Deep Kimchi

Every year about this time, we're treated a stoned-out montage of images from the past year, of celebrities who have died (can't think of any...did Amy Winehouse die this past year?), natural disasters (expect plenty of Japan and Fukushima here), various images of wars and other crap. I don't know, maybe it's a handy milestone for some people, a chance to encapsulate all the pointless things they were ignoring for the past solar orbital period.

I think the highlight of the reel this year will be the death of Kim Jong-Il, the man who has ruled over North Korea in a way that would make even Vlad Tepes a little uneasy. Therefore, expect the year-end montage to include images of America's Least Visible War (tm) -- Korea -- to dominate the cycle this go-round. Cause of death was a heart-related ailment. I'll let everyone speculate on their own about the nature, timing, and cause of it.

I've always wondered about the North Koreans, though, what their actual state of mind is. The North Korean broadcasters announcing his death were in tears, but are they crying because there is a soldier offstage with a loaded Makarov who may prove to be their harshest critic, or did they genuinely love the man and buy into the vision of the world which has been pomulgated in North Korea since the late 40s, of the God-hood of the Korean "Maximum Leaders?"

We would be tempted, living in the West, which has generally been free of such delusions since the Enlightenment, to suggest it is fear that keeps people in line and spouting such nonsense, but the Middle Eastern nations have been run by people no less brutal than Kim Jong-Il and have seen one uprising and coup after another since the Cold War. Clearly, some people take to the brainwashing a little better than others, but David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter does a good job at offering insights into the North Korean mindset at the time, and probably up to the current day. Poor, rural, once a great kingdom, but now sandwiched between the warring powers of Russia, China, and Japan (and also the United States, to some degree, now), it's not hard to see how the nation became what it is, after taking a different road from South Korea.

I'm not sure that North Korea isn't necessarily not a blueprint for the future in some cases, especially as modern civilization continues down the road to a new dark age. The siege mentality due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, the tendency to elevate a person to a semi-divine status if they cleverly position themselves as a "savior," ignorance of the wider world as isolation grow and communication breaks down, all seem like ingredients which might be far more common in the future than anyone might guess at the moment.

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I want to take a brief moment to wish all of you a Happy Holiday, be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and so on. Whatever we are going to have to deal with in the future, and whatever the circumstances of our daily lives, we need to reflect and remember that we still have reasons to celebrate and things to find joy in, even in the commonplace. Take a few days off from thinking about where we're going and just appreciate where we are and where we've been. Hug your spouse and your kids. Give your dog or cat an extra scratch behind the ears. Enjoy the days. The best to all of you and your families this year.

Complexities

There's a few items of note in the news lately. One is that Europe has basically recommitted itself to the idea of the European Union, while Britain has increasingly chosen to turn away from it. People are afraid that the job losses we've suffered are permanent. The Republicans cannot really define themselves as a party of opposition, and Obama cannot define himself as a president. Hollywood is tanking again (gas for the week or go to a movie? You decide). Modern industrial civilization seems to have finally lost its way, getting someplace, and not knowing whether to go forward or backward, all the while not understanding that it's on an iceberg that is slowly melting away.

All bets are off, anything is fair game, the ball's in play. These cliches sound good until you realize that apathy is the order of the day. Nothing's getting solved, nothing is being really analyzed. Or, if you want, it can be boiled down to "If you're looking for meaning in the world that has been built over the last hundred or so years, you're wasting your time." It's with this that I want to keep moving forward and exploring where we are going as a civilization and what we do after we get there.

There's been a lot of talk between a slow-crash scenario and a fast-crash scenario in the past, revolving much around what people's perceptions and attitudes are, as much as anything to do with what case is actually mostly likely to happen. We look at the somewhat linear graph of oil availability, point to a definite peak, and assume that since we've gradually built up to this point, that we'll gradually descend on the other side of the slope, giving up plenty of time to make adjustments and see ourselves through.

The problem with this hypothesis is that it shows an ignorance of the theory of complex systems. While I don't want to go to deeply into it, complexity theory generally tends to consist of an energy input into a closed system, such as oil into the system of human civilization. It's a little like running a current through a tube filled with neon gas. All of a sudden, everything is very bright. We also see spontaneous order, in terms of people aligning their economic activity as part of this system.

What is sometimes forgotten, and what is most important for this discussion, is the idea of "feedback." Feedback, in this case, tends to function as a self-correcting mechanism that tends to sustain the system longer than it would potentially otherwise persist. Short-term substitutes are found for oil, there are other ways of working around it, maybe nuclear or solar picks up some of the slack. Think of it as borrowing on credit cards to not only keep the party going, but to build it up bigger and better.

The problem with complex systems is that they also collapse suddenly. The classic example is a traffic jam which creates itself for no reason, leaves us stuck for half an hour, then suddenly dissipates. We drive by, expecting to see construction or a wreck, or something, but there's nothing. It just happened and then it just vanished. (If you want to be really philosophical about it, the same thing is said of the beginning and end of the universe.) So, while we expect that we might be able to see an orderly "powering down," I think the odds of this happening are much, much lower than the odds of seeing everything come to a grinding halt in relatively quick succession.

What this really means for people is that anyone who tends to think that there's plenty of time to figure things out as they happen may be in for a rude shock as people begin to rapidly unplug themselves from the "complex system" and start looking for other ways to get by. In other words, there would be negative feedback on a massive scale, as opposed to the positive feedback (in terms of sustaining the system) that we've seen for years.

A possible example might be with the airlines. Business slows, and ticket prices rise due to fuel costs, so air travel slows. A person working for an airline as a mechanic, for example, might see the writing on the wall and look for something else to make a living at. In turn, this reduces the number of people working on planes, driving up the price for maintenance for existing planes, making air travel even harder to do. More airlines go under, demand for surviving ones rises, putting the ticket price out of reach, etc. This ignores the possibility of cheaper competition jumping into the game, but the barrier to entry for an airline startup is very high, especially when lending has dramatically slowed and investment cash is scarce.

This thinking is obviously open for debate, but it should color how we view the future and how we expect that things may play out. Obviously, an orderly transition to a sustainable world would be best. However, when you've built on top of a house of cards, it's not likely you're going to be taking the stairs out the front door when the winds begin to blow.

Smoking Fires

It seems like the news comes all at once, when it comes. Predictably, there is the usual anecedotes about people rioting over game consoles on Black Friday, much like dwellers in the slums of Paris drinking spilled wine from the filthy gutter in A Tale of Two Cities. I guess the new twist this year is that some enterprising person actually thought to bring a can of pepper spray and let loose with it, getting my vote for "best evolutionary adaptation to a hostile environment." If this isn't good enough, we also have another sports molestation scandal with plenty of "juice" brewing, Chevy Volts catching fire, Miley Cyrus calling herself a "stoner," pick something.

No, there is plenty of real consequence going on in the world over the weekend, with sobering long-term consequences for the failing world system. The first item is the open and official anger in Pakistan over the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by a NATO helicopter, including a Major, something which has tossed gasoline onto the embers of an already-smoldering fire. The second big item on the radar is the resurgence of the Arab Spring, becoming the "Arab fall" as both nationalism and radicalism drive Arabic countries farther away from the sphere of the West. The Occupy Wall Street movement keeps hanging on, defying orders to clear their temporary living places. And, rounding up the hit parade is the continuing Eurozone crisis, where the latest big news was the failure of Germany's bond sale.

