In my latest essay in this space I mentioned two phenomena worth fighting for: the living planet and freedom based in anarchy. I surrender. I no longer believe the struggle matters on either front.
I no longer think we’ll save the remaining shards of the living planet beyond another human generation. We’ll destroy every — or nearly every — species on Earth when the positive feedbacks associated with climate change come seriously into play (and I’ve not previously considered the increasingly dire prospects of methane release from Antarctica or the wildfire-induced release of carbon from Siberian peat bogs).
The climate-change data, models, and assessments keep coming at us, like waves crashing on a rocky, indifferent beach. The worst drought in 800 years in the western United States is met by levels of societal ignorance and political silence I’ve come to expect. I would be stunned if this valley — or any other area in the interior of a northern-hemisphere continent — will provide habitat for humans five years from now. And climate change is only part of the story.
My trademark optimism vanishes when I realize that, in addition to climate chaos, we’re on the verge of tacking on ionizing radiation from the world’s 444 nuclear power plants. Let’s ignore for now the radioactive waste we’ve left lying around without a plan or already dumped into the world’s oceans. When we choke on our own poison, we’ll be taking the whole ship down with us, spewing a global blanket of radiation in the wake of collapse. Can we kill every single species on Earth? Apparently we’re willing to give it a try, and I will not be surprised by our “success” at this omnicidal endeavor.
Onto anarchy. Few people understand what it is, and even fewer support it. As a product of cultural conditioning, the typical American confuses anarchy with terrorism. Considering the near-term exit of Homo sapiens from this planet, it seems a bit ridiculous of me to express concern about living outside the absurdity that has become mainstream.
Color me non-judgmental. Continue to fuck the planet and our future, and see if I give a damn. Actually, saying we fucked the future without offering so much as a kiss, as I wrote back in January, is an insult to four-letter words everywhere. Minor efforts to sound the alarm, including my own, fade to insignificance when compared to the juggernaut of global imperialism. These efforts have long been irrelevant; it’s my awakening that is new.
And color me sad, of course, at the societal path we’ve taken. Swept up in the pursuit of more instead of better, we’ve become the waves approaching the rocky shore.
We had an opportunity to return to our tribal roots, as others have done when civilizations collapsed. Consider, for example, the survivors from the Olmec, Chaco, and Mimbres cultures, all of whom chose tribalism when civilization failed. Tribalism worked for two million years in a diverse array of situations. It worked before and after civilizations arose in specific regions. For many decades, our version of civilization has been successful only for a few individuals of one species, yet we keep tinkering with the system long after it’s failed.
Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, we’ve come to believe industrial civilization is the only way to live. As we’ll soon discover, it’s the only way to die, at least at the level of our species.
Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s eponymous poem, I offer the following requiem for Earth.
If Earth could sing with a female voice.
Her strength would be evident, though her tone might waver.
Could she withhold judgment against one of her own,
through all we’ve done to her, and our brethren?
We lived in her bosom from which we were born
for two million years not forsaking our home.
Then we became something different from all we had known,
and in the gasp of a breath we destroyed it all.
Can you blame her for judging us, considering what we’ve done?
She gave us every chance to turn it around.
Now we’re all done and she’s endured our abuse,
including pillage, plunder, and rape without any excuse.
All she can sing in that mournful tone is sorrow for the power she unleashed,
through us and thus dispassionately onto herself, destroyed by one of her own.
She must ponder how our hubris overwhelmed our humility
in concluding about our recent selves: They didn’t like it here.
______________
This essay is permalinked at Seemorerocks and Island Breath.
August 30th, 2012 at 8:26 am
Seems like many of the most aware, most empathic, most real, most honest, most hopeful, most integrous (my created adjectival form of integrity!) people I know are coming to this same state of mind, Guy…
I really dont know what to do, where to place my focus and efforts any longer EXCEPT to keep planting seeds in a last Quixotic hope that a miracle will turn all of this around, and/also that the seeds will sprout/grow in the aftermath, and to try to find a way to cushion the experience of this Mad-Maxian future for my youngster…
August 30th, 2012 at 9:02 am
“I do not dine on the mind-numbing carrion of hope.” — Kirkpatrick Sale
I do, though. Hope may be mind-numbing and an insidious poison, but I can’t help but indulge. I know I shouldn’t but I do.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:16 am
I am resolved to eat, drink, and not marry. another thing I’ve changed my mind about is fossil fuels. I use them with abandon, now that I realize that the sooner they are gone the better. I also use solar and live below my means to conserve money. But before I understood the problem, I stayed home to avoid using fuel and now I am driving around enjoying the beauty of this place while I still can.
I had to give up the doomer demeanor to hang on to any shred of sanity.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:38 am
Like Sheilah, I’m seeing and hearing the same chorus of resignation. And I’m starting to hum that tune myself. Not much left to do but party our way out of existence.
When Hawking wrote about our chances of answering the big questions (unified theory and all that) he threw in a comment about “if we don’t blow our selves up first” (or words to that effect) — I didn’t understand what he was talking about – the Soviet Union was gone and the middle east isn’t really a match for the US – what’s the problem? Perhaps this is more what he had in mind.
There’s an SPCA benefit dance (rave) tonight in Auckland – great local DJ’s playing my favourite trance anthems. Who knows, I might even smoke some of that marijuana stuff like back in the day.
I’ll be thinking of you, and all the warriors who tried to turn in around. Perhaps we were too good, too kind, too trusting. Perhaps the Klingons had it right after all.
I’ll write again and catch up with you on the other side when it’s all over.
– Deck
August 30th, 2012 at 9:48 am
In Douglas Adams novel, the dolphins left with a note “so long and thanks for all the fish.” Unfortunately no species will get to leave. But we can take what time is left to enjoy whatever is left for as long as it is left.
Right now that means maypops!
Meanwhile, so no more humans have to go through the crash than are already destined to do so, if you are fertile get a tubal or vasectomy while you can.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:51 am
I almost agree with you. I have almost lost all hope, except for the last glimmer of hope that i still hold onto, not because im foolish, at least i hope not, but because i think there is actually a chance to bring industrialized civilization down. If we work hard enough, with all we have, in an organized political resistance, we might just have a chance.
http://deepgreenresistance.org/
With the understanding that despair is necessary,
Charles
August 30th, 2012 at 10:02 am
Thanks Guy,
We must all deal with death, which should be the easy part, obscured as it is by our culture.
The specter of suffering through acute want, privation, stripped bare of industrial society and all that it protects and clothes us with daily is an insurmountable task to all but a few. Those who already live that way, on the edges of society, may react most quickly, and with violence.
Those of us who would weather this for even months or years, will have to completely change lifestyle, and probably location, just to skip the Rwanda stuff.
Fortunately, it is the same task as living more sustainably, more lightly, more thoughtfully, more communally, more humanly. It takes some free resources to break out, and skills, and pioneer-attitude, and “farm smarts”. Community is crucial, not just ammo, food, water and fuel.
Now is the opportune time, and it is passing before our eyes. Awareness of the problems, and opportunity to work-around them, are an inverse function for society.
Forced awareness approaches.
August 30th, 2012 at 10:02 am
I have also noticed that I seem to have given up hope of anything changing. I have not made the super-human efforts that you have – but I have not been idle.
But there are so many who absolutely refuse to take this very real and devastating situation seriously. Instead they argue about religion, abortion, homosexuality… and can you believe the statements about “not getting pregnant with rape”!!!!
With our “leaders” having that type of stupidity in their belief systems – how in the world can we expect to help them realize the direness of climate change and nuclear contamination… the effects of fracking on water – the consequences of GMO and pesticides on our foods…etc.
I’m caught in an economic situation that limits me and what I “can” do right now… but I am working my out of it. If I live long enough … I want to incorporate myself into a saner community of like minded people where maybe I can live the last years of my life in a more sustainable fashion.
I watch the shows about what “new inventions” are coming and allow myself to think about a technical future … and then I shake my head at myself for “believing” in this technical future when I am also aware of how unlikely it is to actually happen… cognitive dissonance
I seem to make a lot of “Well maybe “IF”….” statements – lol
I believe that is also called denial
It is as if I live in two separate realities sometimes
August 30th, 2012 at 10:32 am
What a sane, if sad, voice in the Wilderness! I’m up to page 167 of Walking Away From Empire….and as ye might guess, even the few friends I can talk seriously with now ponder whether my naturally mad, Outsider tendencies are teetering perilously close to the edge. As if we aren’t all in at the despairingly drawn-out death…. It’s all so damnably sad.
Nothing left but to gather together; to be the very best we can; to give everything we have to give; to speak our beliefs to empathetic ears; to love and nurture all the living things we cross paths with….a daily goal!
I love your writing, Guy, and not only because it makes me feel less alone, in my own wilderness….but that does help!
August 30th, 2012 at 10:53 am
Guy, I waiver a lot on this topic – I suspect that comes through in some of my posts. I don’t waiver about our eventual outcome – I’m pretty certain about that – but rather I waiver about what to do in the meantime. On one hand, I know that my sole actions mean nothing. Similar to the brief foray we made in the previous discussion about whether one vote matters; in the grand scheme of things, my actions mean nothing.
On the other hand, my actions mean everything to me. Even if they are completely futile, my actions are an expression of who I am as a person. I realize that implies that I, too, am a mere dot in the cosmic fabric but that’s okay because it’s true. The cosmos would be no different whether I ever existed or not. To me, that doesn’t matter. I am here, right now.
So, ultimately, I will keep doing what I feel is right for me to do at that moment. Some days that may mean that I, as Rita said, use fossil fuels to abandon, other days I may live as simply as a Tibetan monk.
Mostly, I plan to continue living life to the fullest, spending time with my family, loving my animals, continue connecting with the natural world while it’s still here, and trying to be as happy as one can be when one possesses The Knowledge.
August 30th, 2012 at 11:30 am
.
An analogy. It’s likened to holding up this massive rock above our heads which represents the System, and we’re beginning to crack under the strain. Our arms are starting to tire and slowly drop. At some point, that massive rock of a System is going to come crashing down. In this process, we may fool ourselves into thinking we can just put the rock down, but we can’t without it crushing us…it’s too massive and pervasive. It’s a classic Catch 22.
Wine Night tomorrow. I’m looking forward to that, just as I look forward to this blog every day. It is immeasurably soothing to know that there are other people who feel and think the same way. It may seem like a small consolation, but to me, it means the world….both literally, and figuratively. We are not alone, yet this System sends that false message.
.
August 30th, 2012 at 11:31 am
“I surrender. Much to my chagrin,
This fight is one I cannot win;
My awakening’s new:
We’re really all through.”
“Now vee may perhaps to begin?”
H/T: Philip Roth
August 30th, 2012 at 11:34 am
Quitter.
August 30th, 2012 at 11:44 am
Breathe more easily about the methane release – it may not happen for decades, long after everything else has gotten beyond the point of no return. As the note says “not a game changer.”
“Methane Game Upgrade” – Real Climate
“But the general response time of the system is slow, decades to centuries, rather than potentially poised to release a huge pulse of methane within a few years…
Walter Anthony et al (2012) have made a major contribution to the picture of methane emissions from thawing Arctic regions. Not a game-changer exactly, but definitely a graphics upgrade, bringing the game to life in stunningly higher resolution (/joke).”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/06/methane-game-upgrade/
August 30th, 2012 at 11:56 am
Let’s take one step at the time, let’s make it through economic collapse and energy shortage first trying to enjoy the downgrade on necessities and living a holistic and simple life, and then if all the species don’t survive climate change and nuclear apocalypse so be it. Probably earth has some million years to go still and it will be capable of hosting new species.
I’m so glad I don’t have children though.
August 30th, 2012 at 12:00 pm
I absolutely agree with you, Guy, and believe that it’s not possible to avoid the certain outcomes you name even if the economic crash happened immediately. How ludicrous that it doesn’t since it is wholly supported by fantasy, and that the current ongoing collapse of arctic sea ice is met mainly by excitement over the prospect of more intense drilling for oil. Where I disagree is on the topic of what we should do now, and I’m firmly in the camp of continuing to do what we know is right, including conserving energy, not as a fight or in the hope of “winning” anything external to ourselves, but because doing what’s right is peaceful and enjoyable. My personal goal is to let go of anger and make more room in my psyche for the pleasure of watching seeds germinate and take hold, and thinking about how to best bring my garden into harmony with what we are pleased to call nature. I welcome others in this, but won’t be trying to change anyone’s mind.
August 30th, 2012 at 12:11 pm
Len Conly, we’ve triggered five positive-feedback events, any one of which leads to near-term human extinction. Each of the five has been reported in the refereed journal literature, as a quick search will reveal: reduction of Arctic sea ice, rapid decomposition of boreal peat, release of Siberian methane, release of ocean methane hydrates, and the drought in the Amazon basin.
August 30th, 2012 at 12:25 pm
.
The poles are melting Lickity Split
Feedbacks underestimated, Holy Shit
Tis clear to me
And to all who can see
The extinction of our species is surely legit
.
August 30th, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Guy, yes and if I am not mistaken the cyclones that hit the Arctic this August were unexpectedly strong and added to the break up of the sea ice
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/08/10/unusual-summer-storm-blasts-the-arctic/
August 30th, 2012 at 12:56 pm
@Sandi: I wouldn’t call Guy a quitter. In fact, he is
accepting speaking engagements in 2015 in overseas locations (burn that jet fuel, baby!). Is that encouraging or what?
August 30th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
So in one week you go from
“That our species is headed for near-term extinction is no excuse to throw in the towel. Resistance is fertile, and there is still plenty to fight for. Coming immediately to my mind: the living planet and freedom based in anarchy.”
to surrendering? I understand the despair, but why the sudden turnaround? Sorry, but i cannot see any reason for going on living if you don’t plan on fighting. Surrendering is exactly what the-powers-that-be would have us do, that’s what their entire enforcement machine is about, from the military and police ranks to the propaganda system of advertising which Goebbles could only dream about to the “education” system. Maybe further struggle is futile, but i for one would not be able to look at the mirror if i stopped struggling. I will make THEM take me down, and will not go easily into the dark night. It’s not a matter of hope, but of INTEGRITY.
August 30th, 2012 at 1:19 pm
I hate cars, but “Drive” is my favorite movie. Like the movie, our situation is hopeless, but all you can do is hang onto your integrity and get ready for a very chaotic ride.
August 30th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
.
Sorry, but i cannot see any reason for going on living if you don’t plan on fighting.
That’s how these guys felt, and fight they did. The U.S. may see a similar fate as resources diminish and the country is Balkanized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6MblImHjWI&list=PL7B3B6DCC879D6E58&index=1&feature=plpp_video
It’s a great documentary, by the way, if you have the time…because it is loooooong, both irredeemably informative. This is one such permutation for the developed world, and it can happen that fast.
Fighting, one soon realizes, is part of the process that keeps it moving along.
.
August 30th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
Jeff S., you’re hardly the first to suggest I kill myself. Please take your plea to an imperialist. There are a few billion to choose from, and I’m not one.
August 30th, 2012 at 1:33 pm
i’ve been reading richard reese’s book titled WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE, in which he recommends keeping urine separate from feces, diluting it with water, and adding that directly to the garden. he says that bacteria in feces breaks down the urine, causing much of the nitrogen nutrient to be lost. i’m looking for feedback on this info/advice, including how much the urine should be diluted with water. thanks. (haven’t yet read guy’s latest essay, so no comment on it at this point)
August 30th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
.
This thread calls for a T-Shirt.
http://www.roadkilltshirts.com/?gclid=CNbBu-ebkLICFQTNnAodNQwAJg
How do you like that one, Yorchichan?
.
August 30th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I just heard this on the radio:
“Labor Day weekend is going to be nothing but beautiful with plenty of sunshine and great savings on appliances and other consumer goods…”
If you can afford one, I’ve heard they are on sale now. Buy One, Get One Free!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3a3XBnMe5Q
August 30th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
“Jeff S., you’re hardly the first to suggest I kill myself. Please take your plea to an imperialist. There are a few billion to choose from, and I’m not one.”
EH? I was strictly speaking in terms of myself. Why the hell would i want YOU to kill yourself? You’re one of the few people who is doing anything in terms of casting light on this really dirty picture. Sorry if you took what i said in terms of my feelings about my own manner of living as a suggestion to you. I admit what i said could be read that way, since i used “you” (“if you don’t plan on fighting”), but i totally meant it in a generic, abstract way (i.e. like saying “if one doesn’t……”), not as directed at you specifically. I’ve had friends commit suicide, it’s not something i wish upon ANYONE, least of all those who are or have been doing something.
August 30th, 2012 at 1:58 pm
Kathy C: Yes, that’s quite a picture of a cyclone over the Arctic. Paul Beckwith noted that the previous cyclone managed to spin around the entire ice sheet of the Arctic, breaking off pieces as it turned. This one might do the same. These storms bring up salty and warm water from far below the surface and hasten the melting. As Beckwith said, “All Hell breaks loose.”
We see now that it won’t matter whether civilization collapses next week and all emissions shut down – the tipping point has been reached. It makes me very sad that all the other species will perish when we do, but it doesn’t make me sad that all people will die. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to do something about torture, war, rape, lies, poverty, racism, oppression, etc. but now I see that all of that will end when the species dies and takes its faulty DNA with it. I don’t have to cry anymore. We had conciousness, but we misused it, so now it will be taken away. I’ve had a good life but I didn’t want it because so many people in the world had bad lives. So I tried to use my privileged position to publish and teach and make a difference, but I really think in my heart I knew I wasn’t changing a damn thing. Fuck, now I’m crying again.
The onions know. I went out there this morning and half the plants have thrown down their tops, now lying on the ground. I look up at the steep mountainside behind my house, covered with Douglas fir trees. I know soon there will be a fire storm that takes them all down. We had a preview in ’03 when a lot of B.C. burned and the flames made it to within a few kilometres of our house. Next time our house will go down, too. We could go into the root cellar dug into the mountain and wait it out, but what would we see when we emerge from the cool stacks of home canned food? A black spot where the woodshed and house used to be? By that time there will be no insurance, no rebuilding. Will my beloved wood cookstove survive? Will my peonies come up again? Will all the neighbours be dead? Will we still have the guns and ammo to hunt deer and bear? Will all the animals be dead? What will we do – camp in the ruins until the food runs out?
My end will be appropriate, I’m sure. It will be a unique death as it was a unique life. Soon over. I have one more class to teach this fall. Oddly enough – Climate Change and Health. I worked for two years to get the approval to teach this course. What do I do – tell them the truth? I’m sure I’d break down standing right in front of the white board. I don’t know what do do. I’m at a loss.
August 30th, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Jeff S., all of us die. It’s just a matter of when and how. We never get a choice about if we die, and rarely the when and how.
If you were on an airplane and the engines fell off, what good would it do to start flapping your arms, or telling the pilot to fly harder, or making impassioned speeches trying to motivate the other passengers to do something? No matter what, you’d still splat the same way that everyone else did. The only difference would be that you would spend your last few moments of life trying to postpone the inevitable instead of using that time to appreciate and reflect on the life you had. Would either action make any difference to the outcome? Nope. And after everyone was dead it wouldn’t make any difference to them either. So the only thing that matters is what a person experiences during the time he or she is living.
However each of us chooses to spend our few remaining moments of life is our own personal choice. Whether Guy chooses to fight or forage, it’s his choice, whether I like it or not. Same for you. Same for me.
You said: Surrendering is exactly what the-powers-that-be would have us do, . How is what Guy said in this essay, surrendering? Further, your use of the word surrender implies that someone or something remain to surrender to. That’s the whole point. We are ALL finished – the proles, the powers that be, those who care, and those who don’t. It’s done.
August 30th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
BC Nurse, maybe seeing you break down in front of class is what they need. I suspect that more and more have this uneasy feeling that things are not right but don’t know how to name what is wrong. Its not that you can change anything, but perhaps you can get them to talk about how they feel. Dog I am glad I am older now. So much less of living to loose.
When I learned that we were nearing peak oil about 10 years ago I realized that perhaps 90% of the world’s population was going to die. I mourned. Then I remembered, oh yeah we all die anyway. It is not that anyone or any creature is going to die that changes, it is the timing, the mode of death, the conditions leading up to death, and whether or not you pass on your genes that changes. So now it looks like 100%. Still the same equation. Which is why I urge permanent sterilization. One thing we can do is not add to the misery by birthing a child that will lose most of their projected life and live in incredibly hard times before their early death. We can spare the unborn.
August 30th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
VT, we separate urine (most of it) from our humanure by having a separate bucket for pee. I empty that every day on the garden with about equal water to urine. Many say you have to do 10 to 1 but I have yet to loose a plant from the more concentrate urine application (of course I enjoy water and drink a ton of it so my pee is already diluted). I pour it around the base of plants and try to remember which ones I have done recently so I don’t overdo it but with this old brain that becomes harder and harder. Still I haven’t lost a plant yet. I don’t put it around young seedlings and I take extra care when putting it around leafy plants. Thats about it. You sit on one bucket to shit, another to piss. An old toilet seat makes bucket sitting easier. I wash out the buckets after dumping and I rotate pee buckets to let them air a bit and in the summer when bacteria can build up and make the pee smell even in one day, I give a wipe with alcohol or hydrogen peroxide.
August 30th, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Thanks for clarifying, Jeff S., and to all of you for the humor
August 30th, 2012 at 2:39 pm
REAL Doctor House: comparing our situation to that of a plane whose engines have failed is a huge stretch. We don’t know for sure that we’re at the point of no return. And a plane’s failure means the end in a matter of minutes. We face who knows how long even if the point of no return has been passed. Giving up now means living lives which are gonna be increasingly miserable, because TPTB will keep on doing what they do, put us and the planet through the wringers. It won’t be a sudden end like a plane crash.
Four days and 39 years ago, i underwent a profound experience which over the course of the next few weeks got me to get clear about my politics and the way i see the world, and i saw a global machine chewing up the world and the human community, realized it needed to be stopped. I became an anarchist activist as a result. I have no regrets, and have no plans to throw in the towel. And i’ve had a LOT of frustration over these years, including the end of a very long term relationship which started several years later and ended after almost 14 years, because my partner/wife just ran out of patience in terms of our activity bringing about change, and realized that she couldn’t get me to give up, so she left.
I’ve faced incredible resistance on the part of those around me (not counting friends, i’ve been lucky). Every few weeks or so, i do a 9/11 table at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, and i never fail to be amazed at the rationalizations which come out of all the “progressives,” who would rather throw out the laws of physics (i’m an engineer by training) than even remotely believe that it was an inside job. I post on the very “progressive” Well discussion board, and get grief because i keep pointing out what a corporate/military tool Obama has been, and don’t get blown over just because the others yell “Romney,” as if that allows them to evade all my points. I don’t know if change will come, i think the odds are against it. But i have to live with integrity, i cannot do otherwise.
August 30th, 2012 at 2:52 pm
TVT,
You might be interested in the free version of The Humanure Handbook linked here:
http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html
August 30th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
Guy,
So what happened between June 11 and August 30? How is it that in two and a half months you go from “chop wood, carry water” to “I surrender? The drought was already in place although the level (800 years) may be new to you. The 444 nuclear plants where already in place, as was the idea that they were a serious threat when the grid goes down. Climate change is nothing new to you nor is the lack of political will in dealing with it.
The way I read the news, every day more and more people are looking up from the grindstone and saying, “What the fuck?” I know you believe in tipping points. I know you believe that tipping points are a reality both in the natural world and also in culture and society. This is going to be one of those societal times when a point is reached when suddenly everything changes. You can see it in people’s eyes. You can hear it in the way they talk about the weather. In any conversation someone will bring up the weird weather. Soon, very soon, I think a tipping point will have been reached and people will understand that they’ve been lied to by TPTB. They will be angry. They will want justice. Then you will see that your “minor efforts to sound the alarm” have not been in vain.
Hang in there.
Michael Irving
August 30th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Gotta love this culture: ‘Massacre’: Scores of Amazon Indigenous Tribe Members Killed by Miners.
The more I know, the less I understand.
August 30th, 2012 at 4:00 pm
How can we know the ending,
to a story that never ends?
Our tiny speck of universe,
is a river with infinite bends.
Perhaps we share a gift, so rare.
Can we possibly see what’s to come?
If so, turns out, that vision we see,
is a curse that leaves us numb.
But chaos works in mysterious ways.
Wisdom and logic can’t stop the barrage.
Far better to live as though each day’s your last.
That vision may be a mirage.
(Composed while drinking Corona Extra and listening to)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ6Mzvh3XCc&feature=related
with an assist from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo
August 30th, 2012 at 4:20 pm
.
Civilization at its best.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/sep/02/congo-blood-gold-mobile-phones-video
.
August 30th, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Michael Irving: it’s possible that social tipping points will arrive. I sure hope so. But it’s hard to maintain such hope when i see how “smart” phones are turning more and more folks into stupid people who are so totally divorced from what’s around them that they don’t even notice. (Even as i type this, Berkeley is being buzzed by an ominous-looking low-flying helicopter) There is no device which is more socially destructive in every way, from its very material beginnings in mining, than a cell phone. But i too wonder what changed so decisively, not only since June, but since a week ago.
By the way, if people wonder about my politics, they should go to http://www.dailybattle.pair.com (i do it with a close friend) and see the statement along the left side, an article i wrote about 9/11 last November, and a bunch of articles by my “twin brother”(:-)) Jack Straw, most recently one about Occupy, posted in May.
August 30th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
“Climate change is always followed by mass extinctions”.
That was the terse answer I got from one paleoclimatologist back in 2008 after writing to every scientist whose email address I could find.
Once I understood that the initial forcing to change climate climate began several decades age, and learned about the drastic habit of amplifying feedbacks to accelerate exponentially, it seemed quite obvious to me that catastrophe would be the inevitable, irrevocable result of ecosystems thrown out of balance – but it took quite a bit of persistence to get even one professional academic to admit it.
Now of course that those feedbacks are making themselves felt in earnest, it is becoming empirically evident.
You named 5 loops, whereas Rockstrom described 9 planetary boundaries, 3 of which he designated as crossed. He doesn’t include pollution as one of the three that are irredeemable, part of the effects of which are described as: “Crop damage from exposure to ozone, forest degradation and loss of freshwater fish due to acidic precipitation, changes in global precipitation patterns and in energy balance are further examples of indirect effects of air pollution on human well-being…”
I believe that we have passed that particular threshold, all by itself enough to end much of life on earth even without climate change, more specifically that trees are dying everywhere from that same ozone which is listed as damaging crops. Trees absorb ozone year after year and sustain cumulative damage and, the persistent background level is inexorably rising.
There can be very little life on land when trees are gone, just as there will be very little remaining in the oceans when the coral reefs are all dead, a parallel inevitability. Forests and reefs are on the edge of complete loss. You don’t need a PhD to see that – in fact a PhD might get in the way. All you have to do is look at them to see they are pale artifacts of what they once were.
It is, very, very sad. It is hard to know how to react…it would be easier, except I’m a mother, and so I think about the children: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/08/synonymous-with-failure.html
Thanks for being a rare rational voice in a sea of lies and delusional hope, Guy.
August 30th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
We acted with no long term view,
As unthinking animals do;
And now, though we’re dying,
We still keep on trying—
The animals, they do that too.
August 30th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
And then when the factories all stop spewing their dirt into the air, the global dimming will end and we get to see how hot the planet will be without global dimming.
Yes Gail there are the children and grandchildren. I never vision them in my vision of the future – too hard.
But again everyone who is fertile please get fixed now. Let no more children have to go through what is coming. Even if you think you can abstain, we will need what comforts we can find – let your sex be a comfort but not a curse on the unborn. And well of course there will be rape (but not to worry, Rep, Akin says forced rape does not lead to conception)
August 30th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Guy
You must let yourself go through the full cycle you begun with the exploration into the truth. As a self confessed scientist you are examining evidence and the evidence is overwhelming that humans are destroying the planet.
In addition to being a scientist you are a compassionate human being, and you have responded by reaching out and informing others of the scientific evidence and likely peer reviewed conclusions, mainly because your university employer thwarted your attempts to do it locally through teaching.
The journey will take you to another incarnation of self, and you are enduring the crisis of limited power. Good. Brng it on and you will move beyond this and come to another realiation, alluded to in the old fairy tales.
When a protagonist is in an impossible situation, like counting all the grains of sand in a grain room by sun up, which a human can never do, the ants come and do the impossible task. They come because the protagonist showed earlier his/her compassion for all beings and their sympathy toward ‘Nature’.
When you truly sacrifice, the greater instincts come to help.
We are the ants, in a way, and the bees and the birds.
No one of us, feeling and acting as you do as powerless individuals, can accomplish much. We all get that.
However, as a ,(disperate), community, we can be the ants , birds and bees.
It is all about the critical mass, and IMO it is coming , yes too late , but who knows what is really coming?
My advice to you directly in what seems to readrs as your darkest moments here, is dont underestimate the power of ‘Nature’ to assist in the creative motivation to heal a bleeding world. I use the term’Nature’ advisadly, for here it is intended to denote far more than the sum total of the obsevable entities and structures of the biosphere. It is also the Heart.
All
We are the bees.
Do your bit, pick up a grain, and shout!
August 30th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Gail
Your link provides a video rendition of the song “Ship of fools” by World party. Worthy of note are teh lyrics, which without music and images are all too clear.
Ship of fools
We’re setting sail
To the place on the map from which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
By the light of the crosses that burn
Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
And the gold and the cotton and pearls
It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need
You sail away from the light of the world on this trip baby
Pay, you will pay tomorrow
You’re gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow
Save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools, no no
Oh, save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools, no no
I want to run and hide
Right now
Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
Drowning in the oceans of history
Travellin’ the world, you’re in search of no good
But I’m sure you’ll build your Sodom like I knew you would
Using all the good people for your galley slaves
As your little boat struggles through the warning waves
But you will pay, you will pay tomorrow
You’re gonna pay tomorrow
You gonna pay tomorrow
Save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools, no
Oh, save me, save me from tomorrow
I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools, no
Where’s it comin’ from or where’s it goin’ to?
It’s just a, it’s just a ship of fools
All aboard
Very precient.
Like in other modern music, the tune is jivy and hopeful, but the message is savage and dire.
Fools indeed.
August 30th, 2012 at 6:14 pm
People used to tell me that I’d regret it if I ever got a vasectomy. I got one 12 years ago, shortly before getting married, and before anything in there got where it shouldn’t.
As time has gone on, I have only become more convinced that I did the right thing.
August 30th, 2012 at 6:16 pm
Morocco Bama
You sure know where to find the most inspiring material.
Here is one from the west.
Debtors’ Prison Is Back — and Just as Cruel as Ever
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/30/debtors-prison-is-back-and-just-as-cruel-as-ever/
“Debtors are sometimes summoned to court repeatedly, increasing chances that they’ll miss a date and be arrested. Critics note that judges often set the debtor’s release bond at the amount of the debt and turn the bond money over to the creditor — essentially turning publicly financed police and court employees into private debt collectors for predatory lenders.”
Dickens would not be amused.
August 30th, 2012 at 6:36 pm
The Virgin Terry,
If you google “urine separating toilet” you’ll discover much to explore.
Take care,
Richard Reese
August 30th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
Hi everyone,
I read the RC thread on methane release at the time. I admit, I was slightly reassured. However, it was recently mentioned there, that models do not include methane and CO2 release from melting tundra permafrost, do not include soot and CO2 from burning forests and the resulting loss of carbon sink, do not include the responses of global micro-organisms… so there’s three feedbacks that are not figured into the predicted temperature increases ( afaik ) and, from what I gather, they are significant and not in a good way.
I would have also mentioned the Antarctic methane, but Guy already did.
My own view, we are on the brink of a Permian-type mass extinction event. I don’t think it is possible to say how fast this will happen, with any degree of certainty, because there are so many unknown variables, like major war, economic collapse, pandemics, major volcanic eruption, or whatever.
Anyhow, I don’t see how 7 billion gets to be 9 billion ( 2 additional Chinas ) and gets to the end of this century. I’d say that is impossible.
