The Hundredth Post

I started writing this blog a couple of years ago, on a rainy fall afternoon. At the time, the Gulf Oil Spill was still in and out of the headlines, with the well recently having been stopped up at least. There was still quite a lot of news coverage about the effects of the spill, who was responsible, what the lasting environmental damage was, and so on. As of today, the full impact of the spill is not known, but things like increases in the death rates of large marine mammals, mutations are widespread in smaller marine animals, and much of the information related to the environmental impact is still suppressed due to an "ongoing criminal investigation," so the full extent of damage may not be public for a long time, if ever.

Back in October of 2010, the event was still so fresh that these issues were not yet identified on any scale, but it was clear that we were dealing with something unprecedented related to the consequences of our reliance on cheap energy. If an oil well could blow and poison a massive body of water, what other consequences could the addiction to energy produce? Fukushima was still months off, but it seemed clear that the consequences had been identified, at least on some level. Remember, also, that this was two years into the global economic downturn, brought on by an addiction to spending and overconsumption, the need for MORE. In June of 2012, the gulf is still reeling from what was released into it, then dumped into it, Fukushima is still smoldering, real unemployment in America and elsewhere is around 20%, gas has not fallen back down to affordable levels, the stock market is increasingly looking like a minefield, pick something.

In the almost four years since October 2008, the world has not shown signs of recovery. The green shoots dry up and blow away as soon as they emerge, in spite of what optimists says, and another "downturn" is around the corner. These things are not "stumbles" on the road to a brave new epoch, but signs that we have exceeded our grasp as a civilization, both in terms of using them, and understanding them. Humanity has become the equivalent of a child who finds the door of the candy store unlocked and decides to go in and have "just one piece." With half the store eaten up, and a bellyache like no other, it's come time to decide how to proceed.

Is there a plan for dealing with the world, and a way forward to a more sane and sustainable civilization? Clearly, political "leadership" has become playing to the polls and trying to catch up with what people want to hear -- the expression "The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable" tells you all you need to hear about the attitude toward "American Exceptionalism." It's a grand, fine-sounding "line in the sand" type of expression, but falls short of physical reality.

The human imagination is both our greatest friend and worst foe. We can imagine wonderful things like travel to other stars, thinking computers, and worlds of fantasy. In the past, we've been able to implement some of these dreams, too, such as the airplane, the telephone, and so on. However, it's also our worst enemy in many ways. We become so focused on the "possible," that we ignore the "practical" and the "realistic."

Right now, we still have the ability, as a civilization, to begin examining our models and deciding what the best course to take is. There is still enough in the way of resources, wealth, and energy to begin promoting alternative ways of doing things. Rail, an end to widespread automobile use, turning grass into gardens, an end to consumerism and overspending. It's not a question of whether or not we need to make adjustments, but whether or not we will choose them or be forced into them. In this, civilization is not unlike a boat at sea with a storm coming -- we can choose our own harbor while there's still time, or get smashed against the rocks from forces we cannot control.

Unfortunately, like political leaders who adopt a "No Compromise" position on the consumer-driven lifestyle on campaign stumps, our society, from businesses, civic organizations, institutions of higher learning, religious organizations, down to individuals has also preferred to ignore reality and continue doing things as they have. After all, there is no such thing as Peak Oil, our oil-industry connected scientists tell us. Our bankers say there is no problem with the economy and not to worry. Our priests and preachers tell us "God will provide." All is well, don't worry.

For people who have taken the time to study the issue, and listen to the voices crying in the desert in the past such as Thomas Malthus and M. King Hubbert, who have examined the science and numbers, and even lies and distortions, for themselves, the picture is sobering, if not bleak. We have overshot our planet's carrying capacity for people by a factor of thirty or more, based on the use of fossil fuels to create massive short-term surpluses of artificial labor and resource utilization.

Think about that for a moment, and take a look around you. Count out thirty people. Pick one of them. The earth only has enough capacity for that one person, without the application of cheap energy to act as a surrogate "slave." This is less than the population of America, much less the world. It is a sobering exercise, but one we have ignored to the peril of our species and human civilization.