Each one of these alone would be a serious problem, but together, they are more signs that the high water mark of modern, global, industrial, civilization is now solidly in the rearview mirror. The chaos in the Arab world is likely to only increase as the true "clash of civilizations" begins -- the Western-backed military dictatorships on one hand versus the Islamist nationalists who have no real incentive to sell cheap oil to the West. What do we have to give them for it, anyway? Increasingly worthless currency? A non-stop flood of semi-pornographic pop culture broadcasting? Even if someone wanted to sell the oil, it would mean trying to get it out of the ground and then to a shipping terminal via vulnerable pipelines. Pakistan is obviously taking a different route, deliberately divorcing itself from NATO, the military expression of Western power.

Domestically, the fact that German bonds aren't finding buyers means that the question of the Western economy is no longer in doubt. There is no confidence in it. The only option is for Germany to begin to monetize its debt, which is when the economy and debt begins to eat itself. When this happened in the 1920s, Germany produced Hitler. Now that it's happening in 2011, we can probably expect Germany to shed the rest of Europe and start going its own way. The problem is, how can this happen once the price of oil doubles or even triples because of events elsewhere in the world? It seems more destined to collapse in on itself.

The Occupy Wall Street movement represents something else entirely. Domestic internal opposition to Western governments, especially in America, has in modern times largely been channeled through the political parties. The Tea Party largely was co-opted by the Republicans, but the OWS movement doesn't seem to have been scooped up by the Democrats in spite of their attempts to become "friendly" toward it. While it doen't really amount to much at the moment, it could very easily become a lightning rod if we see another crash, if the 15% unemployed begin to rally behind it, if gas spikes to seven or eight dollars a gallon (which would effectively collapse the U.S. economy overnight), or if the world market stops buying Treasury bonds, or half a dozen other scenarios. A movement which doesn't really have leaders and doesn't have anything much in common, except a jaundiced view of domestic politics, could grow very quickly and militantly, given the right circumstances.

In the coming weeks and months, I think we'll keep seeing more news items like these, but without much discussion of the significance behind them. The reality of the situation has been beyond the scope of the media, except in a few cases, and the willingness of governments to really tackle them. At a minimum, they are harbingers of a coming, drastic change of modern lifestyles, something that a world system which relies on keeping people comfortable and happy cannot come to grips with. At a maximum, they will in the end mean suffering and disorder on a scale that has not been seen before in human civilization.

Old Fashioned

For those of you who have read James Kunstler's Witch of Hebron, you'll already be familiar with a certain section of the book, but for those who haven't, I'll briefly detail a small part of the story (and leave out spoilers, as it's quite a good read).  As part of some other action in the story, a carbon fiber fly rod and modern spinning reel get broken beyond repair, with one of the characters reminiscing about how it represented the height of materials engineering and would probably never be duplicated again. 

That Mr. Kunstler included this passage speaks a lot to his true grasp of what collapse really means, and serves as a reminder of what we stand to lose once the process really accelerates and the things we have built can't really be replaced easily, if at all.  Take not just fly rods, but consider the idea of not being able to go into a Wal Mart or Bass Pro any longer, and buy your choice of outdoor equipment for those adventures into the RV park campground.  Or, also consider that your outdoor adventures are going to be a whole lot rougher in the future than plugging in a bug zapper and reaching into the cooler for a beer. 

Our ancestors in America -- both native and colonial -- faced the problems of outdoor travel and survival, and often thrived, in spite of rough conditions, while making use of the materials around them and often being forced to be relatively self-sufficient out of necessity, not choice.  Imagine taking a trip cross-country on horseback, or on foot, when roads were little more than muddy wagon-trails, when the idea of a hotel hadn't even been considered yet, and you have to carry your supplies with you on your back, not in the trunk of your car.  However, through the ages, a store of mythology and assumption have been built up around the actions these people took, and how they lived, to where real outdoor survival has taken on something of a surreal veneer at times.

Back in the 40s, one writer, Ellsworth Jaeger (who was also a college instructor on these topics), seeing that there was an increasing interest in people getting back to the outdoors as a reponse to the horrors of World War 2, set out to write a guide called Wildwood Wisdom (here on Amazon) on how things were done back before technology began to affect outdoor life, and is a contrast to other works which assume that the reader has at least some access to modern technology, or isn't dealing with a long-term survival situation.  Instead, his work focuses on life at the point in time right before the West began to really be tamed, when there were still plenty of people who lived in a style that hadn't drastically changed for thousands of years. 

Just as an example, there is plenty of information on how to craft low-tech outdoor clothing, and how it was done back in the pre-industrial period, even including how to lay out a pattern for a buckskin jacket, or a shirt made from a wool blanket.  Other chapters include information on cooking, foraging, shelter, etc, but from the perspective of how it was really done, not someone's modern reinterpretation of how they think it might have been done -- or should have been done.  Even more important, Jaeger's writing focused on day-in and day-out life, not emergency survival situations that most books are focused toward. 

There have been a number of books on the subject written over the years, but I'm not aware of any that have been as comprehensive and down to the basics as Jaeger, or had as much of a focus on the practical daily life skills that people would have practiced away from the "civilization" of the time.  While the Leibowitz Society advocates and practice preserving ideas from the modern age, such as cosmology and higher mathematics, the other focus is on the ability of people to survive from day to day in rough conditions, making a book like this invaluable for anyone who sees the collapse coming and is working to prepare for it.

Delusional Thinking

Normally, I spend some time thinking about my posts and trying not to react off-the-cuff to items in the news and statements by public figures, as these just exist in passing in the grand scheme of things, but I heard a radio talk show host today railing against the idea of windmills and how foolish "green" (renewable) energy was to pursue, when fossil fuels were much cheaper and packed more energy, and could provide energy for 1/4 the cost.

Well, that's true for right now, but I can also go outside without a coat on today and not worry about freezing to death.  What about the future?

Really, what this represents is just the modern incarnation of fable of the grasshopper and the ant, and a stark reminder of how intellectually bankrupt most "mainstream" thinking has become.  Yes, we can use fossil fuels.  Yes, it is cheaper, more efficient, and packs more concentrated energy than solar, wind, tidal, etc.  It's more portable.  But...how long is it going to last?  This is such a simple concept -- if we use it up, it's gone.  It's that easy to figure out.

I wish I could capture the tone of the host, the sheer arrogance, the scorn at the suggestion of exploring things other than fossil fuels.  At least admit that they won't last forever...people raise their children with the idea of making them responsible adults and contributing something of value to the world, but why don't they take those same ideals and embrace the idea of guiding society and human civilization to be responsible and of benefit to future generations?

Americans take pride in the feat of their ancestors -- freeing the nation from the Royal yoke of England.  We take pride in electing our leaders.  However, there has long been a small minority of people who think we would be better off with a king or queen, because then the leader of the nation would have an incentive to pass on an intact nation to their heirs.  While this is probably just a fantasy, the reality is that we lack any kind of core guidance and desire to correct the course of industrial civilization much beyond token gestures and feel-good measures that have nothing to do with patching the holes in a rapidly-sinking ship.  


