🌍 ⤑ opining on unread books
Sometimes – that is, on too regular a basis – I buy a book on an impulse, eager to read it right away, and genuinely convinced that, merely by purchasing it, that's what will happen when my future self receives it or picks it up. Be reading it right away, as soon as I have it!
Which happens, but especially in recent years more often than not does not, so many a book in yonder shelf ended up there remaining entirely unread. :l Several of them presumably forever. :( I can't be alone in this behaviour..
At least recently, thanks to the help of more energetically inclined loved ones and relatives, I devised a shelf system promoti.. ehh, no matter – one such book that crosses my mind more often than others lately — leaving this tiny trace of guilt, an echoed whisper of “damn yes, with that one I really ought to have gotten started a miserable decent while ago” — is The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann.
The book's about pushing earth's limits, or abiding by them, is the gist I took away from cover and reviews - in anticipation of reading. In which case I think time proved the prophet right, and the road to hell was paved, in part, with good intentions. Is there any precedent of revoking Nobel Prizes? :l In a most honourable manner, to be sure. Just, like, reassess the candidates with 20/20 hindsight.
Why yet another blogpost utterly TBC, it appears to become a habit. No regrets! :|
🤯 ⤑ adembemende epiodes..
Of all the things I shall have read,
At the Mountains of Madness
matters much. On further reflection, I suppose I haven't read any
H.P. Lovecraft at all,
even though it would appear to be Reading 101. :| An awkward gap in my
cultural constitution. Much like
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
ffs :/ and many more, but let's not digress.
Herewith it's bumped up some on the TO-READ list, as lately I oftentimes truly
find myself climbing mountains of madness — and then tumbling down them, tearing
open some more awkward gaps, this time 'round in my weary, forworn memory; and
tangibly manifested in batter and bruise. :l
Breathaking epiodes come from chemicals, but that may not be the entire story. The likelihood, mentioned elsewhere, of “more things in heaven and earth” cannot be ignored. :l As such, this blog post, too, is utterly TBC.
Lists and lists of things needing doing! What better unnecessary additional reason to finally be diving into Emacs 20 full years late 😔 – literally the ultimate processor of lists, after all. The editor for life. 🌈 But eternal ~koudwatervrees.
🌍 on collapse
❬ The below is about an an 8m read. I do tend to repeat myself, though (for lack of a better way to say “in herhaling vallen”), but more often than not that's a matter of stressing a matter, on purpose and/or necessary or not. Also there are five pictures 🤦♂️ be adding thousands of words. Then again, what's a minute or two in the face of eternity, or my, your – our demise? ❭
Collective action will not be considered until the impacts are obvious and likely past a point of no return.
..an internet denizen wrote in the comment section of a news paper article, about a year ago. We know of the Mayans, and Easter Island. Also, over 3000 years ago, there was the Late Bronze Age collapse. Says history.com:
Ironically, the interconnectedness that had strengthened these Bronze Age kingdoms may have hastened their downfall.
Anno 2024, we sure are highly interconnected – compared to just ten, never mind thirty years ago. The internet has come a long way. As did we, didn't we! Our future, though, is blim & greak – to start on a jolly note, before considering our future looks grim & bleak indeed. Many bright scientists — for every James Hansen there is an Eliot Jacobson — and many mediocre minds alike can tell you all about it. How bleak could it really be? We'll sure find out; it does keep the aforementioned bright scientists up at night, and they would know, wouldn't they. Note that climate disaster is only the most glaring part of our predicament rooted in overshoot.
Take famine: we know of it, though mostly in Africa, or from history, and the bible, maybe. But indulge yourself in some mere Gedankenspielerei and imagine such very famine bluntly coming for you and your loved ones, here, in our lifetimes. Because supermarkets one day stopped to be all that super, their logistics unraveled due to pesky Houthis or a flu more serious than COVID-19; and crops shriveled in the heat, and/or were flooded for good measure, in one too many places at once.
