Psychotic Breaking Points
With psychos running the world, how does one not become crazy?
Dear readers, I have been largely absent the last two months, apologies. Since my father’s death in November, I have had to sell my parent’s home and move its contents long distance, including an art collection of over three hundred pieces, mostly my dad’s work who was finally able to realize his true ambition in retirement. Sadly, he was the glue holding my mother together who is gripped by late stage dementia, and is now in an assisted care living situation, unable to recognize her condition, and angry over the decisions the family has had to make. Truly, I feel surrounded by crazy. From the actions of the Trump regime, to our inadequate action on climate change, and attempting to reason with a parent beyond reason from a cruel disease, I’ve been exhausted, but I am getting back with this article. Researching, writing, and your readership are my sanity. Thanks so much for your patience.
“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”
— Lyrics from 1973 hit single by Scottish folk rock band Stealers Wheel
Proud to be a doomer
Those of us referred to as doomers are often labeled as paranoid and certainly not considered pleasant company should we touch on the subject of our self-created biological collapse. Explaining the insane, voracious behavior that has destroyed an Earth that makes our narrow conditions for existence possible is certain to make eyes glaze over. Pointing out that the collapse of nature documented by science in nine identified points of overshoot (of which climate change is just the most well-known) will result in the destruction of civilization guarantees dinner party alienation.
Other elements are speeding collapse as well, perhaps most ironically the impending end of economically harvestable oil which has brought us to the brink. We’re damned if we burn it (ecological collapse), and damned if we don’t (economic collapse). This link is from Goehring & Rozencwajg NYC based capitalists who specialize in making recommendations on natural resource “investment,” provides evidence. Tree huggers they are not. The short-lived fracking boom, with its wildly intensive energy, water and chemical needs, is ending. If easy to obtain oil was still available, the Chevrons of this world wouldn’t be fracking.
No, easily obtainable oil deposits are tanking, and consequently the dream of the falsely labeled “renewable” energy economy we were promised was optimistic at best or possibly a lie to keep us complacent. While renewables can supply some power to the grid, they will never come remotely close to the abundance, energy intensity or ease of burning carbon. Furthermore, the massive amounts of raw ore required to manufacture concrete and steel, and then deploy wind turbines and solar arrays covering hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of acres cannot be realized without diesel fuel. That’s what all heavy equipment runs on. Dwindling oil equates to an incomplete renewable build out (getting stopped in its tracks by the current “administration” anyhow), and eventually no ability to maintain it. We are headed for a lower energy world, and should be preparing for the contraction, not pretending otherwise.
The nine points of overshoot
The renewable economy was also falsely touted as “green,” never mind that mining is a historically proven form of environmental disaster that feeds overshoot. Mining for this magical future also includes the need for grid “smoothing” battery backup. While various grid battery technologies are being researched, just as with concrete and steel, all require massive amounts of diesel fuel to realize. And we must consider water as well. On average, the lithium battery we are so familiar with requires 500,000 gallons of water to produce just one ton of raw ore, this in some of the most drought stricken regions on the planet. Do you want water at the tap, or to drive a 7,000 pound Tesla Cybertruck penned by a psychopath adolescent?
Planetary scale death, brought to you by billionaires
Of course, I feel badly for calling out Elon Musk here. After all, we have a cadre of billionaire sociopath buddies who bear responsibility for taking the planet down. Elon is not special, even though he thinks he is. Aside from their profoundly antisocial behavior, consider that billionaires produce more CO2 in 90 minutes than the average person in a lifetime.
That is death at planetary scale, perpetrated with great deliberation by a handful of people on eight billion of us.
I can’t possibly list all the crimes our billionaire buddies commit merely from a moral standpoint, a legal one, or name all the political sycophants they’ve bought in a mere article, that would take a book, so I will just call out a handful that demonstrate their range of psychopathy for you, from adolescent to outright malevolent. BTW, here’s a simple psychopathy test. Why aren’t such tools deployed to determine who is healthy enough to lead society?
Billionaires are devoid of human empathy and insatiable in their greed.
Silicone Valley product and chief executive officer of OpenAI Sam Altman wishes to have his brain uploaded to a computer to live forever. AI built on the unerring wisdom, benevolence and stolen intellectual property of Western culture, (the only culture worth talking about of course), is going to save us. I applaud Sam and approve of him living in a box.
Have you heard of tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson? He’s the subject of a Netflix documentary, unassailable proof of his importance to humanity. Bryan founded Braintree, which specialized in mobile and web payments for e-commerce companies. I mean, how important is that to human advancement? How can you burn a planet up without making mindless consumption as efficient as possible? Braintree was eventually acquired by Venmo for $26.2 million, then PayPal for $800 million. Obsessed with reversing his aging, Bryan spends millions each year to have the organs of an 18-year-old. I’m sure you agree Bryan’s accomplishments justify his quest to stay forever young and ardently hope his outstanding contributions continue in perpetuity.
