There's not a lot in the news to write about lately, to be honest. The financial markets are staggering again, people are rushing to embrace any social fad they can to try to find meaning, the attempts by the governments of the world to hang on to some sort of normalcy are getting ever shriller and desperate. Something's happening with gays and immigration and temperatures are really high. Twenty years ago, bad news was news. Now, it's the norm. Nothing to see, just go look at the celebs.
One of the things that will become crucial for people to understand about our ongoing collapse is that they need to be able to adapt their expectations and ways of living to the reality around them. I'm reminded of the old trope of the rich woman who is standing on a sinking boat and wondering where her butler or maid is at (there are a hundred different variations of this). Yes, humans are adaptable, but I think adaptability is like a muscle -- you need to exercise it on a regular basis or it's too weak to help you much.
Culture can change very quickly, but our expectations sometimes remain the same. I wrote a while back about subcultures, but I think those who try to cling to the past are eventually going to be in their own subculture while the rest of the world has moved on to something more realistic. Getting stuck in the past is going to be a little like Jews in the 30s who assumed that because Germany had always been relatively decent to Jews (unlike the rest of Europe), that things were going to continue to be the same, even with the fellow with the funny moustache in change.
"Culture shock" is a real phenomenon, for a variety of reasons. We are wired to be familiar with things, with our brains only being able to process so much change in a new environment. It's expected when we move to another part of the country, or to another nation, but do we expect it when our environment changes around us? In the modern, cheap energy age, it's really not a huge problem. In a time and place where food is scarce and energy expensive, it can be a potentially lethal problem. Imagine still having the idea stuck in the back of your head that you can go to the store and buy food...even though the store is no longer there.
For people living in modern industrial civilization, there are a number of ways we can begin to prepare ourselves for the culture shock of industrial civilization ending. While people can assimilate, given time, we may well be in a situation where things happen very rapidly and we are trying to make a transition overnight (maybe even literally). Therefore, it's essential to start making at least a bridge to a different way of life while we have the time and resources to learn how to adapt.
Everyone has different circumstances and abilities, but some suggestions come to mind. First, try living a way or even a week, without using electrical lights in your home. Likewise, try preparing all of your food outside. And, if possible, don't drive anywhere for a week as well. If you are a picky eater, or even a normal eater, try doing some eating outside of your comfort zone -- go get some sushi or spicy food. Go to a foreign language learning group and learn how to communicate in a different language, especially if there are native speakers. If you're a religious person, go to a church of a different denomination. If you're not religious, go to a church.
The idea here is not to take up a new way of life or get a taste for caviar, but to get out of your "groove," so to speak. People who are not accustomed to doing so will be paralyzed in an emergency as they try to find a familiar model of how to behave and what to expect. Our civilization is on the cusp of entering a very long emergency, and there is not going to be anything familiar about it to people who have grown up in a society of excess. This is the time to learn a new mode of behavior, not when the first power grid goes down for good.
Showing posts with label social collapse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social collapse. Show all posts
Monday, July 1, 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013
The Perfect Storm
It's been a while since I've written on the topic of Collapse, so I'll keep this relatively short. It appears we're on the verge of the "Perfect Storm" in our industrial civilization, where many factors so perfectly come into alignment that things play out in a way and on a scale we could never have imagined.
The first storm front is the global political scene. The poltical leadership has not been effectively able to stabilize the Syrian situation, and various parties are in fact inflaming it by upping the ante in terms of aid and support for one side or the other. It would take very little for third parties to begin shooting at each other in a serious way, or the violence to spill out of the borders like so often happens with civil wars. It's one thing for that to happen in a post-colonial sub-Saharan nation, quite another thing for that to happen right in the world's "oil breadbasket." It doesn't take a great imagination or much more than a B-level technothriller writer to see where that has the potential to go, especially when the neighbors are nations like Turkey (dealing with a forced secularization of the world's most militant Islamic nation) and Saudi Arabia (where an entire population smolders under a brutal medieval theocracy). Or, if you want your foreign tensions spiked with a little ginger and garlic, North Korea looks ripe for an implosion as Kim Jong Un's leadership may be in name only, with a cabal of generals and other power brokers jockeying for position.
Then, there's the domestic side of things. While other Western nations are dealing with various political instabilities, America is outpacing them all. Whether or not Barack Obama explicitly ordered media spying and IRS intimidation, the reality is that he is president and his name will be attached to any scandal. On top of this, the people who identify with the political right could be well move from simply being in opposition to feeling truly alienated and no longer able to participate in politics. This crisis of legitimacy in government couldn't happen at a worse time -- if and when the narrative of transition into a post-industrial economy moves to the forefront, it will be necessary for the President to have the full faith and confidence of the American people, regardless of whatever direction things are going in by that point. It also doesn't take much imagination to see that certain parties within the U.S. might decide they want to go their own way again.
Finally, the last storm front is the natural world. Whatever the cause, the global temperature is rising, a couple of degrees in the last century. This doesn't mean much to some sectors of the American population, where the scientific process is as opaque as "mud on the fenders," but small changes in a delicately balanced system may produce big results. The past two or three years have been spiked with abnormally severe storms in the plans states. Are we going to begin seeing the warming of the ocean waters spawn "superhurricanes?" There are also more subtle and far-reaching things at work, too, with some people suggesting a "Sixth Mass Extinction," brought on by Colony Collapse Disorder and other factors. And, who knows when there might be another tsunami or Deepwater Horizon event to shake things up? What about a new flu pandemic? Or a Tunguska-like event, but directly hitting a nuclear plant, a major city, or an oil processing center?
So, there you have it -- foreign wars, a civilization unable and unwilling to address reality, and a world that has always been a little hostile to us. Anything can be addressed in small bites, but we seem to be getting to the point where we have to cram everything down at once and risk choking on it. Worse, for most of us, these factors are well beyond our ability to control or change, so we are left with doing what we can for ourselves and those we care about.
The first storm front is the global political scene. The poltical leadership has not been effectively able to stabilize the Syrian situation, and various parties are in fact inflaming it by upping the ante in terms of aid and support for one side or the other. It would take very little for third parties to begin shooting at each other in a serious way, or the violence to spill out of the borders like so often happens with civil wars. It's one thing for that to happen in a post-colonial sub-Saharan nation, quite another thing for that to happen right in the world's "oil breadbasket." It doesn't take a great imagination or much more than a B-level technothriller writer to see where that has the potential to go, especially when the neighbors are nations like Turkey (dealing with a forced secularization of the world's most militant Islamic nation) and Saudi Arabia (where an entire population smolders under a brutal medieval theocracy). Or, if you want your foreign tensions spiked with a little ginger and garlic, North Korea looks ripe for an implosion as Kim Jong Un's leadership may be in name only, with a cabal of generals and other power brokers jockeying for position.