But does the actual precise date matter all that much ? It must if you have children, which I don’t. I don’t know what percentage ‘we’ ( those who are lucid and awake ) are, out of the 7 billion. Must be a very tiny fraction, no ? and it seems we do not have the power to alter the course of events….
So then, the emphasis is upon how we deal with this ultimate cataclysm. Spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, practically. IMO, this is the very worst thing that could possibly happen. It didn’t happen in the historical past, nor in the distant future, it happens now, in my precious lifetime. I have to witness this total fuck up of…. well, of everything…. That’s extremely hard to endure !
The evil ones who torture people know that even the strongest gets broken if forced to watch their children being tortured. I think that’s what it is going to be like…. because I love nature, the wildlife of this world just as if they are my relatives and children… a most terrible thing, the most terrible thing.
August 30th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Kathy C, I have never considered getting a vasectomy until recently. I haven’t really figured I need one (I do have a 28 yo daughter but that’s a different story). However, on more than one occasion I have been asked by lesbian couples to be a sperm donor. I have always declined but felt like a cad afterward. Now that I have a very good reason not to bring new life into this world, even that doesn’t seem to be enough. Some friends are requesting it even now, despite my sharing my thoughts about collapse, over population, etc. So, I’m thinking that if I get a vasectomy, I would have an easy out. Hmm.
August 30th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
More bad news on the positive-feedback front: Carbon release from collapsing coastal permafrost in Arctic Siberia.
And, on the political front, there’s this: Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA.
August 30th, 2012 at 10:28 pm
I feel depressed and weepy. Seems very appropriate.
I’m grateful to you all here but sometimes I wish there were more of a way to sit down and have a cup of tea with you.a
August 30th, 2012 at 11:13 pm
i see guy once again is indulging in dogmatic pessimism, a curious compulsion. well, it’s good someone cares enough at least to keep reminding anyone who wishes to know that we’re entering dire straits. this isn’t a dream, it’s a surreal nightmare.
maybe many of us will face death ‘prematurely’ because of collapse, and maybe we will go extinct relatively soon. but we can’t be sure.
guy, i think u’re far more pessimistic than some of the other academics u cite as being in agreement with your position. i think richard heinberg, for example, is one u’ve cited. his public writings on the matter are much more cautiously optimistic. to my knowledge he’s never written anything remotely as dogmatically bleak and pessimistic as your last couple of essays.
as i’ve observed before, this is in stark contrast to the hopeful, optimistic guy apparent at other times. for all the pessimism, u don’t come off as suicidal, or overwhelmed by depression. u function well with a sense of humor while speaking publically.
everyone has their quirks.
‘I would be stunned if this valley — or any other area in the interior of a northern-hemisphere continent — will provide habitat for humans five years from now.’
this quirk is getting bigger. i hope it won’t become so great that it drowns out or hopelessly distorts the bigger message u have to share.
‘Continue to fuck the planet and our future, and see if I give a damn.’
not giving a damn about something terrifying and painful and out of control is a natural, sane reaction. otherwise u’d go bonkers (even more so than u are now (smile)).
re. anarchy, maybe it’s only possible outside the confines of civilization, among small groups of egalitarians. i certainly share your dismay that anarchy isn’t more widely respected and sought after.
imo some writers idealize the life of noble savagery. richard reese, whom i’m reading now, is one. perhaps if we don’t go extinct, this will be the life of survivors. anarchy, with greater happiness and fulfillment. perhaps in a world depleted of resources in which a comeback of civilization is impossible, our descendents might have a worthwhile future after all. perhaps without the shackles of civilization/domestication, intelligence and sanity will make a come back. wouldn’t that be nice?
very interesting comments to this essay. gail’s blog is worth further exploration. thanks to kathy et.al. for replies to my query about separating shit from piss to best recycle these ‘waste’ products.
i live a double life. by day, i blend in with mainstream society, by night, alone, i’m on nbl, sharing with others contempt for the mainstream and despair for the predicament we share. sigh
August 30th, 2012 at 11:22 pm
Morocco Bama
How do you like that one, Yorchichan?
You’ve definitely got the wrong idea about me! See the post I’ve just made at the end of the last essay.
August 30th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
Guy said
“And, on the political front, there’s this: Correspondence and collusion between the New York Times and the CIA.”
Yep! The Times was with the Washington Post a flagship of Operation Mockingbird, the CIA op which used the mainstream media to disseminate propaganda from the late 1940s (when the CIA was founded) into the ’70s. was exposed by one of the post-Watergate investigations. We were told then that this would no longer happen. And some people actually believed it, and have insisted it was all in the past. During the ’60s, a common saying about the Times was that its motto “All the news that’s fit to print” should really read “All the news that fits.”
If there is any form of survival, it will have to be organized along anarchist principles.
The question of kids is impossible to answer. I know people who are inspired by their children to work for a world in which these children could survive. Yet i also know people who seem to be unable to do much or even think much beyond worrying about what happens to their kids the next day in terms of already scheduled activity, meaning they have no time to do anything about the big picture. Sometimes, there are no answers, certainly no easy ones.
August 31st, 2012 at 12:01 am
tvt, re the pessimism….
I think that is because the news of recent days is so much more alarming, isn’t it ? All the respectable responsible scientists speak in very measured tones, because they have to keep one eye on their employers and colleagues so as to keep their jobs and reputations.
The recent news is FAR worse than anything they were predicting a couple of years back.
Global warming is accelerating and the positive feedbacks may mean that it runs away with itself, like a broken thermostat on a water heater.
Also, many scientists are very busy and tightly focussed upon their specific field. To get a realistic picture means looking much more broadly, at all relevant areas.
We were arguing on an earlier thread about fast v. slow collapse. Collapse means different things to different people. Collapse of social order, of the US empire, of the global economy, banking, trade, fisheries, agriculture, etc. Thing is, climate change and collapse of the global ecology trumps them all. All the cheery optimistic positive talk about transition and resilience, idealistic alternatives, etc. means very little if the change becomes very rapid.
We’ve gone from 250 ppm CO2 to 400 ppm CO2 in little more than a century. On the geological and evolutionary time scales that’s astoundingly, dramatically fast, and what we are seeing today, is the result of CO2 levels 30 or 40 years ago. There’s that time lag. CO2 has been rising constantly and still is. So it seems things are going to get very much worse very quickly. Much faster than the scientists have been expecting from earlier projections.
I personally keep the way I feel separate from the information I receive, as much as possible. Two independent variables. I can’t afford to get depressed or to despair. I just do whatever I can, as a matter of self-respect, because it’s the only right thing to do. You know, like the professionalism of nurses or doctors who get emotionally engaged with sick people, but can’t afford to break down every time one dies, or they could never do that job. It did take me years to find a way. I used to get extremely depressed and disheartened and despair at the way things were going. Now I just fight, in whatever way I can, to try and help other species.
August 31st, 2012 at 1:19 am
Yup…but IMO keep it framed correctly please.
This is not about homo sapiens, it’s about homo colossus aka homo economicus, who WILL die off.
That there may be remnant homo sapiens left after The Great Unravelling has finished, is marginal. But if they are there really fighting to defend the biosphere, that would be great.
Using grief as a way to burn off beliefs or attachments to “civilisation” or it’s continuance is important. Used as a way to kill off the “civilised” in you and as a tool to decolonise heart and mind is very appropriate at this time.
Most of us will die sooner than later. I intend to make a difference on behalf of my beloved, or die trying.
“Interesting times” now morphed into “Exciting times” eh?
http://www.deepgreenresistance.org
August 31st, 2012 at 2:34 am
Btw, re climate change and remnant homo sapiens…. from what I can gather, this planet cannot have a runaway global warming that takes it into some kind of condition like Venus, or where we lose the atmosphere altogether, like Mars, for various reasons, which I previously found somewhat reassuring. No runaway global warming. But I think that what we can have is a runaway global warming that goes on for centuries before it slows, quite sufficient to cause the major extinction event. Which of course includes us. Civilisation will be gone, so will most of the larger fauna, and most of the humans. Because we are so adaptable and ingenious, a few may survive, living like the Inuit or Australian aborigines or Kalahari San, in isolated pockets, I wouldn’t discount that. But as far as the mass of people alive today are concerned, that’s hardly of any relevance is it. Whether that remnant will fight for the biosphere…. well, will they even know such a thing exists ?
August 31st, 2012 at 2:39 am
VT you wrote “guy, i think u’re far more pessimistic than some of the other academics u cite as being in agreement with your position.” Most other academics don’t put it all together – they will talk about one aspect of the situation we are in but limit themselves to that aspect. For instance, if they talk of CO2 levels they do not incorporate in what happens if we stop spewing CO2 when we either clamp down on it (unlikely) or the economy collapses and thus do not factor in the increased warming we will see when the factories and power plants stop putting particulate in the air. Almost no one projects what will happen when the grids go down and the nuclear power plants go Fukushima. They can’t even begin to imagine a world without electricity. Arctic News one of the most dismal sites doesn’t say a word on that. Dmitry Orlov is probably the closest to Guy in dismal predictions. If you read between the lines in Richard Heinberg I think you will see that he knows. He I believe consciously chooses to project whatever optimism he can manage to project because he doesn’t want people to despair. I am of the opinion that it is best to know the worst – that is why I spent years as a Hospice Volunteer.
The IPCC never incorporated positive feedbacks in their reports thus making them excessively optimistic. Meanwhile the facts on the ground keep racing ahead of some of the most dire predictions.
August 31st, 2012 at 2:43 am
As if things were not dire enough….
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/two-earthquakes-off-the-coast-of-jan-mayen-island.html
Two earthquakes in the Arctic (could the change in ice weight increase the likelihood of earthquakes in the Arctic and around the world?)
The author writes “The largest earthquake in August 2012 was a magnitude 7.7 quake on August 14 in the Sea of Okhotsk, close to Sakhalin, Russia’s largest island. With a depth of 626 km (389 miles), it was a “deep-focus” earthquake that can be felt at great distance from their epicenters.
As the above map shows, this 7.7 M earthquake and the two recent ones off the coast of Jan Mayen Island occurred on the same fault line that goes over the Arctic. The danger is that further earthquakes on this fault line could destabilize methane hydrates in the Arctic, triggering release of huge amounts of methane, as described at the pages on seismic activity in the Arctic and runaway warming.
August 31st, 2012 at 2:51 am
Dr House I was thinking you were exempt from my frequent posts about vasectomies and tubals. Well frankly I can see why others would want your DNA for their child but I suspect you can continue to Just Say No rather than submit to the knife.
August 31st, 2012 at 3:21 am
Mitt (aka The Glove) seems up to the task of accelerating our demise…I say vote for him and vote often! Sweet, I’ve just become a Republican…go 1%!
August 31st, 2012 at 4:03 am
.
TRDH, since there’s at least a statistically insignificant chance Humans might survive, albeit in small numbers, I would say please don’t get a vasectomy. I’d much rather have your seed sprinkled about than say Darth Cheney’s or Obama’s or the myriad other sadistic psychopaths and their sycophantic technicians.
.
August 31st, 2012 at 4:07 am
.
You’ve definitely got the wrong idea about me! See the post I’ve just made at the end of the last essay.
Come on, Yorchichan, loosen up! I was joshing you. If you read her T-Shirt, she says she takes a pill for that now, and it made me think of the Limitless pill you brought up on the other thread. Plus, are you telling me you don’t like a photo of a pretty woman?
.
August 31st, 2012 at 4:10 am
.
I’m grateful to you all here but sometimes I wish there were more of a way to sit down and have a cup of tea with you all
Jennifer, I understand you are from New England, but considering the subject matter, tea won’t cut it….it must be something much stronger…a witch’s brew would be fitting, perhaps.
.
August 31st, 2012 at 4:25 am
.
If you read between the lines in Richard Heinberg I think you will see that he knows.
Guy’s not in it as a niche career choice, imo, but I can’t say the same for Heinberg, and so Heinberg has to placate and nurture the audience he has cultivated, and that audience requires a light at the end of his bleak tunnel. Look at Heinberg’s blog versus Guy’s. It’s much more “professional”, and I don’t mean that as a compliment to Heinberg. To me, “professional” is a dirty word. Heinberg churns out a book a year, it seems, so this has largely become his livelihood. And, perhaps, Heinberg buys his own crap about living sustainably. Guy’s definitely not in this for the money and status, and that’s why I frequent his blog….well, there’s that, plus I love all of the great people here. What a wonderful collection of human beings!
.
August 31st, 2012 at 5:14 am
Morocco Bama
You wrote:
‘…and that’s why I frequent his blog….well, there’s that, plus I love all of the great people here. What a wonderful collection of human beings!’
There is the Turing Test. (Spoken as Stephen Hawking’s voice.)
Also, I wonder if you would write that if you viewed a spreadsheet of out mug-shot?… not that I’m serious about that.
August 31st, 2012 at 5:30 am
Kathy C raises a very good question:
‘could the change in ice weight increase the likelihood of earthquakes in the Arctic and around the world?’
I have wondered this for some time. As ice weighs a little less than water, and is packed up some km’s on the poles, which I know deforms the Earth’s crust in Antarctica some considdrable degree, it is a distinct possibility the icemelt could add, or take away pressure that , along with the torsional physical forces of global rotation, may shift some critical geomorphological elements to effect seismic activity, and further FUBAR the planet.
( I like how terribly scientific that may sound to a 10 year old).
Anyone got an answer for Kathy C on that?
August 31st, 2012 at 5:49 am
Just an update on the first monthly community readings and storytelling night I just hosted here in our(rented) house in the Blue Mountains.
Our town has 4600 residents, and three phoned to say they could not make it this month. No one came!
I had the fire going and some soup set on the stove, and some red wine on the way to being mulled.
So I sat and read a commentary and some chapters of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden – Life in the Woods’. It was peaceful. After an hour my 12 y/o son and I looked through a book on M.C.Escher like optical illusions he borrowed from his school library today.
I got to wondering if modern community is not an optical illusion too.
Maybe next month, ‘I’ll see how it goes.’
August 31st, 2012 at 5:54 am
.
The trees are dying, it’s plain to see
But it’s not just trees, it’s also thee
When forests are gone
And many suns accompany dawn
The human race will finely be free
.
August 31st, 2012 at 6:02 am
.
Ozman, if it creates more volcanic activity, the warming could quickly turn into an Ice Age, I would think. I don’t think an Ice Age is completely out of the question even without the earthquakes. It’s plausible and possible, just not highly probable, but you never know. Either way, we’re screwed. I don’t think the nuclear power plants give a damn whether it’s by fire, flood, or ice, they’ll glow like the postman, come rain or shine.
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August 31st, 2012 at 6:04 am
ulvfugl: Collapse means different things to different people.
This spurred a thought in me that I hadn’t had before (perhaps others are already there?). Global climate change may lead to ecological collapse similar to the way that runaway fever can lead to death in a human.
Proteins are long molecules twisted about themselves in certain patterns and shapes. Those shapes are largely what determine how they work. When a protein heats up to a significant degree, the bonds that are maintaining their shape break causing it to “denature” or lose that shape so they no longer work. This is how fever protects the human body: fever goes up and the proteins in the invading virus or bacteria denature, and you get better. Unfortunately, if the fever gets too high, then the proteins that make a human work start to denature as well and then the body can’t work either, leading to organ failure and possibly death. (Forgive the basic biochemistry lesson.)
So, if we think of the environment as one large body, it too can tolerate lots of variation in cold and heat. As long as it doesn’t go too far either way, then the body can adjust, and may actually benefit. However, if the heat goes too high, the body reaches a point where things don’t work anymore and organs (ecosystems) fail. Death soon follows. As this fever of AGW continues to rise, then we will start to see various systems fail – not just weather. Here are a few off the cuffs examples: pollens of entire species don’t work anymore, beneficial bacteria are unable to function, embryos don’t develop properly, endocrine systems can’t function, etc.
Fortunately, all the building blocks of life will still remain on Earth and as the forces which led to the runaway warming slowly recede, life will slowly begin to reemerge – just different from what was there before.
So of all the various “collapse” entities (social, government, etc.), ecological collapse is the one which is the most ominous – at least for everything living today. Of course, this is at the heart of what Guy has been preaching, but for whatever reason it just hadn’t occurred to me to think of it quite this way.
August 31st, 2012 at 6:11 am
.
To add further insult to the injurious madness, one of the organizations that has brought us awareness about ACC, also gives us this. Who wants to scream….and laugh…and cry…..and surrender?
http://news.yahoo.com/supersonic-flying-wing-nabs-100-000-nasa-155935257.html
Supersonic Flying Wing Nabs $100,000 from NASA
An aircraft that resembles a four-point ninja star could go into supersonic mode by simply turning 90 degrees in midair. The unusual “flying wing” concept has won $100,000 in NASA funding to trying becoming a reality for future passenger jet travel.
The supersonic, bidirectional flying wing idea comes from a team headed by Ge-Chen Zha, an aerospace engineer at Florida State University. He said the fuel-efficient aircraft could reach supersonic speeds without the thunderclap sound produced by a sonic boom — a major factor that previously limited where the supersonic Concorde passenger jet could fly over populated land masses.
“I am hoping to develop an environmentally friendly and economically viable airplane for supersonic civil transport in the next 20 to 30 years,” Zha said. “Imagine flying from New York to Tokyo in four hours instead of 15 hours.”
Wow! Think how quickly the Bush’s can jet off for drink of highly coveted fresh water from the Guarani Aquifer in Paraguay, or Ted Turner and friends can jet off to La Primavera on the Rio Traful in the Nahuel Huapi National Park just north of San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina for some fantastic trout fishing during the now non-existent Montana winters.
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August 31st, 2012 at 6:22 am
Here’s another good reason to expect rapid acceleration, the first graph on this post (it was the first link I clicked on this morning – before coffee!):
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2012/08/31/the-reality-of-climate-change/
…which looks like a very dangerous escalation to me.
Also, someone mentioned runaway Venus warming. Hansen has warned it’s possible, that the oceans will boil.
August 31st, 2012 at 6:52 am
MB you wrote “TRDH, since there’s at least a statistically insignificant chance Humans might survive, albeit in small numbers, I would say please don’t get a vasectomy. I’d much rather have your seed sprinkled about than say Darth Cheney’s or Obama’s or the myriad other sadistic psychopaths and their sycophantic technicians.”
You miss my point. If the human species survives some will have to live through horrific conditions for a long time to keep the species going. What right do any of us have to bring a child into that world. The unborn do not suffer. Once born they always die, but for some time some few on the planet got to live very comfortable lives. In the future such comfort will be unknown. I am not sure what right we ever have to bring a child into the world. Most humans think death is bad, yet the ONE thing that insures death is birth. How and when one dies are variable, but no one dies who is not born and no one who is born fails to die.
Is the concept of “the human species continuing” enough to bring a child into the coming horrors.
I remember watching a show once in which people were asked what would they do if they knew that in 10 years a planet destroying asteroid would hit and there was nothing that could be done about it. One woman said she would have a child as she would want to experience that before she died. No thought given to that child at age 9 seeing doom in the sky and knowing that she had to face it so her mother could have the experience of having a child. We seldom think how selfish it is to give birth since the new self gets no say in the matter. But it is beyond selfish to give birth if you have any idea what the future looks like.
August 31st, 2012 at 7:10 am
In WWII the Jews at the Terezin concentration camp performed the Verdi Requiem, which they learned by rote, as an act of resistance. They knew they were the walking dead, so they sang to the Nazis what they could not say. Perhaps that is all that’s left. Resistance. Refusing to go quietly into the dark night. A Requiem for Terra, if you will. Nevertheless it is all so fucking sad.
August 31st, 2012 at 7:39 am
.
Hell, it was meant to be “finally”, not “finely”, but now that I think about it, “finely” works just as well, or almost as well. No redaction necessary.
.
August 31st, 2012 at 7:57 am
Trying to answer my own question about increasing earthquakes due to arctic melt the answer may be no, but may be yes to melt in Greenland and Alaska per some scientists.
From http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/03/17/3165155.htm
“While melting ice might not have a global affect, it could have an impact on active faults that lie directly underneath glaciers on landmasses such as Alaska or Greenland.
“Melting of ice may change stresses in the crust locally, near the place with ice cover. As the ice load is removed, small faults in the same region may become re-activated,” says Pyle.
But the Japan quake, for example, was completely caused by plate tectonics. “The size of the event may have been a bit of a surprise, but the location and the way it moved were not.”
Future wholesale melting of ice above active faults would promote earthquakes through unloading, says Professor Bill McGuire who is with Geophysical & Climate Hazards in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London.
“This would take the form of ‘bringing forward’ the timing of earthquakes by reducing the stabilising tress beneath,” McGuire says.
Ice melt from free-floating ice sheets in the Arctic, on the other hand, would have no impact on active faults because they don’t exert any pressure on the sea floor.
There is, however, some research that links ocean water mass with a slight increase in volcanic activity.”
August 31st, 2012 at 8:03 am
OTOH since plates are connected if glacial melting moves something in one place doesn’t it affect many other places?
And this links climate change to earthquakes http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/560158/scientists_find_link_between_global_warming_and_earthquakes
” However, scientists have for the first time released a study that indicates that man made changes to our climate are also quite probably effecting the movement of tectonic plates around the globe as well. The implications of their research are far ranging as well as frightening: …..
What few foresaw however, was that changes to our surface climate would impact the movement of the large crustal plates that cause the continents to drift and that form mountain ranges and cause earthquakes. The research is obviously in its early stages, but I do not think we should take the findings of these scientists lightly or diminish their import.
The relationship of the movements of continental plates affecting climate is well established, as the lead earth scientist for this study quoted above noted. It is not, therefore illogical to assume that changes to climate in a feedback loop would also effect the movement of those plates. This study demonstrates that such is the case, at least with changes to the climate involving the increased intensity of monsoons in the Indian Ocean.”
August 31st, 2012 at 8:20 am
From today’s essay at Common Dreams: “Hell is coming, but it’s coming a lot faster than any predictions you’ve see so far from the scientific community.”
August 31st, 2012 at 9:32 am
Those low-flying helicopters are apparently measuring “radiation.”
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2012/08/29/low-flying-helicopters-over-berkeley-are-measuring-radiation-levels/
So why is there a need to measure baseline radiation? The Lawrence Berkeley Lab has been here for decades, so surely there is no pure baseline to compare its possible emissions to. Are the authorities expecting further catastrophes at Fukushima, where the spent fuel pool sits damaged, liable to collapse from even a moderate quake? Or are they anticipating a false flag “terror attack,” a nuclear 9/11 like the one which Homeland Security, one of the two agencies jointly carrying out the flights (with the National Nuclear Security Administration), has been “warning” about for several years, i.e. preparing people for?
Re climate: i’ve been closely monitoring global climate change since the mid ’80s, the pace has distinctly stepped up in recent years, changes happening WAY ahead of what used to be “worst-case scenarios.” But denial is at much higher levels than 10 years ago, at least in the US. Isn’t this interesting?
August 31st, 2012 at 9:40 am
The article at Common Dreams which Guy linked to above is quite good, but there was one point i disagreed with, and indeed it drew several comments.
————
“What about the Democrats? Well, except for one mention of climate
change in an interview with Rolling Stone, the President has been mum on
the topic, as has most of the rest of the Party.”
I didn’t realize that aggressively opening offshore drilling, allowing fracking to continue and so forth was “being mum.” It’s as if the past four years didn’t happen in article after article.
rwe2late
Don’t forget that the “bi-partisan” military-industrial behemoth is the single biggest user of petroleum products, and is the world’s worst polluter (nuclear, biological, chemical) and destroyer of the environment.
Gordon
Actually, under the Republican administration you’re shilling for, oil drilling in the U.S would increase exponentially. But you know that.
Toby Fernsler
Criticizing the Democrats is not shilling for Republicans. It is criticizing the Democrats.
mtdon
We don’t know that at all – shrub bush wanted to drill baby drill in the Artic only to be shut down by dems…..
When Obama does it the dems sit silently.
Obama the More Effective Evil.
Nukes? Same thing – the rethugs wanted more new nuke plants but it took the Oilybomber to get r done….
Of course those new nukes are tax payer funded but all profits go to the predator corps Obama loves so much. And of course those new nukes are built in the back yards of poor communities – promising new cancer hot spots – but hey it’s only poor people right?
According to Obummer it is.
Chris Randolph
Well no idiot, under the DEMOCRAT with majorities of DEMOCRATS in both Houses, a DEMOCRAT president stood in front of a fighter jet and announced the largest opening of US coastline in history to drilling.
And of course your pal Obama is sending the USCG to protect Arctic drilling from protestors.
And of course it’s a Democratic governor in NY who is backing fracking in exchange for campaign cash, no different than Corbett here in PA. Zero difference.
“under the Republican administration you’re shilling for…”
Um. no, there is a Democratic administration in reality-based reality (not that this makes any difference) and YOU are shilling for them.
readytotransform
August 31st, 2012 at 11:08 am
.
Whether or not to spread your Seed
Not all Doomers will agree
Even if Gay
Matters not to DNA
So go under the knife, too many to feed
.
August 31st, 2012 at 11:41 am
.
Clint said, “go ahead, make my day”
The dead did roar, and rock and sway
Sorry, old man
That’s not the plan
Move on, you’re in Nature’s way.
.
August 31st, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Wow, most people writing their epitaphs. I feel the same urge. One of my last hopes is that with economic collapse we will be forced out of the industrial age and thus give our planet a break. Many lives will be lost, but the remaining could rebuild a new society, or should I say tribe. It seems that’s the best outcome, but for us older folks, our day is done. I’ve had a good life, and am ready for something more fulfilling than this 3rd dimension existence. I’m sorry many young people will not have the playing field I had…
August 31st, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Guy, I have for some time been feeling the way you do now, only with guilt added to it for feeling that way. All I know to do anymore is withdraw from industrial civilization as much as possible without losing my mind, taking care of my daughter as best I can, and holding on to love with both hands.
My father took his own life back in May. He was 65, retired from Exxon, and had just gone back to work as a consultant for a small company in Houston. The man enjoyed a lifestyle that most folks in my generation (including me) can only imagine; but the money was never enough. There are so many lessons to take from this, and I am absorbing them as I am able through my sorrow.
TRDH, is Isaac bringing you any rain? We’ve had, like, four days straight of it here in Mississippi. No flooding or downed trees in my area, thankfully.
August 31st, 2012 at 1:32 pm
How close is the U.S. to totalitarianism? Let me count the ways:
http://agonist.org/numerian/20120831/totalitarianism_in_the_us_an_accident_waiting_to_happen
A very good essay.
August 31st, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Christopher, I’m very sorry to hear about your father. Suicide of a loved one is never easy, but I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to lose your father that way.
As to the rain from Isaac, we’ve had some but not nearly as much as they were predicting originally – less than an inch over the last 24 hours. We’ll take it though and smile while we do.
August 31st, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Very good post, Guy.
To BC Nurse Prof – I often have the same fear (breaking down into tears) if I truly explain what I think awaits my students. I think they deserve to know, but what good will it do? If I were them, would I even want to know?
Hard to know what to do.
Best regards to everyone – it’s sort of like living through one of the most influential books of my teenage years “On The Beach” (Nevil Shute – sure most of you are familiar) only it’s not theoretical. We know the end is coming, just not exactly how soon.
Karl
August 31st, 2012 at 2:49 pm
A great interview of Chris Hedges:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dHle_turjes
August 31st, 2012 at 3:29 pm
BC Nurse Prof, the section of the Hedges interview between 11:20 and 14:15, on the topic of higher education, particularly resonates with me. The always-articulate Chris Hedges is one of several people interviewed for Mike Sosebee’s film, Somewhere in New Mexico Before the End of Time. Early information about the film is posted here. Additional trailers and supporting video appear at Sosebee’s YouTube channel.
August 31st, 2012 at 3:51 pm
I noticed this from Kathy C on the previous post:
August 30th, 2012 at 7:23 am
“Here is perhaps a more relevant topic for discussion, ie one that we will face soon and in which we can exercise choice.
If you have created some way of surviving longer when things collapse (stores of food and supplies, gardens, livestock) what will you/should you do when those who have not done so come to beg or take your supplies or take over the farm you have worked hard to create?”
If you are one of the responders to Guy’s “What are we fighting for?” convinced that we are toast as a species and have nothing to live for, how do you respond to Kathy’s question? How do you think Guy would respond in that he has rejected the idea of suicide? Giving up a “lifeboat” like the Mud Hut without a fight in a time of collapse seems akin to suicide to me, but I know Guy has suggested he would cut loose and resort to wandering and foraging. Others including Kathy C herself, I believe, have suggested they would just open their arms and their storehouse to anyone that arrive at their front door. John Rember once suggested that a 12 gauge was an appropriate response to possible looters (forgive me John if I made that up). I know I’ve thought often about what I would do. What am I going to do, shoot somebody’s kids just because they’re hungry? Am I going to open myself up to starvation by providing that help? Where do you draw the line?
Michael Irving
August 31st, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Just when you think you have heard everything about us that is bad, Hedges manages to add a few garnishments.
August 31st, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Michael Irving,
My understanding is that Guy has a supportive community. Any defense will be communal. I think that his neighbors realize his value to the community.
Anyone there with any kind of military or police training should not have much trouble setting up a road block. No one gets far off road and on foot. Like to see them try. Won’t have to shoot them.
The Southwest is a rugged place to travel in normal times. If you are off the interstates and U.S. highways you had better know where you are going and why. With disruptions to services, gasoline in particular, few are going to have the nerve or skills to go very far from where they are when TSHTF. The hoards can not read a map now. Without cell phones and GPS, they have no chance. When was the last time you saw anyone walk any distance with a purpose? Walking, riding a bike, in the extremes in Arizona, and New Mexico? Finding water? A string of bodies on the road. They will attack each other until the last one is standing, and then he/she will succumb to the environment.
Want some practice? Load up your car with camping gear and supplies and and a tank of gas, and spend a week or so checking out campgrounds on back roads. Get a feel for the area. You only get that one tank of gas. See how that works out. Guy will be fine.
August 31st, 2012 at 5:23 pm
There are parts of the US where travel on a single tank will not get you to very many back roads, e.g. the New York Tristate area. Yes, i know there are a few, in respect of the local residents i don’t think we should discuss them.
August 31st, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Further evidence, as if more were needed, that the rule of law is dead in the U.S.: Obama’s justice department grants final immunity to Bush’s CIA torturers
August 31st, 2012 at 5:56 pm
.
Hedges is cogent, that’s for sure
In the liberal tradition, he feels for the poor
Good on him
But the chances are slim
That things will be like what they were before
.
August 31st, 2012 at 7:59 pm
Kathy C and Michael Irving,
What any of us would do in such a situation you describe is one thing to say and quite another to do.
For me, I intend to do my best to avoid such situations. We are in a rural-suburban area with lots of people but quite a bit of space between us. We are situated at the end of a remote country road surrounded by woods. No one would come down this road unless they knew where it was leading – those who did would have my neighbors to chose from/contend with first. And as Curtis points out, getting very far by walking is just one more skill that most Americans have lost.
My neighbors might be a more likely threat. Most of them know we have chickens and goats. Some of them have pretty large gardens. It’s hard to know how many would come knocking if the situation warranted it. But this I know – all of us have guns. It would probably start to look like the Hatfields and McCoys in short order.
So, to sum, if someone comes to my house asking/demanding for help, here’s my line of defense/offense:
1 – not a walkable distance
2 – many other places to chose from before reaching our place
3 – lots of well armed neighbors to pass through prior to reaching our place
4 – then, who knows? I have a gun, but whether I would use it or not would depend entirely on the person/situation.
August 31st, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Curtis, your point about getting a practice run is a good one.
Hunters might get along fine in any woods. But if you take away their insulated coveralls, guns, weatherproof boots, cell phones, water, food, etc., put them in the woods and told them to find some place 10 or 12 miles away, very few would find it; likely many would die of exposure before they got there (depending on the weather, of course).
The non-hunters would fare far worse. The woods are covered with poison oak, ivy, and sumac. There are snakes, skunks, wasps, and oh god the brambles! There are old rusty broken down barbed wire fences, felled trees, deep gullies, and more. That’s just on my property!
