Excellent article, Erik, so many correct points and links to further explore. Your reader Jayasree Srivastava recommended I read this. I, too, started a similar Substack about four years ago to better understand our predicament, and share what I learned. Certainly it's disquieting, but does offer a realism that can guide better decision-making about what's real and important in our lives. Like you, I see the root of our ills as a behavioral problem. Too few have awakened, and even if everyone did, we are well past the opportunity of problem-solving.
Erik, I truly appreciate your enormous and persistent efforts at explaining the various nuances and implications of ecological overshoot and the predicament arising from it. I have been reading your blog via Facebook and your website for a few years now and it has been such a huge learning for me. Knowing that you (and a few others) are steadily working at pointing out the futility of hopium & the attendant “solutions” somehow makes me feel less alone as I go backwards & forwards through the stages of grief. I am discovering that total radical acceptance is somewhat elusive and requires regular practice of inner work.
I've always been comfortable with whatever aspects of reality I could learn. I'm so fortunate. I will stop trying to show people how wonderful reality/Great Nature is and focus on enjoying my time and telling stories that people might find entertaining. Most folks are happy with the stories they believe in. I'm delighted if they are happy. In the face of the grand predicament, what good would it do to shatter their illusions? I wish we could be kinder during the end times. I am sorry I can't do anything to help people terrorized by war. Our leaders are dark tetrad vandals. The problem of evil is what gets me the most. My heart goes out to those less fortunate.
This is so good. I had you flagged from something else that impressed me when Geoffrey Deihl forwarded this.
So, Now What? One category is uplifting humanity, getting us to feel good about being human. Although we still wouldn't know what to do, all hands on deck would give us our best chance.
I've suggested to Geoffrey a Zoom for a few good minds to talk about getting the public wised up and to try to come up with an ask for humanity. What to get everyone to do? People are looking for leadership and maybe we can get some organizing going!
Aaahhh, if it were only that simple. I used to think that way back in my idealistic days too. Optimism bias can be a cruel master, unfortunately. Of course, that is precisely why I write these articles - to point out who and what we are as a species. Optimism bias is yet another one of those psychological mechanisms we often employ, thinking that we can do things which in reality we can't, which I went over in my paragraph underneath the list of articles above.
My experience has been enlightening on getting people to reduce technology use in an effort to reduce overshoot - folks aren't interested in it because they don't WANT to do that. My original ideas revolved around the thought that if people are just given the facts that they will make the correct choice, right? I discovered that a few people will, but that most won't. As a result, leadership, politics, and organizing all fall into the same category of ideas that don't work to resolve anything because what we have here is a predicament, not a problem. Mitigation is the best that could ever be achieved and very few are actually interested in accomplishing it.
The best known scenarios to highlight this phenomenon are the shopping cart theory and the tragedy of the commons (made famous by ecologist Garrett Hardin).
Nothing I’m suggesting is simple. Before you rebut me, best you get familiar with what I’m talking about. With people doing what they want to
do, the point is to change that. Optimism has nothing to do with it, just energy toward what we could do is potentially life-giving, and an ain’t-it-awful agreement will get us dead.
Sue, we're going extinct. Maybe you missed that part? In other words, we are going to be dead REGARDLESS of what we do. Previously and individually, this has always been the case. It is just that now our entire species will also go this route because the rate of evolution cannot match the rate of change.
The whole point of this article is to explain the difference between problems and predicaments and that predicaments don't have solutions, they have outcomes. There is no "potentially life-giving" answers here because predicaments DON'T HAVE ANSWERS. The outcome here is extinction, which is what happens in mass extinctions. One can choose to do whatever he or she wants and the outcome won't change one bit, which is precisely the reason for my advice to Live Now.
It appears that you have missed a considerable amount of content with the article above, so perhaps this article will spell things out more clearly:
Excellent article, Erik, so many correct points and links to further explore. Your reader Jayasree Srivastava recommended I read this. I, too, started a similar Substack about four years ago to better understand our predicament, and share what I learned. Certainly it's disquieting, but does offer a realism that can guide better decision-making about what's real and important in our lives. Like you, I see the root of our ills as a behavioral problem. Too few have awakened, and even if everyone did, we are well past the opportunity of problem-solving.
Erik, I truly appreciate your enormous and persistent efforts at explaining the various nuances and implications of ecological overshoot and the predicament arising from it. I have been reading your blog via Facebook and your website for a few years now and it has been such a huge learning for me. Knowing that you (and a few others) are steadily working at pointing out the futility of hopium & the attendant “solutions” somehow makes me feel less alone as I go backwards & forwards through the stages of grief. I am discovering that total radical acceptance is somewhat elusive and requires regular practice of inner work.
Thank you for sharing all your work & wisdom.
I've always been comfortable with whatever aspects of reality I could learn. I'm so fortunate. I will stop trying to show people how wonderful reality/Great Nature is and focus on enjoying my time and telling stories that people might find entertaining. Most folks are happy with the stories they believe in. I'm delighted if they are happy. In the face of the grand predicament, what good would it do to shatter their illusions? I wish we could be kinder during the end times. I am sorry I can't do anything to help people terrorized by war. Our leaders are dark tetrad vandals. The problem of evil is what gets me the most. My heart goes out to those less fortunate.
This is so good. I had you flagged from something else that impressed me when Geoffrey Deihl forwarded this.
So, Now What? One category is uplifting humanity, getting us to feel good about being human. Although we still wouldn't know what to do, all hands on deck would give us our best chance.
I've suggested to Geoffrey a Zoom for a few good minds to talk about getting the public wised up and to try to come up with an ask for humanity. What to get everyone to do? People are looking for leadership and maybe we can get some organizing going!
Aaahhh, if it were only that simple. I used to think that way back in my idealistic days too. Optimism bias can be a cruel master, unfortunately. Of course, that is precisely why I write these articles - to point out who and what we are as a species. Optimism bias is yet another one of those psychological mechanisms we often employ, thinking that we can do things which in reality we can't, which I went over in my paragraph underneath the list of articles above.
My experience has been enlightening on getting people to reduce technology use in an effort to reduce overshoot - folks aren't interested in it because they don't WANT to do that. My original ideas revolved around the thought that if people are just given the facts that they will make the correct choice, right? I discovered that a few people will, but that most won't. As a result, leadership, politics, and organizing all fall into the same category of ideas that don't work to resolve anything because what we have here is a predicament, not a problem. Mitigation is the best that could ever be achieved and very few are actually interested in accomplishing it.
The best known scenarios to highlight this phenomenon are the shopping cart theory and the tragedy of the commons (made famous by ecologist Garrett Hardin).
Nothing I’m suggesting is simple. Before you rebut me, best you get familiar with what I’m talking about. With people doing what they want to
do, the point is to change that. Optimism has nothing to do with it, just energy toward what we could do is potentially life-giving, and an ain’t-it-awful agreement will get us dead.
Sue, we're going extinct. Maybe you missed that part? In other words, we are going to be dead REGARDLESS of what we do. Previously and individually, this has always been the case. It is just that now our entire species will also go this route because the rate of evolution cannot match the rate of change.
The whole point of this article is to explain the difference between problems and predicaments and that predicaments don't have solutions, they have outcomes. There is no "potentially life-giving" answers here because predicaments DON'T HAVE ANSWERS. The outcome here is extinction, which is what happens in mass extinctions. One can choose to do whatever he or she wants and the outcome won't change one bit, which is precisely the reason for my advice to Live Now.
It appears that you have missed a considerable amount of content with the article above, so perhaps this article will spell things out more clearly:
https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/2025/03/denial-of-reality-part-two.html