We are still collectively toward the cliff, but individually, we have begun to wake up, here and there. The critical model of mass consumption is not going to be untied and discarded on a mass scale, but we can begin to understand where we are headed and what our seat on that "bus" is going to be. Do we join in with the mass of people who are like bipedal locusts, congratulating themselves on their latest purchase? Or do we take a measured approach to life, live with low-impact, and prepare for when the "black swans" take to wing en masse?

The Leibowitz Society has gone through a couple of iterations since I originally defined it. In the beginning, I had looked at it as being a stuctured sort of thing, combining both a running analysis of our descent into a new Dark Age, with efforts to collect and store as much relevant knowledge as possible. Allied with these goals was the idea of trying to raise some level of awareness as to where we are, and what can be done about it, if anything, including defining how society may reorganize itself and what we can do as responsible people to make things better locally, even as they get worse globally.

Discussing the events leading to the Dark Age quickly moved the other considerations to the back burner, and I suppose it's a natural reaction. When Rome fell, there was a Dark Age on three continents (the Byzantine Empire survived, of course, but often felt "under siege" through most of its existence), as the mechanisms which had built daily life up to a high level fell apart. Now, America is stumbling and the coming Dark Age, brought on by resource scarcity, environmental failure, and economic mismanagement, is going to cover the entire globe. It will unfortunately be a collapse of unprecedented proportions, where the conditions on the other side of the globe will be no difference from what they are down the weed-dotted and decaying street. Like a train wreck, we can't look away from this.

However, the study of our near future is at some point going to become the study of our past, and it's the far future which will take precedence. As responsible people, we understand where the world is headed. We also know that this understanding doesn't lead to a comfortable complacency. We will all likely only live to see the early manifestations of the new Dark Age -- wars, riots, starvation, looting -- but our children and grandchildren will be there to see the dust settle and try to make sense of it all. They will have questions and will need answers. How did they get to where they're at? How to go forward? And what to go forward with?

One of the most sobering ancedotes I have ever read concerned a village in the south of France, not long after Rome collapsed. It had been an agricultural area, and it doesn't take much to imagine how many people it supported. Within a generation or two, human remains showed signs of starvation or even death by starvation, as the knowledge of high-intensity farming was quickly forgotten. And, this was just one village in one area. How many places like this existed, but were not known about in remains of Rome? This was not in a time and place where the science of agriculture depended on high technology to make it work, but on remembering procedures that had been discovered and modified over several generations. Even if we take slave labor out of the picture, figure that people would shift priority to food production away from whatever other pursuits they had.

If you take modern America, where even fewer people are connected to food production -- maybe three percent at most -- and most of them are involved in the "high energy input" tye of farming, are we going to fare much better when the cash runs out and the cupboard is bare? And what about other things, like medicine, governing ourselves, maintaining our structures, and so on?

We can save books on things that interest us, and it's a start, but we also need to think in broader terms. If we accept that information is DNA, then knowledge is an organism built from it. Do we really know what the books mean? And how to use them? Are we missing areas of knowledge that would be vital? Would we have any way to pass this on to another person or people? Or form a community of learning?

This was the original intention of the Leibowitz Society and where I want it to go toward again. This doesn't mean we can't talk about the path we're headed down, only that we need to think clearly about what we do once we get there. And it's likely that none of us will survive to see the "hard landing" when it finally happens. Rome's collapse took several generations. We started ours in 2008 and have not managed to reverse course, although we limp along, meaning our children or grandchildren will be the ones to see "lights out," more likely.

I don't see all this as being pessimistic, no more than someone who looks up at a darkening sky and says it's going to rain is being a pessimist. We're gifted with reason and foresight and would be fools not to use them. We can make a difference in our futures, and the futures of people yet to come, by taking steps now to preserve thousands of years of wisdom and knowledge, and having a plan to pass it on. The problems we face now are not going to go away, but only get worse, and it's up to us to light the future.

Hearth and Home

The Euro panic keeps going and going. If the end of the EU was a disaster flick, it would be shown as a multi-year series, maybe studded with the usual standby roster of not-quite A-listers, all desperate to keep their face on the screen, hoping for a mid-career boost back to Cannes. It would definitely not be a two-hour feature film, a back-room, caviar-laced version of Armageddon, featuring Bruce Willis managing the global financial crisis with a steely eye, while an Aerosmith ballad played in the background.

