The business and economics news has been full of reports and analyses of the jobs situation in the US, which may be signaling a continuing weakening economy. Here is what I had to say way back in October of 2009: Jobs: When Will They Come Back? Answer: Never. The basis of my prognostication was extraordinarily simple. Jobs require that there is work to do. Work requires energy flow. Energy flows are on the decline. Ergo: Jobs are in pretty much permanent decline. At least the kinds of jobs we've been used to.
The neoclassical economists and the talking media heads are still puzzling over what has happened, and haven't got a clue about what is going to happen. They incessantly continue to blame (depending on their political leanings) the banks, government overspending and environmental rules, lazy southern Europeans, schools (well actually that one may be legitimate), greed, you name it. But all of these are really just symptoms of something deeper going wrong. Our civilization is moribund and no one seems to realize it. The jobs situation, the financial crises of various forms, are all just symptoms of the disease that will kill civilization and most of humanity. Other symptoms include stupidity and ignorance. It is a genetic-based disease. It is due to a lack of sapience. [Metaphors aside, the root problem is that our species is no longer fit for its environment since the latter no longer harbors growing supplies of high power energy.]
Contraction and Collapse
The reason I don't write books is because I really don't have anything to sell. Certainly not a plan to resurrect a growth-oriented economy. People aren't really interested in buying a book that doesn't at least provide some kind of hope that things could get better. If you look at the vast majority of books on the subjects of peak-this and that, collapse, etc. they all tend to end with a prescription that, “if only our leaders would do thus and so, we could weather the storm, maybe get a little battered, but basically come out the other end OK.” With one exception, even the most doomerish books assume that somehow our species will go on and one day rebuild some kind of society. William Catton's, Bottleneck, is the only book, and Catton the only author, I've read that simply ends by saying that it is too late. We are past the tipping point, and we are going to face extinction or at very least an evolutionary bottleneck event. In the latter case survivors generally form the seed population that will undergo further selection and lead to the evolution of new species (plural as a rule). Either way, Homo sapiens is destined to extinction.
And that thought does not really sell books. I don't know what number of copies Catton has sold, but I haven't seen the title on the New York Times bestseller list and don't expect to.
My message, playing the role of a modern day Cassandra (and there are actually a few of us doing so, like Catton) is basically the same. Civilization is doomed to collapse on a global scale. Humanity is doomed to contraction simply because it takes our modern kind of civilization, based on cheap, high power energy sources, to support the amount of biomass that the human population represents (which includes food crops and animals, pets, ornamental plants, etc.) Civilization runs on that cheap energy and the availability of that is starting into decline. I know the media and so-called experts are declaring that we are awash in oil. Well, in part that is because many folk are already feeling too poor to buy the fuels that come from oil. In part it is because in our desperation we are turning to much more expensive sources like tar sands and shale oils. Even so, the rate of increase in oil extraction is still decelerating relative to what it was even 20 years ago.
But that isn't the real issue. The issue is net energy available to do physical and physiological work. Net energy is what you have left over after you account for all the energy inputs it took to get the next increment of raw energy out and processed to a usable form. In simple economic terms it is the energy profit that is applied to supporting civilization and that profit has been diminishing at an increasing rate over the last thirty years or more. Moreover, the population has continued to increase meaning that there is less per capita net energy. And that is why there are so many poor people in the world. And that is why so many formerly middle class people are getting poorer every day [1].
So I don't write books because no one would want to buy my message. I do this for free in hopes that some of it will make sense and some people may benefit from anticipating the future I see. As always I hope I am wrong.
The title I've chosen for this piece reflects the above sentiment along with an unreasonable hope that somehow enough people will get it and learn to accept reality and get on with shutting down gracefully. Because that is what we are talking about. When people accept that they are dying and need assistance (if not pain relief) to die in dignity, they turn to hospice care. That is what our species should do — go extinct with dignity. We should provide ourselves with a process of contraction that will minimize the hardships of collapse. We should, but...
If Understanding and Wisdom Prevailed
What would a sufficiently sapient species do if faced with imminent extinction? What would a hospice for humanity look like? Several goals might be set forth regarding the desire that the fewest number of individuals possible would suffer greatly. Society would need to begin organizing around the dynamics of contraction in such a way that the ravages of disease and loss of numerous services would be less impactful than if we just sit around and did nothing (or as is more likely going to happen we start killing each other off). There are a number of focal social processes that would need to be strengthened and become the recipients of all our resources.
