• « Thesis #30: The future will be what we make of it.
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22 January 2006

• « Thesis #30: The future will be what we make of it.
• Ecotopian Dreams »

Comments

1. Dude,

   I stand in awe before you. No shit. I know what it’s like to write. So I can truly appreciate the effort and self-discipline it takes to crank out this much high quality work.

   I’ll be plugging it to everyone.

   Comment by Peter — 22 January 2006 @ 2:54 AM

2. Nice rip, JGL. Brilliant.

   I feel like I’ve ripped you off, or something - taking in all your work, over the years…

   Thanks for the education - puts most of my schooling to shame by comparison.

   —–

   But, dag, I’m saddened to see a softening of: Diversity = primary good… It’s like my mantra, you know.

   So save that revelation for the extra-special, “gotta reach for it” pearl of wisdom…

   Comment by JCamasto — 22 January 2006 @ 3:29 AM

3. Hey –

   Hip hip huzzah!

   I like the look of the new outline. Jim may miss the original first thesis, but I think the whole work will be strengthened by the change.

   BTW, if you want any outside editing, let me know. You know — editing of the language variety, as opposed to technical verification. Matt’s been busy, lately, so I have been without a writing project

   Janene

   Comment by Janene — 22 January 2006 @ 10:39 AM

4. For the love of G-d put some sort of copyright on it.

   Comment by Justin Case — 22 January 2006 @ 10:50 AM

5. Alright Jason!
   And it’s not even the end of the month yet!
   WOOO!!

   Good job Jason, the thesis’ rock.

   Comment by Miranda — 22 January 2006 @ 12:25 PM

6. Since there’s no place else to post this, I’ll do it here. The documentary Why We Fight opened this weekend. It’s about our beloved military-industrial complex. Go see it if you can.

   Comment by Peter — 22 January 2006 @ 1:33 PM

7. Congrats! Step after step…

   Comment by bml — 22 January 2006 @ 7:02 PM

8. Many thanks for sharing your writing with us. I don’t think I have ever been more fascinated by a subject before. I think you write well, too, no matter what Savinar says!

   I tend to agree with most of what you say, but I do feel the way you present the hunter/gatherer/forager concept suggests a transition to such a lifestyle — especially by city slickers — would not be all that difficult. I would argue the opposite.

   And I am still puzzled about whether you are talking about a “primitive” version of that lifestyle or a “modern” version.

   Thanks, again, and best of luck with the book.

   Comment by George — 23 January 2006 @ 12:29 AM

9. Right on, great work. I like the new outline too. Just one thought, when you said “distilling all of this into just 30 statements is a daunting task in itself” I wondered a little if you weren’t unnecessarily constricting yourself through your love of nice round numbers. I personally wouldn’t give a crap if it was the 37 theses, or 29 (or 103), as long as it was the perfect number to most precisely, articulately, and concisely express your message.

   Not trying to in any way rag on you though, in fact, mostly I just want to say..

   thank you

   Comment by limukala — 23 January 2006 @ 12:49 AM

10. Thanks, everyone.

    George–Savinar was ripping on me? Oh man, I must’ve missed that. But, Ran posted something yesterday that I think sums up my thinking about the difficulty of learning primtive skills: “What you have to learn is how not to get killed in the first five minutes of level one. If you can survive that long, you have a good chance of figuring the game out and surviving longer. Then, of course, we don’t even know how long level one is, or what’s on level two, let alone level fifteen.”

    Janene–I have a number of editors lined up, but I’d be happy to add you to the list. The more the merrier!

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 23 January 2006 @ 12:08 PM

11. Jason,

    Excellent piece of work. I look forward to more and wish you the greatest success with it.

    I’d like to see important works like yours…there are lots of other candidates, too…recorded for download and distribution as audiobooks.

    There are so few readers, comparitively speaking, that restricting work to the written word, either digital or on paper, drastically limits the audience for important nonfiction and is much like preaching to the choir [not that the choir doesn’t need preaching, too].

    Radio…and audio in general…are hot media. I see tapes and CDs and audio files being exchanged over the internet, at fairs and festivals. We’ve got to be looking at distribution systems outside the petro-industrial system, and that’s a step.

    Politics…philosophy…how-to manuals…you name it, should all be read into computers now, so that “1,000 flowers” can bloom as TSHTF.

    Audio is the mass medium, and I hope you factor it into whatever distribution strategy you plan for your book.

    Best wishes,

    Rick

    Comment by Rick — 23 January 2006 @ 3:53 PM

12. It’ll be released under a Creative Commons license, so if you want to do that or any other kind of “remix” you can imagine, you’re more than welcome to do so. There’s already a fellow translating them into Turkish.

