Beyond Acceptance
This isn't Kansas any more Dorothy.
I think we’re entering a new age of doomerism. Doomers moved from spreading the news, to trying to help, and now I think the weight of what is happening is starting to settle in.
For a long time, there were people devouring the reports of the dangers we are going to face, and trying to get people to wake up to this reality. Those same people are now putting together guides on how to survive when things fall apart.
Acceptance was once a big part of the message, but I think even committed doomers, deep down inside, hadn’t moved from intellectual understanding to what I call visceral understanding, the feeling that what you feared, the nightmares that haunted you, has now been made manifest.
It’s scary as fuck.
I don’t see a lot of, what used to be termed, doomer humor. Not a lot of cute little memes, and much to my relief, Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic and the boiling frog analogies have died a long overdue death.
I had stated, some time around 2021–2022 that it was going to be fun until it wasn’t.
We’re there.
It’s not fun to have to think about the collapse and all the attendant issues that we can no longer avoid, no matter how hard we try.
It’s there every day, dwindling bank accounts, ever-increasing numbers of people disabled or dead because of Covid, food shortages becoming part of our lives, societal breakdown coming closer and closer to home, everything in our lives is being upended, and it’s not getting better.
Someone pointed out that during the depression years, Hollywood made more musicals to try to take people’s minds off the horror of their lives.
I think it’s happening again, not with musicals this time around, but with the popularity of people like Michael Mann and Rebecca Solnit telling us that we can still have hope, selling the snake oil delusion to the gullible masses who only want a little relief.
Knowing there’s an end and being able to see that point in your life are vastly different things.
It’s not hell yet, but we can see it from here.
Sheriff Ray Bledsoe: [to Butch and Sundance] You should have let yourself get killed a long time ago when you had the chance. See, you may be the biggest thing that ever hit this area, but you’re still two-bit outlaws. I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you’re still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. It’s over, don’t you get that? Your times is over and you’re gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where.
Our times is over too.
Don’t mind me, I’m just getting a little cranky in my old age.
I'm getting cranky too. I went to our local pet clinic and a store this morning and by the time I finished dealing with stupid humans, all I wanted to do was punch someone. Fortunately for them, my wife talked me out of it.
We're living in a fantasy world of their making and they like it that way. People are shutting down and pulling the bubble of normalcy over their heads and pretending that nothing is out of the ordinary.
Meanwhile, stores have fewer people working in them, prices are shooting up, and shelves are emptier at the grocers. Yet, nothing is wrong. Life is normal.
When I mention these things to people, I get accused of scare mongering. Let it all burn down. I'm done with humanity. I'll protect myself, my wife and my dog and let the rest suffer as they will. I'll be watching from the sidelines and the hills above as the fires burn and the people run around like ants in a kicked over anthill. I'll take pictures.
I learned a term that is new to me today:
Anticipatory Grief.
Now I know what it is that I am experiencing.....