On Hope
by Jason GodeskyPeak Energy raises an issue brilliantly in “Peak Oil And The Philosophers Stone” that I’ve seen lurking about quite a bit, namely, that we see in the implications of Peak Oil whatever we would like to believe. “Big Gav” writes:
Kunstler has a deep seating loathing of suburban sprawl and modernity in general it would seem, so he sees peak oil as resulting in a semi-collapse that returns us to a future that resembles small town america of 150 years ago (plus wasted large cities and pirates ravaging the coasts of course).
He isn’t alone in seeing what he wants to see of course - the Viridian camp sees a shiny green future awaiting us in the post oil world, old school oil guys like T Boone Pickens see a exploration and drilling bonanza, energy industry investors like Matt Simmons and Henry Groppe see soaring energy prices, gold bugs see rampart inflation and soaring gold prices, ferals and hippies see a return to living closer to nature, socialists see the revivial of marxism, conspiracy theorists see government/elite conspiracies and the rise of the new world order, primitivists see the collapse of industrial civilisation and human dieoff, libertarians see an opportunity for the market to bring new energy sources and technoloies to us, fascists see an opportunity for a return to authoritarianism and some of the uglier approaches to population control used by their ilk in the past, economists see suuply and demand issues being resolved by energy prices, military-industrial complex members see the need to militarily dominate the energy rich regions of the planet, end-times Christian fundamentalists see another symptom of the impending rapture and survivalists see an opportunity to say “I told you so” and finally get to use the skills and tools they’ve spent their lives practicing for.
I’ve been seeing much of Kunstler’s agrarian vision echoed in recent comments on the site, and I can definitely see where that’s wishful thinking. As I’ve responded in those comments, our agricultural history has eliminated the possibility of an agrarian future by turning once fertile land into a blasted desert now kept alive only be a constant input of petrochemicals and fertilizers made from natural gas. Without those inputs, only a tiny percentage of the earth will still be arable.
Seeing that it was my own thesis #18 that provided Gav with his link for “collapse” above though, I set about some introspection. Might my own expectations be set more by what I would like to see, than what is actually probable? I’m more often too quick to indict myself, as Giuli will readily attest. But this time, I don’t think that’s the case, because this wasn’t what I wanted to see when I first accepted the implications.
I guess I’m strange in that. At one time, I was a Catholic. Then, I read Quinn. Only later did I become a primitivist. Most people are very resistant to changing their worldview; I’ve changed mine three times, when the facts convinced me. Each conversion came at great personal cost, which makes me think that I did not make any of these conversions for psychological reasons.
It was only after I had accepted the course of our civilization that I began to formulate a primitivist vision. I’m often described as a pessimist “doom and gloom” type, but I think that’s because I’m still laying out the factual case and haven’t yet gotten to the vision. I really am very hopeful for the future. In my vision of the future, everything truly wrong in this world will be gone inside of my lifetime. I will get to see a day when war, poverty, hunger, mental illness and chronic stress are all fading memories. I will know what true freedom and true community feels like.
I used to have hope in Quinn’s New Tribal Revolution, and before that, I found hope in the salvation of Mother Church. But with each successive conversion, I’ve formed my idea of what the world is based on facts–and only then come up with a vision that could give me hope in such a world.
That’s a tall order, something few of us do. Most of us prefer to hope for something, and then find the facts to support it. That leads to the phenomenon Big Gav discusses. Am I guilty of it? Maybe I am. All I know is this; when I started to think this way, it cost me dearly and turned everything I had lived and hoped for into a wasted lie. But it seemed unavoidable, so I accepted it, changed the whole direction of my life at great personal cost, and found a new vision that could give me hope within that new framework.
I think that’s what hope’s really about. Anything can have great hope and optimism in it; any crisis can be an opportunity, for someone who’s hopeful.
Hey –
Gotta love the introspection.:-)
If you suffer from this at all Jason, I think it may be that you have ‘accepted’ the collapse and have found a way to turn this into a positive vision. The question, in my mind, is less whether you have ‘cooked the books’ to find collapse as inevitable and more whether you have ‘cooked the books’ to determine that ‘the futures so bright… I gotta wear shades’.
