Still Watching the Political Circus

Now that the conventions are over it might be a good time to take stock of what is going on. But to be honest I have been wracking my brain trying to think of something clever or insightful to say about what we are watching unfold. And the fact is I can't think of anything because I am too saturated with pity for our species. What else can you say? What is taking place in the US political arena is really just a magnified (and amplified) microcosm of what is going on world wide, no matter what the political system might be called.

Both political parties and their candidates believe in the same basic economic philosophy that is the root of what is killing civilization. They both call for a return to a growth economy (because it creates jobs). They both believe that the pursuit of greater profits is akin to the quest for the holy grail. They both believe it is OK for there to be wealthy individuals and the not-so-wealthy. The only difference here is that the republicans believe that only a few deserving individuals should be fabulously wealthy while the rest muddle through as best they can. The democrats believe that wealth should be moderated and some of it shared with those less fortunate. Otherwise they are both committed to the idea that wealth, as measured by one's bank account, can be generated endlessly in greater quantities. They even both agree that it can be done by financial speculations of various kinds (just maybe not so blatantly speculation). They are both committed to modern western capitalism, now seemingly spread around the world. Neither party has the capacity to see that the notion of endless exponential growth is physically impossible.

There are plenty of people raging at Ryan's blatant lies and Romney's incapability of getting anything straight, especially when it comes to actual policies. There are just as many decrying the failures of Obama to follow through on his more meaningful promises or raging (as I have done) for his complete sellout to financial interests (big banks and Wall Street). There are those like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert who get good laughs from the debacle that is politics in America. And then there are those like me who simply hang our heads and weep. Most of those folk pine for the political process they imagine used to exist. In many ways politics in prior decades was a cleaner, healthier version of group decision making. But it has never been truly about finding the best people to make governance decisions with the electorate's support, and putting them in the driver's seat.

My weeping is more about the inevitable destiny our current path is accelerating us toward. What we are seeing in the increasing stupidity of the political process in this country is the rapid degradation of social institutions that comes with increasing complexity of culture and population numbers that cheapen every aspect of human life. We're beginning to see, in real time, the falling apart of any semblance of functional structures as our politicians battle it out trying to frame the other guys as stupid and dishonest (or at least full of baloney ideas). The cultural garment made of social fabric is coming undone at the seams. The fabric itself is tattered and worn. And we human beings are unable to do anything about it.

I've written often about our species lack of true sapience. We do not posses, on average, the capability to build wisdom and thus exercise sound judgments. We have, through technology and social innovations, created a culture that is simply too complex and cognitively demanding for our own capacity to think critically and make good choices. The vast majority of people cannot even discern the real problem, though I think many more sense that something is wrong. The lack of sapience in the population is the core cause of what we find ourselves facing today. Our political figures are far from sapient (Bill Clinton is hailed as a superiorly clever person, but his capacity for good judgment is easily brought into question). The electorate is far from sapient. Even our judicial operatives are incapable of good judgment (witness Citizens United).

I feel sorry for us for what we are soon facing in greater measure than we have witnessed to date. But I also recognize that it is a natural consequence of what we lack biologically and cognitively and it probably had to be this way. We are driven by the biological mandate to garner resources to ourselves and generate new biomass (procreate). That is our deepest drives. The prefrontal cortex, especially the frontopolar patch, Brodmann area 10, evolved very recently in primate terms and expanded to its current status only an eye blink ago. That region is richly connected with the limbic regions and can moderate, through it, our baser drives. It just wasn't quite as evolved as it needed to be to prevent capitalism from fulfilling that biological mandate without really understanding the consequences. Capitalism, as currently understood, is the biological mandate completely unfettered by natural negative feedbacks. In fact a cognitive positive feedback loop now drives the notion that greed is good. Indeed the era of fossil fuels has unleashed it beyond anything resembling the kinds of natural constraints that keep other top predator in check over the long run. Mankind is run amuck, it is true, but not for long.

