Ducking doomer porn
Meh. I have spent way too much of my life gaping at various spectacles civilization churns out. The attempt to leave them behind has turned into yet another trap. Mother Culture is nothing if not wilier than Wile E. Coyote himself. Last summer and fall into winter, my spectacle of choice was linked to my growing self-identification with the doomer community. As I gradually made my exploratory inroads into the doomersphere, perhaps as the natural extension of my previous fascination with the unfolding economic shenanigans, I spent more and more time reading jolting essays attempting to wake people up and build a meaningful narrative encompassing all the various crises humanity is facing. I thought I finally found a community of kindred folk who were obviously out of denial and into clear seeing. I hungered to be with other people who were past denial! My local friends note the bad news du jour but rarely venture into bold analysis, much less into preparing for a radically changed world.
As the months wore on, I became aware of a certain compulsive quality in my daily search for yet another rousing doomer post. Since I am a ferret by inclination, I first attributed this directly to my excitement with having a new idea-community to explore. Eventually, though, I had to admit there was something else going on. My daily life was suffering from spending so much time glued to doomer websites, aghast, paralyzed by the sort of appalled fascination that – once I began to reflect on it — seemed akin to what the Puritan parishioners of Jonathan Edwards must have felt attending his fire, brimstone and damnation sermons. I recoiled from this image, surprised more than anything. I never would have thought myself susceptible to the allure of Calvinist gloom!
So it came to pass that I turned to fellow doomers, sharing my insight and looking for a sympathetic understanding and correction. None was forthcoming. Puzzled and frustrated, I began to counter those regular doses of climate and other doom as panic-mongering, hoping for a less shrill and more nuanced understanding. It got me labeled as a skeptic, and evidently, in doomerworld, skepticism is not a good trait. It was at this time that I began to notice an occasional fellow traveler complaining about family members scoffing at their “doomer porn.” Hm… could this be a clue to my own predicament?
You may well ask, what exactly is doomer porn? Unfortunately wikipedia does not yet have an entry for this phenomenon. Scouring the web, I have congealed a number of people’s meandering opinions into one less-than-pithy definition: In brief, it means overwrought or unrealistic forecasts and predictions of shit hitting fan. More narrowly, it involves wrenching stories of global disasters that threaten the extinction of the human race; all is assumed to be lost except for a scant remnant of humanity.
Obsessive dwelling on and morbid fascination with the mind-boggling, terrifying and plausible images of coming destruction brings on satisfying feelings of grim exhilaration. Fantasies abound of outwiting the Four Horsemen, surviving all the desperate zombies and marauding hordes and entering a cleansed world. Doomer porn plays on base emotions and thrills — anxiety, fear, and fright and the urgent need for sudden climax — all for the furthering of someone’s agenda. This agenda is usually a mix of apocalyptarian messianism and salesmanship, although some purveyors seem to do it for the thrill of salvific prophecy alone. Such sky-is-falling storytelling has the same sort of can’t-look-away quality of a car crash or pornography, seducing its fans into seeking repeated addictive fix.
This sensationalist, distracting, time-wasting blight induces an urgency to DO SOMETHING, usually translated into buying someone’s books or reports, although the purveying of lecture gigs, precious metals and survival paraphernalia plays a role as well. Images of impending doom are obligingly served up by people whose internet readership and often financial well-being depends on my thrall. In other words, kidz, a good chunk of doomerism is BAU, dressed up to fool those of us longing for an “out of denial” moment of truth. Doomer porn is but one of the many freak side shows of the empire.
Hanging in the doomersphere is kinda like hanging with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (though admittedly much more fun). There are all these people scurrying about constantly yelling at each other and the world out there that we are finished. Methane? Doomed! Warming? Ice melting? Doomed! CO2? Doomed! Debt? Doomed! Food supply? Doomed! Peak oil? Peak everything? Doomed! Even Sharon Astyk, otherwise a paragon of pragmatic thinking, feels it necessary to come out with an obligatory “doomed!” thrill for her fans a few times each month.