Of course, it doesn't have to be this way.  We could make decisions to move toward more efficient forms of transportation, live, work, shop, and play in small self-contained communities, moderate our energy use, etc, but this won't happen.  Unless we are burning our candle at both ends, people are always going to complain it's too dark. 

What are they going to do when the candle is gone and the lights are never coming back on?

Meltdowns and Buffers

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan is shaping up to be one of those events that no one knows the true extent of until it's well in the rear view mirror.  Going from a death toll of a hundred or so, into the tens of thousands now, with no one really sure of what the real toll is, confusion over the actual state of nuclear plants in Japan, if they've melted down or not, store shelves emptying, etc. 

The Middle East is still in turmoil, although the disaster in Japan and short attention spans have pushed it off the front pages for the moment.  However, tensions are still high in many places there and it doesn't seem like it would take much for things to get out of hand quickly again, especially now that the reformers in Egypt are not satisfied with the choices they're being given and want to move to a more civilianized government.  The lid is still on Saudi unrest, but once people have the idea of self-determination in their minds, it's hard to get rid of.
In the United States (and in Europe), there is the question of where the economy is going.  In spite of some items of good news.  Rising oil prices have a good chance of crippling whatever recovery is currently going on and leaving a large portion of the American population ever less certain of their future.

 In chemistry, a "buffer" is any substance which tries to keep a system at a certain state, such as a pH buffer which will prevent acidity in a solution from rising or falling below a certain value.  However, at some point, the buffer can't adjust for what's being put into the solution and the nature of the solution will dramatically change almost immediately (going from neutral to very acidic, for example). With nuclear reactors, the various control mechanisms which keep the reaction from running out of control serve the same function.

What we seem to be seeing now is a test of our modern industrial civilization's ability to "buffer" events.  We have various reserves and institutions which are designed to provide precisely this function, but they can only work so long and go so far.  Japanese society, for example, was able to cope with an economic crisis in the early 90s, but can it deal with the physical, economic and social damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami?  The Middle East has long been kept in a statis by Cold War legacy politics and a conservative religion and mindset, yet those controls are no longer able to keep events in check -- which way will things go once that buffer is gone?  And, in America, we've been able to deal with the economic events so far, including spikes in oil prices, but at what point are we going to see the systems we've built to handle these shocks give way?  Already, some politicians are calling for the strategic oil reserve (a fool's errand) to help control oil prices.  What's going to be next on the horizon as we sink into the next dip of the recession?

Ultimately, what this points to, from a perspective of collapse, is that we really have no way of knowing how long what we've built can hold out against unforeseen events.  We can maintain things for so long, but like the buoyancy of a boat that is suddenly overwhelmed  from flooding, we're not going to know it until it's too late, even though we've seen it coming from a long way off.  We need to make sure we're prepared and able to cope with events as they occur, and when they overwhelm our civilization's ability to deal with them effectively.

Returns

As the readers of this blog know, I've been away for a while, but now I'm back.  Thank you for the inquiries and compliments that many of you've sent in my absence and I feel both bad for making you send them and glad that you did.

Over the years that I've studied how civilizations collapse (and personal survival long before that), I've run into a lot of people who have inexplicable faith in the future.  They look at the past, see that there have been many problems which have come up, then looked at the solutions to those problems, then look at the future, assuming that the past is our guide.  In truth, we are entering new territory -- the point in time where we have absolutely no model for a mismanaged and overextended civilization, outside of how Rome fell.  People cannot contemplate the end of things, either of their own lives, or the "world" which has been built for them and which they in turn have built on. 

When we have the "balls" to point out to them that "Hey, your false idols are going to topple sooner or later, probably sooner," they have mixed reactions, from looking at us like we're a little nuts, to downright hostility to question the worldview which they have put so much faith into.  And, in truth, there are a few maladjusted "doom junkies" who, for deep psychological reasons, would love to see billions die off and humanity collapse back into the paleolithic for a long downhill slide.  But, for the rest of us, we live in the same space that enthusiastic optimists do...we go to the same places, have the same kinds of friends, like the same kind of food.  The only real difference is that we have taken a look at the future, with an unbiased eye, and know there's no way to escape the coming storm.  We're not happy about the way things are turning out, how the optimism of the 1950s has turned into the denial of 2011. 

This is not an easy thing to deal with.  Sometimes, we just have to take a breath, go smell the roses for a while, waste time in a hobby or other form of distraction.  We look at the abyss, but the abyss definitely looks back at us.  All the time.  For those of us who write publicly about these topics, who spent hours thinking about the collapse of modern civilization, poring over every last scrap of relevant information and item of bad news, it's even more painful to keep going and writing on the subject.  The truth is, when people call us"doom and gloom" for speaking the truth, we all too well know what a price there is to pay for going down this road of inquiry in the first place.  It gets hard to enjoy modern life, when you know it's getting late in the day and there's a cold, hard rain coming.  Not just modern life, with the bells and whistles, but everything.  Sometimes, we have to walk away for a little while, but we come back stronger than before, with more resolve, because we know that we can at least reach a few people who will take this to heart.

Not that I've ever cared much critics, and not that I would ever quit writing because someone got mad because I suggested that all they take for granted today will likely be gone in a few years -- to quote Austin Collins -- "It's easier to offend you than to hold my breath for days."  Instead, if I ever quit again, it's because I need to take a break and rediscover why I'm here and why I do what I do.  In the meantime, there's plenty of material to write about, including the battle over unions and what it really means in America, to the collapse of regimes in the middle east (bonus points to anyone who thinks that civil war in oil-producing regions is going to hose our economy once more), to personal preparedness.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for being real out there, not people lying to yourselves.

Dealing with the Devil

As the modern world system slowly collapses under its own weight and a lack of will to make effective transitional changes, there is a lingering question of what is going to emerge on the other side to replace our current system of governance and authority.  This isn't an academic question -- as people struggle during and after a global collapse, there will be a scramble to try to find a stable position in a radically different sort of world.  There often seems to be an unwritten assumption that people will be able to live in a relatively autonomous state of existence, made possible by being relatively self-sufficient (growing their own food) and relatively able to defend themselves (having some rifles and ammo stored away).  After all, this was the case at least part of the time on the American frontier, which was itself a relatively authority-free place.

Building on this assumption is the idea of an "us vs. them" mentality, where people who aren't savory are going to either be shunned or disposed of outright as their base impulses outweight the "frontiersman's" tolerance of their existence.  In other words, part of the post-collapse existence is expected to be a removal of people from the earth because they are not the kind of people you'd invite to a backyard barbeque.  Unfortunately, I don't think the reality of the situation is going to be that simple.

For people who haven't yet read James Howard Kunstler's "A World Made by Hand," I strongly advise that those people purchase a copy and give it a read.  While people have differing opinions on the quality of the story (I personally thought it was a good read and finished it more quickly than I do most fiction), the genius of the book was, I believe, in how it represented the clash of five different possible emergent cultures in a new Dark Age -- the townies, the religious movement, the neo-feudal estate, gangters running a town, and the "outcasts" -- the people who ran the scavenger dump in town. 

