[RepublicanfromEngland]

I'm a young person.

I posted last year stating I knew of this subect, and that former congressman Ron Paul.

Um, the posters here are correct that people often living in their own little dream world, and optimisim is everywhere especially amongst the young. Though since the bad economics a lot of young people have a different outlook of negativity. I do myself. I don't think American citizens will walk on the moon again as an example. Space flight has become very important in our time, more specifically satelites.

The events around us are what they are, and we all have to try and stop it. But for those of us that can, preparation for a different society is an option on the table.

[Newfie]

RepfromEng.

You are right to prepare. You have to prepare to succeed, even if it looks bleak. Wouldn't it be a bithch to give up all hope, only to have a unexpected opportunity drift past.

Ibon,

I kinda sorta get your drift. If I haven't already mentioned it, I recently read E O Wilson THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH. I think you would find it interesting. It goes a ways down your path, but with a scientific explanation. Re: self sacrifice is a way of assuring the health of the collective at the loss of an individual. Think ants crossing a body of water, or a suicide bomber, or a Non-profit volunteer.

I do believe the collective is very powerful, as you indicate. Predicting how it will behave is neigh on impossible. AFAIK the collectives evolved to compete with adjacent collectives. Doing so is in our DNA. Social media is messing with the way that works in new and unpredictable ways. You no longer need to bw physically part of a tribe to be a part of the tribe. Also the tribe can grow in size while still retaining traits of a small group or visa versa. This is urecedented territory and it remains unknown on how that will be manipulated.

On the other hand, those most pessimistic among us, self included, fear that we have already crossed tipping points that make much of this argument moot. If we bust down to only a few tens of millions even, we will be looking at an entirely new kind of existence, with new rules. At that point there will not be much of a collective left. At least as we recognize it today.

BTW you are right, I am a "religious" or " spiritual" person, in the sense that I have thought about it a good bit. I am also ex-president of a local Ethical Humanist congregation.

http://www.aeu.org/

Cheers

[ennui2]

Its all totally reversible when we turn our backs on big government and multi national corporations in favor of much smaller constitutionally focused government and local/regional enterprise supported by a business friendly environment.

This is what's known as the bargaining stage of grief.

To date, the anti-big-government movement has been used merely as a way to further the goals of the multi-national-corporations (think Citizens United). And this has been sold to those who think they are anti-big-corporations. A very Orwellian bait-and-switch tactic.

Politics to a certain extent is unavoidable, but there ultimately is no political solution to this. Even the decision on something like Keystone-XL is kind of missing the point. You wouldn't need a pipeline if the US didn't need the oil. It's like the war on drugs. The only way to tackle it is to tackle demand. For people to think that you can solve limits to growth through political means is kidding themselves.

Too many people conflate doom with whatever ideological axe they have to grind, and therefore you get pseudo-doomers like Planty who really just wants to use this as a venue to bash Obama. If you really want to see the problem, you have to look at it from an apolitical perspective. It's really more of a psychological/cultural/anthropological thing.

[Plantagenet]

there ultimately is no political solution to this. Even the decision on something like Keystone-XL is kind of missing the point. You wouldn't need a pipeline if the US didn't need the oil. It's like the war on drugs. The only way to tackle it is to tackle demand. For people to think that you can solve limits to growth through political means is kidding themselves.

It's naive to imagine that demand for oil will drop because of a change in the ethos or through a cultural change. Demand for oil is dropping for concrete economic reasons---the price is higher and the weak recovery since 2008 has seen falling wages and net loss of millions of jobs. Pseudo-intellectuals like ennui2 always have a hard time with empirical facts-------economic and political realities sre what controls US oil demand

Yes the culture is evolving --- no cultural change will not end the demand for oil

[Ibon]

On the otherside of the bottleneck when the consequences have done their work, the collective may indeed embrace in a newborn spirituality the words of prophets from our past

“God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.”
― John Muir

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Henry David Thoreau (Walden, 82)

[evilgenius]

Pops, it would be a mistake to dismiss the real power that a belief in God bestows on a people.

Yes, you're exactly right. I was raised in the baptist tradition and know very well the power in believing oneself to be of the chosen. Faith has fed every army, for who would fight believing god was rooting for the other side?