This is when I get scared, myself, is when I start to question whether you are right that civilization will become impossible. So I WANT you to be right, but I’m not convinced
Janene
Comment by Janene — 6 December 2005 @ 12:29 PM
Those are for the later theses.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 12:33 PM
Thanks for the personal insight. It’s great to know how individuals have come to terms with formulating/adapting new worldviews…
And, the line between NTR and primitivism appears blurry to me… Can/do they not share similar ideals?
It’s a mad, mad world.
Comment by bml — 6 December 2005 @ 12:41 PM
Ya know, Jason, I was just talking to Jim about exactly this the other day. I remembered that you had posted something similar on Ishcon a while back.
Comment by Raku — 6 December 2005 @ 12:48 PM
You know, even the people who have been beaten on the most — the First Nations — have a vision of hope. In the face of everything that civ throws at them, they keep going and they know that the world will change for the better.
That certainly gives me, an elite turned primitivist, hope as well.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 6 December 2005 @ 1:20 PM
Why have the First Nations been beaten on the most? I would say they’ve been beaten on the least, being the most recent population to fall under civilization’s wheel. They got an extra 9,500 years of existence sans civ, and some of them have still managed to keep some of their knowledge intact! Which is more than I can say for most of the rest of the world.
Comment by Raku — 6 December 2005 @ 1:33 PM
Ah, wrong choice of words then. I do have to deal with people with whom the culture shock is severe. They have, within their memory, stories of a massive die-off of 90% of their population + a constant grinding down of their society which continues to this day + a continual rape of everything they hold dear right in front of their eyes.
And they still keep hope alive.
Does that make more sense?
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 6 December 2005 @ 1:53 PM
Yes. They’re still in the midst of the trauma, whereas we’ve been wearing the shackles so long, we think they’re fancy jewelry.
Damn that great forgetting.
Comment by Raku — 6 December 2005 @ 2:04 PM
I have been trying to find a quote from Orwell for years now. I have all of his collections of essays but not the time to reread them. It’s been a good decade since I saw the quote. It goes something like this, “All political ideology is the result of childhood neurosis.”
Anyone know it?
Comment by Peter — 6 December 2005 @ 2:16 PM
Raku,
You know when the Great Forgetting angers me the most? When I see it occurring in otherwise educated people. For example, I’m talking to my mother & she goes off on a rant about how whiny different minorities are. Why can’t the Indians just forgive and forget? After all, it’s all in the past, right?
Then I remind her about the forced ‘relocation’ of some 10,000 Navajos in the 1980s-1990s thanks to Peabody Energy. I tell her about the desecration of sacred lands.
The war is still ongoing.
Now, she is neither stupid nor racist. Nor are other college-educated friends of mine who have the same opinions. They just believe with their whole heart and mind in modern society and that things are just getting better and better.
Hmph.
Best
Bill Maxwell
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 6 December 2005 @ 2:45 PM
I’m glad you broached that subject, and considered the possibility of being biased toward collapse.
That’s my number one fear, actually, that I’ll spend all this time learning what edible foods are around me, building survival kits, developing a ‘bug out’ plan, hauling around emergency supplies, water, and a small-volume biodiesel “processor” (think 2-liter bottle, drill pump and fuel filter) in my car trunk , reading every collapse scenerio book/website I can get my hands on, and then find out I’m not prepared for the non-collapse!
No collapse would be the biggest catastrophe for me, so I know I’m biased.
Comment by Cory — 6 December 2005 @ 3:00 PM
Yeah, it’s frustrating. When I think of all our ancestors who were wiped out, enslaved and relocated, and of the shells of their descendants, it makes me sad. Sometimes I’m even envious of the Indians for actually having something left. But I don’t feel guilty about what’s happened to them, any more than I feel guilty about what happened to my own ancestors. Angry, sometimes. Wanting to change things, absolutely. But guilt just immobilizes people, or makes them defensive. Then they’re really lost. I agree, though, the belief in progress is a tough bastard.
