So many choices. Such an American thing, that.
This is an effort to parse such.
I spend almost no time around other humans, so I have lots of time to think. Here is some of what I've thought about.
(crossposted from Right of Assembly)
Also from firefly-dreaming.
Okay, first we have to address the very strong possibility that our species has broken the planet.
We have set some huge forces in motion, and they appear to be accelerating.
This is not good, because they are very huge forces with lots of inertial mass. That means that once they get going, all of that momentum is going to take that much longer to cool its heels, even if we all dropped dead tomorrow and left it to the birds and the badgers and what's left of the tigers.
It's unlikely that we are all going to drop dead tomorrow, and it's equally unlikely that we are all going to suddenly stop breaking the planet tomorrow, or any time soon.
That could mean any one of a number of things. One of the scariest things about climate change, to me, is that the worse it gets, the more unpredictable it gets. It's like throwing increasingly large rocks into an increasingly small pond, except magnitudes bigger with a whole bunch of other, often poisonous things thrown into the mix. Plus a bunch of heat and wind & stuff.
I have spent my life seeing this come down...in my lifetime. My species breaking the planet. Gone from hope, when the people just before me managed to finally drag us out of VietNam and DDT..back when I was a teenager, to now this ongoing terrifying drawn-out political and climate drama.
Well, fuck me with a phone pole. Isn't that special.
I could sum this up endlessly. What a strange sentence. One should be able to sum things up briefly.
But I can't. I can't sum up genocide, I can't sum up health care. They are both hugely complicated.
It's easier to sum up the planet, the environment, this limited round box we live in. And even that is impossible to sum up.
Except that it's getting worse. It's getting more crowded and more rowdy, and the planet has been drinking. So to speak. (sorry, I just love that video; great art!)
The planet has been drinking because she's a victim of an abusive relationship. With us. My species. Homo fucking sapiens.
And she's getting pretty rowdy now. And she's biting back with her hurricanes, and despairing in her deserts.
Yeh, I know. That Gaia stuff is just more wizardry, just foolish chick talk, or something like that.
But as metaphors go, it works so well.
If you beat upon a living system long enough, it will go crazy.
That's why it's not a good idea to beat upon your spouses, your children, your friends, yourself. Because it makes people crazy. And it spreads.
Madness does tend to spread. It has that way about it.
Okay, so here we are, in proto-Venus or whatever the hell is going to wind up when my youngest relatives are my age.
What the fuck are we going to do about it?
I'm open to suggestions, but this is where I'm at.
First, if one is going to stay alive and keep using up stuff, one should look towards working to educate people who are open to listening, about how to do this in a sustainable manner. It doesn't matter who they are, or what their politics are. What matters is spreading any available information about how to live sustainably.
Next, one can look towards a really bad outcome here, that will not kill all the mammals (some potential for that if the air deoxygenates this century, and I know that deoxygenates is probably not a word but you know what I mean, if you've read about what's happening to our oceans).
Okay, if we get that happening, but there is still breathable air for mammals, humans will, I will predict, survive, in small numbers.
In places like Newfoundland, looking at the climate change prediction maps.
I think a good bet is that everything is going to get warmer, eventually, and maybe for a long time.
It might flip over into an ice age thing, but my intuitive guess is that with all this carbon we're releasing into the atmosphere, etc., that such is less likely. The warming scenario is more likely. Even if the Atlantic convection current shuts down, we will still be dealing with all of this atmospheric insulation we've been busy creating.
However, trying to predict any of this seems more of a fool's game all the time. I think we should be working more on becoming survivalists. There is LOTS of room to move there. It doesn't have to be about war.
But it probably will be. That's part of what makes me so fucking sad; that it probably will be, and I have no idea how to change that.
Still, there are so many useful things to do, so many avenues to pursue, and so many people to love and work with.
I'm 53. I figure I have 20 years, if that, before I am returned to the clay and the Great Spirit.
They will go fast, I expect, if I even have them.
I don't plan on spending them trying to push anybody around.
I'd like to spend them looking at stuff. Whatever is left that hasn't been killed. Including people of all species.
And, also; doing just what I do here, on the Internet, long as it lasts, and I hope it will, this amazing free access that we have.
It really is amazing.
It is one of the best tools we have available.
It helps so many of us not get so crazy.
I likes it.
love,
Miep