Thank you, Andre. Your insights are spot-on, and your simple analogy (for a predicament) of a cheating husband nailed by his wife in the jazz bar with his mistress is very apt and imaginative.

The essential question now for all of us is how to cope--how to maintain an even keel emotionally and spiritually as our global industrial civilization circles the drain and collapses into chaos, first incrementally, and then at an ever accelerating pace. The vast majority of us, especially in the so-called "developed" (i.e. fossil fuel and money-dependent) world are either totally ignorant of what is coming, or in deep denial, or both. The awakening will be very rude, I fear.

This is why I have started an initiative I call "Garden Guilds" where I am encouraging neighbors in close proximity to get to know each other, have monthly potlucks, and learn and teach each other how to grow their own food and other useful survival skills. But I've found that most of my neighbors are so deep in ignorance and denial of the cataclysm to come that they have no interest at all in making any changes to their comfortable and mutually alienated way of life. So the one big challenge here is how to wake people up who don't even know they are asleep, and will resent you bitterly if you even try. My solution (so far) is not to mention the Predicament at all, but to take a more upbeat approach--at least for now.