[Ibon]

Finding silver linings in the upcoming external consequences of human overshoot is like peeling an onion. You think you have found a silver lining but unfolding events only serve to peel it away as a false start or illusion.

In the early days of peak oil / environmental instability I believed that consequences would force us to move toward renewable energy sources. I believed that consequences would act as a catalyst toward social and moral values changing toward conservation.

I believed that constraints would act as a catalyst toward more wisdom and openess to new narratives.

This last sentence is the most recent layer of the onion to be peeled away as delusional.

I am now more than ever convinced that the narratives that keep us in the status quo will strengthen as constraints tighten rather than be questioned.

If we just take two topics recently popular on this site, capitalism as a viable economic system moving forward and the recent geopolitical consequences of Russia's action in the Ukraine, it seems we have little choice but to hold on to the narratives that were born in the 20th century.

On one of the threads I posted the following......"We grasp and kling to narratives that are familiar being frightened of unknown teritorry.

Part of defending existing narratives is structural, we are committed for example to an economic system or energy source that has embedded itself as an organizational system that currently maintains 7 billion humans. Changing this is not just waking up one morning and saying, let's try something new. The scale required to change is so daunting that the sheer bulk of humanity this supports ends up being the single greatest force against change.

Another part of defending existing narratives is the fear of the unknown. There is no roadmap that takes 7 billion through the process of re inventing itself toward a more sustainable way of life.

We are structurally committed and psychologically committed to existing narratives. This will result in narratives only hardening when threatened. That is my conclusion.

Of course, all of these conclusions is what has provoked me to turn to worshipping the overshoot predator since I find no mechanisms to break the structural and psychological impass toward reinventing ourselves on a collective scale.

All of this makes for a very pessimistic and hopeless post. I would be more interested to hearing responses that refute rather than support this position being the eternal optimist that I am, but at the moment I am feeling raw from having peeled back the latest skin of the onion and recognizing my most recent silver lining, that consequences will force a change of narrative, as delusional.

[Pops]

I posted just yesterday that internal narratives are a product of a lifetime of experiences and observations around which our minds create a story. It then reruns that story of the world over and over until it becomes our reality. The mind, conscious and unconscious, is invested in the dream-world it has created to make sense of the real, physical world. That dream world is our great adaptation because it allows us to predict what is going to happen and taking advantage of it, to prepare for it, to profit from it.

The famous "Stages of Grief" (however many there are) is the mind reworking it's internal model of the real world. When confronted with dramatic new information or drastically changed circumstances, I'd guess it's normal for the mind to be skeptical, after all it spent a lot of time and effort making those synapse connections. Rewiring is a hassle and potentially dangerous if one is constantly changing perspectives and so too preoccupied to provide for current needs.

Inventing an easier way is our evolutionary niché, it's how we got to this point. Looking around and seeing nothing but plentitude in every direction and yet attempting to convince our heads that this is a passing event and things are going to become harder from here pits our two main evolutionary strengths against each other. That's where we get the entrenching of opinion and the stubborn rejection of bad news.

My most optimistic thought is and always has been that we've not squandered our entire fossil fuel endowment. Some small amount has been spent to broaden our objective understanding of the universe via science. This will lead to a future (hopefully) of appropriate technology more sustainable than today's and a life somewhat easier than the past.

Of course there is the problem of getting there . . .

.

[rollin]

Humans have and are engaged in a war on nature for 10 millenia. For a while it appeared we were winning battles and might win the war (spend our time cruising the galaxy in metal shells looking for who knows what). Now it appears that we may have won some battles but nature was merely letting us set ourselves up to be enveloped in unending predicaments. The war will go to nature.

The silver lining - maybe none for humans but certainly DNA will win, it always has so far. Life will continue. Life will win.

[Plantagenet]

Human culture isn't static. Individuals change in response to economic stimuli and other external influences, and the culture slowly shifts as millions of people individually respond to changes in the world.

Peak Oil is going to have severe economic consequences. People will have to change their beliefs and behavior, and the broader culture, politics, economics, and dominant societal memes will shift as a result.

[KrellEnergySource]

The silver lining - maybe none for humans but certainly DNA will win, it always has so far. Life will continue. Life will win.

A very interesting insight, and something that I have never considered.

I have pretty much come to believe that the consequences coming are unavoidable. Years ago, I would have thought that we would eventually (of course) move to an economic system that takes physical limits of resources and the protection of our biosphere into consideration. Instead, I see an increasing polarization where it seems 'normal' for approximately half the population to disagree with the other half of the population on many important issues to an extent that I cannot see any real hope of global planning for the future. In the US, political parties steer the country, and those that don't affiliate with either of the major parties are left out entirely while those that do take turns believing that they are being 'represented'. What would it take to implement real long term planning as a society when 50-60% of the actual people would disagree with the directions charted by their current government? Gulag after gulag after gulag? Not practical, not acceptable on any level. So things play out as they will.