This is how collapse seems to go, a long, slow event, better imagined as the Galaxy of Unrestrained Hope and Cornucopian Optimism, colliding with the galaxy of Physical and Financial Reality, all while accompanied by a Strauss waltz. We know what the outcome is, where we're going at the end of it, but become self-improsed refuseniks, not wanting to leave the land of Plenty for the land of Adjustment. Adjustment itself is a nuanced word and implies a lot of things, most of them not so good. It is a word of acceptance, when reality runs over our dreams, and we reassemble the pieces into something that we make ourselves live with, even though it's a long way from Optimum.

This is where we are at the beginnings of the new Dark Age. This paradigm is well-played out in the situation of the twenty-five or so percent of the population that is unable to find work that matches their skills and expectation. Maybe colleges would be better off offering the "Bachelor of Barsita-ing" instead of Film, Philosophy, and all the other things a society in decline has little need of. That doesn't address the auto and factory workers who spent half their adult life at positions which are no more likely to return than a helium balloon released by accident in a moment of overexuberant play.

Reality is slowing pushing us into making different choices and thinking in new ways. One place it still doesn't seem to have caught up is with the "prepping" movement. The notion seems to exist that everything will turn bad for a couple of years, then return to normal, and all that is needed is to have a basement full of MREs and a few guns to shoot the horde of starving people that show up to claim them. The fact is that 2001 was an "overshoot" and a warning sign that we were pushing against the limits of growth. 2008 was when the rubber band snapped and it became clear that the lights were starting to go out, for good.

How do people find their way back from a collapse, when there's nothing to find their way back to, anyway? We grow up with the expectation of always being able to run to the store to pick up something for dinner. At some point, the Wal-Mart is going to become "Home to Pigeons and Rats Mart." I've done a little urban exploration, traversing buildings that have outlived their usefulness. I think it's a good illustration for where we'll be at, after a few more years of the present upheavals. For anyone who thinks this isn't where we're headed, take a look around. How many business do you see that have closed up, or are on the verge? How many buildings stand empty now?

Prepping is, in some ways, an optimistic activity assumes we can find our way back at some point. Realism assumes that the door is closed behind us, for good. It's not enough to think anymore in terms of "a rainy day," but we need to think in terms now of a new era of human life. What happens when the palette of ramen noodles in our suburban McMansion runs out, and we have 1/4 acre of land to try farming on? Prepping can't be a matter of trying to replicate or maintain our present life, but needs to shift to the idea of trying to function in a time and place when the old ways of doing things are gone and the new ways are the same as the old old ways.

Medicine, food, transportation, entertainment, social interaction and organization, these are all things which are going to shift from the high-energy input, semi-anonymous methods of existence, and become slower, more effort-filled, and more personalized. Are we prepared for these shifts? Does the average office worker have any idea what a full day labor in the fields feels like? Or does the average modern suburbanite have any notion of what it's like to live in a house during winter that's only marginally warmer than being outside? Or when the idea of a big trip becomes walking a town or two over to catch an open-air play?

We probably don't like the idea of these kinds of adjustments, not having asked for it or considered it, but things are forced on us sometimes, like it or not. We've all benefitted from 180 or so years of massive expansion of human luxury, but never asked when, where, and how it would end. Now, like how the idea of pan-European culture died with a pair of gunshots in the Balkans, triggering the First World War, the collapse of a single nation in the Balkans is going to destroy the idea of globalism, and with it all the things built on top of it. The wise response now is to recognize reality and align our lives with what the future holds, not what the past brought.

Hot and Hazy

Summer seems to be getting an early start this week, with forecasted highs coming close to records that have stood for sixty or seventy years now. This on the heels of a winter-that-wasn't-a-winter, so the countryside was flush with vegetation a month or two ahead of schedule. I'll make an easy prediction now that we can look forward to lots of verbal battles between people who advance theories of global warmings, and those who argue against them. Leading the way on the anti-side will be the pundits like Rush Limbaugh, who have zero scientific training or knowledge, versus people on the pro-side who accuse people like him of wanting to destroy the earth and life on it.

