the personal psychology of climate change - ideas drought -

Discussion in 'General chat' started by kimbo.parker, May 20, 2013.

  1. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    around about this time every year, as moisture returns to the landscape - ideas return to my mind.

    or they used to.

    now in-synch with the plants - my bio rhythms are stumbling about trying to find the light.

    "hello self, it is greening, wake up,,,,hello, is there any one at home?"
    [ hollow echo where enthusiasm and passion used to reside ]
    ____________________________________

    truly, i'm at an ideas standstill -

    i sit and think, and think, and look for the hidden doors, and scheme and design and plot for advantage

    again past tense - currently i'm just lost in the general confusion unable to transcend the 'grow something paradigm'.

    part of my permaculture bend has always been this reliable enthusiasm for growing stuff - owning the genetics, having lots of genetics under my personal control - truly a power thing.

    never mind the power implied in ownership of massive physical space - the surface area of plants and forests just always inspired the megalomaniac within,

    always - previously.

    and now the climate is different - and the bio stuff that comprised my natural landscape is throwing up all sorts of new behaviours as it trys to adapt.

    the plants are leaving me behind because i can not come up with one new idea.
    a truly new idea.

    ___in a personal resort to faith -
    i believe i've created the venue in my mind with an attitude of discontent with the status quo -
    but for the love of bob i can not come up with diddly in the way of significantly advantaging myself
    ( or others! for any altruistic types that went for my throat there )....

    what i really need is a new amway.

    ah the good old days.,,
    or a new permaculture ( something to inspire, is the point )

    amway and permaculture both flicked my switches in their times.

    and this is the dumb paradigm that i am unable to transcend - the urge to secure some valuable cactus genetics and then sell some semi legal product utilising a multilevel marketing platform .....

    cactus soap -

    this is the box i'm stuck in.
    please set fire to it.
     
  2. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 9, 2009
    Messages:
    5,925
    Likes Received:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Maybe there are no new ideas because there don't need to be. Maybe the plants have nothing to say this year because they need you to do nothing.
     
  3. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 9, 2009
    Messages:
    5,925
    Likes Received:
    9
    Trophy Points:
    0
    Or you could make agave nectar and sell that in a pyramid scheme.
     
  4. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    so i took my whinge to the archdruid, and this is what he said

    At this point, roughly in parallel with fundamentalism and the New Age, the environmental movement is having to come face to face with the total failure of its hopes. Back in the heady days of its early successes, the vision that guided it saw environmental protection as the next step forward in the same trajectory of social progress that included the civil rights movement and second wave feminism; it was in this spirit, for example, that environmental lawyers proposed that trees be given legal standing. The hope all along was that industrial civilization could achieve a permanent peace with the world of nature and continue up the infinite road of progress without leaving a scorched and looted planet in its wake.


    That hope is dead. If there was ever a chance to achieve it, it went whistling down the wind decades ago, and at this point the jaws of resource depletion and environmental degradation are tightening around the collective throat of the world’s industrial societies, in exactly the fashion predicted in detail forty years ago in the pages of The Limits to Growth. Even if the green technologies promoted by an increasingly frantic minority of environmentalists could support something like today’s rates of energy use, which they can’t, we can no longer afford the sort of massive buildout of those technologies that would be necessary to supplant even a significant part of our current fossil fuel consumption. If what’s left of the environmental movement managed to overcome its own internal dysfunctions and the formidable opposition of its foes, and became a mass movement again, the most it could accomplish at this point would be the protection of some of the most vulnerable ecosystems as industrial society stumbles down the first bitter steps of the long descent into the deindustrial future.


    That’s still a goal worth achieving, but it’s not the goal to which the environmental mainstream committed itself when it embraced a role among the socially acceptable institutions of American public life, with the perks and salaries that this status involves. This explains, I suggest, the way that certain mainstream environmentalists have turned to proselytizing for nuclear power and other frankly ecocidal technologies, under the curious delusion that "possibly a little better than the worst" somehow amounts to "good." The desperation in such rhetoric is palpable, and signals the end of the road—an end that, in this case as in the others I’ve cited, involves a good many fantasies of total destruction.


