[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '&')lt;<< a lazy doomer

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')fter 5 years here and a personal professional lifetime in 'Sustainable System' I now believe that most, say 5 billion, will die---1st, 2nd, and 3rd world. Does that make me a romantic doomer? --snip-- Mass panic, chaos, and finally hunger prevail. I can not prepare for that. But I do not need to and it will be fun watching from Fortress Humboldt

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')fter 5 years here and a personal professional lifetime in 'Sustainable System' I now believe that most, say 5 billion, will die---1st, 2nd, and 3rd world. Does that make me a romantic doomer?

[Sixstrings]

I got to thinking along these lines after watching the Nightline piece a few days ago. After watching that, it occured to me that no, I don't really want to live that way. I don't want to grow all my own food. I love all my techie toys, and no I don't want to live in the woods.

To be honest, a lot of the doomstead lifestyle just looks like poverty to me. And I don't want to live that way unless I have to.

So I'm still a Doomer, but I plan on enjoying the Age of Oil down to the last drop.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')To be honest, a lot of the doomstead lifestyle just looks like poverty to me. And I don't want to live that way unless I have to.

[Hermes]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')I guess my point here is that when / if the first world collapses, don't assume this new way of living will be "better" than the old. In fact, it will very likely be terrible. And this is why the mainstream isn't quick to jump on the Doom bandwagon.. it's not exactly a future many people want to contemplate.

[WildRose]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'A')ll the talking we do about preps, with stores of rice and beans, and walking to work and giving up this and that luxury.. if the day comes that there really are food shortages, and it's full-on Doom, I just don't think it will be so glamorous as the novel "World Made by Hand."

I mean, we have all these modern conveniences for a reason. Fact is, subsistence level hard work pretty much sucks, and what we call Doomerism is what most of the world already lives in -- abject poverty.

[vtsnowedin]

My take on it is that everyone that believes that world oil production has or soon will peak is a Doomer. What that means to the Doomer personally and their beliefs about what the future holds for them and the worlds population varies all over the board. Some want to fight the good fight with solar panels, tidal turbans, alga oil and such and others just want someone to pass the cyanide capsules.
Living on sparsely settled good farmland without oil would be hard work but not poverty. Living on the Indian subcontinent with out oil and with 1.3 billion people will be worse then any here tapping at a keyboard can imagine. The worst nightmare is the desperate and starving nuking, those few places with enough food ,to prevent anyone from coming out a winner in the post oil post multi-billion population world.

[rangerone314]

Poverty is relative.

What was 19th century middle class life like compared to poor people in the US? In the US most poor people have TVs and electricity.

Imagine living in the middle ages as a lord in a drafty, damp castle. Canopy beds because roofs leaked.

Compare US poor to 3rd world poor. In a 3rd world country poverty can mean you are starving, and eating clay like in Haiti.

[mos6507]

Whether doomerism is putting a fashionable spin on poverty or not, we really don't have much choice in the matter. Assuming that powerdown is gonna happen whether we like it or not, our main objective for ourselves is to do the equivalent of Steve Martin in The Jerk, which is to hold on to as much as we can on the way down.



The idea that securing food alone will be a panacea is wrongheaded, however. There is more to survival besides food. For instance, the loss of modern medical care will be devastating. Those who think if they just eat well and exercise they can get by on nothing more than herbal medicine are deluding themselves. And what about dealing with a traumatic injury? Viruses that ripple through communities unchecked by immunizations? What if you get lyme disease from a tick while out in the field? The death rate will skyrocket once we're in A World Made by Hand even without zombies.

This is a big reason why I haven't just quit my job and moved out to the country. I'm just doing too well for myself to turn my back on BAU with all of its comforts and safety nets.

Just because we have been poor stewards of the environment doesn't mean every aspect of modern life is superfluous. The greatest luxury of all in modern life has been the rise of the individual. Because we're not so concerned with death around every corner, we've been able to focus on individual life goals. This luxury has been used and abused but I'd much rather have that buffer zone than not have it.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ') For instance, the loss of modern medical care will be devastating.

[jdmartin]

I get the point of the original post and in spirit I agree with it. I don't think there's anything glamorous in having less purchasing power, of competing with others for dwindling resources, etc.

However, just because it's not glamorous doesn't mean that a) it's not coming, and b) in some ways we won't be much better off for it.

I think about all this from time to time. I think in some ways people think romantically of it because it conveys a simpler existence, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Think about it - do we really all need cell phones to be connected 24/7? Do we need instant access to the internet all the time, any time? 113 channels of shit on the tv to choose from? Of course, you can always simplify your life voluntarily without the world crashing down by simply doing away with these things (I don't have a cell phone, and eventually I'll talk the wife out of cable ).

