Comments on: Engaging collapse

By: matt c

matt c — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:42:11 +0000

Stan
you are right, I will race this Saturday and ride with the lads on sunday.
I am familiar with Chomsky, I left him a decade ago for my bike, compost and chook poo.
Stan you are on to something – ‘gold backwardization’ occurred a week ago,
for those in the know this is serious doo doo. The fiat currency (paper money)
is toast. Look up Professors Fekete analysis of the situation, the economic
crisis may get us before peak oil does.
‘Gold bugs’ have beeen looking at the kondratieff theory as an indication
that now is the time to buy bullion (if you can get it). Bullion buyers
are anticipating the worst, at the end of the day you cant eat money,
gold included.
The pop is clueless, if you did a vox pop 99.99% of people would never have
heard of peak oil. Are we really on to something? There are equally a number
of economists that are positive about the future as there are ones that are
apprehensive. Nouriel reckons its all fucked up.
a good quote I heard the other day that was pertinent to Guys previous posts
about Obama -
‘the problem with polictics is that the government always gets in.’
ciao

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:06:09 +0000

Total Turboguy,
I understand,I live in the ghetto of Sun City,but the residents are older,Christian and law abiding.Our problem is the outlaws that cross the street from Youngtown.Fortunately we have the world’s most famous sheriff,Sheriff Joe looking after us. There’s a rampike in my front yard and plenty of beautiful cacti as I’m in the Sonoran Desert.
Hey,how you coming with that beautiful waitress ?
Frank

By: Turboguy

Turboguy — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:41:11 +0000

Goodwill and Generosity.
As much as I want you to be right Brady, I just don’t see it happening. Crises bring out the best in people it’s true, but it also brings out the staggering worst possible in people. I remember the quotation: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
I live in a rather not so nice area of a major metropolitan area. People are living in comparative abundance right now and I dare you to walk down many of the streets with a twenty dollar bill clutched visibly in your hand. I don’t actually think you’d make it more than afew blocks before you were robbed, probably at gunpoint, possibly getting stabbed in the process, for your twenty. All I need do is point at the Katrina aftermath as a great example. Sure there was great generosity, the rest of us had loads extra to give. The people of New Orleans who were quite literally fighting for their lives weren’t giving anything to anyone they weren’t forced to.
I may be cynical (I am a police officer and have to deal with the dregs of society on a daily basis) but I just don’t think there’s going to be a lot of generosity going on unless you call it generosity when a desperate person takes what you have at the point of a gun.

By: Frank Mezek

Frank Mezek — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:35:17 +0000

Memo to Matt of OZ:
Matt, If you could understand and believe The 3rd Generation Rule,you would see that Our Stan is correct.I’ve been thinking about this for many years. I’m amazed at just how simple and obvious this works,because human nature never changes.Very few people have ever known how to think,so the world had to carry everything to it’s most insensate extreme in everything.It’s a house of cards.One bank-Lehmann Bros.,was the one card that caused everything to collapse.In the` last Depression it was one Austrian bank that brought down the house of cards.
But the details are unimportant so long as you understand that economic history must,in the essentials,repeat itself every 3rd Generation.This is very well documented,no need to repeat the details,which I’ve gone into many times here.
Every Depression must,of necessity, be worse than the one before.The world barely survived the last one.In the 1930′s
many contemporary observers thought we were going into total collapse and anarchy.For many reasons,conditions in every
important way,are much worse this time.Just think of the 100′s of millions of people facing starvation because the factories they used to work in producing worthless junk for the Yuppie Scum of the world are now closed.Most of the world’s auto dealers have to close,and most of the retail stores likewise because of the extreme glut of everything,
including houses.
It was glut that caused the last Depression,glut in agriculture,real estate,factories.The glut this time is incredibly
worse.I could spend hours going into the details.To me it is as simple and obvious as the fact that 2+2 =4.

