[Ibon]

My father's and his father's generation where part of that movement leaving their agrarian background behind and moving to urban and suburban environments. We can see this today in China as the countryside is depopulating as hordes flock toward urban areas looking for a better life.

When you speak with folks from early 20th century America and explore the reasons why they left this agrarian lifestyle there is of course the economics that can't be ignored. But it is worth reminding ourselves of the cultural and lifestyle reasons. The adjectives that this generation often uses to describe their agrarian past are striking: small minded, conservative, gossip ridden, hypocritical, boring, laborious, intolerant, racist, suffocating. In spite of the provincial "tyranny of the group" restrictions they recall at the same time the community bond, the cohesiveness of going to church, the neighborliness of helping out in times of harvest and crisis are recalled as fond memories.

Here we stand in 2010 in this isolated consumer driven hyper individualism yearning for a return to a greater sense of community. The pendulum has swung about as far as possible in this direction of hyper individualism not only due to the economics of peak oil and resource constraints imposing limits but also because of the diminishing returns in satisfaction and fulfillment when there is too much self indulgence in the fine tuning our individual need of consumption.

And so recalling the words of my fathers generation, the impetus to leave behind that agrarian past, and seeing the pendulum having exhausted it's momentum in the direction of consumer driving hyper individualism, one cant help but recognize that there is a synergy at work at the moment.

The economic and environmental consequences of peak oil and resource constraints will impose themselves as catalysts of change away from consumption and impose transition (that has been one of my mantras on this site.... The catalysts of consequences). But this is happening in synergy with a cultural and lifestyle weariness about the diminishing returns of hyper individualism.

Consequences together with a new cultural direction toward community is a powerful synergy that I predict will accelerate during the 21st century as the emerging generations adapt to the physical consequences of resource constraints and climate change at the same time as they distance themselves from the emptiness and solitude of the generation that followed this consumption driven hyper individualism.

The title of this thread is hyper individualism vs. the tyranny of the group. But this is perhaps a false dichotomy. The small mindedness of agrarian life 100 years ago when people felt held in the tyranny of a group was one extreme as is the isolation and emptiness we witness in the consumer driven culture of hyper individualism.

I sit up here in this remote cloud forest in Panama where I have been greatly enriched by the roots I have established with the local community not to mention the connection with the land. At the same time I have this access through technology and the internet of global friendships that allows the inputs of a huge diversity of ideas and genius that insulate me from the "tyranny of the group" small mindedness that my father and his father's generation referred to in why they left behind their agrarian roots. I know there are a number of posters on this site who have chosen a more rural community at the same time as staying "connected" to cultural influences that expand one beyond their local communities.

We linger on the doom and dark side of coming consequences. But is there not a ray of sunshine and hope out there where the benefits of community side by side with the rewards of individual self actualization emerge as the unexpected dividends of this coming centuries brutal consequences?

Not to mention the humbling affects of watching humanity experience a die-off of historical proportions.

I predict humans will pass through this bottleneck better integrated with their environments and fellow humans and with a greater sense of balance of their individual place within the communities they live.

I actually cant wait for the fireworks that will hone this synergy.

[mos6507]

I'm not convinced that this move towards community will just happen.

I think we now have generations of people (Y and Z, my generation X being kind of a crossover) who are basically socially crippled. We not only don't know anything about community, we also have very poor interpersonal skills in general. We're narcissistic and we think a clan on WoW or a facebook friend is a social life. We seek our own ideological tribes (like Fox News) in which we can shut our minds off to anything that challenges our preconceived notions of the world. We know only two extremes, which is to bobble-head to the base and flame everyone else with ad hominems.

It's just as hard for me to conceive of these people growing turnips in their backyards as it is for me to conceive of them evolving the social skills required to rebuild community and navigate the vagaries of ideological conflict.

I certainly don't see it happening without some sort of intervention, since beyond all of the above, people don't realize their own limitations. They don't because the world doesn't exact a pricetag for this hyperindividualism. BAU enables this sort of lifestyle. There doesn't seem to be a downside to them. Who wouldn't like to ignore having to deal with people you don't agree with? It's kind of natural. So that's why what we have now is the ambient culture that we've evolved into.