The fields are barren wastelands of industrial farming. The ditches between the fields are devoid of shade for miles and miles. There is no wildlife to speak of and the chemicals that are everywhere are enough to make most people sick. If you drank the water in those ditches, you would likely die sooner rather than later.
Lack of water would be the most common (and rapid) cause of death. Humans need a rather large amount of it on a daily basis – particularly when undergoing physical exertion. Who would be willing to drink brown thick water from a stock pond in order to survive? Very few, I’d wager.
I may be wrong, but when face with complete collapse, I just don’t see large numbers of people getting more than a few miles.
August 31st, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Question as to how many urban residents would even try to leave the city, when so many of them downright fear the countryside. I grew up in New York, remember many of my peers who thought that within a few miles past city limits you get attacked by insects. As if New York doesn’t have a certain insect problem. It’s scary to realize how many would be hopelessly disoriented without the usual urban landmarks to guide them.
August 31st, 2012 at 9:27 pm
Oh my yes! How could I have forgotten to mention the insects?! Mosquitos should be our state bird. At times they can be so thick that it’s like something out of a horror film. And there are ticks, and chiggers, and spiders, and . . . you get the idea.
August 31st, 2012 at 9:58 pm
The REAL Dr. House, I’ve replied to your interesting comment earlier, on my own blog, because it was too long for a comment here.
http://www.monsangelorum.net/?p=3993
September 1st, 2012 at 12:56 am
It seems that poor people need to work harder.
‘Gina Rinehart attacks ‘jealous’ poor’
Some copy from same:
“Gina Rinehart, a mining magnate worth an estimated £19 billion, has advised those jealous of the wealthy to “spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working” in order to be successful.
Miss Rinehart, 56, also rounded on Australia’s “class warfare”, insisting it was billionaires such as herself who were doing more than anyone to help the poor.
She warns that Australia risks following European economies ruined by “socialist” policies, high taxes, and excessive regulation.
Miss Reinhart stated there was “no monopoly” on becoming a millionaire”
Ah, right Gina, I’ll get right on it…ah now …where did I leave that Capital I had lying around?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9510025/Gina-Rinehart-attacks-jealous-poor.html
The privelage, Oh! the privelage.( Spoken like Dr Smith from the 1960s TV space com ‘Lost in Space’)
Come to think of it, we are sort of …’Lost in Space’ now.
September 1st, 2012 at 2:45 am
Jeff who cares how many will leave the city. In any rural area how many are prepared for what is coming. Most my neighbors are now on city water. The hand dug wells dried up several decades ago. We have a hand pump in a drilled well. I have one other neighbor who has made such preparations. But within 1 mile radius are over 100 people. Those who think something is going to go wrong are preparing with guns without giving water a thought. We will of course make our water available to any who want it. We have a small town of totally unprepared people about 12 miles away. That is walkable. Thinking that the folks in the cities will stay put does not mean that any prepared person will be free of finding hungry people on their doorstep with or without guns. If you have stashed enough food for 1 year for 2, taking in 2 more drops your food supply to 6 months. One person with 3 young children and an elderly parent would take you down to 4 months yet add only 1 person to your workforce.
Meanwhile while you are out working your garden with your rifle on the ground because you can’t work a garden with a rifle it just takes one well aimed shot to do you in.
It doesn’t take hordes of city folk to ruin your plans for long term survival.
Meanwhile check out where the nearest nuclear plant is and what prevailing winds are. Remember that Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima happened when there was still the ability to try to contain them. What will it be like with 400 plus nuclear plants going critical untended.
Got you depressed, sit back and watch Dr. Strangelove…..
September 1st, 2012 at 5:21 am
.
When the time’s upon us, what will you do?
Defend your holdings, as is instinctual for you?
They will come
To those who have some
Do you welcome them, or does their ass get your shoe?
.
September 1st, 2012 at 5:27 am
.
A fear of nature is culturally ingrained
They flocked to the cities til few remained
The few that are left
May be targets for theft
But the melting reactors ensure there’s nothing to be gained
.
September 1st, 2012 at 6:32 am
MB – yep “But the melting reactors ensure there’s nothing to be gained”
September 1st, 2012 at 6:33 am
And then there is nature
“Solar storms can destabilize power grids at midlatitudes August 31, 2012 The Sun is capable of disrupting electrical systems on Earth in a variety of ways, from solar flares and coronal mass ejections to proton storms. Typically, it is only objects far above the Earth’s surface, or systems at high altitudes at polar latitudes, that are considered at risk except during the most powerful storms. Notable recent examples include solar activity during March 1989 and October 2003 (the “Halloween Storms”), which knocked out power in Quebec, Canada, and Sweden, respectively. Research by Marshall et al., however, finds that even a moderate event can have destructive effects far from the typical regions of concern.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-08-solar-storms-destabilize-power-grids.html#jCp
September 1st, 2012 at 6:34 am
“Japan plans to cut state spending, could run out of money in a month
Japan’s government is planning to suspend some state spending as it could run out of cash by October, with a deficit financing bill blocked by opposition parties trying to force Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda into an early election.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9510811/Japan-plans-to-cut-state-spending-could-run-out-of-money-in-a-month.html
September 1st, 2012 at 7:22 am
We had conciousness, but we misused it, so now it will be taken away.
Consciousness imagines we exist. For now. It once didn’t, and once again won’t. When and how is a matter for speculation.
I don’t know what do do. I’m at a loss.
Chop wood and carry water. Non-volitional action. Acting without a sense of agency: without the sense that “I am doing such and such”.
How is it that in two and a half months you go from “chop wood, carry water” to “I surrender?
With non-volitional action there is no going, no separation between the two: without the sense of agency, that “I am doing such and such”, there is neither “I am doing the fighting” nor “I am doing the surrendering”.
for all the pessimism, u don’t come off as suicidal, or overwhelmed by depression. u function well with a sense of humor while speaking publically.
A pessimist is a realistic optimist:
“The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised”. ~George F. Will, The Leveling Wind
Thing is, climate change and collapse of the global ecology trumps them all.
And the ace has just been played. Exponential feedbacks lead to exponential progression in the news.
The perception of danger changes with the severity of the possible consequences. Among dwellings remotely downstream from a dam, the consequences from a failure of the dam are perceived as minimal, increasing with proximity to the dam – upto a point. For those immediately downstream from the dam, the consequences are not perceived within the realm of the possible.
With the dam of climate disruption towering above us all, few will believe that the cracks presage imminent failure.
September 1st, 2012 at 8:04 am
.
Inspired by Benjamin, I’m compelled to rhyme
Now I’m thinking of Limericks all of the time
Tis a curse
I’m obliged to nurse
This clever five-line obsession of mine
.
September 1st, 2012 at 8:08 am
.
A picture’s worth a thousand words….or more.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lEEBRiGpt34/UEFk38c06nI/AAAAAAAAB0s/N0Np6SZCnqc/s320/thumbnail-4.jpg
.
September 1st, 2012 at 8:16 am
Though the Christian imagery can be off putting for some, the deeper truth revealed by Yeats is correctly on target:
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
——–
Consciousness shall not end by the collapse of civilization nor shall life end by a return to a Miocene climate. Indeed, the fall to tribalism shall be brutal and bloody, but life feeding on life has been the way of this planet from the very beginning. For the virtualized and sanitized human consciousness so common today, quite domesticated through rigorous years of education to become nothing more than super-consumers, the future tribal life will actually be a release of the human mind “back to the wilds” where life will be harsh certainly, but it will be vastly more real and connected to the basis of all things. I have faith in Life…it will eventually consume me as it does all things, but just one moment in time to stare at the stars and contemplate existence as a truly free mind is worth the price of that eventual consumption.
September 1st, 2012 at 9:01 am
.
The Puritan Ethic survives to this day
Not entirely intact, but in part, I’d say
Their concept of Time
Has made it a crime
For sinful souls to play without pay
.
September 1st, 2012 at 9:12 am
Kathy C: are you trying to tell me that post-collapse won’t be easy?:-) Don’t worry about me being too optimistic, i’ve been confronting doom for, as i said earlier, over 39 years. Perhaps the worst part has been the utter denial i’ve confronted not only amongst the mainstream types (where one would expect it) but also amongst so many “activists,” e.g. one guy who thinks the earth could easily support 100 billion people if power and resources were “fairly” distributed, another (an academic!) who saw no problem with WWIII, even a nuclear one, since the world survived the first two global wars,…
September 1st, 2012 at 9:23 am
Agrarian anarchy isn’t a realistic expectation to take over, dreams die hard? Seems that is what I’m seeing here.
There is another way to look at this. Many others have a lot of different dreams that are getting cold water dashed on them. Dreams dying hard could lead some to want to go out with a bang. Their attitude will be they are going to die if they can’t have their dream, and they are taking as many with them as they can. Once this starts, it leads to waves of desperate, suicidal fighting, with the usual company of starvation and disease. Billions could die relatively quickly.
As a result,fossil fuel burning drops to practically nothing compared to now. Forests, grasslands, phytoplankton, begin recovering, sequestering CO2 at much higher rates. Climate stabilizes. It could be stable at a point similar to past eras of high or low temperature, much harsher, conditions, but survivable. Many nuclear power plants could work as designed and hold in their radiation. What does get out is not necessarily going to be lethal to everyone.
People who more gracefully give up dreams and accept reality, who make rational decisions about how they get along with each other and the rest of life, might survive.
September 1st, 2012 at 9:29 am
.
Maybe this Mass Melancholia is our attempt to connect with the French, as witnessed by this article. The French Butterfly flapped its wings, and we became suicidal.
http://news.yahoo.com/french-pessimism-nears-time-high-poll-120633463–finance.html
French pessimism nears all-time high: poll
PARIS (Reuters) – The French are bleaker about their country’s future than at any time since 2005, a new poll showed on Saturday, with 68 percent saying they are “rather” or “very” pessimistic, the highest level ever in the initial months of a new presidency.
We’re all French now.
.
September 1st, 2012 at 9:45 am
Pralaya:
Pralaya, in Hindu cosmology, is an aeonic term for Dissolution, which specifies different periods of time during which non activity situation persists, as per different formats or contexts. The word Mahapralaya stands for Great Dissolution. During each pralaya, the first three realms (loka) are destroyed, that is Bhu loka (Earth), Bhuvar loka, and Swarga loka [1]
Praakritik Pralaya, which is of 311,040,000,000,000 solar years duration, occurs after the completion of life of Brahma (i.e. 100 Brahma years = 311 trillion and 40 billion earth years = one day of Vishnu = 1 Parama). After the completion of one Brahma life cycle, the complete dissolution of all the entities (i.e. the Panch Mahaabhoot or Universe) takes place in the eternity (God). Praakritik Pralaya is the time for which Vishnu sleeps. The next morning, he again gives birth to a new Lord Brahma and asks him to create new worldly entities. Noticeably, Praakritik Pralaya and the Life of Brahma are of equal duration.
According to the Wikipedia:
The age of the universe is the time elapsed since the Big Bang. The best current estimate of the age of the universe is 13.75 ± 0.11 billion years[1][2] (4.339 ± 0.035 ×10^17 seconds) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model.
September 1st, 2012 at 10:01 am
Oz – I can’t thank you enough for posting “Ship of Fools” …
September 1st, 2012 at 10:03 am
Oz,
I like the video of this version better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFZgbO-O1gA&feature=related
September 1st, 2012 at 10:45 am
Thanks for this website. I am pessimistic but not as pessimistic as Mr. McPherson. But perhaps I should be;
I am an office drone (attorney in legal services) who chairs the local union chapter of legal services workers. Granted, I probably am in the wrong position because I find the collapse of industrial civilization within 20-30 years (I know, too long) quite possible. Maybe I should tell all the members to quit their jobs and prepare for post-industrial life.
I have only myself to blame if collapse comes and I am unprepared. But I admire the efforts of the posters here and can’t disagree with the message of doom. If people approach you after collapse and say how could we have known, take a hoe and strike them on the top of their heads.
September 1st, 2012 at 11:08 am
Ken not to worry, in the best of situations preparation only buys you some time (since we are all mortal) but things keep progressing so fast and the outcome looks so much more dire that probably the best of preparations will only buy a tiny bit of time. Hope that cheered you up.
The older ones of us on this site have the comfort of knowing that we have less time for living to loose than the younger ones. For once it is good to be old.
What has always mattered most is what we do with today. Hug everyone you love lots and lots for a starter
September 1st, 2012 at 11:11 am
We represent the limerick brand;
Time’s short, and the end’s close at hand,
So, skipping the drama,
Morocco Bama:
We welcome you to Limerick Land!
September 1st, 2012 at 11:16 am
For all of you SF&F fans, you should remember, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street
September 1st, 2012 at 11:23 am
Jeff, I was just trying to address the fact that saying that folks won’t be coming out of the cities doesn’t mean that one is home free. My neighbors don’t need one tank of gas to get to my house. When I start typing my fingers forget to stop, so I added information that was really more pertinent to others comments than yours.
September 1st, 2012 at 11:53 am
Kathy said, “Meanwhile while you are out working your garden with your rifle on the ground because you can’t work a garden with a rifle it just takes one well aimed shot to do you in.”
TRDH said, “My neighbors might be a more likely threat…all of us have guns.”
I find the movie “Cold Mountain” to be instructive. There is the part where the squad of Home Guard (Homeland Security) enters Esco and Sally Swanger’s yard to question them about their sons (deserters). Five against one–the outcome is clear from the start.
It seems a possibility/probability that as order becomes disorder TPTB will, at least for a time, attempt to maintain order by any means necessary. It seems likely that the same thought processes that finds it okay to use LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device)/water cannon/tear gas/pepper spray to control citizens engaged in free speech will be employed to maintain order in the future. Police forces are increasingly militarized and are equipped with all kinds of hardware including tanks and drones. It is not much of a stretch for me to imagine someone like TurboGuy, previously our NBL resident gendarme, and a burly SWAT team driving up to my door in the Department’s Hummer to demand the government’s share of my garden produce.
Not unlikely either is the problem of neighbors. For some completely unexplainable reason, 95% of my neighbors out here in the boondocks have not seen fit to grow a garden. Apparently they are just another kind of suburban dweller who just happens to live miles from the nearest town and more than an hour’s drive from the nearest city. Without gas most of them could get really surly when their food runs out. Taking a line about Tennessee from the movie “Shooter” this area is just a western extension of Idaho, “the patron State of shooting shit.”
I’m into agrarian anarchy, thinking it to be the best chance for maintaining some semblance of civilization, if we don’t persist in scrubbing the planet clean of life. However, I think having a bug out bag and a plan B would be wise.
Michael Irving
September 1st, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Arthur Noll:
“Forests, grasslands, phytoplankton, begin recovering, sequestering CO2 at much higher rates. Climate stabilizes. It could be stable at a point similar to past eras of high or low temperature, much harsher, conditions, but survivable. Many nuclear power plants could work as designed and hold in their radiation. What does get out is not necessarily going to be lethal to everyone.”
Nuclear power plants work as designed? LOL. I worked on nuclear plant design. What i know is SCARY. They hold in their radiation so well that a 1970 study by Lawrence Livermore Lab by Arthur Tamplin and John Goffman found an alarming increase in leukemia and other radiation-related effects around nuke plants. They were told to dump their study, but resigned and released it anyway, and withstood massive efforts to smear them. This was happening as my time in the industry was coming to an end, my co-workers reacted with anger because their jobs were threatened, not because they questioned the study.
How will the on-going supply needs of nuke plants (spare parts, etc) be taken care of? What’s gonna be done with the waste, just let in pile in spent fuel pools? What will be done to maintain the grid you expect them to feed into?
And the idea that eco-systems will begin to recover as soon as fossil fuel use drops ignores the fact that so much stuff is already in the atmosphere that hasn’t even begun to do damage, and it will continue to do so for many years even if emissions drop to zero today.
It’s such know-nothing optimism which drives me to as much despair as Guy is showing.
Kathy C: no problem, any time you respond,you are responding to an entire forum, not just me.:-)
September 1st, 2012 at 1:42 pm
.
Who said the end of times isn’t fun?
There’s something exciting about “then there was none”
When the lights go out
Don’t scream and shout
Limerick day and night til they come with the guns
.
September 1st, 2012 at 1:45 pm
And i forgot to state explicitly (one should never assume everyone knows:-)) that nuke plants do need FUEL, which after fossil fuels use ends will be dug up, refined, transported…. HOW?
September 1st, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Jeff S, thanks for the info on nukes. Always nice to hear what we suspect is true from an insider. Fukushima has brought the nuclear plant problem into stark perspective for many of us. Many ways the grid can go down, some sudden (EMP, solar flare) some less so – loss of fuel, maintenance problems due to failure to maintain infrastructure, cutting corners and allowing the work force to age (average age of linemen in the US is now almost 50). When the grid goes down for good and backup energy sources for cooling run out its “uh oh” time at the nuke plants. A study prepared for the US Congress reported that our grid could be hardened “EMPact America believes it would cost a mere $60-$100 million to protect the 300 largest transformers running the grid, and another $400 million to $600 million to protect an additional 3,000 transformers. It would be a one-time cost.” That would at least potentially protect it until all fuel ran out. But it appears to be more important to bail out big banks.
http://www.whentechfails.com/node/1545
400 Chernobyls: Solar Flares, EMP, and Nuclear Armageddon
September 1st, 2012 at 1:57 pm
The monsters are due on Maple street part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIBMWoVfnMY
September 1st, 2012 at 2:00 pm
The monsters are due on Maple street part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMVFrNfCp1g
September 1st, 2012 at 2:27 pm
The above links are for a 2002 update of The Monsters are Due on Maple street and may not be as good as the original.
September 1st, 2012 at 2:28 pm
Michael,
You garden on land brutally stolen from the original inhabitants, done by this present “civilization”, which has moved on to brutalizing other areas of the world. It uses resources with virtually no thought at all for the future, makes plans on concepts that exist only in the imagination. What part of this did you want to maintain?
I have never seen in the concept of agrarian anarchy, any talk about dealing with people who are willing to take things by force, any talk about how to keep population in check, any talk about specifics of how economic value is decided, including a careful look at how fast resources of all kinds are being used. I see vagueness and ignorance and fantasy about serious problems on all this if I see anything at all. I see no serious thought behind the words agrarian anarchy, just a vague utopian dream. No clear idea of how it works, and appropriately, no clear idea of how we get from here to there.
If Guy really has surrendered on fighting to have this, I’m glad to hear it. But his extreme pessimism about anything working makes me doubtful that he really has fully surrendered. He has his small shadow of his dreams in what he has done and has seen a few others doing. I think he is telling himself there is no hope in trying anything else, he will do what he is doing or something similar, until the end comes. I’m saying no, there is another possible path here. A path that isn’t based on dreams and looks like it might have some human life at the end of it, and as a necessary part of that, of course, a significant amount of other forms of life. Worth trying for, I think.
September 1st, 2012 at 2:40 pm
.
The need to control, it’s what got them here
Creating safe havens, from all that they fear
Humans are clever
But it’s a shame they never
Considered their impact on the biosphere
.
September 1st, 2012 at 3:00 pm
.
So true
http://i.imgur.com/YB76Y.jpg
.
September 1st, 2012 at 4:12 pm
That is a really odd answer, Jeff. Most people don’t regard me as a wild eyed optimist for seeing that a huge dieoff needs to happen to avoid worse problems, and that the chances it will happen are good. Did you actually read what I wrote? And I said people surviving would *not* be using fossil fuels. Included in that, they would not be trying to maintain electric grids. I think you are responding to some fantasy person you have made up in your mind, not me.
As for nuclear plants, I’ve said previously that we might have to draw large circles around them, around contaminated areas, and people just don’t go there for centuries. That could still leave a considerable amount of territory in the world.
As for leukemia around existing plants, that may or may not be the result of the plants. There are other things that cause cancer. You seem to be really quick to jump to conclusions with me, here, imagining a person who doesn’t exist, are you doing that with other things, too? There is no question that radiation can be dangerous and that it gets out, but I often think it is possible that people seriously overreact to those dangers and pin everything that goes wrong on it.
That does *not* mean I’m in favor of nuclear power. People so often insist on these extreme positions, that if you don’t believe that small amounts of additional radiation to existing background is simply horrible, that you favor nuclear power. I don’t favor nuclear power, I think too much energy use from any source, can be a major problem. I trained to be an engineer, but walked away from that decades ago on reading Limits to Growth and similar stuff. I haven’t been a person knocking myself out looking for new energy sources or declaring that we need nuclear energy. What we need are a *lot fewer* people behaving rationally about how much they use and how much they reproduce.
I don’t want to either exaggerate or downplay the dangers involved with radiation. There are already parts of the world that have significantly greater amounts of background radiation from natural sources, due to altitude, due higher amounts of uranium in the local rock, significantly higher amounts of radium from that, and people do not drop dead there at a noticeably higher rate than other places. On another list I’m on, a person who does favor nuclear power, in response to the levels of radiation being found in fish near Fukushima, came up with some of these places in the world- link at the end- and there apparently isn’t any evidence that this causes significant problems. As before, I don’t agree with this person’s argument that we need nuclear power plants, but at the same time, this information about how much radiation people can deal with, is interesting and valuable. Since we are likely to be exposed to more of it as things fall apart, it is good news that many may well be able to do that. It is not what I’d like to do, but if there is no alternative, it might be survivable. The excuse that we can do nothing to help ourselves, so we won’t change anything, could be wrong, I think. https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1946.html
September 1st, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Also, Jeff, I don’t think I’m saying an ignorant thing about CO2 and forest regrowth, etc. The turnover of CO2 in the atmosphere with plants is very large. We use something like 40% of the available photosynthesis, and a lot of that is with annual plants that constantly turn CO2 over. They take it in with growth and it goes right back to the atmosphere as they decay. Perennial plants like trees and grasses, grow bigger, and they don’t turn over as much. If that current 40% of use was put down to, oh, I don’t know, less than one percent, and perennials grew where annuals are presently a similar high percentage, then I think you’d see a reduction in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. I don’t think people looking at this question are considering a massive dieoff and regrowth of forests on land currently cultivated. I think they are considering attempted continuation of business as usual for a large population of people doing annual agriculture and burning firewood.
September 1st, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Arthur Noll,
Hmm, let me see if I understand…
Your plan is to have no plan but to just go along and get along until most of the rest of us kill each other in a hissy fit because we can’t accept reality. You wait around until someone else has a plan that works and then you just mooch off them?
I like it. Where did you sign up to be one of those graceful people?
Michael Irving
September 1st, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Arthur Noll Says: I’m saying no, there is another possible path here. A path that isn’t based on dreams and looks like it might have some human life at the end of it, and as a necessary part of that, of course, a significant amount of other forms of life. Worth trying for, I think.
If correct, then maybe past the bottleneck, Homo sapiens would have transformed/evolved into Homo eusapiens, as Dr. George Mobus suggests in his blog Question Everything. Possibly smarter, but not “Too Smart for their own Good”.
Otherwise, the extremophiles, particularly the hyprethermophiles would still survive, until the 400+ Fukushima radiation substantially decays (in less than half a million years). They would then have a chance of building another tree of life – until the sun goes red giant.
September 1st, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Guy,
Certainly don’t blame you. Think there are plenty of people that have heard the message and know but unfortunately not all of them are doing, would be interesting to know how many have taken action with what they know now. You certainly have been one of the few that can stand behind what you say as you’ve demonstrated your ability to work hard (considering all that you’ve done at the “mud hut”), you’re smart (common sense) and intelligent, I’m sure in your travels you’ve met many (including us) who would welcome you to enjoy life by being around those who know, those who care and those that continue to do what they can as we do, and let’s not forget enjoying the time we have here, fuck the rest of it.
Thank you for coming here and sharing your time and thoughts with us, there’s a lawn chair waiting for you to sleep in.
September 1st, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Oops, I meant nap not sleep, no time for that!
September 1st, 2012 at 6:15 pm
Arthur Noll:
“As for nuclear plants, I’ve said previously that we might have to draw large circles around them, around contaminated areas, and people just don’t go there for centuries. That could still leave a considerable amount of territory in the world.”
Nuke plants don’t just sit there. Unless the spent fuel is controlled, it will go critical.
“As for leukemia around existing plants, that may or may not be the result of the plants. There are other things that cause cancer. You seem to be really quick to jump to conclusions with me, here, imagining a person who doesn’t exist, are you doing that with other things, too? There is no question that radiation can be dangerous and that it gets out, but I often think it is possible that people seriously overreact to those dangers and pin everything that goes wrong on it.”
May or may not be the result of plants? You think Tamplin and Goffman, experienced researchers, did not CONTROL for other factors? Seriously?
“That does *not* mean I’m in favor of nuclear power. People so often insist on these extreme positions, that if you don’t believe that small amounts of additional radiation to existing background is simply horrible, that you favor nuclear power. I don’t favor nuclear power, I think too much energy use from any source, can be a major problem. I trained to be an engineer, but walked away from that decades ago on reading Limits to Growth and similar stuff. I haven’t been a person knocking myself out looking for new energy sources or declaring that we need nuclear energy. What we need are a *lot fewer* people behaving rationally about how much they use and how much they reproduce.”
You are against “agrarian anarchy.” What do you favor, then? The implication is that you favor continuing industrial civilization, somehow.
“I don’t want to either exaggerate or downplay the dangers involved with radiation. There are already parts of the world that have significantly greater amounts of background radiation from natural sources, due to altitude, due higher amounts of uranium in the local rock, significantly higher amounts of radium from that, and people do not drop dead there at a noticeably higher rate than other places. On another list I’m on, a person who does favor nuclear power, in response to the levels of radiation being found in fish near Fukushima, came up with some of these places in the world- link at the end- and there apparently isn’t any evidence that this causes significant problems. As before, I don’t agree with this person’s argument that we need nuclear power plants, but at the same time, this information about how much radiation people can deal with, is interesting and valuable. Since we are likely to be exposed to more of it as things fall apart, it is good news that many may well be able to do that. It is not what I’d like to do, but if there is no alternative, it might be survivable. The excuse that we can do nothing to help ourselves, so we won’t change anything, could be wrong, i think.https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q1946.html”
Chenobyl still shows massive damage to the environment, it isn’t going away. Any background radiation present in some areas is puny compared to radiation damage around Chernobyl, Fukushima, Pacific islands which were sites of US nuke tests (and similar sites in Russia, including the Chelybinsk disaster of 1957, Hanford in central Washington,…..
Also, Jeff, I don’t think I’m saying an ignorant thing about CO2 and forest regrowth, etc. The turnover of CO2 in the atmosphere with plants is very large. We use something like 40% of the available photosynthesis, and a lot of that is with annual plants that constantly turn CO2 over. They take it in with growth and it goes right back to the atmosphere as they decay. Perennial plants like trees and grasses, grow bigger, and they don’t turn over as much. If that current 40% of use was put down to, oh, I don’t know, less than one percent, and perennials grew where annuals are presently a similar high percentage, then I think you’d see a reduction in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. I don’t think people looking at this question are considering a massive dieoff and regrowth of forests on land currently cultivated. I think they are considering attempted continuation of business as usual for a large population of people doing annual agriculture and burning firewood.”
Any such reduction will take many years. Face it, the damage will keep mounting for years even if emissions are reduced to zero RIGHT NOW.
Michael Irving (to Arthur Noll):
“Hmm, let me see if I understand…
Your plan is to have no plan but to just go along and get along until most of the rest of us kill each other in a hissy fit because we can’t accept reality. You wait around until someone else has a plan that works and then you just mooch off them?
I like it. Where did you sign up to be one of those graceful people?”
Bravo! Well-said.
Kathy C.: maintaining the grid is about a lot more than making it safe from EMP. It is inadequate right now, and parts of it keep deteriorating, same as the rest of the infrastructure. Maintaining it without fossil fuels is pretty nigh impossible.
September 1st, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Michael,
Guy posted an essay that I wrote, that goes over these questions. It is in the archives. June of 2011, “Principles for Society” I think you were here, you might remember. Basically the plan is to convince someone with some formal status that these principles are true, that they matter, and to take them to the world. The rest of the population then decides to accept them or not. Those that do, come together and try to live by them, and get the advantages to survival they should give. I don’t expect many to do that. The rest go on committing suicide- and I’d expect that to go much faster after being exposed to these principles. That will give cognitive dissonance that drives people to try and smooth that out that conflict in their brain, along with conditions in the world also driving them to make something work or die. I’d say it will be dreams or nothing for far more than those who accept simple, observable truths. And dream choosers will die, almost no doubt at all about that. The others have a chance.
The “principles for society” are like a sharp knife to do triage on a seriously sick society, cutting the healthy, who would like to try to form a rational society, from the sick, who would rather die than even try to do anything like that.
September 1st, 2012 at 7:27 pm
this one goes out to the earth, from all the harmfully redundant overshooters who know they are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx2lJIOTBjs
I need you pure I need you clean
Don’t try to enlighten me
Power to misconstrue
What have they done to you
Infants in infantry
Rewrite their history
Uproot their colony
You’re ripe for harvesting
Virgin cells to penetrate
Too premature to permeate
They can’t elucidate
Never thought i was the enemy
I am the plague
I am the plague
They fake sincerity
Thy gifts don’t give to me
Now you’ve been annointed
They’ve been asking for it
Infants in infantry
Rewrite their history
Uproot their colony
You’re ripe for harvesting
Virgin cells to penetrate
Too premature to permeate
They can’t elucidate
Never thought i was the enemy
I am the plague
I am the plague
I need you pure I need you clean
I need you pure I need you clean
September 1st, 2012 at 8:38 pm
I don’t even know who I am anymore! I can say that I am being guided by bliss more now than I have in years. No regrets, man. Also, I pay attention to the “animals.” They just keep doing what they do. Until they can’t do it anymore. That’s sort of boring, but inspiring and a relief. I don’t have to save the world. I can’t. (But there are things that I enjoy doing which might have saved the world decades ago.)
September 1st, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Rock on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIkoSPqjaU4
Not much to say that hasn’t been said.
Bob
September 1st, 2012 at 9:00 pm
Bob
September 1st, 2012 at 11:03 pm
This does not need any words from me, even if I could find adequate expression, which I cannot…
http://vimeo.com/25563376
September 2nd, 2012 at 12:37 am
Kathy C
RE:
‘The monsters are due on Maple street part 1 & 2′
The original is so pleasing and powerful, IMO, that I am reluctant to view the newer version, but probably will tonight, Thanks.
September 2nd, 2012 at 4:41 am
What are we fighting for?
Living is not fighting, but fighting is a complex notion.
If you have to fight I feel you have already lost.
Finding the people accountable and bringing them to the table is one way.
Getting on with individual and community ‘development’ is another way.
To fight is to condone the adversarial opposition TPTB require to continue.
I suppose it is a different matter if the fight comes to your door. In that case perhaps you revert to instincts and do what is necessary, but many of us don’t really know how we will respond if it comes to a personal confrontation.
All I can see that works is to disengage from the cogs of Empire, and progressively move to a more local way of life.
(Strangely, that is a suspicious act to many.)
It may not be enough.
What are we fighting for?
To survive, and to take back the biosphere.
Call me a fool, but that is it, IMO.
September 2nd, 2012 at 4:44 am
Arthur Noll
Great posts . You appear to have ruffled a few feathers. I, however, agree with everything you wrote.
Positive feedback and climate change
It is clear that throughout the Earth’s climate history negative feedback loops have always rapidly gained the upper hand over positive ones. That is why the planet it is currently neither a giant snowball nor a burning hell. That, plus the fact there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, are the reasons why I don’t worry too much about climate change. At worst the climate will flip to a new state a few degrees warmer than it is today. This new state is likely to be more conducive to life than our current state. Why?
1) More CO2 in the atmosphere;
2) Average global temperatures closer to optimum for photosynthesis (21C), especially at higher northern latitudes where much of the land is;
3) Higher average rainfall. At the moment, rainfall is being held in check by global dimming. Once industrial civilization ends more sunlight will strike the earth causing more evaporation and hence more rainfall.
