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):
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