    Innit open source grand?

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 23 January 2006 @ 3:57 PM

13. Oh, it wasn’t a really bad rip.

    He (Savinar) just said some of what you wrote in Thesis #26 “…could be worded a bit better,” but it had some “…good points if you dig through it.”

    It was on the January 13th News and Updates, but, for some reason, that one isn’t in the archives. Google has a cached copy here.

    Comment by George — 23 January 2006 @ 7:26 PM

14. Oh, that wasn’t so bad. I’ll take Savinar’s traffic any day.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 23 January 2006 @ 7:28 PM

15. I had to read it a 3-to-4 times through to understand it. Not “ripping” it at all. But an individual less motivated or interested in the subject matter might not make the effort to work through the parts you have to read twice. Think most of the stuff here is either A) on the money or B) not on the money but highly thought provoking.

    That’s about as much as you can hope for from even whoever your favorite authors/writers are! Good or thought provoking with not too much “ugh, this sucks” thrown in.

    As far as it not being in the archives, don’t know why it isn’t. Will go take a look and figure out why.

    Best,

    Matt

    Comment by Matt Savinar — 24 January 2006 @ 8:38 PM

16. Thanks, Matt. I certainly don’t expect anymore than that. Like I said, it’s a rough draft. I’ll be sure to go over it for readability.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 January 2006 @ 10:46 PM

17. Hey Jason! Talking with a producer friend of mine today & she reccomended Lulu for publishing. Apparently, the industry is taking a nice little hit for having to pay book stores for stocking & refunds for ‘returned books’ so the inventor of Linux came up with a different model.

    It might be well worth it. It might not be. But, hey, if you do use it, tell them Kate McCallum sent you. It’ll help her deal with them (she’s setting up a program that matched spiritual folks with artists).

    Good luck again! A fantastic job.

    Best

    Bill Maxwell

    Comment by Bill Maxwell — 2 February 2006 @ 2:01 AM

18. Lulu was at the top of my list, actually.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 February 2006 @ 9:18 AM

19. re: Lulu, hmph. Should have seen that coming.

    

    Best

    Bill

    Comment by Bill Maxwell — 3 February 2006 @ 1:30 PM

20. Jason,

    Everything Emergent Associates is about revolves around finding your positive core and living it. It’s pretty clear to me that assembling high quality information about topics like these, synthesizing the data and compiling them in great writings like these are a central part of your positive core. And to turn this into a book would just be marvelous. Congratulations on doing something so important to you with so much passion. Much appreciated!

    Howard
    http://www.systemsthinker.com
    http://www.emergentassociates.com

    Comment by Howard — 22 March 2006 @ 10:01 PM

21. I thought you might be interested to know that the thirty theses are referenced in a paper presented by Dr Bednarz at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Philadelphia, December 14, 2005

    http://www.energybulletin.net/12158.html

    Great work.

    Comment by Davidh — 1 April 2006 @ 6:47 PM

22. Davidh, Jason is aware of that reference.

    Comment by aksum — 1 April 2006 @ 6:52 PM

23. Thanks, David. I actually stumbled across that a few months ago, and was feeling quite good about myself for a solid week thereafter. We’re even had Dr. Bednarz comment here since then.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 April 2006 @ 11:24 AM

24. well i read through them but I’ll keep the review short and sweet.
    even though i have not read #27

    1. number 8 needs more sources to certify your claim.

    2. number 4 needs scientific studies to back it up.

    3. 14 definitely needs some studies proving it.

    4. 11 needs more evidence then it has to prove the point. also there was one civilization about the time of Rome which willingly powered down so to speak. why no mention of it?

    5. 18 seems to be mainly based on 14 and 14 needs to be proved with more sources.

    6. 21 is not a may but a definite.

    7. 29 needs at least one example for it to draw on otherwise it’s conjecture.

    8. 22 needs to be changed. peak oil will only drop us back to the pre-coal days at least as long as no nation decides to start a nuclear war. of course there will be a die-off as todays population cannot be supported by those methods.

    9. lastly define complexity, mainly things can be held as complex.

    Comment by truekaiser — 30 July 2006 @ 4:50 PM

25. You appear to be using the revised numbering above, with the old text provided online. The book version, as I said, is subject to change, and has changed already. One of the biggest changes is that I’ve provided a lot more sources, footnotes and citations, which addresses most of the concerns you’ve raised.