Then, there's the domestic side of things. While other Western nations are dealing with various political instabilities, America is outpacing them all. Whether or not Barack Obama explicitly ordered media spying and IRS intimidation, the reality is that he is president and his name will be attached to any scandal. On top of this, the people who identify with the political right could be well move from simply being in opposition to feeling truly alienated and no longer able to participate in politics. This crisis of legitimacy in government couldn't happen at a worse time -- if and when the narrative of transition into a post-industrial economy moves to the forefront, it will be necessary for the President to have the full faith and confidence of the American people, regardless of whatever direction things are going in by that point. It also doesn't take much imagination to see that certain parties within the U.S. might decide they want to go their own way again.
Finally, the last storm front is the natural world. Whatever the cause, the global temperature is rising, a couple of degrees in the last century. This doesn't mean much to some sectors of the American population, where the scientific process is as opaque as "mud on the fenders," but small changes in a delicately balanced system may produce big results. The past two or three years have been spiked with abnormally severe storms in the plans states. Are we going to begin seeing the warming of the ocean waters spawn "superhurricanes?" There are also more subtle and far-reaching things at work, too, with some people suggesting a "Sixth Mass Extinction," brought on by Colony Collapse Disorder and other factors. And, who knows when there might be another tsunami or Deepwater Horizon event to shake things up? What about a new flu pandemic? Or a Tunguska-like event, but directly hitting a nuclear plant, a major city, or an oil processing center?
So, there you have it -- foreign wars, a civilization unable and unwilling to address reality, and a world that has always been a little hostile to us. Anything can be addressed in small bites, but we seem to be getting to the point where we have to cram everything down at once and risk choking on it. Worse, for most of us, these factors are well beyond our ability to control or change, so we are left with doing what we can for ourselves and those we care about.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Distractions
Apparently, last night was the Golden Globes, or tonight, or something. Some guy named Ricky Gervais talked about something. A cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, sank because the captain decided to go "showboating" (heh, heh) off the coast of a small island. Tim Tebow, who does something with prayer and parabolic trajectories, lost some sort of sports contest. Finally, almost as a footnote to the news, many countries in the Eurozone were downgraded.
I could go on and on about the seemingly endless ability of modern Americans (and people around the globe as a whole) to distract themselves from the systemic problems facing the world. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, leftover from the days when we lived in clammy stone huts and wore animal skins (who wouldn't want a distraction, then?). The problem is that we, collectively speaking, at the wheel of a car that is hurtling down the road at a hundred miles per hour, when the roads are icy and getting narrower and narrower. Oh, there's a canyon nicknamed "Peak Oil" just ahead.
The downgrade of the Eurozone countries is going to be waved off by a lot of people. It'll be called a political move, fearmongering, unwarranted hysteria, whatever label happens to fit the narrative that any given person sees the world through (and therefore pushes). The real way to interpret is that it is a collective judgement on the soundness of the European economy. If you look at credit ratings, the point is to determine the ability of a person or institution (or coutry) to repay a debt. By downgrading the rating of countries in Europe, the collective judgement is that these countries can no longer maintain themselves economically the way they have intended to (or have, to this point).
Essentially, this means that we're not expecting to patient which is modern industrial society to pull through. While this is, at first, a problem for the politicians and bankers who have created this system, it is going to quickly became a problem for the people who live in these nations as the wheels that have allowed modern populations to exist and thrive suddenly grind to a halt and we all find ourselves in strange new territory. We cannot even begin to address these issues, so late in the day that things have become, so we find ourselves looking for newer and better distractions until the clock finally winds down and we return to a world where real meaning is found when simple existence itself becomes a struggle.
What strikes me is the responses to the crisis at hand. Some people, who have not examined the situation, may ask "what crisis?" Simply put, the fact that we're at the end of the road and don't know where to go, because none of the answers are acceptable in mainstream society. We place quasi-religious faith in "alternative solutions" such as alternative fuels, we pretend that there's not a problem, we believe that we can find a political solution to overspending (which in nature would be too many deer eating too little forage). We want to dream our way out of reality and into a new golden age.
In none of this is the realization that we are on a downward slope and need to adjust to it, but we only do so when we are forced into it, kicking and sreaming.
***
I would recommend that everyone who has already not done so follow Ed's recommendation and read John Michael Greer's latest post at The Archdruid Report. Quite a good read and is well worth it alone for the discussion about our modern narrative.
I could go on and on about the seemingly endless ability of modern Americans (and people around the globe as a whole) to distract themselves from the systemic problems facing the world. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, leftover from the days when we lived in clammy stone huts and wore animal skins (who wouldn't want a distraction, then?). The problem is that we, collectively speaking, at the wheel of a car that is hurtling down the road at a hundred miles per hour, when the roads are icy and getting narrower and narrower. Oh, there's a canyon nicknamed "Peak Oil" just ahead.
The downgrade of the Eurozone countries is going to be waved off by a lot of people. It'll be called a political move, fearmongering, unwarranted hysteria, whatever label happens to fit the narrative that any given person sees the world through (and therefore pushes). The real way to interpret is that it is a collective judgement on the soundness of the European economy. If you look at credit ratings, the point is to determine the ability of a person or institution (or coutry) to repay a debt. By downgrading the rating of countries in Europe, the collective judgement is that these countries can no longer maintain themselves economically the way they have intended to (or have, to this point).
Essentially, this means that we're not expecting to patient which is modern industrial society to pull through. While this is, at first, a problem for the politicians and bankers who have created this system, it is going to quickly became a problem for the people who live in these nations as the wheels that have allowed modern populations to exist and thrive suddenly grind to a halt and we all find ourselves in strange new territory. We cannot even begin to address these issues, so late in the day that things have become, so we find ourselves looking for newer and better distractions until the clock finally winds down and we return to a world where real meaning is found when simple existence itself becomes a struggle.
What strikes me is the responses to the crisis at hand. Some people, who have not examined the situation, may ask "what crisis?" Simply put, the fact that we're at the end of the road and don't know where to go, because none of the answers are acceptable in mainstream society. We place quasi-religious faith in "alternative solutions" such as alternative fuels, we pretend that there's not a problem, we believe that we can find a political solution to overspending (which in nature would be too many deer eating too little forage). We want to dream our way out of reality and into a new golden age.
In none of this is the realization that we are on a downward slope and need to adjust to it, but we only do so when we are forced into it, kicking and sreaming.
***
I would recommend that everyone who has already not done so follow Ed's recommendation and read John Michael Greer's latest post at The Archdruid Report. Quite a good read and is well worth it alone for the discussion about our modern narrative.
Monday, December 5, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Guns of August
It's been a while since I've posted anything here, mostly for the reason that every time I sat down to write something about the ongoing Euro crisis, which is probably the most significant event in world history since the fall of the Berlin Wall, things changed and I felt like it was impossible to really get a clear picture of where things were going. However, after seeing the news percolate over the last couple of months, I think it's possible to figure out where we're going with this. I'll skip the drum roll and the dramatic build-up and get straight to the point about it -- what we're seeing the Eurozone is the political class being unable to find a way out of the crisis because there is no way out of the crisis.
