What Am I Watching?

Signs that the End is Nigh

[edit note: Neigh changed to Nigh! OK, it was late, I was tired... So thanks to those who pointed out the distinction. And my apologies to those who came here looking for something about horse language!]

The boundary conditions for human civilization and, indeed, our species have been identified. Even though economists are loathe to admit it, we are in the throes of resource limitations that thwart any kind of future economic growth, that is growth of real wealth not that phoney debt-based paper stuff. No amount of technological twiddling is going to change the fact that we have used up the most easily accessed critical resources. It would take a technological miracle, probably based on a radical physics discovery (a lot more than the recent announcement of data patterns at CERN compatible with the existence of the Higgs boson!) of a completely new kind of energy source, previously unimagined. With adequate energy it would be feasible in principle to recycle much of our current wasted material resources. We could, for example extract fertilizer nutrients from the runoff water from agriculture, thus preventing soil depletion and dead zones in the oceans. It takes energy to combat entropy. Every time concentrated or configured material wealth is consumed and dissipated we come that much closer to entropy's take over. The material flow through in our economic system is largely one way at present, with only minor amounts of things like aluminum and copper being actually recycled.

The major source of energy for human civilization is that stored in fossil fuels. We are depleting those at the fastest rate possible constrained only by social factors I will discuss below. We have reached the peak of conventional oil extraction (in spite of the recent distortions being reported by the mainstream media and people like George Monbiot, the fact is that we are at peak oil extraction) and combined with the declining energy return on energy invested in both conventional and newer non-conventional fuels, such as shale oil, there is no hope that fossil fuels will provide the energy needed for the future maintenance of civilization, let alone growth.

Indeed it is even worse than that. To a very large degree we have been frittering our inheritance of fossil sunlight away on frivolous pleasures, meaningless toys and gadgets, that provide no real gain to our wealth. Consider how many different versions of iPxxs have been bought and abandoned just because of some new ‘design’ innovation. How many ‘smart’ phones have been thrown into the trash heap because the newest models provide wow features? Actually just consider the whole marketing game. Its about getting people to buy stuff they might enjoy (for a little while) but not something they actually need, or is an investment in their ability to live in the future. And most of this stuff is used up or even thrown away long before it wears out. For what purpose?

Well, in a sense it doesn't really matter if we understand the purpose of human profligacy or not. It is what it is and it doesn't look like there is much chance of changing that before it is too late. In fact, if my calculations are right it is already too late so it is no longer worth fretting about.

That being the case I want to share with you the kinds of things I am watching in the world which will mark events and trends signifying the collapse of our global civilization. I don't expect to be around to see the most severe cataclysmic events (although I must admit that at the rates of change we are seeing in many of these processes I may have to re-assess that assumption). Rather I focus on processes and trends and rates of change. I select these various processes based on their systemic interrelations, particularly the kinds of feedback effects we see that will dampen some kinds of processes (like economic growth) and accelerate other kinds of processes (like methane escape increasing the rate of global warming).

The processes I am watching have all been covered in various forms in my previous blogs. What I will be doing now is simply pointing out when I think I see a significant change or event that may provide us with a better handle on how rapidly the decline is happening. I will also examine the systemic relations between these processes and try to assess how changes in one may affect changes in the others. Call it observational systems science applied to the global human civilization. Should be interesting.

The Systems Viewpoint

The processes that most directly affect daily lives around the globe are economics and politics. Those two are tightly intertwined but not in the ways most people think. Political actions cannot make the economy better, certainly not in any permanent sense. They can only make matters worse, and we are seeing this in action right now. Interestingly a number of pundits are recognizing and saying that the president, for example, really can't do a whole lot about certain economic conditions. The recognition of this realization is amplified in the US political season that we all must endure. Discussions about what either the incumbent president or the challenger could do once the election is done abound with an increasing consensus that promises being made now are probably worthless. Neither the incumbent nor the challenger actually have a science-based model of the economy. They are running on pure party-line ideological beliefs. So even if they somehow managed to get legislation through that was designed to accomplish something, say jobs creation, they would fail miserably (in terms of restoring the income potentials of all those wanting to work). The reason is that the economy is governed by laws neither of the candidates understand or are even aware of. And their respective ideologies are actually counterproductive with respect to what actions might actually work.