Brian

[AndyA]

I'm kinda of a similar opinion Ibon. Though I was never too optimistic to start with. If you Bing Crash on Demand you'll see that David Holmgren shares a similar sentiment. Joining ranks with George Monbiot 'we were wrong about peak oil.' Peak oil is too slow, and modern society is too resilient.
My meme if you can call it that is 'live and let die.' When you were young.... you used to say live and let live, but... you say live and let die.'
I think it's pointless to hope for a top down constructive change because as you say there is no roadmap. However what you can affect is a local change starting with your own household. Get a bike or a horse, grow food in a zero input system, live a renewable lifestyle, be the roadmap. At least you will have done something. Almost like JMG's Green Wizards.
If you are hoping for a change of narrative, it will come, but like all good things it takes time. You can't rush these things. Narratives take about 4 generations to change, as in the 4th turning Strauss and Howe I think.

[Quinny]

I am surprised about the resilience of the system, but believe things are starting to accelerate. It's going to be tough, but maybe the planet might benefit.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Humans have and are engaged in a war on nature for 10 millenia. For a while it appeared we were winning battles and might win the war (spend our time cruising the galaxy in metal shells looking for who knows what). Now it appears that we may have won some battles but nature was merely letting us set ourselves up to be enveloped in unending predicaments. The war will go to nature.

The silver lining - maybe none for humans but certainly DNA will win, it always has so far. Life will continue. Life will win.

Though since I became a teen-ager, I never have been a personal fan of "organized religion" I always thought my mother had an interesting take on "The meek shall inherit the earth". She interpreted this as the insects would be left once we were done really messing up the planet. On this one point, I think she had some good insight.

[Simon_R]

If, as some here posit, we will truly transition to a local based, sustainable, simple existence

wouldn't you say the meek would have really inherited the earth ... wise woman your mother

[KaiserJeep]

I find myself in the unaccustomed role of the optimist on this topic. We are NOT doomed to a future of agrarian squalor - even though that is the apparent avowed goal of many of you.

We have the technology to build super-insulated, off-the-grid alternative housing from the detritus of our energy-intensive civilization, such as the various Earthship designs.

We can maintain the distribution of foodstuffs at an end cost that is probably somewhere in the range of 4X to 10X the present cost of diesel train and heavy truck transport, using alternative fuels and electric vehicles. The luxury of foods not grown within 50 miles of your door will still exist, but you will enjoy it a lot more although a lot less frequently.

I think whether we lose the electric grid and the internet are 50/50 propositions - at least in the USA. I also think that we will "spend our time cruising the galaxy in metal shells looking for who knows what" (as rollin puts it) but I don't know if that will take decades or centuries.

But I do not believe we are entering another Dark Age, either - knowledge that exists in digital form will never be lost.

I simply think that many of you are realizing the truth in one of the things I have been saying all along. Mankind really only changes via the slow process of evolution. The last such change, the transition from tool-using ape to Stone Age technocrat, occurred 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, and resulted in the Solutrean people of Europe replacing the Neanderthals - and somewhere in that struggle, the Clovis culture of the Americas was born, producing the various Paleo-Indians.

All advances since then are due to the accumulation of knowledge, and this was intensified by the creation of writing - which in the end was the most disruptive tech of all, allowing the accumulated knowledge base to exceed the mind of a single human and to persist beyond a single generation.

Don't waste your time waiting for mankind to suddenly become enlightened, adopt the philosophy of Buddha, Karl Marx, Jesus of Nazareth, John Perkins, or even M. King Hubbert - and then behave differently and with wisdom. It's not gonna happen, nor does it need to.

Allow me to prescribe a simple medicine for your gray thoughts if I may. Whenever such melancholy overcomes me, I like to sit and watch Werner Herzog's amazing documentary film, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It is the record of the epic struggle of the first humans, who were coping with problems even greater than the end of fossil fuels, some 30,000 years ago.



These were people, they had problems worse than ours - the very real "climate change" of an Ice Age, and an environment full of mega-fauna predators such as cave bears and sabre-toothed cats.

They survived, and they became us.

[Ibon]

I recall discussions some years back about Jared Diamond's book Collapse, specifically the reference on the inability of cultures to change their narrative in time to change course and avoid overshoot with the various examples from Greenland to Easter Island sited. What I recall from those discussions specifically was a sense of wonder on how these past civilizations lacked any big picture overview of their impending decline and how ridgid their narratives where. I understood that narratives lead a culture toward survival or demise.

