2021 comes in hot with Michael Dowd, ecumenical Christian preacher turned climate grief advocate, whose Post Doom Conversations are a well of wisdom for anyone prepared to stop fighting the inevitable* and start celebrating what actually can be done in these weird, scary, precious years to come. We discuss his time as an evolutionary biology evangelist and his friction with techno-optimists, what it means to live sustainably within a mature religion of place, urban scaling and collective action problems, a general theory for the collapse of market-based civilizations, and how to reorient one’s faith to planetary and secular values that allow us to accept reality as it is and avoid doing further evil to the Biosphere and each other. (*We spend a lot of time in this encounter digging underneath the surety to ask not “Is there hope,” but “Where am I still doomed by my conditioning?”)
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Intro and outro music by Skytree.
Further Reading:
My appearance on Post Doom Conversations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d2VX3cx-zM
“Irreversible Collapse: Accepting Reality, Avoiding Evil”
Rafe Brown at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum
https://biodiversity.ku.edu/herpetology
“What if preventing collapse isn’t profitable?”
https://www.postcarbon.org/what-if-preventing-collapse-isnt-profitable
“Six ways to think long-term” by Roman Krznaric
https://medium.com/the-long-now-foundation/six-ways-to-think-long-term-da373b3377a4
Gordon White and James Ellis on Accelerationism, Meaning, and Exit
https://runesoup.com/2020/08/accelerationism-meaning-and-exit-rune-soup-hermitix-swapcast/
John Michael Greer’s The Long Descent
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Descent-Users-Guide-Industrial/dp/0865716099
Neil Postman’s Technopoly
https://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-Postman/dp/0679745408
Zach St. George’s The Journey of Trees
https://www.amazon.com/Journeys-Trees-Forests-People-Future/dp/1324001607
Further Listening:
MG on cultural mutation rates, network latency, and the collapse of civilizations:
https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/139
MG with Geoffrey West on Complexity Podcast re: cities and scaling
http://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/35
MG with Scott Ortman on Complexity Podcast re: even ancient rural human settlements obey “urban” scaling laws
http://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/48
MG with Tim Kohler and Marten Scheffer on The Future of The Human Climate Niche
http://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/33
MG with Mark Nelson on Biosphere 2 and the yoga of optimism
https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/95
MG with Lydia Violet on deep ecology and community as medicine
https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/82
MG with Jamaica Stevens on crisis, rebirth, and wisdom
https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/61
Kevin Wohlmut reads The Next 10 Billion Years according to Ugo Bardi and John Michael Greer
https://shows.acast.com/futurefossils/episodes/116
And if you just need a breather, here's my music and my recommendations on Spotify.
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159 - Michael Dowd on Post Doom: Life After Accepting Climate Catastrophe