"Humankind cannot stand very much reality" T. S. Eliot

Analyst Chris Clugston offered a sobering assessment of our response to the crisis that is unfolding before us.  He titles it: The Six Clusters of Denial.

Chris Clugston wrote – “On American Sustainability.”  The full paper can be downloaded from the following website: http://www.wakeupamerika.com/PDFs/On-American-Sustainability.pdf  It contains the models, evidence, and references for the conclusions reached in the attached.

Tim Murray, http://sinkinglifeboat.blogspot.com or http://biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com, said, “I came upon an orchestration, the environmental movement, and all the musicians were playing violins to the tune of “Overconsumption, overconsumption, overconsumption.” They refused to play any other tune or use any other instrument to compliment that narrow repertoire. Apparently some corporate donors were paying them to be a one-trick pony.

“I believe this to be a very succinct and accurate categorization,” said Murray. “I am becoming increasingly impatient with people in clusters three and four. People will not follow the logic of their own arguments to their logical conclusion. It all comes down to what I have argued is a flawed human brain that is a failed prototype of what should have rolled off the evolutionary assembly line to supersede us. Just as the Neanderthals were quite possibly driven off the field by a competitive disadvantage---a language deficit --- homo sapiens of our design should have been pushed off the plate by a hominid who could acknowledge and act upon long-term dangers.

“In other words, we play chess with an inability to see more than one move ahead. With a language of complex symbolism we had the facility to articulate thoughts in a future tense, to speak of potential scenarios and plan for them.  But instead, in my view, language became our albatross, because we used it as vehicle of entertainment and obfuscation.  If I were to write an epitaph of the human race, it would be "Death by Storytelling".  For eons we sat around the campfire regaling listeners with tales---myths and legends that would entrance and beguile us. And we are still doing it. Our appetite for escapist novels, movies, heroic feats of athletic accomplishment and fairytales is insatiable. And if even a morsel of truth is to be swallowed, it must be coated in entertainment.

“The entertainment industry is so pervasive now that it acts as a buffer against reality. Our minds occupy a virtual world, not the real one, which is too raw, shocking and depressing for a primate brain that cannot tolerate more than a minimal quota of bad news. This is not an exclusively human trait, of course. Paleo-climatologist Andrew Glikson commented after a lecture in Australia last year than even zebras practice denial in order to maintain a mental equilibrium. They can be grazing just a few short meters from a lion without panicking. There is an inborn calculation that allows them to "play the odds" that a predator will victimize some other member of the herd but not them. As Glikson put it, we must live day to day.

“We cannot take another step if we think the sky is falling.  On a personal level, some measure of denial is a necessary coping strategy, especially for a species that can foresee death. The only difference, I think, is that humans have taken this pardonable personal posture and completely enveloped themselves in a make-believe world---thanks to language and symbolism.

“Rather than seek knowledge, we reach for a cushion---something which the priests of corporate capitalism and Madison Avenue are only too happy to throw at us. The sum total of delusional individuals is a collective that walks blindfolded toward the cliff of extinction. Organized religion is only the most developed form of delusional thinking. We are all religious it seems, most especially the so-called intelligentsia whose intellectual realizations are not truly internalized.  We embrace faith without evidence and grasp at false hope. So even those in our movement who understand "reality", who see the cliff ahead, cannot help themselves from attaching a Hollywood ending to their story. After all, their audience demands it. We crave intellectual comfort food, not the clarity of mental castor oil. 

“A man in Ireland recently asked, "Is there anywhere to turn from the despair which all thinking and rational persons must feel?" Indeed there is. Hallucinate! Take refuge in a virtual reality. Perceive the real world differently and confuse that perception with objective reality. Embrace a faith like environmentalism, which seemingly offers us the hope of accommodating infinite growth by infinite reduction in our per capita consumption. Or believe that industrial civilization, or civilization itself, is sustainable, if only it was organized along equitable lines.  Or immerse yourself in murder mysteries, children's fantasies or tales of the supernatural . Or invest your hope in a technological fix. 

“Dream about new technological miracles that will save us from ourselves, much in the way that the Nazis dreamed of miracle weapons that would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The name of the game, after all, is to feel good about yourself, not about actually changing society around you. To paraphrase Marx, philosophers have merely tried to understand the world, the point however, is to be able to live in it by looking at it through rose-colored glasses---or inventing another world in which to dwell. 