Or think of refugees nowadays: they
die in sad numbers on tragic treks north, in the Mediterranean, and the
Darién Gap. When they do make it to
wherever they made it, they disrupt the societies in which they end up. No need!
even for religion or other bad habits, just their numbers will do. Even if
everyone were willing to show all humanity the other cheek wäre es einfach
nicht schaffbar. See how it works out today, with just a few million people on
their merry way, from 🇸🇾 Syria here or
🇻🇪 Venezuela there. Imagine a billion 😐 or two people from
🇵🇰 Pakistan or 🇮🇳 India, 🇳🇬 Nigeria or
🇪🇸 Spain, compelled or forced to leave their home or scorched
homeland. Where will they go? A cynic might mutter they're probably better off
dying just where they are.
¶
Not like we didn't know. 😔 (Who's this pesky
“we”, though.. 🧐 and what did they know..)
#ExxonKnew, for instance. Already in the early
1970's we knew about
the limits we ought to
have abided by. Instead we relied on 🙌 technology to overcome and
ignore them, and to do so gobbled are gobbling up fossil fuels like there
was is no tomorrow, disfiguring all that is beautiful, quite simply
destroying the very systems that support us. And while it's hard to fathom,
probably just a few dozen, or hundred sleazy greedy, willingly myopic scumbags
can be singularly blamed for unleashing this, the
sixth mass extinction,
ongoing & unfolding before our eyes.
This past July 22th was the planet's 🔥 warmest day in 100.000 years. Awful numbers keep blowing minds brighter than mine and presumably yours. Even high-profile mainstream media like CNN have stopped mincing words. That mere fact could be reason for pause, and then maybe cause for concern – of which, however, around me I discern absolutely NONE. 🥴 So then ЧТО ДѢЛАТЬ, i.e. what is to be done? Perhaps I shall go spraypaint some landmark, or glu myself to an unsuspecting work of art after all. One of few bucket list items was to go see The Hunters in the Snow for real someday anyway, and 🚆 the train goes a long way.
¶
On July 30th of this, the year of our Lord 2024, The Guardian reports on coral bleaching once more, it must have been a while. Coral reefs made for breathtaking pictures, and do so again as they succumb to marine heatwaves – life gone, death ☠️ beyond repair. April 2025 addendum: “84% of the world's coral reefs hit by worst bleaching event on record”. 😶
“We’re coming out of a couple of decades where we made predictions,” said Prof Tracy Ainsworth, the vice-president of the International Coral Reef Society. “Now we are at a point where we hoped we would not be. Now we’re asking, what do we do now?”
If there is one thing to internalize, it is that
there is no fixing things anymore, no way out of our predicament. This can't
be stressed emphatically enough: 't is a time of consequences. A loved one,
let's call them B., told me not to “lose myself in admiring the problem” – a
wise take and sidestep I probably needed, but of little solace, and in any case
no use. Attitude is irrelevant, and obstinate resolve regrettable, in the face
of an unfolding polycrisis. It's not just conceited – not just a mere you
problem – to believe all problems can be solved, it is exceedingly ill-advised
to assume so and act, even stake everything (that is, all that is and all who
are), upon the assumption. Assuming keeping on bending nature reality to our
every whim & will for all eternity time simply never made sense, as
evidenced by the evidence. 🙌 gesturing broadly at everything 🙌
Only today, being 21/5/25, I noticed
(by way of a quick Ctrl+f) that nowhere in this slab of text I verbatim
mentioned the tragically misguided disposition toward TECHNO OPTIMISM. One
does not create something out of nothing – how hard is that to get? Nor! does
one, say, 🦾 pull CO₂ out of the air; and surely! it is unwise to assume
${technology} 🌈 will exist just because, and when we will it to? And even!
if it would, when would it? because ⏱️ time has been ticking since well before
we were born. And when the magic technology ever would come to be, would one
store the CO₂ in plastic bottles or rather wooden boxes? Cleverly in sandbags
maybe, to stack up against the rising tide?
