The Dilemma and Conundrum of Predicaments
November 27, 2024
"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control...Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust; we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper." ~ Albert Einstein
Every once in a while I turn to more personal matters in regards to the predicaments we all face. Sharing these stories tends to point out certain realities better than simply linking articles which may or may not actually get read. Sure, I'm not a scientist or have a PhD attached to my name, but I have been studying overshoot and its symptom predicaments for quite some time and have developed a bit of wisdom to share right along with it. I sure don't know it all, but there are some very important concepts that I have mastered.
The main purpose of this blog has been and continues to be to try to shed light on the difference between a problem and a predicament and precisely what technology use has to do with all of this, especially surrounding the predicament of ecological overshoot. Most people are familiar with the reductionist trope of "solving climate change by reducing emissions" but are never told that the only way to reduce emissions is by reducing overshoot. They are also never told that reducing emissions will not "solve" climate change. That's correct - climate change cannot be solved. That's because it is a predicament, like overshoot, and the absolute best that can be achieved is reducing it - solving it and returning to the climate of the Holocene epoch that we've enjoyed for the last 12,000 years or so is not a possibility. Period. For those who doubt these facts, please read Denial of Reality.
Longtime readers already know all of this, but this blog is steadily receiving more and more attention regularly, so occasionally I have to help newer readers "get up to speed," so to speak. A recent article from Dave Pollard points out the difference between problems and predicaments with the stark reality of homelessness. This is an excellent summation of the difference, quote:
"Almost everything that happens in human, social, and biological/ecological systems, however, is complex, not merely complicated. There are an infinite number of variables. The complete situation can never be completely “known”. There are many “feedback loops”, some knowable, some not, that will affect any attempt to intervene in that system. The system is therefore largely unpredictable.
In many cases, the system is so complex that when something undesirable occurs, it is not a “problem” with a “solution”; it is a predicament. Predicaments have outcomes, not solutions. Sometimes, to a greater or lesser extent, you can intervene to influence those outcomes, but you cannot know whether, or to what degree, your intervention will improve or perhaps worsen the situation. In some cases, no workable intervention is available; in those cases, your only alternative is to adapt to the predicament. If you can’t change the situation, you have to change yourself to accommodate it.
The current, rapidly-advancing collapse of our economic, ecological and political systems — sometimes called the ‘metacrisis’ or ‘polycrisis’, is a predicament. Climate collapse is a piece of that predicament. The collapse of the current economic and political ‘world order’, occurring in an environment of unsustainable economic activity, unsustainable levels of debt, unsustainable levels of inequality, and unsustainable levels of political coercion, aggression and violence, is another piece of that predicament.
Humans intuitively dislike complexity — they want things to be simple and controllable. And they hate predicaments. This is especially true for conservatives, since predicaments upset their simplistic good/bad right/wrong worldview, and it’s true for politicians of every stripe, since predicaments are no-win situations for people whose livelihoods depend on convincing supporters that they have all the answers, when predicaments have no solutions."
I truly appreciate people who understand this difference since so much of society today seems to only comprehend problems and solutions and sees everything from inside that box and cannot appear to be able to figure out what to do about anything that is outside that box (The "Solution" Obsession points this out). Another excellent author, Tim Morgan, has one of his articles featured in Dave's article. More on collapse will appear below.
One more item of note to help newer readers: ecological overshoot is the root predicament behind all the symptom predicaments such as climate change, pollution loading, energy and resource decline, biodiversity decline, extinction, etc. NONE of those symptom predicaments can be reduced absent a concomitant reduction of overshoot first and foremost, and emissions is one of those symptom predicaments. So the idea of reducing emissions without reducing overshoot is an illusion that in reality will not happen. The human behavior of technology use is what is causing overshoot, so technology use must be reduced. This will happen whether we voluntarily reduce technology use or not, because we are in civilizational collapse caused by overshoot. ALL species which enter overshoot face the same fate - collapse and die-off. We're no exception. We like to think we're immune to these rules, but the reality is that we are not.