While it's been a while since I've read the novel, the outcasts were the people who most closely embodied the trope of the "Mutant Zombie Biker" -- lawless people who tend to live violent, hedonic lifestyles and care little more than what's going to happen in the here and now.  Their form of entertainment includes drinking, drugs and live sex shows on a makeshift stage, as well as kids hammering out acoustic version of Metallica (with less skill that Apocalyptica, I would guess).  In effect, they had become a new culture, a modern tribe, if you will.

What was interesting in JHK's novel was the fact that the outcasts were also the same people who were able to provide nails and other building supplies, metal, spare parts, glass bottles, whatever, even if they lacked the technical skill to maintain and run internal combustion engines.  The great irony of course, was that society had cast off these people both as garbage and the garbage that occupied the dump, yet were now coming to depend on them.

This was a fictional example, of course, but it raises a good question -- at some point, as the collapse intensifies, are we going to be put into a situation where we are trying to preserve our ideological principles and social class orientation on one hand, and on the other hand, trying to do what we need to do to survive by being forced to interact with people we do not particularly care for?  The fact that we are going to see many new subcultures emerge, as the ability of the global media to maintain and propagate one cultural norm vanishes, means that this will no longer be an academic question, but one which needs careful examination as we slowly move forward into a new world.

Unhappy New Year

The turning of the year is a time for many things -- optimism, reflection, melancholy, a chance for renewal or regret.  Somewhere, hidden in all the messages that bombard us during this time of year, there is one unwritten one -- the assumption that things will be okay, that we'll be here again next year, once more drowning the unpleasant thoughts in bottles of cheap champagne or randomly mixed drinks that are only slightly less toxic than if they were made with antifreeze instead of Everclear. 

The problem with this message is that it's absurdly, completely, patently wrong.  There are many parties complicit in spreading the message -- the media who increasingly see their role as mood management of the public, the advertisers whose support the media depends on, the people in government who have no real idea how to steer us out of this mess, and most of all we the people who lie to ourselves about our rosy future and how people are looking out for our best interests, much like a women whose husband comes home at two in the morning smelling of gas station perfume tells herself he's really working late every night.

The simple fact is that we've basically run out of manuvering time and space.  Much like a plane that just lost an engine, is sinking slowly, and can't maintain altitude long enough to reach a runway, our modern global industrial civilization has become boxed into an envelope of increasingly shrinking options.  Our ability to steer our way out of the mess has vanished under a massive, international case of self-delusion and political paralysis, where the honest men who tell the truth are branded as fools and nutjobs, people to be laughed at instead of taken seriously when they deliver warning after warning about where we're headed.

We could have once corrected the course, but that time is past.  Even now, with the writing on the wall for our civilization, we can look at the next bizarre round of political infighting between the Republicans and Democrats that's about to occur, like two people wrestling for a silver-plated candleabra as the waves wash over the ballroom deck of the Titanic.  The real lesson to be learned from this is that there's no real chance for any meaningful change in the country, guiding things to a somewhat softer landing as we readjust to the new realities of living in a post-collapse world.  Instead, when we do hit, it'll be far harder and worse than anything people might've once expected or hoped for.

So, it's the time for New Years resolutions.  Instead of resolving to lose some of those holiday pounds, to quit smoking or whatever else comes to mind, I suggest an alternative -- resolve to start using the time, energy and resources we have now to prepare for what's coming down the road for us all.  Make sure we have a way of making a living that will survive the collapse.  Make sure we are able to protect our health when the system of modern medicine fails.  Make sure we have friends and family that we can depend on -- and let them know they can depend on us, even if the subject of collapse never comes up.  Get involved and give back to the community when you can.  Finally, resolve to keep preserving knowledge for the future age when humanity crawls out from the rubble and decides to take another crack at getting it right. 

Happy New Year, everyone.  Let's make the most of it.

Optimal Action

(my apologies for the extended break -- I have found that reflecting too much on the cancerous collapse of our modern system begins to build up a toxic residue of thought and emotion to where it's necessary to step back from it for a few days and meditate on other things for a time...I advise everyone to do this now and then to avoid settling into a state of despair)

Modern life has been the antithesis of most of human history in a number of ways.  In truth, we have been able to successfully avoid being bound by many of the same rules of reality of our ancestors, as the largesse of modern civilization has allowed us to at times coast in our lives, knowing that there has been so much surplus wealth and resources accumulated that, until recently, it took almost conscious effort to starve to death in the United States.  Obviously, while conditions have been changing in recent years, there is still plenty of "the fat of the land" to live on. 

As we begin to move through the initial stages of collapse, however, we're going to see conditions change radically.  Most people are familiar with wilderness survival, especially the survival "reality" shows.  While they range from comical (Survivor) on one end, to serious (Dual Survival) on the other, one point which is often stressed is that there is no room for error when it comes to personal survival.  Misplaced priorities or actions which have no direct benefit to a person or group can cost valuable time, energy and supplies.  Simply put, as things get more "lean," there is less and less room for anything which doesn't directly benefit a person or group.

Some people may be familiar with Brian Tracy, the motivational writer.  One of his books, Focal Point, decribes a (possibly apocyphal) situation about a power plant that is having output problems.  An engineer is brought in to look at the problem, spends a day there and marks an X on a malfunctioning gauge.  The gist of Mr. Tracy's thesis is that we need to be able to find where to direct our efforts to do the most good.

Likewise, members of the Leibowitz Society need to start learning where and how to put their efforts as conditions in the modern world steadily worsen.  In response to this, I would like to present a concept called "Optimal Action."  Optimal Action is the idea that when we are in a siutation, we need to be able to make the best of our available choices in a logical manner that will have the least negative impact and most positive impact for our long-term survival.  An easy example is, if we are dehydrated and starving, and having a choice between food and water, choosing the water over the food, as it's more vital to immediate survival.  Obviously, there are going to be many situations that are less clear-cut than that.

While this seems like a logical thing to keep in mind, the problem we face is that as conditions worsen, we are going to find ourselves in situations of more and more stress, with limited time to respond and limited information on which to base that response.  We need to remember to keep focused on what is going to benefit us the most even as we are being pulled in many different directions. 

The Terror Time

(no, this is not about people deciding for some odd reason to blow themselves up)

Most of us tend to treat the arrival of winter with a relatively casual demeanor.  Sure, we may be inconvenienced by having to scrape off the car in the morning, or not like bundling up in warm clothes, or may find that our houses are a little draftier than we first thought.  Even the first big snows (for those who live where it does snow) is greeted with a little uncertainty, but after the first day or so, the roads are open again and we can be on our way.  On the other end of the spectrum, we look forward to holiday celebrations or being able to sit near a roaring fire.

All this, of course, is a relatively modern development.  In the past, things were drastically different and the approach of winter was heralded with dread.  For example, an old Celtic folk song called "The Terror Time" details the misery and plight of displaced crofters trying to find someplace to hole up and last out winter until there is work again in the spring.  Even if you had your own house, imagine huddling around a fire in the dead of winter, with little to do but last out the season and tend to the animals, hoping there would be enough food to hold everyone over until spring.