After several months in the grip of delicious dismay, I finally had the sense to investigate a little and make up my own mind. One of my reality checks was a look into so-called peak phosphorus. P is an element absolutely crucial to soil fertility. What I found out was that while mineral phosphorus deposits were indeed being depleted, there are vast supplies of phosphorus in all living bodies. This bioavailable phosphorus is daily eliminated via urine and excrement, while the rest of the phosphorus can be made available to the soil by utilizing animal bones. There is absolutely no shortage, and never will be. There is only a disconnect between available phosphorus and its delivery to the soil. For this I got all worried?! Apparently, some folks are in the business of pulling crises out of a hat.
One of my regular haunts of late has been Guy McPherson’s blog. My enjoyment of the professor’s thoughts and doomstead doings was rudely interrupted by his announcement that there will be no cars on the roads of America by 2012, and the return to stone age would be completed by 2018. That really was the final straw. After doing my usual pooh-poohing of such crass predictioneering, I went into the blog’s archives to understand better what was going on. What I found was not only a staunch commitment to prophetic utterances based on wishful thinking, but also very clear determination to ignore more moderate voices and to insist on certainties that were pure figments of overheated imagination. (IMHO, of course! ;))
And so it finally dawned on me I’d been had. What I had seen as an unfortunate aberration, a mistaken zeal, is in fact part and parcel of the psychological underpinnings of the doomer gestalt. While enjoying the shared understanding of the crises facing humanity, I had unwittingly allowed other, less savory elements in through the same gate. And in so doing, I had became hooked on doomer porn.
I count Kunstler’s very upsetting alarum regarding an acute food crisis in 2010 as a particularly egregious example. I followed the links provided. What I found was an obsessively documented web site of someone who translated the various troubles U.S. farmers had as a results of a very wet last year, and the difficulties connected with a late harvest and drying the grain crop with propane (that this is a ridiculously unsustainable and foolish system, there is no doubt) into an imminent disaster. A compelling profusion of data… echoing endlessly over the internet. It was fortunately debunked by the comments of farmers, silo workers and other local observers coming online to provide corrective actual experiences and understandings. One of the readers was kind to note that this person had made a similar prediction the year before! Apparently the strategy panned out well in terms of his PayPal donations. 😦 Increasing food prices in 2010? Definitely. Empty store shelves in America? I don’t think so. At first, I thought Kunstler had gone lazy, no longer researching his claims. Now I see the overblown nature of those claims as the intended effect, even coming to wonder if the resident troll regularly abusing all and sundry on his blog and keeping the melee going is really Kunstler himself or a hireling. If it bleeds it leads! Even if it’s a bleedin’ lie.
It is one thing to be sharply critical of empire and this civilization, and to keep one’s eyes open to its disturbing actualities and prospects. Quite another to create an alternative reality of phony certainties, shrill frantic claims, manipulatively frightful forecasts, and magic circles of wishful thinkers who long for these forecasts to come true and to be among the Remnant who avert a total disaster.
I am henceforth taking the doomer community with a large pinch of salt because I see its reliance on repeated doses of doomer porn and true believerism as an integral aspect of the doomer worldview. Understanding its cheap-scare hijinks as entertainment of a rather dubious sort, I am calling doomerism on its brazen hype overlay and point to its BAU nature of “selling more stuff.” (This delightful piece from Mother Jones illustrates that collapsitarianism is prone to the same hijacking. New tribalism had been stolen by the hucksters a few years back.)
My kind of community has clear awareness and acceptance of the multiple and converging crises we face, the understanding that cornucopian techno-salvationism is not the path forward, and heavy focus on the need to go back to basics: local food and manufacturing, a sane economy, self-reliant frugal living, community, and common sense. But alongside, it also understands the perils of groupthink, cultish solipsism, gurus who cloak same-old same-old authoritarian posturing behind a façade of prophetic utterance, and yank-my-chain self-promoters who use the community of would-be Babylon escapees as another way to get ahead.
“Feed your worries” here, says ecoshock radio. But wait a minute: isn’t it common sense that what you feed will grow? I submit to you that feeding our worries has always been good business, also known as “business as usual.” Wanna be a rebel? Tell the worry merchants of all stripes to stick it.