Comment by Raku — 6 December 2005 @ 3:04 PM
Cory,
That’s where I think the strength in diversity of the Tribe of Tribes or AppCon ideas come in. We cover all our bases (and asses!).
Comment by Raku — 6 December 2005 @ 3:07 PM
I think every single one of us is guilty of confirmation bias. We all have our own experiences, and we can only see the world in terms of those experiences. There is something to be said for having a diverse range of experiences, and Gav makes the case that a generalist is less prone to confirmation bias than a specialist.
I tend to see Quinn as a generalist, and Jason as a generalist, and myself as a generalist, as well as most people on IshCon. Now, this may be confirmation bias, but I don’t think it is. Quinn does an excellent job of telling the story of our entire culture, which definitely takes a bigger picture focus. It would seem that the people who this most resonates with also are bigger-picture thinkers. Jason has one hell of a handle on anthropology and history, and seems to know a little something about everything. (Sometimes his ego gets in the way and he’ll self-aggrandize a bit, but most people have egocentric tendencies one way or another. ;)) I’ve dabbled in everything, being most particularly drawn toward psychology and anthropology — but I like to incorporate as much as I can into a big-picture vision, and will tend to look more at the broad sweep of society rather than any one particular event.
For instance — I like to look at the benefits of community from a historical/anthropological, psychological, ecological, economical, and ultimately personal perspective. Take out Peak Oil, take out the possibility of collapse of industrial society, take out an awareness of ecological destruction, take out the economical perspective, and I still would be moving towards a community, which I see as something that would make me much more happy. But there are some real-world impediments to this vision, Peak Oil being one of them, the possibility of the world falling down around me another, and so on and so forth. In order to get to where I want to go, I’m going to look hard and fast at what might get in my way. There are physiological needs — you can’t have community without keeping people alive. So how do we get subsistence? Hm, it would seem that agriculture is a not very easy or particularly successful way of obtaining sustenance, what else is out there? Okay, in the sweep of history, many small communities have been destroyed — what is the cause of that? And so on.
The difference between a generalist and a specialist might better be described in terms of systems thinking as opposed to linear thinking.
-Devin
Comment by Devin — 6 December 2005 @ 4:15 PM
As a newcomer to your excellent site, I want to thank you for the good, hard thinking and clear writing.
I disagree with you, however, that a Kunstleresque agrarian vision represents wishful thinking.
Though I acknowledge the tremendous difficulties and dislocations heading our way (petrocollapse and climate worsening, to name two), and realize that we as a species have overshot our carrying capacity, there’s a lot of good work out there showing that sustainable yields comparable to those achieved with petro-agriculture are possible using manual labor and organic inputs. And soil fertility and plant nutrient values can be increased simultaneously.
The work of John Jeavons at Ecology Action, Wes Jackson at the Land Institute, and Adam Purple at the [late] Garden of Eden (NYC) stand out. The folks at Community Solutions in Yellow Springs, OH are working on post-Peak local food self-sufficiency issues, too.
By definition, it will be easier to rebuild plant communities and healthy soil than it will be to reintroduce complex animal ecologies. We will need to re-green, and our tribes will have to learn to feed themselves, and it’ll take more than foraging and hunting to do that…for quite some time.
Best wishes,
Rick
Comment by Rick — 6 December 2005 @ 4:43 PM
In other words, precisely the agricultural methods used since the 1970s. Granted, the Green Revolution has made things exponentially worse, but don’t forget that these “sustainable” methods turned the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl, and made the name of the Fertile Crescent into a cruel joke.
Everything is “sustainable” over a short enough timeline, and organic agriculture is sustainable over a longer timeline than petroculture, but it’s still hideously unsustainable and will eventually end in desertification, ecological disaster and widespread extinction.
But it’s mostly run its course already. There’s not much land left where you’ll be able to practice such “sustainable” methods. Salination and outright desertification has made for the amount of arable land to be very, very small. Climate change will only make it smaller.
