[markofthebeats]

there's a chapter in matt savinar's book where, under "what should i do?" he mentions to accept death. and it's true. you can prepare yourself but if TSHTF in the worst case you could be against disease, wars, starvation, weather patterns, biological/nuclear weapons, the army, the law, the govt, and of course hordes of millions of armed angry people. as he says, you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. it's a safe bet things won't get better (transition to a fully functional post-oil civilization) until everyone alive now dies of old age anyway. so making peace with death is a good concept to keep in mind, to not be in denial of.

and when you really see the big picture, peak oil isn't just some isolated event like Y2K, it's a symptom of an economy dependent on infinite growth and a fundamentally unsustainable society. so hey! is has to happen! *shrug* we had a few crazy decades there but oh well, that's life!

at least, these have been my thoughts until lately i've been thinking that it doesn't have to be that way.

the earth could probably support way more than 1 billion (the estimated pre-oil exctraction population and projected post-die-off population) sustainably. perhaps not 6.4 billion at our growth rate... but still, if somehow people magially evolved past greed and the earth's resources were allocated fairly, much if not theoretically all of the world could sustain itself forever in a modern democratic setting. just a different one. if we could all magically set up agriculture and labor based communties, with bikes and alternate energy like solar and wind and without all the wasteful luxuries that we wouldn't miss if they were gone, future generations could have lives every bit as fulfilling, as free, and perhaps even as hedonistic, as the lives cheap oil affords us today. even china.

couldn't we? am i wrong? it is debatable.

so now i'm kinda mad. peak oil has the potential to enlighten, to set the mass paradigm shift in motion needed to progress past self-importance and materialist greed. the 90% die off, the eastern island amnesia scenario and being sent back to the dark ages aren't inevitable, but it's probably gonna happen anyway DESPITE the fact that it didn't have to. damn it!!!

at least these visions give me something to believe in, to strive for. and to stress out over.

anyway, just sharing my half-formed thoughts. i'll get back to homework now.

[Ebyss]

If someone had tried to force you to think like this :

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')we could all magically set up agriculture and labor based communties, with bikes and alternate energy like solar and wind and without all the wasteful luxuries that we wouldn't miss if they were gone, future generations could have lives every bit as fulfilling, as free, and perhaps even as hedonistic, as the lives cheap oil affords us today

[Ludi]

I don't think it needs to "magically" happen, and I don't think people have to suddenly and magically "evolve past greed," all they need is a little "enlightened self-interest." It's in people's interest to make some changes. That's what they might be convinced of, eventually. Maybe even soon enough to avoid the worst of the problems. Nothing "magical" required.

Not saying I don't get discouraged too, I do, everyday, but then I just keep on planting seeds, both the real ones and the metaphorical kind....

[0mar]

We have the knowledge for a sustainable future. However, 6 billion people are not sustainble by any measure of that word.

[Yavicleus]

Yeah, I've been pretty paralyzed with depression about this lately too. I can't seem to logicaly form any long term plans that would work. At most I can do is little, peacemeal solutions that might help if all we experience is a new great depression but no anarchy or die-off.

Ironically though, I've been thinking: wouldn't Easter Island be a great place to live if there is a die off? I mean, bring some chickens, some goats, and a fishing boat along, and you'd be set.

What's hilarious for me, is I see these "survivor" and "Lost" shows on TV, and I think, "man...if I was stuck on a tropical island, I wouldn't want to leave. What is fucking wrong with these people?"

[fossil_fuel]

i definitely wouldn't want to live on a tropical island. i'd probably get wasted by malaria, fever or any one of a number of tropical diseases before too long.

[earthman]

Matt Savinar is correct about accepting death. The existential philosophers have said this. You or I could die today or tomorrow, we need to deal with that or live in a fantasy. Depression is one of the stages of grief. The ideas is not to get stuck in depression, but work your way through to acceptance. It is liberating.

This is a post I made on another thread but it applies here:

Reagrdless of Peak Oil, nuclear war, ecological catastrophe, natural disaster, etc. there will be a massive die off...it is simple math.

Death is not a problem. If there were no death, that would be a big problem. To ignore death, or live as if death were not in your future, is to live an inauthentic life. Not accepting death would be like the fetus not accepting birth. Rumi has a wonderful poem about this.

I did some math…if I made any mistakes or missed something, let me know. To make the math easy I’m using round numbers as generalities, not specific amounts. These are underestimates.

World population: 6 billion
Life span: 100 years

So we can expect 6 billion people to die in the next 100 years, right?

That turns out to be, over the next 100 years:

60 million per year, every year

5 million per month, every month

1,250,000 per week, every week

and 178,571 per day, every day

And that does not include the persons who are born and die within the next 100 years.

These numbers are padded (underestimates)…there are more than 6 billion people on the planet and most will not live 100 years, so the per day or per year number should actually be higher than the math above.

Now if these numbers were averages, and we do not currently see 5 million people dying per month, then we would expect to see more than 5 million per month as it averages out.

Do these numbers make sense to you?

The combination of narcissism, egocentricity, ethnocentricity, and 6 billion people on the planet does not work very well.

Paradigm shift? Yes. Evolution of our worldview? Yes. The kind of transformation we are talking about is nothing short of a SPIRITUAL phenomena, on both an individual and collective level. I'm not talking about religion.

George