I live on a small island in the Hauraki Gulf of Aotearoa, New Zealand. The country was stolen from the indigenous Maori at the point of a blood soaked bayonet on a gun being held by British Imperialists.
The permanent resident population on Rakino Island is currently 21 humans, thousands of birds and millions of insects….for now. The island has neither an electrical grid nor reticulated water. I generate electricity with a solar array built with rare earth metals unscrupulously mined in ‘developing’ nations with close to no environmental controls and naturally tonnes of carbon. I store the energy in toxic batteries full of acid and catch soon to be irradiated water from my roof.
I head into Auckland more or less weekly to buy provisions on a gas guzzling ferry, with on average, 20% occupancy, often 5% and less.
Living in relative isolation, off grid, gives me a somewhat different perspective on industrial civilisation, as almost everything I see when I go to the city seems insane. Frantic looking sapiens scurrying around, almost none smiling and many eyes glazed over as they stare gauntly into small screens. George Orwell was sadly spot on.
For the last 6yrs I have been studying full time, the ecological armageddon unfolding around me. The official statistics according to the conservative U.N. guesstimate is 150 to 200 species going extinct every day.
It will almost certainly be many more and we are soon to follow the rest of our victims. Why is this not the first item on the news every night? The answer is because the entire culture is insane and in an insane asylum you can ignore anything including that the asylum is on fire.
If I sail into Auckland City in the evening, I see multi story buildings lit up on every floor whilst a handful of underpaid and under-appreciated class warriors clean up after the white collar workers who have gone home to whine about their soulless jobs and odious work colleagues and to beat their wives and impress their neighbours with gratuitous consumption and their success at grinding the living planet into dust.
I have just witnessed my 57th Xmas and each one sickens me more than the last. I clearly remember my mother being tortured by Xmas, by not having enough money to buy presents for her numerous children that would some how show us that we were loved and so we wouldn’t be envious of our friends presents. 8 children is a legacy of her being, to quote Ma “A Former Prisoner of the Catholic Church”. The sacrifice I watched Ma make for over 50 years clearly showed us that we were passionately loved. The Christian church says that “God created man in his own image”. The misogyny aside how about the arrogance of the species that created a god in it’s own image!
The vast majority of what has been purchased in the last few weeks by hundreds of millions, was bought on credit and will be in a land fill by the end of next month, washing up on my beach or to be ingested by the plummeting numbers of fish still alive in the irradiated, acidic ocean .
George Monbiot who writes at The Guardian recently wrote; ” Everyone wants everything – how is that going to work? The promise of economic growth is that the poor can live like the rich and the rich can live like the oligarchs. But already we are bursting through the physical limits of the planet that sustains us. Climate breakdown, soil loss, the collapse of habitats and species, the sea of plastic, insectageddon: all are driven by rising consumption. The promise of private luxury for everyone cannot be met: neither the physical nor the ecological space exists.”
Infinite growth on a finite planet is insane nonsense and virtually no one challenges it. To quote Edward Abbey the desert anarchist “Infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”. More on Monbiot’s take on this aspect of the insanity here; Everything must go.
The evidence is clear that we are in the early stages of non-linear runaway warming covered previously on this blog, but every where I look it is “Business as Usual” or half arsed solutions that are nothing of the sort.
We can all see that a B-grade reality show TV ‘Star’ now has his small “Pussy Grabbing” hands on the White House Ipad with the nuclear codes. That in itself is patently insane but the insanity goes much, much deeper.
Some believe that the solution to fiat currency is crypto currency’s like Bitcoin and a host of other pretenders. This store of value depends on the internet of things working every day. Turn the electricity off at your place and let me know how that pans out for you. I have Tulips from Amsterdam and a bridge for sale at a good price if anyone is keen?
The insanity of the large corporate NGO’s and “Green Parties” is another more insidious aspect that concerns me.