I can’t see a few degrees of warming driving humanity to extinction. We are the most resourceful and adaptable vertebrate ever to live.
Agrarian Anarchy
If it looks like agriculture and smells like agriculture…
A question for those of you who practise it: If someone came along and tried to force you off the land now, would you call the police? Your only “right” to the land is a piece of paper sanctioned by the state you detest saying you own it. Once that state no longer exists, what right do you have left? Is “I was here first” enough?
Nuclear Power Plants
I’ve never really investigated this issue before, but when Jeff S came along claiming to have been involved in nuclear plant design and agreeing with the apocalyptic position I thought I would. Jeff, when you wrote
Nuke plants don’t just sit there. Unless the spent fuel is
controlled, it will go critical.,
did you mean to write “go into meltdown” rather than “go critical”? (Still bad, but not as bad.)
It proved difficult to find out how long the risk of meltdown remains after shutdown. The best article I could find was the one here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/033564_solar_flares_nuclear_power_plants.html
Given the subject matter, it wouldn’t surprise me if Kathy has previously posted this link. It supports the position that in any rapid collapse situation the threat would be very real. Best hope that the sanity currently being displayed by Germany spreads to the rest of the world.
”Fear is a sickness. It will crawl into the soul of anyone who engages it.” Flint Sky, shortly before his village was destroyed due to lack of fear.
September 2nd, 2012 at 5:26 am
Yorchichan, your points re climate are grossly mistaken and don’t stand up to even the simplest criticism. Perhaps you should study the subject further before embarrassing yourself. The science refutes them all.
If it looks like agriculture and smells like agriculture…
An empty meaningless slogan. Do you actually know anything about agriculture, farming, horticulture, gardening ?
September 2nd, 2012 at 5:40 am
And this I can’t see a few degrees of warming driving humanity to extinction. We are the most resourceful and adaptable vertebrate ever to live.
What utter nonsense. Perhaps we are the most arrogant, hubristic, conceited, perverse and ignorant, in our present form… resourceful ? adaptable ? We’ve only been around for a couple of million years. That’s a blink of the eye in geological time. It’s is exactly that stupid attitude that is our downfall, our delusions of grandeur that we are the masters, the all-conquering supreme beings… Yuk.
“A few degrees of warming…” You really have no idea what you are talking about, have you.
September 2nd, 2012 at 5:41 am
From 2007, but still worth looking at IMO.
‘E.O. Wilson calls for an Encyclopedia of Life’
http://www.ted.com/talks/e_o_wilson_on_saving_life_on_earth.html
It shows how much we don’t know.
September 2nd, 2012 at 5:49 am
Just a note on ‘growing’ food.
‘We’ don’t ever grow food, the food does the growing, we do the facilitating of growth.
Soon the planet will no longer do the facilitating of our growth. Will we be ‘grown’, or grow ourselves?
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:08 am
I like E O Wilson. However, he was saying those same things many years earlier. That’s the trouble. Nothing much has happened,except things have become more dire.
Really, the gloom and doom and sorrow isn’t so much that the Arctic ice is melting away, per se. The gloom and doom comes because many of us could foresee this coming decades ago. We always assumed that the USA or the UN or some other international organisation would get some sort effective action set up. Nothing happened !
Blair and Bush trashed international law, and now it’s too late.
The heartache and pain comes because we ALL have to face up to the fact that this mess is NOT going to get fixed.
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:13 am
Oh dear, now I’ve ruffled some feathers!
ulvfugi
Agrarian anarchy is just a fancy term for agriculture without recognising the power of the state. Agriculture is defined anywhere you care to look as the growing of food and raising of livestock. Have you decided to invent your own definition because agriculture’s a dirty word to you? Do you claim agrarian anarchy isn’t agriculture?
You forgot to mention rudeness in your list of bad human traits, a trait you possess in abundance. Do you know what you are talking about? Ever heard of the Stefan-Boltzman Law? It’s the reason we won’t turn into Venus. Explain to me the mechanism by which, say, even a 10C warming would lead to our extinction? And I do mean extinction, not merely a vast reduction in our numbers. As I’ve posted before, there have been methane releases and rapid temperature increases since the advent of mammals, yet mammals are still here.
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:34 am
.
Best hope that the sanity currently being displayed by Germany spreads to the rest of the world.
Sanity? Huh? Either the leaders of Germany are boldly duplicitous, or they are insane, there’s no other option. This article cogently spells out the ruse.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Can-Germany-Really-Shut-Down-Their-Nuclear-Plants-And-Phase-Out-Fossil-Fuels.html
Unfortunately, even as Germany contemplates simultaneously phasing out it’s nuclear fleet and meeting ambitious goals for carbon reductions, the country is actually poised to dig itself an even deeper hole, as the country is in the process of building 10 coal-fired power plants, which would add 11,311 MW to the country’s installed capacity. These plants would emit 69.4Mt of C02 annually, over a quarter of the Germany electricity sector’s 2008 total carbon dioxide emissions, making it substantially more difficult for Germany to achieve each of the scenarios outlined above.
Germany has announced ambitious-sounding objectives on numerous fronts, from getting off of nuclear to leading the international climate charge. For now, however, the numbers and actions simply do not add up.
The only way what Germany is doing makes sense, is if they have shown their hand, and population reduction is in the cards, because that’s the only thing that fits other than being duplicitous or insane.
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:53 am
Sea ice crashes – AMEG was right
AMEG was right to warn the world that without action the sea ice would collapse. The world now is in a dire state and only immediate drastic action can cool the Arctic and hold off catastrophe.
The image below is an edit from a larger image, illustrating the dramatic fall of the sea ice over the past few weeks and showing Arctic sea ice extent (total area of at least 15% ice concentration) for the last 7 years, and compared to the average 1972-2011, as calculated by the Polar View team at the University of Bremen, Germany.
Read more at ‘The biggest story of all time’ and the AMEG news release at the AMEG blog.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/sea-ice-crashes-ameg-was-right.html
What more needs to be said
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:58 am
The biggest story of all time
What is happening in the Arctic is what Peter Wadhams, myself and others in AMEG have been dreading – that our deductions from the physics of the Arctic sea ice situation have come true. We also understand some of the dreadful repercussions from a sea ice collapse, which nobody has wanted to believe. But it is also like a cloud lifted, because now we can tell the world that we’ve been right all along. The sea ice extent was bound to start collapsing within the next year or two, because the thickness was decreasing steadily. Now it’s happened. Now people will have to face up to the repercussions. Now people can realise that our only choice, if we want to avoid decent into a hellish nightmare, is to geo-engineer like mad – use all the measures and techniques at our disposal that we can deploy immediately or at least before next summer’s melt, in the hope of trying to prevent further collapse.
rest at http://a-m-e-g.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/the-biggest-story-of-all-time.html#comment-form
I don’t agree we should do geoengineering but I understand why they want to – they think nothing else will save humans from extinction. They never considered that the collapse of industrial civilization might do the trick, but it seems to late for even that.
I had a friend who was dying of Hodgkins disease. When he was in remission they saved bone marrow and so at the end they did a bone marrow transplant which had almost 0 chance of saving him and in fact did not save him. It seemed better to just accept fate and go at home rather than in the hospital. I think likewise it is better to accept the fate of the planet and not start messing with geo-engineering of various sorts. Even if it worked and didn’t have dire unexpected consequences, without the dismantling of industrial civilization it would just push extinction down the road a bit. But no doubt no one will bite on their proposal anyway and within some decades some aliens can come and put a gravestone on the planet – RIP.
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:18 am
With our earlier discussion about security, I thought this article was particularly apropos:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/01/robbers-make-off-with-an-estimated-11-tons-of-elderberries-in-austria/
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:20 am
ulvfugl,
I watched that video and shared it. It brought tears to my eyes – not sure I’ll be able to watch the full film when it comes out. As most here know, the only real solution is the termination of the industrial economy.
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:36 am
.
Fossil Fuels, Renewables, and all the rest
It matters not, when put to the test
The root is to have more
It’s at the core
Of the Human compulsion to foul the nest
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:40 am
Yorchichan, I can’t see a few degrees of warming driving humanity to extinction. We are the most resourceful and adaptable vertebrate ever to live.
You may be right. The problem is that almost every climate model I know of, as well as virtually all the data, now shows that we are headed to way more than a “few degrees of warming”.
I understand your reluctance to accept what so many scientists are saying; accepting that humans will likely be extinct in very short order is difficult at best, impossible at worst. Facing death is not something that most humans can do easily. Survival is deeply ingrained in our DNA. The prospect that human beings will not survive what’s coming is antithetical to every bit of programming we have.
That doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.
I’m not saying that extinction is 100% certain – to claim such would be just as baseless as your statement. I can imagine that there might be a pocket or two of humanity that survives somewhere – perhaps on the antarctic continent. The fact is, we don’t know what the future holds. We can speculate and model and run scenarios, but no one knows how this is all going to turn out. But when virtually every climate model I know of shows significant warming without a complete stop of carbon emissions, and the data is also supporting those models, to assume that somehow our resourcefulness and adaptability is going to see us through, seems to me to be wishful thinking and the epitome of denial.
September 2nd, 2012 at 8:17 am
.
One of the responses I’m confident the psychopaths are going to institute, because they can make a profit on it, is spraying aerosols into the air to reflect the sunlight. It’s already in motion by virtue of the fact they’re already scheduled to test prototypes, and this is being financed by billionaires such as Humanity’s best friend, Bill Gates. Bill and Melinda care, they really do, but when I ask them for an investment in my school, they tell me it’s not a worthwhile cause, even though we would pay them back with a return. Instead, they point us to the SBA. Thanks, Bill and Melinda, for not wanting to teach people to fish, but rather, throwing them a few fish here and there and calling it Charity.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/17/geoengineers-to-release-planet-cooling-gas-into-new-mexico-atmosphere/
Geoengineers to release planet-cooling gas into New Mexico atmosphere
Two Harvard engineers are planning to spray thousands of tonnes of sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease the temperature of the Earth.
David Keith, one of the investigators, has argued that solar geoengineering could be an inexpensive method to slow down global warming, but other scientists warn that it could have unpredictable, disastrous consequences for the Earth’s weather systems and food supplies. Environmental groups fear that the push to make geoengineering a “plan B” for climate change will undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Keith, who manages a multimillion dollar geoengineering research fund provided by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, previously commissioned a study by a US aerospace company that made the case for the feasibility of large-scale deployment of solar geoengineering technologies.
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 8:28 am
.
The choice of Fort Summer for this experiment is rather telling, imo, and not a coincidence. To underscore that assertion, I have provided the following article. It’s as though what we are witnessing is somehow purposely ritualistic, as far-fetched as that sounds. In the least, it certainly is unconsciously ritualistic.
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/01/untouchables-news-in-indian-country.html
The Untouchables: News in Indian Country
Navajo and Apache children in prison at
Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner, N.M.
The most censored issues five years ago remain the most censored issues today. The issues censored by Indian Country Today, 2004-2006, remain censored today by both the mainstream media and the national Native media.
Those issues include Native Americans exposing the truth of US wars; the destruction of sacred lands; environmental genocide targeting Indian country; the co-opting of American Indian governments by the US and corporations; and casinos on Indian lands which benefit non-Indians while Native people suffer.
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 8:36 am
TRDH
I am not in denial because of a desire for human immortality. True, I’d like my children to have long and happy lives and if I am ever fortunate to have grandchildren then them also. In fact, I’d like it if everybody in the world and all creatures could live happy lives of harmony. Unfortunately, life is not like that. I am in denial about human extinction because of history and common sense that’s all.
The history is that the earth has undergone rapid heating in the past and mammals have survived. The common sense is that humans currently have a range spanning from deserts to the Arctic. That’s why it is undeniable we are the most resourceful complex creature that has ever lived. There are plenty of places which would remain habitable if they were 10 C warmer than and 10 C is higher than any predictions I have seen.
Like Arthur, I’m hardly an optimist. I think given pollution, environment destruction and climate change even 10% of the current population is highly unlikely by centuries end, maybe even twenty years from now. I just can’t see extinction. If even 1% survive that’s still an awful lot of people.
What data suggest we are headed for way more than a few degrees of warming? Climate is complex and not well understood. Who knows what negative feedback may kick in and when? If human survival is what you want, don’t give up hope.
September 2nd, 2012 at 8:59 am
Agrarian anarchy is just a fancy term for agriculture without recognising the power of the state. Agriculture is defined anywhere you care to look as the growing of food and raising of livestock. Have you decided to invent your own definition because agriculture’s a dirty word to you? Do you claim agrarian anarchy isn’t agriculture?
Yorchichan you are an idiot !
Agrarian is not a synonym for agriculture, and your definition of agriculture is one for kindergarten kids, not intelligent educated adults. Agribusiness is certainly a dirty word for me, but farmers farmed for thousands of years before that approach appeared, using hundreds of methodologies that are not part of modern agriculture at all. Agrarian anarchy can be whatever people choose to make of it, but it certainly does not have to be anything like the common capitalist commercial agriculture that dominates today.
You forgot to mention rudeness in your list of bad human traits, a trait you possess in abundance.
I don’t have time to waste correcting fools, there are too many of them. You seem proud of your foolishness. Are you actually an adult. I feel like I’m talking to a teenage know-all yob.
Do you know what you are talking about? Ever heard of the Stefan-Boltzman Law?
Yes.
It’s the reason we won’t turn into Venus.
You hope ! The Earth doesn’t have to become Venus for a mass extinction event to occur.
Explain to me the mechanism by which, say, even a 10C warming would lead to our extinction?
No. You educate yourself. It’s not my job. It’s not the 10deg that matters, it’s the speed of increase.
And I do mean extinction, not merely a vast reduction in our numbers. As I’ve posted before, there have been methane releases and rapid temperature increases since the advent of mammals, yet mammals are still here.
jeez, get a clue will you, for all our sakes.
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:10 am
Nearly two years ago, Science says 16 C increase by 2100. But we know better now. And it’s not the temperature that’ll kill us all, it’s the massive changes in ecosystems. Like, say, no plankton to produce oxygen. And proteins that denature. And therefore no plants to sequester carbon. That’s the short list, and it all points to near-term human extinction.
Yep, we’re clever. Like yeast.
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:18 am
Arthur Noll,
You seem to want me to buy into the idea of original sin. I agree with all of your statements about the way current civilization has abused the planet and indigenous peoples. Where we part company is in the idea that I am somehow responsible for the actions of long dead people. I’m not! I had no control over what they did. I can only work, in a small way, to try to correct some small part of the damage they caused. For your part, you’ve gone out of your way to suggest I’m at fault for living on the spoils of conquest and yet you offer no alternative–long on judgement, very short on solutions.
As for agrarian anarchy, there has been much discussion here, in generalities as well as specifics. I guess you missed it. You, in your role as judge, “see vagueness and ignorance and fantasy behind the words agrarian anarchy, just a vague utopian dream.” Of course, as in all of your comments, there is judgement (negative), but you are never willing to engage. You see vagueness, and are vague. You see ignorance, and offer no examples. You see fantasy, but offer no hint of what you mean by that. All the while you, with your superior tone, fail to offer any alternative plan (except “graceful” people will prevail in the end). What does that mean? Who are these graceful people (the tribe to which you belong). How is graceful people will prevail in the end, after everyone else has been eliminated by mayhem, starvation, or disease, not a fantasy? How is that a plan?
How do you suggest feeding people in a harsher, energy depleted planet, if not by formulating people intensive agricultural techniques? How do you suggest “dealing with people who are willing to take things by force?” Did you overlook the discussion of just that topic in this and the last post? Did you think that anarchy involves waiting for someone to tell you how to do something rather than trying to figure out the answers for yourself?
If you intend to join the discussion let’s hear your thoughts, not just, “I’m saying no, there is another possible path here.” Show us the “path that isn’t based on dreams and looks like it might have some human life at the end of it, and as a necessary part of that, of course, a significant amount of other forms of life.” What is that path?
Absent details, as near as I can come to figuring out this plan of yours, it reads something like this: The Morlocks loose their unrealistic dreams>>they go crazy and kill almost everyone>>absent people the earth will rapidly heal>>the Elio will emerge from their gated communities>>everything will be cool.
It’s your turn, Arthur. Explain yourself!
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:28 am
Another point – EVERYTHING that humans have and do has been developed over the last few thousand years during this benign window called Holocene. We get ‘a few degrees warmer’, we’re no longer in the Holocene, we’re into a totally new climate, that’s much rougher, more erratic, more extreme events. We won’t have a few thousand years for generations to learn how to adapt and develop new cultures, so we’ll lose most humans.
Okay, so it is possible a few people may survive, so it’s not the 100% extinction that Yorchichan insists upon, but that’s mere semantics. There might be a few thousand in Siberia, a few thousand in Australia, whatever, but they won’t even know that, they’ll be living amongst the polluted toxic remnants without any of the present day technology and knowledge, at the level of the Kalahari San, small groups scavenging. So what we think of as ‘the human population, Homo sapiens,’ of today, will have gone.
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:29 am
We can grieve our potential demise as a species. We may cause it. Species come and go. Mortality is a bitch.
But living isn’t. It is great joy.
I play cribbage with the senior citizens in my town. At 69, I am the youngest. One of their sayings, “You want some cheese with that whine.”
Two of my local friends are farmers. They are both in their 80s. They just stopped milking this year. He has been legally blind since early childhood. Has a rope strung to the barn. I rototill their garden so she can grow their food. They still will cut hay because in is their way. They revel in living.
Because of stupidity, I have emphysema and hardened lungs from radiation that saved me from cancer. When I work, I will often and episodically have to been over to catch my breath. I don’t stop working, I revel in it.
We, my partner and I, are building a growing system with rotational fields, trees, berry bushes, large root cellar, new hot house for growing and drying food. Wells that can be worked with human power all for the next generation. We have one young man working with us. We had some 20 somethings visit this summer and they want to come back and volunteer (we will see). I am planting trees and bushes the odds are I may not see come to fruition. If it goes to hell, there is not a damn thing I can do about it. I love the learning, the creating, the work.
We will continue our population stupidity, it is the nature of the beast (all life).
We will continue gorging ourselves on the resource of the earth because it is the nature of the beast (all life).
We will continue to play the us and them game because we are a social animal, we need to belong, we need to have answers no matter how absurd for a sense of control and we will find scapegoats among the “them” because it is the nature of this particular beast.
We will continue to have unintended consequences arising from our acts seemingly well intended and innocuous, again it is the nature of this particular “too smart for our own good” beast.
We will continue to have inequity in power/resource availability whenever we become larger than the gatherer and hunter group size (30 to 200) that we evolve into and lived with for 99% of our existence. Life does not give out the candy of brain and/or brawn fairly. It is the nature of how things shake things out.
I have lived at an incredible time in human history. So many opportunities. So much to enjoy. I am alive because of high tech medicine. I thrive at the knowledge available to me to learn about so much and celebrate the men and women who have contributed to that knowing.
I know I have done it on the backs of others and on the back of “mother” earth. We in the USofA (and much of the west and the rich everywhere else) have benefitted from the rape of others lands, from military incursion when it will be good for business, assassination when necessary and so many other atrocities.
Now it is coming home to roost.
Suck it up.
John Weber
Curmudgeon of Northern Minnesota
http://www.rea-alp.com/~dragnfly
http://sunweber.blogspot.com/
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:46 am
Dmitry Orlov :
“On the evening on April 14th, 1912, was someone banished from the Titanic’s captain’s table for being so rude as to mention that the ship was sinking?
It troubles me deeply that bringing up the subject of immanent collapse is regarded as uncouth, while blithely talking about the satisfactory present and an ever-more-agreeable future is not seen as irresponsible denial. (“Forget about the lifeboats, and try some of this pheasant. It’s delicious!”)”
http://www.cluborlov.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-collapse-wager.html
September 2nd, 2012 at 9:56 am
The dissonance is bizarre. Here I am talking about imminent extinction, and a couple of clicks away, the British PM and Chancellor are talking about building huge new multibillion airports, opening up more green countryside to building development, etc, etc, to kickstart the economy…
It reminds me of a moment during the war in Yugoslavia, when beaches were covered in sunbathers and swimmers staying in luxury holiday hotels, whilst within earshot, 50 or 60 miles away, artillery was firing, hand to hand fighting in the streets, people were being burned alive in their homes…
Seems to me the same contrast as mentioned above… rudeness v. obscene but polite reckless irresponsibility…
Crazy world.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:04 am
Those who think that “a few degrees of warming” is no big deal, in fact might be a blessing, are totally clueless as to how much devastation such a change can bring, in particular given the RATE at which it is happening, which is unprecedented. Idiocies like that are unfortunately commonplace, especially in global warming denial circles.
I have little to add to the responses here (especially ulvfugl) which appropriately put such notions in their place. Know-nothings are unfortunately all over the place, as are people (46% of Americans) who believe the world was created less than 10,000 years ago, and that humans and dinosaurs lived together.
And i did work in the nuclear industry, like it or not. Bechtel corp., 1970-71.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:04 am
Yorchichan, as I said earlier, you may be right, but I don’t think so. If I may offer a few more thoughts.
I will grant you that some places on earth could withstand a 10°C increase in average temperature and be livable. But, that assumes that everything else stays the same. There are so many other changes which would accompany that level of temperature change that it boggles the mind.
Further, let’s say for a moment that a handful of people were resourceful enough and smart enough to be able to survive such a drastic increase in temperature. A handful is not a very precise number, so let’s say that it was one in ten million (just a random number but one which seems reasonable to me). At today’s population, that would leave 700 people on the planet who were able to survive extreme climate change, collapse of industrial economy, no more conveniences of the modern world like running water, sewer, basic medicines, nuclear power plant meltdown, release of toxins into the air and water from the hundreds of chemical plants which explode when there is no more power to contain all those volatiles, social upheaval the likes of which haven’t been seen in human history – I could go on, but you get the idea.
So, 700 people on the planet. Unless all those people were in the same place, how would they find each other? Their cell phone? GPS? Smoke signals? How would they get to the part of the planet which would be more hospitable, particularly since those places would be much closer to the south pole? (The industrialization of the northern hemisphere and the fact that there is no land at the north pole, rules out that area as a refuge.) It’s a cinch they aren’t going to drive there. And, if only 700 humans out of 7 billion survive, how many “beasts of burden” are going to survive? Would those few remaining humans ride horses? Even if they were able to walk to the new hospitable regions, would they be able to survive migrating through the dead zones where temperatures are 150°F and there is no water and there is nuclear contamination, etc.?
It’s possible that two or three of those who survive such a scenario are in the same location – perhaps their location is one of the reasons they survive – maybe they are already close to one of the new hospitable regions. The tip of South America or the most southern portion of Australia. But unless they are already skilled at living off the land and know how to survive without any of the modern conveniences of today, they will face starvation and dehydration very soon.
So, try as I might, I cannot be bullish on the prospects of human survival.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:15 am
Michael Irving,
Others have debated with Arthur Noll to no avail. Best to ignore him and his goofy sidekick, Yorchichan. No crops, no animals, massive deaths (not theirs), and the massive disruptions to society, somehow won’t have an impact on the slower to die.
The few that may survive for a few years will be lacking any societal support. As they succumb, the screen fades to black.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:35 am
ulvfugl Says:
Yorchichan, your points re climate are grossly mistaken and don’t stand up to even the simplest criticism. Perhaps you should study the subject further before embarrassing yourself. The science refutes them all.
No need to worry about embarrassment on Dr. McPherson’s timescale. If that timescale is wrong, vindication will be soon forthcoming. If it is right, then again soon enough embarrassment will be the least of anyone’s concerns.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:45 am
.
As we strive for more, the noose gets tighter
Don’t worry about Nature, we are mightier
Some say innovate
But that just perpetuates
The saga that ends in the ruin of the Fighter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAULUqmwN04
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:49 am
If human survival is what you want, don’t give up hope.
There is a difference between curative palliative treatments (as in the case of cancers). A curative treatment may involve more severe measures, and is associated with a higher incidence of more severe side-effects – morbidity and even mortality. It would be unethical to submit a patient to this if there is no chance of cure, even though a cure is what is wanted.
The issue is to determine if a cure is possible.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:51 am
Ha ! He suggested I am rude, I was suggesting he might like to try and save some face… it was on the timescale of today
Sure. I’m a certainly a very rude fellow. When people tell me more CO2 can be good or okay or doesn’t matter or a hoax…. I think of dead oceans, burning forests….. and then ‘who is this effing moron telling me this stuff ?’ I’ve had enough of it !
Re the dissonance, this kinda illustrates it…
http://youtu.be/dXq5rcY4_TU
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:51 am
Arthur Noll,
RE: “Principles for Society.”
“But if a collapse took two or three years to be triggered, and then lasted another several years…”
REALLY? This is the collapse you are preparing for? Oh dumb me, I was thinking in terms of centuries.
Arthur, you’re a really smart guy with a ton of hands-on and academic experience. Address the problems.
Michael Irving
September 2nd, 2012 at 11:00 am
.
Don’t let Climate Change leave you powerless
Buy a generator to help you ignore the mess
Just fill it with gas
Until nature’s wrath has past
And sleep soundly knowing your future’s a guess
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQkKanKBc6o
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 11:38 am
“The issue is to determine if a cure is possible.”
There was a time when I thought I had found the cure, which was when Bill Mollison’s Permaculture Design Manual came out. I thought, this is genius, here’s a way forward for people to get their basic needs, and to have less impact on wildlife. But that was then. decades ago. I didn’t appreciate the lengths that corporations and politicians would go to to sabotage all attempts to ameliorate climate change.
I still believe that Permaculture offers the best way forward, but sadly it isn’t the cure.
I mean, yes, get supportive communities organised, as self-sufficient as possible. But, for example, we’ll have the coldest winters for a century two years running, followed by the hottest driest summers for a century, the wettest year for a century three years in a row, etc, etc, the bird and insect populations all get thrown out of sync with the seasons as the thermoclines move, the vegetation all changes…. communities are going to have to plant scores of different kinds of crops to hope that some produce a good harvest when many fail… and Permaculture does nothing to assist endangered species… it’s an excellent human survival plan… but vulnerable to all kinds of external chaos, extreme weather events, nuclear fallout, pillagers, etc.
You know, i think most people are mentally ill… the talk of war, of expanding the economy, the crap everyone talks… sigh…
September 2nd, 2012 at 11:49 am
Thanks to Yorchichan. Some feathers ruffled, I agree. I think it is going to be more than ruffled feathers before this is done.
I don’t disagree with Jeff that if all fossil fuel burning stopped right now, that things would continue to get worse for a time. The present warming would not immediately stop, CO2 will continue coming out of the tundra, also methane. On the other hand, the regrowth of forests, especially, would have near immediate impact, since growing trees take up more CO2 than mature ones. And offsetting melting tundra, trees are already growing further north. I don’t think it is unreasonable to think that CO2 would stabilize and possibly decrease. As for methane, I agree with Yochichan that this must have also happened in the past, there have been warmer periods in the past and the planet didn’t run away and turn into another Venus.
Nobody has a perfect view of the future with regards to anything, but it looks far too soon to give up on it. And that is what people are doing. They are giving up.
With regard to my “vagueness”, Michael, I don’t see any hint that you bothered to read my “principles for society”, essay. Let me refresh your memory as to some main points where I don’t feel I am vague at all.
One, human beings are social creatures, we live by teamwork or don’t live at all. We all have a naked body to demonstrate this if anyone has doubts. The teamwork can be really inefficient like it is now, with many not even realizing how important it is, a glorification of individualism reigning instead. The money game sets up people as independent agents. Supposed independence of each other is how massive inequities are justified. It can be observed that serious inefficiency in a mechanism may get by, may even sweep everything else aside, if it is big enough and has enough resources to fuel itself. Using their resources at unsustainable rates, the person who comes out of the start of a marathon sprinting can seem to be winning, but experience says that is unsustainable and they will slow down, may collapse, and they get passed and lose. And this can happen on social levels, as well. The money game also pushes unsustainable behavior, because people can win at market competitions by ignoring the extra costs of conservation. People get rich and powerful in money driven societies, and they do not pass laws that limit themselves. They generally do the opposite.
I wrote that all these problems can be bypassed. We are subject to some simple physics with what I termed food EROEI. Food energy returned over food energy invested, eaten. That ratio defines life and death. Both the individuals in a team, and the team, must have a ratio of this of one or above. Since this is a life and death relationship governing animals for millions of years, even animals have instincts about this. We can look at it with more than instinct, consider it mathematically, and use it as a way of determining what behavior has value and what doesn’t. Closely related to this, we can also look at how fast resources are used in getting a favorable ratio of food EROEI, and if we were rational, we would use resources at an estimated sustainable rate plus a factor of safety. The factor of safety is because this is a life and death matter, yet predicting the future exactly is difficult.
I wrote of sometimes using resources for brief periods at very high rates, to cope with emergencies, no differently than your body secreting adrenaline and increasing metabolism to much higher rates to deal with emergencies.
Does the concept of agrarian anarchy say anything so specific about any of these things? No.
The absolute need for teamwork, for measuring value by food EROEI, and for the sustainability of it, are three foundational principles. There is nothing vague about them unless you have serious problems with intellect. As mentioned, animals have instincts about food EROEI. Most children of the age of ten can understand these principles if explained in simple terms.
Applying these principles can be equally specific. You cannot live without a team, and you cannot reproduce without one, either. If you need a team to do this, then logically the team has a say in when and how much couples reproduce, to keep resource use sustainable. Saving the energy of reproduction for the duration of the stress, could be a vital strategy to surviving periods of severe scarcity. The majority of humanity, blindly forging ahead with expectations of magic of one form or another, overshooting resource supplies, is creating an ultimate situation of severe scarcity. Surviving it will logically require the ultimate in efficient teamwork, efficient decisions about where resources are used, and reproduction is a major place to get temporary savings.
The most efficient model of economic exchange, looks like that selected for the internal workings of individual bodies. Specialized organs trade their goods or services to the whole rest of the body. This avoids mismatches of availability and need that are common when specialized individuals barter. Groups of people can use this model, and ultimately specialized groups might form and do the same thing on much larger scales.
The amount of health care that makes sense, is if you can heal someone who is hurt and bring them back to being a functional part of the team, for less resource cost than raising a replacement. I won’t go into applying that now, but just give the basic principle.
Finally, the word “agrarian”. The main point here is the observation of inherent problems with annual plants in many environments. They cannot be as efficient at recycling nutrients as perennials, because recycling efficiency is a function of the size and density of the root system. Recycling ability is critical to having a long term sustainable system. Annuals grow and then die in a single season, their root systems go from zero to small, compared to what exists with perennials year round. The size of the above ground plant also is generally smaller, and is also going from zero to small. That means more bare soil exposed, more impact erosion. The extensive network of roots with perennials, can also hold soil and slow or prevent gullying erosion. Poor recycling ability, poor soil holding ability, means disastrous problems grow with continually growing annual plants.
And before disasters of this nature are reached, other problems push yet other disasters. The extra work of tilling soil, controlling weeds and insects and animals, hauling fertilizer from other places- depleting them in the case of organic fertilizer- means people are often pushed to have larger families to do this work, leading to overpopulation problems.
Agrarian anarchy has nothing to say about any of this, yet it looks fairly simple and vitally important to understand, and avoid getting into the traps that annual crops can draw us into.
And what can we possibly do to get out of this trap? How do you live on a perennial base? Well, there are perennial crops of fruit and nuts, and animals turning vegetation and fruit and nuts into milk and meat. But with trees, that will often have to wait for annual agriculturists in denial of problems, to die off. Most areas that grow trees have also been attractive to farmers, and they are beyond reach at the moment. What is available is land that was never attractive to farmers, and land they have damaged and abandoned. Ranchers have also often damaged land with over grazing and selling animals, selling the nutrients in them and slowly depleting the land doing this. Land like this may still be capable of supporting people living as nomadic herders, hunters and gatherers. Grazing animals can start feeding you immediately, if they are milking. There can also still be some small trees and bushes with fruits, nuts, roots and herbs to gather that have not been of any interest to farmers or ranchers.
