Accepting Our Lack of Agency

 

An early morning picture at Black Rock Mountain State Park in Georgia

The last month has been focused on acceptance, and has been building up to the inexorable, immutable, and irrevocable truth that besets us within the confines of the set of predicaments we face. The one thing I constantly see and hear is about all the things that "we" can do to mitigate the situation -  all the ways we can "regenerate" nature - and all the ways we can "save the planet." While I do think that society is beginning to realize that something is wrong, most people are still following the constant narratives being delivered in an attempt to keep the public calm. George Tsakraklides says it best right here, quote: 

"The toxic positivity theatre isn’t confined to the corporatocracy. Hope, whether real and justified or morbidly delusional, is an irresistible narcotic for humans.

A hopeful message will always win over bitter truths, and our information machine knows this: news media habitually turn even the most sobering news into fast-consumable entertainment, making a mockery of reality.

It used to be that this was the role of movies: to allow us to experience a funny or terrifying world and entertain ourselves either way, knowing that it is all fake and we are watching from the safety of our sofa. But now the same is done to real, actual news coming from around the world: reality has been gamified, turned into amusement, into a video game in the most morally corrupt, sick, and irresponsible way possible. All of this, in the name of “hope” and “bringing lightness” to our collapse predicament."


Once again, it is helpful first of all to remember who the "we" in the first paragraph actually is, and I bring a quote back up from So, What Should We Do, Part Four that comes from Tim Watkins: 

"War, of course, is but one of the many bottleneck crises washing over us. The declining energy and resources which are the cause of war is a more existential matter. As are climate change, freshwater shortages, environmental decline, depleted soils, etc. And in each case, the use of “we” is more often deployed as a psychological device to mask individual powerlessness. Because if the supranational technocratic kleptocracy have failed to resolve them, while the nation state is no longer fit for the task, what collective is left to us to resolve crises that are global in scale?

The sad reality is that in the face of all but the smallest of crises, it turns out that there is no collective “we,” and that we are each on our own."  

OK, so much for the "we" part. Next up is the "regenerate nature" part which is dispensed with here. Additional info is provided in last week's article. Coincidentally, those two articles are also great at exposing our true lack of agency. Of course, there are also many people who might have you believe in some sort of hope for the future to keep us chained to the existing paradigms of today; what many of us in the know refer to as hopium. The people who want us to believe in these fairy tales accuse us of doomism because we are immune to their pleas for hope; primarily due to our realization that we don't control nature (along with many other things known as hyperobjects). Can we attempt to manipulate or "steer" nature with geoengineering ideas? Sure we can - but do we want the inevitable consequences which will accompany such attempts? Look at all our other attempts at engineering. Take the technology of agriculture for instance. That resulted in the development of civilization. Not only was that an epic failure in terms of sustainability, but as a species, we doubled down on the initial systems we used to accomplish all of that to form more and more systems supported by the initial ones which led to industrial civilization, the world we now live in. Just take a look at another hyperobject, the electrical grid. How sustainable is that? (Hint: it's definitely not sustainable.) So, the idea that we actually have the ability to control the climate system is hilariously filled with hubris and optimism bias. Despite this, and despite not having consensus on geoengineering, apparently that doesn't even matter as shown in this article. We're right back to ignorance, hubris, and stupidity. 

Here's a slightly different twist from a different author, although he clearly mistakes the predicament of ecological overshoot and all its symptom predicaments as a "problem" or "problems" - still, he clearly understands our lack of agency, quote:

"Plastic is another example of ‘technological necessity’. For the past century the technological system has demanded that we build our entire world from plastic, with catastrophic consequences. Plastic slowly degrades into tiny particles which saturate the things we use, our food and water and the air we breathe and have been shown to act as vectors for a wide array of contaminants, including pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, and antibiotics. These particles, which are chronically toxic (neurotoxic, genotoxic, hepatotoxic) and carcinogenic, are then absorbed by biota tissue, organs, and even cells, causing an absolutely unbelievable range of illnesses, the degradation of soil fertility and the destruction of the wild. What choice did we have in all this? None."

The link above about the world we now live in is where I found this link to The Anthropocene Project. Just for the record, here is another picture along with the story of the kelp forest of Northern California, although it is an older story. Lately, I've been focused on a particular topic and as such didn't spend much time looking around for new material specifically for the purpose of including that material here. There has been, however, a large amount of new material building up; most of which I didn't save to include here. Surely anyone interested in these things can look them up, but a few tidbits I have saved or posted in the group I run are notable including this article about the Copernicus portal. A notable article explaining everything about H5N1 HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) and why we need to be concerned is also very important. Here is another medical concern that is being piped to us through our public water systems. Our world unfortunately includes war, so there's an article for that fun part of things. If that isn't enough information to spin your head, here's yet another call for stopping the march of AI (Artificial Intelligence). 

Due to the ongoing expansion of disease and the possibility of a new pandemic (HPAI), combined with so many other diseases which overshoot is exacerbating, I have added a new page with links to websites dedicated to informing about disease outbreaks and associated information. 

Despite all these facts, I continue to see half-baked articles about "solutions" which can almost always be discounted fairly quickly simply because they don't fit the actual situation we have in front of us. I realize that many people think in reductionist terms, so I have little choice but to give them a pass with a statement or two about what we actually have (a predicament, not a problem). One example of this was shared in this article. It represents the same common mistake I see over and over again of calling something a problem that is actually a predicament. Labeling something a problem that is not a problem doesn't change any of the facts surrounding it; the only thing a person who does this accomplishes is muddying the waters for the public to be unable to distinguish what is a problem with a solution and what is a predicament with an outcome. It is denial of reality, plain and simple. The first three sections of the article are good, then, the author makes this mistake, quote: 

"4. Climate change is one of many problems we need to focus on"

She doesn't seem to realize that these are symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot. They cannot be solved separately from overshoot, so focusing on the symptoms won't actually accomplish much of anything (as can be seen by every symptom predicament continuing to worsen or remain static, not actually get better in any truly measurable way). As long as symptoms are focused on and not the root predicament, no changes will come. Period. Then, another mistake, quote:

"5. There is more we can do, but we’re currently barely talking about alternatives, let alone actually doing them"

Oops, there is that "we" issue again (see paragraph 5 above). She goes into degrowth, which is yet another one of the so-called "solutions" many people discuss. Don't get me wrong, degrowth will happen, but not voluntarily like advocates claim. It will instead be due to collapse, and this is already occurring and will be complete by 2050. Ted Trainer understands that many of its advocates don't comprehend just how much degrowth would actually be required, and this aligns with what I have witnessed as well. He wrote this well-intentioned critique of the movement, indicating the bargaining going on within the movement. Since most people don't really comprehend overshoot or the fact that civilization is unsustainable, their ideas about degrowth are woefully naïve. This, unfortunately, includes many of the same people who are its main cheerleaders, so the story that most people hear about degrowth is a romantic narrative that would never play out in real life. Reality is a harsh task master, and last week's article goes into considerable detail about why the story you've probably heard needs some serious updating. 

Ted Trainer's focus has been on a "simpler way" which I agree with wholeheartedly. Whatever your thoughts on how simple that might need to be, go even more simple for the long term. Think of collapse like a long staircase where you have to keep stepping down. Each step is just a temporary stop before the next step requires more simplicity. There is quite literally a ton of additional information I could include here, on every subject I write about. However, rather than continuing throwing links out into the ether, I shall leave you with this documentary, which more or less repeats my common theme at the end - Live Now!