I said in another thread somewhere that I blame optimists and "positive thinking" for most all the ills of our civilization.
My own experience thinking about these issues was not a spiraling down to a hard landing and than bouncing back to some state of inner peace and acceptance.
My off-my-meds state is a black hole of depression and OCD, with not even much room for pessimism in there.
I started college with the goal of being some kind of television engineer, largely because it meshed well with my electronics and computer obsessions. Digital equipment was just beginning to be used in television at the time and I probably could have made a very lucrative career in that field... if I'd lived. Or I might have fallen so deep as to be entirely unsocial and unemployable, a homeless guy in the library scribbling incomprehensible notes on whatever pieces of paper he can get. I don't know.
I found my happy place, such as it is, in evolutionary biology and paleontology, and changed my major to biology. I was still asked to leave school twice after that, to get myself "together" in some way, and the university wasn't going to take me back the last time but for the intervention of a kind paleontology professor. Other kind people also kept my university computer accounts open, etc.. My parents were pretty tolerant of me too, or maybe they were distracted by my insane grandma who was becoming a danger to herself and others, and my brother who had cancer.
Anyways, looking back into deep time I found kind of peace in this crazy world, and at the same time my meds were improving.
My brother found the same sort of peace after a six hour surgery, a few rounds of chemo-therapy that killed the remaining cancer and didn't kill him.
This world has seen environmental upsets like humanity before, and it will see them again.
What are the odds of existing in such turbulent times as we do? It is at once extraordinarily good fortune and bad fortune. Nothing to do but enjoy the ride. We humans are not in the driver's seat.
I live my life as an organic gardener as most I'm able, in all my relationships with this earth and society.
One plants seeds and they grow. Or they don't.
Make your garden friendly for birds, spiders, ants, and other predators of unwelcome garden pests, compost all your kitchen waste, and generally the garden will grow
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