Today’s Contemplation: And Now For Something Completely Different…

January 1, 2023 (original posting date)

As I work upon the multi-part series regarding my thoughts on our energy future, thought I would throw together something a little different for this initial contemplation of 2023.

My journey down the rabbit’s hole of Peak Oil and related energy/societal issues began more than a decade ago after watching the documentary Collapse featuring the late Michael Ruppert. The information presented seemed to mesh closely with my educational background in biology and archaeology — particularly the rise and fall of complex societies. My thinking about virtually everything shifted significantly shortly afterward. The typical Kubler-Ross grieving process was followed with much denial, bargaining, and anger until I finally reached acceptance and really began to explore ways to better understand our predicament and to help others along that road as well.

The first method of talking to people about my appreciation/understanding of what we were facing did not go very well, perhaps because I was still overly ‘enthusiastic’ about my ‘discovery/enlightenment’. It took a while but I’ve learned to mostly reign in that ‘preaching’ tendency and offer ‘insights’ only if asked directly or the topic has been raised by others. My understanding of things still doesn’t sit well with most people, but I have grown to appreciate why — we have a host of cognitive/psychological mechanisms that keep us from holding anxiety-provoking thoughts for very long, if at all.

The second way I dealt with my new perspective was more cathartic in nature. I have always enjoyed writing. I’ve found it a pleasing and somewhat more precise method to both explain my understanding of our world and work out this understanding by way of the feedback I receive and reflection upon it (primarily during the process as I edit and rework the wording for greater clarity). Speaking — particularly in public venues — is not something I find that I can do with much confidence or clarity, although others tell me I do fine (I did, after all, spend 25 years in a career that demanded lots of it and pursue some voluntary leadership positions that required it). Writing is my chosen and preferred method of communication outside of my immediate circle of family and a couple of close friends/acquaintances. I leave it up to readers to conclude whether I do it well or not.

Anyways, I thought I would share some fictional prose. It is a chapter I wrote some years ago as I began putting together Olduvai IV: Courage, a follow-up to my first three novels. Writing on this book has come to a stop for a variety of reasons, mostly because I lost the motivation to continue it as I transitioned into non-fictional writing and have begun to enjoy it and I have grown to believe I need to be ‘acting’ on my altered belief system rather than simply thinking/reflecting upon it so have put much greater effort into personal actions — especially as it comes to learning about and practising food production.

Without further ado, here is the link to a PDF file of a chapter of Olduvai IV: Courage that has never been seen before.

Please keep in mind that this was written at least 6 years ago before some of the chaos of the last few years occurred and when my understanding was different than now, which is pertinent since I attempted to weave current events into my story and many of my ‘predictions’ of what might take place in an unknowable future are completely off the mark — such is the difficulty of making predictions, especially if they are about the future!

I may, depending upon feedback, share the other chapters I’ve already written (or mostly written) in the future. Difficult to predict…