Conversations with Cranks
I’ve had the good fortune of spending most of my life in the company of people most of us would describe as “insane,” but even among the insane there are gradations, from winningly eccentric (like yours truly, I hope) to touched in the head to crazed monomaniacs to the cleaver-wielding. Fortunately for me, my encounters with the insane have mostly been in that more pleasing half of the spectrum. Like most of us, though, I’ve had occasional encounters with kooks and cranks. Of all the vivid descriptions of such encounters I’ve read, most have been from the perspective of the sober, non-insane party. But now, thanks to James Howard Kunstler, I can read about just such a conversation from the perspective of the loon.
I was content to let it drop, but G then said. “You know, you’ve been predicting all these catastrophes for years now, but we’re still here, the cars are all rolling down Broadway out there, and life is going on. You’re beginning to sound like a crazy person.” It didn’t bother me especially that G thought my my ideas were outlandish so much as being comprehensively written off by an old friend as a crazy person, someone who… I dunno… rummages through dumpsters and talks to himself on the street without any sign of a cell phone in hand.
I’ll note, briefly, that I know many freegans who strike me as at least as sane as Kunstler, not to mention people who occasionally talk to themselves, usually about subjects other than peak oil.
I didn’t hasten to defend myself. G obviously needed to feel that the world would continue functioning like a well-oiled machine now that he was responsible for an operation that employed a hundred other people. We parted agreeing to acknowledge a difference in our view of things.
Fortunately this conversation didn’t end with Kunstler stabbing G in the heart with a broken glass bottle. Let’s all be grateful for this minor Christmas miracle.
Of course, Kunstler will get the last laugh when I start working as a stick-thin rickshaw-puller in the nightmarish dystopia that will follow a … gradual increase in oil prices.
Ok, freegans — is that a joke or is it real?
— PEG · Dec 29, 09:01 PM · #
Totally real.
— Reihan · Dec 29, 09:13 PM · #
When I saw this title and the first few sentences, Reihan, I thought this post was about me — given our recent diaper exchange. Um, I mean, exchange about diapers. (The diaper exchange — now, that was a decision that I’d prefer to put behind me. I mean, I’d prefer to forget about.)
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 29, 09:45 PM · #
The diaper exchange… There’s a stockmarket joke in there just /begging/ to be made, I know it!
— PEG · Dec 29, 10:08 PM · #
James Howard Kunstler is a loon. While Peak Oil is more than likely a real issue of concern, it isn’t a revolutionary idea or something that mainstream energy industry people haven’t heard of and already considered in their calculations.
Here’s a quick story. The first time I heard of Peak Oil was at a luncheon I attended about four or five years ago, in which the speaker discussed the theory, and most of the 200 or so people in the room (at least from the small random sample I spoke with afterwards) considered it to be a matter of serious concern, but not something that couldn’t be managed. Was this luncheon a luncheon for lefty green activists? No, it was a luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Houston and most of the people there were energy industry types (not me, I’m just a simple country lawyer) who were getting some intellectual stimulation with their steaks. Peak Oil is an important issue to deal with, but it isn’t going to bring about the Apocalypse or the collapse of American capitalism, despite the wishes of those who would like it to cause one or both of those things.
— Mark in Houston · Dec 31, 01:36 AM · #
Mark is dead on: people choose their dystopia, and they project onto it their ardent hopes for imposing various crazy schemes. I probably have them too, which is why I urge everyone to take everything I say with a grain of salt. I remember talking to a woman who was a huge fan of wind power, to the exclusion of all other alternative energy notions, and I was like, “Hey, what about minor limitations and objections (a), (b), and ©?” You’d think I had just murdered her beloved family pooch.
— Reihan · Dec 31, 02:17 AM · #