21 Comments

I empathise with your anger, Geoffrey.

Every morning I open world news, and am forced to ask myself 'what will it take?'

Expand full comment
author

Indeed, what will it take? So many wake-up calls, so many sleep walkers.

Expand full comment

Degrowth. A term we all need to understand and work towards. Only a lunatic like Meatball Ron would think that ignoring the threat will make it go away. Isn’t that childish behavior and thinking?

Geoff, I just don’t see any leader of any country taking this as seriously as they should. We are in the midst of a mass extinction event, animals of all kinds.

Our oceans are pathetically polluted, whales are dying and our world’s solution to that is to build cruise ships as big as a city, burning even more fossil fuels and turning our oceans into a dumping ground.

So, I’m afraid the Degrowth will have to be shoved down our dry throats. It will not be implemented in a logical and scientifically accurate manner. Our society has simply not developed to the point where we can deal with climate change like informed adults.

Expand full comment
author

I agree with everything you said. It's astonishing that in the short period of industrialization starting with coal, we have completely forgotten our relationship to the Earth. That statement isn't completely fair though, as it is the Caucasian races, not the indigenous ones, who have created the destruction.

I don't see us pulling out of this nose dive. I think the second scenario in my essay, fighting for that can of beans, is far likelier than the first. If the average person could have degrowth explained to them the right way, I think the majority would buy in. The problem of course is the deluded people building and buying bunkers control the media and most of our elected leaders, so degrowth is unlikely to see the light of day.

There is also a case to be made that the bunker diggers are getting exactly what they want, a preservation of resources and reduced pollution through the extermination of the majority.

I touched on it once in my article Circumstantial Evidence. It may be time to resurrect that argument again. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence

Expand full comment

With the invention of the spear indigenous Homo species managed to exterminate all megafauna on every continent except Africa where they had learned to fear the two-legged animals.

Expand full comment

I work on social change and would like to argue cogently that you're wrong, Walter. But this month? It's hard to deny what you say. I left Twitter months ago in disgust, returned briefly to consult a link I'd been given, and saw a slew of MTG-style geoengineering troll accusations that hurricanes were fake or a Democratic plot. Unbelievable. How hard we've fallen.

Expand full comment

Phoebe, I want so badly to be wrong.

Expand full comment
author

Me too.

Expand full comment

Social media is very powerful. Those who saw through the 'covid' lies (or some of them) have been targeted with this nonsense about globalists using fake climate change to depopulate them. They've completely lost their sanity- but it has enabled a strong swing to a nationalistic, zenophobic, climate crisis denying right wing. Just where big fossil fuel and big animal ag want them.

Expand full comment

I think it’s important to build on what @Geoffrey Deihl refers to above - that our woes and dysfunction are not symptomatic of universal relationships between people and Nature, or between different people, but of peculiarly western (and some prior) civilizations based on dominance, individualism, power asymmetries, extraction, predatory economies and a sense of human supremacy. These aren’t universal as Geoff says. The work my colleagues and I are doing is based on deep learning from Indigenous communities and the people I call “Indigenous cultural bridges,” from collaborative and feminine leadership and decision criteria (note I didn’t say “women’s leadership” though women often express this more easily), and youth energy and observation of where boomers and corporations went so horribly wrong in the last couple of centuries of colonization and the Industrial Revolution.

Expand full comment

Hi Pheobe, i note you were very careful with your words. We need leadership that reflects the people it services. Women brought up under the patriarchy do as badly or worse (as they can't appear 'weak') than men brought up under the partriarchy which rewards domination (or submission) over women, nature and non white people.

We need feminism.

Expand full comment

I think we should prepare for the future by constructing a monument like "The Wall" for the Vietnam vets listing all the politicians & billionaires and titled "God damn you, you destroyed it" for the coming mass extinction event. Placed on the white house lawn.

Expand full comment

Call it what it is 😂

Expand full comment

The US and vassals will decline with the petrodollar and loss of hegemony as Israel crumbles- yet energy consumption will continue in the global majority and its up to them now.

Expand full comment
author

Yes, decline is here. It won't just be the US and its vassals, though. The entire world runs on FFs destined to decline to the point of being economically unviable to extract in the next two or three decades with the economic convulsion that implies. Unfortunately, they won't have declined rapidly enough to save us from increasingly devastating flood and fire. No nations or alliances will be spared. In the meantime, the US November election looms, with the potential for far right violence and the end of even the pretense of a democratic system.

Expand full comment

yes, i think that’s what i was trying to say, BRICS will have to deal with the crisis, we won’t have any political power anyway.

Expand full comment

Excellent post, as always. Quote below applies.

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker, whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented."

Mark Twain

Expand full comment
author

Love Mark Twain. He and George Carlin are my dream ticket, two people who understood human nature, which is the root of what is taking us down. I've long seen the folly of our behavior, and am far from naive, but was mistaken that the "information age" would raise people's awareness. Even in the face of existential threat, no amount of information can overcome greed and ignorance. Thank you, Mary.

Expand full comment

The last cannot kill you. Only the future can. We are primed for apocalypse. When we realize this we can understand the rhetoric around it and start to soft through the noise.

More on apocalypse here:

https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/apocalypse-always

Expand full comment
founding

I want to encourage you to take the lead on this. You are very clear. And you have flair. Anyone with ears to hear has the message so rather than reiterating it move on to another phase.

The thing that could happen is conversation. You're all gadflies now. Get together with other heavyweights who see with your eyes and scheme together.

I hope my encouragement encourages you. I'm here to help.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you, Suzanne. I am aware that I'm a decent writer, that I have a flair. All the ears listening to my message, or eyes reading it, are already on board. I'm aware I'm preaching to the choir and the futility of that.

I can deliver the message — others can, too, but we need powerful backers, serious media and air time. Where are the wealthy in support of the wise?

You manged to produce a movie, which is quite an accomplishment, but now we need unrelenting messaging, every day, an inclusive, engaging vision that puts everyone to work, like WWII.

How does one break through with no money and powerful backing?

You mentioned a celebrity or two in your posts. Where are they?

I can think of a few that speak out occasionally on issues, but they fade away.

We are at the mercy of powerful forces, which may very well see the future as better with most of us dead. I wrote this some time ago, but it's probably time to do another with the same core message.

https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/circumstantial-evidence

Expand full comment