BUS RIDES, NTHE, BEND OREGON, AND JACKSON AND PEACH

POST # 128

Readers of this blog will be well aware by now that I refer to my friend Guy's website, "Nature Bats Last" every now and again, probably to the chagrin of most. Yesterday during a long drawn out Greyhound bus ride (which I'll get to in a moment) I used that time to read the latest essay by the author Daniel Drumright. Daniel wrote another essay for NBL probably about a year ago which was extremely thought provoking and significantly long and his latest essay certainly fit that bill as well. What better way to pass the time on a long bus ride, then to have something good to read and think about. His current piece which was written on July 11th, covered plenty of territory, however, one thing that stood out for me was the way he talked about the distinction between the intellectual mind vs the emotional mind and how that affects how we process the information regarding NTHE (near term human extinction). To quote from the article:

"There probably isn’t a single aspect concerning NTHE that isn’t a cognitive dissonant trigger. All of us are of at least two minds: how we intellectually process information and how we emotionally respond to such information — the phenomena that exist to be observed and our ability to observe it. And our emotional capacity to observe a thing often dictates what we imagine exists to be observed. While NTHE is rationally and empirically based, acceptance of such dire evidence however, is wholly an emotional endeavor … and that’s where everything flies off the tracks.
So acceptance of NTHE not only demands “we” first put the highest intellectual value on observable empirical evidence that we innately comprehend undermines our sense of self-preservation, but then, “we” must completely shift to an entirely different emotional state of ‘being’ with such evidence. There are very few individuals in the world who are even capable of attempting this, not alone, maintaining their sense of bearing once they have.
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“We have great difficulty dealing with philosophy in context of real events” (John Ralston Saul)
Yet, here “we” are, attempting to do exactly that, not only in context to an event that has yet to gravely impact the affluent western world, but presuming that when it does, most of life on earth will cease to exist. Like I said, most days I find myself utterly dumbstruck.
Selfishly seeking illumination in the dark light of NTHE is either profoundly absurd or absurdly profound, but then again, so is most of humanity. As to whether “we” agents of demise have any “right” to even seek peace in the wake of our ongoing collective annihilation, is but one of countless questions made irrelevant by the acceptance of NTHE. Never before, has the forced acceptance of thing, so completely erased that which came before it. And where on this side of acceptance, we’ve only the cold vacuum of truth to keep us warm, while virtually every past attempt to define the meaning of life is but now suspended in a state of erasure. There isn’t a single story or event within all of human history that can even remotely serve as a comparative example or an analogy to what the human race is now experiencing."

Having emotionally accepted this idea of NTHE a long time ago now, reading his essay made perfect sense to me. However I do understand that it takes a while, perhaps a long while to come to terms with the information. I am thankful for Daniel's attempt to clarify things.

So, getting back to the bus journey yesterday. I left Bend, Oregon at 7am yesterday on a bus called the Central Oregon Breeze which was scheduled to get me to Portland at 11:00am with 30 minutes to spare prior to my Greyhound journey north to Vancouver. A thirteen year old boy boarded the bus at Madras and was to get off at Government Camp at Mt. Hood, however the adults who were to collect him there, were late arriving, and the bus driver had to wait until they arrived. In the meantime, I was watching the clock and wondering whether or not we would get to Portland on time. If that wasn't enough of a delay, just as we were in Portland on the way to the station, the road was blocked off. Luckily there was an off duty driver on board, who knew an alternate route, otherwise, I am quite sure that I wouldn't have made my connection. I walked into the bus depot and straight into the line up for boarding.

Our scheduled arrival into Vancouver was meant to be 8:30pm, however a big accident just north of Bellingham, followed by an extremely long wait at the border crossing had us arriving about two hours behind schedule. As we sat in the traffic jam, I pondered the madness of industrial civilization which this traffic jam is a product of. The good news if one wants to call it that, is that I foresee a time in the not too distant future, where traffic jams will be a thing of the past, as the population won't be able to afford the cost of the fuel to keep this game going. That will probably make a large amount of people very angry, and there's no telling what social unrest will develop as a result. It should be quite a show.

My purpose for being in Bend, was to help my friend Mary move there. She has grand kids living in Bend and wants to spend time with them. Trying to fit a house worth of things into a smaller unit was a challenge, however I think it went rather well overall.

So here I am back in Vancouver with my buddies Jackson and Peach the Yorkshire terriers. I'm looking forward to spending time with them for the next month.


Happy trails,

Paul

The Thoughtful Wanderer