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:00:37 +0000

A couple of points for Matt –
I think it is very clear that the public is uninformed, misinformed and disinformed on MANY aspects of the control of their lives. This is well-documented and the only rational explanation whey people, especially Americans, continue to act out of their own best interests in many ways. Thomas Frank wrote a pretty good expose of this phenomenon recently in his book “What is the Matter with Kansas”. Noam Chomsky wrote an important book called “Manufacturing Consent” which shows how the powers that be maintain control by nefarious means.
The difference now is that mankind is approaching certain limits to world resources that have never been reached before. Richard Heinberg calls it “Peak Everything”.
No — we cannot unconditionally read the future, but the science of probability and statistics demonstrates that if we make rational assumptions about trends, we can make rational predictions about what will probably occur next. And in the case of collapse, we must and I think we do understand that society will attempt to avoid symptoms of collapse, even by irrational means. This can include propping up a national economy that is unstable and unsound with injections of billions of paper dollars on the hope and mythology that somehow a foundation of paper will hold up an entire society until society’s self-inflicted woes are healed.
Speaking of predictions, I don’t know you, would not recognize you if your photo was sent to me, but I can predict that you will go for a bicycle ride before Sunday. And I predict the U.S. economy will crash with severe pain for millions during 2009. The same sort of predictive process is involved, and I could be wrong in either case, but I think the probabilities are in my favor.
Lastly, denial can be an effective mechanism for peace of mind, though reality always has to intervene. The realities we face, whether we like them are not, are forcefully intervening in the lives of many right now as jobs are being shed in the world economy like water off a duck’s back. People without jobs have a hard time feeding themselves and paying off their personal debt, and the U.S. government is probably far less proficient at helping everyday people than many other governments around the world, because of the tendency to favor the elite and let their well-being “trickle down” to those down below. But like you said regarding some ecosystems, when the damage is done past certain thresholds, recovery is impossible, which probably means improbable. The great American ecologist Aldo Leopold, speaking of overgrazing in the desert Southwest of the United States, said that some damage could only heal in geological time frames. That means a LONG time in my vocabulary.
On the other hand, bald eagles are showing up in my area now, which is delightful. The local common black hawk is still present at the Laguna de Santa Rosa and paid little heed to squadrons of white pelicans flying in formation overhead. So there are good things happening in our world despite the self-induced travails of humanity.
Stan Moore

By: matt c

matt c — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 02:41:07 +0000

despite what I have said,
I am weary/wary of prophecy,
as we all should be.
there is an assumption that 99.999999999999999999 of the population
is sleep walking into the future, and the corresponding .0000000000000000001
of the pop can foresee a die off scenario.
This figure would suggest that there is a depletion of rationality
amongst the peak oil crowd.
I believe there will be massive change,
(massive change may not be a ‘collapse’,
maybe a slow collapse – ie eco-technic future?)
I am trying to be optimistic),
as I have said we need to define ‘collapse’
to debate what we arguing about,
having said the above, I am naturally disputative,
dont take offence, the written word is much
harsher than the spoken word.
I dont necessarily disagree with all that has been said,
somebody has to play the devil to ground and firm your arguments.
regards to all
car free Matt, Melbourne

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:55:11 +0000

Note to Matt –
You say now that no one can read the future, but you have already predicted inevitable societal collapse in the future. The question, then, becomes the timing of inevitable collapse in the future. You seemed a day or two ago to claim that current trends argue for a later collapse. And I said and still say that you are misreading the significance of current short-term trends and that they actually allow for fulfillment of Professor McPherson’s predictions regarding the coming calendar year.
I don’t know where that leave us, but I continue to see trends very much in line with emerging chaos and financial collapse in 2009, which could lead to even more severe problems, including collapse of democracy as Americans have known it, collapse of food production and resultant serious hunger in America and other phases of the process of collapse. I continue to say that collapse as I have discussed it is a process and not an event, but we are now facing a period in America which will result in significant pain for the American people that has not been experienced here in a number of decades, if ever.
Stan Moore

By: Stan Moore

Stan Moore — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 01:40:24 +0000

Prison garden project for women
see: http://www.cityfarmer.org/prison.html
I saw mention of this on Stan Goff’s blog at feralscholar.org. A very nice sort of way of connecting people with problematic backgrounds with productive and healing interaction with nature and with other people.
Stan Moore

By: matt c

matt c — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:53:14 +0000

Stan
there is nothing to ‘misread’,
no one can misread the future.
The ‘net’ is littered with ‘casandras’.

By: Theresa

Theresa — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:01:38 +0000

Thanks Guy; I have a different translation but that looks like Chapter 29 to me. The TTC has a lot to say about meddling and greed, and I find it very helpful in a lot of situations.
All the best to you,
Theresa