Many of us have been involved in environmental organisations like Greenpeace and 350.org for decades, trying to slow down the ecological armageddon unfolding. This was good honourable work but now those organisations have been co-opted by the dominant culture to be little more than agents and brokers of ‘sustainable’ products as we bare witness to the 6th Great Extinction and are trying to guess where in the extinction line we sapiens are.
They used to talk about tipping points but now that we have crossed so many the subject has been dropped, don’t mention the elephant in the room. At what point will these organisations admit that the game is up? Not as long as their paid ‘activists’ need paying from your donations or in the case of 350.org from the Rockerfeller Foundation.
Our youth are under more pressure than ever before in the 300,000 yr history of our species and we are still dumping on them that they have to fix the unfix-able chaos that we have bequeathed them. I find that immoral, heartless, brutal and cruel.
I stressed for many decades that my humble contributions to slow down the armageddon were having little effect and I strove to do better but one consequence of me understanding that we are over the cliff and descending into oblivion is now I am no longer burdened with such a responsibility.
One of the straw man arguments against accepting that collapse is locked in and unfolding is that people will no longer make an effort. I strongly refute that argument. The good people amongst us will do whatever they can, as long as they can, irrespective of the outcome but none of it now will make a dog shit of difference as long as the Military Industrial Complex carries on it’s murderous way prompting any and all independent nations to invest heavily in military equipment and training in a feedback loop of it’s own.
For more on the collapse of complex societies like ours check out Joseph Tainters’ The Collapse of Complex Societies
My personal “Antidote to despair” is to volunteer at the not for profit Rakino Island Nursery where we propagate native plants to re-wild the island. I’ll be surprised if I see any of them grow 1 metre, so much for the accusation that I have given up.
First with civilisation and then with the discovery of fossil fuels our species went down the inevitable cul de sac of extinction. Industrial civilisation is unsustainable in any form, forget the myth of renewables saving us, it’s a great white lie.
Cut the youth some fucking slack, surely they are entitled to that?
I have a monthly show on The Progressive Radio Network called Nature Bats Last, that I have taken over from Professor Guy McPherson. I will continue to chronicle the great unraveling and the attendant insanity until either the lights go out or I quit to maintain my own sanity.
Have a great extinction everyone, it’s been nice knowing you. Very soon the living will envy the dead. The new denier position is to deny early stage runaway. Don’t be the last generation of humans to lie to our youth, they deserve better.
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
Thank you for your honesty. Accepting something doesn’t mean we have to like it. Thanks for being here for us! I wish you well, my friend.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m telling the truth to the kids, doing my best to put it in a way that they can understand, somewhat, and deal with it, kinda- as well as any of us can… I tell them the world is majorly fucked up- this they know already… I tell them not to have kids, as I have done… They’ve come to me because their families are laid to waste by this horrible set of circumstances and our own human frailties. I’d vote for you for president, and campaign HARD… I like to think that it’s not over till it’s over, and as long as breath is drawn, hope remains.. Science tells me otherwise, but I’m human and continue to not give up some small thread of hope, and do what I can, while working at coal fired power plants, so I can see it happen right in my face, be part of it, because I can’t stop it… the work will go on whether I’m there or not… Tomorrow I will shred, as best I can at 56, with an 11 year old in tow, at a ski resort not far from the power plant where I slave away… that ski area shouldn’t exist, but I’m real glad it does, so we can SKI… for tomorrow anyway… The resort uses a shit load of power and barely keeps running economically… If it wasn’t for the arctic polar vortex shifting ( paul beckwith educated me on
that – Thanks bro! ) this would likely be their last year… That last year will be coming soon.. We don’t get snow much here anymore, don’t get much cold, except for the warming effects that drift the arctic air our way, so they can make some snow and run the lifts, which continues the process… very sad times and I’m very happy to share them with a noble soul such as you Kevin… Peace be with you, never give up till your last breath,
remember to always help your momma in the kitchen and drink upstream of the herd ❤
LikeLiked by 3 people
Perhaps you will soon realize like I did that there is no hope for the species. These blogs are unread epitaphs that garner no hope, no solutions, nothing. I’ve taken another break and it feels good. Nobody cares. Nobody ever will. The race towards self-extinction precludes all else. This speck of dust flying through the cosmos is indifferent as well. It may be Christmas, but that’s just another delusion that I don’t bother to celebrate. How could I? I know the truth, but I also know that the truth is meaningless now. Enjoy your island – while you still can.