Fixing just the CO₂ problem turns out to be impossible, ergo even if all humankind were somehow committed to save itself 🫡 – like the US economy transformed itself to end WW II say, or all of us doing our bit to fix the hole in the ozone layer back then – oh such an accomplishment, and such a symbol of what all we aren't capable of – by now no commitment could prevent the end. The CO₂ is only one of the things, ffs.
¶
Let's, for good measure, drop yet another stunning holiday postcard frommm.. 🇨🇦 Manitoba this time. Good thing we have those seeds stashed in 🇳🇴 Svalbard! Where they will safely remain, so when Europe freezes, they will sav.. we will plant th.. Hunger won't b.. hmm. Such smart monkeys, or so clever a squirrel we are, with our iPhones in our opposably thumbed paws.
“L'homme moderne, au lieu de chercher à s'élever à la vérité, prétend la faire descendre à son niveau.”
Our undisputable ingenuity has had plenty of time to prove its worth or use, but never managed to slow us down, never mind stop us from circling down the drain. The humility to acknowledge that not all problems can be solved behoves us all, and our failure to do so has only exacerbated the kerfuffle, turning problems into a predicament. Embrace the predicament! sounds corny, but sometimes words don't matter. Truly embracing our predicament requires not just willingness (seriously lacking already), but also, amidst the incessant hustle and bustle foreground noise of an imposed lifestyle, the ability and time to try to get a proper picture, and adequately assess the state of affairs. I suppose it then takes a decent while to regain one's bearings, maybe surfing some unfamiliar Kübler-Ross vibes in no particular order.
This entire mega-kerfuffle obviously doesn't leave us with nothing left to do, quite the contrary, we'd just do well to reconsider our efforts. The sooner, the better, because in the meantime we are running out of precious time, and wasting resources of human and other kinds. Green growth is such an obvious oxymoron. Resources are finite, planned degrowth a fantasy. Unplanned then, the degrowth will be forced upon us, and quite dramatically so, because there really seems to be. no. way. of. stopping the machine. Why don't we try to see what the future holds, instead of literally just assuming it'll all be swell & dandy as it always done did; and then figure out how to mitigate the misery coming for us as best we can, in unfavourable circumstances already showing, and baked in to get unfavourabler still for decades to come. 🫥 It somehow reminds me of that.. guy forced to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity. As always, Wikipedia assists us with a think, because –
“The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus himself.”
Frits, 5/8/24,
with
424 CO₂ ppm
21/5/25 PS: According to the internet, “Limits to Growth was right about collapse”. Well. Whom to believe – the internet, or the aforementioned loved one, who, insisting our Titanic is not yet sinking, told me, kept telling me, that “smart people are working on avoiding that”. Not wanting to come across as antagonistic for the sake of it, I haven't inquired further about those people, and their work: who they are, what they have been doing all this time, and indeed what it is they believe they will be averting, by mere virtue of being smart and willing to work.
7/9/25 PPS: Perhaps for many the 'X' in XR is yet another
bridge too far; another thing so ludicrous it isn't even worth a moment of
thought, never mind the fact it may well be a bridge, or river —
“Lethe, wasche die Wunden rein..” —
to be crossed. Then mayhaps
this yet another Reddit post
shall trigger another post here, or there, again. Again! And again..
15/9/25 PPPS: Another loved one, this time we can refer to them as N., left me utterly speechless the other day.. In all their scientific, technological, engineering, and mathematical excellence, they appear to have no inclination at all to look up; their brain not lacking the power, but their soul any and all will to even just consider the possibility that what appears to be self-evident just may not be. It must be like living religiously! A soothing cosy comfortable mindset leaving no need, nor room, for doubt, since religion will forever be holding the answer. To anything! Based on its own authority. It says so, after all, and has always done so, after all! Oh so blind the pride. 😞
¶
In my youth I certainly often must have come across as antagonistic for the sake of it, but my weary worn soul has lonnng shed most all hubris. Only incomprehension remains, and this life a dreamy pointless punishment. “Sicker!”, quoth Cassandra.