    1. OK, that’s pretty easy; nothing in there was controversial at all, it’s all pretty well-known and widely accepted in anthropological circles.
    2. That’s one of my favorite parts of the new version, is I’ve added so many more scientific studies beyond just Dunbar’s number about happiness, satisfaction, and group size to show that humans are more productive and happier in small groups.
    3. #14 already has a number of studies, both in the original text, and a long list of other studies brought up in the discussion. The origins of epidemic disease in domestication is well known, and there are many, many studies on the negative health effects of grain for a non-granivorous animal like Homo sapiens. It’s so well known we even refer to “diseases of civilization.”
    4. You’re right on that, and I’ve added a good deal more to that one already. As for the example, I suppose you mean Petra? It’s bandied about, but I don’t think you could call Petra’s fall a voluntary powerdown nearly so much as being out-competed and rubbed out. That’s a very different thing.
    5. No, #18 is nformed partly by #14, but it also addresses issues of longevity, knowledge, and other measures of quality of life.
    6. No, like peak oil, there’s always some slim chance of some magic bullet coming to save us at the last moment. I wouldn’t want to entirely rule out the possibility that somehow, some way, we get our act together and fix the environmental problems we’ve caused, as unlikely as that seems.
    7. #29 relies on the idea that we’re entering a unique period in history–if I had an example, I’d have to retract the claim. #29 here is an enhanced version of #29 online (for example, see this correction).
    8. I disagree. In order to “drop us back to the pre-coal days,” we’d need the same resources as we did in the “pre-coal days”–an increasing amount of naturally arable land, most importantly. We don’t have that. The story of agriculture is 10,000 years of “just in time” breaks to keep the whole thing from imploding. By 1960, we’d come to the limits of the old strategy of just farming more land. Since then, the Green Revolution has allowed us to exploit the energy of other biomes to increase yield per acre–as Richard Manning puts it in Against the Grain, now we “farm the biosphere.” Without fossil fuels, the Green Revolution ends, and we find out that underneath all those fertilizers we put down, the Dust Bowl was the Great Plains turning into a desert. I think we’ll find that there’s only a few, small, isolated, scattered pockets of arable land that can be farmed without fossil fuels, so I have no doubt people will try to farm everything, but I also think they’ll wind up doing little more than plowing dry dirt.
    9. Didn’t I already do that?

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 31 July 2006 @ 4:49 PM

26. i am glad to hear you have added more sources.

    1. funny this is the very first time i have heard of this theory.

    2. thats good i would like to see the newer version.

    3. what i got from whats on-line is that you seemed to have mistaken the difference between new diseases emerging(aids, sars, birdflu) with ones that existed back pre-agriculture days but did not have such a easy vector for spreading that civilization provides

    4. again thats good to hear but i think that even if Rome was the original cause, they chose to submit and not to fight and thats still a choice.

    5. (please note this is a not a attack) well then this is a big problem with the book. i do not know the name of the term but it basically says that if a theory/thesis basis it’s self on another part of the same theory/thesis then it’s not true. this is often a claim laid on dieoff.org

    6. no offense, but if thats the case you better start praying to what $deity you like because with climate change all life on the earth will be under stress, the simple act of becoming another top predator onto local species just might be enough to tip them over the edge like your theory on how modern man did in some creatures in the last ice age.

    7. then can you label it as such?
    also you only cover iron, copper, and aluminum. i saw no mention of stainless steel and galvanized steel. also copper is not useless for tools. the Egyptians seemed to have been able to build the pyramids with them, granted the copper chisels needed to be re-tempered after some decent use but still.

    8. note i did not say all, even today there should be enough usable land today for maybe 5 to 8 percent of the current population. if the collapse happens rather soon.(in my honest opinion the sooner the better because it will leave us in a better situation later). also note i did not say they would successful in it.

    9. from my point of view no not really, you seem to jump around from complexity in society, to complex organizational structures, and finally a very rough top level view of technology. imho either stick to one area and use it as a example or separate all of them into their own sections and cover each in as much detail as possible because right now the way it reads makes it look a little like the uni-bomber’s manifesto even though you do make a good point

    please do not take this the wrong way, i am trying to be constructive here.
    if anything you will get the most flak from points 1, 4, 5, and 9 from the general public from my point of view.

    Comment by truekaiser — 31 July 2006 @ 7:14 PM

27. oh i forgot to add this to point number 6.
    http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1205975.ece
    “Professor Crutzen has proposed a method of artificially cooling the global climate by releasing particles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight and heat back into space. The controversial proposal is being taken seriously by scientists because Professor Crutzen has a proven track record in atmospheric research.”