That absolutism bleeds over into all realms. How could it be otherwise? If to have true faith, I must truly believe I know that my god is the one true god, so all faiths unlike mine are, by definition, at least misguided if not downright evil. And woe to those who do not at least profess belief. If all that is true then it follows that I'd be more inclined to believe my opinions in every matter are always correct.

That, to make a gross generalization, is why I find the most religious people are also the most outspokenly black and white in their views, all their views. There is simply no room in their belief system for grays because to equivocate in one thing is to equivocate in all things: You're either with me or you're against me.

Thaaat brings me around to my earlier notion. We'll need to cast off the badge of "god's chosen strawboss – just a rung below the creator himself" and revert/revise our beliefs so we stand as part of the natural world instead of above. That idea seems completely compatible with with a creation story. Considering that selective reading of scripture has always been a part of religion the only thing standing in the way of that interpretation is sufficient social upheaval.

You are pretty much spot on. That's exactly the way it's been most of the time. People don't listen, not even to God. They like to go about determined that they walk in the ways of God, but they seldom bear any fruit. When challenged on this point most Christians submit that bearing fruit means bringing more converts into the religion. That is such a laughable response. Bearing fruit means genuinely exhibiting things like love, patience, long suffering, order, self-control, godliness, etc. The strawboss is an office, if you will. To date no one has been able to take the seat in that office since.... well, fill in the blank. Or, really, isn't that seat taken up daily by our norms and our collective rational and irrational fears, doubts and couched desires and determination to see the world our way. Don't we all sort of vote our part in the whole by who we are and then try to claim a sort of separateness that doesn't really exist. The only way for a 'person' to really be the strawboss is to engage the world in what can reasonably be termed complete selflessness. Funny thing is, that's also the only way to stop voting our part in the whole as well. If you want to defeat the devil then you have to first know him. What a shock to discover that 'he' is 'us'.

[Newfie]

Well, for a well thought out atheist, if we throw off god, and as humanist realize that we are the ones making decisions, then we must also throw off the devil and embrass that part into ourselves and into our responsibility. In other words....."he" is "us".

[Ibon]

In other words....."he" is "us".

Herein lies a fundamental archetypal cognitive dissonance shared by both the religious and secular collective.
The religious have a funny way sometimes of selectively choosing what is of the Creator and what of man . The sanctity of life (as in conception) falls under the domain of the creator while the ability "to play god" altering our planets landscapes and consuming with impunity is accepted as a morally unregulated right of humans. The only moderation of this inconsistency is when religions come up with the tepid response that we must be good stewards to god’s creation that he put on this planet for your benefit. None of the dominant modern religions honor life without some context of man. In fact, if you think of it, the religions that have become dominant are those that to date have supported the dominant position of man as god’s creation. This is important because we tend to blame religious superstitious belief as being the cause of our ignorance when this is not the whole story. We simply have no scripture honed from the conflicts of overshoot. What was never lacking was never obsolete. Religions today have become obsolete in morally dealing with overshoot because overshoot only now is revealing the deficiency in the teachings of modern religions.
In the secular world we have had the enlightenment and the paradigm shifts starting with Copernicus and Darwin to take humans off the center stage of the universe of space and time. The secular world however is equally guilty of selectively choosing where to apply this rational understanding, not hard when measuring the movement of the stars or looking at fossils but damn tricky when trying to understand the finite nature of fossil fuels or reconsidering the belief that technology will always find solutions to allow us a one way trajectory toward endless growth. Science allows us to see cycles and change and impermanence of epics and eons of time but we demonstrate tremendous cognitive dissonance when we challenge the myth of technology’s ability to allow us to grow with impunity.
The ability to leverage this cognitive dissonance through denial is slowly squeezing shut as consequences of overshoot bear down on us. There really is a point where events leave one no room left to wiggle. No room left to rationalize our hubris. An individual can be selfish through ignorance. So can a collective.
Lacking the ethical compass from within balance comes from without, from external events. This is not really as great a challenge as many assume. We have simply lacked the internal collective narrative. Surely we have all played the game imagining a future human 200 years from now looking back and being dumbfounded at the stupidity of modern humans to have not seen the obvious while at the same time being such masters of “playing god”.
We have not seen the obvious because we still have some wiggle room with our denial.
It’s not hard to understand why we wiggle. It is also not hard to understand that events will make it increasingly difficult. So where does this put us right here and now, the only place that ever really matters? …. It puts all of us in the most unique position to act as agents of understanding and as mentors as we help construct a new collective narrative, putting upcoming consequences in their proper contexts, not as random secular events nor as acts of god. Remember I mentioned that leaders do not exist in vacuums but rise out of the something cooking in the soup of the collective.
We are not far off. The knowledge we have will allow us to immediately recognize truth when revealed. And we will rally around leaders who speak this truth.
No leader can step forward while we are all wiggling. He has to wait until the claustrophobia of denial makes it unbearable to hold any longer on to dead dreams.
We are the foot soldiers ready to rally when the time comes…..
Carry this awareness with you when watching events unfold. And look for the new enlightenment that will come forth. We are spiritual creatures and we will rally when called upon.

