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Let’s get high on hopium
As things fall apart, do you hold on tight to the superstructures that are crumbling, or worse, that have already crumbled away?
Or do you jump, flail, and eventually learn how to enjoy flailing within the reality of the cyclical dynamic destruction-creation that is life within civilisational collapse?
Wait actually, you don’t have to answer that.
Your reaction to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6) has already told me everything I need to know about your opinion on hopium addiction.
Let me describe, very generally, three common patterns of expression I’ve witnessed by sustainability professionals (and other mainstream foresight strategists and economic commentators), the public, and the marginalised — in the weeks leading up to, and the few excruciating days since, AR6’s Working Group 1 release:
Blind Determination, Pensive Anxiety, and Gleeful Validation.
Blind Determination
You, reader, quite probably fall into this camp.
AR6 told you things that very much shocked and saddened you. You had no idea things were this bad. It truly is “Code Red” now. The Climate Emergency is officially Not Fucking About.