    Comment by truekaiser — 31 July 2006 @ 7:20 PM

28. Thank you for your criticism; I absolutely take them in a constructive tone, and they’re very helpful.

    I can see #4 and #5, but #1 and #9? “Life requires resources” and “Civilization is the result of agriculture”? I would have thought them both to be painfully self-evident.

    1. Not so surprising; there are many basic things about, say, geology, that I know nothing about.
    2. The newer version will be a published book, but it won’t be available for several months yet, at least.
    3. OK, I guess I need to spend more time on zoonotics. Very few diseases actually existed prior to agriculture—most of your various poxes including chicken pox and smallpox, cholera, plague, etc., are all zoonotics that followed from animal domestication. Now, it’s also true that some diseases did exist prior to civilization, and civilization amplified them (for instance, syphilis was once something along the lines of a mild head cold before it became a virulent STD in civilized populations), which I thought I’d also addressed. I’ll take another look at it, though.
    4. When you get to that point, I think the line of what’s “voluntary” becomes fuzzy, and either all collapses become voluntary, or none of them are. Petra competed to the best of its ability to the very end. Its best wasn’t good enough, and it was rubbed out. Does that count as voluntary?
    5. I don’t follow—from my days back in computer science studying formal logic, it’s not only legitimate but necessary to use previous proven statements to make further statements. I’m building a case throughout the book, and I use my previous conclusions as premises in subsequent arguments. How is this invalid?
    6. There’s certainly a lot of environmental damage, but we’re at the peak now. I don’t expect things to get much worse than they are now—they’re pretty bad now, but it’s still habitable. Ecologies repair themselves startlingly quickly. Full regeneration will likely take centuries, but the initial stabilization is astonishing. After the 2003 blackout, air quality in central PA showed immense improvements in just 24 hours. New growth forest can spring up in as little as 20 years. What gives me hope is that civilization is fragile, but humans are not. A deteroriating environment will topple civilization long before it is so depleted that humans can’t survive, and while there are some longer-lasting effects, most of civilization’s abuses will be recovered almost as soon as civilization stops inflicting them. Of course, if I’m wrong, we’re all dead anyway, so why worry? As for Crutzen, his plan scares the bejesus out of me, but I sleep well at night all the same, secure in the knowledge that while solutions like this are commonly offered, they are very rarely acted upon, so I’ll save my alarm for when, or if, there’s some movement to actually implement such a plan.
    7. Well, it’s a logical argument, not an empirical one. I think the argument is valid; we’ll have to wait and see if it’s sound. Copper is pretty useless for tools, and I didn’t cover any of the various forms of steel because, as I noted in the correction, iron alloys have melting points too high to work in a primitive forge. They might be salvaged and beaten into shape as I noted, but that’s a fairly limited set of uses.
    8. Ah, all right. I did not spend much time on it because I see it as, at best, either a rare pocket, or a transition phase lasting perhaps a whole season before it, too, collapses.
    9. All right, I’ll throw in a little more explicit definition of terms.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 1 August 2006 @ 9:56 AM

29. well 1 because the vast majority of people don’t see how much life depends on energy. for example look at tod today, dave seems to think we can use bio-mass to power electric rail and keep going on as normal.
    and 9 because the popular belief, which is mainly due to bad science. that agriculture came after we stopped being savages and settled down to the ‘more peaceful’ stationary life.

    4. well to me it’s not that fuzzy despite the fact the outcome was not under their control, they had a choice on how to deal with it.

    5. it’s hard to explain because i was only recently introduced to the concept. but i understand the concept that with a self supported argument one could(not saying you did though) make it support anything.

    7. please look up the tools the Egyptians used. they did use copper chisels to cut the stone. to counter the fact it was a soft metal they had smiths nearby where they could easily exchange a dulled chisel with a fixed one.

    Comment by truekaiser — 1 August 2006 @ 9:26 PM

30. truekaiser, for number 5 I believe you are confusing circular reasoning, ie. “the Bible is true because it says it is true” with statements building on previously proven statements.

    Comment by ChandraShakti — 2 August 2006 @ 5:26 AM

31. well 1 because the vast majority of people don’t see how much life depends on energy.

    No, we all know that life requires inputs like food and water. We all know that whatever else there may be, physical existence requires inputs. The question of biofuels is deeper than just that; it’s about balances, conversion rates, and other such problems, not because we think that life can form without any kind of resources.

    and 9 because the popular belief, which is mainly due to bad science. that agriculture came after we stopped being savages and settled down to the ‘more peaceful’ stationary life.

    That’s the picture, yes, but even in that myth, civilization is the result of agriculture. In that version, agriculture is what frees us, and gives us the security and liesure to build a civilization.