In addition, another thought arises from the possibility that there might actually be survivors of a bottleneck event who would form the breeding population that just might keep the genus Homo in the game. And that would be to deconstruct the human built world as parts are no longer needed due to contraction of the population. The pieces still represent low entropy materials (e.g. steel and concrete) that could be salvaged and cached for possible future use. These materials exist because we have expended large amounts of energy doing work to reduce the entropy (e.g. going from iron ore to steel). That “embodied” energy would ultimately go to waste if these materials are simply left to decay as a result of exposure to the natural elements (c.f. Alan Weisman's. World Without Us for an examination of how quickly the natural world would overwhelm and reabsorb mankind's handiworks). Properly preserved (mostly by burying) many materials could be protected from rapid decay, thus making them available for reuse sometime in the distant future. Much of our past and current civilizations' energy expenditures have been on the extraction and entropy reduction work that has produced these materials. A future society might be able to reuse these with a lower energy flow economy, one based on real-time solar vs. fossil sunlight.
In this scenario we would consciously (and conscientiously) deconstruct our complex and unneeded infrastructure, carefully preserving the pieces, and, in a sense knowingly let nature take over the spaces that we abandon. We would be doing both our possible successors and the natural world a huge favor.
How could this kind of activity be accomplished? Through manual labor. I am not talking about massive, fast deconstruction (or demolition and clearing to a landfill!) but rather careful, deliberate taking things apart and storing the components, so to speak, so that they can be accessed with manual labor in the future.
What I am suggesting is that our near future economy would change from a growth orientation to a rational devolution with the intent to salvage low entropy materials and minimize harm to still living individuals.
There Will Be Jobs
The key to understanding this is in recognizing that there will be increasingly less high-power energy sources available to power rapid and massive work, the kind we have become accustomed to in a growth economy fueled by fossil energy and machines doing the heavy lifting. We will have to shift more and more to manual labor to perform critical work that is directed at meeting the kinds of goals we have set up. Put simply, the currently out of work youths and even the underemployed middle agers will find there are plenty of jobs available. Its just that those jobs are not going to be glamorous nor will they produce income levels that allow one to live the high consumption lifestyles promised in the past. Basically, and crassly, if you are able to work you will work or you won't eat! If you do cooperate and do your part, your basic needs, and those of your family, will be taken care of. Nobody is promising it will be fun or enriching. But, neither does it necessarily have to be mere subsistence if we are smart about how we do it.
All I am saying is that as society and the human population contract (preferably through natural deaths rather than mass starvation) those remaining and of able bodies will need to carry out specific work aimed at providing the basic needs of life to the remainder. Below is an outline of what I think would make for a feasible approach.
I've boiled it down to five fundamental work functions that will be needed as the energy flows wind down. There will be many job types and specialties within each of these categories. These are just the foci of what social organization might look like.
One further note. As energy flows diminish the possibility of long distance travel and transport will likewise diminish. Population centers will become increasingly isolated and must work toward local versions of the below activities. I have already written about the use of permaculture as a guide to finding local optimal solutions in the face of climate and other resources.
Food Production
I would not be surprised if fifty years hence more than fifty percent of the able-bodied population, that is all women and men between the ages of, say, ten and fifty-five would be engaged in growing food plants, processing and preserving, and transporting/distributing food products. I won't speculate on what kinds of food are going to be possible. I do suspect there will be a good deal less meat in most diets, but that is likely to be conditioned by regional influences such as range land, etc. The mix of vegetables, grains, and fruits will be based on local climate. Those of us in the Pacific Northwest can essentially kiss winter-time tomatoes goodbye (no plastic greenhouses either since plastic is a product made from petroleum-based feedstock), and with a few exceptions we might be largely without tomatoes all year round. Every region will need to find what grows best and what mix of food plants will provide the maximum yield and balanced nutrition.
The important point is that as me move more into manual labor and local production/consumption a significant percentage of the working population will be needed to provide any kind of sustainable supply. And clearly this is the most important issue that will face future society.
I am lumping the supply of potable water into this category as well. Food and water are the most fundamental essentials for life. And adequate supplies are essential for reasonably comfortable living. I would count this focus of activity as central to everything else. And the sooner communities start organizing around the capability to produce food and water, the better off they will be (absent radical impacts from climate changes).
