mountainFrugal Journal

[delay]

It's useful to distinguish between the metacrisis and the polycrisis. The polycrisis is an aggregate of "everything going wrong at the same time" e.g. energy, climate, politics, finance, etc. A good overview (minus pandemics) is https://www.amazon.com/Users-Guide-Cris ... 745330533/

Thanks for your reply. I checked out Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed's book and read his chapter on energy scarcity. The book is from 2010 and quotes studies from 1999. The book predicts oil production as a bell curve that peaks around 2005 and drops by a third in 2025. To the author's credit the book mentions the adiabatic theory of oil production.

Given that the predictions the book uses are now 25 years old it's possible to check how they held up. It seems oil production has continued as a straight line rather than a bell curve, see IEA or worldometers. The US Department of Energy predicts linearly growing oil consumption until 2050. New refineries are built based on these predictions. So organizations with vast capital are using these predictions to make investment decisions.

So far the predicted energy crisis shows no signs of showing up, which I suppose should be welcomed as good news.

[jacob]

@delay - I wrote a longer diatribe in response but then decided to delete it after realizing that while---to use the definition above---it would make a difference, getting into the mud of debating a particular point in a particular field wouldn't make a difference that actually makes a difference.

Indeed, the subfields of the polycrisis are all characterized by endlessly nitpickery of complicated subject fields. Climate change, pandemics, energy resources, politics, finance, immigration, ... In each and every case, this has led to situations that remain unresolved as the respective problems keep developing and eventually trigger each other.

The metacrisis is an attempt to figure out why there is this epistemic problem. For example, on this forum we've had some very long threads about climate change and pandemic responses. In both cases, much noise was made but few changed their mind, and in practically all cases, those who followed along learned less from pages and pages of debate than they would have from reading the first chapter of textbook101 instead of turning to Google searches and news articles. Why are we all so tempted to pick a strategy of debate (whether watching or partaking) when/where debate demonstrably only serves to make a noisy difference that doesn't make a difference?

The metacrisis and the polycrisis are two ways of looking at the world, but they're both connected. One can study the symptoms. Those are the individual parts of the polycrisis with its endless debates. One can pick one or two symptoms and become a warrior in those battles, essentially trying to treat specific symptoms. The metacrisis is a more holistic approach of looking for an underlying causes, a disease that explains all these symptoms, like why are humans still arguing textbook101 stuff? The answer is probably "because we can" and/or "because it's highly addictive".

This is indeed a very deep and broad matter. For those who are interested in what is likely the most epic perspectival journey of the 21st century, I'd suggest the following approach.
1) Study each and every field of the polycrisis to a 101 level. Fortunately, there are only 6 or 10 or so depending on how one counts/aggregates them.
2) Develop a fundamental understanding of each field. What is important? What is irrelevant detail?
3) Understand how the fields are connected and how they trigger each other.
4) Look for similar patterns in each field, like the way they're approached. Shared paradigms.
5) Understand how paradigms evolve.
6) Develop a response, that is, figure out what to do about it. (ERE1 is a response for individuals of a certain type of character.)
7) Figure out responses for other types and characters. (This is what is being attempted by ERE2.)
8) Figure out how to get different types and characters to work together. (ERE2 heading towards ERE CIty)
9) Figure out how to treat the metacrisis diseases.
10) Figure out how to cure the polycrisis.
11) Figure out how to cure the metacrisis.

[Henry]

endlessly nitpickery of complicated subject fields.

There is a sociological term "elite overproduction." It simply means that the number of people who believe they are qualified for elite positions exceeds the number of elite positions. This results in nitpickery to be viewed as a job survival tactic and not a linguistic annoyance congesting an otherwise meaningful discussion.

[suomalainen]

I read your other post, which I thought was “better”. My reaction to the above “why do we do this?” Is that humans gonna human. Cognitive biases, including confirmation bias, tribalism, etc. Your other post made sort of clear the problem with 8-11 above too — it all assumes / relies on “better” humans, which I believe you even called out as “smarter” and “more empathic”. I dunno. It’s a bit like expecting monkeys to solve a god problem. We probably die off before we evolve there.