It's a little like hanging from a tree branch on the side of a cliff, with a hundred foot drop below you and a rabid grizzly bear above you. You can either climb up and get eaten, fall to your death below, or hope for some kind of miracle. Or, in Europe's case, you can throw the PIIGS under the bus and destroy any lasting chance at recreating the sense of Pan-Europeanism that died with World War One, you can watch the currency get detroyed, or you can hang on and hope that some economic miracle happens between now and inevitability.
I don't know if it's a lack of leadership, or a lack of will to simply get on with pulling the plug and figuring out what happens afterwards. The rotation of national leaders is about as effective as changing the coach on a sports team where everything else in the franchise (and perhaps league) is horribly broken. Do people think that ousting Berlosconi will magically make Italian debt turn into butterflies? Do they think that new blood is going to prove any thicker than the old?
Unfortunately, it's not all that hard to see where this is eventually going to lead. While it probably wasn't mentioned much during the formation of the EU, one thing that has always been implicit in the idea of a united Euope is that it would effectively mean an end to the fratricidal wars which have wracked the continent for millenia. After all, how can you go to war with someone who shares your currency, whose economy is tied to yours, and whose survival depends on your survival as well?
Sadly, a stake the size of Transylvania is about to be plunged into the heart of this idea. Pundits have made some light of the grumblings of Germans about Greeks and vice-versa. People who have a poor grasp and sense of history don't really understand the size of the colliding mountains behind these small, initial sparks. Southern Europe has always been in seen to be the ancient, cultured part, Northern Europe to be the hard-working economic giant. What happens to the idea of European unity when bank runs ensue and it once again takes a wheelbarrow full ofmarks euros to buy a loaf of bread?
The old scores to settle -- which were shelved first in the face of the Soviet Threat, then for the promise of United Europe, are bound to reassert themselves as people first look for someone to blame, then realize that the pie is shrinking and those who aren't willing use force to take their share aren't going to have any left at all. Add to this the pressures brought on by Peak Oil, environmental damage, overpopulation, the clash of cultures, the clash of ideals, pick something, and it's not really crazy to talk to think that we'll hear the Guns of August once again in our lifetimes, maybe even this decade.
It's a little like hanging from a tree branch on the side of a cliff, with a hundred foot drop below you and a rabid grizzly bear above you. You can either climb up and get eaten, fall to your death below, or hope for some kind of miracle. Or, in Europe's case, you can throw the PIIGS under the bus and destroy any lasting chance at recreating the sense of Pan-Europeanism that died with World War One, you can watch the currency get detroyed, or you can hang on and hope that some economic miracle happens between now and inevitability.
I don't know if it's a lack of leadership, or a lack of will to simply get on with pulling the plug and figuring out what happens afterwards. The rotation of national leaders is about as effective as changing the coach on a sports team where everything else in the franchise (and perhaps league) is horribly broken. Do people think that ousting Berlosconi will magically make Italian debt turn into butterflies? Do they think that new blood is going to prove any thicker than the old?
Unfortunately, it's not all that hard to see where this is eventually going to lead. While it probably wasn't mentioned much during the formation of the EU, one thing that has always been implicit in the idea of a united Euope is that it would effectively mean an end to the fratricidal wars which have wracked the continent for millenia. After all, how can you go to war with someone who shares your currency, whose economy is tied to yours, and whose survival depends on your survival as well?
Sadly, a stake the size of Transylvania is about to be plunged into the heart of this idea. Pundits have made some light of the grumblings of Germans about Greeks and vice-versa. People who have a poor grasp and sense of history don't really understand the size of the colliding mountains behind these small, initial sparks. Southern Europe has always been in seen to be the ancient, cultured part, Northern Europe to be the hard-working economic giant. What happens to the idea of European unity when bank runs ensue and it once again takes a wheelbarrow full of
The old scores to settle -- which were shelved first in the face of the Soviet Threat, then for the promise of United Europe, are bound to reassert themselves as people first look for someone to blame, then realize that the pie is shrinking and those who aren't willing use force to take their share aren't going to have any left at all. Add to this the pressures brought on by Peak Oil, environmental damage, overpopulation, the clash of cultures, the clash of ideals, pick something, and it's not really crazy to talk to think that we'll hear the Guns of August once again in our lifetimes, maybe even this decade.
Monday, October 3, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Brother Against Brother
As part of writing this blog, and researching much of the material which goes into it, I've had the opportunity and need to talk to a wide range of people with an equally wide range of opinions. This includes people who either back the Tea Party viewpoint or the pro-Obama viewpoint.
The thing which stands out in many of these discussions, is that there is no reconciliation between one viewpoint and another. People on the right accuse people on the left of wanting to use government to oppress them and destroy them financially. People on the left accuse people on the right of wanting to "take over" the system and trample freedom in the name of some hidden agenda. The facts no longer matter, the notion that each side genuinely believes it is trying to do what is best for the nation, is lost on the other. The hatred between each camp is palpable and is not decreasing.
Things like this get glossed over in the good times, when there's no real pressure and competition for how to distribute limited resources. When everyone is fat and happy, there's no need to worry about who's fighting over scraps. Now, however, with uneployment and despair reaching catastrophic levels, a president with no ability to lead the nation out of the mess, a congress which is paralyzed by partisanship and whoring after lobbyist dollars, the pressures are growing until the inevitable is going to happen, a spark of some sort, the first rock through a window, which is going to set off a spiral of violence until a de facto state of civil war exists.
The first American civil war came perilously close to tearing the nation apart and has had repercussions that have not stopped to the present day. This was in a time and place when there was a giant western frontier for people to escape to and rebuild new lives in a place of plenty. Now that there are no ready-to-exploit frontiers left, no safety valve for radicals of both sides, what is going to be the end result? A nonstop grind of civil conflict until there is not one stone standing on top of another?
It is in times like these when knowledge is lost and ideas die, in favor of the daily struggle to survive. Look at any of the "third world" nations wracked by civil wars in recent decades. What is there except using food as a weapon, making homebuilt AK-47s in the basement, and getting high in between clashes in the streets between one "militia" and another? Do we think that we're any more immune to this than any other nation or culture?
While it doesn't necessarily seem that civil war and collapse would necessarily intersect with the storing of knowledge for rebuilding in the distant future, consider that the Khmer Rouge made a habit of putting plastic bags over the heads of people who wore glasses or didn't have callouses on their hands. Would a few bins of carefully packaged books be enough to condemn someone? Even if that were not the case, do we expect that anything resembling a public library would survive civil upheaval, or would they be torn down and disposed of along with all other institutions, such as universities, that one faction or another saw as objectionable?
