Yeah, I tend to agree with that. That business about Jason comparing him to the Nazis was really below the belt. An unjustifiable and unforgivable attack on Jason’s reputation. At least for this, JMG owes Jason an apology. I’d go over to the Archdruid Report and say so, but I very much suspect it would fall on deaf ears.

Yeah, I lost a lot of respect there too. I did get to read the post before deletion, and agree w/ Hasha: it was a good, strong rebuttal. While it was certainly, uh, “strongly worded”, it wasn’t offensive. I would maybe be more or less okay, except for the snide insinuation left after deletion. That’s pretty much unforgivable in my book.

LOL! But in fact, yeah, that does seem fair…

But primitivists are, apparently, banned from the Archdruid Report. I ammended the link in Anthropik’s directory to warn others: “John Michael Greer’s blog, defending the notion of a long collapse. Warning: Greer often makes ill-informed, disparaging insinuations about primitivists, but he has made it clear that primitivists are not permitted to respond in his comments. Defenses against his attacks will be deleted.”

[quote]Jason, you surely know that comparing opposing viewpoints to Nazism is the generally recognized internet signal that rational discourse has come to an end.[/quote]

Right. He so pulled that out of context, and now that your post is gone, a person reading the comments from that thread just ends up with ‘Jason compared JMG to the Nazis, and JMG reacted reasonably by removing his post.’ How convenient…

It is really unfortunate though that you didn’t save that post. It was a strong post that, as far as I’m concerned, adequately addressed all the objections raised to your earlier arguments.

Wow. I’m beside myself. I can hardly believe that.

I used to have a lot of respect for John Michael Greer. Now … not so much.

We’ve had plenty of hairy threads around here, but no matter how heated it got, I never pulled anything like that.

I’m afraid I didn’t save my post anywhere else. Who would have expected Greer to suddenly sink to that level? At this point, those who are still permitted to speak in the thread are congratulating themselves over “facts” like agriculture causing no mass extinctions or global warming prior to industrialism, the mass extinctions hunter-gatherers caused as proven by the “Overkill Theory,” and the sustainability of agriculture in Japan and southern Europe. And, apparently, should I take the time to rebut those “facts” with actual evidence, that work is deleted because it’s not right-thinking. (Suffice to say, none of these “facts” are actually true.)

As for Lovelock, oh I know he’s pretty extreme. The comment on Lovelock being an optimist was made with tongue in cheek.

All I’m suggesting is that we are no more resistant to some of the mess that we’ve created than your average multicellular being.

Yes, but being such adaptable things, we’re actually quite a bit above average. Not invulnerable, not divinely blessed, but certainly above average.

I am saying that you cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that we won’t. I’m not saying any more or any less than that.

But I do think it’s fairly clear that if humans can’t survive, there won’t be much surviving, anyway. Devastation on that kind of scale would be well beyond our ability to handle anyway. If it’s that much worse than what everyone has so far predicted, then it’s already too late, and has been for decades, so what sense is there in worrying about that?

…and if Lovelock doesn’t turn out to be an optimist climate-wise…

Mind you, Lovelock has the most extreme position out there, so if it’s worse than he expects, that means it’s worse than anyone is predicting right now.

[quote]All I’m suggesting is that we are no more resistant to some of the mess that we’ve created than your average multicellular being.[/quote]

I deliberately italicized the word ‘some’. And by ‘some’, I mean plastics and radiation, for instance. If toxins don’t wipe us out, and if Lovelock doesn’t turn out to be an optimist climate-wise, then as a species, we do indeed have pretty good chances of survival. Again, I’m not claiming that we’ll go extinct. I am saying that you cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that we won’t. I’m not saying any more or any less than that.

As for:

[quote]We’re so far down the road of nightmare scenarios, what’s the point? If it gets that bad, who will want to survive, anyway?[/quote]

Not me, certainly… I can’t say I disagree here.