[J_]

1) Study each and every field of the polycrisis to a 101 level. Fortunately, there are only 6 or 10 or so depending on how one counts/aggregates them.
2) Develop a fundamental understanding of each field. What is important? What is irrelevant detail?
3) Understand how the fields are connected and how they trigger each other.
4) Look for similar patterns in each field, like the way they're approached. Shared paradigms.
5) Understand how paradigms evolve.
6) Develop a response, that is, figure out what to do about it. (ERE1 is a response for individuals of a certain type of character.)
7) Figure out responses for other types and characters. (This is what is being attempted by ERE2.)
8) Figure out how to get different types and characters to work together. (ERE2 heading towards ERE CIty)
9) Figure out how to treat the metacrisis diseases.
10) Figure out how to cure the polycrisis.
11) Figure out how to cure the metacrisis.

@Jacob I think that this is a very clever engineer way of approaching those crisises. But...

I have studied the Hanzi Freinacht books "the Listening Society" and it sequel "Nordic Ideology". A heavy read. Very worthwhile because those books approach both crisises in a very elaborate way which touch/work not only on the more personal approach but also on how to reach much more people: how to reach societies. And at last how to combine both to work to a cure for what you name the poly crisis and the metacrisis for both are intertwined.

ERE 1 and ERE 2 fit both very well into the way the Hanzi books works it out.
Those who not want/can/understand all the technical problems of the world can nevertheless work to personal and societal ways to find together solution(s).

[delay]

@delay - I wrote a longer diatribe in response but then decided to delete it
...
In both cases, much noise was made but few changed their mind

Thanks for your responses, I'm a natural contrarian and not offended by diatribes. I learned that you agree with a book by a Guardian columnist from 2010. I was in that position myself, I read the Guardian and books by its columnists from 1988 to 2018. It took me a rather long time to evaluate their stories in the context of trying to sell a newspaper. Fear is one of the ways to sell a newspaper. So a journalist is always on the lookout for a possible new crisis. After 30 years of reading, when I had experienced none of the predicted crises, I started to take their reporting with a grain of salt.

[jacob]

Thanks for your responses, I'm a natural contrarian and not offended by diatribes. I learned that you agree with a book by a Guardian columnist from 2010. I was in that position myself, I read the Guardian and books by its columnists from 1988 to 2018. It took me a rather long time to evaluate their stories in the context of trying to sell a newspaper. Fear is one of the ways to sell a newspaper. So a journalist is always on the lookout for a possible new crisis. After 30 years of reading, when I had experienced none of the predicted crises, I started to take their reporting with a grain of salt.

FWIW, this [argument] is also known as the "turkey illusion".

Having worked the trenches of no less than 3 aspects (energy, climate, pandemic) of the polycrisis, I already know most if not all of the contrarian takes and where people source them from and thus what they're likely to argue next (mentioning the abiotic theory gave it away ). This is why I'm no longer interested in contrarian debates where the point often is to argue just for the sake of arguing. Been there, done that, and burned out. Too much like running on a thread mill. Lots of talking, getting nowhere. All debate is good for is showing who is better prepared, better at googling, and better at presenting. It's basically the internet version of amateur sports. It may be fun as a diversion, but like pickleball, it's not worth the mental equivalent of tendonitis. I'm trying very hard to avoid the temptation to get into the fray again.

An important part of trying to understand the metacrisis is why people overwhelmingly prefer to get and argue their facts from newspaper articles, Google searches, and increasingly TikTok et al. instead of (here's a wild idea!) developing a more comprehensive/fundamental/scientific framework or some other epistemic strategy. It's information meets psychology meets philosophy meets sociology.

As such the metacrisis tends to attract "galaxy brains" from the humanities (or people who crossed over from science), whereas the polycrisis appeals to the more mathematically oriented who often just want a technical hobby in a controversial field. In contrast to @J_ my working hypothesis is that a solution can not be found by different people each working on parts of the problem having only a passing knowledge of the grand context. The fact that this is what everybody has been doing from modernism onwards is (in my hypothesis) what caused the SNAFU in the first place.

[Henry]

Too much like running on a thread mill.

Truth comes out.

[jacob]

I can't spell.

[delay]

FWIW, this [argument] is also known as the "turkey illusion".

To reply on a lighter note, it seems to me the illusion is on the side of humans, who project themselves in the turkey's place and feel the turkey deserves to live until it dies of old age. But a turkey is not a human, and a domestic turkey's purpose in life is to be food for humans.

Humans have predicted apocalypses for as long as history goes back. Like you wrote earlier, "Rather, as resources are depleted, the get increasingly more costly (in terms of existing resources) to dig out until eventually it costs as much to dig them out as the cost of the resources used (net zero). " Things end slowly and not in a big bang. Perhaps the model of a bathtub filled with liquid dinosaurs is close to the truth, and we will indeed run out of oil. Like you wrote earlier, a bell curve can appear to be a straight line for a time, and a large enough bathtub can look like a straight line for longer than we care about. The large oil companies are investing like oil wil not run out during our lifetime.