The thing which stands out in many of these discussions, is that there is no reconciliation between one viewpoint and another. People on the right accuse people on the left of wanting to use government to oppress them and destroy them financially. People on the left accuse people on the right of wanting to "take over" the system and trample freedom in the name of some hidden agenda. The facts no longer matter, the notion that each side genuinely believes it is trying to do what is best for the nation, is lost on the other. The hatred between each camp is palpable and is not decreasing.
Things like this get glossed over in the good times, when there's no real pressure and competition for how to distribute limited resources. When everyone is fat and happy, there's no need to worry about who's fighting over scraps. Now, however, with uneployment and despair reaching catastrophic levels, a president with no ability to lead the nation out of the mess, a congress which is paralyzed by partisanship and whoring after lobbyist dollars, the pressures are growing until the inevitable is going to happen, a spark of some sort, the first rock through a window, which is going to set off a spiral of violence until a de facto state of civil war exists.
The first American civil war came perilously close to tearing the nation apart and has had repercussions that have not stopped to the present day. This was in a time and place when there was a giant western frontier for people to escape to and rebuild new lives in a place of plenty. Now that there are no ready-to-exploit frontiers left, no safety valve for radicals of both sides, what is going to be the end result? A nonstop grind of civil conflict until there is not one stone standing on top of another?
It is in times like these when knowledge is lost and ideas die, in favor of the daily struggle to survive. Look at any of the "third world" nations wracked by civil wars in recent decades. What is there except using food as a weapon, making homebuilt AK-47s in the basement, and getting high in between clashes in the streets between one "militia" and another? Do we think that we're any more immune to this than any other nation or culture?
While it doesn't necessarily seem that civil war and collapse would necessarily intersect with the storing of knowledge for rebuilding in the distant future, consider that the Khmer Rouge made a habit of putting plastic bags over the heads of people who wore glasses or didn't have callouses on their hands. Would a few bins of carefully packaged books be enough to condemn someone? Even if that were not the case, do we expect that anything resembling a public library would survive civil upheaval, or would they be torn down and disposed of along with all other institutions, such as universities, that one faction or another saw as objectionable?
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
London's Burning
On September 7th, 1940, the German Luftwaffe bombed London after a smattering of RAF attacks on Berlin. Particularly excited by this turn of events was Hermann Goering, who telegrammed his wife Emmy and bragged "I've sent my bombers to London! London's burning!" The irony, of course, was that the shift by the Luftwaffe to the bombing of London provided a respite to RAF Fighter Command that was essentially on the ropes by that point in time, running short on aircraft and especially short on pilots. Now, 71 years later after Germany failed to destroy England's defenses, London is once more on fire, but this time her own people are doing the deed.
There may be a handful of surviving RAF pilots who are now asking themselves just why they flung their Hurricanes and Spitfires into the sky against the Messerschmidts and Heinkels, if the end result was going to be angry mobs burning down shops, houses, and businesses. Did they suspect that the nation of England might well be destroyed by the barbarians from within?
There doesn't seem to necessarily be an easy way to categorize the riots. Nativists would try to point to immigration or race as being the source of the problem, but there were plenty of pictures of Anglo-Saxon looking folking swinging heavy objects at police cars or being dragged off by riot cops. Marxists, on the other side of the fence, would try to blame lack of economic opportunity, but can a convincing case be made when a Sony distribution facility was targeted and looted? (I tend to doubt that anyone is going to put "The Internationale" on their stolen iPods)
It goes without saying that there won't be any shortage of opinions on the cause of these riots (and other ones around the world). I don't think it's unlikely that we'll begin seeing the same sort of thing start to occur in America, either. However, one explanation lies in complexity theory, the branch of mathematics which deals with spontaneous organization of patterns. In short, complexity theory notes that patterns can arise where they didn't previously exist, generally caused by energy entering a semi-closed system. An example of this is a neon sign -- neon gas just sits in the tube until electricity is applied, when the molecules begin to glow. An even better example is a spontaneous traffic jam -- for no real reason, cars begin slowing en masse, until traffic slows to a crawl. Just as quickly, it can dissipate, the road becoming clear once more, without anyone really knowing the cause. Yet another example is the action of acts defending their colony or digging a nest.
While we see the effect of destabilizing industrial society in the riots, complex systems also seem to exist at a higher level in places like Washington. A poster commented here a couple of weeks ago about the debt crisis solving itself, if the government would simply quit spending. We look at the "debt ceiling deal," and ask just how each party can support something so meaningless, claim some victory, blame the other side, and kick the can down the road. On top of that, we ask how someone like Alan Greenspan can just say that the printing presses can keep running, or Bernake can just float a trial balloon about QE3? The answer is that our system of leadership has taken on a particularly rigid and chaotic pattern after years of energy inputs in the form of lobbying, power grabs over budgeting, and everything else that goes with fighting over the spoils in a late-state empire.
The pattern which has emerged is very much like that traffic jam -- nothing is going anywhere and no one really knows why, even though there's no wreck on the road, no construction to channel the traffic down to one lane. Nothing moves, nothing changes, it just keeps plodding on to the inevitable point where it collapses into chaos, once there is no more energy to feed into the system.
There may be a handful of surviving RAF pilots who are now asking themselves just why they flung their Hurricanes and Spitfires into the sky against the Messerschmidts and Heinkels, if the end result was going to be angry mobs burning down shops, houses, and businesses. Did they suspect that the nation of England might well be destroyed by the barbarians from within?
There doesn't seem to necessarily be an easy way to categorize the riots. Nativists would try to point to immigration or race as being the source of the problem, but there were plenty of pictures of Anglo-Saxon looking folking swinging heavy objects at police cars or being dragged off by riot cops. Marxists, on the other side of the fence, would try to blame lack of economic opportunity, but can a convincing case be made when a Sony distribution facility was targeted and looted? (I tend to doubt that anyone is going to put "The Internationale" on their stolen iPods)
It goes without saying that there won't be any shortage of opinions on the cause of these riots (and other ones around the world). I don't think it's unlikely that we'll begin seeing the same sort of thing start to occur in America, either. However, one explanation lies in complexity theory, the branch of mathematics which deals with spontaneous organization of patterns. In short, complexity theory notes that patterns can arise where they didn't previously exist, generally caused by energy entering a semi-closed system. An example of this is a neon sign -- neon gas just sits in the tube until electricity is applied, when the molecules begin to glow. An even better example is a spontaneous traffic jam -- for no real reason, cars begin slowing en masse, until traffic slows to a crawl. Just as quickly, it can dissipate, the road becoming clear once more, without anyone really knowing the cause. Yet another example is the action of acts defending their colony or digging a nest.