That's a simplification, of course, but I think it illustrates at least the caricatures of where people stand on the issue. I don't really pay much attention to the debate on manmade global warming, as I think we're likely to do ourselves in as a civilization before it will ultimately become a serious issue. However, I do listen to Limbaugh from time to time while driving and caught a tidbit along the lines of "Folks, if we had to heat up the earth, we could never manage that. Only God could do something like that." That anyone could take him seriously after a tidbit like that goes to show that his audience is no more sensible than he is. Again, while I don't really pay a lot of attention to the theory, it seems that statements like that at least tip the credibility scale toward scientists who actually try to seriously study the issue.

In a lot of ways, the cultural crisis which is starting to shake up human society seems to be cut from the same cloth. Why the term "cultural crisis," anyway, and not "economic crisis?" Think about this, though -- an economic crisis implies problems with the economy, confined to the economy. The Great Depression generally fell into this category, where people had built an economic model that had some serious problems, but the overall culture was relatively sound. When the economy collapsed, people were able to still get by, and had some idea of where they were going as a nation and a people (in contrast, look at Nazi Germany, which was the product of a destroyed German culture in the wake of World War One). Now, the problem is so much greater and is no longer really confined to just one aspect of human society. America is stumbling, has no idea of what values it should be embracing (we have Jersery Shore on one hand, we have Joel Osteen on the other, with NASCAR and militarism in between).

The rest of the world is largely in the same boat, too, because the economy and consumption have become the end-game of all human effort everywhere. People measure who they are by what they have. When you have it, then what? Things rust and rot away, or we just get bored with them, like a middle aged salesman with his wife, and go chase something new. The ancient Greeks put stock in philosophy and learning, the Romans in tradition, the medieval European in religion, the Chinese in meditations on the nature of things, Enlightement thinkers in science and natural philosophy, early Americans in rights and law...and modern Americans in phantom things like Facebook stock.

A Dark Age is a combination of many things, part of it a time when there is no longer enough of an input of energy to sustain the socioeconomic models that people have built, but it's also a time when old ideas that have carried us forward die. With the Greeks, it came when the notion of pan-Hellenism died out during the Peloponnesian War, the Romans when perpetual conquest could not be sustained, and in the modern day when the idea of perpetual growth and consumption run into the reality of limited energy and markets.

In the end, it's not unlike the global warming debate -- we see what we want to see, put so much faith into an idea, that we conflate our existence with that idea and mindset. Now, we're facing the fact that our models are broken and we still cannot come to grips with that, preferring to deny that there is even a fundamental problem with things and that life as we know it can't go on forever. Traditionally, the summer has always been a slow news season, as people vacate Washington to go on vacation, but the Greek crisis hasn't resolved itself (the Greeks not even knowing who they want to lead them), the French are still pursuing their own broken model, and America is forced into an election that will change nothing, because reality itself has begun to catch up with the process.

We may be coming up on a very hot and hazy summer indeed.

Fracked Up

New Year's Eve this past year in Ohio came with a little bit of an extra "bang," thanks apparently to "fracking." (see here for the whole story) A quick search on Google turns up a few more articles on this happening in other places -- in England and Oklahoma as well. Obviously, a 5.0 (or even 6.0) magnitude quake is not a monster, apocalyptic-level event in any sense, this shows another serious problem with pushing for more and more oil production, now that all the "easy" oil is gone. And this doesn't even begin to take into other issues, including contamination of groundwater, and so on.

Hmm. Putting up with eathquakes so that we can milk the planet just a little bit longer, keep the machines going just a little bit longer, even while we experience potentially catastrophic environmental catastrophes. I mean, doesn't this come off a little bit like a bad science fiction movie? I expect the Klingons to do something like this, but....

The idea of fracking, whatever the soundness of it from a geological or environmental perspective, and whatever ultimately comes of it, is just another attempt to maintain the modern industrial lifestyle that the world has become dependent on. It is this idea -- overextending ourselves to maintain this lifestyle -- that is taking us down another parallel road, with this one based on the squandering of capital in the endless pursuit of trying to acquire more capital and goods.

