Those Who Live in Diamond Houses Should Throw Stones

According to a new study published in Nature, sequestering carbon by injection into the ground has 1/10 (10 times less) of the capacity we thought it did.

This is important because the corporations and oligarchs, who stand to lose money if we actually pursue Climate Action, have convinced many people that we don't have to stop producing CO2 or change our lifestyles/behaviors because scientists can just innovate it away through sequestration. This has always been a claim that requires a healthy dose of skepticism, but we are now seeing it for what it always was, misdirection.

#1: We must stop emitting carbon! There is no magic wand, and continuing to deny that we must sacrifice some comfort and completely redesign society, will not save us.

#2: It doesn't mean we should stop trying to find ways to sequester carbon or that the practice itself is dubious. We need to find other ways to capture and store this carbon. Let's be creative in our problem solving. (I propose we all build diamond houses.😜)

#3: This is a reminder that Capitalism (or whatever you wish to call this current system) has created a society in which people will cling to power and wealth even until the planet is uninhabitable... they will lie, cheat, steal, and kill to maintain the status quo. This commodification of everything, this "infinite growth" delusion, this religion of the "free market," this corruption of democracy, this parasite that feeds on our bodies and dreams, this sadistic and shallow philosophy that people are just labor and the Earths's resources are just capital... this is not an economic system, this is a collective mental illness.

Climate Destabilization should be the Worlds greatest priority. We can't keep escaping reality, not from the Climate, not from our Institutions, not from our "belief systems," not from our nature as humans. We must embrace reality; only then can we change our fate.

Our Own Stories

I was watching a tv series called "The Sandman" about a familial pantheon of godlike figures, and in one scene one of the "gods" is giving a eulogy for her brother and she says:

"To me, he was arrogant, and judgemental and impossible... and he was all of those things... but then, so am I... so are all of you."

Now in this series, that was probably a particularly true statement for the "people" present in the scene, but it struck me as quite true as a general condition of mankind. We tend to believe we are the hero or tragedy of the universe... the main character of life. Whether we ourselves are "judgmental and impossible," we definitely have little trouble finding those things in others. Everyone else "just doesn't understand."

If you're the 1 person who has perfect judgment, the perfect amount of patience and assertiveness, and always takes the appropriate action in all situations, then forgive me, disregard this, and carry on. For everyone else, a healthy dose of introspection now and again is probably warranted.

I don't know if this is a healthy habit but I find it humbling to make a habit of just calling myself (and humanity) a "dumb monkey." When you find yourself being totally dramatic or unreasonable, you are a dumb monkey doing dumb monkey shit. It doesn't mean we should completely give in to our dumb monkeyness... but it means you are just a human, you feel what you feel, you are compelled to have human reactions and behaviors. You are attracted to other dumb monkeys for dumb monkey reasons... you want to eat/drink/smoke/inject things that are bad for you, you get embarrassed, jealous, arrogant... dumb monkey shit.

Instead, we should create a society that enshrines the wisdom we have accumulated into our goals and laws, but also account for the fact that we are fragile and fallible dumb monkeys at times... intractably so.

On top of all of this, we live in a sensationalist society, completely designed for inhuman creatures... evangelizing the "hero's tale" into every piece of media. We preach "might makes right" in every superhero and action movie. We burden our children with the impossible "standards" of Instagram models, and YouTube stuntmen. Ambition is one thing but we often strive to become impossibly weird and inhuman creatures.

We need to stop designing systems for non-humans, we must appreciate it when we excel beyond normal expectations, but also accept our limitations. We must also admit that we are not in continuous homeostasis, we are always in varying degrees of compromise, energetically, physically and mentally. No system will create good outcomes and reduce suffering as long as we rely on ambition instead of data, designed for inhumans.

"Practical Atheist"

Today the new Pope said that he worries that Catholics are not attending church and that they should avoid becoming "practical atheists"...

What an insult to Atheists. Atheists are atheists because they don't believe in a god, your god, any god. They aren't lazy catholics/christians, they've thought about REALITY and come to the conclusion that sky wizards are an unlikely component of it.

What the world should be worried about is NOT becoming a "practical atheist", but a "true believer" in nonsense. The ones committing genocides/assisting genocides/warring against other countries because of religion... the ones who teach their children to "learn by authority" and not through evidence and reason.

Whether this pope is better or worse than the last pope, honestly I don't give a crap. Religions are a relic from a time when we didn't understand the world and we created stories to make ourselves feel more secure, but it needs to go away now and we need to build communities around more solid beliefs and traditions that are healthy for humanity.