u/Great-Help7394

This is complicated so let me defend my reasoning for this being collapse related.

The Kingdom of Bhutan is the only country on Earth that has environmental protections firmly written into the constitution.

As rural life provides less and less opportunity - or rather - the city life offers more - the rural parts of Bhutan have been losing numbers for at least a decade. The nation itself is witnessing huge emigration.

One might think that's great because on its face it is less humans damaging nature. The reality is there will be nobody left to defend these areas from extractive capitalism. There will be nobody left because they've all moved to the cities, cities that will demand resources from the very places people left for the city. You don't need to be a genius to see how this story ends.

In purely technical terms this is driven by automation of farming, and you could argue falling birthrates are also driven by this automation. More food for less should be a wonderful thing but if it seems too good to be true - it often is.

Unfortunately it is here too. Automated farms are not for the benefit of our species or even any particular nation. They could be, but they're not. Talk to any MAGA farmer long enough about Right to Repair on their own equipment - you might be surprised by how quickly they start echoing sensible socialist policy.

Bhutan is, soon to be was, a bastion of environmentalism on a political level. The goal isn't being abandoned, just the ability to uphold the promise, all while the vultures circle above a dying nation.

I know the old saying - hate is like swallowing poison and hoping the other person dies. I get it. I wouldn't use the word hate here. Frustration maybe.

Pinker wrote a book called "The Better Angels of Our Nature", in which he argues that the world has never been more peaceful because *humans* stopped killing each other. Not only does he completely disregard environmental destruction - his whole premise is cherry picked data mixed in with a lot of personal feelings. Anarchist John Grey wrote a response to Pinker's nauseating book and I highly recommend it.

Then there's my family.

A lot of them have no opinion at all when it comes to life saving medicine like vaccines. That position is not great, not terrible. They have jobs and lives and personal problems. It isn't fair to expect everyone to worry about everything all the time. Life is fucking exhausting as is.

But a large part of my family has pushed anti-vax nonsense since before Covid19 and still do, totally unphased. Innocent people have died as a result.

I understand not trusting big pharma or a crappy doctor, I totally get it, but I draw the line at pushing disinformation that, deep down, you know will kill people. Anti-vax nonsense is killing millions of innocent people and even today, right now, the part of my family responsible for this doesn't feel an ounce of shame. A few of them even said "that person was going to die anyway". I bet you've heard it too.

Its easy enough to say these people are selfish or ignorant but I think its more apathy than stupidity. Its both of course, but its mostly apathy. And its driven by this delusion that we all know better than experts.

My point is smart and dumb alike, rich and poor, there seems to be a violent indifference in the modern world and because we can't agree on simple facts - how can we ever hope to tackle climate change?

Using satellite data going back to 1985, new research shows that thousands of rivers worldwide are losing oxygen at an unsustainable rate. As always, end of century projections are the biggest concern. Collapse related because the article explains that even low emissions scenarios still pose a catastrophic threat to river ecosystems.

I'm not new to using mushrooms but in the last few weeks I decided to try growing them myself and I have become obsessed with all things mushroom.

A few days ago I learned of this mutant strain called Enigma. Apparently it requires human intervention to reproduce.

I don't really fall for appeals to nature. Whether something is "natural" doesn't concern me too much. But mushrooms are about as natural as it gets, and Enigma isn't.

I saw a video on YouTube that was uploaded 3 years ago and it was a tour of a multimillion dollar facility in Canada. It looked like a CDC building. At one point they talk about how psilocybin can be synthesized but this company chose not to do that because, in the words of the founders, you need the whole mushroom. So then I started reading about the chemical profiles of different strains of P. Cubensis, especially the alkaloids. And it made me wonder.

Enigma isn't purely synthesized, but it also isn't natural. Do you think the trip from this strain would be less... I don't even know what word to use. Just... less? Or do you think a trip on Enigma is just as impactful as a natural strain?

A long time ago I started to slip into drug addiction - almost exclusively weed and booze. I'm too chicken to try anything "harder". Before all that I was fired on the spot from a job that I was pretty good at.

My boss at the time asked me what my hobbies were. It was a fast food job and my coworkers led me to believe that my boss was "cool". So I was honest.

I said I'm fascinated by psychedelic drugs. I read about them all day every day and I want to study, modify, manufacture and distribute them someday. I started going into detail about my deep interest in psilocybin and we also talked a bit about MDMA and dissociative drugs.

He called me to the back at the end of the day. He told me he's sorry but he has to fire me. It wasn't an empty sorry. He really was sorry. This was just some job to me but he was devastated, like he was ruining my whole life or something lol. He was covering his face, practically ripping his hair out because he knew firing me over this was absurd but turns out he was a bit of a boy scout and rules are rules are rules or something.

That's not really why I became a daily, chronic addict but it is interesting to me that it all started around the same time in my life. I grew up (and still live) in a deep red state, in a conservative family, in a society that doesn't think much of drugs if those drugs aren't making lots of money. I was never very aware of my social or cultural surroundings. I just figured if someone didn't share my interests well that's fine, I can't force my interests on anyone. But apparently others can force me to stop pursuing my own interests - or at least shame me so much I end up nearly drinking myself to death.

After 2 months of sobriety and a bit of clarity - I remember now.

I was so passionate about psychedelics and any adjacent drug that isn't too commonplace or boring. I'm growing shrooms right now and statistically its a coin flip if I succeed but I like this feeling. Knowing there is something I want to do in life... even if the whole world is categorically fucked. I missed this feeling.