Damnit

[degringolade]

 

Post-Impressionism / Henri Martin/ In the Garden

OK:  I lied.

I told y’all that I would tot out my usual incorrect predictions for this year and I didn’t deliver.  Nor will I deliver in the future.  Now, there is an odd reason for this (at least in my case it is odd).  The reason is simple mature reflection on my attitude and the attitude of others.

The change started out with JMG’s article this week over at Ecosophia.org.  As usual, the artist formerly known as the archdruid came up with a great argument that destroyed what I had written thus far and made it look like childish pouting.  Thanks John.  It isn’t that he came up with a better and more cogent set of predictions, noooo, he had to come up with a pretty hard to dismiss set of observations about how we simply didn’t have enough information about the critical decisions and actions that will be made to make anything resembling a even reasonable prediction.    Strike One. (0-1)

So after reading JMG’s piece, I started to have second thoughts, but I was plowing ahead anyway.  

Then my favorite angry white guy (James Kunstler) came over with one of his brilliantly snarky and bilious diatribes that have been a twice a week joy for I don’t know how long.    Now, the first part is kinda jankey, and the specific predictions made are amazingly specific and a laundry list of possible outcomes to a long list of villains that while hoped for are on the whole a series of long-shot bets with very low probability of actually occurring (though if any of them happen it will be fun to watch).

So, after reading Jimmy K.’s piece I started realizing how making predictions about subjects that you are incompletely briefed on and which reflect more your personal views on justice and a lot of repressed anger really don’t mean anything. Strike two (0-2)

The last piece to fall in place came by way of a simple text message checking up on a friend.  Michael responded as he always does with the simple “but naturally avoiding whatever nonsense is going on. Thoroughly going over Wittgenstein”.    So I went back to my notepads and what tatters are left of my memory from Philosophy classes taken in the 1970’s and then my idea of making a series of predictions when I had no real knowledge of the antecedent conditions just started looking silly.   Our way of organizing thoughts is descriptive, not explanatory.  Our as that dour Austrian so succinctly put it, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”.  Three and out (0-3).

My prediction piece bit the dust with two people telling me I didn’t know WTF I was talking about and one person reminding me just how silly the whole idea of being a prophet was.  

So here is my New Years thought for 2021.  I am hoping that shit doesn't get too much worse too fast.  I hope that we can even eke out a slight improvement over 2020, but I ain’t holding my breath.