Quote from: Vegematic Deluxe on Apr 29, 2024, 09:34 PMAlthough I agree that continued growth is completely unsustainable, I question the assumption that there are only about 10,000 people who realize this. Most confirmed doomers eventually get exhausted proclaiming a truth that nobody wants to hear.  I believe that even with the massive suppression of truth, there are no doubt huge numbers of people who refuse to don the rose colored glasses and understand the unprecedented disaster our species is facing.

Depends on what you mean by "realize"?  If all you mean is that a person can see the society they live in is failing and that we're heading for a reckoning, the number is far larger than 10K, and getting bigger all the time.  I can see the change in the people I talk to IRL, I can see it in pop culture and in fiction.  I definitely see it in the participation in groups like Extinction Rebellion and even Right wing Natalists.

If however you mean people who really understand Collapse, what underlies it inside our current culture and the mechanics of how all the different manifestations fit together the number is far smaller.  Even some of the very best academics and historians like Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter who have written detailed books analyzing collapse of prior cultures and the scientists of the club of Rome who authored the Limits to Growth Study and Richard Duncan who proposed the Olduvai Theory or Rachel Carson who wrote Silent Spring have a relatively narrow focus and only see collapse through the narrow lens of their specialty area. For a complete understanding of the economic, social, political and scientific reasons we are utterly and completely fucked, you are talking a number far smaller than 10K, you can probably count the number of people on your fingers and toes.

You don't necessarily need to know the entire history of the Middle East going back to Biblical times and the modern history of Colonialism and resource wars that have led up to the current conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza to protest against it though, nor should you need to have a complete understanding of the real estate market to protest against homelessness or detailed knowledge of geochemistry to understand how dependence of fossil fuels has created an unsustainable consumption level of energy and protest against that.  The more things you understand though and the more relationships you can draw in, the better the chance you can bring together the critical mass of people necessary to effect change.

Unfortunately, even with the understanding, trying to get the word out when the most powerful forces in society want it surpressed is a mighty difficult thing to do, so developing any kind of organized resistance to the self destructive trajectory of our civilization is close to impossible.  All we have is a bunch of fractured pockets of opposition to some ofthe more obvious and egregious problems.  At this point, it doesn't seem very likely that any sort of effective, organized resistance and change of BAU will occur before we inevitably run into a cascade failure of many systems failing at the same time.

The best we can do is to keep tabs on it and understand it as best we can, then explain it to whoever will listen.  Perhaps it will help them negotiate their own future as events progress.

Save as Many as you Can.

RE