Erik Prince is the founder of the notorious military contractor Blackwater, now branded as Constellis. Blackwater makes money by providing soldiers of fortune to the CIA, Pentagon, and thugs around the world that protect, freedom and democracy American style, otherwise known as corporate fiefdom. Notorious for its 2007 Nisour Square massacre of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, the rebranding was likely a sensible move. Four Blackwater employees were convicted of murder and manslaughter for the Nisour crimes. Fortunately, this error was rectified by Donald Trump pardons in 2020. Prince’s net worth is at least $2 billion.
Leonard Leo is known as the king of dark money, with an agenda to reshape the American judicial system. He has certainly shaped the Supreme Court, leading campaigns for the judicial luminaries John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Leo’s net worth is reported to be only $5 million dollars, but with his outsized impact, he has earned inclusion on this list. After all, in 2022, he secured a $1.6 billion gift from 91-year-old Chicago manufacturing magnate Barre Seid for his conservative legal network via an introduction through the Federalist Society, even though its tax status forbids political activism. Seid, a luminary himself, opposed the ban of DDT and believes global warming is not the result of human activity, but rather a giant farting cow in the Orion Constellation measuring light years across.
David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries occupies a special place in my heart with their wealth made in petroleum, mining, chemicals, and other industries destroying the livability of our planet. David is dead, but it doesn’t matter as fortunately, the second largest privately held company in the US, zombies on. The amount of environmental destruction the Koch family has created cannot be underestimated (the business started with daddy Fred in 1940). Fines from oil spills, leaking pipelines, and Clean Air Act violations are just of the cost of doing business to this family. A stunning, but likely modest list of their environmental crimes can be found here. Charles Koch’s net worth is $71.2 billion, according to Bloomberg. Environmental crime pays.
No list of criminal billionaires would be complete without Rupert Murdoch, the godfather of contemporary propaganda. Decades and decades before little Elon turned Twitter into a racist cesspool, Rupert was building his fortune on lies. His company, News Corp., owns hundreds of local, national, and international media outlets around the globe, and the brainwashing in America is stunning, ripping the country apart at scale and family by family. Rupert is a prime example of a man without conscience, and humans without conscience are evil, whether wittingly or unwittingly.
If sanity ran the world
These people I have called out are far from complete, but all of them display profound behavioral problems which tied to money, power, and destructive technology built on the short-lived exploitation of fossil fuels enables planetary scale life destroying behavior. The barbarity of humanity is nothing new, it has been amply demonstrated since the beginning of recorded history (here are some merry examples), and to be suspected in the crushed skulls of prehistoric people vying for territorial dominance just as any animal does.
As if we need additional proof, the ongoing, blatant genocide of the Palestinian people is sanitized by the mainstream media, enabled by an American government with endless weapon sales, and enforced by police repression when those that call out the slaughter are labeled antisemitic. The irony that people who were victims to similar atrocities at the hands of Nazis just a couple of generations ago now commit the same crimes is profound and damning. It’s also indicative of what is to be expected as the Cop Cities of this world are built, and protestors of ecocide and ultimately human extinction are jailed.
Wonder and respect are two of the admirable qualities of human beings, best imbued in indigenous cultures that lived in subsistence societies directly interacting with nature for their existence. There was recognition that every plant, every animal had a reason for being, a role to play, a power in their lives. There was wonder around the campfires that warmed them at night and the endless campfires in the sky. There was humility and recognition of how small we are. Native Americans may not have possessed the wheel, but they had something far greater in their spiritual connection to the world, a connection long-lost by their conquerors in the psychopathic founding genocide that birthed America.
Many thinkers have asked, “What is the meaning of life?” To me, this is a ridiculous question. There is no inherent meaning in life, just the question of what we contribute while we’re here. Did our existence contribute to or improve the gifts we have been bestowed, or harm them? Meaning is imbued in every breath we take, every moment, by our choices. Our greatest gift is the Earth and the Holocene which gave us the conditions to thrive. Our common bond, and need as Trump illegally, with racist malevolence deports people is a healthy planet. Uniting on that goal together is our only chance of a future. We must nurture and sustain that which sustains us. Anything else is our heads in the sand — and that — makes me crazy.
Boycott. Strike. Fight. Have those uncomfortable conversations. We are living through a profound convergence of changes that will determine if there’s a future for any of us.
I agree with everything here, except the title. Psychosis is not running the world. Psychopathy is.
It's psychopaths who are leading the world to its soon-coming collapse.
Psychosis describes the masses who are so easily manipulated into following them.
It’s so hard to lose a parent. Glad to read your writing again. Take care.