    Still, there’s another factor here, and it unfolds from one of the least creditable aspects of the way that the environmental movement has evolved over time. It has become increasingly clear that the perks, the salaries, and the comfortable middle class lifestyles embraced so enthusiastically by so many people in the movement are themselves part of the problem. I was intrigued to read earlier this month a thoughtful essay by leading British climate scientist Kevin Anderson arguing, in terms that will sound very familiar to regular readers of The Archdruid Report, that the failure of climate change activism to make any headway in changing people’s behavior may have more than a little to do with the fact that the people who are urging such changes aren’t making them themselves.

    _______________________________end of hack and slap_______________

    mmmm comfortable middle class lifestyles.

    (cough)

    none of those here though
    :)
    _________________________________________________

    i'm going to just let this one go now and get back to my thinking on a new amway

    ps if i put 'arch' in front of my name...arch kimbo, ?- nup - sounds like an instruction from my wife.
     
  5. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    that is a stretch.
    observable is the plants doing stuff - they are trying new ways - admittedly they are using twigs and leaves to do so - but i'm not ready to hold that against them.
    observable also is me not doing stuff - no ideas.

    so we have the plants more pro active than the mammal - i am 'that' mammal.
    but there are probably others - similarly, doing pretty well zip in the new paradigm department.
    lots of 'us' are doing that "This is Water" mantra -
    did i see your lips moving Echo
     
  6. annette

    annette Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2010
    Messages:
    889
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    16
    The "this is water" paradigm is just an exercise in non judgement. Beyond that is a questioning...........Why are you in that situation? kindergarten stuff...........

    The no idea kimbo is the natural state. Nature adapts unquestioningly to slight variances. Do you see what you are focussed on? Trees and plants do not focus, they are. They do not think about it, they reach, oblivious of time, being............ die, new life.............different.........oblivious to the meaning of it. present............

    plants if you observe have no fear and have it all over us. They provide shelter, nutrition, beauty, soil enrichment and a multitude of other stuff............there are no new ideas in this paradigm............it just is...........as it always was and is, moving on ............

    outside of that, nothing is unimaginable....and everything is subject to remembering..............
     
  7. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    good reply !
    but i must disagree with a couple of points

    plants have demonstrated memory and fear.
    they quickly adopt an attitude to tormentors and carers responding with readable and measurable electronic outputs - like fluctuations in their little plant auras - i don;t know, other than what i've read.

    on the plant model offering no new paradigms - it appears to be trying some new things (observable) - and i won't disagree on the simple natural response to stimuli, distinct from thought.

    irrespective - the plants doing something cause me to reflect that i am not.
    i certainly don't appear to be doing an auto sub conscious response - to climate change.
    and i'm in a rut over a next step conscious response - although it is still early in the thinking season.

    then, to cap it off - the flippin arch druid quenched my little hope fire.
    thats like the pope abandoning mass - probably a good thing in the long term but likely to piss a few people off.

    cheers
     
  8. annette

    annette Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2010
    Messages:
    889
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Yep you are right Kimbo. Plants do react on an individual level to the cutting of leaves etc. They even produce evidence of a life force that completes the plant on a photographic level. I read a while ago that they even emit sounds when they are injured. If we understood the language we have an entirely different perspective on plant life. Just think about it........if plants could talk......what would they tell us......I for one would love to know. findhorn comes to mind.

    As for the middle class and the environmental movement............for many sorting recyclables is the limit. That produces a salve on the conscience but the I want my mtv, air conditioning, suv, 3 bathrooms and a masterchef kitchen prevail. As a uni lecturer turned activist once told me, "Annette the middle class are the only ones that can afford to be environmentally active, but they love their comforts.......The poor in the most part are just focussed on surviving". more more more...........which equals less less less in many ways.

    New ideas are needed urgently but getting through the political noise and realities of modern life make that difficult. It gets down to walking the talk I think.

    It's the fear of death that drives most. Once that fear is gone, things open up and people are kinder to each other and the earth.
     
  9. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2008
    Messages:
    2,215
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    36
    Your problem is self-awareness Kimbo. It is the fundamental human problem. And as permaculture might suggest it is therefore also the solution.

