The Solstice time of year

My psyche is dealing with what I can only describe as a one-two punch as a result of my current reading list: The Archdruid Report (and the book, The Long Descent) from John Michael Greer (JMG), and The Philosopher and the Wolf by Mark Rowlands (MR).

First, very brief descriptions:

• JMG's recent work (at least the part of it I'm reading) clearly states that resource depletion (specifically peak oil) and, secondarily, climate change guarantee that the days of the industrial society are numbered. He sees attempts at converting current society's demands to run on renewable sources as futile (they wouldn't have been in the 1980s, but they are now) so all that's left to do is prepare for the decline. He makes a strong case that the decline will take centuries, and preparation for it goes way beyond stocking up on canned goods.



• MR's book is hard to summarize and even harder to do justice. Starting with the well-researched and more or less proven premise that apes' reasoning and intelligence grew out of social structures that selected for scheming, deceipt and malice aforethought, he describes how his relationship with a wolf helped him "connect with" the part of him that is "pre-ape." There is much more to his book, but this is a start.

Not everything that I'm learning from JMG is news to me. I decided not to have children when I was very young (I'd say 8, maybe 10 - about the time I asked my parents to pay for my memberships to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club) primarily because I couldn't stand to be around them. But as I matured into my early 20s (this was the late 1970s), my motivations were more ecologically minded. I knew that, as an American, the single best thing I could do for the planet was to not have a child.

So I've been aware - heartsick, for that matter - for most of my life that the impact of humans on the planet has been horrendous and that it couldn't last. I was relatively certain that, if I'd had them, my children would have been the ones to see the beginning of the end of the human dynasty. What I'm learning from JMG is that, if he's right, I could be among the "lucky ones."

Apparently that's not enough. I have to also be absorbed in a powerful book that describes with stunningly sickening examples just how evil simians/apes/humans can be. On the most unforgettable page - unforgettable because I couldn't bring myself to focus on it and read every word, but I certainly got the gist - MR describes a long-running 'experiment' performed on dogs by Harvard research faculty that involves electric shocks [more than that I will save you], under the pretense of investigating learned helplessness as a model for human depression. As MR points out, the researchers were well rewarded in academia, whereas if they'd been doing the same thing in a garage they would have (we hope) been thrown in jail. (After several years and several thousand dogs tortured, it was decided that the model was invalid or useless.)

So here I am, confronted with the evil that is, apparently, part of my ancient genetic lineage, facing a future that bodes ill. It is the dark time of year.