[Ibon]

The consumer culture that has been dominant globally has lead to personal pursuits of materialism and maximizing ones own comforts. This pursuit has been self focused at the expense of community and the environment and has been an orientation that has become institutionalized through advertisements. We have had a couple of generations now that has been shameless in the pursuit of self. As if doing so will lead one to happiness.

A deeper sense of contentment and joy comes from self sacrifice, from devotion to others, from service. These are values that modern consumption culture has severely eroded.

Like all movements the pendulum will swing back again. The pendulum is currently at the extreme of hedonism globally and the consequences are already visible and about to worsen. Obesity, depression, broken families, addiction, rage, a trashed environment, going in debt, isolation, these are all manifestations and consequences of a culture devoted to the self.

As many of you know I am a great believer that external consequences will be our greatest teacher and greatest force in molding culture going forward. I propose here that as consequences worsen the pendulum currently on the far side of hedonism will begin to swing and we will witness in the next couple of generations a return to many of the more noble values that have been severely eroded during the past couple of generations; we will see self sacrifice returning, devotion to serving others, care of the environment, and we will observe that those who excel at these attributes will gain status and that success may well be defined not by how much stuff you have but in how noble are your actions.

Your thoughts?

[vox_mundi]

A pendulum swings both ways, and not always in the opposite direction.

It could be argued that the Taliban and ISIS are a responses to perceived hedonism.

I agree that we're in for a new Dark Age, and the society that will come out of it will be different than now. If knowledge is lost during those times, then the "lessons learned" may also be lost. Whether it will be egalitarian and conservative or a bunch of jackals fighting over scraps is hard to say.

The ecosystem they will inherit will definitely be much shallower than it is now.

You may find this short study interesting and relevant to your thesis ...

Populations of early human settlers grew like an 'invasive species,' researchers find

the study, published by the journal Nature, finds that for much of human history on the South American continent, human populations grew like an invasive species, which are regulated by their environment as they spread into new places. Populations grew exponentially when people first colonized South America. But then they crashed, recovered slightly and plateaued for thousands of years after over-consuming local natural resources and reaching continental carrying capacity, according to the analysis.

[Newfie]

I do not find myself on either of the extremes you point to. In one way or another Ive spent my working career working in mass transit (after the USCG) doing what I thought was right and green. Despite and my shaky start it has paid well, so I am lucky. But I don't think I have improved the human lot of Earth, quite to the contrary, I may as well have seen working on bombs.

I also spent 14 years involved in managing a small religious community of very left wing liberal folks. 4 years as President. It was not a waste because of what it taught me but it did nothing for humanity or Earth.

So did I sacrifice myself while trying to good? I think not. Nor am I a hedonist. I do not think a person with any deep self knowledge can be a hedonist.

So what am I besides confused?

[Timo]

Very interesting question, and quite disturbing to think about, but i am disturbed, anyway, so i'll continue on.

Everything you said is impossible to argue against, and i, at least, accept your entire thesis as the defacto world we now live in. I remember back in college, back in the days of enjoying the company of Mary Jane, thinking about the contradictions, or indeed the similarities of hedonism and altruism. Here's a question for you that i had way back in the good old days: Is the Pope a hedonist, or an altruist? Are they mutually exclusive? Would the Pope be the Pope if it was not in his self interest to be an altruist?