As humans, we often think of ourselves as separate from the natural world. Technology use has this effect upon us, where we think that our ingenuity, our innovative spirit, and the technology that we've built makes us responsible for the rest of the world and also to have dominion over it (much of the dominion part comes from the religious stories we tell ourselves). In reality, however, we are a part of nature and not separate from it. Being responsible for our effects on the rest of the world is one thing (this part is true). But we do not have agency over the rest of the world - yes, we can kill other species and even bring them to extinction. But we lack any ability in reality to bring those species back or change a specie's evolution. Our abilities are also limited to what our technologies and the fossil hydrocarbon energy that powers said technologies can do.
As pointed out above, fossil hydrocarbon energy will most likely be limited to the first half of this century, bringing most advanced technologies to a standstill by the latter part of this century. Steve Bull explains how things which seem or appear possible today (even if they aren't) will disappear by mid-century. Many people think that technology can solve things which in reality it does not have the ability to do and this is due to the cultural stories we tell about ourselves. Recently, John Peach and I explained why the stories about the "green" "renewable" "clean" and "sustainable" products of the Green New Deal are a failure - because they cannot do what they are being marketed for.
I pointed out a couple weeks ago several more personal stories in my article about capitalism and extinction. The central focus is generally pretty much the same - about how living now is so important due to the fact that the living world surrounding us is changing and disappearing right before our eyes. Last month, for instance, many small towns and even some larger cities in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee were wiped off the map by debris flows and flooding caused by Hurricane Helene. I've spent a great deal of time in these places over the years and I have even detailed some places which have suffered extensive losses (such as Gatlinburg, Tennessee, due to a wildfire as seen here, and here, and here, and here). If you scroll through the posts on Treasured Traditions, you might recognize many of the town names which now sit in ruins and also many locations, which albeit still exist, cannot currently be reached due to rock-, mud-, or land-slides, road washouts, or bridge washouts.
As I frequently repeat, predicaments have outcomes, not solutions, and this is often difficult for people to accept. I have compiled a list of articles about acceptance here, although there are other articles I've written containing material about acceptance not listed. One area in particular which frequently gets overlooked is the regenerative agriculture and permaculture movement. Their goals are noble, no differently than the Transition Town, Degrowth, and other sustainability movements. Many people see these ideas as "solutions" not much differently than folks in the conservation movements look at their ideas of "saving nature" as a solution.
Of course, these ideas aren't really solutions any more than any of the other more ridiculous ideas are. As long as the goal of any particular idea is to continue civilization or doesn't include tackling the goal of abandoning it, it can pretty much be thrown out the window since civilization itself is unsustainable. Anything less than that is nothing more than incrementalism which won't even get a foothold on civilizational inertia. Here's an article about what it would take for humanity to experience radical transformation.
A small part of the regenerative agriculture movement's predicament is highlighted here by Sharon Astyk. She pays a lot of attention to the H5N1 HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) virus that is likely to be our next pandemic. She has seen the same trends regarding disease that I've seen. She appears to take a more upbeat stance than I do. I wrote another article a while back about ignorance, hubris, and stupidity that highlights why I simply cannot uphold an upbeat stance about where we're headed. As the experience with the COVID-19 pandemic taught us, very few people did any actual research on anything, preferring instead to pass along disinformation, misinformation, and/or complete garbage (false information). A new pandemic that has a far more aggressive death rate like H5N1 will simply wipe out far more of the global population much more quickly and send us into a deeper civilizational collapse than the COVID-19 one did.
By the way, I'm writing this on November 1 and this press release from the USDA was published yesterday. I've brought up HPAI before, but the warning signals keep getting louder and more clear. There are folks who are paying attention, but not the general public. Anything that doesn't make money or might interfere with making money is just too inconvenient to get past the MSM's gatekeepers. We saw this during the first three months of 2020 and I expect nothing less than the same spectacular failures we saw then. Only when hospitals are over-run with sick patients and refrigerated trucks line the streets outside for makeshift morgues and tents start getting set up outside those hospitals will the public realize that we're in trouble.
