Of course, none of this means that the Doomers are actually wrong but may influence the tendency to be drawn to these issues rather than pursue the typical human tendency to maintain denial for as long as possible.

This is an interesting and plausible hypothesis.
But since it compensate for the "tendency to maintain denial" that would mean that there is an "optimal" level of doomerosity which has some chance to match reality.

I don't agree.  A lot of young and old people are doomers.  And I don't see the male skew you see.  

Of course, it's kind of hard to tell online.  On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, and all that.

David sir, I would like to respectfully disagree with part of your suppositions. While I would agree that perhaps part of the Doomer crowd is there because of the reasons you provide, I think that it goes much deeper than this. I'll explain in a minute. First let me acknowledge that yes, the potential for `doom' is real. Even probable perhaps. I do think things could get pretty bad for a while, but I think that some sort of civilization will go on. I am an optimist, after all. Many people see the writing on the wall and extrapolate that mentally to doom.

I think that the doomerism(?) extends well beyond the PO community, and that it has both psychological and sociological causes. If you go into an inner city neighborhood, or a poor slum on the outskirts of the city, or any homeless camp, you will run into a significant number of people who are disheartened, defeated, and personally doomed. This is best evidenced in the acting out of the youth of the inner city. What have they got to do besides deal drugs? College? They ain't going to no college. They'll be lucky to finish high school. And they know it. In the past few years this feeling has crept out of the ghettos and into middle class and even some upper class areas. People increasingly have less and less opportunities. They are more constrained in life. This leads many to depression and defeatism. Projected outward, it can become doomerism. Not only that, but doom would have a few benefits -the overhaul of society, starting from scratch. Loss of constraints. More opportunities. I think doomerism and defeatism are two sides of the same coin. As someone once said, the difference between suicide and homicide is the direction of the impulse.

Take this with a grain of salt please. That's my admittedly unprofessional analysis.

Thank you Roger. The future is yet to be written...

As per Doomerism vs Whateverism:

I know I tend to the doomer side of the equation.

Put this down to working in the Y2K arena as a mainframe programmer trying to make it a survival situation.

I worked long and hard hours during this event and saw the scary side of what was hidden from most including the idioticy of the Mass Media.

We escaped it but some did not. There was no mention of those that did not. I saw mass layoffs of very key personnel, idioticy by IT management to unheard of levels.

This gave me some insight as to how we react or will react and this gave me my reasons for tending to the doom side of the future.

That being said, I hope and pray that this proposed upcoming event is averted. I have been watching and keenly reading the internet for years and observing as well personally.

Hope is something I keep near but preparedness is something I chose to do just in case.

So I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. I do not do it gleefully. Its hard work and expensive. It detrimental to good mental health and I do not enjoy it.

What I saw after Y2K was that we no longer had a cohesive society. The business leaders threw all morals to the wind and started to take this country economically to its knees.

Our morals shrank to nothing but selfcentered greed beyond belief.

We are not , IMO, no longer a suvivable species in the USA. We have not the core values to make it through.

The folks who populate this website are not the same as the general public. I applaud the attitudes and efforts of those here but realize the difference.

I still work in computer technology, precision farming and other areas. Mainframes no longer exist in meaningful numbers to keep me employed. I am currenly implementing wireless technology to autombile service areas and am amazed at the unbelievable technology in that area(automotive embedded systems) yet realize that the Big Three for all that technology are mostly on the wrong path.

Will our technology save us? I think it still tied to closely to the business side of the equation to offer much hope. If it was diverted? Say thur 'Open Source' avenues? Then we might have a chance.

I suggest the book (online version exists) by Eric S. Raymond  .....www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar and others at that site.

This to me is where we need to be. Using grassroots technology to take control of our future and not waiting for the 'guv/ or biz to make decisions for us.  I don't think they really care.

airdale--"Thankee Sai, if it do ya."

Wow, that's some writing.

Note the virulent language used against anyone who expresses any doubts about the exact nature not of "geological" peak oil (which is a fairly easily demonstrated fact of geology in the past) but about the "catastrophist" vision of the future.

So, Roger, you are speaking of me as "Yearning for a New Dark Age" and "violently hostile" ?
I am very sad...  