Critical Infrastructure Maintenance
Next in importance is the maintenance of what we will come to recognize as the TRUE critical infrastructure. I'm not talking about highways and bridges, not even the Internet. I am referring to houses and workshops and local roads. I am referring to soils and water catchments. This also includes clothing supplies, general tools, and anything that is needed to maintain a workable and reasonably comfortable lifestyle for the community.
Entropy is a hard task master. It constantly eats away at organization and structure. Yet organization and structure are the very things that define life and differentiate it as a state of matter far from equilibrium. Work is needed to continually combat entropy in all its forms. Therefore some portion of the population will be spending some or all of their time repairing and rebuilding the infrastructure needed to support the living community. The iconic image is the blacksmith. Another is the potter. These are trade specialties, skilled labor, that will be needed at the most basic level of maintaining a working community. If you don't want to work in the fields all day, learn to shoe a horse! Or, something to that effect.
Carpenters will probably be among the most sought after tradesmen. Maybe plumbers, especially if the number four activity (below and discussed above) is successful.
It might take fifteen to twenty percent of the population engaged in these activities. It is hard to say. Again, climate will have a lot to do with deciding on the needed investment. Harsher climates have a greater impact on the decay of structures and tools.
Health Care and Public Health Maintenance
One area that cannot be overlooked is maintaining some form of health care and public health facilities. This might take a rather small fraction of the population to accomplish but its importance cannot be overstated.
In the energy depleted future we cannot expect anything like the current health care or public health systems. We cannot keep our dying elders alive with medications or operations, or whatever it takes. We will revert to the very basics of health care, basic nursing and doctoring of injuries and minor diseases. There will be no annual flu shots, no magnetic resonance imaging technology; really not much more than stethoscopes and tongue depressors. Medicines will eventually need to be manufactured from naturally occurring compounds, like aspirin. On the plus side, people will be so much more engaged in physical labor that they will not be succumbing to couch potato diseases. And, if enough attention and knowledge is applied to the food issue above, i.e. making sure the nutrition is right, and if the labor done is done smartly so as not to be overly draining on physiques and psyches, general health should be achievable. After all we are animals that evolved to deal many threat factors, especially with immune systems that are fairly resilient (especially after we stop pumping out so many foreign chemicals into the environment).
There will be a need for some small part of the population to engage in jobs that would be maintaining public health in the form of sewage treatment (composting!), drinking water safety, etc. They would monitor the community for signs of diseases that might spread and work to isolate those infected.
In some ways the health care work will resemble that done in the 1800s but with a distinct difference. Medical practitioners today can work from a great deal more knowledge than doctors had back then. Most of what gets done in medicine today isn't about just maintaining health in productive people and children. It is geriatric care. It is emergency room care for drugs and bullet wounds and car accidents. It is performing heroic surgeries to remove brain tumors, etc. In other words, much of our health system is devoted to keeping people alive when their problems are largely caused by living the kinds of lives we live now. The pharmaceutical industry makes a healthy profit (no pun intended) by keeping men capable of sexual congress when their libidos have suffered the stresses of modern society.
As the energy runs down two things will happen together. One, people won't have the resource nor lead the complex lifestyles that result in so much of modern disease. Two, we will lose the ability to treat the diseases and injuries that result from the current form of lifestyle. So there will be no way, nor even incentive, to save the lives of people who do not live in moderation and take care of themselves. We are not a frail species. Most of our current health care needs (or wants) are simply the result of living stupidly (and I mean that in the collective sense as much as the individual sense, e.g. the effects of pollutants on all of us).
The main purpose of health care in the energy depleted world will be to prevent epidemics as much as possible. It will be to treat treatable wounds and diseases so as to prevent the deaths of the able bodied and children who will grow into workers one day. Practicing health care will not be easy, nor will it be easy to get used to the idea of not having modern medicines and tests for diagnosis. It will take a few special people who would have the ability to work under these circumstances.
Deconstruction, Salvage, and Preservation
Cities will be abandoned once people realize the food delivery system is no longer going to function. Electricity and water will vanish and it will no longer be tenable to live in these monuments to man's cleverness. At the same time cities contain a tremendous amount of salvageable materials that could be used by the relocalizing communities. But I think more important still is to look at some of this salvage as investments in the future of humanity.
