| ‘Humoring the Horror’: A Book Review |
| Monday, 16 May 2011 | Marita Prandoni | Commentary |
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Their website says they’ve been friends of 30 years, but not much else about them. Whether they are real doctors or just burned out California hippies or surfers remains to be discovered. Docs Michael and Jim are not secretive, however, about their faces. Of what my teenaged daughter has referred to as “that disturbing looking book,” they adorn the front cover holding a stethoscope to a globe, their popped eyes feigning panic. Their expressive, goofy portraits illustrate almost every page, each in a little frame with a pithy quip like, “The economic collapse of 2008 is just the tip of the priceberg” or “Be fruitful, but DON’T multiply.” In fewer than 100 pages, you can get a sweeping overview of the demise of our home planet, beginning with the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief and science-y but frank syntheses of species collapse, climate chaos, infectious disease and more. As difficult as it is to have our noses rubbed in our mess, there are some crystalline gems in this little book: Al-Qaeda and the “war on terrorism” in general are recognized as functionally meaningless, compared to the real crisis. That said, the government “threat level” will consistently vary between orange and red, and corporate media will continue to insist that people be very very afraid of evil terrorists. Comparatively little will be said about corporate responsibility for the increasing climate chaos. Adjacent to this paragraph is a frame with Doc Michael rolling his eyes skyward and the caption, “Osama bin there done that.” If this doesn’t sound like ideal reading on your train-ride to work or what you’d like to nod off to, don’t despair. The last chapter is entitled “The Recovery Scenario” and suggests real-world innovations and solutions with inspiring examples from around the globe. The book first appeared over a year ago and many of the events the ApocaDocs foretell have already begun to come to pass. It attempts to bring naysayers into the conversation and mobilize us into solution-mode. If, increasingly, you feel harassed by climate-chaos denyers or fear mongers and need to arm yourself with the facts, Docs Michael and Jim approach the complexity of the environmental and social issues we face in an intelligent, easy-to-grasp and, depending on your sense of humor, funny or weirdly funny sort of way. And they’re self-effacing about it: “Trust us, we’re not experts! … It may be that the elements of a sustainable world just happen to coincide with those of a better, more balanced world.” If the ApocaDocs can educate and motivate us about environmental issues through laughter, more power to them. Because if we do nothing, the joke will surely be on us. Additional resources: Comments
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If you need a crash course on why our civilization is in deep do-do, the ApocaDocs are here to help. They are the authors of Humoring the Horror of the Converging Emergencies, a quick-read, no-nonsense but whacky guide to the key dilemmas ailing our planet and how the Homo genus hasn’t fully lived up to the distinction of sapiens (Latin for “wise”). The ApocaDocs (first say “apocalypse” and you’ll get the hang of this moniker) are Jim and Michael. Their surnames remain a mystery, and since it’s a self-published book, last names are not required. 
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Seriously, thanks for the review, and for linking to the free version as well as the Amazon version. We love sales, but we want it read most of all.
Keep up the good work you do!
And on our side, we dearly hope most of our predictions are wrong. So far, so bad.