[next installment: Doomer mania II]
March 22, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Wow…great essay. Now i may know the missing piece i was sensing in my own process, as to why i was hesitating with launching a ‘different sort of blog’ out into the varyingly worried worlds.–Almost as much as i’d hate being accused of over-sugar-coating stuff, i’d sure hate to be seen as a purveyor of doomer porn! Seriously! Yuk! I don’t think i was on the “wrong” track, always trying to steer clear of denial, and, again (see last comment), so much of it to me is a matter of us all having our crippled comfort zones…but something more than my own discomfort with/fear of change was holding me back. Now i think there is some wisdom here i need to heed. I now know the “doomer” game better, and the fine lines there i was already struggling to discern. And I know well the greenwashing game with its own finelines, and so on down the scale…Hmmm…A little more research is clearly necessary as i take my own “leaps” (faster than “steps” i figure). Time for a new game, eh? Springtime seems the best time to “leap forward”… Thanks, leavergirl, keep it coming!
March 23, 2010 at 8:30 am
Hey —
Fabulous. Yes yes and yes.. and so forth.
You have just completely elucidated *why* I have never participated in, or even read, the great majority of doomer websites. I do an occassional pass over a few of the biggies, I read Dave, I’ve started enjoying Sharon recently, and I have taken JMG as a potential inspiration for disagreement. And of course, I read *friends* blogs… RL people I know and respect, and care about. And that’s it. Never stopped to think why, but you hit it dead on!
Good Show! 🙂
tp
March 23, 2010 at 11:44 am
So, you think the industrial age will last forever, eh? And that it’s a good thing?
And you accuse me of wishful thinking. You’re deep in denial, living a life of fantasy.
We need to terminate the industrial economy, and the sooner the better. Will 2012 be soon enough? We’d better hope so. At least, those few of us who care about the living planet.
March 23, 2010 at 2:22 pm
I got off on doomer porn for a while, too. Then I got over it.
Now I liken it to the time when I was 16 and thought Ayn Rand was cool. Only at least I had the excuse then of not knowing any better …
I occasionally drop in to Guy McPherson’s blog because he is my uncle, and I like him as a person. Otherwise I would have long since abandoned all proximity of any puerile doomer bleating.
March 23, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Hey- everybody, thanks for visiting again, and visiting anew.
Court, it’s a pleasure to have you here. “Puerile doomer bleating” — love it! 🙂
Guy, for a man trained in science, you have the most alarming penchant for non sequiturs. If anyone criticizes your doomer spewage, you just accuse them of wanting the industrial age lasting forever. That makes things really simple for you, eh? No need to pay attention to any feedback at all. Tidy! 😉
I have a question for you. Suppose you assume for a moment that I do NOT see the industrial age lasting forever, and that I actually want very much for it to end. What do you make of my essay then?
March 23, 2010 at 8:16 pm
What do I make of your essay if you want civilization to end? A pitiful cry in the existential dark.
If we’re to bring it all down as quickly as possible, there’s work. Let’s quick bemoaning our fate and get cracking.
I’m happy to hear evidence-based feedback regarding issues that matter. But pointing to wishful thinking instead of the evidence in support of economic collapse is not helpful. By what means do you think we can keep the current game going? We’re well into ecological overshoot, we’ve generated more debt than can ever be paid, we’re five year past the world oil peak, and the world’s entire industrial economy hangs by the barest of threads. With minimal effort, we can snip the thread instead of supporting the system that is making us crazing and killing us.
March 24, 2010 at 7:17 am
Leavergirl, take it or leave it, at this point I would advise you to move on to something more productive. Talking to doomers about “evidence” is like talking to Glen Beck fans about “history.” They’ve just lost the thread and there’s no getting it back for them.
March 24, 2010 at 8:42 am
Scientists know what qualifies as evidence, and how to evaluate the evidence. Do you?
If I’m correct, we might save our species and I get to live to see the planet make a comeback from decades of industrial oppression. If you cheerleaders for civilization are correct, we’re taking the Keynesian route: we’re all dead. I like my story better.