Up to this point readers of John Michael Greer's work, especially The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age would recognize similarities [2]. In the footnote I supply an explanation of some differences in beliefs about just how bad societal collapse might be. Here I want to point out that one of the reasons for doing the salvage isn't just to keep some semblance of civilization going (as I interpret his thoughts). Rather the main reason I propose it is to preserve low entropy material goods for future generations to have available. Presumably a future society of beings better fit for a real-time solar energy world could at least find advantages in using the low entropy materials. They would not have to extract and refine them if they can just dig them up. They might have enough energy resources to shape the materials into useful forms — tools to make life more comfortable.
So I think that the surviving population owes it to the future of a human species (a hopefully wiser one) to make some sacrifices in order to make these kinds of investments. They would think of it as a sacrifice for their children just as many parents have considered their sacrifices made to benefit their actual children.
Coordination
With four interacting but somewhat distinct work process foci there will be a need for tactical and logistical coordination (I have a whole series of articles on systems science, and sapience, indexed here; go to the bottom of the page. Or you can read the relevant work on coordination and management here). From the standpoint of hierarchical control theory (as outlined in the links above) communities will need some kind of oversight from a council of wise elders (for strategic management). But they will also need specialists who understand how to manage coordination between work processes and organizing resource acquisition activities.
In an ideal (but non-expanding) world the coordinators would be chosen from the most knowledgeable and wisest members of the community. In other words, exactly the opposite of what happens now.
Therein lies the rub. All of the above is a rational species and community response to contraction. Such a response would make the contraction far less painful than it might be otherwise. But...
What Will Be vs. What Could Be
Humanity will need hospice care to ease the suffering. We could provide it to ourselves by following a a regimen such as above. No hospice experience is fun. But wouldn't it be nice to avoid the kinds of horror that the alternative brings? Dying in hospice care is at least peaceful, for the most part. Dying alone and under violent conditions is a sad way to end life. So too, for a species. We are the first species that has literally set in motion the very selection forces that will bring our extinction. And not unlike that of the dinosaurs, ours promises to be violent. That is, unless we were to somehow organize our own species hospice care. We are the first species that could actually do that.
Unfortunately, as I have argued often, the vast majority of human beings are neither wise nor understanding. I imagine they will deny any need to consider this concept until they are already suffering mightily and it is too late. I suffer no illusions that a plan of action such as this will be undertaken. I've largely come to the conclusion that there is not one world leader who has the wherewithal to make it clear to the people what the future will bring. They either don't grasp it, or they just want to hold onto a cushy job as long as they can, so are willing to lie through their teeth. You will have to decide about your own leaders, which they are, dumb idiots or lairs. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that just holding the job as leader today means that you are one or the other. Who in their right mind would want to have the job if they fully understood the consequences?
I have once again indulged in a futile exercise in exploring a feasible future that might actually reduce pain and suffering. The collapse is inevitable. The pain that goes with it certain. The way in which it happens is still a matter of choice. But I have no doubt what the majority of humanity will choose. It is sad.
References/Footnotes
1. I cannot recommend this book too highly. If you really want a comprehensive, scientific view of the economy based on energy please read Hall, C.A.S., and Klitgaard, K. (2012). Energy and the Wealth of Nations: Understanding the Biophysical Economy, Springer, New York.
2. Greer, J.M. (2008). The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, New Society Publishers. Greer and I see many aspects in similar light, certainly the need to relocalize and turn to permaculture and simpler living as a strategy for continued survival. On the other hand, Greer believes in something he calls catabolic collapse by which I think he means a transition to a lower energy life, but not a catastrophic collapse of society. He bases his arguments on the history (or his understanding of it) of prior civilization collapses which have never been outright catastrophic. But what I think he hasn't taken into account is that those prior collapses happened in the context of civilizations that were mostly, if not completely, dependent on real-time solar energy inputs, and were localized to regions surrounded by non-collapsing societies. The latter provided a buffer in the sense of leaking energy into the collapsing civilization, thus keeping the latter from sheer collapse. The situation today is much different. Our world is globalized to the extent that there are no buffers surrounding us. Today it is more of an all-or-none situation. Unfortunately neither he or I will be able to compare notes when events unfold.
Stunning piece, George.