So preaching to them about the power of community is kind of a hard sell. Might play well with 80 somethings who remember the good old days, but not the Twitter generation.

If people feel that BAU is the best of all possible worlds, then they will do everything in their power to perpetuate it (see Sarah Palin 2012). That's what dystopias are made of. You know, THE CENTER MUST HOLD.

This kind of reminds me of the psychological profile of the average North Korean. South Koreans realize that North Koreans just don't think the way they do. If you've grown up from birth to believe certain things, they get hardwired into your brain. They can starve eating mud cakes and cockroaches and they'll still worship the ground that Kim Jong Il walks on and demonize SK even though SK is a far more successful model of life. It's very hard to deprogram because your whole identity is defined by your childhood. So when south korean and north korean relatives meet, it's very awkward because the North Koreans are so deluded that they can't accept any information that conflicts with their programming.

This sunk investment in the self is the hardest part of doom to address. And I guess the sad part of the whole Mike Brownlee bru-ha-ha (for those who are aware of it) via Transition is this false notion on the part of most Transitioners that we can get where we need to go without ever crossing the dividing line of individualism, that we can somehow be community and resilient, but walk on eggshells over elephants in the room like notions of growth, population, per capita consumption, etc... To me that seems to cancel itself out.

Instead, when and if it becomes obvious that we're on the precipice of die-off, I really see things getting more and more violent, as the situation will require that we engage in a collective fireside chat as a society at a global, national, and local level, and we'll have to face our ideological differences as grown and mature adults, to face it head on rather than remaining in our nicely isolated silos of ego-protection. The amount of vitriol expended over trivial issues like DADT or Obamacare should give you an idea of how much harder it will be when we start debating lifeboat ethics.

So I kind of see things as together we stand, divided we fall. On the way down, instead of having a civil discussion I see perpetual shouting matches of the sort we're already seeing here on peakoil.com between different factions, but these shouting matches will comprise of both sides, mostly blinded by their biases, making various flavor of uneducated arguments filled with fallacies, in which the best paths forward probably won't even be on the table, and the doomers who have more of a handle on the underlying ecology/thermodynamics will be marginalized completely, in part due to their own damn timidity!

I'd like to believe otherwise, but I see no evidence of it.

[Xenophobe]

Not to mention the humbling affects of watching humanity experience a die-off of historical proportions.

Don't hold your breath. Hundreds of years after Malthus claimed the same basic thing, we're still waiting.

[Ibon]

I'm not convinced that this move towards community will just happen.
.

Who the hell said that it will just happen? Could I have been any more specific about a synergy of brutal consequences acting as a catalyst together with a cultural movement away from the excesses of hyper individualism?

Acting in tandem why should this not be enough of a force to break what you see as a deeply immovable cultural status quo?

[Ibon]

Don't hold your breath. Hundreds of years after Malthus claimed the same basic thing, we're still waiting.

Whether it is die-off lite or a something more the catalyst of consequences are hard to deny at this point. The points I was making are relevant whether in a hundred years we have 2 billion or 10 billion on the planet.

Of course as an ecologist I would prefer to see that number closer to 2 billion than 10 billion. But I am not evangelical about the final numbers.

[Xenophobe]

Don't hold your breath. Hundreds of years after Malthus claimed the same basic thing, we're still waiting.

Whether it is die-off lite or a something more the catalyst of consequences are hard to deny at this point.

Thats what Ehrlich said as well, when he was recycling Malthus. Face it, some part of this "the end is nigh!" routine is part of the human condition. We worry about the future because its...well...the future! Could go well, could suck. The conditions viewed as indicators of Doom are always "hard to deny"....until we wait 10 years and discover they may have been hard to deny AT THE TIME, but in hindsight they seem kind of goofy.

Until the next time, when we start up the cycle all over again.