The real trouble isn't just the predicaments we face, but also the fact that denial of reality pushes most if not all of it aside for most people. There are those of us who understand the science, comprehend what it means and how it will affect society, and also realize that most of society will ignore all (or most) of it until it can't be ignored. We also realize that by then it will be too late to be able to do much about it. It is very similar to folks who have decided time and again to ignore evacuation orders for hurricanes or flooding only to discover that when they needed rescuing, no rescuers were available due to the very conditions they were warned about.
There are some people who simply cannot evacuate, in which case they should move away from hazardous areas knowing that they risk death living in places like Florida and other natural hazard areas. Sometimes, areas previously considered safe were discovered after the fact to be hazard-prone but only once every hundred years or thousand years or whatever geologic interval deemed after a particular disaster.
This was the case in North Carolina and a series of videos from Mark Huneycutt shows the devastation on the ground and from above (see here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here). If you only have time for one or two, watch the last two first. In a set of analytical videos, geologist Philip Prince shows us precisely how and why Hurricane Helene did so much damage
using landscape models, Google satellite imaging, Paint sketch models, and regular pictures to highlight specifically what happened and why (see here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here).
Speaking of Helene, George Tsakraklides points out in this article that people have forgotten (or more likely simply deny) climate change and overshoot as the predicaments causing the current woes worldwide, quote:
"Years ago, when I warned that one day the climate crisis will be forgotten, many didn’t believe me. Trawling through social media posts in the aftermath of Helene, I came across the pain, the suffering, anger and desperation described in the personal accounts of witnesses who lost everything: their house, their loved ones, sometimes an entire community that simply disappeared forever in the floods. Some people have literally nothing left other than a post code. There is no land to get back to, and no road to get there. Everything they knew has disappeared.
In the comments section, I searched and searched desperately over and over for two phrases: climate crisis, or climate change. Nothing. Nada, even in threads which had dozens of comments and conversations. There was a lot of commentary about “oh my god this is terrible what are we going to do”, what the government should do, what it didn’t do, what local authorities and FEMA should be doing, and what planning needs to take place for the next chapter of “rebuilding”.
Ahem, yes, some people think that rebuilding will take place by a civilisation which is now getting so frequently pummeled by multiple disasters of the type of magnitude that none of our cities, governments and institutions were meant to deal with. What very few have woken up to is that once infrastructure damage becomes this frequent, systemic, widespread and apocalyptic, there is no recovery. Like a car, civilisation has been “totaled”. As multiple disaster zones fight over government assistance, the public gets angry. They can vote for a fascist government, but they still won’t escape hunger, destitution and possibly being forced to migrate. Where to? Hard to say given that this is a global crisis. The old trick of getting up and leaving to colonize another continent, grab some slaves and make money is not in the cards. Mars is a fantastic option, but it would be a shame to devastate yet another planet, even one that is almost as toxic to biological life as human civilisation itself. Trust me if you think Mars is a dump, humans can f**k it up even more. It’s what we excel in."
For what it's worth, I don't take such a dark outlook on humans to heart. It's not like people are doing all of this on purpose, with intent. They don't know they are doing this. Even those who do know they are doing this are stymied by the conundrum of what to do about it. How much consideration has the average person given to abandoning civilization? Even those of us who have given considerable thought to it still generally realize that only a very few individuals even consider such an idea a possibility. Even if the general public was educated through massive public relations and advertising through public service announcements, how many people would voluntarily decide to follow through with such an idea? Considering how long it takes the average person to absorb the essence of what overshoot is comprehensively, this campaign would have to continue for about a decade at least to get everyone on board. How would conspiracy theorists be dealt with? Hmmm, I already have a list of questions here that leads me to think that there would be significant issues preventing such a program from attaining the desired result. I'm thinking back to the "war on terrorism," the "war on drugs," and similar-themed social and cultural movements which have largely failed. Something like this which most of society would be against in the first place would most likely end up in the same boat, I'm afraid.
