The "I'm not doing so well" thread

[greencat]

'Success' is invariably followed by failure, and long success often by rapid failure.
At the risk of repeating an often used analogy: The yeast was a remarkably successful species- until the loaf went in the oven. Even then most of the yeast were still convinced that things had never been better..

IMO, successful doesn't necessarily imply success every time - only more often than not. Failures can create learnings which lead to future success (cf Edison's experiments in the electric light bulb).

As far as we know yeast doesn't have the same level of self awareness or consciousness as humans. And if it did, we don't know that it isn't screaming "I'm dying here, but blimey that was a great party. #worthit". Everything dies in the end. Having had a few close calls myself - I can report that for all of the pain and suffering involved in the process, it's manageable - even OK and quite interesting.

Even so, yeast is still thriving and successful as a species - even if individual populations are regularly wiped out to make our daily bread.

We also know that humans have made choices in the past which have avoided extinction or extreme population loss and are probably getting better at doing so. That said, there are definitely still dangers - particularly over the next century or so.

To address your other point, I've found the best way of dealing with climate anxiety is to take individual action at the domestic, community as well as lobby for national/international action. Decide what you are willing to do, do it - and then stop watching so much of the news works for me. Sure it might be a lost cause, but it might be better than wondering whether or not to stamp on a doorstep slug to protect its progeny from getting poisoned (who are we to decide on their behalf anyhow?)

 

[KermitGKona88]

Well what started out as a nice tribute thread to a fellow RB'er who sadly took his own life, has well and truly been hijacked, so it's so long and thanks for all the fish from me...

 

[CassidyAce]

I hate this planet at present......I want to get off

Yeah.. you know I can't help thinking it's a zero sum game, whack-a-mole, robbing Peter to pay Paul. If this biosphere has any purpose, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that it's basically to produce suffering.

There are 9 billion plus known sites of suffering on this planet- and that's just the human suffering. You make an intervention here, and the suffering intensifies somewhere else. And of course many of our interventions aren't even effective at relieving the suffering they are aimed at, often intensifying that. The whole situation makes a mockery of human pretensions of agency, ethics, or right action.

What about the slug on my doorstep? I noticed it and spared it from ending up crushed to death under my shoe. What a compassionate person I am! Or is it more compassionate to just crush it, perhaps without even realising it's happened, and spare it or its progeny from falling victim to my neighbour's slug pellets tomorrow? If there is such a thing as joy or contentment for slugs, what is say 24 hours of it worth, on the planetary balance sheet? Should I be more concerned with the slug, literally on my doorstep, as opposed to say the homeless guy a mile down the road? Aware that any intervention in either case is just as likely to intensify suffering as to relieve it?

And if you say: "Forget about the slugs, concentrate on improving human situations," Isn't that precisely the
strategy that has led us to environmental degradation and climate armageddon? But who cares, because the world is just a factory for suffering anyway, and who wants to sustain that?

You want to restore the Mediterranean to ecological health so that you can continue to boil lobsters alive in perpetuity, and generations of lobsters can obligingly breed in optimal conditions to satisfy your appetites? Isn't that the all too apparent subtext behind all this 'save the planet' stuff, whether it be demos, documentaries or direct action?

I'm not expecting answers to these questions- the tip of an iceberg of questions.

I have seen someone leave the planet this week—a much-loved someone—and, as well as the grief, it has reaffirmed my belief that all life is precious. Your post reads like a cry of despair about life and, while others might have said that they feel depressed, I think that yours is the clearest example of depressive thinking on this thread. But it is not clear thinking; it is depressive thinking. I’m going to try to explain why you should not be thinking along the lines you are but, really, if you need help, please do go and get it.

Yeah.. you know I can't help thinking it's a zero sum game, whack-a-mole, robbing Peter to pay Paul. If this biosphere has any purpose, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that it's basically to produce suffering.