    You are just one perception in time-space. I suggest you just need a new perception.

    Having said that I think there is also such a thing as the 'herd' perception. a sort of herd-awareness. As individuals we are mostly impotent against it, but we can attempt to steer it. Trying to steer it is probably pointless, but is throws our selfness into sharp relief for a time. Having a self-awareness that is at odds with the herd-awareness is suffering. But running with the herd is also suffering.

    Which is why 'the master' does his work and steps away...

    Success is as dangerous as failure.
    Hope is as hollow as fear.

    What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
    Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
    your position is shaky.
    When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
    you will always keep your balance.

    What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
    Hope and fear are both phantoms
    that arise from thinking of the self.
    When we don't see the self as self,
    what do we have to fear?

    See the world as your self.
    Have faith in the way things are.
    Love the world as your self;
    then you can care for all things.
     
  10. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    i totally agree with you here G.
    a new perception - one that i can get very passionate about - and deeply fulfilled.

    that's all well and good, and doubtless the ambitions of most,many,more.
    granted.

    but - lately there have been these depressing milestones (400ppm), climatic records ad nauseum and the bloody arch druid doing his 'abandon environmental hope' article...
    and whereas i'd some time back decided on being an environmentalist - and having done some decades with the cause - having attained some rank - and some definition of self in the process...

    it turns out that 'my side lost'....( one must concede after some 30? 40? years of loosing ground- no?)

    __definitely i need a new perspective -

    *scan*
    the footy?
    religion?
    consumer?
    owner of a 'sophisticated' auto-mobile
    a stylish kind of guy with demonstrably fine tastes - wine, cannabis,
    ------------------
    56 years on the planet - is that why it all seems so passé?
    _________

    does it not strike any one else as odd - that there is not a lot of new stuff.

    really new - not just market inspired increments.

    where? why not? over 7 Billion Humans - presumably there is a demand, presumably there is financial incentive,,,,where is all the good new stuff?

    there's some new stuff going on in complex fields like space and physics, which takes time to sort out given scales of complexity.

    but that is not what i'm referring to - i can not think of a reason why specialists have the monopoly on new ideas - and assume they don't.

    no cartels?, no regulatory impediments? - and still, no ongoing flow of new ideas, new ways, new improvements, positive new stuff just coming in abundance because that is the way of the universe.
    huh?

    so, in the absence of new stuff - it is like watching re runs of 'gilligans island' - it doesn't matter how many times i watch it - i'll never have mary anne.

    ok, i concede - Game of Thrones shines - but i need more.

    any one remember "Dingbats", that was what they were marketed as in western australia.
    a plastic paddle with a small solid rubber ball attached to a long thin lacky band.

    that was new - there is a classic example of what there is none of today.
    simple, new ( 60's,70's?) great fun.

    before anyone thinks 'internet' - i feel that 'it' does not qualify as we lost too much on dozens of fronts to feel we've done better than break even there......

    i hunger for something new - where are the dam space aliens!?
    and a contemporary new world or two....

    in lieu of ample stimuli i shall sheek the sholace of alcohol.
    cheers,

    addendum; someone is going to tell me that being a relic myself is the reason i find nothing new - i've seen my quota, shut up and stop being greedy.
    and my response is 'bullshit'.
    i'd notice the stream of new and relish the qualitative improvements in my life and the lives of the worlds Herds.

    by way of analogy; i don't believe all the good songs have been written - so with this 'anticipation' ( call it Hope ) i get gnarly when the new tunes are just the old tunes played less well.

    i can just see G exclaiming "Perception!".....and he's right. I could get into hiphop and transcend my current impasse....or i could just get that little bit more impatiant with the late aliens.....
    cuttlefish then
     
  11. annette

    annette Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2010
    Messages:
    889
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Maybe we've entered entropy on a universal scale. That would bring up some new experiences.

    Kimbo if anyone can think of something new I'm sure with that brain of yours it would be you.

    I remember click clacks. 2 hard balls on 2 pieces of string hitting each other as you move them up and down. Ruined the wrists but it was fun.
     
  12. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 28, 2008
    Messages:
    2,215
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    36
    I totally get what you are saying Kimbo. But, I can't help you...

