Thoughts from last night:

Think about the consequences of the end of cheap, abundant energy, and the inevitability of natural disasters that will cause immense suffering for humans. The party truly is ending, and as the booze runs out, we realize that there are too many people at the party. Some will have to leave (die), and most will have to sober up - fast. It will be a reckoning - a reconciliation of the balance sheet.

This all makes sense on many levels (which aren't really levels). Religiously obviously (at least in the book of Christianity).

Spiritually/meta physically/logically because it (and other cultural/societal/social "ills") is a step in the evolution of humans. Like the child who turns on the stove, touches the burner, and gets burned, we too must go through our growing pains. We must learn to crawl before we walk and run. In geological (read: real) time, humans are a blip. We just got here. We are infantile, and we are acting like it. Sure there have been humans who have acted maturely (recognized the fundamental unity of all things in existence) in some ways with regard to how they treat their environment and each other (natives possibly), but even these groups - likely all groups - display primitive values and behaviours in many instances. The same can be said for most people alive now.

So we must not be surprised or maudlin about our fate or the fates of others. We are simply growing up, and it takes time. For the good of the species (and the rest of life), this "house cleaning" must happen. I may die, as may you. But in the end, we as a group, of individuals inherently equal yet aesthetically diverse, will be better for it. Do not lament our struggles, do your part - for you and your genes are more malleable than you know - to join the wave of progress, progress in the grandest, most unselfish sense: the true progress of life.

One might question this argument thus: Why are we special, compared to the Mayans or another like group? I think we can assume that human knowledge has historically been cumulative. In other words, we know more now than they knew then. While this may not be true for all individuals, as a group it holds. We do learn from our ancestors mistakes, however slow the process may seem to our poorly calibrated sense of time.

Today:

I watched most of "Crude Impact" today. A strikingly ironic thought occurred to me during the movie:

The industrial world has developed and its people have become fabulously rich (relatively speaking to the rest of the world) thanks to cheap access to thus far plentiful resources, at the expense of the envioronment and quality of life for people in undeveloped countries. The energy has fueled a population boom. Carrying capacity of the earth is being approached. Natural disasters, more starvation, disease, wars for resources, and so on, are going to cut down the population. Eventually (barring nuclear world holocaust), the earth will get a population close to equilibrium.

My ironic thought is this - the people who have benefited and who have caused this situation, have in the process turned themselves into people who should not be saved. And the people who have missed out on the energy bonanza - the poor - are probably for the most part salt of the earth type people who would give you their fattest calf. I'm thinking about the people in Korphe, Pakistan who Greg Mortensen helped. On the other hand, for the people who don't deserve to be saved, I'm thinking of rich, egotistical elite types who bitch their disgust about being in the highest tax bracket, causing them to lose all their "hard" earned money. Hard earned? Wineing and dining, expense accounting, burning up the atmosphere, and for what? Because they love the thrill of moving large sums of money around, shoving coke up their nose to stay awake because they work such long hours. So yeah I guess you are working hard, because the guys in the level above you did the same thing and you have to do the bitch work for them, pay your dues, and then you're in the club and you too can enjoy the privileges of the "next level", whatever it is. I don't care.

So not only will the poor people suffer the most due to climate change, resource wars, etc., but they are the kinds of people who we want to exist when the world regains stability. The ability of the rich assholes that exist now to survive, will just contaminate the future world with an even more concentrated quotient. Fuckin A!