Optimism is Hilarious!
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Far be it from me to pander to your doomscrolling adventures and fantasies of Superheroes saving us from the Robot Apocalypse, but sometimes, I just get a little tired of the obfuscation of our ACTUAL situation. Even Caitlin Johnstone (Our Entire Civilization is Fake and Stupid), who is a magician with existential skeptical turn-of-phrase, seems to have become optimistic amid the actual doomy-ness of contemporary circumstances.
Civilization itself has become an evolutionary trap of comforts and conveniences for our species, while Nature is about to dispatch us with all of the usual means simultaneously: fire, drowning, famine, pestilence.
As much as it is uplifting and entertaining to think that terrestriality will awaken some magical “best part” of humanity, the environmental statistics and probabilities point out how futile that optimism really is.
Scientists keep trying to be nice and send out warnings about things like “tipping points” and “social infrastructure”, but when you read the science articles that they are using for reference within the vague generalities of the pablum, you start to see the horror between the lines. Greenland, Pakistan, California, Kentucky and Mississippi are data points at the very beginning of the graphs, not the stages where we can save TWAWKI.
2022 human consumerism is blowing past 1.5° like it was broken down on the side of the Autobahn, while politicians are demanding increased oil production and higher stock investments based on debt-based promises to burn and buy perpetually increasing amounts of petro-produced products with our future selves driving to even more pyramid-building jobs.
I love optimists. I can sit and laugh at them for hours.
Even as a majority are now starting to read about global warming, there is no probable scenario where Resentment doesn’t start shooting at all targets of opportunity.
Humans don’t play nice unless they think there’s an adult in the vicinity. Ta Interwebs proves there isn’t.
We have evolved to not know the difference between bullies and leaders. Competition won’t stop painting targets until everyone can see their direct dependence on each living thing they encounter. In other words, Collapse is going to be violent and combative…