So I expect to see a lot of mismanagement ensuing in the not-too-distant future. It doesn't even matter which party gets control of the White House. They will both screw things up equally badly, just trying different approaches. We know that the incumbent will do so because he already has, with his views on the financial system favoring bankers and Wall Street. He is in their pockets by all accounts. And the Wall Street bankers and investment houses are guaranteed to steal from the rest of society (of course it isn't limited to Wall Street; Barclay's Bank showed us that it is a global phenomenon so Wall Street is just a symbol for the general condition). Even worse than merely stealing real wealth, bankers create money out of thin air and pay themselves huge bonuses for doing so. They happily create debt and gambling bubbles that are guaranteed to implode on everybody else and pay themselves huge bonuses for doing so. And as our current president has demonstrated, they can do this with impunity because when the defecant hits the fan, the government will willingly bail them out so they can do it again. Dodd-Frank? Give me a break!

The economy is governed by energy flow. So I continue to watch that very carefully. While a lot of analytic focus continues to be placed on peak oil as a critical phenomenon, as I have said the real issue is net energy available to do useful work per capita. That is the limiting factor. I will continue to try and piece together the combined effects of declining EROI and peak or declining fossil fuel extraction as they relate to declining net energy. It would be nice to have some kind of direct measure of net energy, instead of just looking at oil extraction, but that doesn't seem to be technically feasible given our current accounting systems. The only thing we can do is estimate it based on the physical amount of fossil fuels we have and our best estimates for EROI. Still I think we should get some warning signs by that effort.

The major belief structure operating in the world today is that a capitalistic, market-based, consumer-oriented economy is the BEST approach to creating wealth. We have to give credit where credit is due. Once upon a time that was really true, at least before the emphasis started to shift toward the consumeristic aspects. Profit motive, entrepreneurism, competition to drive down prices, and all of the mechanisms that are entailed in this kind of economy did indeed produce enormous wealth for a segment of humanity. But the whole premise is based on continuous growth (for profits to grow) and that required the shift to consumption orientation. In order to keep the engine going you needed to have ever expanding purchasing of stuff and services even if that stuff and services did not contribute one bit to fulfilling lifestyles. Today the capitalist economies are trapped needing growth to maintain investment opportunities against a loss of the very basis of wealth creation — energy. Without the latter capitalism will die.

Watching the political process in this country is like watching the clown act in a circus. All chaos and loud noises. Everybody trying to squeeze into one of two (or three) tiny vehicles that aren't going anywhere anyway. The clowns batter each other with outsized plastic baseball bats just to get the crowd to laugh. Only the general crowd in the US doesn't get the joke. They take everything the clowns do seriously. They think it really means something. Candidates saying outrageous things just to get attention. It is just ridiculous.

The only justification for watching this spectacle is what it can tell you about the human society's likely responses to the traumas that are descending. The Republicans are still denying global warming (though they are starting to come around on the fact of climate change). George Will, today on one of the talking head shows, proclaimed the cause of the massive heat spell covering most of the country was (get ready for this) summer! The depth of stupidity here is mind boggling. Just what kind of evidence do you need to get you realizing that something important is happening, let alone what is causing it? Moreover, at what rate do you need to see these changes taking effect before you admit that there is something different about this time. Democrats, unfortunately, are really not much better in regard to their responses. They acknowledge the science of global warming, for example, but then turn around and ignore hard science when it comes to wishful thinking about “going green”. They continue to spout off about how, if only we would subsidize solar or wind, all of our problems will be solved by technology. And, they think, with no real evidence to go on, that that shift to “green” will create wonderful new, high paying jobs. They are no more realists than the Republicans. And the Libertarians are so completely out of touch with reality that I don't have anything else to say about them.