I readily acknowledge that i've just driven off on some tangent that's not even remotely relevant to the topic of this thread. My apologies for that, but the question that started it all is what would i be willing to sacrifice (hedonism) to fulfill my devotion (altruism) for a sustainable planet? I'm not sure i have a clear-cut answer to that question. I can tell you that i have engaged in moderation of nearly everything i do. Even Mary Jane can testify to that fact. I drive less and bike and walk more. I don't have a TV any longer, but that form of entertainment has been replaced by this thing i'm looking at right now, so that sacrifice is probably a wash. Tit for tat. My wife wants a Model 3, but as i see it, that's hardly a noble sacrifice. The more i think about it, the harder it becomes to think of anything that #1, i haven't already given up, or #2, that i haven't already reduced in consumption, or #3, Hell no! I'm not giving that up! In fact,proceeding down this line of thought, the sacrifice necessary to fulfill complete devotion eventually becomes rather radical, in terms of a complete change in lifestyle. Ibon and his wife have a completely different lifestyle than anyone else here. Some of us live more similarly than others, but Ibon has chosen a way of life that truly demonstrates his own personal devotions, but has done so in a way that actually minimizes most sacrifice. I'm sure there are some sacrifices, obviously, but i'd venture to guess that most people reading this could and would live quite comfortably replicating his living arrangements for themselves. What prevents most of us from doing that is the risk of making such a radical change from our normal BAU lifestyles. The differences, at first glance, are rather extreme. I would if i could, but i can't, so i won't. Most of that is the simple fear factor in making any change, at all.

Could i? Sure. I reckon i could, but there are no guarantees, and the path i have mapped out for the rest of my life relies on some form of minimal guarantee of financial livelihood. That same situation probably applies to the vast majority of people in most 1st world countries. I have an aversion to gambling. The deck is always stacked against me. The odds are not in my favor. The risks are too great, and the consequences of failure are too severe. Those are all my own personal problems to deal with. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and i don't gamble, so i won't win, and i also won't lose (as much as i could if i did gamble). Poor excuse, i acknowledge, but that's all i've got for the moment.

[Outcast_Searcher]

The consumer culture that has been dominant globally has lead to personal pursuits of materialism and maximizing ones own comforts. This pursuit has been self focused at the expense of community and the environment and has been an orientation that has become institutionalized through advertisements. We have had a couple of generations now that has been shameless in the pursuit of self. As if doing so will lead one to happiness.

A deeper sense of contentment and joy comes from self sacrifice, from devotion to others, from service. These are values that modern consumption culture has severely eroded.

Great topic Ibon, and good points.

I've had similar thoughts, focusing on the same behavioral issue. While I'm not convinced the core problem is due to the consumer culture, I agree completely about the consequences.

In my mind, the broader focus is simply "Where did the heroes go?" For the most part, the people the public fawns over are sports stars, business icons, politicians, and entertainers. Not so much great artists, writers, spiritual icons, etc.

So given how much the"heroes" of today are into cheating (sports), stealing (business and politics), low moral values (entertainers), etc., what does it say about a humanity that worships these values? And let's not forget the general value of display of wealth, which nearly everyone engages in to the extent they're able -- it's not so much that the consumer culture allows us to have a rich set of choices -- it's that the goal becomes to have it ALL to the maximum extent money can be earned AND borrowed, and to hell with everybody else.

There are exceptions. To me Warren Buffett is a fine example of good morals and character, despite having made himself and his family filthy rich. (And despite, to my great disappointment, when he wanted Berkshire Hathaway to get special rules on derivatives -- the same types of derivatives he had earlier sharply criticized. He lost his "hero" status to me with that self-serving nonsense.)

To me, the consumer culture and the isolation and lack of service is a consequence of technology and a couple of generations of relatively good times overall. For one thing, in such times parents tend to spoil their children with obvious results.

Given what is coming just with AGW, and the spoiled, entitled, often lazy nature of the first worlders who will confront the massive problems, it's going to be really rough. Just getting such people to accept that everything won't continue to go how they expect (including having everything they can grasp) is a major hurdle, and the delay only magnifies the extent of the problems.

[Timo]

Warren Buffet lost his hero status with me. There are plenty of self-made billionaires out there who genuinely, or outwardly, want to become seen as heroes to the rest of the world. Bill Gates in one. Richard Dawkins is another. That Dyson guy who makes vacuum cleaners is another. And there are more, all wanting to use their wealth for the greater good. Well, good for them, and for us, too. Sadly, though, through my eyes, most of their actions are more self-serving to feed their own egos, and less to actually solve the problems they profess to be concerned about. I could be wrong about any one, or all of the people who fit into the category i just described. This is just my own perception. There is certainly nothing wrong with what they're doing. Bring it on!