This should be a reminder that the modern world really is not prepared for the kind of weather we're now facing in  North America, if we suffer a serious disruption to our infrastructure as collapse goes on.  Modern homes are not designed to operate without electrical power to blow heated throughout a house and many, if not most, modern homes don't even have a fireplace or wood stove for warmth.  Really, many of us in winter live a little like astronauts -- we dress for the inevitable dash to the car, then from the car into a building.  If heating oil becomes scarcer or priced out of sight, if electrical production becomes less and less reliable, then what? 

The answer to the problem is, of course, to make sure that, if we are building new at some point, to plan to stay warm if the grid fails, by building partly underground or by using other principles.  This, of course, still leaves the question open of how most people are going to face winter if they are not properly prepared for it, which I think will be around ninety percent of the people in the industrial world.  Most people remember Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs, shelter being one of them, and it should be clear how far people would be from being able to meet them.  Unfortunately, I think that as we struggle to adjust to the reality of the coming Dark Age, winter is once again going to be the Terror Time for many, many people.

Can-Do Optimism

(with apologies to the ghost of Voltaire for the pun)

Recently, in the comments, the topic of optimism came up, which set me to thinking for a bit.  I'm sure a number of people have been to "doomer" forums, where the constant refrain is "we are sooooo screwed!"  or some other variation.  Even the term "doomer" tends to carry a tone which implies near-helplessness in the face of bleak inevitability.  The general thinking is that there is little which can be done in the face of what is seeming to be an unstoppable perfect storm, a gathering of forces which will effectively destroy modern, orderly industrial civilization and leave us with a shell of our former existence.

There is some merit to the notion that we are effectively helpless to alter the course of events which are bringing us to the brink of collapse and a new Dark Age.  For example, the American debt is so vast that, eventually, the nation will be unable to even cover the interest payments on it.  Even confiscating all private money and taxing people all their income will do little to put a dent in it.  Peak oil, and the lack of a substitute for cheap energy is going to force a drastic adjustement in the life of the average person.  And so on. 

In this, I think there are two different types of people drawn to the idea that a new Dark Age is going to occur -- people who are naturally pessimistic and people who have taken a good, hard look at the current mess we're gettiing into and believe there's no realistic way out of it.  I fall into the latter category, myself.  I would prefer that our future wasn't likely going to be an inevitable collapse, but it doesn't seem there is anyone at the helm of the ship and the iceberg is rapidly approaching. 

This doesn't mean we have to be pessimistic, to be the mandatory "panicky idiot" (Simpsons reference) while we are trying to figure out a way to deal with these problems on a personal level.  Take "Dark Age" and substitute "cancer."  Would anyone want to be the person who ran around in public saying "I have cancer!  I am so screwed!"  No, there's no respect for a person who would take a personal struggle and react to it that way, so why do we take a social struggle and accept that kind of behavior and thinking?  Speaking in terms of survival stories from the modern day, it's always been the person who refused to accept defeat that managed to survive, while the person who accepted despair was the one who didn't make it (and possibly provided nutrition for the people who were more positive).

So, while it may seem a little odd to consider myself to be an optimist, I in turn look at things this way.  We can see the new Dark Age coming, even though we're still in the very early stages.  All the warning signs of the collapse of civilization -- overspent, overextended, lack of innovation, etc -- are there if we choose to see them for what they are.  This gives us time to reflect and prepare, to consider what we need to do and where we're going to be, both physically and mentally, as the lights go out.  This is a luxury that the people who are on a boat which has wrecked on a deserted island or have survived a crash landing on the frozen tundra don't have and we should be grateful for it.

To wrap up, I'll leave you with a quote from the late Mel Tappan, the "father" of modern survivalism.  Someone wrote a letter in response to one of his columns that essentially said "I don't want to live in the kind of world you're describing."  Mr. Tappan wrote back "I wouldn't want to die in it, myself."  That is where I think we all need to be.

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A quick note -- I enabled anonymous comments the other day, not realizing that they were not enabled.  If posting gets out of hand, I can always disable them, but I appreciate that there are people who want to keep their participation in the Leibowitz Society anonymous for various reasons.  The more feedback and input we receive, the better formed and more useful the Codex and Repository down the road.  As always, thanks to those who participate in discussions.

Survival Hacking

The Wikileaks controversy/scandal/nightmare has once again brought the term "hacker" back into the public discussion.  For a large number of people in the general public, the word "hacker" has connotations of the misuse of technology, usually for purposes of theft or digital vandalism.  However, other people who have known hackers have a more balanced view, realizing that there are a large number of people who are considered "hackers" that instead like to take existing technology and find ways of using it to do new things that the original designers never intended it to do.  These hackers are also often employed in various technical and academic fields and find that their experience with hacking helps them better understand the technology they work with, as well as providing value added benefits to their employers.

Hacking doesn't just extend to high-tech devices, but also to low-tech ones and situations as well, and several examples come to mind.  The first one is from watching Pair Survival, when Cody Lundin made a "canteen" out of a plastic bag and a hollowed out piece of wood.  Following this, there is the often-cited advice to carry a condom or two as a spare water container.  Next on the list is whoever thought to take surplus SKS bayonets and make tent pegs out of them (they're not going to break like flimsy plastic and can be driven into almost any kind of ground).  Finally, if anyone watched the second season of The Colony, the survivors rendered down rotten pigs to make ersatz diesel fuel.

While there are countless other examples, I wanted to use them to point out the difference between improvisation and "hacking," which is putting technology to a new use.  For example, if you don't have a rain poncho, and you have a garbage bag, it can be an improvised poncho.  This is basically substituting one thing for another thing of similar form and substance.  "Hacking," by contrast is taking something and thinking of a radically new and different use for it. 

As civilization moves into the next Dark Age, there are going to be plenty of pieces of technology available, but people will see them and not be able to think of uses for them.  If we are able to think like hackers, finding new and inventive ways to use what's just sitting around, then we are going to be one step ahead of the game of personal survival and better able to preserve and protect our accumulated knowledge.

Wikileaks

   Most people have already seen the headlines about Wikileaks, as well as the outraged blowback from the global leadership.  The details of the content itself are irrelevant, as is the revelation of what people in other nations think about what is being said about them -- I'm sure that Vladimir Putin probably has some distinctly unkind things to say about his counterparts, even as he does business with them.  No one is vain enough to think that nothing bad is said about them or that everyone likes them, even at the level of national leadership. 

   What is relevant from the perspective of the Leibowitz Society is the fact that these secrets were able to be released in the first place.  Much like a bickering family, the global community of nations has its share of arguments, disagreements, and grudges.  Yet there is also a need for national leaderships to be able to talk to each other and sort out these problems and disagreements out of the sight of the public eye where leaders can be frank and not worry about what other nations are thinking of what they are doing, nor worry about public reaction where the public may not have the whole picture. 

   National leaderships, when they communicate, are using trust as their currency of exchange, in essence.  They have to be able to trust that what is being said is going to stay between them in order to be able to have open and free communication and private.  Now that these leaks have exposed things that weren't meant to be exposed, is this going to lead to a climate where national leaderships begin refusing to discuss private matters, or at least are much more guarded when it comes to these serious matter?  For all the talk of "information wants to be free," the flip side of the coin is that there needs to be some sense of the consequences of releasing some information.