It is a very radical change, and I would not expect many to try, but that works out, because these lands will not support a lot of people.
There are also rough coastlines that have never been badly exploited.
Places like what I’m describing may be possible to live in for only relatively short periods even as nomads, as you use up the limited resources in them quite fast, may not be able to cover enough ground to be sustainable. But what you are doing is not meant to be long term sustainable, you are dealing with a severe emergency. That means you want the dieoff to go fast.
And raising cognitive dissonance to the highest level you can manage, could make it go much faster, as I’ve also mentioned. And I am doing that right now. All I have to do is raise serious doubts in people’s brains. People accuse me of vagueness, I come right back with specifics. It isn’t hard to do, because I’m looking at basic principles here, and they aren’t highly complex things to argue.
September 2nd, 2012 at 11:56 am
ulvfugl Says
Yorchichan you are an idiot !
That may or may not be true. But would it be unreasonable to suggest that someone is a hothead?
September 2nd, 2012 at 12:22 pm
The heartache and pain comes because we ALL have to face up to the fact that this mess is NOT going to get fixed.
Well, we can adopt the attitude of cancer specialists (oncologists). The vast majority of their patients have severely shortened life expectancies. Yet they maintain a cheerful demeanour and go about their business of helping to improve the quality and quantity of remaining life as much as possible.
There is no point in adopting an an arboreal lifestyle.
September 2nd, 2012 at 12:26 pm
“That may or may not be true. But would it be unreasonable to suggest that someone is a hothead?”
Hahaha, I’m a Soto Zen Buddhist. I can ‘out-serene’ anyone on this planet. However, I’d suggest, that if ever there was a subject where people ought, need, should,must get emotional, then surely, it is THIS ONE ?
if a person doesn’t have strong feelings about, say, the death of the albatrosses, then there’s something seriously wrong… what we are witnessing is far worse than the Holocaust of the Jews, or the Killing Fields, or any similar horror in human history… there has never been a crisis of this magnitude in human history. Or prehistory, for that matter, if you consider the numbers involved…. People expect me to be polite and calm and ‘reasonable’…. Man, LOVE AND RAGE !
September 2nd, 2012 at 12:30 pm
The idea that higher CO2 can actually be good is just one of the nonsense talking point which global warming denial try to throw around. Over 100 (173, as of this morning) of these are debunked at http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php and a bunch deal with CO2, including numbers 3 and 43.
Arthur Noll and his sidekick are indeed the local specimen of a Web creature called the troll. Best to just ignore them. Rational argument is not gonna sway them, they’re not here to learn. One of their tactics is posting long posts which ramble a lot, say little, most of that little bit is nonsense (like putting the question of CO2 and methane increases even after total cessation of emissions in terms of assumptions which are deemed “not unreasonable,” as if the question hasn’t been studied, as if processes don’t get to a turning point which then make them go exponential due to positive feedback, rather than linear, which means no recovery is possible past a certain point). But people are then kept busy trying to figure it out.
As for his implication that economic exchange is simply part of human nature, see http://www.dailybattle.pair.com/2012/occupy_target_destroy_ruling_money_fetish.shtml
September 2nd, 2012 at 12:30 pm
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The answer, as always, is to find a cure
We need a plan, one that’ll make us feel sure
But here’s the thing
About this lethal sting
Cures beget cures, until we are no more.
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September 2nd, 2012 at 12:44 pm
.
Obama said, “I’m a huge Eastwood fan”
Despite what Clint said, he still likes the man
Very telling, I’d say
The President’s lack of dismay
To the comments of a fellow artist of the scam
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September 2nd, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Well, we can adopt the attitude of cancer specialists (oncologists). The vast majority of their patients have severely shortened life expectancies. Yet they maintain a cheerful demeanour and go about their business of helping to improve the quality and quantity of remaining life as much as possible.
There is no point in adopting an an arboreal lifestyle.
Yeah, we can do that. Or we can be true to our own nature, whatever that may be. A few people found ways to be happy in Auschwitz. I’m a master of this stuff. I can be happy, serene, blssful, amidst the most severe pain it is possible to have. I’m not telling anyone else they need to be like me. I don’t care. People have to find their own paths through all this stuff. Everyone has different stuff to deal with.
But if I’m sitting with some, say, mountaineers, or sailors, or divers, or anyone like that, and someone like Y. suggests a plan they have, which I KNOW is ridiculous and will cause disaster and someone will have to rescue them, then I say ‘Hey, you are an idiot !’ out of kindness, not malice. Whereas all your mealy-mouthed polite pundits and politicians tell most monstrous lies, but because they are polite, then that’s all just fine….
September 2nd, 2012 at 1:58 pm
.
My plan’s better than your plan, nanny nanny boo boo
Move over muthaf*c*er, I’ll find another sucker to screw
Watch the mad scramble
That’s just the preamble
To the apocalyptic holocaust that’s about to ensue
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 2:21 pm
I wrote,“But if a collapse took two or three years to be triggered, and then lasted another several years…”
and you, Michael say,
“REALLY? This is the collapse you are preparing for? Oh dumb me, I was thinking in terms of centuries.
Arthur, you’re a really smart guy with a ton of hands-on and academic experience. Address the problems.”
The problem, Michael, as I’ve said before, is that enormous numbers of people in the world are very dependent on long distance trade. Food, fuel, fertilizer, machine parts. The dependence is huge and grows ever bigger. Long distance trade can be fragile, and if disrupted things can collapse in a hurry. Local carrying capacities were long ago passed for a lot of places.
Problems with monetary economics can disrupt trade, and severe economic problems tend to lead to war, which tends to disrupt trade even worse. Given the enormous vulnerability here, I don’t think that collapse is something that has to take centuries.
You might know of the commission to the US congress that reported that an EMP attack on the US would result in about 70% dead in one year. And the reason is that stuff would not move. If people start dying and fighting, highly likely I’d say, things would not get fixed, either. And I’d guess that of the survivors the next year, they could have another 70% mortality, because while some might survive because they had access to larger food storage places, as time goes by everyone gets thrown on their own ability to get food. There is a learning curve with that, fail and you die, and they must learn with an environment that has been seriously damaged.
Other countries have different vulnerabilities, but most are seriously vulnerable to trade being cut off, most have divisions of people who believe in different versions of magic and under stress would be at each other’s throats, making things worse. It looks reasonable to think this could all go down very fast.
September 2nd, 2012 at 2:56 pm
I thought we could just pop some popcorn and watch the show – but no
Bad news for movie fans, U.S. drought hits popcorn crop. All across the Midwest, where rows of popcorn normally thrive alongside fields of soybeans, U.S. popcorn farmers have watched in horror as stifling, triple-digit temperatures and weeks without rain withered crops. Reuters
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/02/usa-drought-popcorn-idINL2E8JVGSN20120902
Its over folks……
September 2nd, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Morocco Bama
Your limericks are great as far as rhyme and subject so now it is time to work on meter.
http://www.speedysnail.com/limericks/metre.html
There are a few ways to do this – below are the usual – you can fudge a bit on them but the meter really makes the limerick roll.
Limerick Pattern
–/ –/ –/ A (da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM)
–/ –/ –/ A (da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM)
–/ –/ B (da da DUM da da DUM)
–/ –/ B (da da DUM da da DUM)
–/ –/ –/ A (da da DUM da da DUM da da DUM)
An another
The typical rhythm of a limerick is like this:
bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH
bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH
bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH
bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH
bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH bah-bah-BAH
September 2nd, 2012 at 3:13 pm
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Thanks for the tip, Kathy C, but I’m engaging in what I call Limerick Anarchy, so I’m remaking the rules as I go along and forging new paths for Limericks.
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September 2nd, 2012 at 3:20 pm
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Everywhere you turn, there’s always a box.
Limericks are no exception, it has its cops
This is my plea
Universal Anarchy
For everything, including Limerickle flops
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September 2nd, 2012 at 3:44 pm
About Free Verse:
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
- Robert Frost
September 2nd, 2012 at 4:02 pm
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My, oh my, what do we have here?
Some Doomers are snobs, they’re compelled to smear
What a hoot!
Those who aim to mute
Not even the end, can persuade them to freer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_verse
Although free verse requires no meter, rhyme, or other traditional poetic techniques, a poet can still use them to create some sense of structure. A clear example of this can be found in Walt Whitman’s poems, where he repeats certain phrases and uses commas to create both a rhythm and structure. Much pattern and discipline is to be found in free verse: the internal pattern of sounds, the choice of exact words, and the effect of associations give free verse its beauty.[10]
Because of a lack of predetermined form, free verse poems have the potential to take truly unique shapes. Unrestrained by traditional boundaries, the poet possesses more license to express, and has more control over the development of the poem. This could allow for a more spontaneous and individualized product.
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September 2nd, 2012 at 4:09 pm
MB ok go for the limerick anarchy but sometimes it is a nice challenge to fit something into a box.
The limerick’s a very nice form
For writing political porn
It won’t go away
Cause it’s such fun to play
With the meter that’s poetic norm
September 2nd, 2012 at 5:13 pm
.
Boxes are a Western Convention
They’re used for purposes of detention
So circle the square
And rhyme with more flair
As for the rules, don’t give them a mention
.
September 2nd, 2012 at 5:17 pm
.
Playing tennis is like knitting without wrinkled hands.
-Morocco Bama
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September 2nd, 2012 at 5:22 pm
complexity can be hard to fit
in boxes of rhythm and rhyme
but one can take heart
write prose from the start
and keep critics at bay in this way
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:03 pm
MB if you want to do free verse why adopt any part of the limerick form?
September 2nd, 2012 at 6:19 pm
Hey while we are at it lets have anarchist football, baseball, basketball – that would be more fun that having the athletes play by the rules that box them in. What would an anarchist crossword puzzle look like? Lets get these puzzles out of their boxes. Lets allow more than one letter in each square – that will make solving them easier – and if the word you think is right is longer or shorter than the spaces well just black in a space or create a new one. How about anarchist chess – you can move the pieces any way you want and if you call checkmate well checkmate it is regardless of where the pieces are.
Sometimes setting up boxes for ourselves creates challenges that are enjoyable. I enjoy working over a limerick for the right meter and rhyme. If you want to do free verse, do free verse. If you want to do a limerick accept the box. If you want to do a half limerick, invent a new name.
September 2nd, 2012 at 7:45 pm
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The Limerick Police are at my door
They tell me my meter and form are poor
I must rename it
Else, they’ll issue a ticket
I spose I will, since to fight them’s a chore
Moroccobamick
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September 2nd, 2012 at 10:12 pm
More time I must waste defending myself against obnoxious morons online.
uglyfuk
Yorchichan, you are an idiot!
I came top of the year in many subjects in my university mathematics department. I am no Einstein, even less a Shakespeare, but I am certainly not an idiot.
your definition of agriculture is one for kindergarten kids, not intelligent educated adults
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/agriculture
A slightly more longwinded way of saying the growing of crops and raising of livestock.
Agrarian anarchy can be whatever people choose to make of it, but it certainly does not have to be anything like the common capitalist commercial agriculture that dominates today.
You just contradicted yourself: if agrarian anarchy does not have anything in common with capitalist commercial agriculture then it cannot be whatever people choose to make of it. I didn’t write agrarian anarchy had anything to do with capitalist commercial agriculture anyway.
I don’t have time to waste correcting fools, there are too many of them. You seem proud of your foolishness. Are you actually an adult. I feel like I’m talking to a teenage know-all yob.
More contradiction. You say I am a fool and yet you have spent time correcting me. I was not the one who resorted to name calling because somebody had opinions different to mine. You are the one who started behaving like a teenage know-all yob. Hypocrisy is my second least favourite human trait after rudeness. What do you hope to gain by your rudeness? Does it make you feel better? Do you think if you shout loudly enough everyone will agree with you? The only thing that will change my mind on something is hard evidence. Failing that, I will always find those who adopt a reasoned tone more persuasive than those who rant and rave. In my experience, those people who resort to name calling and ranting are those who are losing the argument and have no other recourse.
No. You educate yourself. It’s not my job. It’s not the 10deg that matters, it’s the speed of increase.
I wish it were so easy to educate myself. Unfortunately there is a lot of often contradictory information out there and to sift through it is an impossible task. Even answering the simple question “How long does it take to shutdown a nuclear reactor” proved difficult. Getting answers on the far more complex question of climate change is hopeless.
It is well known that humans have no wish to be eductated. People seek out information that reinforces their currently held world view. Clearly that applies to many who contribute here. I regard myself as far more open minded than most. I am not arrogant and do not get personal unless someone else starts it.
Okay, so it is possible a few people may survive, so it’s not the 100% extinction that Yorchichan insists upon, but that’s mere semantics
No, extinction is a black and white issue. Either we go extinct or we don’t. Because there are so many rude, hypocritical, arrogant people in the world, I don’t care much either way. If we go extinct, it will give life on earth a chance to recover. And it will.
Contracdict yourself once more by wasting time on a fool and having the final word if you will.
September 2nd, 2012 at 10:18 pm
That’s not a defence, Y. that’s a confirmation. Idiot. Failure on all points.
September 2nd, 2012 at 11:08 pm
As someone who taught college students math for a couple of decades, i can attest that i’ve met lots of people who know math well who haven’t the faintest idea regarding the nature of climate change, or even the scientific method. Guess i’ve now met one more. The regurgitation of global warming deniers’ talking points is a glaring sign.
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:00 am
Mb, better
Why do games with boxes (rules) appeal to people is the question I had in my mind as I drifted off to sleep. No answers came to me in my sleep. Why is a crossword puzzle more interesting than a list of definitions to which you must supply words of any lengths. When did games with rules arise among humans? Is it innate? Does the complications of rules we set for games or puzzles increase in lockstep with civilization? Do organized games and organized religion help support civilization? Certainly the fervor of a football game seems to be a mild version of the fervor that sends young men to war, bonding them as a team.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:56 am
Kathy C
Years ago I read a small book, whose title eludes me now, which spoke about the passing out of the age of the warrior. This book did not seem to be based on any identifiable group or school of thought, and to this day I can’t identify such a position for it. However, it spoke of the earlier stages of human civilisations and how they necessitated warriors for defence etc.
Such a practice has been easily debunked as a response to rising populations and competition for resources etc. The book also wrote that this principle of the warrior is dying and a new, more cooperative approach is needed and coming.
I can’t vouch for the thesis of the book, but it did inform me early in life that all the atributes of the physical warrior were still needed, but the emphasis would need to be on generalising the psychological strengths, the mental and emotional resiliance, such that ‘we’ mature, to abandon the need to use force.
As much as that impressed me it looks like the warrior cults are hanging on and are going to the extreme before they surrender and come to the table.
For a long time young men have been grouping to achieve some specific purpose, and perhaps a protective force for the group was not an unreasonable phenomena, if all were invading each other’s watershed. No doubt some complexities in the actual histories there, but the strange thing is that with modern corporate sports there are no longer players on a team for life, which mirrored the group bonding within groups of a cohort, who knew and trusted each other( or not), and relied on that intimate cohesion. With players ‘purchased’ and ‘traded’ on a season by season basis, it would appear a deviation from an earlier form.
Dare I say Money has the power and capacity to break and shape even the most intimate of relationships.
Like this controversial cartoon by Michael Leunig:
http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/369/86c/36986cec-2c1d-40c0-8e08-cb0a501eb2fc
Rips your heart out.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:50 am
Kathy C
Come to think of it, the book was probably alligned with the astrological change from the Picean to the Aquarian age. ‘Peace, brotherhood and love shall rule the stars’.
We can only hope so…(Jung’s take on the age of Aquarius was far less rosy. He wrote that it was more likely, in the change over period, to be an age where warfare was constant, because it was a period of resolving the conflicts of the earlier Picean Age, which he rekoned was dominated by the ‘motif of the hostile brothers.’)
September 3rd, 2012 at 7:02 am
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Why do games with boxes (rules) appeal to people is the question I had in my mind as I drifted off to sleep.
Well, one reason I’m certain of, is they’re a form of play, and play, inherently, is anarchical as Bob Black so cogently elucidates:
http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/abolitionofwork.html
No one should ever work.
Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.
That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By “play” I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.
The ludic life is totally incompatible with existing reality. So much the worse for “reality,” the gravity hole that sucks the vitality from the little in life that still distinguishes it from mere survival. Curiously — or maybe not — all the old ideologies are conservative because they believe in work. Some of them, like Marxism and most brands of anarchism, believe in work all the more fiercely because they believe in so little else.
Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists — except that I’m not kidding — I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work — and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs — they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They’ll gladly talk about anything but work itself. These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don’t care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.
Play, as Bob Black describes it, obliterates Civilization and all its implications, and this leads to the inevitable discussion of rules as they relate to play, but before I address that, let me say that I don’t necessarily accept this statement you made, because it assumes something that isn’t necessarily fact:
Why do games with boxes (rules) appeal to people is the question I had in my mind as I drifted off to sleep.
Maybe it was just the way you worded it, but is their a consensus about how many people this appeals to, aside from why these said people find it appealing? Neither me nor my children are fans of rule-based games. Sure, we’ll play them from time to time, including the boxed games, but they quickly lose their luster after a round or two, and then they just sit on the shelf waiting for the next time that never comes. When I was young, and even to this day, I would engage in playful games in which we made up the rules as we went along, and those rules could, and did, change in a moment’s notice, depending on the situation. It was like applying the basics of jazz to any game you could think up at the moment. And you know what? It worked….it worked very well. We would play these games for hours, and the rules would change to make sure no one got bored. Some of these games were derivations of traditional sports such as basketball, football and baseball, but because of certain limitations and constraints, such as lack of a formal field, too few players, not enough space and so on and so forth, new rules would be developed and the game took on a completely unique flavor…often to the better. It would keep our attention for hours, sometimes the entire day. It was anarchy at its best, and it was glorious. What’s of note about this, is that those in the neighborhood who played on established sports teams could not mentally and emotionally handle this form. They refused to play at all, or if they did play, they did so reluctantly, and would quit out of frustration after a half hour, or so. It was very telling. They believed themselves superior because they were part of something they saw as legitimately established, and therefore they had status, and to play this illegitimate version was regressive and beneath them. Also, they had become so accustomed to playing by the rules, they could not envision, or engage in, a world without them. To them, the rules were the rules…you didn’t mess with that, you didn’t break them, and you cannot be so bold as to make up your own up as you go along. For them, their cell-like box was complete, and for many, there was no turning back.
Why is a crossword puzzle more interesting than a list of definitions to which you must supply words of any lengths.
I believe it goes back to what I first said, our primal need for play, and to seek play in everything we do, but I have another beef with that. What I was doing with the Limerick form was not what you described with this sentence. My poems are not likened to the juxtaposition you’ve described with this statement, and maybe you weren’t implying that, but your statement does come on the heels of that debate, so it must be clarified. You seem to imply that strict use of the Limerick form, following all the rules related to it, set by who is anybody’s guess, is superior to any derivation thereof. I contend it’s not, and I contend there is as much creative skill and expression in the anarchical derivations as there is in the strict, rule based form. So, why is it that you and Robin adhere to Frost’s arrogant establishment attitude that all creative form that doesn’t adhere to established standards is by definition, inferior and likened to cheating for easy gain?
When did games with rules arise among humans?
A good question, but I would have to imagine that games that were formulated after the dawn of Civilization were necessary extensions of Civilization, and since Civilization is predicated upon rules, as well as many other attributes, it stands to reason that anything it gives rise to, will be a simulacrum of itself.
I’m reading an excellent, if not a somewhat tedious, book right now entitled Albion’s Seed: For British Folkways in America written by David Hackett Fischer. It’s really a sociological and anthropological study of the early British migration to America. I’m currently finishing up the first part that deals with the Puritan migration from East Anglia to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and let me tell you, talk about rules…..the early American Puritans had rules for everything….and I mean EVERYTHING. Nothing was to be left to improvisational chance, not even play. It was important to control the wild, feral, primal streak in all endeavors, especially play, so you can see, play is a crucial activity in which to create and enforce rather static rules that maintain the status quo. Play is a wildly creative, anarchical touch point, and if left unregulated, can lead to a threat to Civilization. Of course, the rule making, and the regulation and the setting of standards becomes an unconscious process, but that is the mechanism that is at play (pun intended), imo.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 7:17 am
Do you need more evidence that social collapse is underway?
http://www.kait8.com/story/18751022/5-dead-at-least-35-hurt-in-violent-chicago-weekend
(NBC) -
It was a violent weekend in Chicago, with dozens of shootings, assaults and armed robberies.
Five people died, and at least 35 others were wounded in shootings. Several people were mugged, beaten and robbed on Michigan Avenue on Saturday night by groups of up to 10 attackers.
Police believe some of the incidents are gang-related.
One man said the violence makes him think twice about going downtown. Someone was assaulted right outside the tavern he was visiting.
“People wanted to know what was happening more than anything else. They wanted the details, who was robbed? Unfortunately, this happens all the time. It happens in other neighborhoods but doesn’t get this type of exposure. But downtown, the large tourist area, the large business center,” said Jason Hicks.
Between Saturday night and Sunday morning, 20 people were wounded in separate incidents.
September 3rd, 2012 at 7:20 am
We’ve discussed drug shortages before, but what caught my eye about this article was the lines I’ve included below. THAT should fix everything!
http://www.kait8.com/story/19428870/drug-shortages-sweeping-hospitals
“It hasn’t reached its peak yet,” Martin said. “It’s likely to get worse before it get’s better.”
One solution is to impose more federal oversight. There are several bills in Congress that address the issue.
September 3rd, 2012 at 7:47 am
So, why is it that you and Robin adhere to Frost’s arrogant establishment attitude that all creative form that doesn’t adhere to established standards is by definition, inferior and likened to cheating for easy gain?
Beauty lies in the eye of the beerholder.
September 3rd, 2012 at 8:20 am
Try living outside the box by jumping into the water: quit breathing air and adopt an aquatic respiration like our
Rhipidistian ancestors. Or quit eating stand in the sunshine with feet in manure and try to photosynthesise.
Unreformed statists who flaunt an anarchist attitude as a fad misunderstand anarchy completely. Anarchy is without rulers. That is not the same as without rules. Without rules, one has chaos, not anarchy.
September 3rd, 2012 at 8:21 am
My sister and I used to play Monopoly in a somewhat anarchic way. The normal rules would put you out of the game when you ran out of money. We invented Mr. Big. Mr. Big would loan us whatever we needed and we never needed to pay it back so we could just keep playing as long as we wanted. Does this sound similar to something going on in real finance in recent years? Life in civilization without rules or rules that can change arbitrarily is not necessarily better.
Oh well, enough on limericks. I love the sound of reading out loud a good limerick because of the meter and rhyme. It seems to me that the form leads you to the punch line and makes it more satisfying. I love the challenge of fitting a meaning into the form of rhyme, lines and meter. But to each their own….
September 3rd, 2012 at 8:23 am
Robin “Anarchy is without rulers. That is not the same as without rules. Without rules, one has chaos, not anarchy.” Well put!
September 3rd, 2012 at 8:35 am
Well put!
H/t Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio.
September 3rd, 2012 at 9:00 am
Morocco Bama
You wrote:
‘…I would have to imagine that games that were formulated after the dawn of Civilization were necessary extensions of Civilization, and since Civilization is predicated upon rules, as well as many other attributes, it stands to reason that anything it gives rise to, will be a simulacrum of itself.’
This is an interesting conjecture. I have formulated a hypothesis along these lines and will share here in brief.
The four functions I have blabbed on about, namely, Feeling, Thinking, Sensation, and intuition, and th eArchetype of the Shadow are reflected in the structure of many many games. Whether these originated after the development of ‘Civilisation’, is moot, but certainly some co-evolution is at play.
For example the Game known as Pick-up sticks, or fiddle sticks. It happens to be a derivation of Chinese Yarrow sticks, chich were for determining the I-Ching, however, for the purposes of this reporting it is enought that it became a widely played popular game.
The game:
Five types of stick are used. Usualy designated by coloures, Red Blue, Yellow, Green, and Black.
Usually the colours are worth 2, 3,5 10, and the black 20. there are usually 41 sticks, 10 of each colour and one black only.
The players can pick up any colour excepting black. Only if the player picks up the four colours in a row from least value to highest value, con they try to pick up the Black. If successful in picking up the Black stick it can be used to pick up further sticks.
The game rests on moving only the stick one is attmpting to pick up
Analysis:
The four colours represent the four functions, and have a cultural bias because of the numerical value placed on them. You can pick up any stick but observation of the tiny relationships between the sticks denotes that within an individual all the functions are dynaicly related. The art is in identifying how.
Also the Black represents the Shadow, all that is relegated to the unconscious in early life in order to adapt. Only when one has properly identified and used the four functions in sequence can the Shadow be faced and reintegrated. Subsequently, the Shadow, is an asset, as the power and contents hidden there is now able to be used conscoiusly.
Comment:
Having played this game many times as a boy, it was obvious to me this game had the possibility, which often happened, of an ending where it was impossible to get past a situation of mutual reliance, where every stick rested on another so none could be moves without moving one at least. As I feel that a throw is a life, and the lay is the Karma of that life, then some karmas end in unconscious chaos. Some lifetimes are also not they ones that the Shadow can be integratd.
Other games are cards. Which are modification of the Tarot, or are only the Minor Arcana. They have four suits. Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs. They are symbolic corruptions of the Tarot suits, Cups, Pentangles, Swords, and Wands, in corresponding order. Cups are vessils and represent Feeling. Pentangles, (sometimes depicted as Coins) represent Sensation, Swords – Thinking, and Wands represent Intuition.
Modern cards still retain the signs of Monarchy and court, so to that expent they deploy and tech, as well as reflect a social heirachy not disimilar to Empire.
Other games using a single ball, of which there are very many, are symbolic of the movement of the conscoiusness from funstion to function, as in soccer from player to player, and the goal,(pun intended) is achieved by the mastery of the flow from player to player.
Snooker, and pool its poor cousin, comes from some some earlies associated game from India, which I cant name. The coloured balls represent the chakras in the bodymind, and the reds are the Kundalini dormant in the Sacrum, (a triangle). The white is conscious attention, and the game starts with the Break, symbolic of awakening the Kundalini. Each red must go in first before a colour can be attempted. This is symbolic of the process of having outer experiences, and then attempting to use them to contact one of the Chakras. The colours keep coming back to the table as does the white, and the game closes down when all reds are gone, and the colours are potted in sequence in the last phase. After the life of experience and awareness, the whole Chakra system falls away and only the white is left, consciousness itself.
I have a theory of Chess along these lines too, but it is a bit long for this entry.
Suffice to add that one must see thes structuring models as both products of the psyche, and conditioners. The main structure however is one of equal/adverarial. Like in Chess, Black versus White. It is obvious how some games relate to battle, but others are less combative by way of turn taking, as in Pick-up-sticks.
I will not go so far as whitewashing Empire as an evil on the world. Some of the structuring supports Empire and the inequalities, but some of the structuring is not biasing any function, as per my hypothesis, and therefor, is worthy of keeping.
In conclusion it is obvious sme games change over time, and some stay pretty much the same. Chess is a good example of one that has changed considderably over the 1400 years it has been played, denoting a change in the modern Psyche. But that’s another post…
It’s worth noting that Jimmy Conners, and later John Mackenroe wre notable great players who challenged the authority of, and intimidated, the umpire, denoting a change in the way super-individualism, (and the big bucks), propelled a challenge to ‘the rules’ or taboo on obeying the umpire.(Authority)
So many games….
September 3rd, 2012 at 9:13 am
Kathy C
We also played Monopoly, but we also had a game called ‘Stockmarket’! Yep, and my older brother was the best trader in the street. How wonders never cease.
Another game that fits well into the four functions model is Cludo.
September 3rd, 2012 at 9:46 am
More on games and structure.
Many have pointed out that fairytales and Myths contain symbolic structuring, similar to games.
There are many fairy tales that have a stupid Hans. The older brothers try to do a task and they cannot succeed. Stupid Hans, who no one expects can do anything, represents the ‘inferior function’, (search engine it), and it is only by finally engaging the inferior function, aka stupid Hans, that the challenge, or task can be accomplished. So many narritive based tales have this structure.
Depth psychology points to the Myths as well, for example, St George and the Dragon, conform to psychological developmental structuring. First, go off the usual path, through difficult terrain and challenges to find the Dragon. This is symbolic of developing the less well adapted functions than the culture has provided, including the inferior function.
Second defeat the Dragon, (never in real life a certainty), which is confronting the Shadow and defeating it, or integrating it. Luke in combat with Dearth Vader comes to mind. Fear and Anger are part of the Shadow and accompany any true encounter with a ‘Dragon’.
Third, rescue the maiden held captive by the dragon. This is the Anima, or soul, or access to the flow of transcendent ‘life’ and joy, that comes when the Inferior Function and Shadow are integrated.
The Grail legends also hold much of this structuring. Yes the Abrahamic cults also have a adversarial cosmology, as does the Westminster Parliamentary System, where they actually refer to the opposition as ‘Shadow Treasurer, Shadow Forein Minister”. Very clear isn’t it?.
That opposition modeling and structuring comes from the Picean Age, and is now a dead cat to many awake people. A newer and less adversarial structure is wanting. The cat must be seen to die first. TPTB keep the bipolar structure of politics to keep the game going way past its used by date, IMO.
Agrarian Anarchy? It’s a start.
September 3rd, 2012 at 9:52 am
Arthur Noll,
“Most children the age of ten can understand these principles.”
Ouch! Now that’s the tone I’m talking about.
—————————————————————
I’m on board with your survival program now thanks to the specifics you provided. I just had a few unanswered questions that are actually based on your earlier comments about agrarian anarchy.
*I need a flock of goats. How many would that be? I’m thinking I should have milk goats so that I get the 3 liters of milk each day (nine months a year). Maybe I eat a goat a month, about a pound each day. So that would be a buck and 12 does (young, healthy ones) assuming collapse does not come during the first year. Let’s see, 3 liters of milk and a pound of meat a day, plenty of food.
*What would I do for veggies?
*By the end of the summer I should have one buck, twelve does, and maybe 18 kids (some twins). I’m not sure I have enough space to keep that many goats. Of course after the 91% human population die-off over the first two years of collapse there will be plenty of space but as you say, none of us can exactly predict when the collapse will happen. (I would like to get my flock maybe a month before the crash so I won’t have to mess with all these goats for too long. I just don’t know for sure when it will come.)
*Did you mention how much land “brutally stolen from the original inhabitants” it will take to feed them through the winter? Maybe you don’t have winter. I’ll probably have to steal the fertility of some other piece of land by buying hay put up by a farmer with a tractor. Of course I could grow some hay for my goats and harvest it with a scythe. I would have to put it up loose in a barn. I would have to build a barn. But that all sounds kind-of agrarian to me and I’d like to steer clear of that. How have you gotten around all of that agrarian stuff with your flock?
*By the following spring I will be down to one buck, twelve does, and the six young does from the previous year getting ready to breed. But I need a new buck to breed the young ones. Did you mention where I should look for that replacement? I’ll need a new buck each year, or else I will need to cull all of the young does before they breed. But if I do that how do I maintain my flock over time? . Oh, I remember from the “principles” I will need a team.
*According to the “sharp knife of triage” provided by “the principles of society” I will need a team of highly rational people to provide the core of my wandering tribe. Probably each of them will need a flock of goats too. Say I just work with a team of 23 other people (rational, mixed sex, fertile for population stability, but restrained sexually by their intellect). I guess each of them will need about a dozen goats as well, although we could have fewer bucks (randy bastards) per person, unless of course each team member lives on a separate piece of land. What does that come to? 24 x12 = 288 goats to start with and 24 x 18 = 432 when the kids arrive in the spring. That’s not including the bucks. Wow! That’s why all those pictures I see of nomads always show so many goats (and/or sheep). I wonder how the team will deal with them all.