    4. well to me it’s not that fuzzy despite the fact the outcome was not under their control, they had a choice on how to deal with it.

    I still fail to follow. The choice they faced was whether or not to racket up to keep competing. They did that right up to the point when it ceased to be an option—only when it was no longer possible to do otherwise did they “choose” to downscale.

    5. it’s hard to explain because i was only recently introduced to the concept. but i understand the concept that with a self supported argument one could(not saying you did though) make it support anything.

    Like Chandra, I think you may be getting this confused with a circular argument or tautology.

    7. please look up the tools the Egyptians used. they did use copper chisels to cut the stone. to counter the fact it was a soft metal they had smiths nearby where they could easily exchange a dulled chisel with a fixed one.

    The Egyptians only really got off the ground when they started using bronze. Before that, their tools were quite ineffective. Bronze is an alloy of copper that’s much stronger, and it was with the introduction of bronze that you start to see the Old Kingdom really get its start.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 2 August 2006 @ 4:13 PM

32. 1. well we know but others do not. they don’t see food and water as energy they just see them as well food and water. they neither know or care about how much energy went into that food they have at lunch.

    7. yes i know they did not really hit their prime until they started to make bronze. though that doesn’t mean a copper tool was less then useless they were able to do allot with them. i do not know about the grade of copper they used as compared to the copper in house wiring.

    Comment by truekaiser — 2 August 2006 @ 7:11 PM

33. 7. The copper being used then was a much higher grade, but I’ve never heard of any practical tools made even with that–I was under the impression they were pretty much entirely ceremonial until you get to the Bronze Age.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 August 2006 @ 9:04 AM

34. Well, this doesn’t refer to “civilization” per se, tho’ it does speak to copper tools a bit.

    From http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570777_26/Native_Americans_of_North_America.html

    “Subarctic peoples crafted useful items from leather, wood, stone, and bone. Some peoples, such as the Chipewyan, also worked in copper. They used annealing techniques (alternate heating and hammering) to work copper nuggets from the soil into a desired shape. They fashioned a variety of copper tools, including knives, axes, scrapers, arrowheads, spearheads, awls, drills, and chisels. They also traded raw copper to other tribes for food, shells, and other goods.”

    Comment by jhereg — 3 August 2006 @ 10:00 AM

35. i don’t know where to put it so i will put it here since it does relate to it.
    i just finished watching part one of a two part documentary titled.
    ‘What Makes Us Human’ which aired on the bbc(thanks to uknova i am able to watch it)
    here is the description.

    “Big Heads.
    What is it that separates us from our animal cousins and makes us essentially human? For centuries, philosophers and archaeologists have asked this question, but at a fundamental level the answers have remained a mystery, until now. Evolutionary scientist Dr Armand Leroi explores how and why we became human, but instead of looking for clues in ancient fossils, he seeks out the oddities, aberrations and mutations around us in the present.”

    for a scientist he does very little proper science, he starts off talking about a genetic disorder that results in a smaller head, smaller brain and the average intelligence of a 1 year old with a rat like looking face. he then moves onto talking about the old theory that a bigger brain = more intelligence, says why this idea failed and ended that segment with a comment basically saying that ‘it may be socially wrong but it might have ’some truth too it’
    after that he moves onto the aspm gene which deals with the brain, claims this gene makes us different from the chimps and uses Shakespeare’s Othello as a example. he then says that a mutation of this gene 6,000 years ago resulted in civilization but then goes on to shoot down his own argument by stating 10% have the new gene, 40% have the old and the rest have both followed by a short few second blurb that there are no studies to link aspm to intelligence. he ends it by painting a picture of how wonderful it will be that mothers will want to screen for this gene.

    the next one will be about how we conquered nature and natural selection no longer applies and how we are unique among animals.

    Comment by truekaiser — 13 August 2006 @ 6:35 PM

36. So… where’s the book?

    Comment by Jeff Lindsay — 3 April 2007 @ 8:07 PM

37. Twelve months in a year, and May is month #6, so I’ve got some time yet. My calendar says June 30 … though, realistically, that’s looking somewhat unrealistic, too….

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 April 2007 @ 11:33 PM

38. Any news on the publication?

    Comment by Dana — 4 July 2007 @ 1:49 AM

39. Haven’t even started.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 10 July 2007 @ 2:42 PM

40. I was always taught that May was month #5…

    Comment by Chuck — 14 July 2007 @ 9:53 PM

41. That’s just ’cause you know how to count.

    Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 July 2007 @ 12:23 PM

42. Hey Jason, have you got your articles in seperate files like .doc or opendocument format?

    Comment by gunnix — 8 November 2007 @ 4:39 PM

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