LikeLiked by 2 people
[…] via At the Edge of Extinction only Insanity and Delusion Remains. | Kevin Hester […]
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thanks,Kevin. Peace.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In the very near future we will appreciate…” Good night and good luck “.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Guy making many similar points in this short clip from one of his recent presentations;
https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fguymcpherson.com%2F2017%2F12%2Fedge-of-extinction-action-vs-hope%2F&h=ATNn6qQwcptcrIo5zh_aX85SvMDc2jWwO2IKPwQICBHgC0Z0B3vuU3Tw8_nt7KRy_TR5JErw4tvvdOgFvghTmezrJ21VmkCisQbHfizhpH5oV6TocBEFDpy_vnQzGavW1t0wErUtdNmbnu1Uxv-UpQTUEoI5ECmKeoOWHxuOTDHSfFhyMnhEeR6oHPy68abqZ_8YPhD71DBSy3UJA1tD4TlEjuJyjWpbli_NkdtqR8sHnQleyEP_AA5TjBKkoXpcB9wDovyORilsmRepYJoQs2WDd8k8OXfa6c4
LikeLike
For some light relief: I visited Sydney at the end 0f 2014 and the activity levels were as if everyone was on something, it seemed pathological to me!
“The Window of Opportunity to Salvage Your Planet and Its Human Inhabitants Is Now Closing” For today’s Quote of the Day, I turn to the mysterious FINAL book of the “Handbook For the New Paradigm” series titled, “Messages For the Ground Crew.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
CNN: “This Year Has Been an Unequivocal Disaster for the Future of the Planet”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Kevin, (Kevin suggested I add this private email to the comment board.)
I hope that you are doing ok. I’m not a facebook friend of yours as I have never had a facebook account – never had a smart phone. Please know that I am private emailing you as I don’t want to comment on your site as a means to market my recently published book which very few people know that I have written – not even my family apart from my husband Dan. I’ve copied a small sampling of the content with the initial poem “Dissonance”. The way you’ve lived your life demonstrates to me, from a personal perspective, how spiritually connected you are to the environment. The impetus for this contact is to let you know that you have left an imprint on me related to your advice to the youth which influenced me to include it in a section of my book. I too feel very passionately about the burden we are placing on those that come after us. The cultural brainwashing is formidable.
I haven’t bothered with the formatting of the copied data you will find below. Again, I’m not trying to market my book though if you wanted to view it in Look Inside on the Amazon.com site the presentation and distinction of the poems is much clearer. Hope the suggestion doesn’t offend you. There always seems to be conflicts in much of what we do. I am conflicted about the oligarchical framework within the Behemoth of this company though it was a means to market/sell my book which I can authentically say was spiritually guided. I feel that those needing a desiring a resonate healing will find their way to the book. The ying yang of my book is extinction and eternal life. I have had many personal experiences of existence after the demise of the physical. My framework includes the seen and unseen world and I wish to influence a more peaceful death as people make their transition to the spirit realm. I know very little about it though I have a knowing and confidence that some of my loved ones exist still in the unseen world.
I had mixed feelings when I read your blog today – very glad to be in the club that has been able to filter through the BS and stand firm in my own knowing, along with feelings of compassion as you sounded, very understandably, bitter – more so than usual. Some of those folks chained to their cubicals are not deserving of your derision in my humble opinion. The pain inside is likely far greater than your own.
My beautiful 20 year old son Sam passed away in November 2011 from an accidental drug overdose as a result of a relapse with poisoned drugs. He knew prophetically what was to unfold – environmental collapse – his death. He was a beautiful compassionate human being who was a modest yet gifted artist. He was very uncomfortable with patriarchy. What he thought was cocaine was laced with opiods. Six years ago I knew what was coming at us in a tsunami like wave has been realized in social and environmental collapse – and then some – faster than expected as they say. Our family story is a small part of the book though strongly represents a voice which represents our youth.
