Good morning, friends. Art Berman led off this week's podcast by referring to the U.S. Israel War with Iran

as the biggest blunder in human history. And this might be true. I am quite worried about the future and these past couple months.

This worry is a bit on turbocharge.

And in reflecting on this, I honed in on what exactly it is that I'm feeling.

And what I'm feeling is dread.

And irrespective of how the situation in Iran resolves, I am already paying for it.

Not in money or lack of convenience or higher grocery cost or unavailable parts in the global supply chain,

and not yet. I am paying for it in my lack of daily attention to things in my poor sleep

and this kind of low grade but continual tightness in the middle of my chest

whenever the thought spirals happen on the implications of this unfolding event interrupt my day,

which is often. I'm guessing that many of you feel similar.

And this is what dread does.

Dread is like a tax we pay on a future that we cannot escape, or at least we believe we

can't escape it.

And so I've been a bit obsessed with this the last week.

And the insight I had is that the dread itself that we feel may often be worse than the actual event.

And the work I do on the Great Simplification has been kind of a public anatomy of difficult truths.

Global heating and net energy decline and the end of material growth and the fraying of the social contract.

And as more of us are able to see the soft feudalism on the horizon and biodiversity loss, these are not abstractions to me.

They're part of a synthesis I've spent most of my adult life building.

And I believe this synthesis is roughly correct and more correct each year.

Which means I, and a growing number of you who have followed this conversation,

...