    Because either

    a) The Universe is fundamentally flawed
    b) Humans are fundamentally flawed; or
    c) I am fundamentally flawed.

    All of the above are essentially the same thing with slightly different view points.

    Even if the universe is, as I suspect, a thing of our own making the barriers and degree of difficulty in actually manifesting a working, non-suffering universe are too vast and thus, flawed.

    We are on the losing side because the odds are stacked against us no matter how you look at it. We as individuals are mere specks in an ocean which is flowing its own way.

    I have come to the conclusion that the only way to live is to do as you think is right and just ignore that it will have no obvious effect on anything. Climate change and environmental 'destruction' are matters for the whole, not for the individual.

    A single cell cannot fight a body-wide infection, but if that is its role then it goes about fulfilling that role as best it can. What choice does it have?

    If you could happily drive around in a great new car in your designer duds sipping latte's with your mates then the most prudent course of action would be to do so. If not, then all you can really do is keep slugging away and hope that there is an afterlife and it is a good deal simpler and more satisfying than this one.

    The worst thing any of us can do is wallow.
     
  13. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    A & G i appreciate your company on my seasonal 'wallow'

    dam it G, you are soft and cuddly like an electric blanket -
    you know there is 240V of pain in there.

    dam it A,throw me a bone, you've got a degree.

    hahahahahaaahaha

    love ya.

    you know what really pisses me off - the humanity of it all.
    me, weak as piss moaning like a bitch - like Cam
    and you guys, hard arse like Jay
    ( i reference Modern Family )

    it's true - i should have been gay. it is only through some quirk that i am straight without a fallback.
    sometimes i just need to be gay .....

    not in a sexual way,,,in a Mitchell unable to cope with a pigeon gay.
    no doubt the sun shall shine tomorrow on my hangover, yet i will chalk this down to a man doing what a man has to do.

    does anyone not watch Modern Family or The New Normal - to stay current with what the Herd is doing/thinking?

    on the same tangent - in Master Chef Australia - what are the chances that out of a packed dining room (120 people) that Matt Prestons duck dish would be sans duck.
    i can do this math - 1 in 120 - but that did not stop Matt Preston from making the allegation.

    this is what i am reduced to.
    if you want to know about real life - ask me, armed with my new perspective, i am a force.

    ps G call it de ja vu or something....but i have the recollection of being shocked out of lethargic mind syndrome about 1 year ago when you used the word "wallow".

    i advise that i am hardened to such appeals to my self worth.
     
  14. kimbo.parker

    kimbo.parker Junior Member

    Joined:
    Mar 21, 2009
    Messages:
    1,441
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    not good enough G!
    you're a mod, i come seeking,,do some of that expert stuff...and 'Wallow' won't work This Time.

    sometimes all one needs is the trigger to get one on the neural path - wallow was last years solution - and it hurt.
    if you are going to catapult me into worthiness yet again...something new is needed.

    if i could emoticon a small flashing incandescent green light right now - i'd do it.
    to indicate that i am in standby mode and eagerly await my next instruction.

    G - here have the controls - the K unit is yours for a spin.
    where are we going.?
    infact - that deal is open to anyone

    take me for a spin - changing the world one person at a time - here i am.
    occupy my brain.

    if you just captivate me with an idea - i am the sort of person who will grab it and run - shit, if it is good enough, i'll fight for it.

    anyone - ?
    i could give passion a home...

    caves or aliens from space are my preferred 'hit', but i'm not beyond some altruistic stuff if there is just a chance of glory.

    entropy shall not take me without a fight
    who's with me?

    hahahahaaa
     
  15. annette

    annette Junior Member

    Joined:
    Jul 8, 2010
    Messages:
    889
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    16
    Kimbo you need a guru to shoot a kundalini into your ajna. Otherwise get to a near death experience quick smart. That'll distract you for a while. A new perspective with different aspects to explore. It's all very normal.

    Herd mentality is part of the whole. Acknowledge and let it go. Interesting at times, boring mostly but utimately a waste of time. But ever wondered why people that only talk about football and who won on the voice seem happy? Ignorance is bliss so it seems. Others that look behind suffer the pain of questioning.

