Small Acts Of Sedition

Small Acts Of Sedition

the first 2 paragraphs of caitlin johnstone's latest post:

'It is not easy being someone who cares about the world and opposes the status quo. It’s a series of disheartening failures and crushing disappointments amid an endless deluge of information saying that everything is getting worse and worse.

The environment keeps degrading. Ruling power structures keep getting more and more controlling. Capitalism gets more and more imbalanced and exploitative. World powers get closer and closer to a mass military confrontation of unspeakable horror.'


she goes on to advocate committing small acts of sedition as a means of attempting to upset the status quo. much of what i've written over recent decades has been in the spirit of sedition. i did so hoping to receive positive feedback from readers encouraging me to do more, but that largely has failed to materialize. i can surreally relate to caitlin's first paragraph above. it truly seems most of the time that no one cares or wants to know how bad our world has become or how bad it's likely to become in the near future. perhaps it's too depressing. my worldview is particularly gloomy. unlike caitlin and many other doomers, i have no hope to offer. only horrific info to share with anyone able and willing to take it in and embrace it.

sedition- conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.

without putting forth hope that any such rebellion has any chance of success, i suppose my writing isn't quite seditious. perhaps that's why no one pays it any mind.

in a utopian (vs. a dystopian) world, sedition wouldn't be a crime. there would be no 'authorities' to rebel against.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/24/cultivate-a-habit-of-small-acts-of-sedition/

SIX DEGREES

mark lynas book SIX DEGREES, originally published 15 years ago, was re-published a year ago. below is the chilling summary of it's contents as taken from it's amazon page. the 2nd paragraph sums up in a few sentences the gist of what u will learn from reading it:

We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond. Degree by terrifying degree, he charts the likely consequences of global heating and the ensuing climate catastrophe. 

At one degree – the world we are already living in – vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away, and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth.

These escalating consequences can still be avoided, but time is running out. We must largely stop burning fossil fuels within a decade if we are to save the coral reefs and the Arctic. If we fail, then we risk crossing tipping points that could push global climate chaos out of humanity’s control.

This book must not be ignored. It really is our final warning.

https://www.amazon.com/Our-Final-Warning-Degrees-Emergency/dp/0008308578/ref=pd_rhf_d_dp_s_ci_mcx_mr_hp_d_sccl_1_2/134-7278809-1740269?pd_rd_w=p4x8l&content-id=amzn1.sym.0a853d15-c5a9-4695-90cd-fdc0b630b803&pf_rd_p=0a853d15-c5a9-4695-90cd-fdc0b630b803&pf_rd_r=AAQNFF1WA51BW4YT6V10&pd_rd_wg=5Ukew&pd_rd_r=73ba559e-f238-4ee7-92b8-699dc5c8ed1f&pd_rd_i=0008308578&psc=1

Extinction Acceptance Is A Tough Sell

the following passage in quotation marks i copied and pasted from the most recent post i received from the leader of the nearest EXTINCTION REBELLION group to me:


'A fellow stopped to talk with us last week. He said he was supportive of our message, but what good does it do? I didn’t think of it at the time, but I later realized that without the constant and widespread pressure for climate action, the recent climate legislation (IRA) would never have gotten through congress. It may be too little too late, but it is a first step. In order to take our second and third steps, and to walk a mile into a habitable future, we have to continue and escalate our demands.

Is it a lot of work? Yes.

Is it better than watching as a few rich people insist on ruining the environment so they can be even richer? Yes.'


i wasn't that fellow who stopped by to talk, but i could have been. those are my sentiments exactly, 'what good does it do?'

i'm not active in this chapter, mostly because it's 50 miles away from me and i have no transportation to get to their protests. but even if i lived nearby, i'm not sure i would be a regular participant, mainly because i see no point in it. i have no hope, and i think anyone who does simply doesn't know as much as i do, not just about climate change, but about the widespread and profound stupidity of sheeple when it comes to science, or anything for that matter which requires deep critical thinking. thus i see no hope whatsoever of public enlightenment.

besides his misguided hope, i take issue with the idea that the problem is only about a 'few greedy rich people'. in my experience, virtually everyone i'm acquainted with is seriously a part of the problem. they're all very ignorant and either unconcerned or insufficiently concerned, mostly the former. they're all contributing to the problem by heedless consumption, casual consumption of energy resources. as long as fossil fuels remain ridiculously cheap, they'll continue to heedlessly waste them, to avoid any slight inconvenience.

a couple of posts ago i referenced greta thunberg and posted a link to a 3 part tv program made for pbs in america about her activism titled 'greta thunberg: a year to change the world'  In the second installment of this series at one point greta breaks down into tears as she contemplates all the suffering and death that lie ahead of us from climate change. it's quite heartbreaking to see.

i've often contemplated the same thing but i don't think i've ever shed tears over it. truthfully, i'm more bothered by the social isolation i feel as one who has come to terms with the looming prospect of civilizational collapse and either a massive human die-back or nthe and has no one to share it with (along with having no one to share my full perceptions of living in a crazy dystopian society with). perhaps this shows me to be a rotten sherson, self centered. 