This paragraph begins with the speculation that life on Earth is a zero sum game, that is, without any net gain in satisfaction, and concludes with the assertion that it’s a negative sum game: that the purpose of the biosphere is to produce suffering—net loss. That does not follow. It’s not clear thinking; it really is depressive thinking: leaping to an unjustified and unnecessarily bleak conclusion.

There are 9 billion plus known sites of suffering on this planet- and that's just the human suffering. You make an intervention here, and the suffering intensifies somewhere else. And of course many of our interventions aren't even effective at relieving the suffering they are aimed at, often intensifying that. The whole situation makes a mockery of human pretensions of agency, ethics, or right action.

If you make an intervention here, it does not follow that suffering intensifies elsewhere. It might do, by coincidence, but, even if that is the case, the suffering ‘here’ could have been worse if you hadn’t intervened. So, the intervention could still have reduced the aggregate suffering that would have existed had you not intervened. If a helpful intervention ‘here’ causes intensified suffering elsewhere, then we need to learn from that in order to make more enlightened interventions rather than throw up our hands in despair and assume we can do no good. The same applies if our interventions actually worsen the situation ‘here’. If our actions have unintended consequences, it does not follow that our motives are wrong or that we should give up; it implies that we are not knowledgeable enough about likely consequences and that we should learn from our mistakes so that we have more successful results in future. Correspondingly, the situation does not make ‘a mockery of human pretensions of agency’; indeed, your own points rely on a conception of human agency—to make mistakes logically entails agency—but a tragic conception of agency in which good intentions create the reverse of what’s intended. Again, that’s depressive thinking, not clear thinking.

. . . ethics, or right action.

What about the slug on my doorstep? I noticed it and spared it from ending up crushed to death under my shoe. What a compassionate person I am! Or is it more compassionate to just crush it, perhaps without even realising it's happened, and spare it or its progeny from falling victim to my neighbour's slug pellets tomorrow? If there is such a thing as joy or contentment for slugs, what is say 24 hours of it worth, on the planetary balance sheet? Should I be more concerned with the slug, literally on my doorstep, as opposed to say the homeless guy a mile down the road? Aware that any intervention in either case is just as likely to intensify suffering as to relieve it?

And if you say: "Forget about the slugs, concentrate on improving human situations," Isn't that precisely the
strategy that has led us to environmental degradation and climate armageddon? But who cares, because the world is just a factory for suffering anyway, and who wants to sustain that?

This paragraph and the preceding few words about ‘ethics, or right action’ are based on a ‘consequentialist’ and ‘utilitarian’ view of ethics: judging the morality of actions purely on the basis of their (actual rather than intended) consequences and the only consequence you are considering is utility (happiness/unhappiness). But this is a widely criticised perspective that generates wildly counter-intuitive conclusions. To take a classic example, if I throw a terminally ill Christian to the lions and hundreds of Romans enjoy the spectacle of the Christian’s death, it’s theoretically possible that the consequence of my action is that more pleasure has been generated than suffering. But it would still be deeply wrong, and that cannot be explained adequately by reference to utility. ‘Ethics, or right action’ is not just about a ‘planetary balance sheet’ that adds up aggregate utility. There is a lot more to it than that.

You want to restore the Mediterranean to ecological health so that you can continue to boil lobsters alive in perpetuity, and generations of lobsters can obligingly breed in optimal conditions to satisfy your appetites? Isn't that the all too apparent subtext behind all this 'save the planet' stuff, whether it be demos, documentaries or direct action?

According to your own thinking, it would not be clear whether boiling lobsters alive is bad or whether it’s a good thing because it might spare them a worse fate a day or two later. However, regardless of that, the ‘subtext’ you describe is an ‘instrumental’ view of the environment or anthropocentric environmentalism; it’s far from the only form of environmentalism and, again, widely criticised. At the opposite end of the spectrum is ‘deep ecology’ but there are intermediate positions too. I would not assume that the instrumental view of the environment is the principle form of environmentalism. It’s just one view.