I’m aware people are working on this, but I don’t know of any that are addressing these issues. They all seem to have bought into the idea that devouring the earth at a slightly less insane pace counts as “sustainable.” The first step towards any kind of agrarian future must first be to understand that “sustainable agriculture” is an oxymoron. As it stands, they’re mostly looking at the yields possible with petroleum-based fertilizers on land that’s otherwise been bled to dry rocks by a few centuries of farming before, and assuming it will produce the same yields as it did before it was left barren and lifeless by said farming.
Imagine a man who could run a marathon, and people depend on him to run. They run him and run him until it kills him. They prop his body up at the funeral home, dress him up, and people file past and say, “My, he looks so healthy! Can he run in my race next Saturday?” “Oh, I don’t see why not, he ran a really great marathon last month, and he looks so healthy now!”
This is what comes to my mind when I hear about sustainable, organic agriculture.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 4:53 PM
Jason: Your “marathon man� analogy could also apply to the remainder of this planets ecosystems that supported hunter-gatherers so well 10,000 years ago. Will they still be able to do that after having been depleted by 6 billion+ humans that starved to death?
Comment by Bob Harrison — 6 December 2005 @ 5:39 PM
Those ecosystems are still viable. They’re still alive, and they recover quickly if you ever stop cutting them to pieces. The farmland in question is quite dead. We started using petrochemical fertilizers because they were completely incapable of supporting crops otherwise. But look at the forests we have even in North America. I live equidistant from the Allegheny and Monongahela National Forests, and both are very healthy ecosystems. Look at the Pacific Northwest! There are regions there so remote and wild that even this late in the game, they haven’t seen a human in centuries.
What’s more, life is resilient. It takes 25 years for rain forest to regenerate from ash. The Monongahela National Forest was a wasteland a century ago, and now it’s healthy forest. When the lights went out in August 2003, central PA’s air quality sky-rocketed in just 24 hours. Life is resilient, and there’s still more viable ecosystem on the planet than there is city and farm. If we ever stop trying to kill it for even a moment, it will heal itself so quickly it will amaze.
Remember, also: land that’s dead to agriculture is still great for other kinds of life, and new ecosystems can thrive on land that’s become impossible to farm. Even in the Kalahari, there’s an abundance of life to provide a life of ease and plenty for any forager willing to live with it, instead of against it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 December 2005 @ 5:47 PM
You know, whenever I read words like that it still gives me a surge of joy.
Thanks!
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 6 December 2005 @ 6:02 PM
I lived just south of there on a ridge in a hundred year old log house from 1980 to 1985. It was over a mile to the nearest neighbor and much further to any others. The woods are beautiful, but they are deteriorating. In 1980 cherry trees, some 3 feet in diameter, were common. In the spring it was all you could pick of delicious wild red or black cherries. By 1983 most of the cherry trees mysteriously died. Black walnuts were loosing their leaves early in August. Locust trees were dieing.
The point I was trying to make is that the desperate, dying population is likely to survive long enough to damage these areas badly. Of course they will eventually recover, but in the meantime how will humans survive?
Comment by Bob Harrison — 6 December 2005 @ 6:31 PM
I’m not being wishful. I am just presenting some points of contention in order to fully understand this for myself and a clearer vision of the future. I’d be interested in any sources for your contention that the Great Plains would be not be arable. I tried to find one, and I couldn’t find anything supporting your desert contention. I also am not sure how long it has taken for the Fertle Crescent to become a lot less fertile. They still do grow crops though there. There are and were still marshlands used there like in Iraq. There are indigenous people there that used water buffaloes and such, but it looks bleak for them because of the turmoil and Saddam drained them a lot. And the new “democracy” is totally screwing the farmers there for the agribusinesses.
http://www.energybulletin.net/1469.html
Organic grain and soybean production in the Midwestern United States
A comprehensive review of a large number of comparison studies of grain and soybean production conduct by six Midwestern universities since 1978 found that in all of these studies organic production was equivalent to, and in many cases better than, conventional (Welsh, 1999). Organic systems had higher yields than conventional systems which featured continuous crop production (no rotations) and equal or lower yields in conventional systems that included crop rotations. In the drier climates such as the Great Plains, organic systems had higher yields, as they tend to be better during droughts than conventional systems. In one such study in South Dakota for the period 1986-1992, the average yields of soybeans were 29.6 bushels/acre and 28.6 bushels/acre in the organic and conventional systems respectively. In the same study, average spring wheat yields were 41.5 bushels/acre and 39.5 bushels/acre in the organic and conventional systems respectively.