[Newfie]

Ibon wrote

No leader can step forward while we are all wiggling. He has to wait until the claustrophobia of denial makes it unbearable to hold any longer on to dead dreams.
We are the foot soldiers ready to rally when the time comes…..
Carry this awareness with you when watching events unfold. And look for the new enlightenment that will come forth. We are spiritual creatures and we will rally when called upon.

Ironically this is what I fear.

You look forward to this new leader with the anticipation that it will be some improvement.

I look forward with the dread that we will first pick someone who will be the last bastion of denial, who will call for a "Return of America's Greatness" with a vengeance. I fear a repeat of 1933.

Let us hope you are right and I am wrong.

On most things we agree on the direction, if not cause.

I come, as an adult, from a Humanist background. I can assure you that I see no great understanding of the issues you mention over in that camp. Lots of tongue clucking about this or that social injustice, but no knowledge of systematic ills. Over population, global warming, shifting weather patterns are given no more energy than any of a thousand social slights. While I support a woman's right to choice, gay marriage, and abolition of the death penalty, they just do not match up against over population, resource depletion, and global warming. Yet I am virtually alone in that community in recognizing the difference. Tis a pity.

[SeaGypsy]

The 'New Leader' is Utopian idealism, not realistic IMO. Either another disaster dictatorship or a neo-Jesus martyrdom only recognizable as leadership in post facto are possible in our megalopolized world.
The need for such is effectively redundant also; given that there is so little left to say: "Go forth humbly and together on a wing and a prayer with your loved ones close by, seek peace, survival and sustainable lives. If worst comes to worst may death bring you solace." Although this is more or less all there is left to say, who is listening and what will the world be like by then?

[Newfie]

Good summary.

[Ibon]

You guys are desribing 100% the leaders who will in vane try to preserve the status quo and I share your fear about these early encarnations of "leaders". But these are not leaders. These are pacifiers. And they can be dangerous populists.

Consider the dust bowl in the 30's, folks squeezed like prunes to the last drops of their resilience. When I talk of a revitalized spirit that springs from consequences I am not referring to consequences that are like annoying mosquitoes. I am referring to consequences that take us to the edge of collapse and desperation that you can see on the faces of these folks in 1938 in western Kansas.

While the status quo holds on during decline we will see the leaders you fear. But once we hit spiritual pay dirt think of what spiritual hunger and desperation will remain of the shattered consumer paradigm. Real fundamental change can only rise from a shattered paradigm.

The challenge for the humanist will be to help minimize suffering on one hand while welcoming it on the other. We have left ourselves no option.

It might seem like I am overly optimistic in my prognosis.

This will not be a walk in the park.

[SeaGypsy]

What I don't get with this prognosis is:

How can a 'True Leader' emerge post collapse, post population bottleneck, post enviro- disaster etc?
Who would give a hoot? What would make such a person relevant? (Say more relevant than the historical Jesus or Mohammad or Gautama or Theresa?)

So much of the ways we have become accustomed to thinking depend utterly on the technology of mass communication. The government is totally irrelevant to people disconnected from these mass systems. They have their own 'Leaders' or systems of leadership.

As these mass systems fail, so will mass systems of government. We will have leaders, but they will not be the media creation we call such now, but people we know directly and who know us.

Meanwhile the totalitarian wish will strive onwards in it's various guises and try to sucker us all into slavery to the death in it's support. In the end though these systems must fail and the most resilient, redundant systems recur. That is if any humans are left to require leadership.

