Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on December 11, 2013
6 ways to become more miserable about climate change and peak oil
It’s bad enough that most middle-class people still have to struggle to keep their jobs and homes in today’s Second Great Depression.
But if you’re even a little bit awake, then you also have to worry about longer-term threats: climate change, Fukushima, peak oil and the impending collapse of industrial civilization.
There’s plenty of reason for anyone to be depressed these days. Yet, somehow, some people still manage to keep calm and carry on.
So, for the ordinary person who thinks that happiness is for dopes and who needs a little help finding their way to the bottom, therapist Cloe Madanes offers “14 Habits of Highly Miserable People.”
Here, for those who are energy- and climate-aware, I offer my own adaptation of Madanes’s six top points to succeed at self-sabotage:
- Be afraid, be very afraid, of economic loss. If you know that fiat currency is about to collapse and take the global financial system down with it, then you certainly won’t bother changing jobs, trying to start a new business or helping make your community more resilient. Just buy some gold and wait for the inevitable. Meanwhile, keep showing up at that soul-sucking cubicle job.
- Practice sustained boredom. Convince yourself that your city is full of mainstream fools too stupid to dodge the can of whoop-ass that’s about to hit them in the head. And don’t forget that people are utterly predictable and will always let you down.
- Give yourself a negative identity. Why not start telling others that you’re a Depressed Person, or at least a dissenter against everything that Western Civilization, patriarchy and capitalism stand for?
- Attribute bad intentions. If you disagree with someone on climate change or energy, it must mean they’re a greedy bastard or just a dupe of the system. No need to listen to anything they say — except to mock it later on.
- Always be alert and in a state of anxiety. The ultimate doomer-prepper stance. Be like Noah and make your home an ark. You don’t want to be caught napping when the whole house of cards comes down.
- Glorify or vilify the past. It really doesn’t matter whether you think humanity made a wrong turn at the Industrial Revolution, in the Fertile Crescent or with the election of Ted Cruz. Maybe the time in which you were cursed to be born is the ultimate dark age. Or it could be that today’s world, whose ecological awareness and freedom from ancient superstitions gives us so much promise, is the victim of the flawed Weltanschaung of previous generations. Either way, the fix is in and you’re screwed!
In the Dark Ages, the benighted peasant worried that Satan was always at his back.
In today’s scientific era, the eco-doomer is way past that. He knows that an industrial-strength climate disaster, energy crisis or financial panic is just around the corner. Society has got to collapse by the end of the first quarter of next year at the very latest.
OK, let’s get serious folks.
Nobody can say how much time humanity, industrial society or any one of us has left. Even without world-threatening catastrophes, you or I could get hit by a bus while crossing the street to work tomorrow morning.
So it makes good sense to follow the advice of religious teachers and secular sages alike. That is, to live each day as if it were our last. And then, to make the most of that day. Part of that is being grateful for the pain of just living.
As John Keats said, “Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
– Erik Curren, Transition Voice
9 Comments on "6 ways to become more miserable about climate change and peak oil"
Beery on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 12:29 pm
I love this quaint notion that every peakist and everyone who believes that climate change is happening must be some kind of anxious and fearful grumpy depressive.
Since when are we not enjoying life?
Bob Inget on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 1:37 pm
Obviously, all of us don’t fit in EVERY
little over-simplified box as described.
One writer having a bit of fun with other’s anxiety. You have a problem with that?
Personally, I think the little post would be funnier if self directed.
BillT on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 2:52 pm
Bored? Afraid? Anxious? Negative?
I’m a child of the ‘cold war’. I grew up thinking about ‘duck and cover’. I breathed DDT and cigarette smoke like it was perfume for much of my youth along with leaded exhaust fumes from cars and trucks. My eyes burned from burning coal fumes from the furnace in the basement. I lived in homes with radon filled basements. Why should I be afraid of oil peaking? I’m far more interested in what is next.
I have come to peace with the fact of my death. I do not fear it, nor do I court it. I just know it is an event in my future. After that, there is nothing, and I will no longer have any knowledge of what happens anywhere.
I cherish every day as if it were my last and live it to the best of my abilities. I care not what you or anyone thinks of me or my thoughts. I got over that fear long ago. I am me, unique and glad to have lived in such a great age. I have little of what you would call wealth or security, but I have love, friends, family and the necessities of life. I enjoy a life free of debt. What more could I want? Nothing I can think of.
Bob Inget on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 3:29 pm
BillT
BobI born 1935,dies 2035, agrees.
I’m hanging on a beach in Nicaragua keeping close track of wild surfer
girls, eating inexpensive fresh seafood
every night and pumping iron when taking off from this blogging nonsense.
Northwest Resident on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 4:15 pm
I’m like Steve Buscemi’s character (Rockhound) in the movie Armaggedon — just trying to have a little fun before I die. Also, thinking, mellow out everybody — we’ve got a ringside seat to the end of the world!
Seriously though, one person might fully understand the hellstorm headed our way and get very depressed as Erik Curren points out. Another might see it as an opportunity for humanity to reset, to purge itself of the peversions and deathly dysfunctionalities that it has come to embrace, to return to living natural human lives in harmony with the natural world he has been blessed with — and such a person might find a way to be happy and optimistic about the future, knowing even that it is going to be a rough voyage to the “other side” which very few people will be able to navigate. I’m one of those.
J-Gav on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 4:27 pm
Living in the present is sound advice, as long as it’s not taken as a licence for constant personal pleasure-seeking and self-aggrandizement at the expense of others. Language is always tricky on these subjects but I’ll venture to say I’m in favor of hedonism and Epicureanism – in the original sense of those terms, i.e. Epicureans did NOT indulge in orgies, in fact their lifestyles would seem rather monkish today. I just try to enjoy what I have to the hilt as opposed to always running after something else which won’t bring any more happiness than what is already on offer.
Beery on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 4:29 pm
Bob Inget wrote:
“Obviously, all of us don’t fit in EVERY
little over-simplified box as described.”
Yeah, I kinda gathered that. Though it didn’t stop Erik from acting as if everyone did and creating his stupid fantasy.
“One writer having a bit of fun with other’s anxiety. You have a problem with that?”
Yeah, actually, I do. Because it’s fricken stupid. It doesn’t say anything meaningful. It’s just mental masturbation.
keith on Wed, 11th Dec 2013 4:47 pm
Like most talk today. Very wordy, no substance.
Pops on Thu, 12th Dec 2013 1:56 pm
I commented on this in the forum:
http://peakoil.com/forums/curren-6-ways-to-become-more-miserable-t68961.html