Physical resources will always check exponential growth — ALWAYS. Polluting one's nest will always lead to sickness and death — ALWAYS. There is no escaping physical reality. The fossil energy is rapidly depleting. Indeed I have good reasons to believe we have already passed the peak of net free energy per capita and are rapidly approaching the peak of net free energy total. It is absolutely no wonder to me that the economy is in the doldrums or even trending downward (if you ignore government jiggered statistics). It is no surprise that our government-abetted banks have been frantically inventing ways to make it look like the economy was still growing (going back at least three decades or further) by insisting first on deregulation and then by inventing pure smoke and mirror wealth. The debt load experienced by both private and public sectors is completely understandable. I don't find it remarkable that companies have off-shored their labor in an attempt to get out from under the high wages and entitlement programs based on a population of spoiled people who are such high energy consumers. And I don't think it is mysterious why so many people today are cheating and lying like hell as they feel the previously wealth-providing culture is failing to keep the party going and they need to compensate. Corporate heads as well as those lower in the ranks are more and more turning to nefarious ways to make their stocks look good in the eyes of shareholders. The latter can only grasp their need (desire) for profits to be maximized in order to protect their lower-rate taxed incomes and portfolio values.

And finally there are the average working (middle) class folk who had it cushy back in the day (1950s) and got used to the idea that that kind of progressive hedonism would go on forever. They too are driven by the biological mandate without anything to really check their desires. With advertising to fuel their wants and previously increasing free energy to fuel their frivolous lifestyles (think NFL and NASCAR but also strip clubs, fast food restaurants, McMansions, etc.) they have now become “consumers” and indeed the whole modern economy hinges on them continuing to consume junk so that there is a need to hire people to make junk so that those people can themselves consume junk, ad infinitum. Economists call this the “virtuous cycle” if you can believe it. As far as the dishonesty goes for corporate chiefs and bankers, etc. so it goes for the little guys as well. There they sat in a mortgage lenders office being told they could get a house that was priced at twice what the old rules about income and credit worthiness suggested they could afford. And not one of them stopped to think about the feasibility. Not because they were just stupid, but because they were falling victim to the same pressures that drove the upper echelon to rob and steal to enrich themselves. The biological mandate without checks and balances will drive not-so-sapient people to grab whatever they can get their hands on by whatever means they can.

Finally, it is not at all surprising that the “job market” around the globe is tanking. It will take a little more time before even the dumbest economist and politician will begin to get that unemployment under the old model is not only not going to come back it is going to get far worse. People will eventually get tired of waiting for those yahoos to create jobs and will revert to black market and local economies based on a mix of barter and local currencies (hopefully based on actual physical assets). The political and financial systems will crumble before our eyes. I would not be surprised to see some heads roll. I certainly do not advocate violence; I'm just thinking about human nature under those circumstances and what has happened historically under the same.

We are rapidly approaching the age of complete selfishness. There will still be a few individuals who think and act with moral convictions. There are now people with higher degrees of sapience who will not succumb to greed and selfish behaviors. But they are too few in number to have an impact on the majority. The zombie apocalypse is here. The zombies aren't the reanimated dead. They are the hoards of ordinary human beings who have been taken over by complete selfish sentiments. This is the “Tragedy of the Commons” writ large.

Comments

[Guy McPherson]

Thanks for this essay. I think we've reached the zenith of selfishness. At least I certainly hope so.

From my June 2012 essay at Transition Voice: "As we leave the Age of Entitlement and transition into the Age of Consequences, everybody will need to make a contribution to his or her community."

[Brian]

Just to make one correction. There is no "Tragedy of the Commons", only the "Tragedy of Private Property." Any place where any private property cannot be had by penalty law looks relatively amazing: US national parks and until recently the previously owned Spanish Mexico, Central America, South American Continent filled with lush rain forest.

[João Neto]

This is what some people talked about for decades. Cassandras like Herman Daly, William Catton, Al Bartlett, Joseph Tainter and many others, at least since "The Limits to Growth" publication. Now, and sadly, we will see that they were right. This will not be a pretty sight.

In a way I understand that they were not listen. It is very hard to grok what is going to happening.

Anyway, great post. I also use the analogy of the Zombie Apocalypse. A eerie coincidence that Zombies became such a media fashion recently...

[Bodhi Chefurka]

I don't know how I've been able to set down my burden of grief over all this so completely, though I know it all so well. It feels as though I'm seeing past the shallow attachments that our culture encourages - past our media-mediated attachments to things, activities, ideas and concepts. In the place of attachments to stuff and structure, what I see developing are deeper, more authentic relationships: with other people, with the natural world, and with core concepts such as our place and purpose in the universe.