It isn't really until we step back and look at all these things as a pattern, that we begin to see where we really are as a culture and a civilization. We have built an impressively interconnected society, where it's possible to travel far and wide in days, or even hours, can communicate almost instantly with anyone else around the globe, can access all the important data ever recorded by mankind, pick something. At the same time, we're generally not aware in our minds of what the cost of these advances truly is, nor do we understand that we cannot keep them going forever.

If we think of earthquakes as being the first warning sign that the process of fracking may not be what we thought it was, what is going to be the first warning sign that civilization itself is running on empty? Is it Greece? Europe as a whole? The fact that our politicians don't even bother to talk about reducing the debt, but only about reducing the deficit? When we consider that it's good news that unemployment has dropped down below nine percent, but ignore that the statistic is due to many people finally giving up the job hunt?

It's hard to say what the real takeaway from this is. People who protest fracking have legitimate concerns about the environment, but how do we address the billions of people who depend on fossil fuels to survive? People who protest the debt and spending are correct when they state that the party can't go on forever, but where does that leave the people who are invested in the system and have no means outside of it?

It is when we get down to this point -- where we know that we're going down a road that looks narrower, rougher, and more dangerous the longer we're on it, but a road we can't get off of -- that we know we are destined for a hard crash. The only realistic action at this point is to cover our own butts and make sure we're able to ride out what is sure to be a coming storm.

The Foundation

I've decided to get away from writing about current events for a time and return to the original purpose of this blog, which was to prepare for the coming collapse, not on a short-term basis, but on a long-term generational survival basis. There is always an awful temptation to get caught up in the matters of the day and treat them with the utmost importance. Sometimes, it feels like there is a collective desire among all people to be commentators and "armchair quarterbacks." The problem here is that it leads to putting far too much weight on even the most trivial of news items as people search for the "key" to find meaning in all of the noise out there.

The reality is that we have past history and future change occur as glacial shifts in human action and activity. For example, if you really look at the origin of the problems of modern Europe, they lie in the inheritance custom of the Franks and how the descendants of Charlmagne split his empire into three chunks. Likewise, our decision -- as a collective global human civilization -- to go down the path of letting rates of material consumption define our "success," has doomed any chance for carrying that civilization into the future. We worship things instead of ideas, pastimes such as sports over weighty things such as philosophy. Ignorance is a virtue and learning is a vice. Don't believe me? Try quoting Plato or try talking about quantum physics around a demographically average group of people. Farting loudly is usually far more acceptable in most circles.

But it is the fact that we have chosen poorly that will eventually destroy modern civilization. The seeds are already planted, it's built on shifting sands (cheap energy availability), and it's a matter of time before we see the supports truly taken away. The paradox is that the more we struggle to preserve it through war and spending, the quicker the end approaches. If people have just stumbled across this blog and are not convinced, there is plenty of information available to confirm this and doesn't need to really be discussed further here.

Now, the question is what do we really see as the future, once the modern world has exhausted itself and died? What foundation do we really want to build on? Science, before it became another politicized cultural weapon, offered a glimpse into a world where objective empirical thought would reign. Philosophy, likewise, before it became a tool of oppression, offered a chance to redefine ourselves through ideas and reason.

Maybe this isn't a question which can easily be answered, but I think one thing comes to mind -- beginning to understand that we are not isolated and that survival likely depends on reversing the trend of becoming more fragmented and individualized. At this time of year, people give to charity because it is something which is supported by religions, or they help out in soup kitchens and so on for the same reasons, and many people find great satisfaction in doing this. The reasons they give when asked "why?" are water-thin, however, and are usually a barrage of platitudes.

I tend to think that the real reason is that by helping another person, we are forming a connection to them, when our actions and thoughts are no longer oriented solely around ourselves, but become part of a larger community. We instinctively know that this makes sense, that we don't exist as a vacuum, but as part of a larger world. The isolated animal becomes sick and despairing. The isolated human becomes much the same way, even if that isolation is self-chosen and occurs while surrounded by millions of people.

