Mind ChatterTom F. posted this on one of the Yahoo discussion groups that I'm on, which is called the Atlanta Leavers (a list inspired by the writings of Daniel Quinn):
I just happen to have a paragraph handy... it comes from alot of places but most currently for me, Eckhart Tolle, his book A New Earth ...
My synopsis of Tolle’s “thinking”: Consciousness consists of thoughts and emotions, the latter often triggered by thoughts but also coming from the pain body, accumulated negative energy from our personal & social environment. The world as we know it, drifting toward extinction
- threatened by over-population, consumption/ pollution and war (nukes et al.) is “captained” by this (un)consciousness and we call it ego, dysfunction, the mind-chatter that keeps us in our heads and out of our hearts, that is to say in the present where we experience the felt interconnection of ONE which is being, fathomless being, inclusive of ALL, beyond the passing material world, intelligence, source actually of all that we know. Our task in what Tolle calls the awakening is to reverse the common ratio of presence to mind-chatter which is the dysfunction plaguing our fragile life system, reverse that ratio from high percentage spent In mind-chatter to high percentage spent in presence. Out of this new consciousness will flow A New Earth, if we are lucky, the one intuited by sages throughout time, the natural state corrupted by the dysfunction of ego.
Back To A Hunter-Gatherer Society
This post comes from Tom G., who is a member of another Yahoo discussion list that I'm on, called War-Socialism. Tom is affiliated with one of the best website on peak oil, called Dieoff.org.
Even if the universe has abundant or limitless energy we are still quite limited by time, space and the cozy confines of our quite finite, little spherical planet where energy sources are indeed quite limited. As far as our species fortunate windfall of the last century or so, the fossil-fuel energy supply is not only limited but now clearly past peak production and going into irrevocable and permanent decline. Since modern homosapien's adequate food supplies among other critical, survival inputs are practically and wholly dependent on fossil energy availability and no replacements are available or viable on the scale demanded, the over-population problem will shortly begin to be corrected by the natural default process to ward equilibrium. Equilibrium won't be denied. That natural process is referred to as "die off".
Species die off is the unfortunate consequence subjectively speaking, of ecological carrying capacity overshoot. In this case our planet's capacity to supply the fossil-fuel energy and resource input necessary to permit our species to continue unabated economic and population growth is now past peak. Hence our population, economy, technology, literacy and civility, due to inevitable entropy and the immutable laws of thermodynamics can only decrease here forth.
My conclusions are the result of years of verifying the contents of dieoff.org and independent investigation by cross checking the data Jay has assembled therein. Objective and rational study of the theory of die off by applying the scrutiny of scientific method leaves one with no other conclusions. As much as we wish we could have a subjectively "happy ending" to the human condition it appears the reality of passing peak, fossil-fuel production shall continue to be manifested in a steady deterioration of human economy and ecology which are inseparable facets and consequences of the decline our industrial age existence.
Absent cheap, abundant, fossil-fuel input, it is most probable that the only sustainable possibility for the human species will eventually be in the form that we evolved to in the first place, namely, small tribes of hunting, gathering and scavenging societies. For better or worse, that is probably what the future holds for human kind as much as we would like to fantasize a different outcome.
Like it or not, our decedents if there be any will live more like our ancestors in the Olduvai ways and means with the added pressures of a very degraded ecosystem. On the subjective bright side, there should be plenty of industrial age scraps lying around the landscape to be fashioned into useful machinations to enhance our decedents survival potential. The homosapiens ape has always featured remarkable capability to manipulate the environment to his advantage. Objectively, it would seem he is likely to continue to do so until his existence is no longer viable and his inevitable extinction occurs.
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