can't we all just get along?

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?


Well, after a good part of a year of anticipation, I managed to finally get around to watching the movie “The Road”. And what did I think about it, a collective gasp goes up awaiting my response? Let me put it this way. You know how after you are married for awhile you have to wait way too long in between having sex? And then when it happens it is over in two minutes because you waited too long and your wife uses that as an excuse to not give it up for an even longer time so you didn’t really enjoy it. At least it was sex, but on the scale between “copulating like bunnies to conceive when barely out of our teens and in perfect health” and “after a bottle of wine and three Viagra’s it still doesn’t work and then you forget what you were trying to do anyway so you go back to watching Opra” it is definitely leaning closer to the later rather than the former. Watching “The Road” was like having sex that sucked ( and not in a good way ). At least it was a post-apocalypse but it wasn’t that great of a genre movie. It has been about four or five years since I read the book so I can’t really say it was worse than the book, although that was the vague impression, but it was a bad movie. Mental diarrhea works fine in print, but a movie needs to be really good to pull that off. This movie moved between rambling “feelings movie” to “some action almost happened” ( I understand the book wasn’t action packed, my beef is that the movie tried to do both and failed ). And, for the love of all that is holy, shut that friggin kid up! He was born after the collapse, and ten years later ( or how ever old he as ) he is afraid and crying and complaining and has no conception of keeping quiet when cannibals are near. Dad, who actually experienced the good life previously, was a lot less of a girl. I liked the wood powered war wagon the cannibals drove around in, but as became common practice, they just gave you a glimpse and then moved rapidly on to sharing their feelings. Shove a damn Tampon in and go kill something, Jesus! And the ending! Good God, the ending! ( spoiler alert ). A family befriends the now orphaned boy and they all live happily ever after. What the Hell!!?? They have a dog, yet they aren’t cannibals. Or so they claim. What is the dog eating? And a reasonably healthy looking wife, husband and two kids? Do they feed the dog humans and then eat the dog? So, technically, they aren’t actually eating human flesh. I’ll have to remember that one ( if any post-apocalyptic lawyers make the same claim, and own a dog, you can guess they are human eaters ). Totally lame ending. You need a happy ending, but not some action or boobs? The only nudity was the fathers white and hairy ass, and I was not thrilled.

*

So, the very next morning I’m reading my weekly fill of the Druid Dude. And he mentions the author of The Road to illustrate Doomer Porn. The Druid Dude is usually pretty polite to liberal politicians, lawyers, child molesters and vegetarians ( okay, he doesn’t single them out for criticism, anyway ) but he turns pretty nasty pretty quick when it comes to doomers. Now, I would expect nothing less, as I never fail to take the opportunity to rag on Slow Decliners, tree huggers, or Yuppie Scum so turn around is fair play. What caught my attention was his bafflement over the general doomer attraction. Why would people be lusting after collapse? I would think that is an easy one. Doomers were born from Cold War fear of instant nuclear wipe out ( no, I don’t count the religious nuts and the actual Apocalypse here- there is no logic with bible thumpers, outside of the contrived logic which varies by biblical translation ). Instant annihilation was a given from day one. And wanting to 1) be king of the hill after being the only one smart enough to prepare and, 2) go back to a rational and meaningful existence outside of petroleum age consumerism are not irrational desires. The Druid Dude is a slow collapse, hug a tree, worship asparagus kind of guy. He seeks salvation in the blissful assurance that we can change the world peacefully ( slow evolution to a sustainable future ). I like the idea of having to kill everybody to avoid going in the stewpot. But my point here today is that we are both right.

*

We will see the world the Druid wants. We will go back to a sustainable future. We will be decentralized, divorced from a money economy, totally solar powered. But to get there, we must first go through the collapse. Which is where The Road gets it somewhat right. Huge die-offs happen when the expediential draw down of oil is seven percent a year. Remember that slow graph that suddenly spikes? All at the same percent of change. That is the waterfall collapse. The gradual staircase collapse is a fantasy. It might work in a lower population independent of oil, but not in today’s world. We agree with the far future. Hell, Greer is one smart cookie. I admire his work. We disagree with the shape of the collapse, though. He is wrong in that it will be slow. Doomers are wrong to think order will not be swiftly re-established. The local baron will very quickly take over your independent self sustaining homestead. Which is one of the reasons I’m betting on herding myself. It might be doomed, it might be unrealistic, but at least your freedoms are maximized compared to feudal agriculture. So, really, we are feuding over the angle of descent for the collapse. The immediate future. The far future is plain enough, agreeable by all. We should all get along, but the gamble of how the collapse happens is too important for compromise I imagine.

END
The Official Bison Web Site http://www.bisonpress.com/
*
Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon links in each article. You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase. Thank you.