Along with the preservation of materials that might be useful to future communities of Homo xxxxx, I think this entire posting should be chiseled on a stainless steel monolith and buried in a suitable location for later discovery. I'd return to dust in a happier state of mind if I knew that some future sapient beings might learn that not everyone in our era was blind, stupid or lying about the necessary outcome of our species' over production and consumption of fossil fueled energy.
We may also need to include a neo-rosetta stone, as the English language circa 2012 is likely to collapse along with our amusingly termed "civilization."
Please sign the monolith 'George Mobus and friends' as I for one would be delighted to have you speak on behalf of all of us who nod and sigh every time we read your postings.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | June 10, 2012 at 03:59 PM
Beautiful, simply beautiful.
Unfortunately:
What Will Be vs. What Could Be!
Posted by: Robin Datta | June 10, 2012 at 09:24 PM
Thanks again, very sobering.
One thing that I believe shows your sapience is to make your writings free. I remember reading The Ecological Rift and it hit me that our ecological destruction is a least proportional to our income. I have started a 6 acre forest garden out of gigantic suburban lawn and my family always talks about what a great thing I have started and how I can sell all my produce. I just want to scream "NO!" If I did sell my produce it would only be to burn the money so it can never be used again to destroy this planet (granted I am no saint because my wife makes enough money to do all the damage one family shouldn't). I have come to see horticulture as one of our only truly advanced technologies (think chestnut and acorn forests of the native Americans). I think we could have more people in both food production and infrastructure category if we properly applied horticulture. Then again: What Will Be.
Posted by: Brian | June 11, 2012 at 05:22 AM
All,
Thanks for your kind sentiments. I just hope that something I've said or did helps someone, somewhere, sometime.
I don't seek attribution. There are so many excellent thinkers, scientists, philosophers, and so on, out there in the world and in history that have contributed to my thinking. It is a collective effort!
And thanks to you for reading and thinking. Who knows what can come from this?
George
Posted by: George Mobus | June 11, 2012 at 01:18 PM
George, framing the situation we face in terms of hospice is profoundly insightful and rather sapient, as Brian implies.
At the risk of being morose, the human ape species will experience a scale of death as a share of the population in the decades hence never before experience by the human ape consciousness, even without the effects of falling net energy. That the rate of change of increase in population growth peaked in the 1960s, 35-40 years to date implies a peak in the child bearing of females and thus population replacement contracting 35-40 years thereafter.
Add to the population peak and deceleration Peak Oil, resource depletion, falling net energy, an emerging mega-drought, and the convergence of the Gleissberg and Suess cycles and the implied solar and geophysical forcing resulting in mid-latitude "global cooling" over the next 20-33 years (or longer), and the world faces at a minimum an unprecedented scale of death as a share of population from natural causes, famine, war, and ethnic/racial conflict and violence.
Death will become the dominant experience of a growing majority of the human ape population of the planet, including those of us in the West.
In addition to resources and income per capita, compassion, letting go, forgiveness, and acts of grace will be in high demand and likely in short supply in the decades hence.
Thus, we need a "new religion" to prepare the way for the trip into and through the bottleneck. But don't be surprised if in this context that we see ritualistic death and dying emerge in the form of death cults and the like.
Note from an historical perspective that Christianity (as it became in the 4th-5th centuries) arose out of the "Dark Ages" and somehow survived the the Goths, Huns, Black Death, Mongols, Turks, and Islam, only to evolve into institutions run by earthly acquisitors with their fingers on the buttons of nukes, HFT, and controls of smart bombs and drones.
I perceive that the great energy descent will encourage/require a form of austere monasticism, and the iconic models of tomorrow will be more like the itinerant carpenter rabbi of the 1st century and St. Francis of Assisi than Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg.
Posted by: Bruce | June 11, 2012 at 06:34 PM
Thank you for this nice post George, I 'enjoyed' reading it.
I recall you reviewing 'Too Smart for our Own God' by Craig Dilworth recently. Wouldn't this author also be classified under the 'no hope' category, next to Catton?
Posted by: Xardas | June 12, 2012 at 12:32 AM
You hit this one out of the proverbial ballpark George. Thanks for being honest, forthright and an example of the kind of sapient person we need for the ride down and out, if it is to be anything other than dire.
i was part of a group of about 30 strangers who met a week ago to discuss food integrity (coming to grips with Monsanto, etc) and i hope it morphs into an action plan along these lines. i'm completely ready to give up my job and work on this full time for the rest of what life i have and hope the others will join me. Money is becoming worthless, the food production and distribution system will stop at some point in the not-too distant future and most will be taken completely by surprise and be unprepared. Our political leaders are worthless.