    A labotomy maybe? One flew over the cuckoos nest is pivitol. Think too much and it will nobble you. Stand back. Know you are not alone in your musings. no answers. Just living and experience.

    All is one. The energy of despair is self perpetuating. Step outside. Your thoughts are just that. Thoughts and nothing else, but energetic parcels of intention. Silence the chattering monkey.
     
  16. Terra

    Terra Moderator

    Joined:
    May 16, 2007
    Messages:
    757
    Likes Received:
    23
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Best best thing for the inside of Man / Woman is the outside of a horse , doesnt matter even if your 60+yrs and drag one leg learn what it takes to fly like the wind , bareback and bridle less . Ive seen it done , you want something new do something thats new for you , get to "Level 4 horseman" your brain wont stop spinnin a journey that will last the rest of your life .
    regards Rob
     
  17. ecodharmamark

    ecodharmamark Junior Member

    Joined:
    Nov 9, 2005
    Messages:
    2,922
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    0
    When I get stuck for 'new' ideas, I re-read from the work of what I consider to be intellectual giants. Usually, and often very quickly, some wise words that my mentor once imparted upon me come flooding back: "There are very few original ideas".
     
  18. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

    Joined:
    Jul 10, 2006
    Messages:
    3,046
    Likes Received:
    200
    Trophy Points:
    63
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    E Washington, USA
    Climate:
    Semi-Arid Shrub Steppe (BsK)
    Funny thing about entropy ... while the universe in it's physical manifestation of Matter is winding down from order to dis-order (complexity to homogenity), Life as we know it here on our mere speck of a planet is winding up from simplicity to complexity. Life seems to be a sort of anti-entropy!
     
  19. aikidesigns

    aikidesigns Junior Member

    Joined:
    Sep 1, 2009
    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    That or martial training (K-unit report to tha dojo!) could just about do it.
    Visualise juggling fire (now that's a trip) rather than self-immolation. Learning a new trick creates new synaptic connections - requisite complexity doesn't have to be a drag...
    Grahame says it best here for my money, regarding flaws. Action without attachment to outcomes, wu wei, is the antidote to "wallow". (I miss my dad for his ability to sting me out of my paralysis with a word like that...)
    Having been critically examining the concept (or should that be conceit?) of happiness lately, I can say that this little metaphysical puzzle is very much at the heart of the issues which Pc purports to address. Yet few people in the movement seem willing to touch it other than herb-addled new age pseudo-mystics, and they tend to do more harm than good...
    Monkey-meat robot Kimbo.parker: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find out what happy is, and be it. If you achieve the objective, you may level up to bodhisattva and bring that wisdom back to this forum, where we can subject it to the usual battery of tests, suspicion, cross-examination and attempts to compost it.
    I tend to observe more than interact here, but would be keen to have a discussion about depression, activist burnout, and HAPPINESS (this is after all the central preoccupation of economics and almost all other major world religions) in this or another thread. Anyone else? Bueller?
    Now to bed, to avoid further sleep-deprivation-related, happiness-diminishing emotional effects on my capacity to act without attachment...
     
  20. Unmutual

    Unmutual Junior Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2012
    Messages:
    599
    Likes Received:
    3
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Got to love Kimbo, another thought-provoking thread. I'm with ecodharmamark's mentor, "There are very few original ideas". Between patents, copyright laws and the fickle consumerist, new ideas are few and far between. What was once used to preserve intellectual property just stifles it. Most new stories are just rehashes of old stories, some of them even telling you what it's based on("Oh Brother, Where Art Though" was based on Homer's "Odyssey", for example). Even the open source crowd are just making knock-offs of commercial stuff mostly. All we do is reinvent the wheel on a daily basis.

    Even gardens will come to a point where they are stable and don't want to change much, though they are in constant flux...we just don't get to see the action all the time.

    (I know where you got that from :p)

    One thing I've been leaning more towards, at the ripe old age of 41, is to pass on what I've learned to the younger generations. It might be something different for you to do, and it will allow people to see your property through new eyes...you could learn something from them too. This would also be turning a sink in to a loop, ie: your knowledge.
     

Share This Page

-->