From: grimoire@byron.u.washington.edu (John Greer)
Subject: Re: Singin' Those Apocalypse Blues
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 01:03:25 GMT


Well, this isn't really the direction I'd hoped this thread would go, but 
hey -- I bow to the will of the Lords of Flame, so to speak.

In response to my suggestion that the collapse of our current industrial
civilization is a possibility (not, please note, a certainty), and that
we as human beings and (maybe not parenthetically) magicians might want
to think about ways of surviving it if it happens, there have been some 
critiques of the whole notion.  Josh posts a set of arguments that
some technologies presently in the works, at some stage or other, will
save our cookies.  Peggy talks about "vision" and accuses me of being
pessimistic.  "My name is...", whom I'll abbreviate MNI here for the sake 
of sanity, simply refuses to accept the problem and insists that there
will be some way out because, well, there has to be.

Josh's point of view is at least reasonable, and he may be right  --
though I don't propose to bet my life on it.  There are some possible
technological fixes which, if they were developed fast enough and put
into place efficiently enough, might do the trick.  The fact that
none of these technologies has yet been proven, and that the world
is thus left relying on a pig in a poke, does tend to give me pause;
so does the fact that most of these are being worked on at a snail's
pace, or (in the case of fusion) has been being ballyhooed for four
decades as "just around the corner" despite progress at rates of
glacial slowness.

Peggy, on the other hand, is indulging in the common superstition that
wishful thinking and optimism are omnipotent in the universe.  She
decries what she calls "pessimism."  Is it pessimism to recognize the
existence of a significant threat and want to take steps to avert it?

I'm reminded about the guy who was tired of waiting for the elevator
up on the 50th floor, and didn't want to go down the stairs, and so
went to the nearest window and jumped out.  Someone else, horrified,
called after him as he sped toward the sidewalk, "But what will you
do when you hit the ground?"  The guy shouted back, "Pessimist!"

Civilizations do fall, despite all the optimism -- or should it be
called arrogance? -- in the world.  Endless amounts of vision will
do no good at all if it's founded on willful ignorance of the
situation.  Furthermore, it's precisely this kind of thinking --
the airy assumption that there are no limits and no obstacles that
can't be muscled through -- that has done more than anything else 
to get us in our current fix.

And then there's MNI.  Sheesh.  Does this sound as silly to the rest
of you as it does to me?  We have to come up with some way to pull 
through, the argument runs (and it's not the first time I've heard
it), because, well, er, there's no other alternative.

But there is another alternative, of course.  We can fail, and die,
like every prior civilization.  

He also says -- and this I'm going to quote, to get the full benefit
of the line -- 

>at this point.  We're magickians, why think with limitations like the
>mundanes? 

Well, I'm not a "magickian", as I have some lingering respect for the
English language (he struggles into his Nomex suit, fast, hoping to
outpace the inevitable flames), but as a ceremonial magician of some
years' experience I have to say that I find thinking with limitations
rather useful when, say, I want to interact with the physical world.
I would much rather walk through a door, for instance, than try to
force my way through a brick wall, and I prefer to feed my body at
something approaching regular intervals rather than trying to transcend
the material plane in time to avoid death by malnutrition...

Similarly, when I'm dealing with a huge, creaky and rather dysfunctional
civilization that may just be at the beginning of its death throes, and
I find that it doesn't seem to respond too well to attempts to change
its course to one a little less self-destructive, I start thinking of
things I can do here in the World of Assiah to see to it that I, and
the people I care about, can dodge as many of the bad effects of the
potential collapse as possible...and, among other things, I post a
question to alt.magick...

-- John Michael Greer
   grimoire@u.washington.edu

Newsgroups: alt.magick