Tommy, I agree with your assessment of the future - it will get pretty ugly. And we each have the choice to approach that reality in our own way. I think it is partly due to being a cancer survivor, but also being a permaculturist, that i have changed my outlook of the times to come. Laughter is glorious. It doesn't mean i don't understand or am not actively participating in solution-oriented endeavors. But i just plain don't have the time anymore to waste in negativity. It does not assist in changing the status quo and prevents me from being the best warrior i can be for Gaia.Indeed, negativity is an energy sink. I think of it like a car's electrical system. I need negativity to ground me, but it's positivity that gets things done. To work, the circle must meet at both ends. In order to heal, we have to know the truth about what happened to us but we don't need to wallow about in it and sling it all over anyone who gets close enough. The last thing I want to do is render people inoperative by doing the "Basically, we're fucked" thing to them. I want to say the ecological truth but I want action to result rather than depressed lethargy. My ex-wife survived breast cancer and felt totally resistant to adapting to a rigorous ecological assessment of the near term. She preferred being one of the statistics to getting clear about what her kids from a previous marriage to a very rich man faced. I never learned to honor that choice she made, because I was into preparing for a life in planetary resource depletion. So we divorced. We're friends, I still love her, but I can't live with her nor she with me. It's one of the sadnesses of my life. When I consider what I owe my Sacred Family, the land and its creatures (including humans), I can't figure how to let go and let it not matter that she, and those of the same mindset, will be lost, perhaps even needlessly. It's the sort of thing Joanna Macy talks about in /Returning to Life/. How do we know the truth and continue acting from the power of love for all living things? She and John Seed do their Council of All Beings. The Cuyamunge Institute does their Masked Trance Dance. Several Native tribes do the Ghost Dance. How do we grieve efficiently enough to pretty much stay in the saddle?
Losing 20 species a week is far more depressing to me than the loss of a small portion of a single species. Yes, even if i am one of them.
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