I think the audience reaction might reflect a social progression of viewers through Kubler-Ross’ denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Once the futility of what Catton call’s “cosmeticism,” superficial, attractive, ineffective fixes, cannot be denied and easy hopes become cold comfort becomes disabuse, it’s easy to be pissed. Having kids today, someone above observed, is like renting apartments in a burning tenement to your offspring. Turn this around and you can see prior generations handing you the apartment key laughing “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!” And if you do have kids (I do) you must then recognize your personal complicity in continuing to pass along the flaming family estate. This state of affairs makes me angry and depressed, I must admit. And, really, that last stage of grief, acceptance, is impossible to reach, this grief being as big as the world. The only sane course of action is to carefully modulate your emotional engagement while you do your best to mitigate the damage and nurture repair. You want to be able to say to yourself at the end of the day “I did all that I could.” To arrive at such a day’s-end – how is this possible? I’m reminded of the end of the movie “Schindler’s List” where Schindler collapses in despair over those he didn’t save, but might have were he not to have indulged in a nice wristwatch, etc.

just shortly but indeed just a few weeks ago
I noticed such angry reaction as well
(not directly within this context) but on the angry
reactions some of my thinking about the energy and environmental situation was heavily attacked as well.
Also by one who I had thought to be a good reasoning
friend .. well

in this respect

I am always thinking of the bible story
of destruction of Sodom and Gomorah
(i am not religious at all)

one needs to leave and not look back..
or one will turn to stone!

I believe more and more that it is true
magic thinking from past times
but difficult to accept

michael

I have found it is impossible to talk to people in denial.

anger comes in griefing. this is new stage even for the choir. tonglen calls…

you ask, “how’s it landing?” tumultuous, course. opening space is the key and your words, your story contribute….mightily.

here’s some arc for a fragment of connection–albeit flat and glassy from my screen to yours–

We clasp the hands of those that go before us,
And the hands of those who come after us.
We enter the little circle
of each other’s arms
And the larger circle of lovers,
Whose hands are joined in a dance,
And the larger circle of all creatures,
Passing in and out of life,
Who move also in a dance,
To a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it
Except in fragment

~Wendell Berry

sorry to see that comments are closed on “touching the ground.” i understand the need for monologue and the reticence for communion, but pass the word, please, we’re continuing the holistic “thrival” quest and welcome your companionship on the journey.

love,
“your not from around here, are you?” ‘07 hot springs nc
circle spokes…..

I choose! I choose to stand with you! WAWTG is a great tool for folks to de-colonise their minds, and open their hearts. And as the manure hits the windfarm, it’s going to get quite exciting!

As the pain shakes even the progressives awake, one of their grieving responces will be anger….and a lot of this is due to perceived entitlement, and WAWTG really erodes that.

I try to explain that getting angry at me as the messanger, is more about the person getting angry (how dare you pull the warm rug out from under my soft “civilised” bottom!!!) with the unsustainable position they find themselves in, and complete rage at being shown the emperor has no clothes. Unfortunately the messanger is usually the first to cop a bit of that anger.

What’s needed is for that anger to be channelled into a guerilla resistance movement rather than mindless rioting in the streets. With the militarisation of police forces globally, TPTB are ready for that rioting. What they can’t deal with is a new culture of resistance.

Will this happen in time? I don’t know, I think it may be too late. Too late for “civilised” humans, and too late for the 200+ species that went to extinction today…but never too late to speak up on their behalf, and on behalf of the remnants of indigenous people who have pointed out how insane “civilisation” is for a very long time…

Best regards
Ted

Nelson, NZ

Best regards,
Felipe (São Paulo, Brazil)

My perception is best summarized by Chris C’s line as sung by Janice J “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”. As I watch those around me face what’s going on, most (but not all) of the folks who still have “something” (lifestyle, house, car, money, etc.) will choose to go into denial. However those who have lost most everything or who realize they’re never going to get it are much more likely to acknowledge the deeper truth of the situation. So, even though the collapse we’re seeing around us is moving more folks to the denial stage, it’s also helping to create more folks who will really get it.

Always looking (and finding) the silver lining!

