Who’s the doomer?

by Kathy Cumbee (bio here, at her first essay for Nature Bats Last)

How many of us have been told at one time or another that we are doomers? I was thinking about that and, although it might be correct to call some of us Cassandras , we are not doomers.

Suppose a wife tells her six-pack-a-day husband that he is going to die from lung cancer or emphysema? Is she a doomer? Or is he the doomer, as he continues to do things that may doom him to an early death?

Is a scientist who warns of global warming a doomer, or are the dirty coal-burning factories the true doomers?

Is someone who warns of the dire possibility of the collapse of more and more
fisheries a doomer, or are the factory fishing boats the doomers?

Are those who warned of a housing bubble doomers, or are the folks who sold unsuspecting retirement funds bundles of dicey mortgages the ones who are doomers?

Are the people who warn about building nuclear power plants on fault lines
doomers, or are those who build them there the doomers? Would living with less
energy in Japan be a worse doom than Fukushima?

In my opinion, warning of potential doom does not make you a doomer. But participating in activities that make that doom more likely: that makes you a doomer.

If we are to be called doomers, let it be for our participation in the culture that eats the future, not for our ability to see and our willingness to speak of the devastation that culture is bringing upon us.

__________________

A new classified ad has been added, and will remain under the “CLASSIFIEDS” tab. I’m also pasting it below:

My wife and I are both 35 and civil engineers by profession. In the last decade, our world view has profoundly shifted from the conventional “you are born, go to school, work, work, work, retire and die” to life is meant to be lived NOW and not deferred to the future.

Not being born in wealthy families, we have had to work to build a small nest egg. Currently, I work as an environmental engineer (Note: my job has nothing to do with protecting the environment, only abusing it more while filling out paperwork appropriately) while my wife is a stay-at-home mom, having worked as a structural engineer for 6 years. I plan on quitting my job by the end of the year or thereabouts.

We have a 3 year old daughter to whom we do not want to pass on the cultural messages we were exposed to growing up. Rather, we want her to grow up in as close to our prehistorical ancestral setting as is possible.

We have (more so I than my wife) come to believe that the only truly sustainable way of life is what we arrogantly and derogatorily call the “stone age”. But for various pragmatic reasons, including the fact that we are vegetarians and essentially have no wilderness survival skills, we are trying to find balance in voluntary simplicity and living as close to the land as possible.

We firmly believe in the healing powers of nature and the company of other like-minded people.

We find joy in natural parenting (non-coercive, co-sleeping, extended in-arms phase) and watching our daughter growing up into a happy, quasi-wild child and desperately seek for her the social nurturing that can only come from living with a varied group of people of all ages.

My wife and I are originally from India where we spent the first 22+ years of our life and have mixed feelings about the manner in which we were raised. While we grew up in the typical informal social setting widespread in India, we do not have extensive experience in communal living.

We are big believers of our experiences and have no patience for sky-god(s), sin, reincarnation and the like. If forced to label our views, would call ourselves agnostic-animists.

We believe that health is wealth and consider organic/whole foods a wise investment.

If you are interested in an alliance, please email us at rschwarzg@gmail.com.