More Than One Can Bear

I'm in a reading group for Speed & Scale by the venture capitalist John Doerr. The book does emphasize the urgency of reducing carbon emissions and the need for scale which is often overlooked when exciting new technologies are proposed. The numbers "add up" in a general sense, but any details are quickly overwhelming--how much of this plan is truly politically and technically possible?

And so I come across more and more material addressing the sense that humans need to come to terms with the situation we have created. It's not a new point of view to me. But some lessons need to be repeated to be understood. A video by Michael Dowd, "Hopium Dealers Hall of Fame", quotes William Catton from Overshoot:

Ecological understanding of the human predicament indicates that we live in times when the American habit of responding to a problem by asking "All right, now what do we do about it?" must be replaced by a different query that does not assume all problems are soluble: "What must we avoid doing to keep from making a bad situation unnecessarily worse?"

The video "Blip" by Chris Clugston highlights the coming end of humanity's overconsumption of non-renewable resources. For example, simply switching to electric vehicles (as promoted by the Inflation Reduction Act) does nothing to alter an unsustainable way of life. Books like An Inconvenient Apocalypse by Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen and Power by Richard Heinberg warn against "technological fundamentalism" and point to the need to learn to live within limits.

Even an exploration of animal intelligence, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal by Justin Gregg, expresses the paradox that humans may ultimately be a less successful species specifically due to our complex intelligence.

It is still quite difficult to imagine that a collapse is likely. The Covid pandemic already seems challenging enough--what will people do as life gets progressively worse for us all? Already, a single person can have enough of a following to credibly threaten violence--can we really produce the levels of cooperation needed to avoid the worst outcomes?

I find death hard to talk about. I know it's there, but I don't want to think about it. It's so easy to go day to day as if time just didn't matter. My mom's death seemed to come faster than I expected. There's just no way to know the timing. It feels more important, but not easy, to be prepared. Elizabeth West offers "Learning How to Die: Finding Meaning in the Midst of Collapse".

If we tell ourselves the truth, we know that things will never "get back to normal".

[I]n everyone’s personal life—and now in the life of the Earth– there comes a point when a convergence of natural forces relays the message that we are no longer the master of our physical fate.

We are now primarily in the realm of palliative measures. I continue to bow—with profound respect– to the activists who are using their lives, possibly their last breaths, to defend pieces of this beautiful planet and the various worthy species (including our own), to soften suffering, or to call for justice, but I no longer hold out hope for any sweeping worldly victories. And with that recognition, I find myself asking: What is my role? How can I do this well? How do I find meaningful direction in the midst of this often frightening process of dissolution?

Of course there is grief –and anger–when we contemplate the loss, the suffering. And it all must be honored. But if these are allowed to overtake us, if despair and hopelessness are left to eclipse all else, then we may miss our opportunity to prise from this process all that It has to offer, to transcend our egos’ addiction to survival at all cost, to become who we always believed we could be, to live as if each breath and each thought and each word matters. We may miss the only chance we have to learn to die well.

Even as you attend to the mundane, using whatever tools you need to stay afloat, go ahead and learn how to die. Start by taking the radical step of showing up, heart open to all that is, even and especially when so much is dying around you. Resist the instinct to flee, fight or freeze. This is not about surviving, it is about living. While the world we have known dies.