Thanks again for your inciteful words, great book recommendations and for this site.
Posted by: Tom | June 12, 2012 at 01:55 PM
@ Tom
If the concept of the Devil hadn't already been dreamt up, it would be a perfect characterization of food gene manipulators such as the megalomaniacal Monsanto.
I am stunned that the American public hasn't risen up en masse against what Monsanto has done to your food chain, with the full complicity of what passes for your government. And what they have wrought on farmers worldwide is a crime against humanity - forcing poor farmers to pay for what they used to collect for free from their own land: the seeds of the next crop.
As we disappear down the plughole, it will be a joy to see these parasitic slugs of the human type come to an equally sticky end.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | June 12, 2012 at 05:42 PM
George,
I agree "jobs" will not "come back". But, I also think A.I. by 2030 -- though I would not be surprised if it were announced within 6 years even -- will change everything.
Just think how cheaply we can cure diseases and solve complex engineering problems when we're no longer constrained by the availability of brilliant people who attend school for 25 years to specialize in arcane magics. Take any medical or engineering challenge and let the machines loose.
Unless kept in check somehow, the AI "service" will constantly improve itself. Over time (perhaps quickly), its output will be indistinguishable from magic.
*IF* it doesn't destroy us (or isn't used to destroy us by those who control it), we could literally enjoy all the things people normally associate with "heaven": clean environment, peace, and endless fun for your immortal soul.
I'm not kidding. (And if I'm wrong about AI "saving" us, yes, we're likely doomed.)
Full disclosure: I have nothing to "sell" either. :-)
Posted by: wunsacon | June 12, 2012 at 05:51 PM
@wunsacon, your sense of mutualism is laudable. Thank you for sharing and demonstrating your admirable intentions.
"We" is the operative word. The "we" with the ultimate control of the system of techno-scientific knowledge and application and the allocation of returns from the division of labor have no intention of you and I enjoying a kind of futuristic techno-utopian "Heaven on Earth" in a more egalitarian distribution of net energy returns.
Consider that the Oil Age era's capitalist system of extraction, production, and consumption is unprecedented in its ability to "efficiently waste" COLOSSAL amounts of natural resources per capita (what is referred to as "wealth") in the process of turning the planet into a MASSIVE waste dump (credit to Jay Hanson of dieoff.org) for the ultimate benefit of 0.1% of the population of the planet.
If one were a dispassionate extraterrestrial observer examining closely what has happened to the planet over the past 80-150 years, one might conclude that those at the top of the hierarchical system of status, income and wealth distribution, and power relations were aliens from another planet who long ago clandestinely invaded the planet and whose purpose was to enslave the planet's population to a parasitic system of fatal exploitation and resource extraction at the expense of the bottom 99.9%.
Posted by: Bruce | June 12, 2012 at 07:26 PM
@ Bruce, excellent rationale regarding the aliens who have taken over the earth.
Let's call them the Psychopaths of Zog. I remain convinced that the psychopaths in control of financial services and government (loose terms) who have brought all of us to the edge of mass ruination are as a minimum a sub-branch of the Homo family. If they fell to earth by accident or design at some point in the past, that would not surprise me either.
What does surprise me is the great swathe of Homo sapiens simply belly-upping in the face of the psychopaths. "We" have let these abominations kill our home planet right under our noses, and some of "us" even fawn over such high personages as the corporate marauders of Wall Street, as if they are gods rather than mere empathy-deficient greed-meisters. The tugging of forelocks is audible, and causes me additional pain.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | June 13, 2012 at 12:14 AM
@Anywhere, well said.
That perhaps 90-95% of us in the West have been "educated" or socialized to internalize the religious-like belief in perpetual growth of population and consumption of resources on a finite planet, "we", i.e., in this case the 90-99%, are virtually incapable of imagining alternatives because the division of labor, tax code, and system of allocation of net energy per capita and income and wealth does not reward it, therefore, it does not effectively allow it.
In large part this is because capitalism is highly efficient at allocating resources and rewarding those with the most accumulated financial capital to deploy at sufficient scale to ensure that the majority of gains are captured in the shortest period of time increasingly at the cost of labor.