While we see the effect of destabilizing industrial society in the riots, complex systems also seem to exist at a higher level in places like Washington. A poster commented here a couple of weeks ago about the debt crisis solving itself, if the government would simply quit spending. We look at the "debt ceiling deal," and ask just how each party can support something so meaningless, claim some victory, blame the other side, and kick the can down the road. On top of that, we ask how someone like Alan Greenspan can just say that the printing presses can keep running, or Bernake can just float a trial balloon about QE3? The answer is that our system of leadership has taken on a particularly rigid and chaotic pattern after years of energy inputs in the form of lobbying, power grabs over budgeting, and everything else that goes with fighting over the spoils in a late-state empire.
The pattern which has emerged is very much like that traffic jam -- nothing is going anywhere and no one really knows why, even though there's no wreck on the road, no construction to channel the traffic down to one lane. Nothing moves, nothing changes, it just keeps plodding on to the inevitable point where it collapses into chaos, once there is no more energy to feed into the system.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Ghost Town Blues
I saw a very interesting piece (here) on the shift of population from America's rural areas to the cities, especially the northeast. This really isn't news to anyone who has spent any time in a rural town in recent years. If you go to "main street," you'll see most of the beautiful old brick buildings have fallen into disrepair, with cracked or boarded up windows, peeling paint, water damage. They no longer serve any use, no more than a castle in the countryside in Europe. Yeah, sure, you might find something like a photo studio in one, a pizza parlor in another, maybe even a government office, but mostly, the occupants are like pigeons living in the loft of an abandoned mansion -- they're there, but just because it's there and have no real tie to the place.
Interestingly, the piece even talks about post offices closing up. This is in addition to sheriff's departments who are increasingly unable to provide patrol services to rural areas as their own budgets evaporate. So, not only are rural areas losing population, they are also losing any kind of political organization. Roads, also, are going back to gravel and bridges that are in need of maintenance or are damaged are often simply closed until the necessary funding can be found (good luck). Of course, some roads aren't all that passable to begin with.
Part of the problem is the loss of jobs in the rural areas. Farming is increasingly done on a very large scale, requiring lots of energy input and expensive machinery, putting it out of the reach of most people as a practical way of making a living. A number of the plants which were opened in rural areas (due to low land costs and lower living costs) are closing or relocating because of the economy and rising shipping costs. Of course, as population shifts, all the service-based businesses close as well, as there's no one left to patronize those businesses.
This seems to be a trend with most empires, at any rate. Rome, for example, was relatively decentralized for quite a long time, with the bulk of the population being composed of small-scale farmers. As slavery increased, and landowners grew and consolidated their holdings, the population tended to move to the cities and seek handouts, leaving the rural areas relatively deserted. In turn, this put considerable pressure on the administration and stability of the Imperial cities, that of trying to make sure the populace was fed and didn't riot or revolt. While arguably not a factor which directly contributed to the fall of Rome, it isn't hard to imagine that it made the Empire somewhat less flexible and able to respond to other problems.
There are some obvious implications for modern America here. One is that the loss of smaller-scale farming, distributed populations, and close ties to rural areas, means that agriculture and food distribution is going to wind up being even more "brittle" than it has been in the past, and dependent on effective transportation. Another is that the population which moves to the cities is probably not any more likely to find work than it would have in the countryside -- the continuing Depression, combined with the fact that many people are going to be competing with an established labor force that already has existing social connections, means that opportunities will be limited, even on a generational basis. Politicians are going to face the dilemma of trying to fund social programs to appease an increasingly restless urban population and further ruining the budgets, or are going to face a situation like the Paris communues -- modern "ghettos" which erupt in violence from time to time (I'm reminded of "Mega-City One" from Judge Dredd, too).
As it gets harder and harder to maintain a workable economy, too, the cities are obviously going to see a serious degregdation in living standards. While people have advocated staying in urban areas during periods of collapse, it may get to the point where they are not worth occupying any longer, by any rational measure. The larger the population, the worse these problems will be.
On the other hand, this does present some opportunities for people who are interested in transitioning to a post-oil, post-industrial lifestyle. Entire towns are up for sale now, apparently, and more and more land is going to simply be abandoned and allowed to become overgrown again. One aspect of the Leibowitz Society's philosophy has been the exploration of forming communities around the preservation of knowledge, similar to Dark Ages monasteries, meaning that these efforts would find plenty of open and unused space. It is obviously up to the individual to decide what their best course is, but this is still some food for thought. The key idea to remember is that what a person who has grown up in the information age is looking in terms of dwelling space or lifestyle is going to be vastly different from a person who is contemplating the transition to post-collapse life.
Interestingly, the piece even talks about post offices closing up. This is in addition to sheriff's departments who are increasingly unable to provide patrol services to rural areas as their own budgets evaporate. So, not only are rural areas losing population, they are also losing any kind of political organization. Roads, also, are going back to gravel and bridges that are in need of maintenance or are damaged are often simply closed until the necessary funding can be found (good luck). Of course, some roads aren't all that passable to begin with.
Part of the problem is the loss of jobs in the rural areas. Farming is increasingly done on a very large scale, requiring lots of energy input and expensive machinery, putting it out of the reach of most people as a practical way of making a living. A number of the plants which were opened in rural areas (due to low land costs and lower living costs) are closing or relocating because of the economy and rising shipping costs. Of course, as population shifts, all the service-based businesses close as well, as there's no one left to patronize those businesses.
This seems to be a trend with most empires, at any rate. Rome, for example, was relatively decentralized for quite a long time, with the bulk of the population being composed of small-scale farmers. As slavery increased, and landowners grew and consolidated their holdings, the population tended to move to the cities and seek handouts, leaving the rural areas relatively deserted. In turn, this put considerable pressure on the administration and stability of the Imperial cities, that of trying to make sure the populace was fed and didn't riot or revolt. While arguably not a factor which directly contributed to the fall of Rome, it isn't hard to imagine that it made the Empire somewhat less flexible and able to respond to other problems.
There are some obvious implications for modern America here. One is that the loss of smaller-scale farming, distributed populations, and close ties to rural areas, means that agriculture and food distribution is going to wind up being even more "brittle" than it has been in the past, and dependent on effective transportation. Another is that the population which moves to the cities is probably not any more likely to find work than it would have in the countryside -- the continuing Depression, combined with the fact that many people are going to be competing with an established labor force that already has existing social connections, means that opportunities will be limited, even on a generational basis. Politicians are going to face the dilemma of trying to fund social programs to appease an increasingly restless urban population and further ruining the budgets, or are going to face a situation like the Paris communues -- modern "ghettos" which erupt in violence from time to time (I'm reminded of "Mega-City One" from Judge Dredd, too).
As it gets harder and harder to maintain a workable economy, too, the cities are obviously going to see a serious degregdation in living standards. While people have advocated staying in urban areas during periods of collapse, it may get to the point where they are not worth occupying any longer, by any rational measure. The larger the population, the worse these problems will be.
