emphatic that those consequences will be the catalyst for a much needed rebirth or renaissance for the remaining humans. It seems you Timo are reluctant to accept those consequences because they involve too much death and suffering and the remnants of what remains will probably not be very encouraging. I must say I am ambivalent about this because while I too am afraid of what "consequences" entail, I am also hopeful that for the remaining humans this will provide the requisite conditions to re-establish some worthwhile communities and they can forge ahead in the great unknowable future. My ambivalence lies in what you express Timo, a sense of dread for what the transition will hold for humans during these times and also a foreboding that what remains may be something akin to a barbarian future whereby we will start almost from scratch to try and lift our communities to some sort of worthwhile existence. So in essence my ambivalence lies in the crossroads of hope and a sense of foreboding.

[ennui2]

Acceptance is less about what you want to see happen and more about acknowledging how little agency each of us has as an individual.

We all share this planet together and we're all in some way impacting others and they are impacting us. However, we all go about our affairs as if nothing we do impacts the other, and that we have no business to dictate how others live their lives, that it is an affront to their vision of freedom or the unrestricted marketplace.

So we can retreat inward and tend to our gardens all we want, up until the point global weirding causes them to die off in a freak late frost or dry up in a drought.

The bottom line is we're all in this one together and we have to accept that, as a whole, we're going to just plow right into a brick wall.

How do you cope with that? You wanna be a Cassandra and scream from the mountaintops? How will you accomplish more than Al Gore, Bill McKibben, or even the Pope has? The world is not lacking prominent mouthpieces. What it's lacking are people who are willing to accept what they're saying. You want to whine about it? Start a blog and be a curmudgeon like Kunstler or Orlov? That's fine, but what does that really accomplish besides the ego gratification of having a bunch of bobbleheading sycophants echo back your rage and contempt for TPTB week to week?

There's really nothing TO do besides simply accepting how powerless we are and make peace with it. I still think Ibon is desperately searching for a post-crash silver-lining. But to me, it just feels like another way to treat the pain of feeling powerless. I think the only way really be at peace with it is to both accept a lack of agency and not try to forecast any sort of post-crash nirvanas, to just accept that if we're gonna crash back to Georgia Guidestones or go completely extinct, to just let it be and find a way to still find some remaining joy and meaning in the day-to-day.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', ' ') Ibon believes pretty much that consequences are inevitable but is emphatic that those consequences will be the catalyst for a much needed rebirth or renaissance for the remaining humans. It seems you Timo are reluctant to accept those consequences because they involve too much death and suffering and the remnants of what remains will probably not be very encouraging. I must say I am ambivalent about this because while I too am afraid of what "consequences" entail, I am also hopeful that for the remaining humans this will provide the requisite conditions to re-establish some worthwhile communities and they can forge ahead in the great unknowable future. My ambivalence lies in what you express Timo, a sense of dread for what the transition will hold for humans during these times and also a foreboding that what remains may be something akin to a barbarian future whereby we will start almost from scratch to try and lift our communities to some sort of worthwhile existence. So in essence my ambivalence lies in the crossroads of hope and a sense of foreboding.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')
Let's address suffering. Buddhism as an example explores this and states that suffering and death is an integral part of this mortal existence and it is the attempt to avoid suffering that causes the most suffering. Part of a healthy life for any individual is to accept the conundrum of this mortal sentient existence. A society with some depth and wisdom will have mentors and teachings that will cultivate this acceptance.

We live today in a society that has little depth in confronting death and suffering, that cultivates instead a culture of avoidance and denial of suffering, that allow elders to rot in "old peoples homes", that creates endless products to maximize convenience and distraction. It is little wonder that existential threats like climate change are treated with denial.

My caretakers dog recently had 8 puppies. 4 have died already as this was her first litter and she was clearly overwhelmed. My daughter, who is here with us, found one of the puppies that had wandered off and was severely dehydrated and weak and almost dead. She brought the puppy to the mother and held the puppy to the teat of the mother and it attempted to suckle but was too weak. This puppy did not survive the night. My daughters compassion was noble but just as important was the wisdom gained that the 3 or 4 puppies that will survive will be healthy along with the mother and that this is nature's way, not all 8 puppies "deserved" or were meant to survive.

Now let's apply the puppy story to 8 billion humans assuming that this will be the population when consequences start. Our global culture is going to experience and witness the asymmetrical consequences of climate change and human overshoot, will see bio-regions suffer disproportionately, will see mass migration from coastal areas, will see a die-off unfolding in many parts of the world. Our modern consumption culture, so excellent today at creating distractions and denial, at avoiding suffering, is going to be confronted with hundreds of millions and eventually billions of little puppies to weak to continue to suck on the teat of consumption culture, that will fall by the wayside, linger in starvation and eventually perish.

I do think that many who have been so conditioned to avoid suffering and death will truly prefer to hold on to the ideology of abundance until the end and will go down harshly. They will suffer disproportionately.

Those however who move through these hardships with eyes and ears and hearts open will suffer as well but they will suffer knowingly. There will be wisdom gained. These are the very experiences which will swing the pendulum away from hedonism and toward devotion and self-sacrifice.

How many of you have had dying parents and have experienced hospice workers who have come into your home and helped your dying loved ones ease their pain into death? Hospice workers are some of the most deeply compassionate humans on the planet. They exercise their compassion muscles every day. They help the dying and their families through the process.

Well, there is going to be a big "market" for these skills in the decades and centuries ahead.

We should embrace the suffering that will come. It will make us a wiser and more compassionate culture. It will transform our culture.

Ralfy, you are saying that extinction might be preferable to suffering. This is exactly a sentiment born of our immature culture that is in deep denial of the nature of existence. That has been honed to avoid suffering. This sentiment comes from a culture that is sadly unprepared for what is coming. I agree with you, many who feel this way are to weak to suck on the teat of the reality of consequences, They, like the puppy, will expire in the night. But fortunately they will make room for those more tenacious.

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'G')reat post Ibon. I had my father who languished with cancer recently at the end of last year and eventually succumbed. I saw first hand the care of the hospice worker. I interpret the thrust of what you say is people unable and unwilling to face the realities of life. This applies to death, to suffering and to the end of the modern lifestyle. It is my impression that like you said this causes needless consternation. It is taught in various philosophies and religions to accept the inevitable. This is a wise attitude. So in light of this, I believe most on this site are accepting this. This in contrast to I believe former posters when this site began who were "survivalists" "preppers" etc. I do not criticize others for preparing for the future but this seems in line with what you are saying that people especially in the West are conditioned to seek to avoid all hardships. Nobody wants to feel needlessly pain or suffering or for that matter die. However, it is the wise person who accepts the possibility of this and does not live in perpetual fear of these possibilities. When people are less afraid then maybe they will be freer to embrace the unknown including unknown people and groups.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ralfy', '
')
How is the point that "suffering and death is an integral part of this moral existence" connected to suffering and death brought about by limits to growth? Or is ambition (one source of the drive for growth) an "integral part of this moral existence" as well?