I remember the long debates by doomers, both here and on fascistbook.  Oh noes!  We’re all going to die!  The arctic is going to be ice-free soon and the methane clathrate gun will fire and it will destroy the (mumbles a bit) ecosystems all over the planet so humans won’t have any food!  Or was it oxygen?  I know, I was on the ice-free team for a while.  Then a clearer head on an obscure forum reminded me of hysteresis and latency using actual math for thermal mass conversion.  Not that he’s right about other things, but I still can change my mind when presented with evidence.  Timing is still everything, it seems.

Eventually, I figured out that the entirety of Near Term Human Extinction narratives of all kinds were being coopted for centralized top-down control.  OMG we’re all going to die and therefore we must obey the science and follow the science.  It is so much bigger than just a virus.  It is so much bigger than climate change.  It isn’t that I reject climate change.  I don’t.  The other planets’ climate is changing too.  It’s that I reject the Hegelian solutions offered.  It’s the “and therefore we must all unite and obey and conform and be poor” part that I reject.  “If only we all just got 100% jabbed, we could go back to normal.”  “If only we all just stopped driving to work, we could all be happy while owning nothing.”  It’s the same structure as all religious movements based upon organized hierarchy.  If only we all just got baptized and obey the Pope, we can all go to heaven when we die.  No, not that Pope, the other one.  It’s an impossible promise, which can never be delivered upon, even if we impossibly fulfill the conditions for it.

Here’s the thing: If it is in fact true that we’re all going to die in 5-10 years from (pick your fear-mongering scenario, there’s so many to choose from), the LAST THING I want to do with my remaining time left on this planet is to obey some community organizer bureaucrat who can’t deliver on their promises to save the planet in the exact same manner that they can’t reliably deliver the mail or the cream cheese during a blizzard.  Complying does nothing but make me suffer needlessly, and I ain’t got time for that.  It’s not that I’m against suffering.  I’m fully aware that I’m capable of suffering intense pain for a very long time and coming through the other side the stronger for it.  I’m against needless suffering; the kind where you suffer for no reason, no purpose, no meaning, just because somebody gets off on telling you what to do and stealing your labor without reward.

Eventually, I have enough of being told lies just to get me to suffer in my obedience.  So, if we’re going to die, then let it be quickly instead of slowly, and let it be with honor and dignity and a ton of fun, skidding into the grave sideways while exclaiming what a ride it was.