Long-time readers of this blog are aware that it has gone through several phases — or rather, I have personally gone through several phases — of intense doomerism. Leading up to the global financial crash/panic/mini-apocalypse of 2008, I was fully caught up in the doom meme, with a special emphasis on peak fossil fuels and…
Tag: apocalypse watch
Our alien obsession
UFOs and aliens have been a widespread subcultural attraction for decades, but presently they’re bursting the subcultural boundaries and extending into Western society at large to reach the status of a bona fide, near-ubiquitous obsession. Even the (weird, incomprehensible, utterly Philistine) people who aren’t interested in them are now confronted by them at every turn,…
Art and Spirit vs. Corporate Dystopia: Can the enemy’s tools be used against it?
In our present greed-fueled, corporate-consumerist global dystopia, it’s common for artists and subcultural or countercultural thinkers to reject the present order not only in principle but in practice. They (we) are so disgusted and discouraged by the socially, culturally, spiritually, and ecologically destructive nature of the all-dominating system that we’re driven to the edge of…
Economic doom redux: REALMS OF FANTASY and DREAMS OF DECADENCE shutting down
It’s official: Realms of Fantasy magazine is now history, as announced by publisher Warren Lapine at the magazine’s website today (“A Farewell Note from the Publisher“) and repeated by Locus (“Realms of Fantasy Folds“). We’ll all recall that ROF previously announced they were folding early last year. Some of you will also recall that I…
The 1960s Redux: In our new age of apocalypse, is the consciousness revolution back on?
For the past few years, I’ve had a mounting sense that the abortive consciousness revolution of the 1960s and early 70s may have come back from the dead, riding on the wave of apocalyptic sentiment that’s been washing over us all since the late 1990s. Sometimes a new datum, or something that I interpret as…
The Motley Fool invokes zombies and Lovecraft to describe booksellers’ financial woes
You’ve seen me talk here before about the delicious rise of monster metaphors, specifically zombies and Frankenstein‘s monster, to describe the apocalyptic economic troubles of the past few years. Now a writer for The Motley Fool — always a useful and amusing site for its combination of investment advice and cheeky humor — has invoked…
Can Hollywood help us envision a post-apocalyptic world that’s not so bad?
Everything indeed appears to be lining up in favor of producing a post-petroleum, and therefore post-how-we-live-now, world of the near future. You and I will see and experience the transition within our own lifetimes, if we live what’s now considered a normal span. So here’s hoping. As in, hoping not for Star Trek, and definitely not for Mad Max, but for Mayberry.
Peak Oil: Time to shut up as the conversation goes global
Okay, I officially don’t have to talk to anybody ever again about peak oil. Today U.K. energy minister Lord Hunt made the whole thing an official topic of front-table discussion: Energy minister will hold summit to calm rising fears over peak oil Lord Hunt calls UK industrialists together to discuss government response to any early…
Collapse goes mainstream: MSM attention to new film COLLAPSE is attention-worthy itself
I started reading Mike Ruppert about five years ago. As is true for many other people, the man played a major part in my personal introduction to peak oil theory and its global implications — “global” both literally and metaphorically, not only in terms of PO’s worldwide and cross-national scope and impact but in terms…
Zombies, Digital Media, and Cultural Preservation in the New Dark Age
“How secure is our civilization’s accumulated knowledge?” That’s the question posed in a recent essay by Richard Heinberg, one of the most consistently brilliant, reasonable, and nuanced writers about the ecological and cultural-civilizational ramifications of peak fossil fuels and economic calamity. In “Our evanescent culture and the awesome duty of librarians,” he offers a detailed…