More than that, though, one thing all these luxuries and stuff do is require you to work longer and harder to avoid work. Huh? Example: I have a gas-powered push mower - a simple machine with a 4 cycle combustion engine, 15 years old, no assisted driving, all the pushing comes from me. This thing is supposed to make life easier and faster over, say, a manual reel mower. This is supposed to save me time and energy so I have more time for leisure. However, the mower originally cost more than a reel mower. That money has to come from somewhere, so I trade in my hours for a handful of dimes in order to get that money. Then I have to buy gasoline and oil for it forever, more hours for dimes. Eventually I need spark plugs, air filters, a replacement pull rope, and so on. Now, I've made this mower last 3 times longer than it should have - the deck has rusted out and I've welded on patches, reused air filters for years, etc. Nevertheless, it weighs twice as much as a reel mower, and a reel mower's only cost after you buy it is sharpening the blade (same as a gas mower, btw), which I can do with a $2 file that will last me for 20 years.

And so it is with everything - the dishwasher that saves me time by washing the dishes breaks every 5 years and requires several hundred dollars for a new one. Cordless drills drill a hole faster, but the batteries go dead every two years, requiring replacement. Cars get me to work faster but cost thousands of dollars to buy, maintain and operate, especially over a self-reproducing horse out in the field. Bottom line is all these time-saving leisure-creating devices really do is shift the way you work, from out in the field to the office cubicle. Americans work 8 hours per week longer in 2008 than they did in 1900, despite all these time-saving luxuries. The more stuff you have, the more conveniences, the more money it requires to both buy them and keep them up. Americans need big-ass houses to hold all the crap of "normal" living, from riding lawnmowers to weedeaters to snow shovels to two full outfittings of clothes for "work" and "play", etc. I'm no exception - matter of fact, up until a few years ago, I'd say I was a fairly protypical American, though I've always been on the frugal side of things. I have a good-sized house and lots of stuff just like everyone else here.

Think about how many people put themselves into servitude for *years* in order to buy all this stuff. Is it worth it? I think most "doomers" say no, and that's what they're romanticizing - a lifestyle in which there's more time for play, for culture, for hanging out with friends, even at the expense of truckloads worth of junk. No way would I ever go back to the idea of using credit cards to buy all kinds of instant gratification stuff, trading in my future hours. This realization starts to hit home as you get older and into middle age that, hey, I don't have *that* many years left, do I want to slave away for my stuff forever?

I bought a new, American-made hoe the other day. It's not nearly as fast as a gas-powered weedeater, but it's a lot quieter, and free other than the food in my belly. And it'll last 50 years. Now how can I argue with that?

[Caffeine]

In recent centuries, poverty is often associated with debt slavery. 'Doomer' types are generally interested in self-sufficiency and either paying down existing debts, or not getting into debt in the first place.

[vision-master]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', 'I') get the point of the original post and in spirit I agree with it. I don't think there's anything glamorous in having less purchasing power, of competing with others for dwindling resources, etc. --snip-- I bought a new, American-made hoe the other day. It's not nearly as fast as a gas-powered weedeater, but it's a lot quieter, and free other than the food in my belly. And it'll last 50 years. Now how can I argue with that?

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', '
')However, just because it's not glamorous doesn't mean that a) it's not coming, and b) in some ways we won't be much better off for it.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'W')hy do ppl need 4,000 sg ft 3 level houses?

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')I've used this analogy before, but think of peak oil doom as being on an elevator. We're now living in the penthouse. As the elevator goes down, we lose the trappings of luxury. At first, this won't seem so bad. Do we really need American Idol? Do we really need Wal Mart stocked with backscratchers shipped in from China? Losing that kind of lifestyle might be therapeutic, but what most doomers are worried about is the elevator not stopping at some comfortable level of austerity, but continuing to go down, down, down, into an abyss. Some more cornucopian types think it will stop about halfway and all will be well. We won't really know until we get there. Where we stop will validate or deny various carrying capacity models. We'll have to stop arguing over predicting the future and just experience energy descent in realtime. We'll pass various floors one by one and say goodbye to various cornucopian predictions forever. Going down and where she stops, nobody knows is scary, period.

[mos6507]

Oh, yes. Things can get very unpleasant long before the last stop on the elevator, as hard times brings out the best and the worst in human nature. I just think outlook for the future factors in heavily in how people react. If people think "we'll pull out of this" they will be more inclined to hunker down and play by the rules like in the depression and WWII. If they really think we're headed for a malthusian die-off, they will riot long before we hit bottom (think Children of Men).

[PonyBoy78]

Doomerism.. hard to put into words, but I'll try anyway.

To me, it's the belief that this way of living cannot and will not remain how it currently is. The change could come as a result of oil depletion, economic armageddon, a meteorite strike, pole shift.. take your pick.

However, it's not just the belief - it's also fact that one takes action in response to such a belief. That action can be cyanide capsules (as someone mentioned earlier), or a sustainable utopian ecovillage, or a bunker with 20 years' worth of freeze-dried ramen noodles and vitamins, or anything in-between.

I'm a doomer, but I'm not willing to easily give-up on certain modern conveniences while making my plans and preps.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PonyBoy78', 'I')'m a doomer, but I'm not willing to easily give-up on certain modern conveniences while making my plans and preps.