For myself, I have come to believe that liquid dinosaurs are big oil marketing, and the earth produces oil constantly as in the adiabatic theory. But I'm just an amateur in the field of oil and I do not hold this belief strongly. As our Guardian journalist writes, if the rate of adiabatic production is low compared to the existing oil supply, the adiabatic theory is indistinguishable from the bathtub model's bell curve

[chenda]

Humans have predicted apocalypses for as long as history goes back.

Yes although it many cases it may have been inspired by actual apocalypses. The preponderance of flood myths, which can be found in cultures all around the world, may have been a collective memory of the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose drastically. Similarly the apocalyptic narratives in the bible and koran were likely a consequence of the collapse of the Roman Empire, which was itself likely in part due to climate change and disease. Buddhist and Norse narratives from the same period are suggestive of a global climatic crisis around this period.

[mountainFrugal]

# December 2024
What a great month to end the year on. There is something that is always retrospective about the end of the year. New beginnings. Hopefully you already started those beginnings! It is easier to see if you will stick with it if you are already doing it. If it is a good idea then you should just figure out how to start doing it in the smallest way possible to move it forward. I had a lot of time to contemplate integrate the lessons from the year (next post) and revamp my 5 year plans.

I finished up an 8 page comic (Tarmo) and shared it with friends and family. It is one many partially completed projects that could be completed at any time once the motivation strikes. My art friend DS and I sat on a video call while each worked on finishing up an unfinished comic. There was some chatting, but mostly just like working in the same office and sharing the results. Tarmo is my honorary Finnish name from my postdoc friends which roughly translates to energy (@suo correct me if it actually means something else hilarious!). I am having fun putting this character through the ringer. I want him to be gritty as fuck in all his adventures.

I started a new training program this month (various stats). I did the first three weeks and am now in the recovery/integration week. At the end of each week I am physically tired and looking forward to my rest day (Monday) where I just do art, think , read, cook and roll out. Our trail running crew had a Jingle Jog/potlock hosted by the matriarch of the group. It was miserable conditions, but everyone was in good spirits. I utilized my evolved thick hair to keep me warm when soaking wet and then heading up in elevation to snow-line. The early season snow provided a nice base for nordic skiing. I did a number of 20 km days, 1 30 km, and a 50 km day. It is going to be a great season having these Zone 1 (Z1) workouts already in the exercise base bank.

DW and I did our annual back country ski to get a Christmas Tree. We harvest one that is just small enough for me to carry back through the forest on skis. Hence our continued fascination with "Charlie Brown" (h/t @henry) trees. We also spent a warmer afternoon winterizing the house. We were not prepared for the early season snow so I needed it melt a bit before getting on the roof to remove any remaining leaves and acorns. We also did our 2x/year chimney sweep.

The holidays messed up the class schedule a bit, but provided some time off of teaching weekly classes (watercolor/ink and nature journaling 3x each). I sold one art piece at the opening last month, but sold three more this month. It feels good because one of each of the categories is going to go on someones wall, including one in Philadelphia (visiting for the holidays).

Socially, DW and I attended 4 friend dinners and are going to participate in a space themed murder mystery tonight for NYE. My character is a two headed "Beeble Brayn" loosely based off Beeblebrox from Hitchhikers Guide. My second head is a sock puppet made out of a threadbare cycling sock. In my role on the non-profit board, I volunteered for a movie night and for Giving Tuesday. At the Giving Tuesday event, I met a new student, she is now taking multiple classes per week at Darmera.

I will post my yearly update when I have a bit more time to edit it.

[suomalainen]

Tarmo is my honorary Finnish name from my postdoc friends which roughly translates to energy (@suo correct me if it actually means something else hilarious!). I am having fun putting this character through the ringer. I want him to be gritty as fuck in all his adventures.

Your friends think highly of you. There’s a bit of “grit” to the word in my mind, so I would go with “vim and vigor” or just vigor. Energy is too bland. That said, google says two icebreakers and various other ships have been named Tarmo, so it’s got that “strength” connotation as well. Finns love that shit - vigor, strength, resilience.

Love the journal by the way!

[mountainFrugal]

Finns love that shit - vigor, strength, resilience.
Love the journal by the way!