Then there is the biophysical realities of climate conditions, water over-consumption, soil degradation, food production declines, and biodiversity loss. These are all symptoms of what is ailing us. As with all symptoms we need to monitor them just to understand the progression of the disease. Environmentalist have never gotten past the point of worrying about what humans have done to the environment as being THE number one problem. They won't touch population issues and they are equally guilty of counting on technological solutions as the Democrats, politically. Of course there is a lot of overlap between environmentalists and Democrats so this isn't surprising. Their purposes were well intentioned but the diverted attention from the real underlying causes of our plight. They put undo weight on one of the many symptoms and in doing so alienated a number of people who might have otherwise taken a look at the underlying systemic problem.

Climate change, while merely symptomatic, may be one of the most critical factors to keep an eye on. Radical weather anomalies and general shifts in climate parameters will provide some of the worst kinds of stresses on societies. Populations will be displaced, or more likely due to the rapid onset we might see they will simply expire in place. The energetic (and hence financial) costs of mitigation and adaptation will be prohibitive given the decline in net energy. Thus I suspect there will be little real large-scale adaptation attempted. All one has to do is look at the failures of our governments to simply maintain critical infrastructure now! Where will they get the resources to pay for mitigation and adaptation if the climate chaos is as bad as some climate scientists now claim it is likely to be? We will not only have to suffer political failure but failure of governance in general. Our system of governance is so brittle (and I don't just mean that in the US) that it cannot possibly adapt itself to the rapidly changing needs. Rather we may witness many revolutions not unlike what we saw in Egypt, and likely with similar, though more bloody, outcomes. This is as true for the United States as it is for any other country. The revolutionaries will not be able to do any better and so there could be waves of revolutions as long as there is some energy to drive the effort. But those revolutions will likely destroy the very capabilities of extracting energy and so counteract their own continuance.

I consider the twin (Siamese) predicaments of energy decline and climate change stresses (with all of their ramifications in terms of other vital resource availabilities) to provide the greatest forces driving collapse. So I will keep an especially sensitive eye on developments there.

From a systems viewpoint it appears that the real “cause” of our dilemma is our own mental weaknesses. We are not truly rational creatures. We are subject to thinking guided more by heuristics and producing biases that we nevertheless mistake for rationality (when in fact it is rationalization). Our brains are simply not evolved enough to allow us to override limbic influences and use knowledge-based judgments in guiding decisions. This weakness extends to everything from decisions to buy a hot looking car because a hot looking babe was in the advertisement to choosing a science career because the subject happens to be the hot topic de jour. For that matter it probably guides an awful lot of decisions about what sorts of experiments to do and how to frame the results to put the scientist in the best possible light. None of us is immune from insufficient sapience (except for those rare few), not even the supposed brightest among us. Science, thank the stars, works not because individual scientists are objective, rational beings, but because the process produces self-correction when false understandings prevail. And then there are the financial wizards and bankers — the capitalists who truly believe that their creation of paper assets based on smoke is doing God's work. They just cannot help themselves letting limbic drives take over. Anyone who has spent time in a trading pit knows the meaning of animal spirits.

So I will be watching people. I will continue to observe how people in general react to the various events that portend decay, decline, and collapse. They are in the news on a daily basis at present. But most people go about looking at each debacle as isolated and independent events. I've even talked to people who, even though they think things in general are bad and maybe are going to get worse, still think the main cause is just a string of bad luck events, e.g. the housing bubble/sub-prime market and the gasoline price spike were coincident and the bursting of that bubble just caught Wall Street off guard. Once the housing market bottoms out, we'll get back on track for economic growth again — you know, the normal way. But the truth is that these events are connected at a deep level. My past blogs have attempted to demonstrate that all of these events are rooted in the same basic phenomenon, our imprudent reliance on finite fossil fuels, our imprudent extraction as if there were no tomorrow, and the resulting bursting of the biggest bubble of all, the energy bubble. We are imprudent in all that we do to use that energy, including and especially expanding our populations and profligate consumption of junk just for the sake of consuming. We have no consciousness of the long-term consequences because our brains are incapable, on average, to compute those models.