*How will I keep them from being eaten by my neighbors during the collapse? After all we’re expecting a 91% die-off within the first two years. Some from those folks will die of starvation, and before they do they might be hungry. Luckily I live in the mountains so I don’t have far to go if I bug out there. If I lived further away I might have a problem getting to some wild land to ride out the collapse (five years, you say?). Would I drive my flock along the roads? Would I cut peoples fences?
*What if the collapse comes in winter?
And so on…………….
Now none of this is real because I have had only one goat in my life and I don’t know anything about them. Except the does smell wonderful.
————————————————————————
Arthur, you have no plan. You have a fantasy in which you have envisioned a future that fits your idea of how it ought to be.
I might want to be a cowboy and ride a horse as I drive my herd up and down middle America post collapse. Using your figures (70% year one, 70% year two) there still be would be a lot of hungry people (30 million in the US) looking at those beeves, wondering if I really needed them as much as they did.
A plan is what you do when you think about possible eventualities and try to prepare for them. Many of the people here at NBL are finding that conditions predicted by credible scientist might make it extremely difficult to survive the changes we have set in motion. Those scientist are freaking! None of this, “well it’s been warmer before and life survived” crap. They are seriously doubting even that.
Now I’m an optimist (although my wife doesn’t think so because I read NBL) and I am planning for a future that at least leaves a possibility that humans will survive. But I am also a realist. What the scientists are telling me is that even if human survive there is no possibility that conditions similar to what we still have now will exist again for many hundreds, if not thousands of years. I’m hoping for a hard and deep collapse. I’m fearing a hard and deep collapse. I’m trying to cover eventualities. I suggest you do the same.
Remember, there is an old saw about people living in glass houses throwing stones.
Michael Irving
September 3rd, 2012 at 10:02 am
Michael, your mentioning your wife reminds me of a question I’ve had for a while: are there any couples out there who both read NBL? I know my Josh doesn’t.
As we talk about educating/warning others, what, if anything, does that say if our own spouses aren’t reading NBL?
September 3rd, 2012 at 10:38 am
Thanks for restating that anarchy is about no rulers, NOT “no rules.” i find this confusion all over the place, thanks to official definitions, e.g. dictionaries, which make anarchy into a synonym of “chaos.”
September 3rd, 2012 at 10:50 am
.
Actually, Robin, Anarchy defies your description, or any other description. It rejects your notion of categorization and containment, so you can take that Western attitude of your’s, where all things under the sun must be classified, categorized, defined, contained and ultimately, as a result of that process, either worshiped/respected, or rejected/marginalized, and shove it up your ass where the sun doesn’t shine. I’ll be God-Damned if I’m going to accept your box, or any box offered by any other here, after I’ve just gone through the arduous process of casting off the box of my previous life. You have to be joking. Of course you are, or else you’re a fool. Thank goodness Walt Whitman sneered at Frost and his arrogant establishment ways, otherwise, he would have been just a replica of Frost. What a boring world Robin wants to preserve….one where creativity is thwarted and/or contained, so he can absorb it like someone who has no teeth has to have their food mashed to mush so they can swallow it without it sticking in their gullet.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 10:54 am
.
I’m no longer welcome in Limerick Land
I’ve been banished from same, with the wave of a hand
My short visit’s been fun
But at the point of a gun
I was asked to leave, if I couldn’t meet its demands
.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:01 am
.
Thanks for restating that anarchy is about no rulers, NOT “no rules.” i find this confusion all over the place, thanks to official definitions, e.g. dictionaries, which make anarchy into a synonym of “chaos.”
Amplify strawmen, much? Of course you do. No one said anything about no rules. The debate was about changing rules or static rules, who gets to set them, and who enforces them, so you can shove the strawman. Robin, and obviously you by your little strawman support here, although feigning to be radical in your approach, are really just Establishmentarians in disguise by virtue of the fact you want rules surrounding creativity to be static and highly regulated to preserve the status quo. And, that’s fine, if that’s your thing, but at least be honest about it, rather than sitting in the wings and cherry-picking strawmen.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 11:06 am
Yes, the media, police, and established powers, etc, consciously use anarchy = chaos as an attempt to discredit anarchists in the public discourse. I personally prefer anarchism, but other anarchists sometimes object to that term. Anarchism as a political stance. It’s not a theory or set of rules, is it, it just means rejecting rulers.
As I see it, rule is closely connected to power. The ruler rules because he’s got the largest number of thugs to deploy if you don’t do what he says, which usually means giving him ( usually a him, not a her ) something valuable, a cut of whatever you’ve got. So it’s really just a protection racket.
But there can be another kind of rule. That’s where someone in the community becomes recognised as having superior qualities, wisdom, judgement, insight, and people naturally go to that individual for advice, guidance, leadership and problem solving. Let’s call that person the chief. They become a sort of de facto ruler, because whenever there’s a dispute people will say ‘the chief said that…, or the chief believes this…’ and because everyone respects the chief, a sort of natural ‘ruler-ship’ arises, without any thugs or coercion, and people donate wealth, as an act of gratitude and honour, rather than because of violence and fear.
How far that sort of relationship can scale up, I don’t know. I expect the anthropologists have studied the matter.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:37 am
.
Does this sound similar to something going on in real finance in recent years?
Actually, no, it doesn’t. There are written rules put in place to maintain appearances and peace of mind, and there are unwritten, but well understood, rules, and the one unwritten rule that trumps all others is to maximize profits/wealth. You don’t like that rule…..too bad, shove it, because that rule, rules, and since you’re so fond of your rules that you feel compelled to vehemently defend the notion of them, you can take the implications of that grand rule, that rules all other rules, on the chin until you have no chin, because you’ve welcomed it.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 11:45 am
.
Oh well, enough on limericks. I love the sound of reading out loud a good limerick because of the meter and rhyme. It seems to me that the form leads you to the punch line and makes it more satisfying. I love the challenge of fitting a meaning into the form of rhyme, lines and meter. But to each their own….
I will argue that if you can’t find a meter and tempo in what I’ve written, it’s either because you haven’t tried, or you’re incapable of doing so, and if that’s the case, you’re quite the dirty bird for projecting your failings onto me. I wish there was a way I could sound these out loud to you prove my point because that’s what I do when I’m formulating them, but even if there was, I suspect there is no proving that point with you, or Robin. Once your mind’s made up, it’s made up. I’ve run across many like you in my lifetime thus far. The last part of Benjamin’s name suits you both well. So yeah, like you said, to each is own right back at ya…
.
September 3rd, 2012 at 11:50 am
TRDH,
Not an NBL partner here. She mostly wants to cover her ears and say Nah, Nah, Nah.
My daughter checks in from time to time but usually gets the flow second hand from me. We do have great discussions, however, and what with her humanure, solar lights, tiny stray/clay cabin (she just finished the rough coat throughout the interior yesterday, WHOOT!), stone refrigerator in the creek, and cooking on a rocket stove she is, if anything, ahead of me.
Michael Irving
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:01 pm
.
Neither my wife, nor my children, read NBL, but I discuss some of this material with them over meals, and at other times. My wife is busy working our five-year plan to own a Montessori School. My part in that is starting to kick in, but she’s out guiding children from ages three to six years old to be independent, objective, critically creative thinkers. She’s getting a kick out of this whole rule debate, especially when you consider the environment I just left a few short years ago. She and I just roll our eyes and say “it’s everywhere…you can’t escape it, and not even an apocalypse will destroy it.” It is ironic, I have to admit. Even what seems to be the most radical of venues, can’t help but cling to the familiar, just its own version of it.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 12:05 pm
TRDH, my husband is fully on board about the issues discussed here, he just doesn’t use the computer much. And while he is on board about the issues he finds the endless discussion of peripheral issues futile.
All, For my part I apologize for bringing in the totally peripheral discussion about the traditional form of the limerick. Meanwhile the planet burns and the fate of humanity is uncertain. Of course it is likely that all discussion from here on out is irrelevant except how to buy a few more years of survival if that is what one wants.
Listened to about 1/2 of this vid today. I don’t know if has been posted before but it is quite good so even if it has it is worth posting again. Good but depressing of course – what isn’t these days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbXuvQQt9YY&feature=relmfu
24 minutes into the presentation he talks about NASA being afraid to release findings of methane releases off the coast of San Diego for fear of retribution by the Bush administration.
David Wasdell, Director of the Meridian Programme, is a world-renowned expert in the dynamics of climate change. He is also a reviewer of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports and the author of numerous papers and presentations on climate change and related topics.
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:35 pm
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All, For my part I apologize for bringing in the totally peripheral discussion about the traditional form of the limerick.
Hah! You mean “all” except Morocco Bama.
It’s not peripheral at all…it’s at the very heart of why the planet is burning, and the thing that pains me is that you would have it burn again and again precisely because you see it as peripheral.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Michael,
Plans have to be tailored to local conditions. I can’t give a specific plan without knowing the location. And you are also coming at this as an individual, not thinking of how a group might be put together to deal with some of the questions you raise. It was looking at problems of dealing with animals, similar to some of the questions you raise, that reinforced to me that I needed a community. Someone or more is dealing with the buck(s), or bulls, stallions, whatever, someone else is dealing with the females. In nature animals like these often have bachelor herds that remain separate from the females- following that pattern requires someone to go with the males and someone to go with the females. For the females, people take the role of herd buck, herd jack, stallion, whatever, in everything except breeding, obviously. Herders do things like this. And if at all possible, you would like more than one species of animal, and they are likely to require their own handlers. Sheep and goats *may* flock together, but goats prefer browse, sheep prefer grass, they are likely to want to separate. Ditto for other species of animal. They are going to want to hang out together and not go where the others go when feeding, even though they might all come together easily enough for moving camp.
When I look at where I am now, in Sacramento, CA, I see the mountains to the east and the coastline and mountains to the west, as possible places to go. Winter in the Sierras can have many feet of snow. A plan for going there would run something like this- you cache enough hay to get through a winter in a remote location there. Enough food for people, too. Expecting things to go completely insane, you put that together and you can be there and holed up there for the winter. In the spring you can herd your animals around the mountains, they start feeding you at this point, along with what you can gather and hunt, and by fall you can hope that the dieoff has gone fast enough to winter in the valley. You are then back to an ancient pattern of wintering in the valley and grazing in the mountains during the summer. Other places can be similar, only the migration patterns might simply be north- south, rather than from mountains to valley. In some situations you might realistically hope for making some winter fodder for animals, or that some might naturally exist. In some conditions, that would not be realistic. And the kind of animal matters a great deal for this. Horses became the animal people depended on the most in some parts of Central Asia, because they will dig down through snow to get the grass underneath. They will eat snow for water. Other common domestic animals would die in such conditions. They only survive by being given hay and water. Reindeer do well even further north than horses, obviously. Though when I say “hay”, you shouldn’t feel too boxed in by that. People have cut stuff like willows and poplar and dried the leaves and twigs for winter feed, as well as making grass hay. As far as naturally available winter food, Native Americans wintered in places where they could cut cottonwood branches for the horses to eat bark and buds. That did not always work well, though, apparently part of what drove raiding was looking to replace animals that died in the winter. But that could also be from overpopulation, too much pressure of other Natives and Europeans taking sheltered valleys with enough trees, and not enough time for trees to grow back. Coppiced trees can grow back much faster than a whole tree, though.
Today, where people almost exclusively feed their animals grass and/or alfalfa hay for winter, trees in remote valleys may have grown back, allow this to be done again without serious winterkill. You have to look and see what is there. And with regard to that, information gathering is another major reason for why groups are much stronger than individuals. People cooperating can draw together information about very wide areas. In any case, while resources in remote areas may be quite limited and you might need to buy hay to start off, if a dieoff is going on over the horizon, your options should be opening up to find good places to make it through the next winter with one or a combination of these strategies. Migration, or looking to natural winter food supplies, possibly combined with making and storing fodder of some kind.
People in climates that don’t have winter, might instead be looking at how to get through a dry season, but the basic principles are the same.
The fundamental thing is to get well away from concentrations of people who refuse to be reasonable about their expectations, and look at what is there, what you have to work with, what kinds of domestic animals fit those conditions the best. Pool your resources to get what you need from existing society to start off with. With the huge inequities in present society, some may not have much to contribute to begin with. But anyone concerned about the stability of current society and inclined to join such an effort would have likely piled up knowledge of the area, skills for living without fossil fuels, that kind of thing. If people have just sat around as couch potatoes watching television in their spare time, and know nothing about stuff like this, have not practiced skills, they aren’t likely to join and aren’t worth much if they do, unless they can learn really, really fast. Not likely. Not everyone is equally valuable. You need to be ruthless but fair about who you accept, who you put faith in as part of your team. Take in someone worthless and you may suffer really badly for that, turn away someone on false measure and you may also suffer. The fit survive.
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Aw, c’mon, MO, with respect, you’re exagerating, all Kathy C. said is that the limerick is a traditional form, with a rule as its structure. That’s a common feature right across world culture.
It has NOTHING to do with why the world is in such a mess.
If you don’t follow the rule for limerick structure, then it stops being a limerick. Same goes for, say, haiku, or 12 bar blues. You’re free to do whatever you want. But it’s ridiculous to draw a circle and say it’s a square because you don’t acknowledge the rule that defines a circle.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:20 pm
“Not everyone is equally valuable. You need to be ruthless but fair about who you accept, who you put faith in as part of your team. Take in someone worthless and you may suffer really badly for that, turn away someone on false measure and you may also suffer. The fit survive.”
You appear to be assuming that you are the one doing the ‘taking in’. Perhaps you’d like to write a version from the perspective where you are the one begging to be taken in.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:23 pm
.
It has NOTHING to do with why the world is in such a mess.
The ensuing discussion that followed has everything to do with it, so you come on. The ensuing discussion to which I alluded has everything to do with it, and it’s not peripheral to the title of the thread, which is, if you’ve forgotten What are we fighting for?. Well, I’m not fighting for anything, but what I will say is that I don’t want to be part of another world created in the wake of this one that is predicated on enforced rules to coerce people into traditional modes of behavior. I take it you don’t subscribe to Guy’s classroom etiquette which didn’t abide by the rules, and was quite contrary to tradition in its application? The written, or unwritten, rule was that Guy would teach in the tradition, rather than engaging in classroom anarchy, and what’s ironic, is that now you have jumped on the rule bandwagon and serve to take the place of the cold, calculating, arrogant and condescending bureaucrat who marginalized Guy, and in all likelihood, considered herself superior to him since she followed the rules, and he didn’t.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 1:38 pm
MB Rules about poetic forms clearly are not something that matters and I was wrong to note to you that traditional limericks have an accepted meter. I apologize to you for doing that.
September 3rd, 2012 at 1:39 pm
The ensuing discussion that followed has everything to do with it, so you come on.
Hahaha, okay, I will…
The ensuing discussion to which I alluded has everything to do with it, and it’s not peripheral to the title of the thread, which is, if you’ve forgotten What are we fighting for?. Well, I’m not fighting for anything, but what I will say is that I don’t want to be part of another world created in the wake of this one that is predicated on enforced rules to coerce people into traditional modes of behavior.
Okay. Fine. Reject all traditional modes of behaviour. Who cares what YOU do ? I certainly don’t.
You really believe there will be another world created in the wake of this one ? That’s some peculiar religious doctrine you pursue ? Whatever it is, I don’t share it. I think we get a global mass extinction event.
I take it you don’t subscribe to Guy’s classroom etiquette which didn’t abide by the rules, and was quite contrary to tradition in its application? The written, or unwritten, rule was that Guy would teach in the tradition, rather than engaging in classroom anarchy, and what’s ironic, is that now you have jumped on the rule bandwagon and serve to take the place of the cold, calculating, arrogant and condescending bureaucrat who marginalized Guy, and in all likelihood, considered herself superior to him since she followed the rules, and he didn’t.
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about there. If you really want a reply, you’ll have to unscramble it and make it accessible to me.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:07 pm
.
Kathy C, you don’t need to apologize to me, I wasn’t looking for one, really. Yes, traditional Limericks are noted for a particular meter, just as traditional southern landowners were noted to have owned slaves. Traditions can, and do, change. They should change, and we should welcome those changes.
.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:11 pm
I saw Chris Hedges mentioned earlier in the comments, and today he has a post that is saying much the same thing as Guy:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/life_is_sacred_20120903/
This is the first I have heard Hedges say that resistance is futile. The last line is the best:
“Unrestrained hubris always leads to self-immolation.”
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Yeah, that’s all very well, except that a Non-Traditional Limerick is no longer a Limerick, is it. It’s something else.
Like I said above, re a 12 bar blues. You can mess with it, provide some witty, entertaining extension that enhances a particular performance, but if you stretch it too far, it’s not the blues anymore, it’s something else.
As for the rest, it’s an over-generalisation. Culture is changing all the time, whether you like it or not. Just try stopping it ! However, all around the world, in all cultures, there are traditional forms which those who support them strive to maintain and preserve, because they are seen as having some value. That may or may not be a good thing, depending upon your point of view. These matters are often fiercely contested.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:37 pm
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Yeah, that’s all very well, except that a Non-Traditional Limerick is no longer a Limerick, is it. It’s something else.
I see. So, a non-traditional southern landowner isn’t a southern landowner. I get it. Thanks. Makes sense. If you were following, I conceded to call my rhymes something else, it’s not important to me that they be considered Limericks, even though they heavily borrow from the device, but to imply something’s inferior and not a challenge because it doesn’t follow the “accepted” rules, doesn’t necessarily follow, and that’s at the crux of it.
So much for prose, Arthur. It’s done nothing to bring clarity to the issues at hand. It’s only served to muddy the waters further, so back to the rhyming I’ll go.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 2:40 pm
.
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about there. If you really want a reply, you’ll have to unscramble it and make it accessible to me.
It wouldn’t make a difference. Until you have that operation to remove your head from your ass, it’s never going to make any sense to you.
.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Arthur Noll,
Better!
You still have not dealt with the timeline. You said you were in Sacramento, not near, but in. You may have mis-spoken, but assuming you did not, then if you are serious (rather than working from an armchair) you must have your team and flock already assembled and by this time you must have built shelters and stashed your winter hay supply in the Sierras.
Many people here are actively practicing skills they expect will be required for survival in a collapse situation. Some of them are contemplating Plan B and C. Are you walking the walk, or is all this just an intellectual exercise?
If you are walking the walk, how are your animals coping this summer? I know it has been very dry and very hot there. Has the pasture dried up? My sister-in-law, here on vacation, has been referring to it as Arrakis, in contrast to Caladan, where I live. We’ve been very lucky, benefitting from the wettest spring on record. However, we have not had a drop of rain since July 13.
Michael Irving
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:54 pm
I should add, that when things have progressed to the point where it is possible to reestablish ancient migration patterns, it may also be possible to go back to wetter climates that are presently overrun with people, and start working with tree crops. I like some permaculture ideas, but I don’t like the idea of individuals making tiny little human made ecosystems, though. There has been no other option, I understand that, but regardless I have felt this made no sense for a long time. Groups working with real ecosystems makes a lot more sense to me. And I don’t throw out the cultivation of annual crops entirely, there are a natural niches for annuals in nature, that could be used in a long term sustainable manner. Areas that grow trees, though, can have fewer niches for annuals. Annuals only fit with trees with the natural pattern of patches of forest being destroyed now and then by windstorms, fire. Annual seeds laying dormant are the first to grow back. People have mimicked this with slash and burn. Too much of that quickly becomes destructive, though.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Hahahahaha, jeez, MB, fuck off will you, with your silly childish insults…. or at least come up with a better quality insult, something interesting, creative, original… ‘head… ass…’ Oh dearie me !
I see. So, a non-traditional southern landowner isn’t a southern landowner. I get it. Thanks. Makes sense. If you were following, I conceded to call my rhymes something else, it’s not important to me that they be considered Limericks, even though they heavily borrow from the device, but to imply something’s inferior and not a challenge because it doesn’t follow the “accepted” rules, doesn’t necessarily follow, and that’s at the crux of it
No, you don’t see. You’re hopelessly muddled. I know little about southern landowner, so I’ll not venture an opinion on them, but, generally, the world is full of things, which are described, defined and categorised, by common agreement, so that we can communicate.
If I was a book publisher and asked you for a limerick, and you agreed to supply me with one, I’d expect an effing limerick, not some potty neologism that you’d cooked up.
Same as if I’d sent you money to buy a book from you, I’d expect a book, not some onions.
Simple.
Some traditions I hold in very high regard, and think they are well worth fighting for, so that they don’t get lost. Thatching roofs, for example.
Some traditions deserve to be stamped out, IMO. Cliterodectomy, for example.
Others I’m neutral about, if people reallywant to chase cheese down hills, what do I care ?
As for what you do personally with the limerick form, or what you call it, I care not one bit, but the examples you’ve sup[plied so far are hardly memorable, are they ? Pretty poor, compared with the ones that are heard once and stick in your head for a lifetime. So, yes, they probably are inferior, at least in that respect.
September 3rd, 2012 at 2:59 pm
http://youtu.be/_GdVnzDFyLg
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:13 pm
“Groups working with real ecosystems makes a lot more sense to me.”
How do you define a “real ecosystem” ? In UK all ecosystems are unnatural, in the sense that they have been moulded by human activity. What’s more, they are all going to want to change, because of climate change. How can a group working with an ecosystem know what to do ? Even the best most experienced academic ecologists have very little idea what will happen.
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Hahaha, I see that the savage battle between the advocates of fast collapse and the advocates of slow collapse rages on… too boring and ludicrous for me to get involved…
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/09/02/the-tempest-in-the-oil-drum/
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:26 pm
.
In keeping with the spirit of the thread, and the title of the post, The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony had an answer to the thread’s question. They fought heartily to protect their culture and traditions, which they brought from East Anglia and intensified once in the New World, and they took great pains to codify their bevy of rules put in place to preserve that culture and those traditions. Here’s an example from pages 141-142 of David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways In America:
To discourage excessive display, the Bay Colony passed strict sumptuary laws. Statutes of his sort existed in most American colonies and European states. But the earliest Massachusetts sumptuary laws were very different — they applied not merely to the common people, but to “ordinary wearing” by everyone. One such statute in 1634 forbade men and women of every rank to wear “new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature.” It ordered that “no person, either man or women,” could wear “slashed clothes, other than one slash in each sleeve, and another in the back.” Also forbidden were the “ordinary wearing” of silver, gold, and silk laces, girdles, hatbands, and “immoderate great sleeves…great rayles, long wings, etc.” These prohibitions applied to everybody in the colony.
The sumptuary laws of Massachusetts also forbade the manufacture and sale of fancy clothing. A statute in 1636 ordered that “no person, after one month, shall make or sell any bone lace, or other lace…..neither shall any tailor set any lace upon any garment.” The court decreed that “no garment shall be made with short sleeves, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered.”
Later in the seventeenth century, the sumptuary laws of Massachusetts became more conscious of rank. In 1651, the General Court complained that “intolerable excess and bravery hath crept in upon us, and especially amongst people of mean condition, to the dishonor of God, the scandal of our profession, the consumption of estates, and altogether unsuitable to poverty.” The selectmen of every town were ordered to judge whether the dress of men and women exceeded the their “ranks and abilities.” Costly dress was restricted to those whose estates were worth 200 pounds, and also to families of magistrates. But subsequent statutes returned to general prohibition.
The austerity of New England’s dress ways also appeared in other customs. Through the seventeenth century this culture maintained an intense hostility to wigs. When a Puritan clergyman named Josiah Willard cut off his natural hair and put on a wig, he was visited by a magistrate who told him that “God seems to have ordained our hair as a test, to see whether we can bring our minds to be content to be at his finding: or whether we would be our own carvers.” Attitudes changed in the eighteenth century, when wigs of white and grey (grizzled as if by age) became acceptable. But long youthful curls were strictly condemned in the seventeenth century.
Wow! A couple of things come to mind. Fashion Police, for starters. How about the selectmen looking over what people were wearing and reporting them for prosecution when they didn’t comply? Also, if long blond curls were condemned, can you imagine their shock at things like fake boobs and Viagra? My, how things change, and yet, in a sense, how they remain the same.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 3:40 pm
.
As for what you do personally with the limerick form, or what you call it, I care not one bit
Good on you. Shut the hell up then if you don’t care. For someone who doesn’t care, you sure seem to not care with a ferocious intensity. It’s time for you to get back to shouting “the sky is falling and everyone’s going to die.” If you don’t do it, who will? Go on now, don’t waste your last moments on earth arguing about things for which you don’t care. That makes little, or no, sense. You do seem to say you don’t care a lot. If you don’t care about anything, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be back at your blog having a conversation with yourself as you are wont to do?
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September 3rd, 2012 at 3:49 pm
That’s interesting, MB. I think the pressure to conform in England was intense, had been for centuries. Any dissent was often fatal, and what a person was required to ‘believe’ kept changing, according to whoever was in power, Catholic, Protestant, whatever.
So when there was a chance to escape, it’s not surprising people took it, and went to America hoping for freedom and a better life. All sorts of experiments, Quakers, Shakers, Amish, Mennonites, etc, etc.
I’m re-reading a book, The Dreaded Comparisom : human and animal slavery, by Marjorie Spiegel. It’s filled with harrowing accounts of what people have done to other people and to animals…
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Good on you. Shut the hell up then if you don’t care. For someone who doesn’t care, you sure seem to not care with a ferocious intensity. It’s time for you to get back to shouting “the sky is falling and everyone’s going to die.” If you don’t do it, who will? Go on now, don’t waste your last moments on earth arguing about things for which you don’t care. That makes little, or no, sense. You do seem to say you don’t care a lot. If you don’t care about anything, why are you here? Shouldn’t you be back at your blog having a conversation with yourself as you are wont to do?
Hahahahaha. You silly fool. I care very deeply about what matters to me. As for the rest, it’s all worthless froth and garbage, why should I care about it ?
September 3rd, 2012 at 3:54 pm
.
Why do some people say they don’t care
When they have so much dirty laundry to air?
It’s rather ironic
And transparently sick
That they care so little, with such a strapping pair
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September 3rd, 2012 at 4:11 pm
It’s time for you to get back to shouting “the sky is falling and everyone’s going to die.” If you don’t do it, who will? Go on now, don’t waste your last moments on earth arguing about things for which you don’t care.
Well, the sky isn’t quite falling, but the ice is melting and the global ecology is collapsing.
There’s nothing that I, as a single individual, can do about that.
As for how I spend my remaining time on Earth, I certainly don’t need any advice from you or anyone else on that. I’m a free man, I do just as I please.
September 3rd, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Ah, I’ve got you sussed at last, MB ! Now I understand, your’e competing with William McGonagall trying to win his title ‘Generally considered to be the worst poet ever to have written in the English language’ Well, keep trying, you’re getting there….
September 3rd, 2012 at 4:17 pm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall
September 3rd, 2012 at 4:30 pm
“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right and to realize of a sudden that in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
September 3rd, 2012 at 4:34 pm
That describes me quite adequately, but the sea is to my left, on the other side of my mountain.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Rules. Everyone on this site including Guy and Morocco Bama regularly follows rules. In order to understand each other we follow spelling, definition and grammar rules of US English. I order to post we accept that a Name of some sort is required in the Name BOX and an e-mail is required int the Mail BOX and in order to post a comment we dutifully click on the SUBMIT COMMENT BOX. Every time we post a comment here we are SUBMITTING. Horrors
While some words like anarchy are emotionally and politically charged so that they mean many different things to many people most words are fairly fixed or we couldn’t communicate at all. If someone used the word shitty to mean great and then told their wife dinner was shitty, well they would be in a pile of trouble eh? We live by so many rules that are so embedded and part of every day life that we don’t even realize how bounded by rules we are. Necessarily so. So the question is not rules, but which rules, who sets them, who enforces them etc.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Well said, Kathy C, I agree with that.
In USA ‘to bomb’ as in a film or record release, means to fail, in UK, the opposite.
Re the people working with ecosystems, above.
Just read this on RC, regarding the difficulties for people growing crops when we can expect ever more frequent extreme weather events…
“In the future, two or three different crops, one adapted to warm winters, another to brutal summers, might out-produce a single “regular” crop today. Plus, much of any decline could have been caused by farmers planting the wrong variety or species at the wrong time or nurtured in the wrong way precisely because they didn’t know 3-sigma events ain’t 3-sigma anymore.
A 3-sigma event means it’s probably happened twice since the theoretical time of Jesus. Nobody plans for that.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/08/climate-indices-to-watch/comment-page-2/#comment-247550
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Amongst the various anarchist assemblies that I’ve been involved with in my life, the consensus has generally been that people are expected to take responsibility for their own conduct, and to act responsibly. Inevitably, there are people who behave in ways that others feel are unacceptable.
So what happens then ?
There’s that famous rule that says ‘Your right to swing that (frying pan, machete, whatever ) ends an inch away from my head’.
I think my personal boundary line is a lot further out than that.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:31 pm
Global thermonuclear war is the only cure, a radiation therapy to kill the cancerous growth that is agricultural civilization within the community of life called Gaia.
Even so, come Lord Shiva.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:31 pm
A musical jam is anarchy in action. And anyone who thinks that a jam is possible with absolutely no rules has no idea what music is about. If one is simply about posturing, about throwing out a riff with zero regard for the other musicians, that person doesn’t care whether it sounds like crap. A serious musician does care. Rules are never written in stone. But some sort of common language is a requirement for any sort of communication, without which human society, and thus human life, are impossible.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Be careful what you wish for, Ivy Mike
I have to admit, I do sometimes feel that way…
but one possible scenario is that, as stress and chaos increases, some kind of charismatic figure will appear offering order and discipline, who’ll gather a large following, and they’ll decide to eradicate all the ones they don’t like, Pol Pot style. That’s been one lesson from history… I expect to be on the eradication list, if I survive that long… but it probably isn’t an either/or, we may get that, combined with nuclear and biological armageddon… either way, it’s heaps of skulls, and a thin layer of plastic fragments in the geological record, in the distant future… Grim.
September 3rd, 2012 at 5:59 pm
Good analogy, Jeff S. But the rules are very different in different genres, e.g. in jazz and bluegrass, people take turns to be in the limelight, whilst in Irish trad, that’s considered unacceptable, everybody stays at the same level, and serves the music, not the ego.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:13 pm
Michael,
I have to smile, but ok, we can go through the whole thing. No, I do not have a group set up, yes, my existence has largely become an “armchair intellectual” exercise, but I have definitely not spent a lot of my life like this. We all get old, injured in many different ways, and die. People with social instincts will tend to push the younger generation forward with whatever resources they have left. And of course, they tend to try and push forward the culture they were born into and learned, maybe with some superficial changes. The difference with me is I’m pushing forward on a radically new culture, and simultaneously pushing on the old one to die faster.
I don’t think I’m going to join a particular group. Limited space means that it would be better for someone younger and healthier than me to do that. I’m not going to come tentatively out of the mountains someday, and view bodies and bones everywhere with a sense of wonder. I’ll be one of those sets of bones. However, unlike the genetics behind the brain structure that was in most of those bones, my genetic pattern should be kept by those who survive. Humanity is constantly reproducing itself. Someone very much like myself could be born again and again and again, if people similar to me, survive.
When you tell people things that go counter to their cultural training, go counter to anything they have learned, actually, and against instincts as well, the first reaction is denial. Nothing else is really possible for us, in such circumstances we don’t have neural pathways set up to agree. New information has to have the strength with our particular brain potentials, to break down old neural pathways and form new ones. That takes some time, it can take really strong experiences, and depending on the person and the information, the experience, it might not happen at all. They are very likely to die before their brains make any change in how they see reality.
I’m no different, I’ve been in denial of things, and it took severe pain, sometimes going right to the edge of death to change my reactions. We very commonly know of this with regard to drug addiction, but it can happen with many other things as well.
So, I feel it is for these reasons, I do not have a group set up. People hear me, hear how radical the changes are, and they are in denial. Curtis tells people the way to deal with me is to ignore me- he is merely expressing out loud what most actually do. It isn’t intelligent to ignore something or someone that you can’t argue with, but we do it all the time.
But some, on seeing how death really is coming if they don’t change, may finally listen to me, take it seriously, and start this whole ball rolling.
