Total Eclipse of the Doom: Requiem for Mike Ruppert

Off the keyboard of RE

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Published on the Doomstead Diner on April 15. 2014

Last Sunday Night Mike Ruppert committed Suicide.

For those of you who don’t know who Mike Ruppert was, he was one of the first bloggers to investigate the ramifications of declining energy production, as well as someone who constantly questioned the narrative offered up in the MSM as explanation for things like the 9-11 destruction of the World Trade Center. Some would call him a “Conspiracy Theorist”. More like Conspiracy FACT, but that is a subject for another post.

Like many other bloggers and researchers looking at the problems we face now, Mike became increasingly upset and depressed over the progress and the lack of any real initiatives to try to deal with this stuff in a coherent manner. This is evident in the progress of his writing over the last couple of years, and his demeanor in his podcasts on the Lifeboat Hour, his web based radio show.

Mike isn’t the first Blogger/Pundit to come to an early demise in recent years, Matt Simmons also drowned in August of 2010.  Maybe an Accident, maybe a Suicide, maybe an Assisted Suicide by the Cleaner Squad, who knows? Perhaps even more disturbing is the constant talk of Suicide and Hospicing on Nature Bats Last, Guy McPherson’s blog which concerns itself mainly with Climate Change and the hypothesis that we are on the cusp of Near Term Human Extinction, by mid-century if you accept the arguments made that this is an inevitable outcome.

Not unrelated to this outcome is the fact Carolyn Baker was the first Collapse Blogger to break the news of Mike’s suicide. Carolyn posts regularly on Nature Bats Last, often these days with the explicit theme of Hospicing for people who have incurable illnesses and finding a comfortable way to walk into the Great Beyond. The clear analogy being made here is that the entire Human Race is in need of Hospicing, as we are all condemned to imminent Death under the scenario of Near Term Human Extinction. The difference of course is that while an individual can have a fairly certain diagnosis of Imminent Death in some circumstances, it is hardly a provable certainty that 100% of Homo Sapiens are destined for Death inside 30-40 years or so. Really, even in the case of individuals diagnosed with various forms of inoperable and untreatable Cancers, rarely is there 100% certainty of Death. “Miraculous” remissions do occur with virtually all forms of cancer, though granted at relatively small percentages of the afflicted people.

For the really depressed person though who sees NO ESCAPE from imminent Death and who becomes more focused on getting out of pain or avoiding future pain they are certain is coming down the pipe, the ideas of Hospicing and Suicide become attractive alternatives. The idea here is to Accept Death and become OK with it, and pulling your own plug at a time of your own choosing is a kind of Empowerment for an an individual who feels disempowered by the seemingly hopeless situation they are immersed in.

Everybody should have the right to pull their own plug if they so choose, I have no problem with that idea. What I do find to be worrisome is a developing zeitgeist which tacitly encourages suicide as an option, because people who sink into depression are very vulnerable and can and probably do latch onto this idea as rationale for the behavior.

There is little doubt that as a whole the World and the Human Race are in a World of Shit, and it is pretty easy these days to throw up your hands and say it is all utterly hopeless. Climate Change, Fukushima, Global Wars over resources, Drought, Famine…all you gotta do is read the Newz on any given day and you can hear the Thunder of the Hoofbeats of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Many times in my articles and comments in the Collapse Blogosphere I have used the iconic quote from The Sixth Sense, “I See Dead People”.

Today, Mike Ruppert is one of those Dead People. While he was alive, Mike Ruppert made a difference, many people who otherwise would not be aware of the problems which face us now are aware of them because once there was Mike Ruppert walking the earth, passing on to others what he saw and what he learned.

For those of us not yet counted amongst the Dead People, we still have choices to make, and the biggest choice of all is whether you live to fight another day, or whether you give up the fight, hospice yourself and wait for death, or hurry it along with a Bullet meets Brain combination.

I won’t make a judgement here on Mike’s choice, but for me I don’t see hurrying the trip to the Great Beyond as near appropriate yet. There is a good long ways to go here between now and Human Extinction, even under the most rapid of scenarios. The End Game is NOT written in Stone, and each person can still make a Difference, if not for the World at large at least for the people they know, love and care for. Mike had a clear voice, and it would have been nice if he could have found it within himself to speak a bit longer, but that is not the choice he made.

For those of us not yet Dead, we still have choices to make.

RE

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McPherson was featured in an article written by a member of the audience during a recent presentation. It’s here.