I think it will ultimately come down to how people react to contraction once it sets in in earnest and the pain simply cannot be ignored. To be honest I have no idea how people will generally react. We've speculated on various scenarios in the blogs and comments, but how could we really know what to expect from a truly unprecedented phenomenon. It is true that other civilizations have collapsed and different cultures have produced different reactions. But in all of those cases the civilizations were fairly localized yet there was knowledge of a world beyond the civilization. People had other examples to look at and other places to go when the going got hard. In a global collapse there are no other examples and no other places to run and hide. Everything and everyone will be subject to similar conditions. And given that the dominant culture of the day is greedy capitalism I suspect strongly that the predominant reaction will be violence, both in terms of attempts to take away and attempts to protect what people possess.

But we will just have to see what happens.

Comments

[binary options brokers]

People feel rarely concerned about what is going on around them , as far as they are not concerned personally. It is so obvious, look what happens when somebody is attacked in the subway or in some other crowded place, is there anybody to interfere ?
[Moderator edit: removed commercial URL]

[Tom]

i agree that the usual reaction of our non-sapient humanity to any kind of stress is violence. Lately there have been examples here in the states that the oppressively hot weather paralleled a spike in murders (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170644/Is-record-shattering-U-S-heatwave-causing-rise-murders.html), so as temperatures continue to rise globally i expect this behavior will only increase. Meanwhile the militarization and brutality of police and armies the world over is on the rise (innumerable examples all over the internet) as nation-states clamp down on populations in an attempt to control them. Once food scarcity hits (possibly as soon as this fall) we'll see pandemonium and chaos rather than calm organization and a reasoned response. As you pointed out - we're just not built for it (brain wise).

Thanks for another well-reasoned essay on what's coming. Though we can't predict with absolute certainty, we probably don't need to be all that accurate as to rates of violence.

[Steve]

The end is neigh?? I read this whole thing looking for a horse and didn't find it.

[Gregg Matson]

Great article. We humans are just smart enough to get ourselves into real trouble, aren't we?

[Bruce]

Real wages and salaries after debt service costs and energy as a share of disposable income dipped into recession territory in late Q1 and early Q2 to date. By the time the NBER gets around a year from now to dating a recession commencing, it will likely indicate that we are in a new cyclical recession now (we never really emerged from a recession in real, per-capita terms).

Note that the unemployment (U) rate historically rises 50-60% to 100% during recessions, implying the risk that the U rate could hit 12-13% to 16% by '13-'14 (U-6 could reach 25-30%).

Corporate profits after tax as a share of GDP are at a record high, whereas wages to GDP are at a record low. Profits to GDP are nearly 11%, whereas the historical average is 6% and 4.6% at recessionary troughs. Were profits to decline to a typical recessionary trough as a share of GDP, the hit to GDP will be 6% (as in '08-'09) or an equivalent of nearly $1 trillion.

At the ratio of profits to fixed investment and industrial production, a 6% hit to profits would mean an additional net decline of 1-2% for GDP or a total hit to GDP of 7-8%.

Another 6-8% hit to GDP implies the risk of a federal deficit approaching 100% of receipts or a deficit approaching $2 trillion and 3-4% charge-offs for bank loans.

Cities and counties are going bankrupt in increasing numbers of late, implying that tens of thousands of public sector workers will see their jobs, pay, pensions, and benefits slashed by 30-50% over the next 10-20 years. Local gov'ts will not be able to raise money from the financial markets at serviceable rates (as in the case of Greece, Spain, etc.) and thus will be forced to slash spending, jobs, raise taxes dramatically, or a combination. Exponential mathematics and demographics guarantee that this will happen.

The local, state, and eventually federal fiscal drag from forced "austerity" will combine with the Boomer demographic drag on the private sector, especially housing, autos, and discretionary consumer spending.

Business leaders, politicians, banksters, Wall St., Silly-Con Valley, and the financial media influentials have not yet begun to discount these emerging factors.

To George's reference about recycling waste and ag run-off, I'll reiterate that there is one resource that is not in short supply on the planet: human flesh and bone. The human body in surplus would provide cheap food and fertilizer indefinitely for the small fraction of the planet's evolutionarily self-selected remnant population.