And it’s supported by evidence. Not that you’d recognize it from a work of fiction.
March 24, 2010 at 9:10 am
Wow….
Guy where are you coming up with these accusations? Its one thing to know that we are in the Endgame of Civ and take a thoughtful and proactive approach to to changes that are coming………… and its another thing to take every possible doom scenario and assume it is correct just, well, *because* its a doom scenario. LG is just pointing out that on some doomer blogs the later seems to be the default. And she’s right. I’ve seen it too…. and it is exactly the reason that so many people that *are* aware slide into denial. Because once someone can prove that one statement is fallacious, its easy to assume that all of it is.
Me… I’m of the camp that says not only is industrial civ going away, but civ itself is going away. and that is a good thing. But that does not make it okay to simply *assume* that anything and everything is catastrophic.
Seriously.
tp
March 24, 2010 at 9:16 am
tp, there is essentially nothing catastrophic about the end of western civilization. I assume (and predict) the end of this civilization will be chaotic, as has been the case for the termination of other civilizations. But it’s not a catastrophe, it’s a renaissance.
btw, to what accusations to you refer?
March 24, 2010 at 11:30 am
Hey —
The accusations I was referring to was your statements that leaver girl wanted industrial civ to last forever. Silliness.
As to “catastrophic” — I was referring to the rhetoric on a lot of the doomer blogs that assumes that every suggestion of a potential bottleneck in civ’s systems is certain to play out as crisis. But whatever….
tp
March 24, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Well, Mr. McPherson, i was planning to come check out your site today, after recently hearing about it…but i must say i am dis-impressed by your reading of LG’s essay and that is not a good sign as to your ability to discern trends, etc. To accuse anyone here, especially her or me, of being “cheerleaders for Civ”, that’d have to be the joke of the month! I challenge you to find a single shred of evidence to that effect. I’ll be charatible and assume you really only skimmed it to find the critique of blogs supposedly like yours, and so could not know that its analysis goes much deeper. However, no response to this challenge to pay attention to reality here will be taken as either admission you were wrong, or are cutting your losses and didn’t bother to check back, or you’re too arrogant to care. In either case, if you don’t apologize for this error in this thinking of yours here that she points out above, your comments will stand here as a long-term testament to your critical thinking aptitude, i.e., an embarrassment. Why go this route and alienate potential allies? If anything, according to the “what you resist persists” rule, as opposed to our emphasis on actually getting ourselves out of Civ and building something healthy, the nature of your apparently extreme stridentness would seem to be propping up Civ more than THIS blog is, by far!
March 24, 2010 at 12:49 pm
JayD, I read only this essay (which was trackbacked to my blog) and Ludda before posting my response. Both indicate a desire to keep the current game going, albeit in reduced form. The durable way out of Babylon is to the post-industrial stone age, and I don’t see this route being promoted here. Further, I see no effort (rooted in action) to push the industrial economy over the brink. Finally, I see no optimism at all: Nobody here thinks the industrial age is near its end.
So, unless I’m misunderstanding what’s going on here, the goal is a reduced version of civilization with no desire or plan to reach civilization’s overdue end, and no hope to get there. I interpret this view as toxic.
Please, tell me what I’m missing.
March 24, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Court, I trust you have it on long experience with Unk. I fear you are right. I feel disheartened looking at his condescending snarkiness toward people here.
Nevertheless, nearly everybody deserves a second chance. So here goes.
Guy, when you fling accusations of wishful thinking and civ cheerleading, I feel exasperated. I want to be heard on my own terms. Would you be willing to be specific when you criticize? Show me where I am doing wishful thinking and cheering for civ in my essay, or where anyone else here is doing same.
I am wondering actually… whether you have been feeling desperate of late, because you want to have an impact on people. How has your increasingly shrill (or as readers on your blog called it, increasingly bitter) strategy worked out for you? Have lots of people been inspired by it and moved to get going? Do you judge it successful?
March 24, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I’m snarky, vera?
“How has your increasingly shrill (or as readers on your blog called it, increasingly bitter) strategy worked out for you?”
Nice.
And, by the way, you’ll have to point me to that comment about “increasingly bitter.” I must have missed that one.
