DOOM

I have been a prophet of doom for years now.  I am not a typical doomer.  I am intellectual doomer.  There is a big difference because emotions need to be properly siloed when dealing with doom.  Yet, this does not mean ignoring the emotions of fear and concern.  I look around and see evidence everywhere that a new world is close at hand.  I am experiencing fear too.

The reality of doom is a process with sudden and gradual manifestations.  Set aside your emotions and start quantifying risk.  Educate yourself on what risks are gradual and where sudden change can happen.  Combine the threat assessments and have a plan for negotiating what will be a challenging undertaking.

The gradual is currently manifested in a process of overshoot on our physical realities with resources and environment.  The earth has been changing quickly and this is resulting in dramatic changes.  Much of the best resources have been consumed in this process.  What is left is of lower value at a time when civilization is requiring more value to maintain complexity.

The myth of progress has entered the zone of diminishing returns whereby technology and efficiency are creating problems instead of solving them.  Competition between nations cements the process of tipping over into a destructive phase. 

This myth is extremely dangerous and embedded in almost everything we do.  Very few people would agree to turn back our affluent world.  This means giving up comforts and life saving products and services.  It is that simple but complicated by our desire for affluence.

This process of progressivism will instead be forced into systematic changes that are beyond control.  These are self-organizing and self-adaptive in nature meaning even if we had a collective awakening it is now too late to avoid consequences.  We are not educated on living with less.  We are not emotionally ready to be poorer and experience hardship.

This denial and inability to accept these destructive gradual changes is where a look at sudden change is warranted.  When this planetary system is looked at as a whole then system thresholds can be determined.  There are multiple thresholds being bumped up against and some already broken through.  It is the breakthroughs where sudden change will be manifested. 

Many are negatively converging causing a reinforcing process.   The forces of chaos are found in these places.  It is important to realize chaos is not completely random but instead follows patterns but unlike growth changes are often sudden and cascading.  This means that proper action needs to be recognized when addressing the breakdown of a complex system.  The forces of chaos are a guide to actions.

The forces of chaos that need to be watched in the macro view are abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational.  These are physical and metaphysical forces that are intertwined.  In an ascending level of abstraction processes within a complete planetary process are operating. 

The subset of processes operates at different time frames.  The intersections are markers of things to come.  It very difficult to determine where sudden failure will occur.  If we take the easier to pinpoint gradual forces and predict intersections then threat assessment can be implemented. 

Being able to shed complexity is vital.  The previous paradigm is to apply complexity.  This is a new age of decline so this path dependency of applying more complexity is now out of date.  Shedding complexity involves predictive triage. 

Start now ridding yourself of baggage.  Be ready to utilize salvage to combine existing value of complexity with older ways of living.  We are not ready for the older ways of living but we can start the process of returning to them with a hybridization.  Returning to localism and biomass is what is needed.  These are the older ways in our history books.  Apply existing value to this tougher way of living.

This hybridization will assist the stair steep down nature of gradual decline.  Sudden decline is more difficult to adapt to but if you have steps in place for gradual decline, then these will help mitigate what can’t be prepared for with sudden change.

It is important to see the gradual breakdown of a complex system speeds up when it nears thresholds of bifurcation.  Bifurcations is a fancy word for rapid change resulting in a new physical regime.  This is a breaking and a dip to a new stasis. 

Stability will return eventually so plan for a new level of living now.  Beat the stampede get there proactively.  We are likely not going very far down initially so go to that point now.  Yet, realize the true nature of the unwinding process in human time frames means this dropping process will be for now on.  There is no turning back.

Stability is breaking all along a front of complexity.  This time frame compression means the gradual buildups which are easier to quantify are pointing to sudden changes ahead.  At lower levels sudden changes are happening already.  The greater levels have yet to break.  This is why we are still in a frog boil unaware of the impending changes.

This is a tipping over humans have not experienced in our species history.  This does not mean humans have not seen earlier bottlenecks but not like this.  I say this because the special aspect of the current bottleneck is the global nature of change.   Important to this global nature is our technology and knowledge levels that allowed globalism.  Globalism with its transhuman and delocalized nature mean our huge population can’t gradually undo what has been grown into.  Our civilization was built linearly not circular.

Path dependencies and carbon traps are everywhere.  We are now brittle to change and determined to attempt more of the same.  This means society will continue to solve problems with tools at hand but those tools are now the problem.  This is when you know a break is approaching.  It is when paradoxes appear.  When incongruous juxtapositions are all around.  This is the surreal world of non-linear change.

