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Entry#85 on holding strong views about our collective future and how not to get dinner party invitations
#85
This week a good friend and I were discussing death and my peculiar ok-ness with it - both my own and others. She joked that I would not be a popular guest at dinner parties, which I feel is true and I took in exactly the right way.
It’s as good a theme as any for Friday Flow, so I thought I’d reveal some of my more strongly held views that make me unpopular for table conversations with most people (but of course, popular to other types of thinkers).
Let’s start with Earth’s future. Now, I should clarify that I would have once called this my environmental stance, but that no longer really captures it all. These days I listen to, read and deeply ponder a lot of material about energy systems, biodiversity, social capital, monetary systems and the myriad of frankly stupid ideas people are pursuing with the false hope that climate change can be averted.
Spoiler opinion, it’s too late.
I really enjoy a podcast called The Great Simplification and on recent drives back and forth to Cambridge I listened to a good debate about electric vehicles.
Here’s the EV episode for those who have the inclination to follow a delightfully thick Spanish accent and four very science-y men’s voices for 100 minutes.
In this episode there’s a brief moment where the guests touch on their personal view of what will come next for humans. They do not all agree. Here are the options they see, laid out in pretty binary terms (there are shades of grey in here, but I will not colour them in today).
Future one: every single system will collapse because we are going to stick our fingers in our ears, sing la-la-la-la and keep consuming and walking off the cliff we’ve known about for a long time, pushing the poor ahead of us.
Future two: we will face facts in our lifetime, see global political will align with policy and reshape how we live on this planet into an adapted, simplified form so we survive a bit longer and things are fairer for all.
My money is on collapse and hopefully not too much apocalypse with it.
I enjoy Jem Bendell’s writing and thinking on this flavour of future. For those thinking it’s all a bit depressing, his latest book is titled Breaking Together and it’s rather hopeful and on my reading list for that reason.
Back to collapse. Yes, I really do think that things will unravel in my lifetime with an unknown range of impacts on life as I know it. Yes, I am factoring this into how I live and how I prepare for later life. Yes, I hold little to no hope for those in power to arrest the current industrial trajectory and turn the ship to a simpler horizon. Yes, I will eat my hat before I am ever seen buying an electric vehicle.
Still, collapse might not be all bad. It could be fun to develop my apocalpytic style. Maybe a nod to Tina Turner’s matriarch from Mad Max? Definitely not feeling the Handmaiden vibe…
Mostly, I just live my life, so I don’t want anyone to worry about this entry or feel I am being a massive Doomer. I just enjoy a very researched and realistic position on this topic. Hence why, as you can so easily see, I would not be popular at many dinner parties!
That is all for today. As always, I look forward to hearing what you heard, saw and felt when reading this.
With love,
Michelle xx
Ps. Rucks are underway, but there is still time to join me for a weighted walk and try out rucking… Humanitix button below for event details.