When I look at the collective world view of humanity today and the narratives that are leading us exactly in the wrong direction you have to take a moment and question to what degree are we really in control in being able to steer our destiny. With all the science and technology at our disposal, all the logistical expertise in how we feed ourselves and move about, the intricate digital matrix that links together our economic system and global communication, etc. One would think that surely with all of this we are masters of our destiny and yet here we are pursuing a course that is nothing short of collective suicide.

So from where do these narratives spring? Pops mentioned that the mind is invested in the dream world that we create to make sense of our physical reality. This repeated 7 billion times creates one giant mega super meme that forms the collective world view. We are all held by this, whether we be a cynical critic or drink the Kool Aid.

I mentioned in the OP that the single greatest force against change is the sheer bulk of humanity itself, the scale of which we constantly under estimate in these discussions. The structure that keeps 7 billion waking up every day reinforcing this big collective dream space meme has to physically feed us and physically move us about and process our waste and provide us work and goals that serves nothing more than to reinforce the existing narratives.

And now we enter the chapter in the story when external consequences start to constrain the ability of the physical structure to hold our collective dream space.

I mentioned that without a road map fear will take over causing us to hold ever tighter to the very existing narratives that will accelerate the constraints on the physical structures themselves. Initially this is a feedback loop of sheer madness. That describes where we are right now actually.

And so we look at the great unwinding of our collective dream space as we grind downwards.

The shift from fear to the dawn of new collective narratives that hold and sustain is directly related to when we find a new equilibrium in this grinding down process. Let's be courageous and honest enough to recognize what it is we are talking about.

We must embrace with dignity the shedding of excess humans on the planet and a set of living standards fast dissapearing.

[Timo]

Technologies have changed over the past few millenia, and with those changes have come changes in communications. Billions and billions (don't read that in the voice of Carl Sagan!) of people are now just a click away from communicating with each other, and that ease in communications is the fuel for the fire for control of our common systems and environment.Those systems and environment are inclusive of the entire planet, parceled out into manageable chuncks of power. Those communications fuel the narrative that fuels the fire for control, and those communications are becoming increasingly hardened against opposing points of view. Control is the holy grail, and controlling the narrative is the means to controlling our systems and environment. Controlling that narrative is also causing increased consequences, both within and outside our relative systems. Peak oil will never be universally accepted or officially recognized because the means to communicate that narrative is controlled by points of view who do not stand to benefit financially from that narrative. Global warming and climate change will never be accepted by enough people because the larger narratives are controlled by points of view with opposite economic interests. We can control our own thoughts, and even voice our thoughts in certain circles (PO), but the larger narrative is beyond our control, and the consequences are already visible. Those who control the narrative, however, choose to ignore and reject that evidence. Opposing ideologies, and the wars to control the narrative, will destroy us. Indeed, it already is.

[Ibon]

Those who control the narrative, however, choose to ignore and reject that evidence. Opposing ideologies, and the wars to control the narrative, will destroy us. Indeed, it already is.

I partially agree with this. Yes, governments and financial institutions for example are self serving and corrupt and we can witness during the past 50 years a trend toward more and more overt actions that put their agenda ahead of any concept of the common good. In fact it can be argued after recent wars and the disenfranchising of the middle class that those who control the narrative are overtly supporting policies that preserve their wealth at the expense of the survival of the underprivileged. It never was the odd ball Montequests we had to worry about who discussed the need to increase the death rate. It was always for me the very real possibility that our governments and institutions would come to this same conclusion to preserve their own privilege.

Here is where I caution however this point of view. It is very convenient to put the blame on a controlling elite because this presents the problem as being with the elite which it isn't. It is with all 7 billion of us. When you blame a controlling elite you are implying that eliminating the control of this narrative will solve the problem which it wont. You also imply that the problem is with the corruption of those who control the narrative which is also incorrect since the oppresor and the oppressed are both guilty as two partners in the same dance. To a hypothetical fly on the wall watching Kudzu Ape plow through the planets eco systems and resources there is no distinction between those who control the narrative and those who are lead by that narrative.

[Pops]

Timo if I understand, I think it is interesting that you say the increase in communication is at the control of the controllers and so increasing control. I think just the opposite is happening and have credited technology for the rash of uprisings and overthrows seen recently. Democracy has risen sharply while the despotism prevalent after the post war breakup of the colonial powers has fallen and I think that is also due to communication, travel, etc. It's hard to do terrible things if everyone knows about it.