One person who i do regard as being a modern day hero, though, and i know fully well i'll be ridiculed for even saying this, or even thinking this, is Elon Musk. People may attribute the opening 5 minutes of his Model 3 reveal about climate change as fluff, but i genuinely believe he believes what he says, and he's making good on his word to act on his word. I've seen enough of his speeches and presentations to be convinced that he honestly gets our current human predicament, and he's established his businesses to help solve several of our problems. He's moving in the right direction, and for the most part, he's forging his own path. That's the makings of a hero in my book.

Oh, i also have a whole lot of respect for Ibon, too, living and doing what he does on Mt. Totumas. When he completes the Jaguar Highway across all of Central America, then he'll be my hero. Until then, i'll just enjoy the ride he's providing for all of us. He's also moving on the right path, and doing things his own way. BRAVO!!!!

[ennui2]

Elon Musk isn't perfect, though. His personal life is a shambles and he's on the verge of divorce #2. That's par for the course with those who try to make a big impact on the world. You can't have it all.

I think if someone has a selfish hyper-individualistic outlook on life that it isn't suddenly going to change once that person's been reduced to living like a pauper. They're not likely to have this internal transformation into a paragon of humility, austerity, and communal spirit. They're just going to be poor and miserable and angry, which usually doesn't end well.

[Ibon]

Populations of early human settlers grew like an 'invasive species,' researchers find

the study, published by the journal Nature, finds that for much of human history on the South American continent, human populations grew like an invasive species, which are regulated by their environment as they spread into new places. Populations grew exponentially when people first colonized South America. But then they crashed, recovered slightly and plateaued for thousands of years after over-consuming local natural resources and reaching continental carrying capacity, according to the analysis.

Interesting article and the archaeological findings in South America seem persuasive to me. It underscores how technology advances, opens up resource exploitation and the population quickly grows exponentially (or invasively) until a crash and then this is followed by a new plateau. What happened in South America and countless other examples is now being followed again with fossil fuels and the industrial revolution... almost a perfect script actually. this time around it is on steroids, the invasive part and the exponential growth, unprecedented. .. this could offer a clue of what our future may very well be. We are approaching a correction, a population decline will follow and then some plateau at a reset carrying capacity whatever the disrupted biosphere permits. We cant predict where we will plateau. It is pointless to try.

It raises a question though. Our exploitation of resources and population goes up and down influenced by technology. The population and consumption level is set by the available technology and the culture that supports it. I am guessing, I am no scholar on this topic, but I am assuming that population and consumption always maximizes with available technology and we have never seen any civilization to date, including our own, that has recognized this and attempts any form of self regulation to maintain a kind of stasis. Technology and the resource base set the stage and are the determining factor and human population and consumption rises and falls accordingly.

We invent technologies and we master the resource exploitation that this permits. But the affects of this technology on our consumption and population we do not master. In fact, as the article alludes to and as we see from current human overshoot, that is exactly where we are like yeast.

Can this pattern ever be broken?

[Tanada]

It raises a question though. Our exploitation of resources and population goes up and down influenced by technology. The population and consumption level is set by the available technology and the culture that supports it. I am guessing, I am no scholar on this topic, but I am assuming that population and consumption always maximizes with available technology and we have never seen any civilization to date, including our own, that has recognized this and attempts any form of self regulation to maintain a kind of stasis. Technology and the resource base set the stage and are the determining factor and human population and consumption rises and falls accordingly.

We invent technologies and we master the resource exploitation that this permits. But the affects of this technology on our consumption and population we do not master. In fact, as the article alludes to and as we see from current human overshoot, that is exactly where we are like yeast.

Can this pattern ever be broken?