Thank you Kevin for your work. I wish you peace. I have very powerful feelings of anger that wash over me and so I’m not judging in this area. My mental health is not great as I have intrusive repetitive thoughts that I know do not bear repeating though are part of my brain chemistry. I strongly believe this to be part of the human condition though to varying degrees. Gratitude and meditation rooted in a spiritual perspective help get me though. I will get my cues from spirit realm when it is time for me to make my transition. Much too early, it seems for now, though I will leave with relief. For now I do my best to grow and be more loving and compassionate. More frustrated with humans all the time.
Linda Marble
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
Contemplating Consciousness
in the era of
Predicaments
Poetry and Philosophy
moves through you
Linda Marble
CONTENTS
(Poems are denoted in this font)
1
Life Threatening Challenges, Extinction and Eternal Cues
Dissonance
Incomprehensible
Illusion
Hauntingly Lyrical
Close to the Flame
21
The Rocky Road to Maturity
Cultural Shifts Influenced by Technology
Reconciliation
Heart Shaped Rock
Evolutionary Pondering
31
Peer Reviewed Science
Preparing for a Crisis
Practical Suggestions to Understand the Delicate Balance of the Biosphere
Courage
Yes I Do
45
Getting the Message Out
Undeterred
Carpe Diem
Hereafter
55
Shared Death Experiences and Near Death Experiences
Far Reaching Messages
Grief
After Death Communication
Near Death Awareness and Gently Being with the Dying
Numinous in Nature
Sweet Tears
We are Set Free
Gift
Life Threatening Challenges, Extinction and Eternal Cues
Dissonance
Incomprehensible
Illusion
Hauntingly Lyrical
Close to the Flame
Life Threatening Challenges, Extinction and Eternal Cues
“I give us forty years” he exclaimed with a grin and a twinkle in his eyes. I could definitely see and feel the twinkle and it was remarkable to me. Those beautiful hazel green eyes that are now helping someone else see. How would my 20 year old self feel living in the times we find ourselves and how would I move forward? It is possible to be aware of the predicaments and to move forward with a desire to make a positive contribution and to live with passion. Informed decisions based on honest conversations can lead to some enriching and rewarding experiences.
Early in 2013 as I read more and more related to the ecological degradation of the planet, the words came back to me. The left brain was reminding me “What do I know about science?” I was intuitively informed of the possibility. I’m comfortable relying on the 97% of earth scientists who indicate that anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact. Apart from that a layperson is capable of connecting the dots without the need for a degree in science. The grief I was experiencing took on a different form with the growing awareness of the theatre of future. People will be broken when the reality sets in. Feelings of living in an alternate reality are soothed by compassionate thoughts. My sense is that, even if people are not letting on, many are deeply fearful. Denial may be the answer on a superficial level providing a way to keep going until the critical event, when the individual tipping point occurs and there’s no turning back. In our efforts to avoid and deny the current and looming difficulties, we are adding to the burden that our youth will bear.
Dissonance
Young people perceive their elders sheltered in dissonance
Proffering false hope for others allowing them to carry on their comforts and conveniences
When you apply critical thought observing the death in process of the oceans
Melting in an unprecedented manner the poles demise an ominous harbinger
Extrapolating and up scaling future inventions which will be the answer
Suggestions to look at a consumer lifestyle is anathema to what is ingrained
Looking back in the rear view mirror
The consumptive damage to the biosphere
Knowing what I know now how I wish I had refrained
LikeLiked by 3 people
Hi Kevin,
A great piece. How people persisted with the thought that we could solve this crisis without a fundemental reassessesment of our relationship with the military industrial complex will remain the most unanswered question as we fall over the edge.
As it is, the unspoken strategy of our governments is that the last survivors will be the crews of the nuclear submarines, who will be tasked with crusing through dead oceans and targetting vacated cities.