On the other hand, this does present some opportunities for people who are interested in transitioning to a post-oil, post-industrial lifestyle. Entire towns are up for sale now, apparently, and more and more land is going to simply be abandoned and allowed to become overgrown again. One aspect of the Leibowitz Society's philosophy has been the exploration of forming communities around the preservation of knowledge, similar to Dark Ages monasteries, meaning that these efforts would find plenty of open and unused space. It is obviously up to the individual to decide what their best course is, but this is still some food for thought. The key idea to remember is that what a person who has grown up in the information age is looking in terms of dwelling space or lifestyle is going to be vastly different from a person who is contemplating the transition to post-collapse life.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Consumer Confidence Game
Well, so we're in the middle of the vacation season. As James Kunstler has put it, "The time of the year when we turn Lake George upside down with cigarette boat Cuinsiarts." Or something like that. I'll defer to his ability to turn a phrase, but you get the idea. When the highways are even more choked with people going places they can't afford to go to, so they can start counting down the time until they can go home.
In the daily games of "How do we keep their eye off the ball?" at the alphabet soup networks, the Casey Anthony ordeal has come to a close for the moment, to be replaced by the aftershock of of talking heads all clamoring to make the most outrageous statements about how the process of law should work. Some people have called for an end to the jury system, and I expect we'll eventually have someone stumble across the Code of Napoleon and decide to apply the bastard child of criminal law in post-Revolution France. Maybe we'll just skip to the world of Death Race and be done with it (good flick if you enjoyed Running Man...haven't seen the original Death Race, so I can't comment).
Unemployment is edging back up again, or at least hovering around like a buzzard who wants a snack. It looks like the steam has run out from the stimulation, the census lift, and the Golden Age of Hiring at the Golden Arches. Almost ten years of war and a busted economy which is falling off the cliff, slow-motion, like Homer Simpson, are leaving people wondering where we're going next.
Consumer Confidence, that weathervane of how willing we are to spend money we don't have on crap we don't have, is sinking yet again, two straight months in a row now. Some people will say that it's a sign we're not recovering, economically, but I think it's a sign that people are coming to their senses and realizing that no promises or debt-based government lottery/stimulus packages are going to make a damn bit of difference in what is a steadily declining nation.
Ultimately, people are going to start seeing they have to learn how to fend for themselves, or at least help each other out. While I'm pretty jaded a lot of the time about collapse, having maintained this blog for most of a year, having kept something jumped out at me today that made even me sit up. I was looking through a bookseller's items and noticed the little bar at the bottom which showed what other people were looking at: Self-Sufficient Life Homesteading, Home Canning, Wilderness Survival Guide Books CD, Survival CD Self-Reliance, Raising Chickens Permaculture...
So much for books about World War Two, the Ford Mustang or vacation homes...
In the daily games of "How do we keep their eye off the ball?" at the alphabet soup networks, the Casey Anthony ordeal has come to a close for the moment, to be replaced by the aftershock of of talking heads all clamoring to make the most outrageous statements about how the process of law should work. Some people have called for an end to the jury system, and I expect we'll eventually have someone stumble across the Code of Napoleon and decide to apply the bastard child of criminal law in post-Revolution France. Maybe we'll just skip to the world of Death Race and be done with it (good flick if you enjoyed Running Man...haven't seen the original Death Race, so I can't comment).
Unemployment is edging back up again, or at least hovering around like a buzzard who wants a snack. It looks like the steam has run out from the stimulation, the census lift, and the Golden Age of Hiring at the Golden Arches. Almost ten years of war and a busted economy which is falling off the cliff, slow-motion, like Homer Simpson, are leaving people wondering where we're going next.
Consumer Confidence, that weathervane of how willing we are to spend money we don't have on crap we don't have, is sinking yet again, two straight months in a row now. Some people will say that it's a sign we're not recovering, economically, but I think it's a sign that people are coming to their senses and realizing that no promises or debt-based government lottery/stimulus packages are going to make a damn bit of difference in what is a steadily declining nation.
Ultimately, people are going to start seeing they have to learn how to fend for themselves, or at least help each other out. While I'm pretty jaded a lot of the time about collapse, having maintained this blog for most of a year, having kept something jumped out at me today that made even me sit up. I was looking through a bookseller's items and noticed the little bar at the bottom which showed what other people were looking at: Self-Sufficient Life Homesteading, Home Canning, Wilderness Survival Guide Books CD, Survival CD Self-Reliance, Raising Chickens Permaculture...
So much for books about World War Two, the Ford Mustang or vacation homes...
Monday, June 20, 2011
No One Need Apply, Part Two
CNN recently ran an article about the employment situation in Zimbabwe. Apparently, the position of hangman has been vacant for years, but plenty of people are interested in it, just to guarantee a regular paycheck. I don't know the social attitude toward capital punishment in Zimbabwe, but it seems clear that the social attitude toward being unemployed shares an awful lot with the United States, as large numbers of people take jobs well below their professional skill level and education just to get by. One reason for the riots in Tunisia was a large class of former college students that were unable to find any work related to their education.
I've been waiting for some years for the "higher education bubble" to burst in America. Millions of young adults head off to college, still armed with the out of date mindset of a generation before (get a degree, someone will give you a job), all-too-willing to accept decades of debt slavery based on student loans underwritten with bad government debt. Four years later, or maybe six or eight, these same young adults find themselves with an inescapable debt (bankruptcy laws don't apply) and fewer and fewer job prospects. At my local chain bookstore, the staff consists largely of English majors who weren't able to find anything else but a minimum-wage job working a register and finding books on a shelf. This isn't necessarily confined to degrees which don't directly translate to professional training, either -- plenty of people with accounting degrees, law degrees, etc, are facing increasingly poor employment prospects.
There's a tendency to play the "blame the victim" game here, that people should've known that things sometimes come with strings attached and that there's no guarantee of success. However, what prospective students didn't realize -- and what our civilization as a whole is still failing to comprehend -- that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, that the world which they were raised in, and people still believe in, simply doesn't exist anymore. Lots of things are clear in the rearview, but maybe not so much when they're around the next corner.
It does beg the question of how things will change socially, as we have an increasingly large educated class with little hope of success or life beyond trying to figure out how to pay their minimum loan payments and not find themselves arrested for not coming up with the cash to Sallie Mae or whoever. Will we see a generation of "refuseniks" arise, who simply don't pay back their loans and form communities around this common burden? Or will they form political action groups to try to have mass student loan forgiveness? In an age when we're willing to bail out banks and given planeloads (literally) of dollars to foreign dicators, the latter idea doesn't seem so outlandish. Finally, will they be primary contributors to political disruption and mass dissent?