On to the specifics, to which I referred quite obviously in my latest comment (and included a link):
Your wishes and dreams for a world filled with villages is a down-scaled version of the same old horror show. Why would it work this time, when it failed so miserably before?
Your desire to keep the current game going is evident in your unwillingness to entertain the notion that the industrial age will end anytime soon — you’ve clearly abandoned any hope of terminating ominicidal industrial culture — as well as the absence of advice about how to bring it all down. You claim to want to end western civilization, but you’re promoting village living (i.e., western civilization), and you don’t show us how to terminate western civilization … likely because and you do not believe western civilization can be terminated.
So, you’ve abandoned hope in our ability to terminate the culture of death. And you’ve also chosen to promote a scaled-down version of more of the same. Your version of hope and change matches Barack Obama’s.
As far as the part about anybody else here, check out Court’s blog. Twit lit, anybody, complete with the Amazon kindle? It’s a supreme example of promoting imperialism.
March 24, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Guy,
Yup, methinks you are missing something, and i hope staying tuned for Part 2 of this essay will answer your questions and correct your misinterpretations. Cuz so far, you still gave no actual specifics, and simply saying you did and that you even provided a link (to one of her whole posts!), then generalizing just one notch less about its message ain’t good writing, dude. I don’t read LG the same way, and i’ve read it all…but i’ll let her speak for herself on your particular points.
Clearly you don’t think there’s a “what you resist persists” factor, despite the lessons of life. (Not that there’s never a place for “resistance”, etc., just that it doesn’t work if you don’t grok the cautionary principle i cited.) I trust you make a more compelling case for “taking down the system” than Mr. Jensen, whom i have read a lot of…if so, could you refer me please? My blog will include a complete critique of this whole evident-to-me strategic quagmire, but perhaps you can save me the trouble by convincing me how i am mis-guided?
March 24, 2010 at 3:13 pm
If any cheerleader for civ was watching this conversation, they’be rolling on the floor laughing, eh? 😉 The virus of true believerism, planted so long ago, keeps doing its job. Prof McPherson, in good form, has alienated many colleagues and blog followers by his rhetoric, yet keeps on plowing the same exhausted soil.
Yes, Guy, you’ve been snarky. For a self-admitted online asshole (I refer readers to the link within my essay), I thought that would’ve been a given. The “bitter” comment was on the comments for the post you linked above. Exactly how many supporters do you have to alienate to realize that your behavior is driving them away?
I do believe that villages are one of the durable options for the future; after all, stone age foragers had villages too. But that is a different conversation.
I entertain the notion that the industrial age will end soon. I am not fool enough to make disingenuous predictions about what exactly “soon” means. I see the omnicidal culture terminating itself, as we speak. Besides, there are plenty of people who are already speaking about how to push it a wee bit more. I have my own ideas, this blog is yet young.
And so Guy ends with a flourish, attacking his own nephew. Well. Shows ya. Visions of stone age + assholery = same-old same-old BAU.
Court, thanks for posting that Onion rant about worried racists! Made my morning. 🙂
March 24, 2010 at 4:46 pm
JayD et al. — For my ten-step plan for terminating the industrial economy, see here. But if you disagree with Derrick Jensen about the need or the tools, I doubt we’ll find much common ground. Just like I don’t find much of interest here on vera’s blog, which promotes a scaled-back version of BAU. As I indicated, I don’t see BAU as a good idea.
vera, my comment about Court was in direct response to your question. You asked, I answered. Apparently you’d moved on by then, to some other oft-answered question you could misinterpret.
March 24, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Thanks, Vera. I do what I can. Although in this case the Onion folks did the actual work.
March 25, 2010 at 11:31 am
Ahem. Dunno… looks to me like I got shrill myself. Feeling kinda sheepish about it.
Rereading Eric Hoffer, the guy who wrote True Believer. Couple quotes that spoke to me:
“Every extreme attitude is a flight from the self.”
“The more zeal the less heart. It seems that when we put all our heart into something we are left as it were heartless.”