When comparing the profitability of farming systems, the study found that organic cropping systems were always more profitable than the most common conventional cropping systems if the higher premiums that organic crops enjoy were factored in. When the higher premiums were not factored in, the organic systems were still more productive and profitable in three of the six studies. This was attributed to lower production costs and the ability of organic systems to outperform conventional in drier areas, or during drier periods.
The author of the report remarked: “What is most surprising is how well the organic systems performed despite the minimal amount of research that traditional agricultural research institutions have devoted to them.” (Welsh, 1999).
There is a problem with the aquifer depleton that will be a serious factor though. I don’t know how much.
There is also something else that needs to be taken into account…MEAT.
http://www.taxmeat.com/ecological.html
The meat industry is directly responsible for 85 percent of all soil erosion in the U.S., because so much grain is needed to feed animals being raised for food. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn and oats we grow. The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people-more than the entire human population on Earth. According to the Worldwatch Institute, “[T]he easiest way to reduce grain consumption is to lower the intake of meat and milk, grain-intensive foods. Roughly two of every five tons of grain produced in the world is fed to livestock, poultry, or fish; decreasing consumption of these products, especially of beef, could free up massive quantities of grain and reduce pressure on land.”
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption/Effects.asp
Overall, animal farms use nearly 40 percent of the world’s total grain production. In the United States, nearly 70 percent of grain production is fed to livestock.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1206-01.htm
The maps reveal that more than one third of the world’s land is being used to grow crops or graze cattle.
“The maps show, very strikingly, that a large part of our planet (roughly 40%) is being used for either growing crops or grazing cattle,” said Dr Navin Ramankutty, a member of the Wisconsin-Madison team. By comparison, only 7% of the world’s land was being used for agriculture in 1700.
People wouldn’t eat near as much meat. Yet, you say that cutting waste down would only buy a few years. I don’t understand though. The PEAK is the peak of the bell curve. There is still half of the oil left. This economy is dependent on growth. That’s true. It would have to change that, but I don’t that precludes agriculture/civilization. Afterall, there was agriculture before oil. Granted, there was a lot less people.
I have also read that livestock accounts for a large percentage of energy use.
And again, I’m not trying to be confrontational or say you’re wrong or coming from a similar stance in line with “You don’t support the troops/civilization!” I’m just presenting these real concerns I have before I accept that there is no way dieoff won’t happen. I won’t keep on it if you just don’t want to bother debating it. I’m not trying to win anything. Not that I don’t think you can’t dispute me. I bet you can. I relatively new to all of this.
Comment by planetwarming — 6 December 2005 @ 7:16 PM
If you’ve read the book of Revelation you know that the Bible doesn’t have a hopeful vision of the future of humankind on the Earth. After examining the modern prophets of doom among the premillennialist Christians, I dismissed their dismal vision of the future. Upon further investigation, though, I must say that the modern world at the apex of its oil-induced prosperity is a pretty horrible place: Humans are violent everywhere, billions suffer from inescapable poverty, genocide is occurring in a number of places, there are still tens of thousands of nuclear bombs, pollution, environmental degradation, extinction and the crass culture of capitalistic consumerism is spreading everywhere.
If these are the good days, woe unto those who must face the bad times to come. A global scale environmental armageddon is approaching whether peak oil occurs or not. Peak oil itself will bring scarcity and hunger to the United States, though billions are suffering from this trouble in the Third World today.
The prophets of doom and gloom are more often right than wrong. Consider the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “The prophets who were before me and before you from ancient times prophesied against many lands and against great kingdoms of war and of calamity and of pestilence. The prophet who prophesies of peace, when the word of the prophet comes to pass, then that prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent” (Jeremiah 28:8-9).
Prophecies of peace fail because humans are by nature violent, destructive and foolish creatures. Prophecies of doom are always successful because it is the nature of all kingdoms (empires, nations, etc.) to fail spectacularly as a result of natural catastrophes, warfare or internal conflicts. The United States of America is not exempt from this fate, no more so than the Roman Empire of so long ago.