Instead of becoming isolated, we need to understand that the times which are coming are going to require us to once again become more than just ourselves. I've written some on the importance of this, but I think it's more essential now than ever. I don't mean become part of a group -- groups are always about benefitting one or two at the cost of the many, but I mean, build bridges. Don't be afraid to get to know people or work with them. There will be a time soon when we must do this to survive and it's better to start now.

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.

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?

Like Minds

It's been nearly a year since I started this blog, and a number of things have become abundantly clear.  One thing is that there is a growing sense among people that things really aren't headed in the right direction.  It may be from environmental concerns, too many promises made by governments with shaky finance, or just a gut feeling that we are entering a time when various unseen factors begin to create a complex pattern which will bring civilization to its knees.  Another is that people are looking for information and motivation, anything which will help them both prepare and also to come to grips with what seems inevitable at this point (revolutions, war, famine, pick something).  However, the last is the fact that some people have also gone down the same road that the Leibowitz Society has, that of understanding that there is much valuable information which needs to be saved and preserved. 

Added to the resources links are a couple of items that people may not have looked at before, the Ozymandius Society and the Long Now Foundation.  The contrast between the two ideas could not be more different.  The Ozymanidus Society would like to preserve some record of the apex of human knowledge, going out probably far beyond the lifespan of our species.  I've had a few discussions with the gentleman who has initiated that project and it's interesting to see where our ideas both intersect and diverge. 

The Long Now Foundation is a completely different effort.  Instead of being one highly intelligent person, it is a gathering of highly intelligent people, among them one Neal Stephenson, whose novel Anathem has been some of the inspiration of the Leibowitz Society.  Their idea is to take a long-term view with regard to human thought, to create a body of thought which lasts beyond the few milliseconds that our information-saturated minds seem to be able to retain any pattern.  While the idea of a dark age is implicit in their work, it is a dark age of the mind and human cognition, not a physical one which involved the collapse of human society.
But, in both cases, there is still the idea that we need to save our thinking, our knowledge, our ideas.  The Leibowitz Society sits somewhere between these two extremes, recognizing on one hand that the pace of events in human civilization, the "black swans" so to speak, are aligning so quickly now that there isn't a lot of hope of stemming a collapse.  On the other hand, there is the idea that we can and should preserve knowledge and ideas for a future age, as well as for their own sake. 

While part of the "mission" of the Leibowitz Society is to collect and preserve knowledge, we need to step back a minute from storing books and trying to figure out what would be of value, and instead just think for ourselves for a time.  What ideas catch our interest?  What theory or insight has been valuable in our lives and would be of value to others?  Is it psychology?  Philosophy?  Applied mathematics?  I would be interested in hearing from people who have rejected the "fast food" of modern pop culture and begun to explore the pathways of their own mind.  This, I think, is where we begin to see that we are not alone, that we are indeed part of a common vision of letting our knowledge outlive ourselves.

Chilling Effects

There is a new story (here) out about the forecast solar minimum.  Supposedly, this will be the least active sun cycle seen in centuries.  While the effects of the sun's cycles are not completely understood, the last time the sun was inactive was during the time of the "Little Ice Age," around 1650-1715, when growing seasons got shorter and the weather noticeably colder than it had been for some time in Europe (remember, the Middle Ages in Europe were a time of relative warmth). 

The declining activity of the sun was the subject of a very well-done science fiction movie, called "Sunshine," and has been the subject of numerous other works of fiction.  While this probably isn't the start of something apocalyptic, it's a stark reminder that our life and circumstances are very dependent on things will outside our control.  It's hard to say exactly what would happen in the next few years if this comes to pass.  Food may be somewhat rarer and more expensive, to start with -- something already problematic in a day and age when inflation is beginning to drive the price of food up.


It also really points to the reality of how vulnerable the human race is, that we're stuck on earth for now and the foreseeable future.  What would be the response of the human race if the sun were raging out of control and drastically raising global temperatures? 

In some ways, we tend to assume that a "Dark Age" or "collapse" is a loss of what we already have -- information, wealth, population, etc.  However, if we can look at it another way -- we are simply sitting still, while we need to be steadily advancing as a species and culture.  If we expect that the creation and use of technology is geared to the survival and continuance of our species, then is it not true that failing to advance ourselves is tantamount to guaranteeing our demise? 

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.

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.

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.