Part of the reason the war on drugs failed is because of the potential profits for the drug trade (both legal and illegal), the process of addiction, and the wide availability throughout the history of this so-called "war." The difficulty in exterminating drug use, addiction, and sales shows just how this same difficulty in exterminating civilization would be, given that civilization extends back to the basic way we feed ourselves and has been around for the last 10,000 years at least. I just don't think this is a realistic goal. Because nobody is "in control" of civilization, the most likely way it will end is on its own, enforced by nature. Picture the scenario in western North Carolina without electricity, wide availability of fossil fuels surrounding the region, an intact and functional central government, with both state and federal agencies able to help. Without the necessary basic platforms to support the higher platforms of products and services, collapse would (and will) be guaranteed.
One person who commented recently on a thread on one of my articles said that we won't collapse (as if not collapsing is even a possibility) because of our ingenuity and adaptive capabilities. I had to laugh because adapting to a lack of habitat isn't one of our capabilities, no differently than any other species. No amount of ingenuity can solve a lack of habitat because it isn't a problem to be solved, it is a predicament with an outcome. Once again, we're back to ignorance, hubris, and stupidity. Ugh. There are many things outside of our control, which means that we lack agency to control those things. Of course, people ignorant of ecological overshoot won't understand any of this until they understand overshoot first. These aren't ideas that can be grasped easily in one day, one week, or even one month. Time is necessary for the information to soak in and eliminate common cultural myths, narratives, and beliefs. That fact along with a general lack of interest by society is primarily what condemns us to the outcome of these predicaments.
Basically, as a species, the need to understand all of this was several hundred years in the past, at least. One would think we would have learned from our mistakes in the Fertile Crescent, turning it from a breadbasket into a desert of salinization. We do eventually learn from some mistakes, but often only after suffering from a huge loss first as a result of prior mistakes. The megafauna extinctions are just one of these lessons, but we can clearly see now that a large segment of society didn't really learn much from them. Having respect for the land and nature surrounding us is necessary, but it's still not enough. Understanding limitations is also required.
The whole point of this article is to demonstrate that solutions are reserved for problems and that predicaments have outcomes. Most people understand what a predicament or conundrum or dilemma is when applied to other circumstances, but for some reason don't think it should be applied to overshoot and its symptom predicaments. This article is to provide proof that overshoot and its symptom predicaments cannot be "solved" and that this is due to a lack of agency caused by our behavioral patterns which are molded by genetics, the larger field of biology, cultural programming, indoctrination of belief systems, propaganda, and marketing and advertising, to name just a few. Once again, I'm repeating what appears to be a popular theme on this blog; yet at the same time, it is also something which seems desperately needed in order to talk folks down off the ledges they are perched upon, looking for the way out of this mess which does not exist.
Despite how all of this appears to sound very negative, once one reaches acceptance of this reality, things begin to brighten dramatically. I have a whole file dedicated to resources (below) designed to help. I'm not going to tell you that you will be dancing in the streets, jumping for joy, and instantly happy from that point forward. What I am saying is that my experience was typical from all my reading and that I spent quite a bit of time going back and forth from acceptance into prior phases of grief, mainly bargaining. Once you reach acceptance and can catch yourself when you notice yourself falling backwards (meaning you can stay in acceptance), you can return to what one might call "normal" (if anything like that still exists today). If you think something should be added in this list below, please make a comment below.
RESOURCES HERE:
For the latest set of pictures, here is Cove Lake State Park. Here's to a Happy Thanksgiving for everyone who celebrates it!
Predicaments with positive outcomes are called opportunities. Thus, life is opportunistic.