Since technology allows the modern world to move more swiftly than the ancients we all should anticipate that the United States will fall suddenly, spectacularly. Optimistic people should hope that the failure occurs peacefully (as the Soviet Union failed) rather than violently.
Comment by David Mathews — 6 December 2005 @ 7:33 PM
Hey Devin, I’ve long been of the opinion that specialization is for insects. For men it’s dangerous and possibly suicidal.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 6 December 2005 @ 7:48 PM
Yikes. Humans are not any more violent, destructive and foolish creatures than they are peaceful, constructive, and intelligent creatures. The societies we classify as civilization and that have written history for the most part give us a skewed perspective of humanity. This culture is not humanity. For most of humanity’s existence on this earth, humans lived in small forager bands at relatively low population densities. With the onset of civilization came the onset of many of these things you cite as evidence that humans are destructive and violent creatures.
Comment by Devin — 6 December 2005 @ 8:35 PM
Jason, in general I like your writings a lot, but I am a bit disappointed with this post.
Everyone is biased. Instead of distancing yourself from Marxists, hippies, conspiracy theorists and the like by claiming some kind of objectivity high ground, why not try to flesh out what fundamentally separates you from these types of people, and embrace it?
You should know that even science is not totally objective, but based on the fundamental and undeniably spiritual belief that the universe conforms to the laws of mathematics. Likewise, I admit freely that my worldview (as, incidentally, another Catholic/turned Quinnian/turned many other things/turned primitivist) is predicated on a fundamental, spiritual, and perhaps irrational belief that whatever force creates and drives Life in this world is one of joy, cooperation, and abundance.
Why try and be objective? All it really does it make you incredibly boring dinner conversation.
One more bone to pick with you:
>>In other words, precisely the agricultural methods used since the 1970s. Granted, the Green Revolution has made things exponentially worse, but don’t forget that these “sustainable” methods turned the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl, and made the name of the Fertile Crescent into a cruel joke.
Comment by Debbie — 6 December 2005 @ 11:03 PM
I haven’t finished reading the post or the other comments yet, but I feel a little guilty that you may have misunderstood my link to you.
It wasn’t thesis 18 that I was intending to link to, but the 30 theses as a whole (as a general reflection of the primitivist school of thought on the peak oil subject).
And I hope you didn’t take it as a criticism (I didn’t get that feeling but I do feel the need to explain that I wasn’t trying to criticise any group’s particular set of beliefs, just to point out the range of opinion on the topic)…
Gav.
Comment by Big Gav — 6 December 2005 @ 11:14 PM
Math doesn’t really have laws as such for the universe to obey. Math is a language scientists, accountants, and computer scientists use to describe the universe. It’s no more suprising and unexpected that the universe can be described by math than it is for us to discover that grass is green.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 6 December 2005 @ 11:26 PM
Taking the whole paragraph (and conversation)in context, it’s clear that in the lead sentence Jason meant: “before” the 1970’s… It’s a typo.
Comment by JCamasto — 7 December 2005 @ 12:26 AM
I was thinking along some similar lines, and I share your Roman Catholic background, read and enjoyed Ishmael and all of Quinn’s stuff in college, and some of what you wrote led me to look into what I was thinking about the Peak Oil situation. I surprised myself a bit, and it’s not nearly as well written as yours, and not to say it applies to you either, but just wanted to say thanks for the food for thought.
Excerpted from I am a Cosmic Schmuck - Peak Oil, Catholicism and Guilt
http://relaxedfocus.blogspot.com/2005/12/i-am-cosmic-schmuck-peak-oil.html
…So here’s the point. Catholicism’s overall thrust, Christianity’s emphasis, in my life were themes of guilt, sin and punishment….
So anyways, Peak Oil to the Collapse… Dog eat dog and man versus man in survival of the fittest!
My head went that way, because in hindsight, it’s just so damn Biblical! Peak Oil, the collapse, the horrible, terrible chaos that we’d be forced to endure and suffer through… see, it was only us getting what we deserve, because we hadn’t thought it through. We hadn’t used our resources wisely.