March 25, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Dear Leavergirl,
I come from The Archdruid Report’s link, where I confess that I have done the same since Summer, Fall and Winter–seeking out ideas to explore. I think like (JayD), that a new game might be in order. I hope yours survives the contentions and more flows with independent, helpful, comments. JMG’s does.
March 25, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Another voice here having gone through the same obsession/fascination. I’d been having doubts recently: was I overloading, sinking back into denial, or was it really just BAU, profits gained from the omnipresent fear mongering. Then I began to wonder who was really behind it all. Basta. It was sad to see my favorite sarcaster peddle his book: I wondered if he was going to take the money and run. Good entertainment for a while, I guess. Spring-time to exert the body and shed this accumulation of gloom. Your end-of-post graphic provided a perfect belly laugh release. Thanks.
March 25, 2010 at 5:47 pm
I also linked from JMG, and I admit it: my name is Yvonne and I am a doomer porn addict.
Thanks for sharing!
March 26, 2010 at 7:25 am
Another visitor from JMG’s site ( http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ ). Nice, well written piece. I will look for part 2. I too find myself seduced on occasion by the thrill of doomer porn, but then I catch myself and re-orientate.
Our current civilization based on easily accessed high energy fuel will eventually have to change. A change I believe will be at times painful and disruptive but not something that will happen overnight. Instead we are looking at a slow descent over decades. That will give many of us the time to adapt, and for the rest, they will either learn from our example or seek other ways of coping.
March 26, 2010 at 8:56 am
Nice essay thanks. I would say I see my own experience reflected in it, and I think it is quite helpful of you to point out some of the psychological patterns that occur in people involved with the peak oil scene.
The choice is not only between complete and imminent collapse or Business As Usual, reality is more complicated than that! John Michael Greer is one writer that does an excellent job of exploring some of the reasons why it is so easy and popular to fall into this kind of all-or-nothing thinking.
Personal identification with strongly held views seems to be reflected in some of the vehement comments here.
March 26, 2010 at 9:57 am
Guy, I can’t believe how intolerant you sound in your responses here. You seem to be cheery picking random interpretations of someones writing and manipulating them with a zeal that comes across as something that would be dangerous if it amassed a cult following.
March 27, 2010 at 7:59 am
xhmko, let’s follow the thread here. I was attacked by vera in her original post, based on two lines of my writing (from among thousands of lines in hundreds of essays). I defended myself with reason, only to be attacked by one anonymous troll after another. I respond, to further attacks. To you, it appears I’m cherry picking … and what do you think it looks like from my angle? Has anybody attacking my writing actually read any of it?
March 27, 2010 at 11:16 am
All the new visitors, welcome. Dtrammel, I think JMG understands better than most that wishful thinking and making predictions should not mix.
Thank you all for the encouraging comments!
March 27, 2010 at 11:25 am
Guy M., Before i read your latest comment, I wanted to ask you something like, “Don’t you at least care how you come across? Do you have any sensitivity at all to what it takes to have a growing following…assuming you really believe deep down that would be a positive direction for the world? Don’t you see that you’re on turf here that is not enemy territory?” That’s what i wanted to say…and did. But then, you do keep coming back to try to explain, and though you still don’t seem to be hearing folks here, at least you care enough to hang in for a bit. Or is that mostly just about reputation salvage, damage control?
Come now, you’re a sharp enough chap to see through the “If you’re critical of my apparent excesses, you’re my enemy” tone that is coming across, aren’t you? E.g., Leavergirl made it plain as day that she’d read enough of your writing to deserve to venture an informed opinion about it. Clearly she’s no simplistic thinker. So for you to say above that it seems as if ‘no one who’s attacking your writing has actually read any of it’ is so far out of touch with reality that you are going to convince no one who thinks in a way that can be trusted for much of anything…except perhaps knee-jerking blows against the empire that lose more hearts and minds than they win. But maybe i should shut up, lest you find this point convincing and become truly effective at building a movement that i am convinced will backfire. Because if i’m convinced of that, and i actually really do want to see the end of Industrial Civ, doesn’t it follow that i would not want you to succeed, even though what we supposedly most want is similar? And if you can follow that, doesn’t it make more sense to defend your priorities and make your case with patiently persuasive compassionate logic, than with this extremist edge that turns off most open-minded people?