“My father did that from a hospital bed. After he had lost his wife of 63 years, and his favorite son, in quick succession, he suffered three months of intolerable grief, then snapped. Thereafter he would ask me how they were doing, and proceeded to tell me how he had spent the day in some exotic locale like Mexico, India or down the mine shaft where he slaved for much of his life, coating his lungs with particles that would eventually choke off his oxygen supply.  Dad even imagined that his male nurse was the host of a TV program which he appeared on. It was as if there was a Stephen Spielberg in his brain working full time spinning out fables of the fantastic.

“And my father believed in every one of them, recounting the details with complete sincerity and a straight face. He was like a child who compensated for his loneliness by conjuring up an imaginary friend. That is exactly what most of us do. We cannot take in the full panorama of stark and brutal reality, so we live in our minds--- or watch American Idol. And once every four years, we vote for a savior who promises to fix the unfixable.

“At this late date, should we disturb these refugees from horror with information that is not likely to save them? And what thanks will we get? Are Cassandras ever popular---or useful? I, too, struggle with these questions. I chose to humor my father with fictions of my own, constructing stories of how his wife and son were doing well and asking about him.

“It got him through the night---- until he died two years later from congestive heart failure. Perhaps that is what I am doing now. Getting through the night by writing about it, and pretending that writing about our predicament is in itself, an adequate alternative to solving it. As Peter Goodchild wrote with disarming candor: "The keyboard acts as a safety valve for low-level political dissent, serving roughly the same function that sex and alcohol have served at other times and in other places, allowing ordinary people to believe they are rebels when in fact they are doing nothing to disrupt the structure of society." I suppose then, that I belong to a sixth category of denial---that cluster of 'realists' who confuse their realism with making a difference.”

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If any of us, no matter what our race, creed or color might be, refuse to engage our U.S. Congress as we have not for 30 years as to the population/immigration equation-our children will find themselves living in a terribly degraded America where the American Dream will be described by the history books as a 'fleeting fantasy' from the era of 1950 to 2010.

These are several of the top organizations where you can take collective action to change the course of American history as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Take collective action at:

This is the best website to start:  www.numbersusa.com ; watch Roy Beck’s “Immigration by the Numbers” at 14 minutes. Bi-partisan and very effective. Become a faxer of pre-written letters to your reps to make positive change.

Also: www.fairus.org ; www.capsweb.org ; www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.populationmedia.org ; www.worldpopulationbalance.org ; www.populationconnection.org ; www.quinacrine.com ; www.familyplanning.org/ , www.skil.org ; www.growthbusters.com; www.populationpress.org ; www.thinkpopulation.org ; www.carryingcapacity.org ; www.balance.org ; www.controlgrowth.org ; in Canada www.immigrationwatchcanada.org ; in Australia www.population.org.au andPublicPopForum@yahoogroups.com; in Great Britain www.optimumpopulation.org ; and dozens of other sites accessed at www.frostywooldridge.com.

Must see DVD: "Blind Spot" www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/ , This movie illustrates America's future without oil, water and other resources to keep this civilization functioning. It's a brilliant educational movie! www.blindspotdoc.com

Must see: Rapid Population Decline, seven minute video by Dr. Jack Alpert-

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWduFB_RX0

Must see and funny: www.growthbusters.org ; www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXSTrW_dARc
Dave Gardner's Polar Bear in Bedroom: growthbusters.org/2010/03/save-the-polar-bear-in-your-bedroom ; Dave Gardner, President, Citizen-Powered Media ; Producing the Documentary, GROWTH BUSTERS; presents Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity, Join the cause at www.growthbusters.org ;760 Wycliffe Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80906 USA; +1 719-576-5565

Check out this link with Wooldridge on bicycle and Lester Brown and panel discussion:

www.upnorthmedia.org/watchupnorthtv.asp?SDBFid=1631

Tomorrow's Americaproject on www.youtube.com/contemporarylearning.

Producer: GEORGE A. COLBURNwww.tomorrowsamerica.com

DC: 202-258-4887

Email: gac@starbrightmc.com

Link to www.tomorrowsamerica.com for more discussions on America's predicament.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.starbrightmediacorp.com

www.tomorrowsamerica.com

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Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1 888 280 7715