I'm not expecting answers to these questions- the tip of an iceberg of questions.

There is a lot of good moral philosophy on the issues you are concerned about. It might not give you answers but it can help clarify your thinking. Don’t bother with a lot of what’s available on the internet; get a good textbook that’s pitched at the right level and take it from there. Once again, if you need help, go and get it. All life is precious and I do not want to be reading 'RIP torqueless' in the near future.

 

[Stressed]

Well what started out as a nice tribute thread to a fellow RB'er who sadly took his own life, has well and truly been hijacked, so it's so long and thanks for all the fish from me...

Did it?

 

[legrandefromage]

Just eaten two packets of Hula Hoops

I feel dirty...

Dirty!

 

[KermitGKona88]

Just eaten two packets of Hula Hoops

I feel dirty...

Dirty!

Only 2 packets you lightweight...

 

[legrandefromage]

 

[widowmaker]

Just eaten two packets of Hula Hoops

I feel dirty...

Dirty!

Flavour ?

 

[Betsy]

Ive been eating these



Soooo dirty!

 

[torqueless]

Did it?

That's another thread.
This one is for ranting and venting. That's my understanding of the OP, anyway.
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Thanks for taking the time to go through that CassidyAce, and for your concern.

I wish I could square a belief that 'all life is precious' with the stark reality that any life only continues by
predating on other life, but I cannot.

The zero sum game within the biosphere doesn't rule out the possibility of an entity presumably external to the
biosphere which feeds on the suffering created within it. While that might be entering H.P. Lovecraft territory,
it's arguably a less bleak idea than the alternative- that the suffering is for nothing.

"You make an intervention here, and the suffering intensifies somewhere else."
In keeping with the OP, I was having a rant, which in my book means releasing some steam without having to provide detail and footnotes, and hopefully somebody gets what I mean and doesn't feel so crazy themselves for thinking the same thing. If nobody gets what I mean then that is a very isolating experience for me. Partly the point I was trying to make is that every comfort enjoyed by prosperous societies has been accompanied by
ecological damage and achieved by exploitation of colonies, slave labour, or their 20th century replacements- minimum wage drudgery and fossil fuels- in a nutshell: by off-shoring/externalising the negative effects of consumption/lifestyle at every opportunity.

I'll have to get back to you on that ethics stuff.

Yes that bit about the lobsters was badly phrased. I re-read it and noticed the same ambiguity as you. I was playing devil's advocate a bit. I am aware of deep ecology. As I understand it, it requires humans to either butt out completely, leaving the rest of the biosphere to carry on eating itself and shitting itself, or failing that, for humans to (re?)integrate themselves a bit better with 'nature', which practically speaking means forsaking not only smartphones, SUVs, central heating, Gore-tex outdoor wear, but also their down-market equivalents and probably their 19th century equivalents as well, and much else besides. So obviously it's a philosophical position, rather than something people who've become acclimatised to these things are going to voluntarily submit to, including the deep ecologists themselves.

It's not like we weren't warned of this years back. It's taken until now for the mainstream to take it remotely
seriously, yet it's something that people still seem to respond to with: "Someone will invent some technology to sort it out" just like they did forty years back.
When this denialism delivers us at an impasse which, unless you swallow the window-dressing of politicians under obligation not to spook voters or investors, is effectively a choice between 'life on Earth' and 'human industrial civilisation on Earth for the limited period it has left', 'depressive thinking' if you want to call it that, might be the 'healthiest' response for us human products of the fossil fuel bonanza. We wouldn't last a week without industrial civilisation, and many of us wouldn't even want to make the attempt- even those of us who've been at loggerheads with this techno-cornucopia complacency for forty years.
As human dwellers in the anthropocene, everything we do is toxic, including most of what we do to mend our ways. Everything we touch turns to dust- often as not dust laced with asbestos fibres, depleted uranium, micro-plastics, and more.