I find your statement above internally inconsistent. The fact that population was stabilized by culture at something below carrying capacity is proof that we as a species do self regulate, to a certain extent. Two examples for you to ponder, England in the late Middle Ages circa 1200 had a fairly stable population. This was a balance between the high infant mortality rate and delayed marriages from cultural factors reducing the fertile and reproductive period for women. At the same time China had a higher but still sustainable population, but in their case infanticide was commonly practiced if their were too many babies being born. For cultural reasons the preferred gender to keep were the males, which has a greater impact on reducing future population levels than eliminating male babies.

IOW cultures in both places adapted to the carrying capacity of the civilization in question. This was not some grand plan from on high, it just sort of organically evolved when the circumstances called for it.

[Timo]

Ibon, are you telling me that Logan's Run wasn't real? They achieved the perfect self-regulating society, and they lived in harmony, and even enjoyed watching the chosen being lofted up to the heavens, only to explode in mid air. That wasn't real? But i watched that last on National Geographic! I thought it was a documentary. No????

Sorry. Too much peyote. Time to eat an armadillo. Er, uh.... i mean chicken.

With all seriousness, though, we are most certainly heading for a new plateau, and possibly even a major decline. Everything we see on the news today are all symptoms of our societal disease. The underlying cause of our decline will be AGW, and that will happen sooner rather than later. It might even manifest in very recognizable and catastrophic ways in our lifetimes. On top of that, or perhaps because of that, humanity is turning against itself in no small ways. Humanity's self destruction will not contain itself to any level of society, or to any continent, or even to any country. Past civilizations ended on their own because they lacked the technologies we have at our disposal today. The Mayans died, but life in Central, North, and South America continued. In fact, their demise spawned the rebirth of the entire land around them. With AGW and humanity's planetary suicide,the end of civilization as we know it won't be so limited.

OK. Off topic question, but i want an answer, nonetheless. To what degree does this view of planetary suicide coincide with American presidential elections? Anyone care to examine the correlation of the consumption of SSRIs and Valium with US election cycles? My guess is that Big Pharma makes Big Money every four years. The topic of this thread is a big reason why. That's not meant as a criticism, but just an observation of very unfortunate circumstance.

[Ibon]

England in the late Middle Ages circa 1200 had a fairly stable population. This was a balance between the high infant mortality rate and delayed marriages from cultural factors reducing the fertile and reproductive period for women.

At the same time China had a higher but still sustainable population, but in their case infanticide was commonly practiced if their were too many babies being born. For cultural reasons the preferred gender to keep were the males, which has a greater impact on reducing future population levels than eliminating male babies.

IOW cultures in both places adapted to the carrying capacity of the civilization in question. This was not some grand plan from on high, it just sort of organically evolved when the circumstances called for it.

Interesting examples. Since the middle ages was a time when technology stagnated for several centuries isn't this consistent with my premise since the available technology is still predetermining the organic arrangements that the culture took.

Like today after 200 years of industrial civilization and fossil fuels where rapid technology advances mirrors population growth.

Drawing on your examples and extending this into a possible future, I could well imagine following a huge correction we plateau and enter several centuries analogous to the middle ages where technology stagnates and the existing population reaches some longer termed stasis.

[Ibon]

I wonder what the <1% will do ?

Capitalise on the common man's benevolence probably.

Gas

Actually, the early <1% capitalists did everything they could to encourage hedonism.

Whether you are virtuous or hedonistic the 1% are exploiting anyway. I would argue that a society focused on the individual is a society that the 1% can manipulate far easier as it enables more consumption, far more than a society that would return to more virtuous standards of self sacrifice and devotion.

[Ibon]

I'm just a contrarian I guess. Who doesn't sacrifice? Every day and minute to tow the line, stay the course, take care of the mortgage family lover. I don't believe we are really more hedonistic than ever. Most people go to work, get home, and look for a little release and comfort. The hedonism is probably in the media, advertisers and an shows that titillate. Even the news has become a titillation business.