Thanks @suo. I will continue with the character under this name then!

[mountainFrugal]

# 2024 Review

This year was awesome! I did a majority of what I thought I was going to do (see cross off list in illustration). There were some plans that changed so I did not get to some projects because new serendipitous opportunities popped up that aligned with a larger number of goals.

DIY Tenure
First of all I pulled the plug on full time employment after wrapping up a successful (on my terms) academic science career. This was the most useful thing to have figured out after going back for a few years. I still like some things about academia, but there are too many downsides now that DIY tenure on my own is an order of magnitude better. I can now take my ideas from the science art program I designed for academia and just implement them on my own through Darmera and Montology. . The year started off well with our paper getting published in Global Change Biology. On July 1, 2024 I granted myself full DIY tenure with the title Montology Participatory Professor of Alpine Ecology, Mountain Movement, Visual Storytelling, Bicycle History, Bicycle Physics, and Bicycle Design. It is the most prestigious title ever granted within this one year old organization ( , https://paulgraham.com/love.html). Studying bike physics and engineering has been extremely fun.

Darmera
Not letting my 40 yo quarter life crisis go to waste, I opened an art gallery just because it is fucking cool. We are now consistently break even with overhead. A few nights of teaching, some art shows, and a monthly art workshop and we are there and get 1000 sq feet of studio/project space for whatever. Owning a gallery has an additional perk that you can show you are the gatekeeper to showing your own work. I successfully put together a show in a month that integrated previous ideas and new ideas of nature, shape, value, color, gallery layout, minimalism, show hanging effort, audience, marketing and sales. I sold 4 pieces of 15 (3 additional pending) and can now update my art portfolio website with the high resolution images.

Alpine Ecology
This fall I did a part-time caretaker job at an alpine hut for 5 weekends. I will do the same and perhaps a bit more in 2025. I can exercise (hike/run) while on the clock while stopping to talk to tourists. When I am not moving, I developed a handful of sit-spots at various elevations corresponding to different ecotones. The nature journal observations and practice at these sit spots became the basis for my now weekly nature journaling class that students pay to learn. All of this is part of a larger DIY masters in Alpine Ecology project. My "thesis" project will be a zine series over the next few years that increase in complexity as my understanding of the primary literature and my observations merge.

Movement
This year wrapped up with 681 hours of total movement (500 goal), 3533 km (4000 goal), and 81,014m of gain/loss (70,000 goal). Arguable I would have easily made the distance goal if I was not on the bike trainer for the past 2 months, but I do not feel like imputing. The year started out with about 175 hours of construction (on Darmera) with consistent, but shorter cardio for the first 5 months. My base took a hit early this year, but I regained a lot of it back by cycle commuting, running, and more recently getting very specific heart rate zone workouts on our rear wheel bicycle trainer. The early snow storms brought an early start to ski season in December and with that I started a new cardio/strength/training plan (very similar to Uphill Athlete) with the main goal of making my movement through the mountains more efficient and elegant. I have a local ultra (56km) with 2500m of gain/loss in mind as my June 2025 test piece with a handful of training routes I would like to PR this year. I did not even really attempt them this year because my base was not there from the winter/spring. Older AND faster is the motto this year. .

Social
DW and I road tripped to Vancouver Island B.C. to visit our good friends that are building a permaculture farm. They need a few more years for the nut trees to start producing, but they are literally building a food forest not just pretending by youtubing about it. A majority of the food we ate came from right there, including the venison protein source. Lovely people, lovely project.

DW and I attended (or hosted), over 20 social dinners throughout the year. This is a common way that we socialize in smaller groups (both introverts). Cook good food and bring the social game for a full evening or two a month. My social skills have improved significantly in the past few years through constant effort and feeling uncomfortable a lot. Darmera also offers a good opportunity to be social, but on terms of my design (gallery openings, workshops, events, etc.). I also forced myself to table and try selling zines at a zine fest where I interacted with hundreds of people. It was exhausting, but I survived. THESE ARE LEARNABLE SKILLS! (Thanks again to @mooretrees for the social "coaching" few years ago).

I joined the Chamber of Commerce Board where Darmera is located and also the board of a recreational non-profit. I get to interact with really interesting people that span different subnetworks within our rural region.

Creation
My final academic paper was published January of 2024 to start of the year right. I did a monthly blog post and monthly review illustrations here along with this yearly review. Participated in inktober. I completed 6 30+ page zines and sold at least 1 of each at the zine fest or during my gallery show. I also made money from 14 commissions and doing bike repairs. Renaissance skillset makes it rain whenever you put even the slightest of effort to "sell".