   In a way, this parallels the increasingly shaky monetary system in the world, especially the troubles with the dollar and being tied to the massive United States debt.  Just as nations will begin losing faith in the ability of the currency to reflect any kind of value, they will also begin losing faith in the worthiness of diplomatic communications to resolve problems that might otherwise grow to be more drastic and require more extreme solutions (economic or actual war).  Once nations quit trading with each other and quit talking with each other, we are one more step toward a new Dark Age.

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    I wanted to add a brief note here.  While I talk a lot about how economics, and unsustainable economic practices, are related to ,and contributing to, the next Dark Age, I think it's worth mentioning that humanity can experience a Dark Age from a number of sources, be it war, plague, a meteor strike and so on.  Imagine what the effect would have been on the world had the Black Plague been 95% lethal, instead of around 33%?  Or if we saw a very nasty strain of bird flu erupt?  The odds of all these things happening are not necessarily high, but they are real enough for people to at least put some thought to how to get though them.  I want to encourage people to think of ways how to rebuild afterward, not just survive.

Rumors of War

   Since part of the mission statement of the Leibowitz Society is to chronicle the collapse of the world into a new Dark Age, as well as preparing to save civilization's accumulated important knowledge, I check the news often to see what is happening with domestic and world affairs.  If I didn't think it wasn't important to at least record some historical milestones, I probably wouldn't bother.  After all, there's very little at this point we can do to make a difference in anything and instead we need to concentrate on our own "golden parachutes," so to speak.

   Usually the news is boring and repetitive, like another half point rise in unemployment claims.  It is very sad for the people who are affected (and there is a piece on this over at The Economic Collapse blog I highly, highly recommend:  http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/tent-cities-homelessness-and-soul-crushing-despair-the-legacy-of-decades-of-government-debt-and-mismanagement-of-the-economy), but not dramatic from a historical point of view.  This morning, however, I check the news and see that a new Korean War is on the verge of breaking out.  It's hard to say if this will be just another border incident, or if it will break out into open fighting.  Things can sometimes get out of hand with very little notice, like World War One, so who knows what the ultimate outcome will be.  The First Korean War itself isn't well known to most people, but the roots of the conflict, growing from centuries of Korea being ground between one power in the region and another, are interesting to study and I highly recommend David Halberstam's history of the war, The Coldest Winter.  While it is detailed, he was an excellent writer and the volume is very readable.

   Taking a step back, the possibility of war is often mentioned in both fiction and non-fiction dealing with the topic of collapse.  One point of note is that survivalist writings often include war as the cause or precursor to collapse, such as in Alas Babylon, while doomers often write of war in the expectation that it will come in due course as resources dwindle and people for survival.  I think a third view is relevant, that wars of opportunity may break out as nations scramble for position when they see weakness displayed by their neighbors or rivals.  This is critically important to people who are looking for a safe haven as conditions deteriorate.  After all, there is an anecdotal story about a man who was looking to escape the then-coming World War 2, who moved to Guadalcanal(!). 

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   The other story which seems to have been in the news a lot lately is the backlash over extra TSA screening.  Flying is really not the most pleasant experience to begin with, and facing an overly "personal" experience like this isn't going to endear it to many more people.  In the end, while I think the policies will be changed, it may be too late by that point to rehabilitate the flying experience in the mind of the public.  Flying itself has really always been a luxury item for the majority of the population, a necessity for some (due to work), but it has also represented a major step in creating a global community of sorts -- after all, a person can get on a plane and be halfway around the world in a day or so, something that would take a week or two by ship (not an inconsiderable amount of time).  It contributed to making the world smaller, and when it once again becomes a luxury item available only to the wealthy (due to high fuel prices and the fact that the airline industry is something of a "bubble" industry to begin with), we will see the world begin to grow much larger again, something that is a hallmark of a Dark Age.

Have a Knife Day

   From time to time, I plan to share my insights on the use of tools and equipment, as well as things that I think which may be useful to keep in mind as the global economy stumbles into the dustbin of history.  While I think that dealing with the change from a functioning world system to a completely broken one is going to mostly be a matter of thinking on your feet and having a plan in place, there's no denying that certain pieces of gear, which are readily available in the industrial world, could be very valuable as time goes on.

   In what is arguably the best fantasy novel I've read the last year, The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, one of the main characters says that you can never have enough knives.  By and large, unless you have several dozen in a sack over your shoulder (and you're not selling them), I tend to agree.  Right now, knives are cheap to purchase, especially if you keep an eye out for deals.  Recently, I found someone selling closeout Smith and Wesson folding knives for a fraction of their original list price and bought several, some to give as gifts, some to keep for myself.  As time goes on, companies go out of business and the economy fails, production of knives is going to slow and prices are going to go up (both from scarcity of product and the inevitable inflation which is coming thanks to Quantitative Easing 2, 2+1, 2+n...).  People may still manufacture knives, especially in home workshops, but the quality may be questionable unless you're very familiar with the person and their work.

   The variety of knife is important, too.  Even when common sense thinks people should know better, I've seen plenty of mistakes with trying to use the wrong knife for the wrong purpose.  I think my favorite example was someone who was using a Gerber Mark II (!) for cleaning fish.  Likewise, people have used butcher knifes for offense and defense, folding knives for survival knives and knives are too-often used as screwdrivers. 

   Knives, of course, are a good self-defense tool, as well as working tool, too.  Most areas of the world tightly regulate firearms, but knives are somewhat less regulated.  While, obviously, a factory-made knife is probably going to be superior in quality to what is made by hand, it's still possible to produce a decent and functional knife from a file, spring or some other appropriately sized and shaped piece of metal.  In a pinch, they can be improvised from bone, glass, plastic or stone.  Learning to use a knife for self-defense is not a difficult task, as there is ample intruction available in the form of videos, books, class, etc.  It should be noted that most knife violence doesn't seem to occur the way it is often pitched in knife circles, however -- the idea of two people drawing their knives and squaring off for a duel seldom, if ever, happens.  The Logic of Steel by James LaFond does a good job of dispelling some of the myths about knives and knife violence (hint:  it's often done by people who don't have training and who seldom use fancy "tactical" knives) and I highly recommend it.

   Of the choice of knives on the market, they are limitless, as is advice on what knife to choose.  From my own personal experience, I think there are three types which every person should own -- a fixed blade "survival" knife, a utility-style folder and a multitool.  I've used the Cold Steel SRK in the past and found it to be a heavy, tough, effective no-frills knife.  With care, it should last a long time and a lot of use.  As far as utility-style folders go, there are a million choices on the market.  Cold Steel also makes excellent knives in this category, although one of my favorites was a little $25 folder from Rigid (in Ireland) which has seen a lot of use.  I do think it's a good idea to have a folder you can easily open with one hand.  Finally, there are also a ton of multitools on the market as well.  If anything, I think these are there to save your knife from things it was not meant to be used for -- plus, the pliers will come in handy for times that you would ever expect if you've never owned or used a multitool before.