At 7 billion of us and counting and at, say, 140-150 lbs. per capita, that's about 1 trillion pounds and 16 trillion ounces' worth supply of human flesh and bone.

To sell the idea, it needs to be sexy and promote an exclusive, upscale lifestyle choice. Given the state of capitalism today, it would help if the federal gov't were to heavily subsidize it.

One might suggest ads with Angelina Jolie advocating green veganism and consuming Soylent Green.

Or perhaps James Garner or Toby Keith advocating eating a hunk of Soylent Green steak for the real man, the kind Angelina really gets hot about.

Soylent Green by, for, and of the people.

Soylent Green is for those who love people.

Make Soylent Green, not war!

Obesity is not an epidemic, it's just good business.

Soylent Green: The other white meat.

To show that I'm not the misanthrope, I'll be the first to sell my flesh and bone to the cause for the going rate per lb.

[Mark N]

I really look forward to your observations as industrial civilization continues its collapse.

I have the feeling that the most imminent threat of a fast collapse is in the economic realm. Like you I think peak oil per capita, though seldom mentioned, was a turning point for industrial civilization. Peak oil per capita was in 1979 and ever since then industrial civilization has been adding debt as the new driver for economic growth. We now find the global economy teetering on the edge of collapse; a large sovereign default or a to big to fail bank could cause a cascading default in the 700 trillion dollar derivatives market that makes 2008 look like a picnic.

The fact of the matter is the waste based industrial system does not pay for itself; now that growth is stalled the central banks of the world can only delay the financial reckoning. The central banks are running low on options as they can only create DEBT, not money and there are no credit worthy entities to loan to.

It is my opinion that the economic system could have a major shock at anytime; I feel the 2008 shock was like a stroke that leaves the patient near death and on life support. I think that debt is the life support system for the patient (industrial civilization) pull the plug and the patient dies.

[Dave Kimble]

> The reason is that the economy is governed by laws neither of the candidates understand or are even aware of.

> Watching the political process in this country is like watching the clown act in a circus.

Sounds like you think they don't know what they are doing. But these people are as smart as the best, because they have hired the best to advise them. So they are surely aware of everything you have so eloquently said.

They must have decided to something, and since they get to do whatever they like, it follows that what you see now is what they think is the best thing to do under the circumstances.

Lots of economists could foresee the financial crash of 2008, so presumably Bernanke and the rest could foresee it too, and devised the only solution to keeping the show on the road for a bit longer. Bigger bubbles and more fiat money.

But that will only work for a bit longer, and then there will be another crash, probably MUCH bigger than the last. So what then ?

Well, there is always the option of starting WW3, and it's not hard to see how it could be sparked off in Syria, spreading to Iran, Pakistan and Lebanon, with Egypt and Turkey and Israel not far behind. NATO's involvement would bring in most of Europe, and Canada and Australia are never far behind.

WW3 would need tremendous amounts of money, but would have the benefit of being "a life or death struggle" and therefore requiring a much greater sacrifice from the people in the form of conscription and austerity at home. And the huge money-printing exercise would be "above politics". Conscription would have the additional bonus factors of reducing unemployment amongst the young, and a feeling of patriotic duty done by every household in the land.

The need for tighter security at home in war-time is obvious, which is when all the Homeland Security regulations would come into play. Internet censorship is already flexing its muscles, ready for the need to crack down on spies and unpatriotic dissent.

I reckon that will keep the show on the road for a few more years at least. What more could you ask of a plan than that ?

[Steven Salmony]

What we know about biological evolution as well as the finite and frangible physical world we are blessed to inhabit would lead sensible people to conclude that there is nothing or precious little that can be done to change the human 'trajectory'. So powerful is the force of evolution that we will "do what comes naturally" by continuing to overpopulate the planet and await the next phase of the evolutionary process. Even so, still hope resides within that somehow humankind will make use of its singular intelligence and other unique attributes so as to escape the fate that appears 'as if through a glass darkly' in the offing, the seemingly certain fate evolution appears to have in store for us. Come what may. In the face of all that we can see now and here, I continue to believe and to hope that we find adequate ways of consciously, deliberately and effectively doing the right things, according the lights and knowledge we possess, the things which serve to confront and overcome the 'evolutionary trend' which seems so irresistible.

