[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PonyBoy78', 'D')oomerism.. hard to put into words, but I'll try anyway. --snip-- I'm a doomer, but I'm not willing to easily give-up on certain modern conveniences while making my plans and preps.

[Pretorian]

$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." --snip-- And so the paradox here is that while Doomers prep so enthusiastically for a third-world future, the people living in the third world today desperately dream to have all the common luxuries we in the first world enjoy -- thanks to the Age of Oil.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')And why should you, anyway? Personally, I don't think I need to practice up on suffering. I'm sure I'll be able to suffer just fine when I have to.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ')Nobody is a saint.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', ' ')Nobody is a saint.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'I')f you want to see hunger and doom, go to places like North Korea, the slums of Brazil and India, or most of Africa. I don't think you'll find any sense of adventure in the way the hungry and poor live, their life just is what it is -- hard, painful, and short.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'D')o 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...

[PonyBoy78]

$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]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')I agree. But I pretty much stopped feeling guilty about not being a saint. Maybe because I realize I will never be a saint. I don't see much benefit in feeling guilty, personally.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')
I think a dose of guilt is therapeutic because too often here I see this pathological scapegoating going on as a coping mechanism.

[jdmartin]

I follow MOS's line of thinking. It's easy to point fingers at other people and say "Look at how wasteful they are" when we're really all part of the system. As I've said on here a million times, one man's waste is another man's job. Even the "self-sufficient", like the Amish, depend on all kinds of mechanized, industrialized processi, from the Chinese garment factories that produce their materials, to the people in "the system" that buy all their knicknacks and quilts.

On the other hand, I'm with Ludi: there's really nothing to feel guilty about if you're doing your best. Every one of us that logs on to this board is using resources, same as everyone else (what keeps all these servers running? Mountaintop removal coal, or diminishing natural gas-flavored electricity), and all you can do is the best you can do. Now, if you're pissing away resources on purpose to party like it's 1959, well, maybe you should feel guilty

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', 'I')t's easy to point fingers at other people and say "Look at how wasteful they are" when we're really all part of the system.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', 'I')t's easy to point fingers at other people and say "Look at how wasteful they are" when we're really all part of the system.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', '.')..it was never "honky-dory" for everyone, ever. For example here in the US I doubt slaves or native Americans would have found everything "honky-dory". Activity always equals current carrying capacity, how could it be any other way? We can't [yet] hallucinate production into existence, as we're finding out now.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', ' ')So yes, things were "honky-dory" back then, and would've stayed that way for centuries more than under the newly imposed European time-line.

[jdmartin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', 'Y')ou need might to refresh on the definition of carrying capacity --"...the population size of the species its environment can sustain in the long term, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in that environment."--, because activity doesn't always equal carrying capacity. Sorry.

Centuries ago, before the en masse arrival of Europeans, although I wasn't here, but I'm pretty sure there was enough bison and fresh water for everyone, and I doubt they were any where near drawing from the phantom carrying capacity. So yes, things were "honky-dory" back then, and would've stayed that way for centuries more than under the newly imposed European time-line.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', 'T')hat [carrying capacity] definition is always changing, both locally and globally. It's impossible to say with any certainty, though most of us suspect as much, that the planet's future carrying capacity for humans won't increase or decrease. If you told scientists 200 years ago that we'd be sustaining 7 billion humans on the planet, they probably would have laughed and said it was impossible. Just as we today say that 10 or 11 billion is impossible ... we'd probably easily support another couple of billion just as we are.

One American probably equals three or four Africans...we could subtract 25% of our food intake, provide it to someone else, and they'd be great.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', ' ')One American probably equals three or four Africans

[bodigami]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jdmartin', ' ')One American probably equals three or four Africans

[deMolay]

Depression flattens the tax rolls, and local government hikes fines fess and penalties to continue gorging themselves and their fat paycheques and pensions. If this is true do you agree with it, or should government be cut back like everyone else. http://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct09/cri ... 10-09.html