LikeLiked by 2 people
“The country was stolen from the indigenous Maori at the point of a blood soaked bayonet on a gun being held by British Imperialists.”
Could easily have been French, Portuguese or Dutch imperialists and if that had been the case I think the residents of NZ would have fared much less well! If you’ve read any of the accounts of J.Cook or J.Banks you would know that Maori tribes at that time were almost perpetually waring over land and resources and most slept with a mere under their ‘pillows’. I’m not saying anything is right or wrong but what went on in NZ was happening all over the globe. The Maori were apparently a magnificent race and one anthropologist described their cranial bone structure as the the most striking in the world ( can’t remember who). A couple of world wars took the best DNA.
I still meet people who crow about never having taken public transport in their lives! The rot started in NZ long ago. It’s a graceless, mostly soulless place. Attitudes are very much; I’ll do as I please whether it’s a CEO, executive manager or a 19 year old with a car and too much alcohol and or drugs. A man without culture is like a cat without whiskers, lost with nothing to guide him. Every chance for new settlers to create a new and wonderful society but something happens to people when they arrive, they drop their ancient knowlegde, decide all that is new is wonderful and become one bland mass. I have seen this happen to Italians! I don’t know what it is but there is something that brings everyone DOWN to a certain level and does not create a push upwards. NZ’rs embraced consumerism because there was little else to embrace for a very long time.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I love the long commentaries Kevin! Great piece.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A good articulation of what a lot of us are feeling and thinking at this time of year.
I currently have visitors. The bright twelve year old said yesterday”no TV or internet,how can you live here?”
I resisted the urge to tell him he may find out for himself, sooner than later.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Concise and ‘good’ read. Most won’t believe much of it as long as they can buy food at the supermarket and petrol for their cars. It will continue to make me think deeply…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, they deserve better, as does our planet. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
At the edge of extinction, only insanity prevails.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/swaths-of-native-forest-near-great-barrier-reef-set-to-be-bulldozed-20180512-p4zewb.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
[…] via At the Edge of Extinction only Insanity and Delusion Remains. | Kevin Hester […]
LikeLiked by 2 people
In murica , christofascist, fundamentalists hate abortion and family family planning. They hate gays. They enroll their kids in puppet show classes. The puppet shows are to spread a christian message. The christmas puppet show, is about shopping in a mall and how wonderful it is!
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Ode-to-Puppet-show-People-by-Doyle-Chitin-Refugees-180426-639.html
LikeLiked by 2 people
“It is insanity in its purest form. Insanity of individual people, insanity of legal systems, insanity of governance.”
Absolutely spot on analysis of the predicament and the failure of the corporate NGO’s.
I’ll use it for a future blog post I am working on based on something I said in this weeks episode of Nature Bats Last on The Progressive Radio Network about us conducting the biggest game of ‘Jenga’ imaginable by removing keystone species from the biosphere.
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2018/06/everything-that-dies-does-not-come-back/
LikeLiked by 1 person
1973 no less!
LikeLike
LikeLike
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think we need to stop calling fossil RESOURCES fossil “fuels”. They are so much more than that, they have become an essential fossil RESOURCE!
Most of what we see, use, eat, drink & move wouldn’t exist without these fossil resources.
Without enough of these fossil resources, most of us would not exist either & after they become too difficult & expensive to extract, most of us will be gone, transformed into COMPOST, if we are “lucky” & haven’t become “long pig” first, in that case we will end up as POOP!
Perhaps in time, with billions of dead, rotting bodies, they too will with burial, time, heat & pressure be transformed into fossil resources too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We Are The People of the Apocalypse
“Clinical psychologist John F. Schumaker reveals the dangerous erosion of human personality at the heart of modern consumer culture.”
https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/the-personality-crisis/?fbclid=IwAR3lHBb_uq_Gw6ycAhTguKUd_E_He4D97yMU9oGneizP_zWvbkg0MQPspw0
LikeLike