[Pops]

As Ibon pointed out earlier, leaders are a product of their time, they give a voice to the prevailing whim of the masses. True leaders (not despots, tyrants or representatives of the landlord) inhabit a certain time and only if what they have to say resonates with a significant fraction of the population does their influence expand.

Of course mere populism or demagoguery doesn't make a transformational leader, if it did we would all be Gandhis. So again, look at what Carter had to say and how his idea of conservation and collectivism was embraced, or not, to understand that true leaders are more of a focusing lens for the greater conscious. For a minute there post-peak in the US we were genuinely concerned about the future and willing to listen to a transformative message. But once technology (Alaska Pipe) "saved" us from the immediate threat we forgot about the future and returned to the extractive economy.

Point is there needs to be a desire for transformation before a transformational leader can appear. As AR often says, as long as there are SNAP cards available, we in the rich world probably won't feel much of a desire for a leader that calls for dramatic changes to the status quo. It takes an existential threat to get people off the couch.

[SeaGypsy]

Point is there needs to be a desire for transformation before a transformational leader can appear. As AR often says, as long as there are SNAP cards available, we in the rich world probably won't feel much of a desire for a leader that calls for dramatic changes to the status quo. It takes an existential threat to get people off the couch.

Starvation doesn't create such. Blaming the welfare state for the complacency of nations is disengenous at best. Social security is not just for those needing it, but to maintain the very integrity of the state. Folks are not generally inclined to bite the hand which feeds them.

More likely than not a massive increase in broad based welfare will be the inclination of government in the dwindling period. Killing off the welfare state would instead of "Making folks get off the couch (and vote for 'dramatic change')" will much more likely result in folks taking revenge on the state and resorting to desperate measures to feed their families (a scary prospect in the land of the black machine gun).

Savings on general welfare, in a welfare state, shift dramatically towards police and general security expense. If that makes some people feel bad, or call 'Bring it On!' well more fool them.

With a whimper not a bang.

The essential ingredient missing for Carter's recipe is an educated and united populace. Something which cannot be magically 'SNAP'ped into existence.

[Rod_Cloutier]

This weekend a retired Army captain compared Obama to Hitler:

http://www.infowars.com/retired-army-ca ... an-people/

“It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America,” the decorated retired Army Captain’s letter begins.

...

The only proper response to this threat against the American people is for the representatives of the People, the members of the U.S. House and Senate, to demand in clear terms that the Administration cannot ignore, that the Department of Homeland Security immediately surrender their newly appropriated weapons of war to the Department of Defense (DoD). Further, since the DHS has assumed a position in the Administration to enforce the tyrannical acts of this president against the People of the United States against the limits of the United States Constitution, it remains for the United States Congress to exercise its limiting power in the balancing of powers established by our founding fathers, to disestablish and dissolve the DHS as soon as possible. One needs only to look to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and his associated DHS organizations, the SA and the SS, of 1932-1934, to see the outcome of allowing an agency of government this kind of control over the free citizens of a nation. The people of Germany could not have imagined, until it was too late, the danger of allowing a tyrant this kind of power. We must not be so naïve as to think it will not happen to us as well if we remain passive toward this power grab by the Marxist Obama administration!

...

A recent report that the DHS holds a $2 million contract with a firing range target manufacturer that produces shooting targets of armed pregnant women, children and elderly gun owners depicted in residential settings, has also not helped suppress speculation.

I'm a Canadian and I find this terrifying. Watch Canada and Mexico get annexxed after the new fascist powers come to power. Its hard to sit and watch evil unfold like this, on such a huge scale, and all the while knowing there's nothing I can do to stop it. Scary times.

[PrestonSturges]

This weekend a retired Army captain compared Obama to Hitler:

http://www.infowars.com/retired-army-ca ... an-people/

“It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America,” the decorated retired Army Captain’s letter begins.

.... and people like this officer are exactly the sort that put Hitler in power. He is what you would have called a "Junker" in Germany - the hereditary military officer class. And he's peddling silly conspiracy theories.

Remember that above all Nazism was a conspiracy theory about the looming takeover by the liberals, aided by what HItler called "the liberal press." The Nazis peddled theories like Protocol Of The Elders Of Zion. And of course they were supposedly saving Christianity. All of this was targeted at the stupidest 10% of the population.