I’ve seen that it had to go this way for a long time. People in love with individual freedoms, in love with money,I am metaphorically punching them in the head. People who love annual crops, I’ve punched them in the stomach. My observations about reproduction are like a kick in the genitals. People are immediately in denial, on the defensive, these emotional attractions can be very strong. I’m not naive. Only something stronger, like the fear of death, is going to make a few change, stop denying and making excuses of various kinds. My way is the way of last resort.
People look at what is going on in the world and still hope that somehow the economic situation isn’t going to collapse in horrific ways bringing even greater horrors with war, that new technology will be found to solve problems, and so on. Just a little more time, a little more… please… we have been having such pleasant dreams, no, we do not want to wake up… And here, we have some people who see the horrors but their emotional attractions are so strong they think they would rather die than change. That isn’t as common as faith in magic, but it ends up being no different. I have the end of many dreams, the end of many hopes.
And yes, again and again yes, maybe the end of my hopes are also at hand. I might be wrong, maybe we do all die- but I go on with the best chance I see to live, until I can’t go on any further. I didn’t get this far by giving up at the first hint of pain and fatigue as my celiac disease problem grew slowly worse and worse, starting in early childhood, and it seemed like a hopeless situation. Nobody was talking about celiac in those days, it was thought to be an extremely rare condition, doctors didn’t think about it, I’d never heard of it and my parents didn’t go to doctors, they prayed. I early gave up depending on that, or depending on vague hopes of muddling through somehow without directly challenging my parent’s belief. Hoping I could do that hurt me really badly. It is very old advice, but you really cannot please everyone, and sometimes you either give up trying to please people you love, or die. I looked to things that appeared to have evidence for answers, and even though I saw no answer, and made mistakes about what was evidence at times, bringing even more pain, I kept going as long as I had the strength to do it. And did finally find the answer. All of that is not really an unusual response, of course, evolution selects powerful desires to live, not weak ones. You push through pain even when things look hopeless.
If people do survive this, it will not be those who give up. You get knocked down, you get back up. You can get discouraged, tired, you rest, yes, but after you rest you try again. There is nothing new about this advice, it is very old, but it sticks around because it is true. We are going to find out who really is tough, who really is an idiot and who isn’t. Success in this culture doesn’t say a lot. With me, you start over at the bottom. *We* are *all* failures, all idiots to some degree. If we knew what was happening, we have failed to communicate. Trying doesn’t count. Results count. When people rip at others as being idiots, I laugh. What have you done that is so great, that we are all in this mess? I can try to excuse myself, see how that pattern is likely to go, people are going to be in denial and need to have the fear of death to change, but I might still fail to communicate. I’m still pushed by the fact that I haven’t been successful yet. I can’t crow about being smarter or better than anyone else here. I’ve not shown any such thing yet. And even if some people do decide that I’ve found something significant, I know that nobody can ever rest on their laurels for long. Life goes on, there are always new problems to solve. And I am quite sure that there are people on this list and many others I’ve run into, who have greater talents than I do in many different ways. If I get recognized, and these understandings start to work, that is nice, I’m no different from others, I want to be recognized, I want to be valued, but I know that for other problems, it will be someone else more likely to solve them. That is the power of cooperation, of putting diverse talents together. The chances are better that someone can solve a particular problem.
I’ve been saying this for a long time, that we can be ruled by good thinking, not by specific people. And some might say, well, you say you are against anarchy, but this is the essence of anarchy. Yes, it could be seen that way. My problem with anarchy is that I’ve seen so much bitter argument between anarchists, and neither side getting down to anything like solid ground, in my view. And people who have self identified themselves as anarchists, have turned their backs on me. As have self identified people of every political stripe. I have never been much interested in identifying myself as any particular political type, and this has done nothing to help. I think have elements of many political views in what I’m talking about, but do not seem to fully fit anywhere. I just want a science based society.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Ah yes, MB told me to go back to my own blog and have a conversation with myself, hahaha, well, funnily enough, I am capable of being on several blogs and forums at the same time, but seeing as it was mentioned, I’ll blow my own trumpet, and quote my own website “Here are the rules of this site : There are no rules for this site.”
http://www.monsangelorum.net/?p=7
Obviously, that’s not strictly accurate, because as Kathy C pointed out, we all follow rules all the time, at a taken for granted level, so the rules I was referring to are the kind where one person tells another person what they can or cannot do, usually with some sort of threat in the background.
To an extent, I am in favour of those sort of rules, because you really cannot have any group of people together, without some agreed rules. I tend to think they should be agreed by the group, rather than imposed, and in effect they become culture-in-microcosm, the sort of thing that any family has, in its daily life. And on the larger scale, the culture should be harmoniously adjusted to suit the environment. That seems to be how it worked in simpler times for ethnic and tribal peoples.
I think people do need a culture, to keep them on the rails, so to speak. We have such fantastic brains, and we can put almost anything into them, good, bad or indifferent.
Shamans, some comedians, some artists, and the like, are strong enough to be outside all culture, and to navigate new paths, but for most people, they follow their early conditioning. So what the children are taught should be what they need to survive without trashing their environment, and to build a positive supportive community, with structure that can deal with all the human frailties and tendencies.
Unfortunately, dominant culture these days is grossly, fatally, maladapted. Right. I’ll leave you all in peace. Thanks for the entertaining evening, bye for now, take good care of yourselves…
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:30 pm
ulvfugl, yes cultures have rules that often take the form of traditions. Reading Louis Sarno’s book about joining a Pygmy Tribe in Africa he talks of the hunt. Each hunter has his own net which he strings out. His wife mans the net and the men go scare up the antelope. When an antelope hits a nest the wife clubs the animal. Meat is portioned out in some form based on who clubbed the antelope and the various roles of the men. I doubt they think of it as a rule but it is what apparently they do automatically because that is how it has always been done. The agreement that this is how it should be keeps the clubbing to the antelopes and not to each other which works out best for everyone.
Song from the Forest: My Life Among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:34 pm
Footnote for Arthur N. “When people rip at others as being idiots, I laugh. What have you done that is so great, that we are all in this mess? “
I laugh too, and if I told you what I had done, I think you would be very surprised and greatly impressed, but it’s my business, not something I’m willing to discuss on the internet.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:36 pm
Michael,
For your last set of questions, I wrote an answer, and was informed by the program here that I’d already written it, or maybe significant parts of it, in the past. “Duplication detected” it informed me. I’m not at all surprised that I wrote a similar answer in the past, I know we have been over all this before, I sometimes get bored with it, sometimes feel people are being deliberately obtuse with their questions, or else their memories are really poor, but I’m quite surprised that an automatic duplication program search found what I wrote to be similar enough to be called a duplicate. I didn’t go combing through the past and do a copy and paste. I would rather not try and guess how I might write things differently to avoid this problem. So if you want an answer, it seems you need to comb through the past to where I wrote an answer to a similar question before. Might even have been you asking it. Seems curious that your question was not also seen as a duplicate.
September 3rd, 2012 at 6:44 pm
.
So the question is not rules, but which rules, who sets them, who enforces them etc.
Agree, but it’s a bit more than that, and a bit more complex, as you’ve pointed out. When rules lead to an entrenched establishment, as is the case with Civilization, and that establishment is responsible for the imminent demise of most species on planet Earth, it’s important to note that rules should not remain static to maintain the status quo, and should be flexible, spontaneous and responsive to the situation at hand, and the more unconscious and fluid they are, the better. When you start to codify them and use them coercively to maintain a particular social order, that’s where the trouble begins, imo.
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September 3rd, 2012 at 7:07 pm
Apparently I pressed “submit”, twice, so you can ignore the above post. Though what I say in it stands, as far as feeling like people are being obtuse or have terrible memories. We have been over this before.
September 3rd, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Robin, and obviously you by your little strawman support here, although feigning to be radical in your approach, are really just Establishmentarians in disguise by virtue of the fact you want rules surrounding creativity to be static and highly regulated to preserve the status quo.
Creativity cannot be regulated. It can be recognised and acknowledged. If the acknowledgement is sufficiently prevalent, it is generally referred to as creativity. Even changing rules have to be recognised with a sufficient prevalence for the change to be considered a rule. Enforcement is the purview of rulers. Statists and authoritarians have a mind-set that makes them see dissenters as yet another set of would-be rulers.
I suspect there is no proving that point with you, or Robin.
The proof is in a wider consensus. If a change is accepted widely enough, its detractors will fade into insignificance and be ignored and forgotten: thus there is neither the need not the occasion to malign them if such a prospect is entertained.
Yes, traditional Limericks are noted for a particular meter, just as traditional southern landowners were noted to have owned slaves. Traditions can, and do, change. They should change, and we should welcome those changes.
And the “we” may, on occasion, do. And we must recognise and accept that there may be those whose psychological investment in their own work is deep enough to make them consider other’s accepted norms of poetry to be as detestable as the once-accepted norms of slave ownership.
Yeah, that’s all very well, except that a Non-Traditional Limerick is no longer a Limerick, is it. It’s something else.
But if Monsanto et al. should move into that realm, anything goes. GMO corn and GMO salmon, why not GMO poetry? It will help feed culture to more people.
to imply something’s inferior and not a challenge because it doesn’t follow the “accepted” rules, doesn’t necessarily follow, and that’s at the crux of it.
The source of the perception of the implication is in a recognition, be it right or wrong.
How about the selectmen looking over what people were wearing and reporting them for prosecution when they didn’t comply?
It takes a statist/authoritarian mind to birth such an idea.
For someone who doesn’t care, you sure seem to not care with a ferocious intensity.
A rather ferocious comment, may it be ventured?
September 3rd, 2012 at 9:21 pm
A late rebuttal, but some of us have a life away from the computer screen…
Jeff S.
Did I write that you didn’t work in the nuclear industry? Unless you offer some evidence a claim is all it is to me, just like what I said about myself and university maths is a claim to you. (Please don’t offer any evidence, because I don’t give a damn anyway).
Did I use being top at some university maths subjects as evidence I understand climate modeling? No. I don’t even claim it makes me good at maths (though it is evidence I was once good at maths exams). I only used it to illustrate I am not an idiot. I won’t bother posting a definition of idiot for you.
The idea that higher CO2 can actually be good is just one of the nonsense talking point which global warming denial try to throw around
I said it would be good for life, by which I meant good in the long run. If you’ve read any of my posts on previous essays you should know this. I meant it in two ways. Firstly, as you supposed, I meant good for plant growth
http://intranet.wcastl.org/sites/wsmith/upload/4914610a2dea4.PDF
I was not impressed by the skeptical science link claiming high CO2 levels are bad for plants. If you bother to read it, doubtless you will not be impressed by my link either.
Higher CO2 will be very bad for humans and most other complex life forms in the short term. Given this, my second line of reasoning is that since we are destroying all other life on the planet anything that’s bad for us is necessarily good for life. If the earth does turn into Venus then clearly I will have been mistaken.
I am not a “troll”. Clearly neither is Arthur. If that is an example of a judgement call of a typical nuclear plant designer then we are in worse trouble than I thought.
September 3rd, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Those of us who have been following the unfolding global crisis – the converging, interlocked “wicked problems” of energy, the environment, economics and social justice and their rather dire implications – have become intimately familiar with the progression through the Five Stages of Grief described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.
1. Denial — “This can’t be happening, there’s been some stupid mistake.”
2. Anger — “This is simply not fair! Who is to blame for this?”
3. Bargaining — “I’ll do anything for a chance at a few more years. Anything!”
4. Depression — “I can’t do anything about it, so why bother with anything? What’s the point?”
5. Acceptance — “Well, I can’t fight it, so I may as well prepare for it.”
Often when we arrive at “Acceptance” we are so relieved just to be free of the pain of our grief that we stop looking to see if new possibilities may have been revealed.
As I have worked within Stage 5 for the last few years, I’ve come to think that Kubler-Ross stopped one stage too soon. There is a stage beyond the simple acceptance of our situation, even beyond the clear recognition of What Is.
There is a fundamental principle in deep inner work that the greatest gifts are always found in the darkest places. The acceptance of an inevitable ending, whatever it is, can clear our vision and allow us to see things that become the launch pad for new growth – for a kind of rebirth.
The bigger the change, the greater its potential gift, if we can just look at it with new eyes:
- We may find ways of moving beyond our old habits, expectations and judgments.
- We may realize that our old ways of seeing the world held us back.
- We may give ourselves permission to live authentically, as our true selves.
As a reminder to keep looking, I invite you to add a sixth stage to the model:
6. Finding the Gift – “Wow, look at the opportunities this change makes possible! I may not be able to go back, or even forward in the direction I wanted, but just look at all the other avuenues that have suddenly opened up!”
The Six Stages Of Grief
———————–
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
6. Finding the Gift
——————-
On a more personal note, when I “grokked the shitstorm” I looked long and hard at whether I should change my living situation. I ended up deciding that there was no way to tell what other situations would be more or less survivable given my current situation, resources, skills and age. I decided to sit tight and stay with the other passengers – I’m no worse off than anyone else, and people seem to appreciate guides as they begin to wake up. Most of my attention has been redirected inward now, so it doesn’t really matter where or how I live. I’ll start where I am, use what I have, and do what I can.
It’s hard to learn how to express the joy and freedom that comes from this rather cataclysmic awareness without coming off as condescending, confrontational or filled with schadenfreude. It was very hard for me to learn how to give others the respect to walk their own path. I kept wanting to scream at the sleepers. Not helpful for anyone. The gift of non-attachment is one that keeps giving forever.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:08 am
to imply something’s inferior and not a challenge because it doesn’t follow the “accepted” rules, doesn’t necessarily follow, and that’s at the crux of it.
The source of the perception of the implication is in a recognition, be it right or wrong.
- To clarify that a bit:
When someone says “the sun rises in the east” the implication could be there that the sun moves, and the earth remains still. But that implication does not generally come into perception. This is because the possibility of the validity of such an implication is not accepted. For an implication to come into perception, the possibility of its validity is also accepted.
September 4th, 2012 at 2:54 am
Started watching a movie last night = The Whistleblower (being old we watch movies over 2 nights so we can get to bed early). If anyone is still considering having children as we face collapse please watch this first. While the rules that hold up civilization can be awful, the loss of rules in the collapse of civilization can be even more awful. The ride down to a different way of life if any survive is going to be hell. I am all for the end of civilization but I know the collapse will be so horrific there is hard to find a word for it. This movie is the portrayal of the true story of the sex abuse scandal involving the UN personnel in Bosnia. Given immunity, placed in a war zone, the UN personnel lost even their own internal controls. Being immune from prosecution many became rule-less and ruthless. But none of my words or those below can do justice to what happened to these young girls.
Paul, you talk about finding the gift after acceptance. There was no gift for these girls however accepting they might be about the truth that they had become sex slaves. It is easy for all of us right now to throw around words and ideas. Reality may have something quite different in store for us. A hospice patient, provided with good care, medicines to ease pain, can approach death with acceptance and be gifted and be a gifts. What gifts are there for a teenager who has just been punished for ratting on the UN personnel and Bosnian traffickers by having a long large pipe jammed up her ass. Tonight I guess we find out if that killed her and gave her release from a short life that in a short time became living hell.
Kathryn Bolkovac is an American former police investigator from Nebraska. She worked as a U.N. International Police Force monitor.
Originally hired by the U.S. company DynCorp in the framework of a U.N.-related contract, she filed a lawsuit[1] in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal due to a protected disclosure (whistleblowing), and on 2 August 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor.[2] DynCorp had a $15 million contract to hire and train police officers for duty in Bosnia at the time she reported such officers were paying for prostitutes and participating in sex-trafficking.[3] Many of these were forced to resign under suspicion of illegal activity, but none have been prosecuted, as they also enjoy immunity from prosecution in Bosnia.[4][5]
Bolkovac’s story was made into a film, The Whistleblower, released in 2011. Following a film screening of “The Whistleblower,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened a panel discussion on sexual exploitation and abuse in conflict and post-conflict situations [6]. The filmmaker and senior UN officials addressed issues raised in the film, including human trafficking and forced prostitution as well as the Organization’s effort to combat sexual exploitation of women and children.
Bolkovac has also co-authored a 2011 book with Cari Lynn The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors And One Woman’s Fight For Justice.
September 4th, 2012 at 3:44 am
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The proof is in a wider consensus. If a change is accepted widely enough, its detractors will fade into insignificance and be ignored and forgotten: thus there is neither the need not the occasion to malign them if such a prospect is entertained.
Perhaps that was once true, but that’s certainly no longer the case, or maybe you haven’t heard of Manufactured Consent, and maybe you haven’t been paying attention to the discussions about Education as Indoctrination. There’s no proof in what you say, because there is no wider consensus, instead there is coerced adoption. Yeah, sure, it’s not at the point of gun…not directly, at least, but a strong argument can be made that the literal and figurative gun is there in an indirect way to ensure people comply with the “accepted consensus.”
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September 4th, 2012 at 4:00 am
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But if Monsanto et al. should move into that realm, anything goes. GMO corn and GMO salmon, why not GMO poetry? It will help feed culture to more people.
Ha! Interesting you should mention Monsanto in this discussion about rules, and the example you provide is actually one that supports my contention versus your contention, so it’s rather ironic you chose it, Master Robin.
So, let’s think about all those strains of corn that have been developed over thousands of years…each one unique in their own way, but still, altogether, corn. However, if the Corn Police, meaning you and your brethren here, had your druthers, any new variation that came along would be blasphemy. Immediately you would go to work impugning its quality and going so far as to say it’s not corn. Eventually, your progeny would form a Corporation that sought to define, once and for all, what corn was, and anything else not developed under it auspices, would be considered an inferior imposter and would be stamped out of existence.
My style is a Limerick Hybrid, but it’s still a Limerick. But there are a few of you here, let’s call you the Monsanto Dirty Dozen, who believe you are the authority on what gets to be called a Limerick, and what doesn’t, and you use appeals to authority such as “accepted consensus” to support your coercion.
Authoritarians everywhere, even amongst the Anarchist ranks!! The fact that any of you would argue against creativity and diversity so passionately shows your true colors, and it underscores what I said in earlier threads about the impregnated seeds of Civilization that are seemingly everywhere, so that when this thing collapses, it will rise again from the ashes, if Nature allows it, because it has diligently and adroitly deposited its seeds in even the most unlikely of places.
Keep on, keepin on, oh unwitting carriers of the Sacred Flame.
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September 4th, 2012 at 4:06 am
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A rather ferocious comment, may it be ventured?
How so? No more ferocious than your highly passive aggressive comments. But let’s assume it is a ferocious comment, so what? I never made the claim that I didn’t care, and unlike you, Robin, I wear my passion on my sleeve, as opposed to concealing it in my waistband as you are wont to do.
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September 4th, 2012 at 4:49 am
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Paul, that was an excellent post, and my situation and approach are very similar to your experience. My wife and I have moved to Stage 6 as you describe it. I like that additional stage, it explains what others would prefer to call cognitive dissonance, but it’s not cognitive dissonance, it’s precisely what you have described, so thanks for that. If I heckle the willfully blind in this space, it’s just venting. I don’t do it IRL. I used to, but since I’ve progressed through the stages, I understand its futility.
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September 4th, 2012 at 5:56 am
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Being immune from prosecution many became rule-less and ruthless.
Bullshit! These sadists were moulded by a highly codified and rule-based system, so what they did when the “appearance” rules were not in force is directly attributed to that codified, rule based System, since they were its creation. It is telling how easily you let that System off the hook. And, I would say, the unwritten rules were still in effect….the unwritten rules of that System of sadistic domination.
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September 4th, 2012 at 6:16 am
Paul,
Really, thanks for your updated Stages of Grief – I really like the “gift” phase idea. And I appreciate your honest and simple approach – you do not come across as “condescending, confrontational or filled with schadenfreude.”
I find the “stages” grief have been, for me, more like a “loop.” Even the “denial” stage is revisited from time to time. But cycling through the depression-anger phases is hell.
About “acceptance” – that is a hard one. “Acceptance” of what? For me I think it has been about NOT being able to accept the lack of our collective response. I too kept feeling like I want to “scream at the sleepers” – and more often than not, as you said, that approach was not very helpful. Maybe the opposite, more often than not.
I think I’m now just starting to really accept that what will be, will be. And that fear, depression etc stuff is starting to “lift.”
September 4th, 2012 at 7:37 am
Well, the response to my anecdotes about structure and rules in games and myths and fairytales has been overwhelming. No, really, it was no trouble at all.
From what I can see, some of the regular posters are too busy slaming each other about who has a clearer picture than the other. Some informative posts in between too.
What is there in it for anyone to slam each other?
Seems like the fact that Guy has given a sign of giving up has had some ripples.
Guy knows his struggle doesn’t matter to the planet. We rally to this flag/sandbox that just says all who can see some of what is coming, or wish to discuss the details, or disagree with said planet FUBAR also come.
Lets pull it together ladies and gentlemen.
‘We’ don’t have to agree on all points, and only a fool would expect it.
But please, lets not forget what makes this site truly great:
Everyone is equal.
Everyone has something to offer,
Everyone has an (evolving) point of view,
Eveyone has a stake in the survival of the Biosphere.
Even agreement on that is probably too much to ask of for some. So what? How about we start celebrating that we can share, and keep doing ‘sharing’.
Losing the sense of fighting for something dear to one’s heart is very upsetting. Giving is certainly a great outcome at the end of a grief cycle and IMO is the only real step beyond despair.
I always feel that the symbol of Rocky Marciano, upon which the movie ‘Rocky’ was loosly based, of someone who may not win a fight, but keeps on getting back up, is how the heart would be if it were a fighter.
So some have had a scuffle, now then , lets get back up and share some more.
IMO the capacity to give may be what is worth fighting for.
September 4th, 2012 at 8:51 am
There’s no proof in what you say, because there is no wider consensus, instead there is coerced adoption. Yeah, sure, it’s not at the point of gun…not directly, at least, but a strong argument can be made that the literal and figurative gun is there in an indirect way to ensure people comply with the “accepted consensus.”
A prescribed curriculum has indeed to be met in formal education, But people are not under coercion to buy or read a particular book for their pleasure.
Statists/authoritarians classify any consensus at variance with their preference as others’ attempts at coercive imposition, because that is the method of hierarchies: even when those statists/authoritarians are under no compulsion to abide by that consensus.
The difference from hierarchies is that they are free not to abide by that consensus.
However, if the Corn Police, meaning you and your brethren here, had your druthers, any new variation that came along would be blasphemy. Immediately you would go to work impugning its quality and going so far as to say it’s not corn.
That is indeed the way of statists/authoritarians: they see in others their own unrecognised motives. New variations are perfectly free to exist. If a few persons do not adopt them, there is no reason to impugn them as would-be oligarchs.
The fact that any of you would argue against creativity and diversity so passionately shows your true colors
It is not determined by argument, but by how many people recognise it. Not recognising it does not count as an argument unless that lack of recognition has the preponderance.
I never made the claim that I didn’t care
The caring can come with so much emotional baggage as to become irrational enough to provoke logical fallacies such as ad hominems.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:03 am
The gift of non-attachment is one that keeps giving forever.
It is another aspect of the real.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:19 am
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There are things I’ll miss post collapse
Nutella, Potato Chips, and assorted snacks
When it’s time to go
You have to know
I’ll be scarfing back a bowl of Sugar Smacks
.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:29 am
Bodhi Paul Chefurka:
A talk about the gift: from the aspect of giving.
Dāna: Thoughts of a 21st Century Zen Buddhist
Lecture by Kyôon Dokurô, Oshô, Buddhist Chaplain at Harvard University on the 1st of May, 2011, at the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society of Boston, MA.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:30 am
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I’ve finally surpassed the stage of Acceptance
My journey to this point was not by mere chance
The Stages of Grief
Offered a Bequeath
Of a new covenant betwix Nature and Man
.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:34 am
.
A talk about the gift: from the aspect of giving.
Thanks, but I’ll pass. I like Paul’s just as it is. It’s as legitimate as any link you would bother to put forward.
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September 4th, 2012 at 9:42 am
.
From Limerick Anarchist to accused Statist
Evidence my rhymes have some people pissed
As we near the end
It’s sad to have to defend
Who you are when you won’t even be missed
.
September 4th, 2012 at 10:44 am
Paul Chefurka Says: “6. Finding the Gift”
Very sorry, sir, I’m a big fan of seeking peace in inner space, but:
When grieving, the way that we cope
Has a limited, natural scope;
Five Stages represent
A natural event
With no exhortation to hope.
I guess that makes me a traditionalist, yet I thoroughly enjoy Morocco’s spectacular pyrotechnics! Anyway, I agree with OzMan: “Seems like the fact that Guy has given a sign of giving up has had some ripples.”
September 4th, 2012 at 11:46 am
Weather girl goes rogue – you’ve got to see this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmfcJP_0eMc&feature=youtu.be
September 4th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Weak Indian Monsoon Dries Up Centrally-Planned Liquidity Expectations
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/04/2012
India
Drought has devastated crops around the world this year. While most have focused on the extreme issues in the US, we noted two weeks ago that the Monsoon season was shaping up to add fuel to the fire of illiquidity. As the NY Times reports, there is simply not enough rain in India as the annual monsoon season is down 12%. “If this situation continues, I’ll lose everything” is how one soybean farmer highlighted his plight (and no government insurance or subsidies there).
This is India’s fourth drought in 12 years – raising concerns at the country’s reliability monsoon rains as it source of fresh water (and sustainability) as “nothing can happen without rain.” India is more vulnerable to disruption from drought than the US. While agriculture accounts for just 15% of India’s economy, half of its 1.2 billion people work on farms, and many of its poorest citizens already cannot afford enough food after price increases of 10% or more in the last couple of years.
UN Food Price Index rose the most in July in three years…
rest at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/weak-indian-monsoon-dries-centrally-planned-liquidity-expectations
September 4th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
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Poor dear Pippa, she’s stuck at Stage 2
Her weather report reveals she’s come unglued
Fear not, my friends
It’s still the end
So someone please give dear Pippa the news
.
September 4th, 2012 at 12:12 pm
I can still remember the time before the crash
when we all drove around in cars and I had lots of cash
and anything I wanted, I’d just go out and buy
I’d even drive a mile or two – just to buy a pie
but then the oil wars started and everything collapsed
the supermarket shelves were stripped before a month elapsed
and people all turned really grim and gained a hungry look
we’d steal from anyone at all we’d kill for things to cook
and everywhere disease and grief and bodies left to rot
while gangs of grim and brutal men would kill and steal and plot
and people fled the cities and countless numbers died
and everything was so so bad not even mothers cried
our house was one of many then, a normal family home
but it was stripped and burnt for fuel when we had left to roam
and I remember mum and dad, my little sister too
but they were killed and eaten back sometime in ‘22
and now I know I’m dying, I’ve left no living heirs
nobody is alive to know there’s not a soul who cares
there’s only me so damned hungry I’m gnawing at the trees
there’s no-one left to kill and eat oh God please help me please
and as I stagger on and on through burnt and plundered homes
I see the the signs of rage and ruin and countless human bones
I hear the starving pack of dogs that follow close behind
and I am now so close to death I hardly even mind
I fall and screaming dogs begin to rip and shred my life
my mind drifts back to days of oil and to my kids and wife
oh life was so so simple then and life was so so good
but all we had we wasted, we never understood
September 4th, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Oil crash com man: poignant.
September 4th, 2012 at 1:48 pm
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Well done, Robert. It has a nice The Road quality to it. Two thumbs up!
Same to you, Benjamin, I always enjoy your carefully crafted, traditionalist renderings.
.
September 4th, 2012 at 1:52 pm
oz man, the movie rocky was in fact inspired by a surreal life boxer, but it wasn’t marciano:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/910488-espn-films-the-real-rocky-story-of-chuck-wepner-inspired-cinema-history
September 4th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
Back from the holiday. Blanched and froze peas and beans. Went to the fall fair and rodeo. Spread compost on a new garden area.
Yes, Guy, Chris Hedges always speaks clearly to me, too. What he said in that interview included some new information for me. Horrible developments I had no idea were going on. The wrestling scene reminded me of long-ago morality plays when Simon Legree ties Little Nell on the railroad tracks and the audience screams and weeps and cheers for the hero to save her. This is a modern day equivalent that I had no idea people were so invested in. Have we become such simpletons?
I have not heard back from people to whom I sent Paul Beckwith’s Google doc. I even emailed Beckwith and he won’t answer me. I asked him what the connection was between no arctic ice and the jet stream. Then I ran across this new column by Gwynne Dyer.
http://www.straight.com/article-769621/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-sea-ice-climate-food-production-and-unknown-unknown
When Dyer spoke at this university a couple of years ago, I attended the reception before the speech. He was belting down some hard liquor and looked like hell. He spoke eloquently about Afghanistan that night, but I had asked him what was next for him. He said “climate change” and argued that it was the biggest story ever.
Now he’s written this about arctic ice that answers the question I put to Paul Beckwith.
I heard somewhere that there have been riots in Chicago.
Charles Hugh Smith says that the status quo can be maintained for another decade:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept12/resilience-fragility8-12.html
I certainly hope not.
The fair and rodeo, in a town close by (but not the university town) gave me a bit of hope. The exhibition hall was filled with home canning, baking, sewing, knitting and flower arranging and quilts and a woman working a hand crank sock making machine. Canned bear grease was one of the categories on the entry forms but there were no examples this year (I have seen it in past years). Women were spinning and knitting for young people to see. The prize for the largest vegetable had ten entries. The best bale of hay, the best shock of wheat, home baked bread, biscuits, cookies, etc.
Then there were the barns. The poultry barn was full of dozens of breeds of chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys (including wild), pigeons, and pheasants. There were Morans there. I want some! The sheep and goat barns were full and the 4H judging was goint on in two separate rings. Beef cattle, but no dairy cattle. Vendors and junk food like cotton candy and mini donuts. The local Seventh Day Adventists were cooking up “haystacks” which are a bit like vegan nachos.
Pony chuck wagon racing thrilled the crowds. Saddle bronc and bareback bronc riding. Bull riding. A stupid clown in the ring telling sexist jokes. Ladies barrel racing. Pee wee barrel racing wherein the horse simply walks the 5 year old around the barrels calmly ignoring the flailing legs of the child.
My favourite – the heavy horse pulls. Locals and one fancy outfit from Alberta. The most local team comes into town with mis-matched harness and uncombed tails. The man who owns this team still logs the hills around here that are too steep for Weyerhauser equipment. Until last year, his daughter ran her own team in the bush and also came to the competition. Now she’s married and moved away.
There was a new entry this year, a local man with a very lightweight team who fought him every step of the way. They didn’t pull evenly and kept backing up and getting a foot over a trace. The other men helped him out and I saw them giving him some pointers. Everyone shook hands at the end.
In the end the man from Alberta won. They pulled 8500 pounds. He had a huge team of Belgians that weighed over a ton apiece, with beautiful polished nickel silver studded harness. He is a great driver and the horses stood there like wound up springs until he said, “Git up” and they put their heads down to their knees, leaned into the collars and crawled forward in perfect unison, the doubletree never moving left or right. Inspiring.
I learned to drive a team in Saskatchewan. I can drive two and I can drive four, but I can’t drive six – it takes too much upper body strength that I don’t have.
People in this little town remember when the road to the bigger town consisted of two ruts cut into the side of the mountain. We’re talkin’ only a couple of decades ago, here. They know how to get along and they teach the young people all they can. Then the young people run off to Alberta to the “oil patch” to make their fortunes. They work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and come home after two years – rich. None of them want it to end, but I think these folks will be able to last a while after it does.
Classes start this week. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how I will teach, Kathy C, and I still haven’t come to any conclusions. I will make them watch “Inside Job” about the financial crisis. I will take them to an organic farm. I will take them on a water treatment plant tour. We’ll read about malaria, dengue fever, West Nile virus and guinea worm.
People can (and do, regularly) survive and thrive at 50 degrees C. But 30 degrees C plus 90 percent humidity kills people even sitting around in the shade.
Be careful, folks.
