I’ve reached another crossroads. Chalk it up to pandemic exhaustion at being mostly cooped up for the better part of a year. Of course, this state is on top of other sources of exhaustion (politics, doom, the news grind cycle) that drained my enthusiasm for things I used to do before meaningful (to me) endeavors were all cancelled and everyone was forced to search for meaning staring at surfaces (e.g., the walls, pages, and screens — especially screens for most Americans, I daresay). So as the year and decade draw to a close, I anticipate a spate of lists and summaries as we move into 2021 with the hope it won’t be worse than 2020 — a faint hope, I might add, since nothing has been resolved except perhaps (!) which listless septuagenarian gets to sit in the Oval Office. The jury is still out whether vaccines will have the intended effect.
Aside: The calendar is not a timer or odometer. So although we change the calendar to 2021, the new year is the first year of the new decade (third decade of the 21st century, obviously). We struggled with this issue at the end of the previous century/millennium when 2000 became 2001, not more popularly when 1999 became 2000. This discrepancy is because calendars begin counting each month, year, etc. with 1, not 0. So the first ten counting numbers are 1–10, not 0–9, and all decades run from xx01 to xx10. However, timers and odometers begin counting at 0 and show elapsed intervals, so the first ten minutes or miles run from the start (at 0) to the end of 9, at which point the odometer in particular rolls to 10 and begins a new sequence. I realize I’m being a pointy-headed snoot about this, but it’s a relatively easy concept to understand. Innumeracy evident among the public is a microcosm for all the other easy concepts so badly misunderstood.
I’ve admitted to feelings of exhaustion and defeat numerous times, and indeed, hope eludes me whilst a narrow group of things still produce enjoyment. But my blogroll is no longer one of those things. I recently wrote the following to an acquaintance of mine:
Now that collapse narratives have matured, over two decades old for some (about 14 years for me), I notice that existential threats are still too remote and contingent for most to do more than signal some vague level of awareness and/or concern before returning to normal life. A few who sank into it deeply recognized that nothing positive comes out of it and have retreated from public life, or at least ongoing tracking and reporting. Several of the sites I used to frequent for news and perspective have dried up, and my finding is that adding more awfulness to the pile doesn’t enhance my understandings anymore, so I’ve also largely stopped gathering information. I still cite collapse frequently at my doom blog, but I have other things to write about.
I’m one of those who sank into the collapse narrative rather deeply and blogged about it consistently. By now, the sole available positive outcome has manifested: the recognition (and with it, resignation) that nothing will or can be done to avert disaster. So I’m dumping the doom and inactive blogs from my blogroll. I’ll continue to blog about and bear witness to the gathering storm: the cascade failure of industrial civilization. It’s proven to be a more protracted process than expected (at least by me), but no promises that it will stall until the end of the century at the conclusion of 2100 for sea level to rise and flora and fauna to expire. Human habitat will continue to diminish decade by decade, and at some point, so will human population — already shown to be rather precariously perched on an illusory safety and security we take as business as usual. I’ll keep a couple of the respectable truth-telling blogs just to have something to which to link. I have no links to add at this point.