I did read your 10-point plan for helping to end civ as we know it; thanx for the link. You are right, it is hard for me to find common ground with you if i don’t agree with Mr. Jensen’s strategy. When you are even more blatant than he about feeling good for adding pollution and violence to this world’s burden in the name of “saving the Earth”, well, Guy, can’t you see how you have more listenin’ and ‘splainin’ to do as to how “the ends justify the means” will work out better this time if only…? Almost anyone who understands the Gaia hypothesis will tend to find Derrick and you coming across like sloppy thinkers at best with this implication that the planet is going to die if we don’t kill civ first. Why not humble yourself enough to admit that all sides have kernels of truth powering them, and that it will be in putting those together, bringing us together with compassion for all life, that we build a broad-based force for fundamental change. Not just more of the simple “us vs. them” behavior and thought patterning that got us here…right?!
March 27, 2010 at 7:19 pm
To your credit you are here trying to, well, I was going to say discuss this, but actually its more like defend yourself…but over what? A brief mention in an article where the writer sees one of your predictions as far fetched. Surely you have come across enough people by now who disagree with your extrapolations that you could let something like as vera’s criticism slide right off or at least prove her analysis wrong. But you have come in here guns blazing practically and throwing accusations around that are tantamount to calling her and other “collaborators” in an omnicidal military industrial complex and reinforced what she wrote even further. Perhaps you could go get some fresh air and think about who your slamming and what for.
March 29, 2010 at 3:20 pm
JayD, xhmko, thank you for your input. I think that Guy illustrates well a predicament facing us: it is easy to learn to keep chickens. It is damn hard to learn to treat people well. 😉
March 30, 2010 at 10:54 am
Exactly. Especially challenging for many people to treat others well if they have the courage to express differing views, even harder if they dare to criticize ours. And all too rare to be able to admit that failure to rise to the challenge ain’t gonna get us anywhere better. But those who are able are the ones we can play and work with without wasting a lot of time on ego-centered power struggles. Now to find them…
June 13, 2010 at 12:22 pm
[…] and “doomer porn” By dwighttowers More from Leavergirl and the “Leaving Babylon” website… You may well ask, what exactly is doomer porn? Unfortunately wikipedia does not yet have an […]
January 30, 2011 at 11:00 am
Quite simply, thank you Leavergirl. I have been reading a lot of doomer stuff (reading Endgame now, not sure if I would call it doomer porn, it is thought-provoking and caustic, which is good). But the Gaia reference from JayD is absolutely to the point.
Now for part two of your post.
January 30, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Nice to see more commentary on this Doomer Mania I post after half a year of none. I wonder what can be done to keep everyone apprised of new posts to old comments; i think we might have to check the “notify me…” box below every post? I don’t think the “subscribe by email” box works right…or does it? Can we train ourselves to look at “recent comments” often? (I did get notification in my Inbox about the new comment this time…Hey, “Starting Out”, it’d be good to hear about your moniker!)
There must be ways to speed things up via this medium…i for one can’t and won’t be letting years go by here just discussing endlessly, and i know i’m not alone. Action awaits us, but not forever.
January 30, 2011 at 2:55 pm
Jay D, Leaving Babylon’s ‘Home’ page provides a summary of the five most ‘Recent Comments’ in the upper right corner. It’s a good place to find at least the last five new posts.
https://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/
January 30, 2011 at 2:58 pm
Jay D, Starting Out wrote first in Dickology…
And I don’t know any other way except to look in new comments on the front page. I moved it up for visibility a while back.
SO, Endgame is great. I would not call it doomer porn. If you wanna see doomer porn, Guy McPherson’s blog is a good place, though in the older posts. Nicole Foss, as Stoneleigh on Autom. Earth, does some of it… panicking people into action by dire predictions that fail to materialize, over and over. There is also a funny post somewhere on The Doomer Feedlot… basically the same critique as mine but a lot wittier. One of these days I will get around and add the link here.
