In his episode on The Great Simplification, Luke Kemp, author of Goliath's Curse, talks about his time as a researcher for the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. He comments that, based on his observations of people, lasting very long in this field of study requires a naturally sunny disposition.

This is to counteract the magnetic, soul-devouring pull of the abyss. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.

Such study is potentially insanity-causing, especially when coupled with the obliviousness of the general public (see Paul Chefurka's Ladder of Awareness) and the resulting ostracisation one inevitably encounters when one commits the faux pas of bringing it up with anyone IRL.

It's not that X-risk or S-risk (the risk of astronomical suffering) is itself so dark, although those potential outcomes are obviously as grim as they get. Many of our x-risks are, after all, vanishingly small (e.g., supervolcano eruption, asteroids we can't deflect), and so they're not really that terrifying. You're much more likely to slip and die in your shower tomorrow.

No. It's that serious studies reveal that the existential risks are rapidly approaching 100%, as we are, quite literally, destroying the biosphere that supports our very existence. That we are polluting our bodies with endocrine disruptors, forever chemicals, and plastics to such a degree that male fertility rates are, after aeons of healthy sailing, dropping to zero in the blink of an eye. That continuously rolling the dice on nuclear armageddon is, logically and mathematically speaking, a sooner-or-later guarantee. That all the depleting resources we depend upon for our survival are guaranteed to deplete fully — a true predicament.

It’s the loss of any and all futures, rendering long-term planning surreally moot. I don’t know about you, but if I imagine I know for a fact that an asteroid will obliterate the Earth right after I die of old age, it still completely changes my worldview, even if it wouldn’t affect me directly.

Collapse awareness is an IYKYK situation that cannot be unseen. It’s downright surreal to see the entire globe’s future flip from “our odds are good” to “we are drawing dead” so abruptly and completely. I’ve touched upon this experience in my posts, e.g., in my last one:

When one harbours an opinion so fringe that collapsology contributor Paul Chefurka pegs it at 1-in-10000, it’s good practice to check and re-check the basis for the opinion ad infinitum because of the overwhelming empirical likelihood that one is quite simply mistaken, despite all one’s convictions.

So, I obsessively re-examine the evidence for Collapse day in and day out.

Unfortunately, pretty much everything concerning the polycrisis and metacrisis leading to inevitable collapse just gets worse the more one looks, so while my days sometimes begin with a flickering smidgen of hope that somehow trickled back into my soul during the night – Surely it can’t be as bad as it seems – they usually end with Wow, it’s even worse than I thought! Golly!

Rarely do I make it through an entire day before anxiety sets in, and I have no choice but to drop my demonic devices, deject the dreadfully despairing denouement, and desperately dart outdoors in doleful, despondent, downcast disconsolation to distance myself from the dire directives of doom. Dang. (Ed. Note: this silly paragraph is me allowing myself some whimsicality, vitally important.)

The predicament is that whenever I take a solid break to protect my actual sanity, I’m doomed to eventually return to witness our #FasterThanExpected collapse prognosis having worsened yet again, such as the risk of clathrate dominoes boiling us in a few short years — just one of countless examples I could inundate you with.

My choice is thus between having my spirit ground to dust on a daily basis or desperately disconnecting, but then returning to have my mind blown anew. Pick your poison. Unfortunately, blissful ignorance is off the table for me.

I recently immersed myself in Collapse in conjunction with attending the 3ʳᵈ annual World Adaptation Forum “Facing the Polycrisis”, but as my nature is ill-suited for collapse study (melancholy, latent depression, general anxiety disorder), it's the opposite of a naturally sunny disposition that might withstand it. Coupled with how all news headlines these days reveal nightmare scenarios, behaviours, and outlooks, I can tell it's time for me to put my oxygen mask on again.

Tonight's my premiere for a mini-musical in Copenhagen's Fringe Festival. It's been twenty years since I performed, and it's been really good for me to do something else.

And as Coop sarcastically comments in Friends & Neighbours when he decides to ignore a massive problem for an evening: “That’s the good thing about problems. They’ll still be there in the morning.”

Maybe this book can wait.