   The long and short is that a knife is a tool you will not think about until you need it, and if you do need it, you'll be glad it was there.  Now is the time to be thinking about purchasing your knives, not when the lights are going out.

Arms and the Man

   The next "Codex Universalis" topic, that of self-defense and military subjects, is probably going to be somewhat controversial for some readers.  In the popular mind, survivalism is often associated with violence, and the topic of violence itself is not one that people necessarily want to think about.  People who claim to be "survivalists" often have large armories, more firearms and ammo than they could ever hope to use, in anticipation of the collapse of civilization being a time of nonstop violence, something that sometimes brings unwanted attention from the police and media.  On top of this, people often don't want to think about having to defend their lives and the lives of their loved ones.  They also don't want to think about having to try to protect their food and supplies, as they are often feel charitable impulses -- "I would be happy to share if I had enough to share."  These topics are often viewed with suspicion in the light of a more security-conscious modern world.  Finally, there is the potential for good old "pissing contests," where people claim to be ex-Special Ops badasses, or gun gurus, or just want to argue about which caliber is better, probably the most complete waste of time on the planet.

   Unfortunately, the view that the new Dark Ages will be more violent than what we are accustomed to is probably not without merit.  Part of the impetus for establishing systems of control in the Middle Ages was due to the ever-present threat of external invasions, as well as internal violence and strife.  Banditry itself has been a staple feature of human society and a serious problem even up into modern times, regardless of what it's called or who is doing it.  The fact that people can travel relatively free from threat of being attacked in modern first-world nations is, like many other parts of first-world life, an anamoly compared to most of history.  One the carefully assembled systems of control are gone, due to lack of resources and interest in controlling banditry, it's likely that we will see a return to this lifestyle in many places.  Murder rates, also, which have fallen dramatically century-by-century since the Middle Ages (when reliable estimates can be made), can be expected to climb.  One can imagine they were even higher during the Dark Ages, when there was little lawful authority organized to prevent crimes or catch criminals.

   Part of the Leibowitz Society's emphasis on preserving knowledge is creating safe havens for it to be stored and taught.  In turn, this means that these safe havens need to have some sort of ability to be "safe" -- in other words, protect themselves from people who want to loot and pillage.  This in turn raises the question of what people consider to be a lawful entity, with a "right" to obtain resources from a community in turn for protection, such as a conventional military or police force, but political restructurings and debates are really beyond the scope of the Leibowitz Society.  The fact remains that there may well be times when people and communities will need to protect themselves and trying to ignore this fact is setting people up for failure if they are trying to accomplish the goals of the Society. 

   Equally, it is important to emphasize the need to cooperate with legitimate authority.  The point of the Society is to preserve, protect and interpret knowledge.  Some people make take this as a copout, selling out to a ruling class or political elite, but the simple truth is that most people are going to be looking for security and stability in a time and place where it's gotten scarce.  In the industrialized world, exposure to violence is not a common part of the lives of most people.  For anyone who's had to deal with an aggressive or violent person by themselves, the first thing running through their mind is wishing they had a gun (or a bigger) gun.  The second is wishing they had some backup. 

   There is also mention of WMDs in the topics list, something that might provoke a little surprise and discussion.  I think it's not unrealistic that these weapons may be used at some point by one power or another, or terrorists, as resources grow scarcer and tensions rise.  Therefore, while the Society does not include information on the construction or delivery of these items, there is information on the effects of these weapons, what they can do and how/when they are used to allow people to seek refuge from them (maybe it's not realistic, but I'd be just as happy to see these things vanish from the human conciousness forever). 

   The bright side to all this is that even with a breakdown in lawful authority's ability to protect people, and increasing rates of violence, most people can still probably expect to go through life without having to feel like they are living in a warzone.  When we look at the history of times past, the violence and wars stand out, because they simply get more attention in the historical record.  One interesting anecedote that opposes this was the career of Ulrich von Lichtenstein, the alias of the protagonist in the Knight's Tale.  Von Lichtenstein was born in a period of relative peace, in the height of the Middle Ages.  Knights of the era were expected to glorify themselves in battle, but he was instead forced to distinguish himself in tournaments and through his writing, dying at the ripe old age of 78.  If anything, we can draw hope from his example and realize that peace can still be possible in a rougher time.

Searching Behavior

   Most of us are familiar with the psychological concept of "searching behavior," wherein a person who has experienced a recent loss of a close family member or friend will think they have seen a glimpse of that person in familiar places, or have heard their voice at some point.  In more profound cases, it can even extend to hallucinations of the dead person.  Sometimes, people become obsessed with thoughts of the deceased and may even look for them, based on these cues.

   Likewise, as human civilization enters a decline, then collapse, I would expect that many of us are going to experience a similar phenomenon.  We take clean, running water for granted.  We expect that we can have light and warmth at the flip of a switch.  We know that we can jump in our car, fill up with gas at the station and drive down to the local Starbucks for cup of hot coffee (I'm partial to Caffè Americano, myself).  The grocery, with a huge variety of food, and the doctor, with a huge variety of medical treatments, are close by, as well.  If we need to fix our house, building supplies are readily available.  If we're bored, there is plenty of entertainment to be had.  Movies, books, video games, sports, etc, are all available at the touch of a button.  If we want to go to a far-off place, there are highways and airplanes to take us there.  Finally, it is almost trivial to communicate with people, no matter where they're at -- cell phones and Email have made it instant and easy.

   On a conscious level, most people who are aware of the issues we are facing, and have begun to prepare for them, accept this reality of change and will be more able to adjust to it.  For those who are still thinking in terms of our current crisis being a temporary one, I expect it will be a rude awakening when they realize they cannot obtain food or fuel at any price (because there's simply none to be had), that the lights are not going to come on how many times they hit the switch and that they cannot call 911 for emergencies any longer.  (Jim Kuntler did a nice job of illustrating this sort of thinking when he wrote of the protagonist in A World Made By Hand leaving his radio and television on just in case the power would come on and stay on and there would be something to see)  Combine the stress of trying to live one's daily life in a world of increasing scarcity and uncertainty, along with the psychological reaction to searching for the ghost of a former, greater time and I tend to think that the important things which should be stored and remembered will be instead quickly forgotten.  Who has time for mathematics when they are grieving the loss of the world they knew?

   An even more profound sense of loss will come, I think, when people begin to realize that the systems and society that we have so carefully and thoughtfully built, and implemented over the last couple of hundred years, has completely fallen apart.  While we put faith in religious matters, we also have faith that there are people in business and government who are actively working to fix issues as they occur and that social stability will be a relative constant.  The events of the past few years have clearly shown that some politicians are willing to do risky things in order to keep the voting public happy, but beyond that, some problems are so fundamental and hard to see coming or understand that it is imposible to deal with them until it's too late.  It's easy to become angry at that point, and that is where much of the bitterness of some writers comes into play.  Humanity has done a terrible job of managing energy and resource in the last several decades.  We've gone from living in a world of progress, where scientists and inventors were the heroes, to living in a world of comfort, where actors and atheletes are the new royalty.  What will be the reaction when people realize those they have followed down a dead-end road of decadence have no more answers than they do?