extinction acceptance is a tough sell not only because of widespread ignorance of how serious a threat climate change (and other factors relating to the growth of civilization) pose, but also because it's hard to say what good may come from depriving others of false hope, taking away their motivation to act in ways to try to 'save the world'. it seems a rather selfish thing to convince others of it simply to relieve my own loneliness.

i'm disheartened by the false hope i see manifested in other bloggers whose work i otherwise have the utmost respect for. a good example being caitlin johnstone, whose work i've enthusiastically endorsed, referenced and posted links to in several recent posts.

there remains one 'doomer' blog which is excellent and doesn't promote false hope at all. it's been around for 10 years now and could easily be titled the same as this blog. it's title is instead THE COLLAPSE OF INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION. it's posts were very frequent at first and focused mainly on the dystopian aspect of our predicament. in more recent years the posts have focused much more on making the case for impending doom, and have become quite infrequent, probably because it's author has become doom weary and has basically already said just about all there is to say on the subject. i'll post the link to it below. if by chance anyone ever reads this and decides to check it out, i recommend he or she check out the posts there both from the very beginning, and the most recent. i can't say i've read all his many posts, but i have read a good many of them, and every one of them has been of the highest quality (also check out the numerous links listed along the left hand margin of his blog, perhaps the greatest collection of dystopian and doom related material to be found anywhere on the internet):

https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/

Manufacturing Consent

manufacturing consent is a book written by Edward S. Herman and noam chomsky, published a few decades ago. it's quite extensive, exposing with sharp factual analysis the role big lamestream corporate media plays in propagandizing the american public, in order to sway their opinions and manufacture their consent for whatever agenda their corporate masters seek, be it support for military aggression in the guise of promoting 'democracy and freedom', support for capitalism, or whatever. i read a significant portion of it many years ago. it further educated me and strongly reinforced what i'd already begun to learn about this topic.

here's a link to a short (less than 5 minutes) animated video narrated by amy goodman about manufacturing consent and how it's basically done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M

i came across this link thanks to the caitlin johnstone blog, which i've become an avid follower of. it's writing reveals a very impressive base of knowledge, a very radical understanding of the role that western (mainly american) militarism, imperialism, and especially propaganda plays in world affairs, and an ability to put into the most eloquent if blunt and at times vulgar words things i and i suspect many others basically have learned, but have never articulated, in part because we couldn't do so nearly so well or effectively. i don't agree with every opinion expressed there, but i certainly share the overall worldview. link to the relevant article:

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/08/15/china-threatens-the-us-empire-not-the-us-itself-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

If I Ever Grow Up

if i ever grow up, i want to be like greta thunberg.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=greta+thunberg+a+year+to+change+the+world+watch+online&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAYvXBR26RXwUqsBv6WwGN5iOzvdnVlmat&gbv=2&oq=greta+thunberg+a+year&gs_l=heirloom-hp.1.3.0i512l4j0i30i22l6.20493.27163.0.32823.21.12.0.9.9.0.222.1415.4j7j1.12.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..0.21.1618.O6CKlyUPOwE

CAESAR'S MESSIAH: The Roman Conspiracy To Invent Jesus

going back 30 years i've read free thought literature which examined and questioned the historicity of jesus christ and concluded that no such man ever existed. so i've long embraced the idea. this great documentary featuring joseph atwill and several other maverick historians on this subject comes to an even more provocative conclusion: that jesus and the christian religion his myth is based upon was an invention of a roman emperor working in cahoots with a turncoat jewish historian named josephus, for the purpose of pacifying a jewish rebellion against roman rule. these scholars seem to know their stuff and broadly agree with this thesis, presenting their arguments very cogently and backing them up by comparing josephus' other historical writings with the biblical gospels. i think they make a compelling case.

i thought i'd previously covered this in this blog, but apparently not. probably just mentioned part of another great documentary titled ZEITGEIST which merely makes the case that christianity and the figure of jesus christ were based on older religions which go back to sun worship. links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmEScIUcvz0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzMqlsAGL14

The Case For Doom

the year 2007 was a watershed in terms of productions which made a compelling case for the relatively imminent collapse of industrial civilization and likely near term human extinction (nthe). 3 notable works then all in their own way made a case for doom.

that year there were 2 books published which probably remain among the best regarding anthropogenic climate disruption. SIX DEGREES by mark lynas lays out in excruciating scientifically peer reviewed detail how each degree celsius of global climate warming, up to six, brought about by our consumption of fossil fuels, can be expected to adversely affect agriculture and eco-systems. it didn't really need to go past 6 since at that point nthe will be very much in play, if not sooner. UNDER A GREEN SKY is a more comprehensive look at the relationship between sudden climate change and our planet's chemistry and fitness for life as we know it. it makes clear a link between it and past mass extinction events. both of these books are highly recommended.

a 2007 documentary titled   What A Way To Go: Life at the end of Empire   is exceptionally well produced, 2 hours long, featuring many prominent 'doom' authors like william catton, richard heinberg, derrick jensen, richard manning, and daniel quinn. it's on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2em1x2j9-o