[Bruce]

We desperately need a new "Sun god" religion to replace Christianity, the competing violent tribal desert sky god religions of Judaism and Islam, and their rationalizations for empire to justify plundering the planet.

The new non-hierarchical, techno-scientific religion should properly deify the Sun for its live-giving energy and devise a system of accounting that recognizes and efficiently allocates net solar energy surplus per capita.

That the earthly realm is finite in its capacity to utilize solar energy in a sustainable manner for humans' purposes, the religion would also recognize that there are natural limits to the Earth's capacity for population, resource extraction and consumption, and waste processing and recycling.

The Christian Sun god religion symbolizes, albeit does not explicitly recognize, "the Anointed One" as symbolic of the Sun, its "halo" (of solar energy), "sun cross", Twelve Disciples (12 signs of the cycle of the Zodiac), the Sun's death and resurrection during the Winter Solstice, birth during the Spring Equinox, and so on.

Satan, or Lucifer, "Prince of Darkness" and the "Morning Star" or commonly known as Venus, is symbolic of the feminine force in opposition/balance with the masculine force in Nature.

It is said that Satan is symbolic of "evil", yet the word "evil" means "up from under" or that state of consciousness that perceives one above another or the oppositional superior-inferior perspective. (In this sense, self-identifying psychologically with the male and female physical forms risks identifying with one or the other form in opposition or out of balance with Nature.)

One can infer from the Sun god motifs that when one force is out of balance with the other equalizing force that energy is transferred in the form of conflict or re-creation. The Sun is the unifying source from which balance and re-creation emerges and resolves.

Thus, we need a religion that recognizes scientifically and values properly the source of life-creating and -transforming energy such that a civilization and economic system can be devised that is in sustainable balance with the source of life.

Granted, this notion is not new and is probably as ancient as human consciousness. But consider the difficulty in conditioning such "religious" thinking among the overwhelming majority of the planet's human population.

We need the Pentagon to design a holographic false-flag op that entails aliens from the Rings of Uranus invading Earth, annihilating 90% of us, and giving a remnant population the choice of similar oblivion or a new techno-scientific Sun god religion to "save the planet" from Utter Darkness.

I bet it would yield more desirable results than the efforts to date by the Vatican, Evangelicals, Zionists, Radical Islam, or the public "education" system.

[Bruce]

Jiddu Krishnamurti and the human mind (thought) having been programmed for millions of years to perceive conflict as natural and necessary for "progress".

U.G. Krishnamurti and "enlightenment", gurus selling desire, thought and the invention of spirit, soul, and the demand for permanence of thought, and dualistic conflict of pleasure-pain.

The physical body and its constituent elements are permanent (thought or conceptual "things" cannot create nor destroy it); however, the delusional individual mind is impermanent, i.e, Zen "no-mind" or "no-thingness", or "the Void".

Thus, thought cannot perceive of its own ending, i.e., thought perceiving itself as existing in invented time to perceive itself not perceiving itself perceiving not perceiving.

Descartes' "I think, therefore, I am." is "Thought thinks it is real, therefore, it thinks it can solve the problems thought perpetually creates."

There is no "way out" for thought for the problems it creates and thus only thought perceives itself as has having the solutions for the problems it creates but does not perceive it is creating that it cannot solve by applying "solutions" based on the desires of the problem creator. It is like hammering one's thumb to bits because the hammerer does not perceive that the nail flew across the room when first missed by the hammerer.

It is as if the human mind (and the illusory self, economy, civilization, and "future") has evolved beyond the biophysical and geophysical reality that is necessary to sustain the human being in its natural state of being.

U.G. Krishnamurti notes that "space" (in Zen, the fullness of "no-thingness", "emptiness", "no-mind", and "the Void" being the natural state of consciousness or being) cannot be experienced by thought because by the very nature of thought desiring to perpetuate itself in perpetuity into "the future" it cannot fill "the Void" with some-thing or that which is not "no-thing".