See, society was going to collapse because of our sins.
And we deserved that punishment.
It’s just so twisted, innit?
And the more twisted bit is that I didn’t even realize the “why” of why I was thinking that way.
I’ve been deep into the concepts of “winner scripts” vs “loser scripts”, optimism vs pessimism, the importance of choosing your perspective, etc, etc…
But still at times don’t realize how deeply ingrained a lot of this stuff is and how it still fucks with my head…
Comment by Rob — 7 December 2005 @ 3:57 AM
THE FUTILITY OF FIGHTING A SYSTEM
Certainly, from a systems view, this civilization will end, come apart at the seams, whatever.
Systems thinking was still echoing around in the late eighties when I was an undergrad in Urban Planning. My thinking that way was strongly reinforced when I turned to “computer stuff” in the face of a destroyed job market in Planning in my area.
If you find yourself having to add more and more fixes and fixes to unintended consequences of the previous fixes, you’d better go back and see what the original system has to tell you. If it’s a self-contained and -sustaining system, try to find a way to accomplish what you need within ITS rules. The trick, and often easier than inventing fixes, is to be able to read the rules of the system.
For example, even a relatively simple commercial computer application is too complex for anybody to completely hold in their mind in a way to be able to manipulate it around to precisely their own will.
Yes, this is a whole lot like Taoism as well.
Humans have been all about attacking and trying to bend the earth-system to their will from pretty much day one. Maybe it’s the linear thinking reinforced by language systems and verbal thinking (being stuck in “monkey mind” in Taoism). When you believe the full extent of reality is what you can describe verbally, you’re not even going to be able to comprehend anything as a system. You just see the results, the components, the shallowest outside of it, and of course you believe you ought to be able to make these apparently unrelated, limited components do exactly what you want. After all, you’re bigger than they are.
Now that I think about it, it’s the linear thinkers whom one would expect to write the most comprehensible histories. So, of course it appears that humans have always all done things in linear-thinking ways.
I’ve jumped in on only the last three topics, though I’ve been reading this site for a while. I think a lot of this discussion hinges on one set of people who are strictly talking about the fact that the earth-system’s going to reemerge sooner or later, vs. another who are talking about what’s going to take us down, and even more specifically what things are going to look like in the aftermath of Peak Oil or dramatic climate change, or final soil depletion. Neither seems to be in a direct dialog with the other.
I’ll put myself pretty much in the second group. Frankly, I reckon that if none of the individual calamities comes to a head, we could continue to abuse the system and invent more fixes probably for my lifetime.
I don’t think climate change will do anything catastrophic to me, 500 miles inland, with 500 miles of temperate climate around me, for at least another generation. It sounds callous, but in their heart of hearts, I think anybody would admit everything else is just newspaper articles.
MORE PRESSING CONCERNS
What has me on the edge of my seat is catastrophic money-system collapse from Peak Oil.
What has me really frightened is non-catastrophic money-system collapse from Peak Oil.
If the collapse is catastrophic, everybody’s in the same boat and people will start to look out for each other and learn to live without money. Living without money is not too bad, if everybody’s doing it. During the Great Depression, my Grandpa did just fine. They couldn’t sell a pig, since nobody had any money, but they sure could eat it, and maybe they could trade it for something they needed.
I’ve been reading the Foxfire books, from the late ’60’s, which relate old-timers stories of how they lived in North Georgia. They hardly ever had money. A store-bought candy was a Christmas treat. However, they had a wonderful culture and life and relationships. Granted, they had a whole lot of woods to work with. I don’t have any idea how many people-per-acre were supported in this way. I do know that the only planting they did was in backyard-size gardens. Their livestock was branded and allowed to roam free.
No, what really scares me is that it won’t come down to “Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” (I think that’s Kunstler again). That those at the helm will be able to keep up appearances enough that jobs will become harder to find and lower paid much more quickly, but the expectations for an “Ozzie and Harriet” life will still be there. The baby-boomer generation is and I worry will continue to be fairly isolated from this. Those fewer and fewer who are well-paid will have no idea what’s going on. That’s what really scares me.