The points I was making are relevant whether in a hundred years we have 2 billion or 10 billion on the planet.

Of course as an ecologist I would prefer to see that number closer to 2 billion than 10 billion. But I am not evangelical about the final numbers.

Well, that makes two of us then. 2 billion in the year 2100 would be nice...don't know if we, as humans, will choose a path that leads to that number, I'm betting we'll end up higher than that, but who knows? Maybe, collectively, we'll make some reasonable choices. Maybe, and more likely, we'll be forced to make reasonable choices.

[SeaGypsy]

In a series of vision quests in my teens and early 20's I perceived many things your introduction reminds me of, Ibon,

These are some of my perceptions:

Conciousness liberated from ego is beyond personal, beyond human, more like an ocean than a swimming pool.
The natural human perception or conciousness has always been limited to the sensory field, except in mystical experience.
The internet age is the culmination of technology being able to expand the sensory perceptive field, just as the oil age has facilitated resource exploitation on previously unimaginable scale.

Previous to the technological era, conciouness existed in a bubble where the center saw itself reflected in the environment.
Nature was effectively, God.
If you had a good sustainable ecology going, God was mostly good.
If you were unsustainable, God would get very nasty.
All of this always happened locally, in the field of perception; the next valley was as far away as another country is today and other countries were as far away as other planets are now.
This is how it was for almost the entirety of our existence on this wet rock.

Empiricism and frontiersman spirit came to dominate the globe, our discovery of oil has facilitated dominance by those most attuned to these qualities.
At the extreme, these qualities can represent psychopathology/ sociopathology. The technological era has become the era of the sociopath and the slave.

It has often been commented by anthropologists that mega societies are a modern experiment likely doomed to fail for the primary reason that they are by nature, out of synchronisation with human nature.

The modernist argument has always been that technology is good because it allowed the building of mega society, which allowed us all to come out of the swamps, forests, beaches and savanah.

Scientificly it can be shown that the exact same problems in a natural ecosphere, which occur when any species gets beyond it's balance, also occur in the megasphere society. Technology enabled mega society to mega resource extract and for a time, ignore the fundamental equation of ecology.

In a microcosm, every time this has happened there can only be one of 4 results. Easter island is the result of failing to enact discipline, over spiritualising the relationship with nature and expecting miracle food. Complete wipe out. South Sea Islander style cannabalism/ ritualised killing. Population control by violence. Organisation of strict cultural discipline towards breeding control and stable state ecology, as seen in many aboriginal tribes.Last is by far the most common occurrence in localised human overshoot: retraction, scattering and dipersal.

Just as there is no precedent for globalisation there is none for a response to the need for strict discipline on a global scale.
This makes Easter Island scenario; political inaction leading to mass starvation, the likely political outcome.

As resources dry up and the reality of starvation sets in, socially retarded hungry humans with weapons by the millions will very likely make the cannabalism option the most viable immediate solution to overpopulation/ ecological overshoot. War being the more (ritualised) acceptable form of violent population control means the longer mega society goes on for the more likely mega war becomes.

Green fascism is increasingly likely to be the only form of government available to global elites. Whilst it is still distatefull to them that there is no way BAU can continue on a finite planet, it is vastly in the elite's interest that there be a 'Government'. I suspect that the whole charade of modern police states will fall away without oil to drive the machine of state. International interventionism will be a thing of the past. Policing outside city limits will be a local matter.
However the attempts to hold together some kind of State will pull enormous resources, speeding their expenditure and ultimately hardening the blow of depletion.
Manipulation a global stable state economy with no need for a global military complex is so far from the realm of possibility under any of the current regime's as to be sadly laughable. The gross ineffieciency of the military industrial complex will drag almost every government in the world to it's knees well before they try living without it. Even a untied fascist green one world government would have to expend these resources to quell internal dissent.


The oil age has also prospered the philosophy "Every man a King, Every home a Castle" to such an extent that most people have no idea how they function in group dynamics beyond their work and family requirements. In westernised societies most people would be very hard pressed to put a group of people together to achieve sustainability on a local level, even if they were given 200 acres of cloud forest with willing local helpers; or a sailpowered fishing boat and a hut in a safe harbour.


