Pages

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

I am a Cosmic Schmuck - Peak Oil, Catholicism and Guilt

Had one of those "Wow, it's so obvious in everybody else, why didn't I see it when it was me" moments. Been fascinated by Peak Oil for about the last year, maybe year and a half, since I first learned about it. The concept of the world slowly running out of fossil fuels, descending into chaos and violence as civilization collapsed around them... the imagery just stuck in my head and I came back to it fairly regularly. Weirdly apocalyptic Mad Max scenarios running rampant through the imagination. Now, I certainly hadn't started stockpiling canned goods and automatic weapons, but the idea of civilization's structural collapse and the ensuing drama stayed scarily in the back of my mind. At times there was this visceral sense of 'something bad is coming'.

I was reading something else today, vaguely related to Peak Oil, when the author observed that how people interpret Peak Oil and its possible outcomes relies on how those people are conditioned to think and the perspective they enter with.

Well, duh, right?

And the thing is, that for the last several years I've been reading so much about how pre-conditioned mindsets and 'reality tunnels' condition our responses to damn near every situation, almost every occurence, but this thing had slipped by me. Like you never see the plank in your own eye whilst [you like that don't you? "whilst", indeed] complaining about the toothpick in another's, I had never connected the dots between this odd sense of foreboding I had when thinking about Peak Oil with the ideas I was raised with.

Now, I lay a lot at the doorstep of the Catholic Church. My parochial school and religious upbringing experiences probably rank up there with my parent's relationship and divorce as 'key' events of my growing up. How those things shaped me, for good or ill, conditioning my behaviors both conscious and unconscious that, to some extent, still affect and influence me.

So here's the point. Catholicism's overall thrust, Christianity's emphasis, in my life were themes of guilt, sin and punishment. You know, I envy those who can come out of that Christian headspace with nothing but the 'positive' aspects of forgiveness, love, humanity, etc, etc. But I'll always have the impression of a God [capital G, of course] sitting high above, cataloging your sins and preparing for the day you're punished. And you can be damned sure you're gonna be punished good and hard. And his representatives on earth, the message they emphasize is the fact that all those folks who don't play by our rules, well you're welcome to join them and burn in a fiery hell of anguish, torment and suffering.

Because God loves all his children, of course.

How I'm not more fucked up is a miracle. [Praise Jesus!]

So anyways, Peak Oil to the Collapse... Dog eat dog and man versus man in survival of the fittest!

My head went that way, because in hindsight, it's just so damn Biblical! Peak Oil, the collapse, the horrible, terrible chaos that we'd be forced to endure and suffer through... see, it was only us getting what we deserve, because we hadn't thought it through. We hadn't used our resources wisely.

See, society was going to collapse because of our sins.

And we deserved that punishment.

It's just so twisted, innit?

And the more twisted bit is that I didn't even realize the "why" of why I was thinking that way.

I've been deep into the concepts of "winner scripts" vs "loser scripts", optimism vs pessimism, the importance of choosing your perspective, etc, etc...

But still at times don't realize how deeply ingrained a lot of this stuff is and how it still fucks with my head.

So therefore, this bears repeating:

"The Cosmic Schmuck law holds that [1] the more often you suspect you may be thinking or acting like a Cosmic Schmuck, the less of a Cosmic Schmuck you will become, year by year, and [2] if you never suspect you might think or act like a Cosmic Schmuck, you will remain a Cosmic Schmuck for life." - Robert Anton Wilson

No comments:

Post a Comment