http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

According to the good doctor, when people are committed to a wrongheaded view, especially in a group or “cult” context, they will make enormous efforts to defend the view despite contradicting evidence from the environment. Contradiction assumes many forms, rationalizations, for example. One has only to think of the use of ad hominem attacks against pro-Global Warming (GW) scientists. One avoids the facing the real dangers and costs of GW by deflecting attention and pent-up frustration / fear against the “bearers of bad news”. “They” – IPCC climatologists, ecologists and even proponents of green energy and sustainable development – are portrayed as “Evil Greedies” who foist “the GW scam” on the innocent public in order to “make trillions from carbon trading”. The Oil lobby’s professional GW “debunkers” urge us to “follow the money” to discover the “hidden agenda” of the IPCC thus – incredibly and brazenly – inverting reality. It is actually the fossil fuel companies who are defending THEIR monetary interests with their anti-IPCC “junk science” “debunking campaign” (which goes as far as setting up phony on line “citizens forums” for the “defense of scientific integrity” to propagate anti-IPCC propaganda).

The earth is truly in need of a Great Cleansing..

I personally believe that much of the pathology – individual and collective – of modern societies is due to our inability to confront reality:

- drug addictions (legal and illegal),

- extreme sports, thrill seeking (including juvenile criminality);

- cultism and religious, political or racial fanaticisms;

- violent / brutalizing entertainment,

- foreign military adventures;

- cynicism, despair, mental illness;

- scapegoating..

These are all forms of escape or flight from a reality which has become too frightening to deal with. Scapegoating is especially dangerous: it provides a quick adreneline “fix” or “high” and deflects attention away from real villians / problems onto the backs of “expendable” victims. Unfortuantely, scapegoating appears to be hardwired into our nervous system: even pigeons and rats suffering repeated electric shocks engage in scapegoating as a stress reducer..

The worst is that the mass media are controlled by the fossil fuel / big business lobbies. Robert McChesney is a valuable source of info as is Noam Chomsky on media control / democracy isssues.

http://www.robertmcchesney.com/

As you point out, the citified “masses” are out of contact with physical reality and their own instincts (which are on red alert!). Observe the popularity of “disaster” themes in pop “culture” /”culturetainment”..

Because we have been brainwashed and rendered incapable of dealing with the alarms raised by our instincts we must necessarily engage in escapism and scapegoating as stress reducers: unresolved chronic stress reactions can kill (ulcers, cardiovascular disease, glandular dysfunction, depression, neuroses and, at the limit, psychoses..) Dangerous times these..

For those who read French,

http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/la-tempete-aurait-elle-pu-etre-moins-meurtriere_852056.html

the above article denounces the laxity of zoning codes which permitted residential construction in coastal floodplains. Result: the great storm which recently whipped the coast with hurricane force winds (160 kph / 100 mile per hour), killed 62 (at latest count) and caused massive property damage. One builds in insane places because the Boomers must have their “view” of the sea. Indeed, they did. Talk about a disconnect from reality!

On the positive side, I am happier now than in many years. Beyond the personal sense of vindication that “I was right after all: the world is going to hell in a handbasket”, there is the recognition that “things are coming to a head”: the abcess can be lanced, at last..

The failure of the Old System conceals an invitation to create a new one. Only fools would turn away from this opportunity! But until recently this opportunity was obscured by the superficial glitz and apparent success of “Boomernomics”. Today that ideological delusional systems is rapidly becoming untenable to more and more people and new movements exporing new forms of social and economic life are emerging: Transition Towns is one interesting example.

However, things will have to get worse before they can get better (and they may not get better – we can only try though..).

There is even an opportunity today for spiritual rebirth: in truth, there must be spiritual rebirth before any SERIOUS political, social, economic, technological or environmental rethinking can occur. I am amazed at how the dominant vices of bourgeois culture – Hypocrisy and Inequity – are targeted in the New Testament. I don’t find such emphasis in reading the I Ching or the Upanishads. Christianity perhaps needs new wineskins for old wine which improves with age..

By the end of the century, sugar maples may have migrated north out of New England and the Vermont maple syrup culture may be no more. In the mountain west, bark beetles reproduce by the gabillions because the winters are no longer cold enough to kill them off. As in the mountain west of Canada, we are losing the vast majority of our lodgepole and ponderosa pine forests to the critter.

We could go on. But when you are citified, sitting in front of plasma screens all day, or hooked up to smart phones and other gadgets, really, how would you even notice what is going on all around you?

We have lost the ability to experience our own biological instincts telling us that we are in trouble, our habitats endangered, catastrophe in front of us. Hello?

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Grizzly_Bears_Move_Into_Polar_Bear_Habitat_In_Canada_999.html

Grizzly bears move north into polar bear territory. Formerly the two species did not mix (confirmed by historical records for fur trapping in the north kept by the Hudson Bay Company)

Ah! The psychology of the dear deniers! Lord, bless ‘em (no one else will)..

I recently watched a short video with a financial type from the Netherlands, who goes around “debunking” the Peak Oil Crisis thesis. His argument:

- there is still plenty of oil in the ground

- it is just getting “more complicated” and “costly” to get at it.

THEREFORE: THERE IS NO PEAK OIL CRISIS.

The hick of course is that the advocates of the Peak Oil hypothesis argue:

- there is still plenty of oil in the ground

- it is just getting “more complicated” and “costly” to get at it.

Sheesh! gimmee a valium..

Heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio last night. An Inuit (Eskimo) hunter claiming that the “sky has changed”. Elders remember the sun rising in a slightly different place (!!!) and at the winter solstice instead of 1 hour of solar twilight, there are now TWO (!!) The old folks concluded that “the earth had tilted”.

Apparently, not so crazy as it sounds (just the interpretation is wrong). The effects are due to changes in the light bending quality of the atmosphere as the temperature, thickness, etc of layers of air are modified by global warming.

In the north there are now invasive species for which northerners have no name (despite the fact their ancestors have been living there for thousands of years in some cases):

- biting bugs where there were none

- robins

- blue jays

- gray squirrels (as opposed to theblack arctic squirrel. I’ve seen ‘em: one species cannot be mistaken for the other)

- red fox (replacing the more specialized white arctic fox as the reds move north)

In parts of southern Québec province:

- the disappearance of an utterly magnificent bright red arctic dragonfly. It is retreating north to it’s native habitat as the province warms.

- vultures have become an invasive species, moving north from the U.S.

In the far north, arctic circle, a new summertime sport: outdoor swimming. Used to be too cold, isn’t any more.