But this is not an original idea, of course, as Marx made the case a century and a half ago. But one cannot quote Marx for his brilliant critique of capitalism without being branded a Marxist and thus utterly discredited.
Similarly, one cannot argue the case for the impossibility of perpetual growth on a finite planet without being labeled anti-American, anti-business, a lunatic, a maladjusted loser, or just plain irrelevant.
The ballot box is now gilded, secured within a platinum vault, and surrounded by a perimeter fence constructed of Californium 252. We can't get near the ballot box.
Voting for national politicians is an act of affirming those selected by the banksters and rentier Power Elite to plunder what is left of labor product and net energy per capita for the bottom 99%+.
What "we", the infinitesimally small share of the 99%, do in response is what matters (or not) at the margin for "us". "We" cannot depend upon the top 0.1%-1% or the vast majority of the 99% to "do something" that matters. Our salvation (survival of the trip through the bottleneck) is "us", not the top 0.1% or the mass of the 99-99.9%.
But who among "us" is prepared for the implied sacrifice and struggle ahead? What price for (r)evolution? What justification? Who will first cross the Rubicon but this time leave behind Imperium Americanum . . .?
Posted by: Bruce | June 13, 2012 at 07:14 PM
@ Bruce, I've often thought it's sadly typical that Marx's devastating analysis of capitalism was tarnished by a line-up of psychopaths around the world using it as cover to re-enslave resident populations under the guise (soon to become yoke) of collectivism.
I think of the poor yet stoic Russians, who have been horribly abused by a succession of fascistic 'governments' - first those centuries of out-and-out tyranny by the tsars, then the brutal and manic suppression by the Stalinists, followed now by American-style unbridled, officially sanctioned thuggery masquerading as 'free market' capitalism.
To think that 'Marxist' was and is used as a term of insult is laughable, and typical of the ruling elite's Orwellian approach to language. By the same analogy, to call someone 'American' would become an insult, if it's drummed into you that the imperialist US uses torture against its declared enemies (even its own citizens), despite its stated lofty principles of freedom, justice and rule of law. A vast number of Americans would see past the jingoism and abhor such torture, if they really understood what it meant to be tortured - and that torture is just about useless in achieving credible results. Therefore, to them, being called 'American' as a term of insult is incomprehensible.
Well, that's a bit of a ramble, but my point is that I don't care whether someone calls me Marxist, Anti-American, anti-business, anti-imperialist and the rest. I'll just continue to tell it like it is, as I see it. What the future holds for "us" - the 'infinitesimally small share of the 99.9%' - does as you say depend on what we do next. We are greatly scattered across the planet, so it's hard to get critical mass for a well-planned crossing of the Rubicon.
I continue to ponder this daily. I am 'downsizing' myself to a great degree, shedding the vacant concepts of ownership and possession so beloved by the greed-meisters, while remaining alert for tenable propositions of post-bottleneck living.
All the best and maybe, just maybe see you on the other side.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | June 14, 2012 at 01:10 AM
George
Once again, you've done it. Your ability to make things absolutely, uncompromisingly simple and straightforward is an enormous, treasured gift.
I often wonder why those of us who have had this same vision continue to torture ourselves with "could" when we know too damned well all the reasons - from environment and culture to psychology and evolutionary biology - why "won't" is really "can't".
Please excuse me now, there is grieving yet undone.
Posted by: Bodhi Chefurka | June 16, 2012 at 06:57 PM
The self-satisfied bourgeois professional middle-class and top 1% American households (top 10% in total) receiving average household incomes of $140,000 and up and possessing a net wealth around $1 million and up should be fearing a mass-social backlash by the bottom 90% working-class and working-poor masses as part of the long descent into post-Oil Age lawlessness and barbarism.
The emerging masses of tattooed youths without jobs and incomes will not be satisfied to stand by passively as the detached top 10% drive their BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, Land Rovers, Audis, and Minis, buying their $5+ Starbucks coffees, and shopping at high-end retail while those in the working class under age 35-40 can't afford a cheap car to live in, and especially not costly antidepressants or chic, mind-altering, recreational professional middle-class and upper-income substances to numb themselves to their plight.
History and human nature implies that the US risks conditions typically experienced in the so-called Third World: theft from, assaults on, and kidnapping, ransoming, and assassination of professionals, the wealthy, politicians, and the like. The Giffords attack might have been just the beginning.
