The profound loneliness of being collapse-aware

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

@RealAccountNameHere some of the words here were almost verbatim what I tell my husband and therapist. In a way I’m really glad to see I’m not alone globally, but I still feel hurtful and profound loneliness where I live. I feel so detached from the present and everyone else, watching them go through life business as usual without any willingness to do the smallest sacrifice to their privileged comfortable lives to do whatever little bit an individual can in the face of collapse.

That was a moving piece. Thank you for sharing

I'm very glad my soon-to-be wife see eye to eye on this. I know it's not the same once I step outside the front door, but in this house, it's the unaware that will get looked at as being insane.

I've been around from the old peak oil scene's days back in the 2000's (2005? 2006?) when I was in my early twenties? It doesn't make me lonely, even though becoming aware of it all did cause me to lose most of my friends (they're still trying to party it up, I think, successfully), and almost nobody's really turned up to replace them since then. Loneliness doesn't bother me like it used to, but ignorance and apathy and the toxic positivity that says to wish it all away and get yours while you can is really irritating.

I don't talk about it to anyone anymore offline, because that strikes me as a painfully pointless way to make my lot even worse than it's already been made.