The Daily: 16 August 2024

Last night, the waxing gibbous moon, just a few days from full, rose red over my town and stayed rusty all night. There is no eclipse on a gibbous moon. We had no weather to speak of. There is no healthy reason for a red moon over Vermont.

The reason is terrifying. My town, many hundreds of miles from Alberta, Canada, where the biggest fires rage, is cloaked in smoke. We are being told to keep windows closed and stay indoors. I am not sure how keeping windows closed helps for those of us, the majority of Vermonters, who don’t have any sort of air conditioning system to filter out pollution. Even with the windows closed, we are still breathing Canadian smoke, thick enough to bloody the moon. Maybe there is more of it outside, because it hurts my throat out there, gives me a headache. It merely turns my eyes to gravel indoors.

This is supposed to persist at least all weekend. It may last longer. Typical weather systems for August move air from the northwest into our state. Normally, that’s a pleasant cooling. Not any longer. Now, Canadian weather comes with an air quality warning.

Last night I went out to better process this red moon. I couldn’t. The air was difficult to breathe. It is viscerally wrong. But the worst thing… my town has stock car racing on Thursday nights in the summer. Driving at high engine revolutions in a useless circle, just to burn gasoline and send it into the atmosphere. To cause a red moon. To cause a flood. To cause diseases that joyfully feed on our strained bodies and depressed immune systems. To cause extinction and world devoid of butterflies. I was listening to these wasteful, toxic engines spewing out useless destruction, as I was standing in the darkness of a bloody moon with claws in my throat and eyes. And I just felt despair…

I was angry. I am still angry. I wrote something very dark. This morning I decided that it needed a prologue warning… so…

It’s been a bad week. Things that I am normally able to ignore are rankling, needling into my skin and venting pure anger and anxiety. There is a constant whistling shriek in my head. Because there is just more and more and more.

Here is an example.

This was a headline on one of the newsletters I get each day. I don’t remember which one because it instantly set me off and I instantly deleted it. It does not matter much who said it this time though. It is disturbingly common. It may be that every newsletter I receive has run a similar headline at least once. Normally, I shake my head and move on, but this week I am not capable of moving on. For one, I’m generally tired of all the ignorance and bullshit. But this specifically! It is high time we toss this tired trope on the compost heap.

The headline writers never seem to know how offensive this is. Maybe to them it is a statement of empathy. What it sounds like to the rest of us is pity. We don’t want your pity. More importantly, it’s not true. “It’s the vulnerable who suffer” is not a statement of fact. I suppose adding “most” moves it into the realm of truthiness from a certain perspective. Sounds true — unless you happen to be living in reality. To those of us who do live in reality it sounds as though those who harbor these sentiments are saying that they, being strong and wealthy, are not affected — as much or not at all — by biophysical collapse. Which is sheer idiocy. This is one planet. Wealth is not going to insulate you from the effects of living on this planet. To the contrary, wealth is useless in the face of these effects. Might even be worse. Because to be wealthy, you must live in areas of wealth concentration, which are, universally, every one, highly fragile living arrangements, and especially so in the context of breakdown.

Most of the world’s population does not live in these complex — and therefore uniquely vulnerable —wealth-concentrating environments. Moreover, even those poor who live amongst the wealthy are more likely to survive chaos than their rich neighbors. Most of the world’s non-wealthy have advanced skills, coping mechanisms, hacks, and social networks that have all developed over centuries to allow them to meet their needs despite this culture that works so hard to deprive them. Note, my friends, that the poor are still with us. They have survived because they know how to be survivors. Who of the wealthy could raise their own food? Or design a household water system? Or even know where to go to acquire these necessary skills!

So shove off with your pity. You are the ones who are going to go first, and you are too stupid to understand that. How about you go take care of your own needs so the poor aren’t forced to waste their lives servicing yours…

See? This is the kind of week that I am having. The work I am doing is draining and comes with a hefty dose of guilt, as most jobs will these days. I am doing this work so I can have medical insurance, but that doesn’t seem to be working now that I am $5900 in debt from one emergency room visit — for heat stroke, a condition that is likely to be all too common in this heating world. And the irony of needing medical care for the effects of climate change when I am doing a job that contributes to climate change specifically so that I can afford medical care which does not turn out to be true is just too much for my brain to process. This feels like a migraine coming on. Or a sucker-punch.