Those relationships have nourished humanity since the dawn of our species. Even though stripping the veneer of artificiality will be painful, it will allow us to move closer to the unvarnished truth of who we really are. And as always, we will die trying.

Our global cultural narrative is teetering on the brink of change, and I'm excited to watch it preparing us for the transition, even if most people aren't yet conscious of the shift that has arrived.

I've shed all my tears, and now I can't get this smile off my face...

[Tom]

Tying what happened today (9/11) 11 years ago to the trajectory we're following - it's pretty obvious that people in positions of power will sacrifice everyone beneath them for their own gain. Our government is the apex of corruption now with our "watchdog" agencies underfunded or headed by insiders from the very interests they're supposed to regulate. Congress is useless, the president is a corporatist and the Supreme (kangaroo) court makes it all "official" though none of it is Constitutional. We're spied on, foreclosed on, and our jobs are disappearing. Our standard of living and our infrastructure will soon follow. We're on our way out as a civilization and as the collapse picks up speed many more will figure this out for themselves. In the coming years, i completely expect martial law and absolute chaos.

Thanks for the essay George. i'm afraid that politics is not going to save us and that those in power are looking out for themselves. Humanity, it would seem, is a failed experiment to date. Maybe your hypothesis regarding a super sapient remnant of humanity surviving to rebuild and become the next evolution of humanity, but they won't have much to work with and the hardships will be spectacular. i sincerely hope i'm wrong and that none of this comes to pass.

[Robin Datta]

And then there are those like me who simply hang our heads and weep.

No reason to do so for those with unremitting  cynicism.

Time to forswear the candy: to leave aside the M&Ms - mulatto and Mormon.

[Bodhi Chefurka]

My position on the political aspects of the global clusterfuck is summed up with the following bumper-sticker philosophy:

****************
Representative democracy is one of the most deceptively disempowering social institutions ever invented.

People who vote deserve to be governed.

Politics is not part of the solution, it's part of the problem.
****************

If I were to create a "Don't do this, it doesn't work" list to send through the bottleneck in a time capsule, it would include representative democracy right up there with monocrop agriculture, fiat money, growth-based economies, the use of fossil fuels or nuclear energy, and religions that place humanity apart from the natural world.

[Tom]

George (and all), have you seen this yet?

http://www.feasta.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Trade-Off1.pdf

Financial System Supply-Chain Cross-Contagion:
a study in global systemic collapse.

David Korowicz

It's a kind of "how the collapse is going to happen" (or is likely to) through analysis of the interconnectedness and complexity of our modern world. Fascinating read (75 pgs.)

[D]

 Thanks for this essay. I think we've reached the zenith of selfishness. At least I certainly hope so.

From my June 2012 essay at Transition Voice: "As we leave the Age of Entitlement and transition into the Age of Consequences, everybody will need to make a contribution to his or her community."-Guy McPherson

Guy, given that you are convinced most of the ecosphere faces an Extinction Level Event by mid-century, the contributions anyone makes here will be pretty short lived.  Or have you changed your mind about an ELE coming down the pipe?

RE

Doomstead Diner

[step back]

I suspect the following is mostly an expansion on what Tom (9/11) already said upthread:

We have entered the political age of SPOUTR

SPOUTR= Sweep Peak Oil Under The Rug

If we see Oil as a bundle of energy slaves and Post-Peak as shrinkage of energy slaves, then something has to give as that pie shrinks.

The Elite are going to make sure they continue to get their "entitled" part of the pie. They merely have to convince the "Lazy 47%" that its their own fault their shrinking share is their (the 47%er's) darn fault.

That dialog is already out there one way or another.

Democrats are no less guilty than the Republicrats. The R's tell the 47%, "Your lazy". The D's tell the 47%, "You need to re-educate yourself for the New Economy". That's just another form of SPOUTR politics: telling the victims that shrinkage is their own darn fault (it's not)

[George Mobus]

All,

Thanks for the comments and links.

Tom I did see that report. Little by little truth will out!

George

[Steven Earl Salmony]

What no one is looking at..