If anything, we can see that when the collapse of our systems is in the offing, then like the chaos of a collapsing universe, all sorts of new patterns emerge and things which were once unthinkable become commonplace. This was the view when the Soviet Union was headed off the edge of the cliff and it wasn't unheard of for soldiers occupying Eastern Europe to be picking over the refuse in garbage dumps for the essentials of life. It doesn't take much speculation to see that we're on the same track and that, if anything, we flew a lot higher and have a lot farther to fall before it's all over.
I've been waiting for some years for the "higher education bubble" to burst in America. Millions of young adults head off to college, still armed with the out of date mindset of a generation before (get a degree, someone will give you a job), all-too-willing to accept decades of debt slavery based on student loans underwritten with bad government debt. Four years later, or maybe six or eight, these same young adults find themselves with an inescapable debt (bankruptcy laws don't apply) and fewer and fewer job prospects. At my local chain bookstore, the staff consists largely of English majors who weren't able to find anything else but a minimum-wage job working a register and finding books on a shelf. This isn't necessarily confined to degrees which don't directly translate to professional training, either -- plenty of people with accounting degrees, law degrees, etc, are facing increasingly poor employment prospects.
There's a tendency to play the "blame the victim" game here, that people should've known that things sometimes come with strings attached and that there's no guarantee of success. However, what prospective students didn't realize -- and what our civilization as a whole is still failing to comprehend -- that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, that the world which they were raised in, and people still believe in, simply doesn't exist anymore. Lots of things are clear in the rearview, but maybe not so much when they're around the next corner.
It does beg the question of how things will change socially, as we have an increasingly large educated class with little hope of success or life beyond trying to figure out how to pay their minimum loan payments and not find themselves arrested for not coming up with the cash to Sallie Mae or whoever. Will we see a generation of "refuseniks" arise, who simply don't pay back their loans and form communities around this common burden? Or will they form political action groups to try to have mass student loan forgiveness? In an age when we're willing to bail out banks and given planeloads (literally) of dollars to foreign dicators, the latter idea doesn't seem so outlandish. Finally, will they be primary contributors to political disruption and mass dissent?
If anything, we can see that when the collapse of our systems is in the offing, then like the chaos of a collapsing universe, all sorts of new patterns emerge and things which were once unthinkable become commonplace. This was the view when the Soviet Union was headed off the edge of the cliff and it wasn't unheard of for soldiers occupying Eastern Europe to be picking over the refuse in garbage dumps for the essentials of life. It doesn't take much speculation to see that we're on the same track and that, if anything, we flew a lot higher and have a lot farther to fall before it's all over.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Flopping Around
I read an article (here) today about the new "Spider Man" musical and how U2 is trying to distance themselves from the production, stating that there is still some work to be done, even as the premiere is hours away. The musical itself has cost around $70 million to produce and has been panned by the critics. On top of that, it's apparently safer to be a lumberjack than it is to be a star in the show. In other words, it's shaping up to be the Titanic of musicals -- just the ticket to be a symbol of the faltering culture of a faltering time.
Looking at the upcoming U.S. presidential election, I confess that I feel the same way about it, too. The leading Republican candidate's main qualification is that he's been able to raise a lot of funds, without really specifying what he stands for. The incumbent Democrat president has apparently been overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the problems of the presidency (hint, Mr. Obama -- when none of your party's heavyweights are seeking the top job in politics, the job itself has probably become something of a lemon, with the tires falling off and an engine packed full of Stop-Leak and metal shavings). Some of the Republican runners-up include department store mannequins and stunt doubles from a torch-and-pitchfork mob. Ron Paul, probably the most philosophically sound member of the bunch, has been shoved to the back of the pack. Picking a new emperor is always a dodgy business. Now, it's becoming a parody.
While the Leibowitz Society doesn't take political sides, the problem remains that a nation without solid leadership in difficult times is going to find itself in worse and worse trouble as people try to figure out which way the wind is blowing during a hurricane. We need to start figuring out how our systems are going to work when cheap oil is gone and the dollar becomes worthless, not how we can try to keep the barbarians beyond the "limes" of Kabul or Cairo, or how we can keep building homes that will never see an occupant or cars that will have nothing to run on that the average person can afford.
Looking at the upcoming U.S. presidential election, I confess that I feel the same way about it, too. The leading Republican candidate's main qualification is that he's been able to raise a lot of funds, without really specifying what he stands for. The incumbent Democrat president has apparently been overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the problems of the presidency (hint, Mr. Obama -- when none of your party's heavyweights are seeking the top job in politics, the job itself has probably become something of a lemon, with the tires falling off and an engine packed full of Stop-Leak and metal shavings). Some of the Republican runners-up include department store mannequins and stunt doubles from a torch-and-pitchfork mob. Ron Paul, probably the most philosophically sound member of the bunch, has been shoved to the back of the pack. Picking a new emperor is always a dodgy business. Now, it's becoming a parody.
While the Leibowitz Society doesn't take political sides, the problem remains that a nation without solid leadership in difficult times is going to find itself in worse and worse trouble as people try to figure out which way the wind is blowing during a hurricane. We need to start figuring out how our systems are going to work when cheap oil is gone and the dollar becomes worthless, not how we can try to keep the barbarians beyond the "limes" of Kabul or Cairo, or how we can keep building homes that will never see an occupant or cars that will have nothing to run on that the average person can afford.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Braver New World
One of the signs of an impending Dark Age seems to be a loss of meaning or "way" in society. We go through the motions, but we lose any sense of relevance of our actions. Part of this is because we see that what we do will make little difference in the overall course of human civilization and part of it is because we aren't even aware that we have the capacity to effect change. Or, if you want it boiled down to the essence, we suffer from apathy and ignorance.
Politicians, the media, educators, often get the blame for this state of affairs, but it really makes no more sense to blame them than it does the sun and the moon for someone's bunions. Politicians spend most of their time trying to get out ahead of where the herd is going and say something that will win some votes. The media spends all their time trying to battle fiercely for ratings or readership, fighting a rear-guard action against the new media of the web. Educators take children from homes where education is valued somewhere on the same level as leprosy and try to teach them something, anything, while battling public policy and dodging political potshots.
I'm not really sure where we could put the blame, where we would define the cornerstone event that led to this problem. Maybe Huxley was right, that it is impossible to find a limit for man's capacity to endlessly amuse himself. Prosperous societies never seem to be able to sustain that prosperity. Is it because people get distracted and don't notice when problems start to crop up? Or do they just prefer to kick the can down the road because the problem is too huge to address?
I'm really, really not sure what chance America -- and most of the developed world -- has anymore at sustained intellectual growth. The heroes of yesteryear -- scientists, inventors, tycoons, engineers, explorers -- have been replaced by sports stars, pop stars and actors, all who live shoddy personal lives and can't string two thoughts together. People like these are what kids aspire to become, while demeaning the contributions of people who actually matter and change the world as we know it.