It could be different but it is not.  We unconsciously chose expansion over the wisdom of living within limitations.  It seems that our species is not different from other species in this regard despite our intellectual abilities.  In fact, it points to the limitations of intellectual abilities we hold in such high esteem.  It is these abilities that are now crushing our world because these abilities can’t be controlled.

A collective inability to embrace a maladaptive condition of a “denial of death” must be recognized to be awakened.  This denial for civilization is more the denial of failure.  Very few civilizations can embrace failure.  This is why none survive. 

Some previous ones lived with a cyclical view of change.  The Maya is an example but few others embraced the cyclic of change.  It appears the Maya chose to degrowth because it was central to their spirituality and science.  They were scaled and balanced.

We are now a global civilization breaking down with nowhere to go.  Yet, this is only part of the story because we must look at our global civilization as an ecosystem.  Ecosystems behave in succession.  In the succession of complexity to less complexity there are places where breakdown frees up new places of growth.  The rigidity of stable states of a climax system that break down open up opportunities for new species to grow in niches.  These are micro-climes of growth.

With this in mind you the individual if you accept this greater process and embrace the new reality, can find places of relative growth if available.  Many have no hope for this adaptation because they do not have what it takes.  It takes time, money, and education and time is now running out.

I have explained these conditions over the last few years of postings.  The outline is simple but the simplicity of it is where the difficulty is.  A process of collapse means collapsing in place.  Paradoxically, at this time in history collapsing allows growth.

If you do embrace this collapse process then you will do it with humility and acceptance.  This spiritual act will allow you to embrace growth when it is allowed and properly presented.  Keep in mind very little growth will happen but what does occur will be of very high value. 

This will mostly be about an unwind of complexity.  This means less affluence and comforts.  Deeper yet it may mean hardship and death because loosing discretionary products and services is one thing but loosing necessities means dramatic changes. 

Nobody will escape this.  It will happen.  It is those who live in humility and acceptance who have the chance to survive the changes better.  Yes, even the most prepared and adapted will face consequences.  The key difference is wisdom.  Wisdom can only properly occur with scale and balance.  This is why civilization will not provide proper wisdom.  It is out of scale and without balance.

Now is the time for the individual to embrace proper scale and balance.   This is the wisdom of localism and degrowth with personal applications.  The wisdom that is required today is one that is relative and realistic to the traps and dependencies of the greater civilization that determine our lives.  Since there is no where to hide like previous times when migration could occur, now it is about choosing better within the cauldron of change. 

There are relative migration possibilities within this complexity breakdown.  One such action is leaving locations that can’t be supported where complexity is high.  Leave activities with no future in a world in decline.  You can position yourself differently.  You can avoid worse by proper living in better places.  Change irrational lifestyles for what is occurring.

Not everyone can do this and even those who can, the degree of positioning is limited.  It is here the next step is embraced.  This is the spiritual.  It is a spiritual positioning that will strengthen your being for the drop to a new level of stability.   The entire planetary system including the human ecosystem are now facing this.  Spiritually fortify yourself.  This paradoxically is the one area of solid growth.  “Meaning” itself is what maters now.

Your spirituality is unique so I am not going to advise you on that.  Yet, I will advise you to apply a balanced wisdom to your spirituality.  Today there are ideologies that are being turned into a spirituality.  This is unsound and should be avoided at all cost. 

The most unsound is Scientism.   Science is the opposite pole to spirituality.  One engages in reductionism and the other in embracing oneness.  It is this usurping of spiritual elements by science that will cause cascading failures.  The cult of Scientism that is pursuing the myth of progress of ever greater intelligence and physical performance is actually a spiritual blackhole of self-consciousness individualism can descend into.  This descent is a collective dysfunction and appearing as irrational policy.

Blasphemy of the spirit is the greatest sin of self-consciousness.  Try not to look at this sin religiously but instead systematically.  If we as a people elevate our science to God like status then consequences will be the result from the resulting irrational polices.  This is where a Petri dish of consequences results.  Science and spirit are on opposite poles of our duality.  Respect for this is lost collectively but you the individual can find a proper balance.

In conclusion, you the individual can properly scale and a balance can be found.  This is the science of seeing decline with the spiritual of acceptance.  This is what my REAL Green seeks.  This is green prepping.  What is green is more prepped.  This is not the techno green of our social justice warriors but instead the green of biomass and localism embracing simplicity relatively and realistically based upon your traps and dependencies.

This will allow a wisdom of insecurity.  This wisdom of insecurity allows proper action relatively and realistically. When considering the breakdown of a planetary system into a new state a different disposition is required.  This gradual and sudden process of decline and failure can only be negotiated.  It cannot be stopped with more of what got us here.