And… thank you too. 🙂 For your appreciation, and for engaging with us.
January 30, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Thanks Larry, for alerting people. I just increased the number of comments visible to 8. Less pain to catch up? I could increase it up to 15, so let me know what works.
January 30, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Yeah, the more ‘most recent comments’ visible the better, if chronological; the challenge as i said is getting in the habit of checking. I like the Archives section.
I feel the need to keep distancing myself from DJ’s “Endgame”-type stuff. Someone sent me a pre-pub version to read. But i jumped around, never read most of it; i understand lots of changes took place afterward, so can’t speak to details, but i do find it to be a type of doomer porn and very divisive the way what i read was worded. Also, like the Beatles sang, “And if you talk about destruction, don’t ya’ know that you can count me out…” Big pieces of the picture are not being looked at by DJ et al…at least not yet, to my knowledge.
January 31, 2011 at 10:16 am
Jay D, You may prefer reading Lester Brown’s “Plan B” as recommended by Vera. I’m reading my local library’s copy of his book, but it’s also available online for free @:
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb4/pb4_table_of_contents
Brown is totally focused on addressing our predicament and solving whatever problems we can.
I’m also reading EF Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered” (the 25 year updated), which made some remarkable recommendations back in the ’70’s, most of which are appropriate today (though, for some, the window of opportunity may have closed).
These books address the pending doom, but are wayshowers of dealing with our dilemma.
Hope this helps.
January 31, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Cough, cough. I recommended Lester’s book as a way of getting to know what the “plan B” people are doing… but I criticize their approach in… er… the post before the last one. Not that his ideas are bad. But hey, how do you actually do that stuff? He ignores the problem of power.
January 31, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Please accept my apology Vera. I didn’t recall you had written about Lester Brown in your ‘Pie-in-the-sky-fallacy’ post. For the most part, I agree that Brown fails to deal with the problem of power, but many of his solutions will be self-fulfilling if they become profitable, e.g., implementing alternative energy solutions such as solar, wind and geothermal. In some cases, these solutions will move forward because of the power paradigm, as those in power will profit from them.
To be fair, Brown offers a number of other solutions that individuals can also implement, none of which are game-changing, as you have correctly observed. I especially agree with your critique of those who believe overturning the Federal Reserve will be easy. It will not. Central banks are ground zero, the home base of those in power. If you don’t get that, perhaps you might enjoy a screening of “Inside Job” which details how billions of dollars were transferred from the public to those in power.
January 31, 2011 at 11:55 pm
No apology needed, Larry. 🙂 And it’s not easy to outline gamechanging strategies… Regarding banks… I find it spot on that Assange is threatening banks rather than governments with his “emergency cache.” Good for him. That is where the real power lies these days.
Been meaning to check out Inside job. Thanks for the reminder.
August 2, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Classic: The Doomer Feedlot
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2008/02/334-welcome-to-doomer-feedlot.html
June 10, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Great post! I needed to read this after binge-watching climate change videos on YouTube this weekend. (Doing so, I even thought to myself “hmmm… this isn’t healthy”, but then kept on with it.)
My own view is that it took us 75-100 years to establish an oil-based culture, and so it seems reasonable think in terms of 75-100 years of establishing another culture. It doesn’t absolutely have to be a bad ride. In my city we have bike sharing, car sharing, a tool library, a repair cafe, dozens of farmers markets and CSAs, etc. All little acorns that can grow into the new, quite pleasant, normal. There is also a growing interest in local and artisanal everything. My neighbourhood has a new barbershop offering old-timey shaves, and guess who the major clientele is? Young men under 30.
The wild card is climate change.
March 31, 2021 at 10:21 am
[…] This is an excerpt of a longer essay on the perils of “doomer porn”. In this piece, Vera Bradova (aka Leavergirl) makes the case that doomer porn is another form of spectacle perpetuated by empire to keep us distracted and afraid. She discerns the difference between “awareness and acceptance of the multiple and converging crises we face” and “obsessive dwelling on and morbid fascination with the mind-boggling, terrifying and plausible images of coming destruction” which just plays into Business As Usual. You can read the full essay here. […]