Update

[The following is an edited transcript of a video posted to my Patreon site.]

I've been away from the research side for quite a while, focusing on work and some normal stuff for a change. 

But I have been keeping up on what's been going on in the world. If you've been tracking my Twitter (now X) feed, you can see a lot of the stories that I've been most interested in. Of course, they have to do with the ultimate end state of everything, which is death of humanity. 

Key to those things are the collapse of Earth's ecosystems and the emergence of invasive species contributing to our extinction, such as viruses. 

And then, of course, there is the pollution issue, which is directly affecting us like it's affecting other creatures on the planet. We have injected some pretty nasty man-made chemicals into our system along with basically everything else in the world, and we're starting to pay the price.

I have also been tracking one of my earliest interests: astronomy. You've probably seen the news about the solar storms that we've been having. Those are pretty interesting. They also have a component in the disaster realm, of course the possibility of the equivalent of shutdown of power grids and other things, with effects like the electromagnetic pulse which I explored in my first novel Lights Out. It does make for some very pretty aurora. I didn't get a chance to see any, but I have a friend who did. and a lot of other people around the world did. So, that's all the consequence of our sun’s being in its most active period of its 11-year cycle.

And then there's the social upheaval, the potential of having an authoritarian fascistic state resulting from developments here in the U.S. and around the world that very likely could exacerbate all of our other problems as many of the adherents are in serious denial about what's going on in the world and in particular about the vulnerability that all humans have. 

None of us has a degree of superiority that is of any significance over each other or other species especially when it comes to our combined survival. We as a species have essentially taken the role of the ultimate invasive species, using abusing, destroying everything in our path that doesn't serve our very narrow purposes which unfortunately doesn't serve the purpose of survival for most of the life on the planet.

I have been keeping up on that, viewing it through the lens of my research, since my research really is just a set of hypotheses that helps to guide discovery: questions about how things work, what's likely to happen, and testing, testing, testing. Don't take anything for granted, trust yourself no more than you trust anything or anyone else. Basically, trying to stay honest. 

I am continuing to follow those hypotheses and the kinds of things that they predict, just to see what happens and then prepare basically a comparison between the worlds that it projects and the one that we're living in.

So yeah, all that stuff is going on, mostly in my head. I have done some writing and I suppose I could say I've been mainly in the test phase. 

Also, the recuperation phase, because currently dealing with all that negativity is stressful. It kind of reached a level where it was intolerable, so I had to take a little bit of now time and just focus on what for me is normal stuff: trying to find another house to move into that is smaller and more efficiently meets my family's needs and essentially jettisoning the waste that I've been carrying around for probably at least 20 years. So that's fun.

Getting back to viruses, there's COVID, and COVID is about to make a major resurgence as a new variant that is essentially immune to our medicinal approaches to fighting the disease is very soon, if it's not already, going to be like a whole new pandemic. And there's bird flu, which I've also been tracking. Thanks to the anti-vaxxers the basic science deniers among us, diseases that we had under control as a species are now making a comeback, like measles. 

So, I've also been dealing with the huge amount of just disappointment in the judgment of many people in the world around me. Part of me wants to attribute it to the variables that are affecting other species. I'm sure that there's a lot of that; but there are cultural deficiencies. We've avoided holding people accountable for meeting common values like, primarily, long term survival, at least from my point of view being the ultimate one. 

It's not just this generation, but generations past. We're just reaching a point where ignoring those limitations is no longer an option. We have gotten to the point where there's nowhere left to plunder without destroying ourselves; and we've probably surpassed that point by now, so I'm going to continue trying to learn from all of this. 

For now, I think my focus is going to be on the application and exposition of values. As I've been saying in some of my personal videos, the world is dying and I'm doing this stuff, and hoping to be able to turn that stuff into something that's going to ultimately slow things down at least to the extent that I can, as opposed to just living my normal life and continuing to accelerate the damage.

Six Months Out

In the roughly six months since I completed the last major phase of my research into population and consumption, and its implications for the future, I have been focused on two things: surviving, and writing books that will hopefully be ready for the Christmas buying season. This has resulted in a drop in blog posts and other writing, though I have occasionally released new music.

I recently reviewed blog posts from 2011, around the time I completed the previous phase of research, and found that many of the issues that concerned me then are still in play. Of course, now there is more evidence that the world is undergoing a human-caused mass extinction event; and that catastrophic methane release from permafrost is imminent, if not already in progress, which could push global temperatures above habitability in the not-too-distant future. The causes of the existential threats that I explored then remain extremely relevant now, such as the global domination imperative built into our culture and our economics. My current projects deal with much of that, using new material and old material, in both non-fiction and fiction.

A non-fiction book, to be titled "Confessions of a Reluctant Planet-killer," is entirely new and autobiographical. It begins with how my views have evolved, from exaltation of unchecked growth and open-ended innovation with an outward focus; through discovery (in my own unique way) of fundamental relationships between population, consumption, and happiness; to an awareness of the need for what I call "global responsibility" to offset the negative consequences of "personal responsibility." A pivotal part of the book, reflected in its title and many of my earlier blog posts, deals with how I've failed (and continue to fail) in exercising global responsibility to the extent needed by all of us if humanity is to have any future worth living in, thus contributing to the horrible alternative. This effort is meant as a "coming out" about something few people would even consider bad, an example that hopefully others may be inspired to follow, and together try to remedy.

Another book, tentatively titled "Creations of a Reluctant Planet-killer" is a mix of old and new creative writing, including short stories, poetry, and essays. While much of this work involves themes familiar to readers of my novel and blog posts (including some of those posts), it has a mix of entries that have a broader appeal. I continue to work on "Visitors," the sequel to my novel "Lights Out," which, like its predecessor, is an outgrowth of my research, and has gone through several major revisions as my research has evolved.

With a lot of discipline and some luck, I expect to roll out these books, and perhaps some related music, over the coming months. In the meantime, I will try to be more diligent in writing for my various blogs and Web sites, and perhaps add a few more "Universe X" posts along the way.

Primer Preparation

I'm taking some time to prepare a PowerPoint presentation about my population-consumption-happiness modeling, which I'll post on my Web site as a primer for those who are new to what I've been doing and don't have the patience to look at everything I've produced.  As a consequence of that work and starting my new job, the frequency of my posts (or at least their size) will probably be reduced for a while.

The review is already helping with my thinking about the model's validity and applications, which makes it a good exercise regardless of the physical result.  Bear with me, and I'll try to share my insights as soon as I process them.