Censored by Chevron!
On the
"Will You Join Us"
discussion board.
Chevron moderators censored a post of mine from a discussion about what should be done to prepare civilization for the end of cheap oil. The moderators cited "community guidelines" as the reason, which usually means they objected to some racial fact or other that was included in the text of the censored post. But there was no racial information in this particular post.
Every species known will exhibit the overshoot-and-collapse pattern given the proper circumstances: bacteria, caribou, rabbits, and us. The reason this is a common pattern is, to some extent, a lack of foresight (especially in the case of other animal species). But in our own case, there is less of lack of foresight and more of a "tragedy in the commons," which is based partly on a voluntary self-deception.
Humans have experienced overshoot-and-collapse events before. The inhabitants of Easter Island grew in numbers and fell prey to a tragedy in the commons in regard to the use of their natural resources, with the result that their civilization collapsed and most of the inhabitants died off. What happened on that island, several hundred years ago, will happen to the whole world soon.
But usually overshoot-and-collapse events are historically masked by wars. Most wars are induced by "population pressure," which is merely another way of saying that some people, somewhere, have overshot the supply of one or more resources available in their homeland and must, to survive, take away somebody else's resources. So they go to war, and they either win or they lose, with the losing side being largely, if not completely, exterminated. So in the history books the deaths are recorded as being casualties of war, conquest, and colonization, even though the ultimate cause is overshoot-and-collapse.
So we are not speaking of a special principle that applies only to the global depletion of fossil fuels. The coming overshoot-and-collapse event is merely the largest that will ever occur in human history. The number of deaths? About nine billion. As a percentage? 95% of mankind. The outcome? A new balance of population with food supply.
The above was most of what I wrote in my post on the Chevron discussion board. It was originally published as a part of a much longer post that I made on SFFWORLD.COM, which eventually banned me because of my casual attitude toward holy feminist doctrine. The paragraph following the above there appears below. It was not a part of my post on the Chevron "Will You Join Us?" discussion.
Those of you who doubt that the races will turn ferociously against each other after the collapse of civilization should reflect that there is no better way to judge the future than by the past. Review, then, the history of Haiti (San Dominique) and Zaire (Belgian Congo). Once you have studied your lessons, come back and tell me how confident you are that racial harmony will endure for eternity.
(Not included in post text.)
I wrote that paragraph early in 2005, well before the Katrina aftermath in New Orleans proved me right. Instead of that paragraph, I closed my Chevron post with a substitute that basically said it matters who lives. I stated that those who should live are people with pioneer skills, such as the hardworking farmer or the adroit primitive improviser. Perhaps that is what Chevron's moderators objected to. They're probably among those with "queen bee" lifestyles that I specifically said "wouldn't last long" in the post-oil world "even if they did survive the Apocalypse."
The moderators sent me an email entitled "Your Recent Submission," which said:
We were unable to publish your submission because the content did not meet our Community Guidelines
We welcome all relevant opinions and points of view and encourage your participation. Please check the guidelines and try again.
They did not say, specifically, which part of what I wrote disturbed them. This is typical behavior for censors. It's possible that I didn't violate the guidelines, so while they invited me to read them again, they didn't mention with particularity how I'd been out of compliance.