But the response by the professional middle class (or the buffer caste between the elites and the masses) and elites historically has been the privatization and militarization of law enforcement, draconian state reaction, and mass surveillance of the population. The US has already begun this process, especially since 9/11. The Internet and mobile/wireless communications make the state's job easier, requiring at some point that rebellious individuals and groups either find clever ways around the state surveillance or disconnect altogether and fight the good fight "offline" and "face to hooded face".
Posted by: Bruce | June 17, 2012 at 08:30 AM
bruce,
how about free mary jane to everyone as a temporary solution until the whole finally gets into eloys and molohs?
humans are inventive; they can use other humans quite well as "objects"; and of corse the revision of 'morals' is well under way
Posted by: Aboc Zed | June 17, 2012 at 10:50 AM
Bruce, the question is whether the grid is down before or after the days of reckoning for the greed-meisters and their pathetic lackeys. If it's before, no amount of snooping, lifting in the night and private security (a.k.a. police) will prevent sizable numbers making a move on the flaunters of wealth. If it's after, the lack of communications will hamper the flaunters's ability to control their protection systems, yet the dispossessed will still have their arms and legs and a capacity for moving en masse to locate and physically seize back filched resources such as food and water, knocking over whoever is in their path.
I abhor violence in all its guises, which is why I have disowned Homo sapiens in the still-primitive form that exists today. But as I witness the necessary outcome of psychopathic free marketeers given free rein to run the asylum, I will return to dust with the words just desserts passing my lips.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | June 17, 2012 at 12:50 PM
AZ, yes, decriminalizing cannabis, medicating young males for ADD/ADHD, and dispensing soma in the form of anti-depressants to the PMC and the top 1% who find it too overwhelming to deal with the society we have created (concentration of wealth and income, rentier-captured political system, militarization of the economy and society, etc.) is already well underway.
Can "poor farms" serving up Mary Jane, stimulants, anti-depressants, and eventually lethal cocktails to tens of millions of us be far off . . .?
Anywhere, I empathize, but the top 0.1% have the ultimate weapons of mass destruction to use against the rest of us any time they want to deploy them either selectively or en masse, including neutron bombs, genetically selected pathogens, broad-spectrum biological and chemical warfare, etc. The Pentagon can literally wipe out tens of millions of us over the course of a few months to a few years and call it an epidemic/pandemic, justifying seizing property, taking over the functioning of the economy, martial law, and who knows what other forms of social control in the interest of national security. This is not science fiction but evolution and the survival of the most adaptive, be they sociopathic/psychopathic or not.
But would we be otherwise inclined were we in a similar position of self-interest, privilege, power, and desire for our progeny to survive or even thrive in the post-bottleneck era? The logic of evolution suggests not; therefore, as AZ implies, this informs the way forward for all of us, whether we like it or not.
Posted by: Bruce | June 17, 2012 at 01:49 PM
Great post George.
I've been reading your blog for a while and enjoyed it immensely, in as much as it resonates with my world-view and facing the predicament in which we find ourselves.
We should start a "die off with dignity" movement or something that helps people get their heads around this.
Posted by: juggle | June 17, 2012 at 02:10 PM
Bruce, you paint an even more dreary scenario than my contemplation summoned up. It brings to mind the questioning I did in the 1960s/70s when there was a tangible prospect of nuclear attack as I slept in my bed (inevitably hyped up by governments to keep their populations in fear and therefore under the yoke). In those days, I concluded that if the Bomb was going to drop, I'd run towards it, not away, as I would have preferred instant death to slow death. By the same token, should the 'most adaptive' resort to genocide at bottleneck time, I would welcome rapid release from this humanity-free future. (Humanity as in humane, not as in Homo sapiens.)
One must ask the question, if the 'most adaptive' wiped out vast swathes of the population, who would be the serfs that the uber race rely on to do the dirty menial tasks? As we know, with few fuel resources, there would be a massive increase in menial work required for survival.
As to whether I would be similarly inclined - if I was a member of the 0.1% - to cull hundreds of millions/billions to ensure that my progeny survive, I am NOT in this sliver of 'society' by choice, not accident, therefore I can't answer your question.
To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I would not want to be a member of a club that welcomes a most adaptive psycho such as I would be.
Posted by: Anywhere But Here Is Better | June 17, 2012 at 02:59 PM