September 4th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
great weathergirl, kathy. how i’d love to see anything remotely like it on surreal life tv. fat chance!
great poem, atack. too bad it’s so depressing and all too surreal.
September 4th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Arthur,
I would like to address some of your points:
*I think it could be some time before safety/security would allow a return of nomads to the wetter (what are now more populated) potions of the country.
*Tree crops are good especially the big nuts (walnut/hickory/acorns). I’m trying to get butternuts to grow here and filberts. None of them are natural and filberts don’t fruit very well this far north. Over the winter I will be revisiting pine-nuts. I know there are cultivars doing very well in Quebec. Of course the natives here used ponderosa pine nuts (usually by raiding red squirrel caches) but that is a lot of work for not much return. Douglas fir is even worse. Mostly here we would be working with berries (native) that would include huckleberries, serviceberries, and hawthorn. All three of these were used by local tribes by as fruit or as a major constituent of pemmican. To a lesser degree thimble berries, strawberries (tiny), and chokecherries (astringent).
*Generally researching the original diet of native people in a given area will lead you down the right path. The same can be applied to medicines. Post collapse people will still get sick and still need to be tended. After a few years native curatives and folk remedies will be our only pharmaceutical source. Yarrow, mint, St. John’s wort, selfheal, etc., are commonly available. Native remedies are specific to a particular area (for example knowing that using the dried leaves of strawberries to combat diarrhea or that you could gargle it for sore throat could be important).
*Not to be neglected are local roots (cattails, arrowroot, camas, spring beauty, desert-parsley, biscuit-root, various wild onions, etc.).
*The seeds of various annuals and grasses including lambs quarter and pig-weeds (relative to and cooked like quinoa). Also, around here, native peoples used lichens and the cambium of various trees during hard times.
The list goes on and on, I mean who would have considered thistles for cooked greens. And don’t overlook weeds from Europe and elsewhere (burdock, lambs quarter, dandelion, etc.) for roots, greens, or seeds.
I would suggest (you probably have already) mining the internet, purchasing plant guides, finding a source of local ethnobotany.
Oh, and in transition–guerrilla gardening and Jerusalem artichoke (few know what they are good for).
Michael Irving.
September 4th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
the virgin terry
I had no idea it came from the life or fight of Chuck Wepner. Thanks for clarifying. It was more the response to continual hammering, by getting up again I was illustrating, but its all good an the detail.
September 4th, 2012 at 5:57 pm
No surprise here
“Europe is approaching a crisis as the region’s debt crisis and austerity measures increase the rates of depression, suicide and psychological problems – just as governments cut healthcare spending by up to 50 percent, according to campaigners, policy makers and health organizations.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48883704
September 4th, 2012 at 5:58 pm
Fears Rising, Spaniards Pull Out Their Cash and Get Out of Spain
In July, Spaniards withdrew a record 75 billion euros, or $94 billion, from their banks — an amount equal to 7 percent of the country’s overall economic output — as doubts grew about the durability of Spain’s financial system.
full story at http://www.cnbc.com/id/48889555
September 4th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
We finished watching The Whistleblower tonight, the true story about the woman who exposed the trafficking of women in Bosnia, including the involvement of UN personnel. It is not an easy movie to watch. If you have children however you need to watch it so you know what kinds of things can happen when rules break down and chaos takes over – at least to be mentally prepared for what might happen and to be prepared to protect your children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whistleblower
We don’t know exactly how things are going to collapse, but we sure as hell know what things happened when Slovinia, Bosnia, Iraq, Afganistan, Libya collapsed. We can logically assume that such things can happen in any country in collapse. Heck trafficking happens here already. The movie Trade gave some idea of how the Mexico to US trade of children, boys and girls both happens including the advertising on the internet – high prices to young virgins of course.
Per wiki on sex trafficking “Trafficking is a lucrative industry. It has been identified as the fastest growing criminal industry in the world.[4] It is second only to drug trafficking as the most profitable illegal industry in the world.[5] In 2004, the total annual revenue for trafficking in persons were estimated to be between USD$5 billion and $9 billion.[6]
In 2005, Patrick Belser of ILO estimated a global annual profit of $31.6 billion.[7] In 2008, the United Nations estimated nearly 2.5 million people from 127 different countries are being trafficked into 137 countries around the world.[8]”
Anything that makes collapse go quicker means less suffering in the end.
September 4th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Kathy, I really don’t think Kubler-Ross’ model in either the original or my extended version has anything to say to those girls. It speaks to a different process altogether – of working one’s way through grief when one has the twin luxuries of time and comprehension. They may not have been able to find any gift at all in their experiences. You however, may. If you do, I hope you don’t find fault or blame yourself for doing so.
I suspect my position may feel pusillanimous to you, or maybe elitist, or insular, or otherwise contemptible. If so, those feelings are where your gift is probably hidden. I hope so.
September 4th, 2012 at 6:51 pm
.
We finished watching The Whistleblower tonight, the true story about the woman who exposed the trafficking of women in Bosnia
I have no doubt her part of it is true, but it’s not true in the sense that it’s most likely not anywhere near the whole story…a story that is still ongoing. The whole story would never have made it to theaters, let alone produced. And, you need to stop with the “rules breaking down” schtick. What this women experienced is not merely a matter of rules breaking down…that’s the cover story used to contain the larger story. By virtue of the fact that this is still ongoing, and it’s highly lucrative, its success is precisely because of rules, just not the kind you favor, but its rules, nonetheless, so don’t hand me that bull.
Anyhow, thanks for the movie suggestion. My wife and I will put it in the queue and I will report on it after I’ve viewed it.
.
September 4th, 2012 at 9:07 pm
Yorchichan: troll or not, whatever you are, you keep spinning the same old “CO2 increases will be great for plants” crap which is spewed by the global warming denial PR industry, funded heavily by the fossil fuels industry. A regime of higher CO2, due to higher temps, will also mean a lot more pests which will destroy plants and trees. This has been thoroughly studied.
Interesting article from Bill McKibben, who still doesn’t go far enough, but he’s good at collecting facts, http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-09-04/summer-extremes-signifies-new-normal about how this summer (which started two days before the official end of winter) ushered in a new “normal.”
And a couple of new articles about the deepening global economic crisis, from two very different perspectives, yet both see the crisis as worsening.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/global-manufacturing-update-indicates-80-world-now-contraction
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/econ-s04.shtml
September 4th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
Sorry guys, I didn’t write that poem, but it has been on my site for about 7? years http://oilcrash.com/articles/poems.htm
This is a fun one, from the same author
Flations
So what are all these “flations”
that people talk about?
it’s plain that there’s at least two sides
two sides that scream and shout
“deflation” screams Mish Shedlock
Puplava he says “no!
Inflation is the way of things
I’m rich so I should know”
We’re common folk who walk the streets
and spend our hard earned cash
on things we need to live each day
so we should not be rash
Or take a risk on borrowing
when all could turn to shit
oh no we must be careful now
we’re hording every bit
So when we hear “inflation” yelled
across the MSM
we’re worried that our savings will
be worthless in the end
and when we hear “deflation”
we scratch our heads and think
the falling value of our house
is headed for the sink
don’t tell me it’s velocity
or credit we can spend
or talk of printing money
that is worthless in the end
the truth is that reality
has crept up from behind
while we were drunk on boundless oil
that anyone could find
as asset prices crash and burn
and milk and bread costs rise
the net effect is just the same
for us it’s no surprise
if anything cost all our cash
it’s value will decline
and anything we need to live
will climb and climb and climb
so take your stupid “flations”
and shove them where it’s dark
the simple truth is that we’re fucked
it’s simple, true and stark
September 5th, 2012 at 3:07 am
MB The Whistleblower is much more of that story than I ever read about in the news. And I am well aware that it is just a small part of a much larger evil that is perpetrated by the rulers, but also with complicity in many cases by the ruled as is true in this case. The man who sold the one girl whose life is followed most closely, is her uncle. Her mother’s sister stood by and said nothing.
Regarding rules, you seem to just see them as something that limits you. You fail to see how rules protect you as well. Ah well I will not convince you, but when people start seeing your property and life as something that no rule protects for you, you will wish for more rules. Your rant about rules is always about what YOU can do, and in that you fail to see that without rules what others can do to you is not going to be pretty.
Yet you yourself are bound by rules in your own brain and by rules that you self impose. I see you use the rules of spelling and grammar. I presume you find incest abhorrent. The problem is not rules, the problem is what rules, who imposes them, and of course when the rulers lose all feeling of being bound by rules (the UN people were given immunity) the evil of civilization is much compounded. If any survive to be hunter-gatherers again they will have rules as all h-g do, but they will be largely by consensus and largely related to the survival of the tribe.
September 5th, 2012 at 3:09 am
Paul, I have held and fed starving babies in Haiti. I have given love and food, felt an AIDS baby cuddle to the warmth of my embrace. I held a baby still with translucent skin so a nurse could try to find any tiny vein to put a needle in to give fluids (for some reason that was the one thing I saw that I had to turn away from). I have helped bandage wounds that go straight to the bone in people who still have to do heavy work every day. I have learned much and felt love in return, but I will never call what I have learned a gift, for too much suffering went into showing me how awful and evil the world is for the poor of the world.
If gift I have then perhaps it is of seeing the world more clearly than most. Such a gift may seem more than a curse for those who like to see the good in everything, but I would never trade the seeing for mental comfort. But it is not a gift, for a gift implies a giver. It is just who I am. To call the seeing a gift would be to trivialize the reality for those who have no escape.
http://www.aztlan.net/du_deformed_iraqi_babies.htm no gifts here, just pain.
September 5th, 2012 at 3:49 am
A personal true story. Back in the late 70′s my ex and I were working with an organization to help people in a rural county in the mountains of TN. He organized to bring in youth groups from outside the county to help repair houses. Some of them had blacks in them. We thought that would be OK but this county was deliberately all white. In the end we had 3 crosses burned on our front lawn, a van torched, and guns fired outside our house. The Klan wrote on the note – get out of the county or we will get you out the hard way. Local police refused to help. Our neighbor with tears in her eyes said, I can’t help you, if I do they will burn our house and barn. But we weren’t killed – why? Because we weren’t locals and they knew our families would have resource to law enforcement outside the county. We were protected by the rules of the land, but not by the rule enforcers of the county. When all law enforcement goes the way of that county all hell breaks loose. Even if all law enforcement serves the wealthy first and foremost, there is a certain level of social control that can be very welcome, I assure you. I had three foster children at the time (along with my own 2), local children. That also may have served
for some measure of protection. A rule of a sort that most humans carry, to not hurt your own in the process of hurting outsiders. Without that unwritten rule how would hostage takers have any benefit from holding hostages? In the end we left, got the foster children into the custody of their father who was a better choice than the mother they had been taken from.
I have a neighbor here whose father was once grand leader of the local Klan – he spent time in jail for other reasons. For now laws keep the Klan at bay. My neighbor thinks that Klan was good and wants it back. I’ve met the county sheriff. I hope he stays in power for quite a while for I trust his rule enforcing more than that of the Klan and would rather have his rules than the rules of the Klan.
September 5th, 2012 at 4:03 am
.
Regarding rules, you seem to just see them as something that limits you.
No, that’s only one dimension of my criticism of rules, but not by any means the only dimension. In this case, rules are a large part of what binds Civilization. Propaganda will have us believe that all these rules help provide “Order”, and Civilization thrives on “Order”. So, rules are codified as a form of social control, to suppress and mitigate the sovereignty and autonomy of the individual, and people are indoctrinated to believe that without these codified rules, there would be chaos and disorder, and the System points to cases like this and says, “see, this is what happens when there are no rules..people regress to wild, feral animals and tear each other to shreds as is their nature.” I don’t accept that bullshit propaganda. As tragic as every example you have offered is, it’s the result of Civilization and its rules. Civilization is based upon domination…of everything, but Nature first, then anything else it considers weak and exploitable. One person’s gain is something else’s loss, whether it be Nature’s loss, or the loss of a child’s virginity, innocence, dignity and potential. How dare Civilization blame such atrocities on the Nature of Man, rather than on itself. How duplicitous of Civilization to avoid accountability and responsibility for its sadistic carnage. How dare Civilization considers itself progress to what came before, and brainwash its subjects into believing that its rules are for their own good.
If there’s a chance that we, humankind, and all other species on the planet, can cast this monkey off our back called Civilization, then I would call that a Gift…..it’s as good a description as any for such a joyous result/outcome. For sure, the chances of that are slim to none, but there’s no harm, no foul in thinking it….not yet, at least, and so I will think it, and work towards it, all the while grounded in the reality that as Civilization collapses, it will do everything in its power to hold onto power, and that will include many iterations of restorative Order after the original Order collapses, and there will be much violence and suffering offered up in that process.
.
September 5th, 2012 at 4:29 am
.
An example, once again, that we’ve reached the Singularity. Satire is now reality, and is redundant. It is masterful and in your face. First we get Barrack Hussein Obama. Think about that name and the geopolitical context in which it was presented to the public. Consider the psychology of names and the effect it has on people’s perceptions. Absent any persuasive techniques, that name is enough to make anyone turn the other way. It has so many stigmas attached to it, there’s no way it can be considered for anything, let alone President of the U.S., and yet, here it is, President of the U.S., and that’s the in-your-face part. That’s how powerful this Beast of a Machine really is. It has trained the recipients/prisoners to like anything, regardless of how onerous it is. It’s incredible. Hussein. And they made sure to say it repeatedly in the early days…to drive it home. Hussein, to an unwitting public, should evoke a visceral reaction considering what had just transpired, and was transpiring, and then Obama which sounds very much like Osama. Barry Soweto would have been much more benign, but “they” aren’t interested in benign in these end times…no, it’s in your face, you morons. But it’s not over….oh no, not just yet. Here’s another one.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/julian-castro-mitt-romney-no-idea-good-had-022746739–election.html
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—In a speech that instantly invoked comparisons to Barack Obama’s star-making turn at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro invoked his personal story as the descendent of Mexican immigrants to press the case that Mitt Romney “just doesn’t get it” when it comes to the struggles of average Americans.
Castro, the first Latino to deliver the DNC keynote, spoke of the “unlikely journey” that led him from a poor upbringing in Texas to a rising star of the Democratic party. He talked about his grandmother, an orphan, who immigrated to the United States and dropped out of school in the fourth grade to work and support her family.
Julian Castro, you have to love it. This shit is so orchestrated at this point, I sometimes feel that it’s either being perpetrated by aliens, or we really are a software program. Julian conjures Assange and Castro conjures the U.S.’s arch enemy for the last half century. It’s so over-the-top transparent, it’s sickening in its audacity…and yet hardly anyone notices, or if you bring it up, they’re like “yeah, so what, what’s your point?”
.
September 5th, 2012 at 4:58 am
Morocco Bama
Could it be that ‘Civilisation’ is just larger populations than can be handled with rules for known individuals? Once the rules don’t apply to people you know,(ouside the watershed), then the greater possibility is that exploitation and corruption will come.
I have no real idea of the total population of pre European Australian Aboriginals, however, they managed to inhabit the entire continent and remain far less than what we would call destructive of their bits of Biosphere. The populations were sparse by say Tokyo, or L.A. standards, but I’m informed that there were very strict and binding rules and laws for almost all of life’s events.
An example is that when larger cultural gatherings were approaching and various clans were moving over ‘country’ of another group there were designated transit easements that were like travel paths. If at other times an elder found an unrelated individual or small gruop on their land, after enquiry to determine if they had permission to be there from another elder, if not immediate rough justice was dished out, most likely death. All lawful and according to the rules.
I am positing that smaller human groups may well be able to self authorise a set of rules and laws when they apply to known kin. Those smaller groups have some wider relations with others adjacent, and rules operate for interactions between them.
The issue here is what is it about the entity ‘Civilisation’, continually used here, but poorly unpacked and analysed, except for its destructive outcomes, that makes it turn on the Biosphere so unconsious of the long term consequences?
In previous postings I have mentioned my own views on the way Money puts great power into an individuals hands, where in Hunter Gatherer situations that power was invariably immediately distributed roughly evenly, and never in an individuals hands.
I have also gone to some lenght to put forward an, to some, armchair deconstruction of predominant psychological functions to demonstrate how some of those functions are subjective and empathetic, while others are (positing) objective and require no evaluative meaning.
That is because I have been attempting to share views on what it is in the collective aparatus we call ‘Civilisation’ and by extension ‘Empire’, that predisposes the lack of care and concern for the Biosphere.
Many here have put up their views and points on that, but we still need to clarify the central factors otherwise we will simply recreate such a mess again, and IMO we will better drop the shit if we ‘diagnose’ properly. Then we can better help others drop the shit too.
Although I will frame this question with your views in mind it is also a general question to Guy and all:
Civilisation. Why does it characterise itself in the present modality as a suicidal madness? What central characteristics determine this way of interacting with the Biosphere? I don’t mean effects – we are well up on all the effects. Kathy C has QC pole position an that!
Also, I no longer feel it is meaningful to use the term Civilisation, in purely chaotic and destructive terms without getting to the heart of what it is that animates ‘it’. Bearing in mind that we are anthropomorphising a collective aparatus which is the effects of human action, and therefor, is essentilly a human concern.
It’s about time we nailed the beast.
September 5th, 2012 at 5:29 am
Morocco Bama
Your last post interests me because you are IMO correctly nailing an absurdity of the FUBARed system. If you ever watched the TV show ‘The West Wing’, which I’m sad to say I did, I saw an episode in the first series where the dudes in the intelegensia department of their party ‘chose’ Jed Bartlet as a contender, and in the story he was a senior academic, and only agreed to go there to stop the other bastard from getting in. The salient piont here, of which I’m sure you are aware is that the front guy is only that, and from your insights just before, the names are probably the bits the insiders laugh and gaffaw about , while smokin cigars and getting high, just after banging some illegle, teen sex slave smuggled from an exotic location.
Sick fucks in power would find it funny, and I would too excepting it all ends up as a painful smear on the live of the fucked over poor and powerless, faceless dead meat people that have been run over by that power.
BTW we have a media custom here in Australia about not going after the family of Politicians. The reasoning is that the children in particular didn’t do anything, it was their polly father or mother, so direct attention to them. That sounds OK, but I have felt for some time it’s not OK because their actions effect my kids, and the kids of thousands of others. A basic inequality there, and I suppose even though I’ve written that just now, it does not then make the pollies kids responsible, just generally immune from the economic damage from FUBARed policies.
In the vein of your last post, what about Dick Chaney, so S&M.
Or Bill Cli(n)ton. How about Sarah Palin, or Don Rumsfeld, or Paul Wolferwits. But one of my favourites is The Whitehouse. Beat that!
Just on the West wing. We had a stat some years ago that showed some Americans actually thought Jed Bartlet was thier presedent. That is farce!
September 5th, 2012 at 5:38 am
A little snippet about a possible future if we last to 2030.
Saudi Arabia may become oil importer by 2030: Citigroup
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/09/04/saudi-arabia-may-become-oil-importer-by-2030-citigroup/
Some excerpts:
‘Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, risks becoming an oil importer in the next 20 years, according to Citigroup Inc.
Oil and its derivatives are used for about half of the kingdom’s electricity production, which at peak rates is growing at about 8 percent a year, the bank said today in a an e-mailed report. A quarter of the country’s fuel production is used domestically, more per capita than other industrialized nations, as the cost is subsidized, according to the note.
“If Saudi Arabian oil consumption grows in line with peak power demand, the country could be a net oil importer by 2030,” Heidy Rehman, an analyst at the bank, wrote. The country already consumes all its natural-gas production and plans to develop nuclear power, which pose execution risk amid a lack of available experts, safety issues and cost overruns, Rehman said.
Saudi Arabia, which depends on oil for 86 percent of its’ annual revenue, is accelerating exploration for gas and is planning to develop solar and nuclear power to preserve more of its valuable crude for export. The kingdom has refused to import gas, unlike neighboring producers such as Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates that also lack fuel for power generation.’
Did I read… more nuclear reactors…?
Guys… Guys? Have you heard of a place called Fukushima? Tunaheads!
September 5th, 2012 at 6:13 am
Being no expert it is difficult to come to view on the Euro collapse, but here is an article that has some points to put forward.
’18 Reasons Europe Is Going To Suck The Life Out Of The Global Economy’
http://etfdailynews.com/2012/09/03/18-reasons-europe-is-going-to-suck-the-life-out-of-the-global-economy-vgk-ewq-ewp-ewg-ewi/
A snippet:
‘Summer vacation is over and things are about to get very interesting in Europe (NYSEARCA:VGK).
Most Americans don’t realize this, but much of Europe shuts down for the entire month of August. I wish we had something similar in the United States. But now millions of Europeans are returning from their extended family vacations and the fun is about to begin.
During August economic conditions continued to degenerate in Europe, but I figured that it wouldn’t be until after August that the European debt crisis would take center stage once again. And as I wrote about last week, if there is going to be a financial panic, it typically happens in the fall.
The stock market has seen quite a nice rally over the summer, and many investors are nervous that we could see a significant “correction” very soon.
The month of September has been the absolute worst month for stock performance over the past 50 years, and it has also been the absolute worst month for stock performance over the past 100 years as well.’
‘If the European financial system implodes, the consequences could be even worse.
Why?
Europe has a larger population than the United States does.
Europe has a larger economy than the United States does.
Europe has a much, much larger banking system than the United States does.
If Europe experiences a financial collapse, the entire globe will feel the pain.
And considering how weak the U.S. economy already is, it would not take much to push us over the edge.’
Perhaps we go under now…
September 5th, 2012 at 6:36 am
With thanks for the vigorous discussion, I’ve posted a guest essay. Courtesy of Pepper Givens, it’s here.
September 5th, 2012 at 6:40 am
.
Also, I no longer feel it is meaningful to use the term Civilisation, in purely chaotic and destructive terms without getting to the heart of what it is that animates ‘it’. Bearing in mind that we are anthropomorphising a collective aparatus which is the effects of human action, and therefor, is essentilly a human concern.
It’s about time we nailed the beast.
I agree, but for lack of a better term, I use it. You and I are on the same page about the constraints of linguistics. Perhaps I should revert back to my previously favored term, “System”, but I surmise that will also be problematical to those caught in the linguistic quagmire.
Aside from that, perhaps what we’re dealing with, this thing I have often referred to as the System, is more than what you say. Perhaps it’s more than “a collective aparatus which is the effects of human action, and therefor, is essentilly a human concern.” Certainly, it is what you say, but what if there’s more? I’m not hanging my hat on this, but it is thought-provoking, and it does fill in some gaps for me that cannot be explained otherwise. Perhaps this System is what the Gnostics referred to as an Egregore…..a massive, gnarly, out-of-control Egregore that cannot be reined in by that which summoned it.
http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/chaos/texts/gegregor.html
…”An egregore is a kind of group mind which is created when people consciously come together for a common purpose. Whenever people gather together to do something and egregore is formed, but unless an attempt is made to maintain it deliberately it will dissipate rather quickly. However if the people wish to maintain it and know the techniques of how to do so, the egregore will continue to grow in strength and can last for centuries.
An egregore has the characteristic of having an effectiveness greater than the mere sum of its individual members. It continuously interacts with its members, influencing them and being influenced by them. The interaction works positively by stimulating and assisting its members but only as long as they behave and act in line with its original aim. It will stimulate both individually and collectively all those faculties in the group which will permit the realization of the objectives of its original program. If this process is continued a long time the egregore will take on a kind of life of its own, and can become so strong that even if all its members should die, it would continue to exist on the inner dimensions and can be contacted even centuries later by a group of people prepared to live the lives of the original founders, particularly if they are willing to provide the initial input of energy to get it going again.
If the egregore is concerned with spiritual or esoteric activities its influence will be even greater. People who discover the keys can tap in on a powerful egregore representing, for example, a spiritual or esoteric tradition, will, if they follow the line described above by activating and maintaining such an egregore, obtain access to the abilities, knowledge, and drive of all that has been accumulated in that egregore since its beginnings. Agroup ororder which manages to do this can, with a clear conscience, claim to be an authentic order of the tradition represented by that egregore. In my view this is the only yardstick by which a genuine Templar order should be measured.”
Please don’t take this to mean I’m a mystic and will be, in short order, creating my own Templar/Druid cult. That’s not my intent in posting it. In the least, it’s great metaphor, but also, if you apply technology to the equation, it lends itself to the theory that perhaps we’re a simulation, and that perhaps the simulated program we’re a part of, was summoned from the vast cyberspace we call the multi-verse. That’s one thought thread, but there are many other thought threads that can be derived from the Egregore concept. However, to your point, it implies that this System is potentially more than just our collective actions and concern. I’m just trying to think outside of the box on this one, I’m not saying I’m vested to this view, but it is intriguing.
.
September 5th, 2012 at 6:51 am
Kathy, we all walk our own paths through this life. I’m happy you’ve had the experiences you wanted – they have made you quite a story. I hope the rest of your life is equally gripping, with a suitable finale in the last chapter.
September 5th, 2012 at 7:10 am
Morocco Bama
Sounds interesting, but there is no need to posit an Egregore concept when we have the institution of Money that goes on from decad3e to decade, detailing power, wealth and relationships to the collective. Thanks for trying on my question.
September 5th, 2012 at 7:16 am
.
Thanks for trying on my question.
I wasn’t trying on your question, just throwing out food for thought. Your question cannot, and will not, be answered satisfactorily, especially if you have already answered it and your only reason for asking it is rhetorical, which appears to be the case.
.
September 5th, 2012 at 9:01 am
.
I hope the rest of your life is equally gripping, with a suitable finale in the last chapter.
I second that motion, and since I’m hungry and about to eat lunch, I will add, may the rules be forever in your favor.
.
September 5th, 2012 at 9:18 am
Paul, you wrote “Kathy, we all walk our own paths through this life. I’m happy you’ve had the experiences you wanted – they have made you quite a story. I hope the rest of your life is equally gripping, with a suitable finale in the last chapter.”
My dog you don’t get it. I didn’t want a story that included starving babies. I don’t find it gripping, I find it evil. The finale will no doubt include observing and enduring unimaginable suffering. You call that suitable????
I begin to think that your last step, finding the gift, is in fact finding the gift of figuring out how to return to the first step, denial, with a new much finer sounding name.
This big beautiful planet and all the creatures on it are going to burn up. One can accept that, but never never find any gift in it.
There is one gift I will admit in acceptance – the gift that few find. That is the gift of knowing you are mortal. TPTB in the end game might lock us up in FEMA camps or cart us off to be tortured, but we are mortal and we do not have to endure anything forever. Many of my hospice patients I know treasured the knowledge that their pain would soon be over, but I never found one that thought there was any gift in the untimely nature of their death from cancer or any of the other nasty ways humans get to die. The death of all life means the death of suffering and that is the only good part about what the future brings, there is no other gift to be found in 100 species dying per day, the Amazon burning, the Gulf polluted with BP’s oil, Fukushima …. no gift except that when all life or at least all feeling life ends suffering dies.
September 5th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
Regarding ‘civilisation’, I think that the egregore is quite a useful concept. The fact that the Gnostics came up with it, is not particularly relevant, it’s just a pattern than someone with insight observed and recorded. I think it fits neatly onto say, political parties, corporations, religions and cults, NGOs, and similar collective herd movements, Apple, Google, Freemasons, Scientology, KKK, and so forth.
I don’t think it’s particularly helpful re understanding civilisation, though. IMHO, the best insight comes from considering the first cities at Sumer, and the best account is by Fredy Perlman.
As I understand it, there was the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates, an immensely fertile area, and on the mudbanks of the delta the neolithic people found very easy living, lush vegetation, prolific wildlife, masses of easily exploited marine resources. So the people multiplied and settlements grew larger.
I think the trigger lay in our innate nature. Not necessary for that to be some very striking powerful characteristic at all, perhaps just a slight tendency, say, like sibling rivalry. Some guy had a fight with his cousin when they were young and they disliked each other ever after, they each found themselves headman of large village groups, and rivalry developed, so they compete and try to gather more power and resources than the ‘other’.
Next thing, you’ve got mud-brick cities, and a social hierarchy develops, initially amicably enough, but increasingly by enforced tradition, violence and coercion, priests, soldiers, tax collectors, traders, farmers, labourers, slaves.
Organised labour is essential because the annual floods remodel the land and irrigation and transport channels have to be surveyed and redug, and increasing population density becomes ever more dependent upon planted and harvested crops, rather than hunting and gathering from the wild resources. Then comes expansion by conquest.
Perhaps that’s all it took. Once that pattern is established and appears to have significant advantages, ( to an elite at least ) it becomes self-perpetuating, right down to the present day. Of course, in more recent times, capitalism, industrialism, science, etc, get bolted on, and then globalisation….
That’s my take on it, fwiw.
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fredy-perlman-against-his-story-against-leviathan
September 5th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Morocco Bama
I would not have posted the question if I wanted to get my own homespun theoty back now would I?
If you are baiting me then I suppose you feel I deserve it. I asked for someone elses understanding, nothing more or less.
Regarding ‘rhetorical’, pot and kettle there buddy, pot and kettle.
ulvfugl
I am interested in the previous century to the settlment period you mention. Does Fredy Perlman have much to say about that?
September 5th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
Hi Ozman,
As I understand it, throughout previous history of human beings, they were all hunter-gatherers, who moved around a lot, in fairly small groups.
That’s been the picture in my mind, from what I’ve read. There’s a few question marks though, David Graeber said recently that in some areas, hunter-gatherers would gather together at certain seasons when living was easy, into very large groups, but then disperse again. So i suppose, it’s not such a big step for such a temporary ‘mini-city’ to become permanent, if the local resources were rich enough to permit that.
Then there’s Gobekli Tepe, which is possibly the first ever architectural structure produced by hunter gatherers, just prior to the discovery/invention of cultivated crops and domestication of animals.
Then there’s Catal Huyuk, quite large neolithic town, with combined crop growing and hunting and gathering ( I think ).
Basic idea, significant move is from small transitory groups, by some intermediate stages, to large settled cities of 10′s of thousands, and then that’s ‘civilisation’,
with all the structures that we still see today, a ‘king’ or ‘lugal’ at the top of a pyramid of control, involving religious priesthood, privileged elite, money and accounting and taxes, police and soldiers, organised labour force, and an underclass of thieves, prostitutes, beggars, etc, etc..
All of that begins southern Mesopotamia, roughly 10,000 years ago, give or take, whilst the earlier hunter gatherer thing lasted hundreds of thousands of years.
Of course, there are a few people on the fringe, with alternative theories, that there were much earlier cities, alien invasions, blablabla, etc, but I think what I’ve outlined is the standard scientific orthodoxy from solid evidence, so far.
Gobekli Tepe is probably the most important key. If that could be better understood, we might get a clearer idea as to exactly why civilisation began.
September 6th, 2012 at 5:40 am
ulvfugl
Cool, Thanks.
September 6th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Kathy, you and I seem to see the world from diametrically opposite points of view. Given that, there is probably little chance of effective communication between us, at least at this time. Best of luck with your journey, however you see it.
September 8th, 2012 at 11:41 pm
“The good Earth- we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy.”
~~~~~~Kurt Vonnegut~~~~~~~
September 9th, 2012 at 5:42 pm
We’re all screwed now, it would seem. Is a total financial collapse the only thing that will save us from global warming? Because it appears we are not going to save ourselves
http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/newsbusiness/aap/8530138/shell-begins-petroleum-drilling-off-alaska
September 11th, 2012 at 9:41 am
Mike, I’m now convinced that global financial collapse is the only door out. It did cause a slight hitch in the upward spiral of CO2 emissions in 2008-2009. However even a complete collapse will only stop us where we are right now. Then we’ll be hot, hungry AND poor. But it’s the best bet for saving as much of the global ecosystem as might still be possible.
December 3rd, 2012 at 7:52 pm
This is the 2nd year in a row where we are experiencing a balmy December in the North East with overnight lows 20 degrees above average. The weatherman on TV just smiles as if nothing was wrong like this is something that should be cheered. Didn’t think Global Warming would happen this fast. Always thought Guy was left of center on climate change but I am seeing a different story now. WTF