I continue to hear ostensibly intelligent people say that despite our current predicament, we’ll find a solution through human ingenuity and by maintaining a positive attitude. However, the more I’m exposed to this, the more it has a tendency to frustrate me. What we need most now is honesty: with others, but primarily with ourselves. Our greatest responsibility—and chance for survival—lies in accelerating the process of power down, while mitigating the suffering. As Patrick Henry expressed centuries ago:

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts… For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.

We need to accept that the life to which we’ve become accustomed is finished, we need to embrace hopelessness and shed the illusions of maintaining anything remotely resembling the current cultural norm. Open yourself to Derrick Jensen’s eloquent plea:

PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.

Many people are afraid to feel despair. They fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate our situation really is, they must then be perpetually miserable. They forget that it is possible to feel many things at once. They also forget that despair is an entirely appropriate response to a desperate situation. Many people probably also fear that if they allow themselves to perceive how desperate things are, they may be forced to do something about it.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that, in our hearts, we already know what to do. We’ve known for years.

Once again, voice-screaming-in-(for)-the-wilderness Guy McPherson nails the essence of our collective insanity in his latest brilliant installment, Wanted: two miracles:

The cover of William Catton’s 1980 book, Overshoot, includes the following definitions:

Carrying capacity: maximum permanently supportable load.
Cornucopian myth: euphoric belief in limitless resources.
Drawdown: stealing resources from the future.
Cargoism: delusion that technology will always save us from
Overshoot: growth beyond an area’s carrying capacity, leading to
Crash: die-off.

Most people to whom I speak do not believe these definitions apply to us. Our species, they say, is way too clever to cause a crash in our own population.

Yet, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, far too many of us continue to posit a future with flying cars. Desperately seeking reassurance that we aren’t simply yeast people.