Some readers might look at this as being one step removed from a "get off my lawn!" type of screed, and maybe it is. Whatever people may say, there is still likely a vague sense of a loss of purpose and instead they feel unease at being bombarded 24/7 by new and greater distractions, hedonism as a virtue, the lack of adult thought and behavior from most people, the constant search for an endless childhood.
On the other hand, I think most will agree that we've gone from being a society where things do matter, where we understand what our place in the world is and that we can change it, to a culture of general irrelevance. The mechanisms of corrective change in the course of our society have completely evaporated and we're left with what is going to be an increasingly bumpy downhill ride even as we see that there's no driver at the wheel any longer.
He's off eating Cheetos and watching America's Got Talent.
Politicians, the media, educators, often get the blame for this state of affairs, but it really makes no more sense to blame them than it does the sun and the moon for someone's bunions. Politicians spend most of their time trying to get out ahead of where the herd is going and say something that will win some votes. The media spends all their time trying to battle fiercely for ratings or readership, fighting a rear-guard action against the new media of the web. Educators take children from homes where education is valued somewhere on the same level as leprosy and try to teach them something, anything, while battling public policy and dodging political potshots.
I'm not really sure where we could put the blame, where we would define the cornerstone event that led to this problem. Maybe Huxley was right, that it is impossible to find a limit for man's capacity to endlessly amuse himself. Prosperous societies never seem to be able to sustain that prosperity. Is it because people get distracted and don't notice when problems start to crop up? Or do they just prefer to kick the can down the road because the problem is too huge to address?
I'm really, really not sure what chance America -- and most of the developed world -- has anymore at sustained intellectual growth. The heroes of yesteryear -- scientists, inventors, tycoons, engineers, explorers -- have been replaced by sports stars, pop stars and actors, all who live shoddy personal lives and can't string two thoughts together. People like these are what kids aspire to become, while demeaning the contributions of people who actually matter and change the world as we know it.
Some readers might look at this as being one step removed from a "get off my lawn!" type of screed, and maybe it is. Whatever people may say, there is still likely a vague sense of a loss of purpose and instead they feel unease at being bombarded 24/7 by new and greater distractions, hedonism as a virtue, the lack of adult thought and behavior from most people, the constant search for an endless childhood.
On the other hand, I think most will agree that we've gone from being a society where things do matter, where we understand what our place in the world is and that we can change it, to a culture of general irrelevance. The mechanisms of corrective change in the course of our society have completely evaporated and we're left with what is going to be an increasingly bumpy downhill ride even as we see that there's no driver at the wheel any longer.
He's off eating Cheetos and watching America's Got Talent.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Beck and Fall
Most readers are at least aware, in passing, of Glenn Beck and his programs and books. He has a radio show, a number of books published, and a weekday program on Fox news. Having gone from a self-described alcoholic and drug user, to being one of the country's leading political pundits, is quite an accomplishment, regardless of what anyone thinks of his opinions and views. Much of his show consists of talking about conspiracies between various groups of people, strategies to intentionally collapse the nation so warmed-over 60s-style Frankfurt school radicalism can take over (although most of the disciples of that viewpoint have moved on to enjoying their own slice of the pie -- being a revolutionary seems to be like being a professional lottery player...not worth the effort unless you win the whole enchilada). Now and then, he takes a token shot at the Right and George Bush, before putting more pictures on a blackboard and drawing lines between them.
Over the last few days, there's been a trial bubble floated about Mr. Beck leaving Fox, based on a number of factors, including declining ratings and a veering away from the "mainstream conservative" politics that Fox generally represents, and leaning toward more of a populist form of conservatism. If anything, it means he'll probably abandon a medium which really hasn't been as friendly to political commentators as one might've expected (see the experiences of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on TV), and will return to radio and print, which is where the "alternative" news media got started and where people like him seem to thrive best.
Why the meteoric rise and the almost-as-meteroric fall? The real problem, I suspect, is not with the man, the means of the medium, but the message. People would like to be able to scapegoat one group or another for the problems of the nation -- unions, Christians, patriots, liberals, Muslims, pick something -- but the problems we face are ones we've all had a hand in creating. Support massive defense spending for "security?" Well, guess what, a large share of the national debt is yours. Support massive social spending for "compassion?" Ditto. A conspiracy's not a conspiracy any longer if it's out in the open and everyone knows about it. Even the banksters have to feel a little uncomfortable in those quiet evening hours, when they wonder if they're diversified enough to survive the fall of the dollar or if a mob with torches and weedwackers will show up outside their Hampton mansions.
On a deep level, I think that everyone knows that we're in serious trouble now and that there's no easy way out of it, if any way is possible at all. Talking about conspiracies now is like talking about it being cloudy out when there's a hurricane raging overhead. It's not as much fun to engage in "what if" games when the problem is right in your face and you're wondering if you can get out of the way of the falling pieces or if you'll be caught up in the debris as well.
At least Mr. Beck has probably gotten some people to reevaluate their lives and start thinking about a post-collapse future, so his time on the air has probably not been for nothing. Sadly, the rest of his time -- looking for hidden groups of people to blame for what's coming our way -- has been nothing but a distraction and an escape from the reality of why we're really where we're at.
Over the last few days, there's been a trial bubble floated about Mr. Beck leaving Fox, based on a number of factors, including declining ratings and a veering away from the "mainstream conservative" politics that Fox generally represents, and leaning toward more of a populist form of conservatism. If anything, it means he'll probably abandon a medium which really hasn't been as friendly to political commentators as one might've expected (see the experiences of Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on TV), and will return to radio and print, which is where the "alternative" news media got started and where people like him seem to thrive best.
Why the meteoric rise and the almost-as-meteroric fall? The real problem, I suspect, is not with the man, the means of the medium, but the message. People would like to be able to scapegoat one group or another for the problems of the nation -- unions, Christians, patriots, liberals, Muslims, pick something -- but the problems we face are ones we've all had a hand in creating. Support massive defense spending for "security?" Well, guess what, a large share of the national debt is yours. Support massive social spending for "compassion?" Ditto. A conspiracy's not a conspiracy any longer if it's out in the open and everyone knows about it. Even the banksters have to feel a little uncomfortable in those quiet evening hours, when they wonder if they're diversified enough to survive the fall of the dollar or if a mob with torches and weedwackers will show up outside their Hampton mansions.
On a deep level, I think that everyone knows that we're in serious trouble now and that there's no easy way out of it, if any way is possible at all. Talking about conspiracies now is like talking about it being cloudy out when there's a hurricane raging overhead. It's not as much fun to engage in "what if" games when the problem is right in your face and you're wondering if you can get out of the way of the falling pieces or if you'll be caught up in the debris as well.
At least Mr. Beck has probably gotten some people to reevaluate their lives and start thinking about a post-collapse future, so his time on the air has probably not been for nothing. Sadly, the rest of his time -- looking for hidden groups of people to blame for what's coming our way -- has been nothing but a distraction and an escape from the reality of why we're really where we're at.
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