I do see hopelessness. People are trapped for the most part and that is why they are willing to watch the trash. No fault of their own.

I can see the hopelessness as well. Expectations and dreams shattered. Just look at citizens in developing countries whose standard of living is far lower but so are their expectations. And they are comparably far more happy.
This is multi generational.

We are now experiencing the first generations that will mature with less opportunity and wealth than the previous ones. This is still very new. Where does a young emerging generation turn toward when when the consumption and materialistic train has ground to a halt or stagnates?

Progress may become a bit unhinged from materialism and move toward more virtuous pursuits or values.
The pendulum swings.

[Ibon]

With all seriousness, though, we are most certainly heading for a new plateau, and possibly even a major decline. Everything we see on the news today are all symptoms of our societal disease. The underlying cause of our decline will be AGW, and that will happen sooner rather than later. It might even manifest in very recognizable and catastrophic ways in our lifetimes.

OK. Off topic question, but i want an answer, nonetheless. To what degree does this view of planetary suicide coincide with American presidential elections? Anyone care to examine the correlation of the consumption of SSRIs and Valium with US election cycles? My guess is that Big Pharma makes Big Money every four years. The topic of this thread is a big reason why. That's not meant as a criticism, but just an observation of very unfortunate circumstance.

I was thinking how conditioned our culture is to expect progress with each generation. Tanada's post got me thinking. During the middle ages you most likely followed the same lively hood as your father or mother, If you father was a blacksmith so were you. There was no upward mobility, no expectation of progress as we have become habituated to today. This habituation that expects progress is not normal historically.

Imagine a society that was not revved up with a bunch of unrealistic expectations of progress. That would be a society not so collectively mentally ill.

[Ibon]

In my mind, the broader focus is simply "Where did the heroes go?" For the most part, the people the public fawns over are sports stars, business icons, politicians, and entertainers. Not so much great artists, writers, spiritual icons, etc.

So given how much the"heroes" of today are into cheating (sports), stealing (business and politics), low moral values (entertainers), etc., what does it say about a humanity that worships these values? And let's not forget the general value of display of wealth, which nearly everyone engages in to the extent they're able -- it's not so much that the consumer culture allows us to have a rich set of choices -- it's that the goal becomes to have it ALL to the maximum extent money can be earned AND borrowed, and to hell with everybody else.

This is where the cult of the individual leads. To feel entitled that you can have it all, be damned any lofty virtues, cheat steal and lie and go into debt as long as you can get there.

How long will emerging generations continue to be duped before rejecting this? Especially when the prospects become less and less likely.

And then those that reject this start gaining status because they have liberated themselves from this delusion.

We aren't there yet but I can see emerging generations rejecting this individual hedonism.

[Cog]

It is a matter of indifference to me what anyone does with their life. Want to live in a cardboard box, fine. Want to water-ski behind a fleet of yachts, knock yourself out.

Leave me be to run my life the way I see fit and I will extend you the same courtesy.

Too many busybodies in the world who ought to tend to their own affairs. Socialists and hippies mostly. What is virtuous in life ought to be left to the individual to decide, not some self-appointed, self abasing, redistributionist commie. The individual should reign supreme.

[Ibon]

It is a matter of indifference to me what anyone does with their life. Want to live in a cardboard box, fine. Want to water-ski behind a fleet of yachts, knock yourself out.

Leave me be to run my life the way I see fit and I will extend you the same courtesy.

Too many busybodies in the world who ought to tend to their own affairs. Socialists and hippies mostly. What is virtuous in life ought to be left to the individual to decide, not some self-appointed, self abasing, redistributionist commie. The individual should reign supreme.

Irregardless of political ideology a crowded planet by default reduces personal freedoms.

