What is Doomer Optimism?
This is a little fuzzy but I think this movement has some things to offer. The short version I believe is to be VERY pessimistic about short to intermediate outcomes bordering on a complete reordering of society but that with adequate changes and planning we can be optimistic about the longer term.
1. More detail on what I think it means
Text of a Tweet of mine: Pretty sure I am not a Doomer Optimist but am interested in the conversation and learning from it. The messages I take relate to self-sufficiency on some things, localism/community for other things, general improved resiliency and preparedness.2. What we've done so far
I am big on self-sufficiency. The biggest thing is we are on solar power with batter backup. We're not trying to be green and it turns out solar might not be that green anyway. The grid infrastructure here is so old it's hard the utility to find parts. Seriously. There are so few of us back here that it might not make economic sense for the utility to spend the money on us. If that results in resilience in a doomer optimist sense, all the better. We've done other lesser things for self-sufficiency.3. Our version of localism
There is a sense of community here. It might focus around the fire department but as chief of the FD I might have a bias. People do for each other but other than one exception or two, one thing that is missing is community food production and that's a big one for the doomers.4. Food
Doomer optimism has some overlap with prepping but is less about socking away a couple of years worth of jerky, flour and whiskey and more about regenerative food sources like growing crops on a very small scale, getting eggs from chickens and every so often butchering a cow or the like. We're not there and I don't know if or when we will be there. We live in the forest in Arizona which isn't ideal for small scale farming but there are books about farming in the forest to check out and maybe learn from.5. Why I'm not a doomer
I just can't get to the point of the US getting to be border line post societal but I think the doomers do offer plenty of interesting ideas for self-sufficiency and resilience.6. A bit of my philosophy
I mentioned that there is plenty to learn from the doomers but there's plenty I don't agree with them on. I like to take bits of process from various sources to create my own process.
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