With all that, when the oil monster finally falls over and dies, I expect:

A very strong return to localism in terms of conciousness, work ethic, discipline in general.

The success of some (not all) Neo- Tribal clans in fertile plots around the globe.

Cities becoming much more important than countries, with very wide socio economic gaps between those with immediate access to key resources for food production and those dependent on trade. Cities becoming Medinised, with walls and admission passes.

I see a paradox emerging in terms of the freedom to travel.
Currently travel is unbelievably easy, this ease enables state supervision, travel monitoring and immigration control.
With the end of oil, sailing will again as for many thousands of years, be the main method of getting accross large bodies of water.
Policing the oceans and seas beyond the immediate precints of a port will not be possible.

Will any form of international banking or the internet survive the crunch?

Will we know what is going on outside our bubble of perception?

Likely we are all going to find out what being beholden to the State is, if we hadn't already.

Like you Ibon, I look for gaps in the machinery.

There are holes in the matrix.

When you find one, it's the most precious thing.

I know, like you Ibon, the power of that moment when you are struck in awe at nature around you. Dwarfed by it. Wondering how could this be? How could people be so blind as to not see the earth in it's age and wisdom and beauty? How can the earth still contain paradise when they are saying it is ruined?
The moment when you breath in harmony and your heart beats with the pulse of the forest and you know, this is where I was meant to be. When you finish a days work with a twinkle in the eye, knowing in your heart you were meant to do be there doing that with the people you did it with; with no consideration of money.

How sad that so many supposedly freeborn people never know freedom!

The oil age has been about extraction and abstraction.

Peak oil is the time to extract yourself from oil dependency and undo the hold of abstracts.

[mos6507]

Acting in tandem why should this not be enough of a force to break what you see as a deeply immovable cultural status quo?

If things get that bad, "community" may be little more than roving bands of marauders. These types of posts attempt to imbue doom with some dose of positivity, and my point being that the frog boiling in the pot is not going to be a happy scenario.

[pablonite]

I actually cant wait for the fireworks that will hone this synergy.

That is the frightening thing in my opinion and many people on this site are itching for the "fireworks". You have your little clan up in the Panamanian rain clouds, your internets and food in your belly now but should "fireworks" commence do you think you will have an unobstructed ring side seat with plenty of popcorn? Will you have a say as to what fireworks go off where?
The French people were itching for change too, they loped off plenty of heads, went hungry and probably ended up in a worse position that before the revolution.
I agree with most of your post though, having lived in big cities and small towns I would take the latter any day. Big cities are looking like big targets for false revolutions and abrupt change these days. I mean, when the supermarket shelves go empty it's not like you can even walk 10 miles to the outskirts and get some farm eggs these days, you've got 100 miles of highway and 1 million competitors before you reach that farm and it might not be a pretty site when you get there
I am hoping for slow and steady change myself, and will take a pass on the fireworks as well.

[Ibon]

In a series of vision quests in my teens and early 20's I perceived many things your introduction reminds me of, Ibon,

The vision quests that inspired my relationship with the natural world were like you honed in my late teens and early 20's when I lived and breathed in wilderness that included many long journey for weeks at a time in some of the most unspoiled areas in North America. some of these journeys included peyote or mushrooms somewhere between day 7 and 10 . Waiting this week or 10 days before doing these vision quests were a way to first reach a baseline of perception with the ecology you were in. In other words, no vision quest before you fell deeply into the rhythm of the wilderness you were in. That youthful time seems like a long time ago (25 years!) but certainly marked and led me to where I am today. I have also recognized in your writing SeaGypsy a perception that I believe must have been honed from similar experiences.