We in the West have created an uneconomic basis for a civilization that depends upon conditioning hundreds of millions of minds to be ignorant of, or to reject, the natural state of "no-mind", "no-thingness", and "the Void" in favor of desiring to fill up infinite psycho-emotional space that can never be filled up with "things" thought creates.

[Bruce]

Arctic sea creatures.

Note the remarkable diversity of adaptations for cold water and limited sunlight.

[Bruce]

Gray matter and altruism.

[Tom]

Bruce: you're on a roll!

Coupla comments.
i thought the "problem" of male/female was the manifestation of "duality" (that there is no duality - it's all one) but agree that it fits with or is the nuts and bolts of acting this out in the here and now - your "oppositional perspective" as well.

Great succinct analysis of the financial situation also. i think the environmental collapse will be ramping up significantly in the next few years (with methane spewing out now and being about 25 times as powerful as CO2 on the atmosphere) and that food shortages (which have already begun) will become the norm.

Dave Kimble: i agree that whoever is pulling the strings has no idea what they're getting themselves in to. Pandora's Box will be a birthday present in comparison.

Mark N.: right on - many of us feel that it really might be this year (like this fall) that the crumbling begins in earnest.

It's like riding up to the top of a roller coaster whose peak is in the clouds. Once we go over the top it'll be a long, scary, fast trip down.

[davidgmills]

I too thought there would not be much hope from my grandchildren, until I saw this video regarding thorium nuclear power.

It was invented in the 1960's at Oak Ridge. It was put on the back burner because thorium nuclear fission was a poor way to make nuclear weapons. But it was a great way to make nuclear power that produces only 1% of the nuclear waste of present day power plants and was magnitudes safer. Thorium is hundreds of times as abundant as uranium 235 the fuel we use for nuclear power and there is enough of it to last thousands of years at present power demands. Thorium nuclear power will change not only your view of nuclear power but your view of what the world could potentially be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbucAwOT2Sc&feature=related

[Bruce]

We discover an alternative for electricity that permits us to then produce many more times what we do today at a tiny fraction of the cost. Then what? Will it allow us to desalinate water to produce more food via vertical farming and hydroponics? If so, then what? Will that encourage an even larger population, requiring still more food and water?

Will it make automation of ag and goods production so inexpensive that billions of jobs will no longer be required? Then what?

Will it provide a social dividend for everyone so we don't have to work for wages, salaries, stipends, food, etc.?

Will it encourage even more tens of trillions of dollars of debt to make up for loss of wage and salary employment for billions of people?

Cheap or free energy is not a solution unless the culture, division of labor, and system of resource, income, and wealth distribution is completely transformed to provide economic security and psycho-emotional well-being for other than just the top 0.1-1% of the western world.

We are told that we have a problem of unemployment and underemployment; however, the real problem is ASTOUNDING waste, misallocation, and maldistribution resulting in "overemployment", i.e., far too many people working in order to earn enough to be able to afford to work at jobs to support lifestyles that ultimately are not self-sustaining.

A cheap, abundant supply of electricity is not the solution to resource depletion, waste accumulation, population overshoot, and EXTREME wealth and income inequality.

[Bodhi Chefurka]

Here's a subversive thought.

"There is no problem."

Thinking of "what is" in terms of "what should have been" is a sure recipe for suffering, for both individuals and societies. We are exactly where we are, we could not possibly be anywhere else. Things could not, in this moment, be any different than they are.

What makes our situation appear to be a problem or predicament is our fervent wish that things be different than they are (or will be).

We are, individually and collectively, engaged in a process, not a problem. The situation in which we find ourselves will evolve and change, and in the course of that change particular things may or may not happen. When the wave function collapses, we are left with what is.

Fretting over what might be or what might have been is just another form of the attachment the Buddha identified 2500 years ago. Anyone who has spent some time in self-inquiry knows exactly where attachment leads, and why such suffering has no virtue.

[George Mobus]

All,

Thanks for all the comments and observations. I won't be able to respond to each individually, except for a few where I think some amplification is needed. But I do appreciate the participation.

