Why the general population don't get it

[Prono 007]

This article from Nate Hagens is the best explanation I've read to date.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3178

It's long but worth the read.

Yeah it is long (100+ A4 pages with the comments plus loads of interesting looking links!) but I've read through first bit ( a mere 17 pages) and yes it's really interesting.

Although cognitive dissonance is usually applied to others I can now see how it might apply to peak aware folk too. For me the dissonance is between what I believe to be a very serious issue and the fact I'm not doing more preparation.

In terms of what I was suggesting at the start of this thread I guess cognitive load theory comes closest: "many people are just too cognitively taxed to take on much more", though it's not exactly the same.

There's also the 'recency effect': people tend to overweight the most recent data and stimuli they receive in their decision-making processes. For specialists, activists and those who read about peak oil on a regular basis concern is bound to be much higher. The mass media really has a responsibility here. There's just no connection made between the oil shock last year and the recession now.

Anyway great link, so thanks for that.

[Prono 007]

In my case I had already realised that my 'career aspirations' were making me stressed and unhappy, and was looking for a way to deprogram that side of me. The idea of PO enabled me to switch from a growth/aspirational focus to a mindset based on steadiness and sustainability.

So in my case I leaped on PO as something that pushed me in a direction I wanted to go.

It's interesting what makes people open to PO. For me I was already pretty critical of the whole system and I'd often wondered how much oil there was in the world, thinking about the never ending, continuous streams of motorway traffic going by. So to discover that oil would decline the whole system would collapse came as no real surprise.

I'm sure if PO had been a hindrance to my goals I would have found reasons to dismiss it.

As I said my friend does not dismiss PO he simply doesn't appear to see it as a real threat. Our goals and aspirations must be guided first and foremost by reality and it seems that until one has really got to grips with the topic, entailing a certain amount of study, it doesn't really register as a real threat.

I suspect my friend's reason for being 'peak aware' are that to not be would make him appear to be ignorant within his social group. That's quite different from having deeper and much more certain knowledge of the subject.

[Adam1]

This article from Nate Hagens is the best explanation I've read to date.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3178

It's long but worth the read.

Yeah it is long (100+ A4 pages with the comments plus loads of interesting looking links!) but I've read through first bit ( a mere 17 pages) and yes it's really interesting.

Anyway great link, so thanks for that.

You're welcome. I must admit I didn't read all the comments after the article either.

In my case I had already realised that my 'career aspirations' were making me stressed and unhappy, and was looking for a way to deprogram that side of me. The idea of PO enabled me to switch from a growth/aspirational focus to a mindset based on steadiness and sustainability.

So in my case I leaped on PO as something that pushed me in a direction I wanted to go.

I sometimes wonder whether I would have 'got' PO, had I been at a different point in my life. I had my 'peak moment' a week or two after my dad had just been diagnosed with lung cancer and he died a few months later. Interest in PO became a bit of a displacement activity and I was doubly depressed, mourning the loss of my dad and of my old world view. A lot of people who go through a loss process get obsessed by an unrelated issue as a way of dealing with it. My OH was unconvinced about PO for some time because of this. She only got it when she met other people, who hadn't (as far as we knew) experienced a recent loss, talked knowledgeably about it.

I've never had a highly aspirational focus to my mindset and never felt so attached to an identity associated with a specific work role. Maybe that also helped me to 'get it'.

[marknorthfield]

We're not just witnessing the beginning of the demise of the space age paradigm but all manner of paradigms involving progress towards some glorious (if unknown) goal. Its likely the loss of irrational beliefs in progress will be substituted with other probably more primitive kinds of irrational belief.

I say more primitive because much of our efforts at ethical, intellectual and emotional development has been caught up with the idea it would or could lead to some wonderful place in this world, in this life. Humanism has been part of that development, helped along by that vision of the future. As that vision diminishes together with our standard of living so too will faith in humanism and some of its great fruits – only we'll still need to believe in a better tomorrow to keep us going.

Expect a large rise in popularity for promises of rewards in the next world, in the next life.

I agree that religion (in general) is likely to be more popular in hard times as people seek comfort; it's more or less a given. However, I don't agree that our ethical, intellectual and emotional development will necessarily reverse (assuming for the sake of simplicity that such things can be measured).

It could be argued that there is still much scope for 'improvement' and that the obsession with economic growth and material wealth has become more of a hindrance than a help. Accepting 'limits to growth' may be initially disheartening, but what then? Isn't coming to terms with the world as it is rather than how we wish it to be what maturity is about?

Yes, education, science and technology are likely to suffer through diminishing resources, and that's a severe challenge. What resources do ethics and emotions need though? Awareness, compassion, co-operation... All pretty renewable if you can work out how to tap them.

As that old song goes:

'What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts'

1928 of course, but we can still learn from it!

[Benubi]

I agree that religion (in general) is likely to be more popular in hard times as people seek comfort; it's more or less a given. However, I don't agree that our ethical, intellectual and emotional development will necessarily reverse (assuming for the sake of simplicity that such things can be measured).

It could be argued that there is still much scope for 'improvement' and that the obsession with economic growth and material wealth has become more of a hindrance than a help. Accepting 'limits to growth' may be initially disheartening, but what then? Isn't coming to terms with the world as it is rather than how we wish it to be what maturity is about?

*nods*

There is scope for improvement and economic systems dependent upon constant growth have become untenable so for no other reason than that (and I do believe there are and were better alternatives) they now hinder us. To be good consumers we've been fashioned with an addictive appetite for endless superfluous things that rarely satisfy our higher needs but instead usually distract away from them. What's more the necessity to produce and consume endless superfluous things in order to keep up with each other has ballooned personal debt, trapping us in when we become agitated with how pointless & frenetic our lives are.

But anyway, what remains to be seen is whether we can move from outmoded economic models to others more adapted to the world as it is without being overwhelmed by chaos or oppressive authoritarianism. A society of reduced complexity can be a society of greater freedom & integrity – we're potentially capable of far greater social cohesion than we see now. The difficulty we all face is how to make that happen while so much of the world we're familiar with begins to crumble. It'll be like rebuilding & retrofitting a badly damaged plane in flight.

Yes, education, science and technology are likely to suffer through diminishing resources, and that's a severe challenge. What resources do ethics and emotions need though? Awareness, compassion, co-operation... All pretty renewable if you can work out how to tap them.

What I was saying before about religion, well I think our best hope to preserve standards of education, science and technology may actually have to come from the religious sphere. Yep, I said it.

Materialism as a way of life will die a death and humanism can't compete with the supernatural and/or irrational when it comes to providing meaning in hard times. People are going to need a strong sense of purpose and hope for the future to endure what's coming. Without that institutions like education, science and much more besides could be undermined by apathy and despair. If it was divinely sanctioned that institutions like that were of enormous importance and should be supported it could help a lot. Historically it wouldn't be the first time that's happened. The high standards of education amongst Mormons is a modern example also.

A lot of attention is given to the struggle between atheism and theism. I think its far more important in the long term what results from the struggle between archaic and progressive theism. The battle for awareness over ignorance, compassion over indifference, cooperation over division may largely be fought by competing gods/spirits and their respective sects.

I don't find it easy thinking like this because I'm basically an atheist and always have been. I hope I'm wrong.