As much as I learned very deep spiritual lessons in those wilderness journeys I also came with time to realize that on some level I was always a guest or visitor in these hallowed sacred places. At journey's end I would once again have to reengage in modern society which is what ultimately fed and sustained me. Wilderness as a monastic temple to learn deep spiritual truths is a vital resource humans should not lose. Sadder still as you say is the vast majority of the human population born in urban or artificial environments that never get to connect with what is really a deep resonating relationship with the natural world fixed into our genes from the Pleistocene and beyond. This is not something you can order as one the latest Apps on your Ipod

I realize I come from somewhat of an obsolete mind set. . I miss the voice from the wilderness that states that first and foremost these ecosystems need to be saved for the inherent value these places have for their own sake irrespective of humans. This view is almost looked upon as romantic or nostalgic. I find this deeply disheartening but also as a further evidence of human overshoot; that we have gotten to the point of supporting such a large population of humans who have been born and raised with wilderness representing such an abstraction.

I mentioned in past posts how suspicious I am of green technology and sustainability when it is directed only to maintaining high levels of human populations in urban environments where healthy ecosystems have become an abstraction. This is the majority of humanity today. Applying green technology to a population unhinged is hypocrisy as it only increases the resiliency of Kudzu Ape, the name I have given our species in reference to its resembling an invasive weed in its ability to disrupt bio regions globally. So this leads where the ecologist in me anticipates the fireworks of consequences. Even though I must contain a contradiction.

I have two daughters, one in Manila in the Philippines in a country close to the top of the list experiencing human overshoot. The other appears to be heading to New York post high school. My own genes are at risk as the fireworks of consequences unfold. Of course I want to protect them so like
Pablonite I don't want to see the fireworks unleashed with major die-off being the result. But the ecologist in me and the lessons learned in those vision quests have given me a deeper insight as to the most likely outcome which is the one you Sea Gypsy and Mos for example both have mentioned in your last posts; war, societal breakdown, potentially even cannibalism.

The only real difference I see from what you have predicted and what Mos has stated is a certain elasticity that perhaps you have both overlooked.

When I use the term catalyst of consequences I mean more that just consequences teaching lessons. A catalyst in chemistry acts as an agent that accelerates or initiates a reaction where as the catalyst itself remains unchanged. So this term "catalyst of consequences" refers to this accelerating and initiating characteristic of consequences. What will accelerate and what will be initiated? Cultural transition. And in reference to my opening post I propose that the culture at large is already primed to have this catalyst act on them because of the diminishing returns that consumption culture has provided spiritually in this hyper individualism that has isolated us. I would challenge you and Mos to consider the possibility that you are projecting forward the collapse and decline based on the dysfunction you witness in humanity today. What I am suggesting is that consequences acting as catalysts will accelerate and initiate cultural transition and transformation DURING this descent. So the dysfunction you witness today does not remained fixed on the descent but because of the action of a catalyst actually initiates and accelerates transition.

This may truly be wishful thinking on my part but it does intuitively feel possible.

I should repeat and point out that a BIG chunk of the catalyst of consequences includes what you and Mos mention; wars, further social dislocation and chaos, etc. etc. etc. So I am not painting some painless transition as some rationalization here. I am fully aware of the brutal nature of those consequences. I just point out their power to accelerate transformation on a culture that is primed from going to denial to acceptance because intuitively our modern consumption culture is not spiritually fulfilled. In fact I would say that under all the fat and parasitic consumption humans still have the animal cunningness just needing a catalyst in order to emerge and be embraced. Consequences initiate. Culture eventually steers.

Sorry for being somewhat repetitive. I am just trying to spell out these thoughts and like many of you it is in the very act of articulating these ideas writing them in a post that you find yourself clarifying them even for yourself!

[Kristen]

Sure, individualism may equate to selfishness and shallowness. Status symbols and stereotypes are pursued like Columbus seeking a new land. I was born in 1985 and I guess you could consider me part of the "plugged in" generation.

When I was in school promises of being to succeed as long as you try your best flowered about. America was a dream factory, and anything could be achieved with the right attitude (some people still claim this today). Unfortunately, they should have also taught my generation not to have such unrealistic expectations.