As a number of you noted, the economy is probably front and center in this fiasco. By now you have probably seen my first "watching" post re: the financial subsystem, so I'll wait to see what kinds of follow up comments we get there.

-----------------------------------
Dave K.

Sounds like you think they don't know what they are doing. But these people are as smart as the best, because they have hired the best to advise them. So they are surely aware of everything you have so eloquently said.

I absolutely do think they do not know what they are doing! Please let me know what evidence you have that they have hired the "best" to advise them. The best at what????

Lots of economists could foresee the financial crash of 2008, so presumably Bernanke and the rest could foresee it too, and devised the only solution to keeping the show on the road for a bit longer. Bigger bubbles and more fiat money.

From what Paul Krugman and several other economists have stated the vast majority of economists did not realize what was about to happen. Some were even producing extremely rosy predictions. Only a small handful of economists seemed to have called it and mostly just because they thought the bubble was too big, not because the price of gasoline would burst the bubble.

Bernanke was not merely clueless, he (with Geithner and other Obama advisers) proceeded to do some of the worst things they could. It is true, as you say, they were just trying to keep the illusion going. But was that really what was best for the American people and the world, or just the bankers?

------------------------------------
Steve S.

...doing the right things, according the lights and knowledge we possess, the things which serve to confront and overcome the 'evolutionary trend'...

Could you amplify this? I'm not sure what you mean by overcome. How do you overcome evolution????

------------------------------------
davidgmills,

We can hope. But it is a long way from principle to practice. Probably prudent not to hold one's breath.

-----------------------------------
Bhodhi,

Well said as always.

George

[Steven Earl Salmony]

Dear George,

In response to your question, let me refer you to a statement from above, "...humankind will make use of its singular intelligence and other unique attributes so as to escape the fate that appears 'as if through a glass darkly' in the offing, the seemingly certain fate EVOLUTION {caps added now for emphasis} appears to have in store for us."

Sincerely,

Steve

[Bruce]

Bodhi, well said.

But we (the British and Dutch) have built an imperial economy and civilization upon additive substances, e.g., sugar (rum initially), coffee, cocoa, nicotine, opiates (or now opiate-like pharmaceuticals and entertainment), and debt-money credit, to which we are conditioned 24/7 to become "attached" or dependent upon for our physical and psycho-emotional well-being and self-identity.

The mind or thought moving in illusory time (past, present, and future) seeks what it cannot have: release from the demise of the physical body, which thought perceives as mortal or impermanent.

However, it is that which thought constructs and projects that is impermanent and illusory, whereas the body exists eternally, not in its current form, but between the transitional forms consisting of its constituent elemental parts. Thought is not permanent or eternal no matter how much it wants to be or devises myriad illusory forms within which to reside and project itself.

The western consumer- and debt-based economy and system of miliarist-imperialist, rentier-financier hierarchical power relations and wealth and income distribution is the antithesis of the teaching of "The Enlightened One".

Therefore, one could infer that "the process" in which we are engaged and to which we are "attached" is "a problem" if one desires to experience "what is" and be released from the illusion of permanence of thought or the "I process" or "self".

But, of course, for Zen there is no "I" or "I process" to be released from any "thing"; rather, there is only "no-mind" or "the Void" or "no-thingness" in its natural state full "what is", i.e., all that is "no-thing".

So, to your point, "what is" is all that there is and can ever be in this moment or any moment or no moment. The mind that is in unity, or One, with the permanence of the wholeness of the body in its impermanent form but eternal essence is the only place/no place, i.e., "the Void", it can ever be.

[Steven Earl Salmony]

Dear George, Perhaps you would kindly devote one blog, just one, to sensibly 'watching' and tracking the extant scientific research on human population dynamics. A great deal of preternatural theory (eg, Demographic Transition Theory), politically convenient ideology (eg, Liberalism and Conservatism) and economically expedient theology (eg, Neoclassical Economics) falsely claim to have the sufficient support of science. Let us set aside these widely shared and generally accepted pseudoscientific branches of thought for a moment so that the best available scientific research of human population dynamics can be rigorously examined and meaningfully discussed. Thank you, Steve