-Bob

Regarding the second part, I myself began noticing last August or September, right around the time the economic storm definitively broke for all to see, that an unprecedented level of seething resentment and anger was surging around among the general populace. My most prosaic and mainstream-minded family, friends, and acquaintances were all Mad as Hell and Not Going to Take It Anymore. I was surprised and fascinated to witness this attitude going mainstream. Obviously it is now reaching some sort of critical mass, although I can’t help speculating about the extent to which this is being orchestrated, after a fashion, by the mainstream media via what appears to me as the smoke-and-mirrors show of fury over the AIG bonuses.

Anyway, how very interesting it is to hear about your full frontal encounter with this phenomenon at the recent screening of the documentary. Good luck out there. I hope you and Tim can keep it up and remain safe while maintaining your very worthwhile provocateur/chronicler/prophet roles.

A recent online writing that you might find worth a read in light of these recent developments is J. Peder Zane’s “Are we enriched by hard times?” (http://www.newsobserver.com/2730/story/1324264.html), in which Zane observes that all the reports of supposedly repentant and transformed uber-consumers should be taken with a grain of salt since all it will take is a perceived return to the faux-normality of recent years for these supposedly Awakened Ones to gleefully dive back into the Matrix. (I’m using my own specific vocabulary here, not his.)

On the other hand, Zane comments: “Still, something is different: not change, but possibility. For the moment, the deafening drumbeat of consumer culture has diminished; no longer a sonic boom, it is now just an earsplitting whine. New voices have leapt into that suddenly available aural space, questioning our choices. They can be heard in the news reports of transformed Americans as well as inside our own heads. As we close our wallets, they move us to open ourselves more fully to finding purpose and joy outside the mall. This is the opportunity offered by hard times. It pulls us out of the white-water of consumer culture and lets us sit a spell on the side of that river. If we choose to, it allows us to think, to take stock, to reconnect with the idea of the person we want to be.”

Regarding the first part of your post, I can tell you that I have faced the very same issue in my own writer’s life as I have attempted to navigate the exigencies of a very slow creative and inspirational process, on the one hand, and a Web culture that craves and even demands a more regular and frequent flow of writings on the other. I wish you the best and will look forward to your future posts, regardless of their schedue.

FYI, your self-revelation as a slow and inner-directed writer positively shouts to me that you would find much of value in the books put out by a small, independent publisher named Impassio Press. Look them up. They feature a substantial amount of material on their site (last I checked) about the literary value and place of “fragmentary” writing, defined as journals, short essays, letters, and the like. And the public establishing of these types of writings as a valid genre in and of themselves — the genre of fragmentary writing — is Impassio’s avowed mission. They have published a number of interesting journals by modern writers as well as two anthologies, DARKNESS AND LIGHT and IN PIECES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF FRAGMENTARY WRITING, consisting of journal entries and other fragmentary writings from a host of authors.

I really think you would find their output and overall vibe to be quite congenial to your personal authorial orientation. Their founder, editor, and publisher, a woman named Olivia Dresher, is really committed to what she does, and I have come to view her activities as falling in the line of the “new monasticism” that Morris Berman recommends in THE TWILIGHT OF AMERICAN CULTURE as the only viable response to mass civilizational declines like the one we’re presently experiencing.

I have been angry at the “Progressives” for a long time. Perhaps it’s because I got into the Peak movement through a tangential connection to UFO’s and government secrecy. I see much more denial in the world than most people do, and I see it hanging by a thread. The recent election of Pres. Obama could break that fragile denial thread because of all the talk about Change and Hope is being pushed behind the business as usual of a bloated System of systems. People are angry, but they don’t really know why. Your dark picture is a lightning rod for angst and the sorry realization of delusion that is represented by people with Hope in their hearts getting angry. The ‘progressives’ who led the privileged lives of petroleum are starting to find out that it is one thing to TALK about rooting for the underdog, but it is quite another to be up to their neck in the shit of life. Farmers like me know that our lives are all about two things: killing shit and cleaning shit up. Even now, I am just realizing that EVERYONE’s lives are dependent upon these two things, but the drudgery of actual living has been done by cheap energy up to this point. Billions of people are probably going to die because of this denial of reality, and you are informing people of this fact.
Maybe you should visit the PeakShrink for a while, too.