Advertisement was always rampant growing up. I was poor(which I am grateful for), so I remember the have-nots being rubbed in my face and hearing about how queer I must be for my inadequate possessions by peers and media alike.

These experiences combined with other ones unmentioned (I don't want to write a novel here) give me the impression that there is this poisones individualism at work, but really what society is offering is a selection of stereotype to choose from. Most people of my generation seem to judge themselves with such prerequisites. They would rather fit in with the crowd then truly be individuals.

[Ludi]

I am hoping for slow and steady change myself, and will take a pass on the fireworks as well.

I will most likely die during any "fireworks" so I'm not as excited about them as some people seem to be. I'd just as soon make it to a ripe old age but if folks here are correct, I'll be lucky to have another 5 years.

Nice knowin' ya!

[mos6507]

"I just point out their power to accelerate transformation"

Let's say your transformation happens. What does it accomplish? What do we wind up salvaging? What does it look like? If we're headed for some Lovelock-grade disaster because we're going to go balls to the wall BAU to the last moment, I'm trying to envision something, anywhere, that will remain pleasant. It's hard for me to do this. You can have all the communal thinking you want, and all the pennance you want, but if the earth is still rendered a hell-hole, it's hard for me to see it as anything but some final hell or purgatory where Homo Sapiens goes to die.

Oh, and merry christmas.

[jmnemonic]

I see a different problem - possibly cataclysmic - that few if any are talking about. I came up with a theory a few years ago based on the principle of reservoir-induced seismicity. Because all theories should be predictive, I made this prediction: the world would see an increasing number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. As predictions go, that looks dead-on - according to usgs.gov, the number of earthquakes in the U.S. has increased by roughly 90% over 2009 and about 120% over 2008. In other words, the rate of increase is itself increasing, the curve looking rather hyperbolic if you chart the data in Excel (which I did). Also, going back to 1990, there were NO years where we had 4000+ quakes in the States...until 2009, when we barely topped 4000. This year we are rapidly closing in on 8000 quakes (though I doubt we will get there before Jan 1).

Basically, I introduced a simple postulate: that a gram of water in a dam's reservoir weighs the same as a gram of water off the coast of Japan (or California, or Indonesia, whatever), and if weight in a dam's reservoir can cause earthquakes (and clearly they can and sometimes do), then introducing extra weight to new areas globally would increase seismic instability globally. Where is all the extra weight coming from? Well, most of it, obviously, from melted ice, quadrillions of tons of that. But then we humans also dump who-knows-how-much junk into the oceans too. Now, I'm not saying some extra water mass can make a completely geologically inactive area do anything. But a LOT of volcanoes and tectonics just need a little extra pressure to blow. And I believe that is what is now happening.

If you extrapolate the numbers and just go with the last year's rate of increase in quakes in the U.S., then by 2020 we'd be experiencing more than 1 million quakes per year instead of the more normal 3500-ish. Not a huge number of giant quakes, mostly buttloads more small-to-medium quakes. But globally big quakes are also up, about 25%. (Japan just had an incredible swarm of 86 good-sized quakes/aftershocks a couple of days ago.) If that rate also kept increasing then we'd go from around 12-15 big quakes per year globally now to more like 150 or so. I can't really see the full data for the world, because USGS stopped counting smaller quakes globally. (And I wonder why - are they trying to hide some data, so as to prevent panic? Maybe that's too paranoid of me.)

And now this year volcanic activity is way up too, presumably for similar reasons: they're being squeezed around the edges by new water mass and the ones that were nearest to eruption are popping like zits. As more mass flows to the oceans, I expect this to get increasingly worse.

My fear is that my theory is, in fact, correct. I mean, that was certainly an accurate prediction. And worse, I fear the possibility that the escalation continues. Just a few years of escalation like this past year's and that alone could cause some serious problems with maintaining the civilization we have. If things start getting knocked down faster than we can repair them, then we're screwed.

I wrote a few people 3 or 4 years ago - Time's science editor and such. Nobody paid me any attention. I guess they thought I was a kook. Am I? If you can shoot down my theory here, please do. I already have enough to worry about. Prove me wrong.