Tanada was mentioning how there is an organic self organization of cultures and societies around available resources with her examples from the middle ages. That there does not need to be a top down authoritarian approach. That worked because for centuries technology stagnated. We all know what happened starting with materialism, the industrial revolution, fossil fuels, etc. As in the above article of what happened in South America when cultures became sedentary and opened the new technology of agriculture, there was an exponential explosive and invasive population bloom that then corrected and plateaued. Just where we are now, at the top of the bloom before correction.

We manage our livestock, we cull the herd when necessary and kill 300 million chickens if there is a H1 virus, we are excellent at distribution of goods and services, we manage brilliantly JIT technology when it comes to production. We are mastering the energy grid with more efficiency. The digital age has enabled remarkable efficiency gains. GMO agriculture has enabled vast increases in yields. We apply all these technologies to our products and animal and plant crops. But we fail to apply these same principals to ourselves. Or maybe we are in quite subtle ways that is already making the Cog's of the world squirm.

Will upcoming consequences force us to apply this to ourselves? Air traffic controllers who manage our consumption and population. That sounds horrifying at the moment but will constraints force us to apply to ourselves what we have already mastered with resources and crops.

I am not advocating this I am only posing the question. We certainly wont be able to do this if we continue with the cult of the individual. From our current culture of hedonism this sounds like a nightmare.

But what if we become so socialized that we want this. How you may ask?

The more a society rejects the ideology of the cult of the individual the more a society is then able to default perhaps to these organic processes.

The interesting question is that if we preserve science and technology moving through the correction we wont be able to simply return to the middle ages or more distant times when taboos, spiritual beliefs and superstitions were woven into the organic limits of the environment. We should however recognize the religious beliefs were often molded by environmental phenomenon and in many ways taboos were ecologically based. As much as we may see these former times as "primitive" they were nevertheless functional ecologically. The authoritarian control wasn't the state or a government but the way former cultures defaulted to higher powers in their taboos and dogma, whether this was nature based paganism or more structured religions.

Science and reason and our secular world will confront existential draconian threats during the correction and we wont be so easily lead by taboos as in former times. That does not mean that there will be no spiritual component to adaptation. This is where I see self organization happening, what Tanada referred to in her middle age examples, not from the top down, but in the society itself, no longer able to fulfill material aspirations, forcing to turn to or return to more virtuous values; devotion and self sacrifice, willfully, not imposed by a state.

Possible?

[Tanada]

England in the late Middle Ages circa 1200 had a fairly stable population. This was a balance between the high infant mortality rate and delayed marriages from cultural factors reducing the fertile and reproductive period for women.

At the same time China had a higher but still sustainable population, but in their case infanticide was commonly practiced if their were too many babies being born. For cultural reasons the preferred gender to keep were the males, which has a greater impact on reducing future population levels than eliminating male babies.

IOW cultures in both places adapted to the carrying capacity of the civilization in question. This was not some grand plan from on high, it just sort of organically evolved when the circumstances called for it.

Interesting examples. Since the middle ages was a time when technology stagnated for several centuries isn't this consistent with my premise since the available technology is still predetermining the organic arrangements that the culture took.

Like today after 200 years of industrial civilization and fossil fuels where rapid technology advances mirrors population growth.

Drawing on your examples and extending this into a possible future, I could well imagine following a huge correction we plateau and enter several centuries analogous to the middle ages where technology stagnates and the existing population reaches some longer termed stasis.

That is actually more or less what I have been predicting for some time with a caveat. We are at a bifurcation point in history, if we take steps to maintain our civilization without fossil fuels we will get one future. If on the other hand we attempt to maintain BAU at all costs until we can no longer support our civilization due to running over peak fossil fuels, climate change, or some combination of both.

It appears to me that we have a civilization default position of maintaining our very high energy use lifestyle at almost any cost for as long as possible. This is why I consider us to be stuck with baked in consequences like that thread I opened up, our devotion is on keeping what we have with little or no thought for the future.