How do we cope with this anger and guilt and illness and loss? And did I mention the anger…

I talk a great deal about the importance of community in meeting these challenges, but when it comes down to it, nobody is going to help you deal with the emotions — or really much of anything. Most humans do not have the ability to help others right now; they are doing all they can to stay above water. And those that have the capacity will not help. This is as true of emotional support as material support, few who have the capacity to help a friend usually do that. The unfortunate fact is that as a species, as a deeply social species, most of us are terrible friends.

So we are left to cope alone, and most of our coping mechanisms run toward denial and escapism. In other words, we don’t cope. We certainly don’t help others who are not coping. And when we encounter those who are not coping and who refuse to retreat from reality, we label them pessimists or doomers. Call me Cassandra…

This is another incomprehensible irony. Because doom is exactly what we are facing. I look out the window at a red gibbous moon and I see doom. I look at my bank account which is far less than the debts I owe and I see doom. I breathe in the smoke from Canadian fires and I am choking on doom. Doom is the matrix. Yet when we use it as a label for those who see doom, it implies irrationality, perversity, stupidity. So it becomes another layer of dissonance, a reason for self-doubt. Those who are mocked for acknowledging the reality of decline go through repeated cycles of mental instability, despair, cynicism and disgust with the whole of humanity (which is pretty much where I am this week). This, compounded upon the fear and the deep anxiety of understanding, experiencing, suffering from the decay of our culture and the damage we have inflicted upon the world. It is too much.

We can’t not see the harm we are experiencing, but we are castigated for naming it. And sometimes we believe the castigation. Maybe we are over-reacting. Maybe it’s not that bad. Maybe it is that bad now but it will get better. Maybe all the bad is in my head. Maybe I’m the bad… And then we get a $5900 emergency room bill… or a flooded basement… or another week of COVID… or a red moon rising… or… or… ooooorrrrr… These are not things that are in my head. My head is not capable of creating such conditions.

So then it’s back to anger and disgust. Or despair. Because if I am not even allowed to name what is wrong with this culture to my friends and family, then how can I believe that we are going to come together as a society, as a species, to adapt ourselves to these ills… Everybody is looking at their phones, talking about the Olympics or whatever the distraction du jour on offer. We are a world of ostriches sticking our heads in the sand, resolutely ignoring the damned cheetah that is already eating our hindquarters.

(Anger breeds some unfortunate metaphors… and bad language… sorry… not sorry… because you probably understand.)

We are a social species, but society, or rather this particular form of society, brings out our worst traits. And often it comes down to defining we. Who are we talking about when we talk about biophysical collapse? The white guys who go on about population, who are they talking about? The urbanites who go on about agriculture. Anyone who names invasive species and doesn’t put a very select group of humans at the top of the list. Who are we blaming? And who do we think is going to make it through this mess? Using what capacities and tools? It’s all these assumptions that feel like bone splinters in the throat. People who say that the vulnerable — meaning who? — are going to be hurt first and worst when there is no place or state on this planet that will not be equally affected… it physically hurts to read things like that, because it means that even those who do care, who care deeply, who are trying to pay attention and to do something to help, even the best of us have no fucking clue what we are facing!

Fortunately, we is not comprehensive. Those outside we have the keys to coping because they are outside, looking in. Their well-being, their identity, is not tied to the existence of this toxic culture.

I am not so much of a Jeremiah as to believe that humans are going to go extinct in the next few centuries (though most species do eventually). However, this culture is certainly heading in that direction. All those who depend upon it are going to fare badly, and those who depend most heavily upon it for biological needs such as food and clean water will fare worst. But those who depend upon it are the minority on this planet, and those who have resisted this culture’s dominance will survive, will very likely thrive. They do not have toxic social systems. They do have community and some skill at friendship. They also have the skills to live within ecological boundaries. And they can see what is happening and name it. As long as our crumbling, toxic culture is kept at bay, they will do just fine.

But what of the we that is involuntarily trapped in this culture? How do we who see and feel and understand deal with jobs that are stealing more and more precious hours while undermining the biophysical basis of our lives? How do we process the anger and the fear of a red moon rising over stock car racing noise? How do we cope with being so alone in our dark emotions? And being jeered at for having those emotions!

No… this week I am not doing so well…

©Elizabeth Anker 2024