Here are some links:

USGS U.S. earthquake data (pay attention to total quakes for each year):
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... qstats.php

Reservoir-induced seismicity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir- ... seismicity

[Ibon]

You can have all the communal thinking you want, and all the pennance you want, but if the earth is still rendered a hell-hole, it's hard for me to see it as anything but some final hell or purgatory where Homo Sapiens goes to die.

Damn Mos, you are stuck in a funk. You need a vacation to Mount Totumas Cloud Forest. Print out this post. It entitles you to a two day stay free of charge. I might put a hammer in your hand or ask you to collect some fresh cow manure for the garden if you ever redeem this.

[SeaGypsy]

"I just point out their power to accelerate transformation"

Let's say your transformation happens. What does it accomplish? What do we wind up salvaging? What does it look like? If we're headed for some Lovelock-grade disaster because we're going to go balls to the wall BAU to the last moment, I'm trying to envision something, anywhere, that will remain pleasant. It's hard for me to do this. You can have all the communal thinking you want, and all the pennance you want, but if the earth is still rendered a hell-hole, it's hard for me to see it as anything but some final hell or purgatory where Homo Sapiens goes to die.

Oh, and merry christmas.

It appears Mos, you have trouble distinguishing the illusory nature of 'we'.

When did 'We' emerge? Isn't 'We' just a morphism symptomatic of the oil age fed globalism?

Nobody is going to salvage 'Us'.

You are predicting this imaginary accidental almost collective can and will destroy the entire Earth.

Ibon and I are predicting something different.

The real 'We' is whoever we are with and whoever we care about.

Caring about everyone is disempowering babble.

The world always existed effectively as pockets or microclimate/ catchments acting almost independently within the greater climate of the entire earth.

Every catastrophic whole earth shift so far studied left some vertebrate species alive. The likelyhood of complete and utter cataclysm over the entire planet is still remote.

Even if the population were suddenly reduced by 99% and habitability likewise, the Earth would likely repair the most serious imbalances within a lifetime.

The ability to extract oneself from illusionary collectives is pretty important right about now.
The ability to create collectives based on attunement is the greatest asset one can have.
Unless such collectives are able to sustain themselves they defeat their own purpose.
Just as globalism's idea of "We' has defeated it's purpose in it's infancy.

Unless you believe in the leaders of a society, why follow them?
You have made it clear you don't but you are still attached severely to their organisation.

Honestly Mos, I think you would feel a whole lot better about life if you lived on a rural community; somewhere you can manifest your angst into something really productive and at the same time nurture your daughter's spirit. I don't really get why you are so stuck in suburbia?

[scas]

jmnemonic - you are indeed correct - as far as i'm concerned.

I chose to move out of an apartment complex situated near a fault line for that very reason. Not only is the west coast long due, but in our arrogance we have chosen to house people in concrete stacks. It is only natural that such incredible shifts in ice masses will alter earths spin axis, wobble, and pressures on continental crusts.

The severity of those quakes is not known - at least not by me. But the likelihoods are much higher now.

Don't yell fire in a burning building? There's not enough time for everyone to get out.

Black Swans galore.

[jmnemonic]

It's like we finally reached a tipping point last year. The mass had accumulated over the decades as the ice melted, until there was so much that it started setting off some of the most precariously balanced tectonics. And as the mass continues to increase, one would think that the added mass will cause seismic effects to increasingly sturdy tectonic areas. Where that ends, who can know. That curve better level off pronto. I guess the next few years will really tell us a lot. Like, just exactly how end-of-the-world-ish is the future going to be, anyway? Man, I thought a warming climate, mass extinctions, pools of plastic in the ocean the size of North America, food security problems, population overshoot and Peak Oil were enough, but nooooooo!

[mos6507]

Damn Mos, you are stuck in a funk.

Personally, I think a statement like "you need a vacation" disregards the complexity that is inherent in dealing with these issues.