   In any case, these are things that members of the Society should keep in mind as the world progresses into a new dark age.  It is fair to remember the past, but unfair to the future if we grieve for the past and forget the things which matter most.

Pompous Circumstances

   The last few days have seen an interesting combination of events.  "Interesting" is a loaded word at times and the current convergence should be especially of note from the perspective of the Society.  It should be noted that there's many different ways to interpret a given set of events, what they mean in the context of a larger discussion, and so on.  What's is often lost in discussions of events is the fact that the conditions exist which allowed the event occur in the first place are often as significant as the event.

   The first is the staggering Republican victory in the midterm elections last week.  It's up to the individual reader if they think this is a good thing or a bad thing from the perspective of improving the conditions of the country.  I tend to take another view, that is, the damage to the financial system is so profound and the changing set of circumstances that America and the global economy are in have progressed the point of being able to be fixed.  Given the inertia of the debt problem, and the fact that the Republicans are already back pedaling on not touching the "sacred cows" of the political landscape (Social Security, defense, etc), little is probably going to happen in terms of a change of direction.  What should be more of interest is the fact that such an epic landslide happened in the first place, and why.  While there are numerous interpretations, ranging from the cluelessly scientific ("midterm election upsets are statistically a reaction to one-party dominance") to the laughable (Obama saying that the cause of the Democrat defeat was "poor communication about the agenda"), the most sensible one I can derive is that the people are beginning to realize that no one's steering the ship of the nation and are desperately hoping to find someone who can take hold of the helm.  Word to both parties, the Germans felt the same way in the early 1920's...

   The second is the "quantitative easing" by the Fed.  The first few stimulus packages was basically selling debt to foreign nations, the way we've gotten credit in the past.  What's important to note here is WHY quantitative easing has happened this time around -- there is simply no one who is willing to pony up their own cash to buy bonds that are becoming increasingly worthless.  In other words, the nations that have always been willing to buy our debt at balking because they see America's financial situation as being increasingly hopeless.  The noise about China and Russia being upset by this is really just a distraction -- while they are angry over the irresponsible financial policy of the country, the real issue is that anyone considering doing the QE in the first place.  The fact the gold is going out of sight shows also that people have given up on trying to find any safe refuge in mainstream investments.

   Third is Obama's tour of Asia.  Again, this is oddly out of touch with reality.  The American public has demanded, through elections, restraint and sobriety in government policy.  Instead, Obama is touring in extravagant style instead of staying home and putting on an image of responsibility and a serious desire to right things.  The notion that the trip is intended to promote American economic interests overseas is ludicrous -- the idea of selling finished goods to India, where they can't easily be afforded and can be locally obtained for much less than a tax-heavy and benefit-heavy American economy can produce them shows a lack of reasoning by the president's economic advisors.  While there is some merit to the thinking that the trip is giving tacit approval for India to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council (thus balancing out China), I think the real purpose has been to try to create an image of American power and prestige, to try to convince people that America is still a strong and wealthy nation which can influence other nations, a new version of the Potemkin Village.

   What do these events mean in the context of our oncoming Dark Age?  The most important aspect of a financial system is trust, something that is essentially gone, and things happening in the news now reflect this end of trust.  No one can look at the system and know exactly where they stand with regard to it.  For example, it used to be a given that you could (theoretically) take a certificate someplace and get gold back.  Then, it became that the currency you held had the backing and guarantee of a powerful government that it would be worth something (i.e. you could do something with it).  So, the necessary component for a global economic system -- an internationally trusted currency system -- is increasingly viewed with suspicion.  While people might say "well, go ahead and default on the national debt," do they also consider what a default would mean?  We import much of our energy and raw materials -- who is going to try to sell that to us if they have no guarantee that what they are being given for those raw materials has any worth?

   While this is a simplification of some of the issues, it leads to another point:  if governments are broke, they cannot respond to crises, fix things and maintain any kind of order.  If no one trusts the monetary system, then no one is willing to assume risk in order to trade materials, services and goods.  If nothing is being fixed and nothing is moving, then conditions are going to overtly resemble the new dark age.  Finally, the corresponding increase in the price of goods and services is going to be the final nail in the coffin of the economy, when people begin to turn from prosperity to survival.

On Languages

   One of the issues with looking at the preservation of information is what language to store it in.  While the immediate and obvious answer is "the language that the people saving the information speak," consider the following case -- a plague wipes out most human life and the only remaining pocket of humanity is on a remote Pacific island populated by people who don't speak any of the more common languages the "Codex Universalis" is preserved in. 

Oops.

   Apocalyptic corner-cases really aren't the focus of the Leibowitz Society, but it does raise an interesting mental question -- how are people going to be able to use the information available if it's not in a form they can understand?  It was probably a fortunate accident of history that Latin was also the language of the Catholic Church in addition to being the language of the Roman Empire before it, meaning that all the works of the Roman scholars were accessible.  Of couse, it's possible that the Latin works would have found translation by other means, but consider that ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs were only able to be understood by the chance creation and discovery of the Rosetta Stone. 

   People will probably point out that the language that the information is stored in will likely still exist, in one form or another, so people should still be able to go back and read it.  This may be true to a point, but anyone who has tried to go read Beowulf, Chaucer or even Shakespeare in the original form will have nothing but trouble without an interpretation guide to go with it.  Even within the last hundred or so years, it's possible to witness the mutation of the English language.  How quickly would it begin to split into different dialects, then forms, at the onset of a new Dark Age when people's travel would be limited to perhaps a day's hike and commerce would grind to a halt?

   Using a known dead language, such as Latin is an example, is an option.  Latin is still used in the Catholic church for the simple reason that it doesn't change over time.  The only problem here is that it is not much used any more outside of religious (and some scientific circles).  The benefit is that is at least somewhat known to English speakers through a constant exposure of English to Latin words and uses.  It might also be feasible to create a new language, possibly one designed with information storage in mind.

   Regardless of whether or not the Society materials are in English, Latin, or something else, the problem of interpretation remains.  Imagine a large trove of materials recorded in Latin, with English, Spanish and French dictionaries included.  Those dictionaries stored will be a snapshot of those languages at that time.  So, in order for the stored materials to be used, there would have to be an effort to update the accompanying dictionaries and provide translations for the translations.

   One option might be to include a visual dictionary of some sort, a symbolic "key" for written words, perhaps enough to include large scale translation of obsolete writings.  The problem here is the accuracy of visual images and subsequent translation to written words, as well as even getting a future viewer to understand what their purpose is (and not mediocre, stylized art). 

   Going further, another option might be to create a mathematical process for converting knowledge to something using mathematical symbols, numbers, etc.  Experimentation or study along this path (or even input from a learned reader) may uncover an efficient means of storing information. 

   At the root of all this is still a justification and need for having a body of membership that can interpret the recorded knowledge, in addition to storing it, maintaining it and adding to it.  Regardless of how much effort and thought goes into making sure that the knowledge can be used at a future time, the most foolproof way to maintain access to it is through successive generations of people who are taught, and in turn teach, how to unlock it.  When I speak of the Leibowitz Society as being a generational effort, or of generational survival, this is what I mean.  Secrets written in lost languages may have a mystic appeal, but they are useless to people who need to know what they mean.