Life Editing
I gave up booze and coffee. It is a no brainer in hindsight. I can train WAY harder without occasional alcohol messing up sleep. A little green tea if I want some caffeine. The saved money can go into hosting more dinners and donating to local causes.

Sold some equities and paid off DW's remaining student loans.

2025 is shaping up to offset all of my costs based on incidental income from creative projects (and alpine hut care).

Living the dream while mitigating sequence of returns risks.

[Mousse]

I really enjoy your updates, this is really cool and inspiring and thought-provoking. Thank you for sharing and congratulations on an awesome year!

[delay]

My social skills have improved significantly in the past few years through constant effort and feeling uncomfortable a lot. ... THESE ARE LEARNABLE SKILLS! (Thanks again to @mooretrees for the social "coaching" few years ago).

Thanks for your journal update! The number of things you do in a year is admirable, I don't have anything like that amount of energy Where can I find more about the social coaching that helped you to learn social skills?

[mountainFrugal]

Thank you @Mousse and @delay.

The social learnings and coaching are sprinkled each month throughout the journal since early 2022.
The TLDR is that you have to actively put yourself out there. Start really small at first and then gradually build. Just like learning any skill.

As an example, I was trying to get an art group together in our small town. I wanted to start making fliers (basically the most passive thing I could do). @mooretrees encouraged me to ACTUALLY talk to people. I started trying to talk to people one by one at first and see if they could introduce me to other artists. I also started doing art in the open with my little sketchbook. So I did that for a while. It acts as a filter for those who are interested in art. That morphed into hosting a monthly drink and draw at a bar with a friend. I met my current business partner's girlfriend there. We got invited to a live model session in the next town. I met my business partner there (he was hosting). Fast forward a year and we were at drink and draw and hatched the plans to open Darmera (October 2023). We started working on it the very next day. Found a place to rent and signed a lease. Spent 6 months remodeling and then opened our gallery/classroom. Now we host classes every week and events a few times a month. At every juncture when I wanted to just be a passive INTJ, I thought of @mooretrees initial coaching and actively went against that. Here we are. Start small and get comfortable being uncomfortable.

[suomalainen]

https://www.seekdiscomfort.com/

(it's a youtube thing. now with merch!)

[sodatrain]

As an example, I was trying to get an art group together in our small town. I wanted to start making fliers (basically the most passive thing I could do). @mooretrees encouraged me to ACTUALLY talk to people. I started trying to talk to people one by one at first and see if they could introduce me to other artists. I also started doing art in the open with my little sketchbook. So I did that for a while. It acts as a filter for those who are interested in art. That morphed into hosting a monthly drink and draw at a bar with a friend. I met my current business partner's girlfriend there. We got invited to a live model session in the next town. I met my business partner there (he was hosting). Fast forward a year and we were at drink and draw and hatched the plans to open Darmera (October 2023). We started working on it the very next day. Found a place to rent and signed a lease. Spent 6 months remodeling and then opened our gallery/classroom. Now we host classes every week and events a few times a month. At every juncture when I wanted to just be a passive INTJ, I thought of @mooretrees initial coaching and actively went against that. Here we are. Start small and get comfortable being uncomfortable.

This is a really striking example illustrating your point MF! I love it - thank you for sharing. I think this model can be more than just social skills, but to help live a life that you want to. Gotta start seeing/being the change you want to see/be/realize in the world.

It reminds me a bit of something from Brene Brown that really struck me years ago. She talks about fitting in vs belonging. We try and fit in and be cool when we are younger. High School. And hopefully, we begin to realize who we are, what we want independently, and we then find other people with similar interests, beliefs, values etc. Some of us are fortunate enough to really 'find our people' and end up surrounded by and existing with a peer/friend group (or even jobs!) where we really understand, can be ourselves, click easily, and just end up living our best lives. I feel very fortunate to have been able to transition from a way of life of trying to fit in to belonging. It's taken me a long time and and took many hard decisions. The process didn't really happen until I was mid 30's but it was an awakening. I had to get divorced. It's been hard on everyone. But I hope that the long term outcomes will be as rewarding for everyone as they have been for me. The point is, I'm not living a life I really love. And I am excited for my future - despite the shit storm going on in the future. The ERE philosophy and community has absolutely been a big part of that transformation and finding clarity and contentment that I was seeking. Anyway... I'm rambling.