Of course, like all "Utopias", the dreamed of "dark age" will not come. The technology cat is already out of the bag. The knowledge will survive,

Agreed 100%, except may be with a toned down "technology cat" (not so miraculous), but alas I expect BOTH a die-off and some persistence of civilisation and technology.
This is what I am aiming for, not out of a craving for "dark age" or a yearning for "a simpler, more primitive, slower and less diverse time, a culture that is more comparable to a known model, namely, the past."

I enjoy too much the current facilities of civilisation to have any desire to give them up.
Though, there is a little bit of a difference in my appreciation with respect to what seems to be the "common greed".
As I am extremely lazy I enjoy to spend very little with almost no effort instead of toiling even more than the primitivists to "keep up with the Jones".

I really don't see the point to have to cling to "complexity, high cultural speed of change, overchoice of options in lifestyle, career and social choices" is this has a very bad EROTI (Enjoyment Returned Over Toil Invested).

And I am fairly sure that CIVILISATION has the best EROTI over "dark ages", primitivism, warlordism and any other apocalyptic credences.
More precisely, rather than aiming for die-off I am NOT WILLING to try to avoid population collapse whether this is to be soft or hard, voluntary or unvoluntary.
Sorry if this is so gloomy but this is unfortunately a TOTAL WASTE of time, ressources and ingenuity.
Overpopulation IS our problem, I seem to agree on this with TechGuy, GreyZone and PeakTO (NOT pretending they partake more than this with me) .

This type of attack of such viscousness and slanderous nature bespeaks something much deeper than a difference of opinion or technical viewpoint.

Could you please READ the arguments between odograph, and me or more recently with slaphappy and Magnus Redin and also Starvid and Magnus Redin (who seems to entertain connivance with both).
Honestly tell WHO is the most viciously slanderous?
Who is either LYING or arguing BESIDE the topic to breed confusion?

and no solution should be attempted because none is desired.

Oh! I do crave for a "solution" but probably not in accordance with the one(s) you are looking for.

I DO CRAVE for a change or restraint on 2 of our most "basic instincts" :

• Men are eager to fight.
• Women are eager to breed.

This were EXCELLENT options all along prehistoric and historic times, allowing mankind to evolve and spread over a seemingly "unlimited", "open ended" Earth.
The Earth is NOW bounded and closed, these are NOW deadly vicious habits.
If we don't rein in these we are going toward extinction, notwithstanding ANY kind of technology, ressources, peaks or no peaks.

PERIOD.

Perfect. I guess it should come as no surprise that just as the status quo seeks to demonise PO aware as the other, members of the PO aware community will seek to demonise serious powering down in like fashion. Truly the benighted vastly outnumber the cognisant, even here.

I would greatly benefit from a fraction continuance of the techno-orgy. It would give my librarian career security, and would allow me to continue my love of playing the electric guitar. However, I have been able to put aside those attachments in my pursuit of assessing just how sustainable any portion of modern life really is. My position of serious consideration of completely eliminating electricity consumption stems from a holistic realisation of the complexity and resource drawdown that would be required to sustain that luxury. To remain ignorant of the fact that to expect one infrastructure based on finite resources will prevail over one that is in certain short future is, well ignorant. Not to mention irresponsible and indefensible.

The simple reality remains, the host that allowed for the development of human life owes us nothing. Just because we have been able to leverage certain endowments to create a lifestyle, does not mean that that lifestyle is worthy of sustenance. to deny this simple equation is to deny what it is to be human. We came from the mud, and if we have any chance of making past this century, we had better learn to accept that life in a sustainable form will have to resemble that humble origin to a much greater extent than what is being attempted by the supposedly informed members here.

If you do not like that last statement, then by all means show the community through research and calculation how a fractional techno-orgy can be sustained. However, to resort to the making a villian out of a disparate belief only shows your cowardice and fear. It would be better for all if you just kept your self righteous prejudice to yourself and let the chips fall where they may than to strike out at those that have a deep concern for the future of humanity just because their goals force you to critically evaluate the realistic implications of your desires.

There are two things that need to be addressed in order for humanity to make it through this crises. One is an honest and rigorous evaluation of our needs versus wants. The other is to take science and its progeny technology to task and evaluate the just because we can, should we aspect of implementation.

Roger, your post is a very nice approach to the "end-of-civilization-as we-know-it" variety of doomerism wherein the doomer is not him or herself anhilated but rather the alienating hyper-modern globalizing system is brought down. It is not inconsistent with the hypothesis of projection but a nice complement I think.