Comment by Sam — 7 December 2005 @ 5:10 AM
Oops. Thanks JCamasto. I must have accidentally deleted the end of my post or something. The bone I had intended to pick was actually having to do with Jason’s characterization of the work of Ecology Action and the Land Institute as traditional pre-petro (as in, animal powered) agriculture. (I hadn’t even noticed the typo, guess I am not a very close reader.) Both Ecology Action and the Land Institute advocate agricultural techniques that, by Jason’s definitions, would be considered horticulture, very much on the upslope of the returns on investment curve. They are small-scale by design, take the needs of the land into account, and could never feed the whole world (although Jeavons does have delusions of grandeur sometimes), at this or any population level. They are more in the tradition of the Three Sisters-based agriculture practiced for thousands of years in the eastern US pre-invasion.
Anyway, this is just to point out that not everything can be lumped together that uses the dreaded “a” word. These indigenous-inspired and permaculture techniques will not stop collapse (hurrah) but they will save many lives and sustain human cultures in the aftermath.
Comment by Debbie — 7 December 2005 @ 9:11 AM
Sam,
If you current breath than climate change will effect you. The question is only in what way. The change in climate won’t submerge your town, no. But there is nothing stopping it from turning the area you live in into desert. That’s just an example, of course. But I’m trying to make a point: climate change means very different things in different locals. All is means globally is that the weather in every location will change in some mannor.
Civilization has been attack since day one. Humans had no conception of attacking the world until, essentially, the 1960s. Although we have been fairly successful at it regardless of our comprehension. Remember, it wasn’t that we were destroying the land. How do they refer to setting up a farm? “Improving” the land. We were making it better by bending it to civilization’s will. But paleolithic peoples of all times did not attack, they merely lived. If that meant that something else had to die, then they killed. Same as a wolf, tiger, or giant sloth.
As for fire. Yes, it affects the environment. So does picking up a stick and throwing it at a deer. So does walking. Eating, too. It’s a different scale and kind. But it was never done to destroy the forest, that’s were food comes from. People are netoriously reluctant to destroy their food source.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 11:42 AM
True, I’m just saying that everything we (those of us who can afford computers and internet service) know is rooted in the current civilization of a money economy that always has to be seen as growing. This, in turn, is hugely dependent on oil.
Most likely, people who can take actions and see the currency exhange rates change, or the DJIA rise or fall, etc., have a pretty good idea of the oil supply’s effects. The people who don’t have that level of influence have no clue. Therefore, the mortgage industry, the housing industry, the home improvement industry, other construction, 401(k)’s, etc. keep moving along as if there are just normal business cycles and hiccups.
I guess it’s when even Joe Sixpack knows his 401(k) and his home equity and his career have fallen and can’t *ever* get up, that the bread and circuses will end. At that point, why bother keeping up appearances?
I think there will be just no money to pay for food from anyplace out of barter range long before climate change takes away that food. If nobody bothers to pass legislation to encourage the reimportation of overseas profits, or fudge the federal deficit, or prop up the dollar so we can still borrow a GDP, actual gas prices won’t matter. There’ll just be no damn money.
I kinda think that’s enough to deal with for now.
Comment by Sam — 8 December 2005 @ 2:21 PM
Yeah, the lack of oil as an energy source and commodity will effect the economy quite adversely. Although the immediate obvious effect is a rise in gas prices.
When the general populace knows it’s over, that’s when we really start seeing it. We’ll see the signs long before, because we’re looking for them. When the rest of the holipoloi knows that it’s over. Then we see the roving bands of cannibals buring bookstores for heat.
Comment by Benjamin Shender — 8 December 2005 @ 5:52 PM
Gav, no offense whatsoever. Your article was excellent, and the implication was certainly fair. It simply prompted me to do some very healthy introspection and take a minute to wonder, “Hmmm, am I just seeing what I want to see?” I tend to think not, because it was exactly what I didn’t want to see when I first saw it. That made it a good place to start the article, that’s all.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 9 December 2005 @ 9:05 AM