From my wide ranging study of history it appears to me our civilization has been in decline since about 1970 much like ancient Rome was from 300 AD-475 AD. The people living in Rome or its empire in those days would either deny anything was wrong, or would acknowledge things were in a 'down turn' but follow that up by expressing confidence that things would return to and then surpass the peak of the past. From 500 AD- 1500 AD, the period between the fall of the western Roman empire and the rise of the new west during the Renaissance technology first collapsed to very primitive agriculture, then recovered to very sophisticated three crop rotation agriculture with fertilizer, plant and animal breeding programs to improve the livestock and crop plants. That was followed by the rediscovery of ancient knowledge followed by testing that knowledge with the scientific method.

All those persons who argue we will never lose basic knowledge again do not understand how humans behave. How many people do you know with a large personal library of text books? Most of the books I own are flimsy paperback fiction novels purely used for entertainment. I do have a few textbooks around here somewhere from college courses where the prof changed to a new book the next semester and I couldn't sell them back to the university book store. I also have a few hundred books in electronic format, that are unusable without technology to power the devices. Go to any small town library across the west and really look at the book collection. You will discover that like my personal library the vast majority are light reading fiction for the average person. If you go to a big city library you can find technical volumes, but try selecting one at random in a topic you are not already versed in. They are densely filled with technical terminology and their explanations are based on your already having a sound foundation of the topic and the terminology in the book. IOW if you inherit Grandpa's Kindle and trying to maintain your electronic eReader device in a post collapse world you are completely lacking the tools to understand, let alone apply the knowledge in the electronics books in the library.

We have become so completely specialized as a culture that if our civilization falls very far we will lose the ability to maintain more than the bare essential technologies of garden scale agriculture. If you kidnapped an Irish peasant or an African native in 1820 and put them to work in your fields they had a reasonably good working knowledge of how to tend your crops with a minimum of education. If you kidnap an inner city Swede and a NYC youth who have lived in the urban environment their whole lives today what are the odds either one could repair or maintain your diesel tractor and use it to tend your crops?

We used the fossil fuel bounty of the last 150 years to create a very artificial environment for humanity in large urban centers. This is no different than the building of a greenhouse to grow tropical plants in Alaska, with lots of energy you can do so very successfully. However in both cases take away that bounty of very cheap fossil energy and what are you left with? Neither the palm tree in Alaska nor the wall street broker are prepared to survive without that artificial environment we created for them with cheap energy.

What is even worse is we have convinced ourselves that this unsustainable artificial environment is 'normal' and just the way things ought to be. So long as the decline is managed and slow we will gradually transition to a different sustainable lifestyle. Unfortunately by trying to maintain the bare appearance of our extremely high fossil energy massive urban center lifestyle we are preventing people in those cities from recognizing the artificial nature of their own existence.

At this point our devotion and self sacrifice is as a culture oriented in a dead end direction. People are not giving up the convenience of out of season food and planting large perennial gardens where their yard used to be. Very few are canning their own seasonal surplus or otherwise preserving it for the remainder of the year. In the true urban cores there is not even the option for much in the way of local food production. Let alone water supply! I watched a documentary two days ago about decaying infrastructure on the History channel. New York City gets about 75 percent of their water supply from a massive underground aqueduct tunnel that was built over 70 years ago. The tunnel needs a lot of repairs because maintenance has been deferred for generations. Unfortunately because it is such a large portion of the city total water supply they can not shut it off for any extended period of time, and there is a well justified fear that lack of maintenance over the last several decades could cause it to collapse if it is drained for repairs. Sooner or later if they keep kicking the can down the road that water system will break down causing an unplanned shut down of three fourths of the city water supply. The people living in NYC today could self sacrifice and greatly restrict their water use for several years so that the system could be repaired and be prepared for another 50 years of use. However they, or their political leaders, are unwilling to do that or even have much of a public discussion about the issue.

Ignoring problems will not make them go away, it just lets them grow worse until they rear up and are no longer avoidable. No matter how many iPhone apps you have on your nifty electronic device if you live in NYC your water supply is existing on borrowed time.