For too long a time human population growth has been comfortably and pseudoscientifically viewed by politicians, economists and demographers as somehow outside the course of nature, somehow disconnected from the population dynamics of other evolved species on Earth. The possible causes of human population growth have seemed to them so complex, obscure and numerous, so they have said for many too many years, that an adequate understanding of the cause of human population growth, much less a strategy to address the emerging and converging ecological problems posed by the unbridled growth of the human species, has been assumed to be unapproachable. Their preternatural grasp of human population dynamics has lead to widely varied forecasts of human population growth. Some forecasting data indicate the end to human population growth soon. Other data suggest the rapid and continuous increase of human numbers ad infinitum, and like the endless expansion of the global economy, without adverse impacts. The dogmatic adherence of these politically correct experts to erroneous, unscientific theory regarding automatic population stabilization around the midpoint of Century XXI and a benign demographic transition to a good life for the human community at large cannot be accepted any longer as if it is based upon the best available evidence.
Recent scientific evidence appears to indicate that the governing dynamics of absolute global human population numbers is knowable as a natural phenomenon. Despite all the misleading, intellectually dishonest and deliberately deceptive ‘scientific research’ to the contrary, Homo sapiens can be shown to be, and now seen, as a species that is a part of and definitely not separate from the natural world we inhabit. Experts in politics, economics and demography have consciously fostered and continue obdurately to countenance a perilous disconnect between ecological science and political economy. Perhaps politics, economics and demography are themselves disciplines that are fundamentally disconnected from science. They appear to have more in common with ideology rather than science. To suggest as many too many politicians, economists and demographers have been conveniently doing that understanding the dynamics of human population numbers does not matter, that the human population problem is not about numbers, or that human population dynamics has so dizzying an array of variables as not to be suitable for scientific investigation, seems wrongheaded and dangerous.
According to research of Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D., and David Pimentel, Ph.D., global population growth of the human species is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop in which food availability drives population growth and the recent, skyrocketing growth in absolute global human numbers gives rise to the misconception or mistaken impression that food production needs to be increased even more. Data indicate that the world’s human population grows by approximately 2% per year. All segments of it grow by about two percent. Every year there are more people with brown eyes and more people with blue ones; more people who are tall as well as more short people. It also means that there are more people growing up well fed and more people growing up hungry. The hungry segment of the global population goes up just like the well-fed segment of the population. We may or may not be reducing hunger by increasing food production; however, we are most certainly producing more and more hungry people.
Hopfenberg’s and Pimentel’s research suggests that the spectacularly successful efforts of humankind to increase food production in order to feed a growing population has resulted and continues to result in even greater human population numbers worldwide. The perceived need to increase food production to feed a growing population is a widely shared and consensually validated misperception, a denial both of the physical reality and the space-time dimension, a colossal misunderstanding. If people are starving at a given moment of time, increasing food production and then distributing it cannot help them. Are these starving people supposed to be waiting for sowing, growing and reaping to be completed? Are they supposed to wait for surpluses to reach them? Without food they would die. In such circumstances, increasing food production for people who are starving is like tossing parachutes to people who have already fallen out of the airplane. The produced food arrives too late. Even so, this realization does not mean human starvation is inevitable.
Consider that the population dynamics of humankind is not biologically different from, but essentially common to the population dynamics of other species. Human organisms, non-human organisms and even microorganisms have similar population dynamics. In all cases the governing relationship between food supply and population numbers of any living thing is this: food is independent variable and population numbers is the dependent variable. We do not find hoards of starving roaches, birds, squirrels, alligators, or chimpanzees in the absence of food as we do in many “civilized” human communities today because non-human species and what we call “primitive” human communities are not engaged in food production. Please note that among tribes of people in remote original habitats, we do not find people starving. Like non-human species, “primitive” human beings live within the carrying capacity of their environment. History is replete with examples of early humans and more remote ancestors of “civilized” people not increasing their food production and distribution capabilities annually, but rather living successfully off the land for thousands upon thousands of years as hunters and gatherers of food. Prior to the Agricultural Revolution and the production of more food than was needed for immediate survival, human numbers supposedly could not grow beyond their environment’s physical capacity to sustain them because human population growth or decline is primarily determined by food availability. Looked at from a global population perspective, more food equals more human organisms; less food equals less human beings; and no food equals no people. The idea that food production must be increased to meet the needs of growing human population has been actually giving rise to skyrocketing human population numbers, not only since the Industrial Revolution but even more recently and intensively with the onset of the Green Revolution that began sixty years ago.

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