Sites like Infowars are "antifascist" in the same way homophobic conservatives fighting the "homosexual agenda" turn out to be gay.

And of course, once you are over on the conspiracy side of crazy town, you'll notice the ads for "The Holocaust Conspiracy" and other white supremacist crap. At sites like Info wars, you are never more than 2 mouse clicks away from actual Nazis trying to sell you stuff.

Likewise this guy is almost certainly a Birther, and there are big Birther web sites in Canada.

So there are you conspiracy theories designed to activate the stupidest 10%, just like the Nazis did, with a good dose of good old fashioned antisemitic conspiracy thrown in. Except now they are militant Zionist, so now they can support killing the Jews and protecting the Israel. See the manifesto of the Oslo terrorist for zionism + all the familiar Fox News conspiracy theories + his declaration of war against what he called Jewish "political correctness."

And the "DHS tanks" is right up there with the "FEMA coffins" and "contrails" and "Agenda 21" fairy tales (can you believe the FEMA coffin story is still around and being used in advertising? It sure takes the guess work out of finding sad isolated mentally ill people to cheat out of their savings.)

Debunking this stuff makes no difference, but here's the back story about the "DHS tanks" :

"Navistar Defense, L.L.C., Warrenville, Ill., is being awarded an $879,923,195 firm-fixed-priced delivery order 0023 under previously awarded contract (M67854-07-D-5032) for the procurement of 2,717 units ....... The Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico, Va., is the contracting activity.

[PrestonSturges]

I'm a young person.

I posted last year stating I knew of this subect, and that former congressman Ron Paul.

Ron Paul vanished from public life within hours of Anonymous revealing his close ties to several white supremacist groups. His idiot son Rand continues to use American white supremacist buzzwords like "nullification."

[PrestonSturges]

And here's a Beck-tard yearning for the charismatic leader who will give him permission to go on a killing spree. Because nothing says "freedom" like killing everyone that disagrees with you.

Amen brother!!! I am a retired and disabled USAF veteran and I swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign AND domestic! The left are enemies of the Constitution! I, and you it appears, am ready to defend the Constitution with my own blood against the leftist garbage like Kelly, Obambi, Reid, and the rest of the filth! There are millions of us here in the U.S. and hundreds of millions from around the world (foreigners dreaming of real freedom) willing to fight! All we need is a call to arms and I am out the door! Who is willing to make that call? Must be a citizen in a position to reach all of America! Any in Congress? The Joint Chiefs (where are these clowns anyway)? A strong state Governor? A regular patriot like myself can only prepare locally! We need someone who commands a bully pulpit to reach out! Do any have the balls to stand tall?

[Ibon]

Call it just a device but you can anchor yourself to some distant point where humanity organizes itself living within carrying capacity. The disruptive events, be they environmental, political or economic will certainly twist and turn or kill you between now and then, but in the improbable event we do arrive at that ripe moment when the collective soup will embrace a new paradigm, and a leader(s) will gather and consolidate and distill this into a new social/spiritual/political agenda, is it not worth while? If it isn’t what more constructive human response to adapting to living in the age of the consequences of overshoot can there be?

A noble vision does not require a high probability of success, anything above the futile threshold makes it worthy, for what alternative lies before us? The self-fulfilling prophecy of collective cynicism is not a vision to move our society toward self-preservation.

And yes, this noble vision may never build any momentum at all, and it may come to naught., and once again as history has shown before we may decline into resource wars and into darkness like the middle ages. But even so if any of these noble sentiments survive the chaos and are archived they can represent to some future civilization evidence that not all was ignorance. They may even be stronger catalysts if such martyred.
Another thought perhaps worth considering. The vast majority of humanity in ignorance or denial may not all represent a stubborn arrogance to preserve the status quo and BAU. Perhaps the awareness of passing through the bottleneck is just too bleak and disheartening for mothers and fathers of children, for school teachers, for priests and some politicians. At some point the collective cynicism and consequences together becomes unbearable, and yes, this hopelessness will be exploited by some of the most evil motives as false prophets call for war (as the passage presented by PrestonSturgess)

So we do have to move beyond the collective cynicism, especially the fraternity of those of us who have seen this coming. If we were visionaries 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, why not still be and reach beyond the consequences and already represent an anchor, a barnacle, a germinating seed, in that collective soup that may or may not come to fruition this time round.