I'll grant you that there are many different venues so the particular echo one is looking for is easier to find, LOL. But at the same time there was no fairness in the lack of diversity in opinion back when Walter Cronkite laid out history at 6: and you either bought it or were on your own. I don't partake of (un)social media because I don't need to listen to my teenage third cousin test out various cusswords and others of my relation display their narrow mindedness and ignorance. But so far those sites are making a pretty good weapon against the on the controllers.

Of course I may not have understood what you were communicating, LOL

[ralfy]

I think what's driving social unrest worldwide are high food and oil prices, in turn affected by lack of crude oil and the effects of global warming.

[Ibon]

Timo if I understand, I think it is interesting that you say the increase in communication is at the control of the controller's and so increasing control. I think just the opposite is happening and have credited technology for the rash of uprisings and overthrows seen recently.

There is a great paradox about digital communication. On one hand yes we can see how the technology prevents a despot from hiding his actions. On the other hand we are all streaming into the same conduit, all becoming homogenized into the same values. A Pandoras Box, opening a world of information as it constricts and homogenizes. Control of the narrative does become easier as a result.

[Pops]

Timo if I understand, I think it is interesting that you say the increase in communication is at the control of the controllers and so increasing control.

What the heck was that? I think my blood sugar was low, LOL

There is a great paradox about digital communication. On one hand yes we can see how the technology prevents a despot from hiding his actions. On the other hand we are all streaming into the same conduit, all becoming homogenized into the same values. A Pandoras Box, opening a world of information as it constricts and homogenizes. Control of the narrative does become easier as a result.

Hmmm . . . There is no one controlling the narrative in the Ukrainian threads on this forum for example or whatever other threads for that matter - unless it is you, me, Tanada, Dave, Eastbay, etc.

The web is prone to too much reverb, that's true, but there are as many different echos as there are kinds of people. Folks are always going to seek out others of similar opinion but the value of expanded communication is that those people can be anywhere in the world, not just down at the local church/pub/club. Twain said "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" and like travel, communication across borders can only be a good thing as it makes it that much harder to "deamonize the enemy" which is always the first task of war.

[sjn]

I think it's pretty fair to say the moderators (narrative police) here are very tolerant of diverse opinion, and most contributors to this site seem to respect this. I'm not sure this is typical of most popular discussion forums, and it certainly isn't true of the "mainstream media".

It can be misleading to see the apparent rise in democracy as somehow an indication of increased popular diversity of opinion and a freedom of ideas. It could be the very opposite; the biggest change in the practice of governance through the last century, in my opinion, is the refinement of "manufactured consent", this only really works when people believe their vote counts.

[Pops]

It could be the very opposite; the biggest change in the practice of governance through the last century, in my opinion, is the refinement of "manufactured consent", this only really works when people believe their vote counts.

Hi sjn.

So you think the despots in Libya/Ukraine/Egypt/Romania/Haiti/Philippines/wherever felt their ouster was by "manufactured consent"? LOL.

The whole "your vote doesn't count" bit I believe is manufactured to disenfranchise those who've become complacent about democracy.

[Subjectivist]

It could be the very opposite; the biggest change in the practice of governance through the last century, in my opinion, is the refinement of "manufactured consent", this only really works when people believe their vote counts.

Hi sjn.

So you think the despots in Libya/Ukraine/Egypt/Romania/Haiti/Philippines/wherever felt their ouster was by "manufactured consent"? LOL.

The whole "your vote doesn't count" bit I believe is manufactured to disenfranchise those who've become complacent about democracy.

IMO it is the opposite, when people were ignorant of what people in th next village over thought of the powers that be in their country it was easier to believe the governmen propganda that the government reflected the majority desires. When everyone is talking to everyone else they learn hat th propaganda is just propaganda an government actions are not in line with mass desires. The great genius of the US in the 1800's was that the competing media newspapers offered a diverse set of opinions reflecting the fact that the average Joe had a variety of viewpoints. Today the mainstream media in TV and Radio is about 85% Democrat viewpoint with 10% Republican and 5% Libertarian. If you survey the population the break down is more like 45% Democrat, 40% Republican and 15% Libertarian. This creates a cognitive dissonance and should demonstrate why Mainstream Media is being ignored by the 55% of the population with a different point of view. Fox News is only popular because it has no competition for the Republican viewer audience. If there were five Republican viewpoint TV networks they would divide up the Republican viewers just like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC split the Democrat viewers up between themselves and all have worse ratings than Fox as a result.

You want to put Fox News out of business? Start up several more Republican news channels and divide up their audience like the Democrats do. Or eliminate the duplication in the Democrat stations.