[Ibon]

Yes, I know catastrophic climate change will take us out anyway, but wouldn't you rather face the end with electricity (i.e.,air conditioning) as long as possible rather than face instant Zombie Apocalypse flowing from our cities? (thankfully uncoordinated and on foot)

It is a cornucopia of threats and consequences out there.

I saw a broken off branch in the forest, still hanging in the air, held by vines. At the end of the branch was this bromeliad with a beautiful red blossom, procreating in its tenuous state, oblivious that it was literally hanging on by a string.

Let's combine an EMP event exactly in August when a massive heat wave due to climate change is pushing temperatures into the triple digits. The electrical grid goes down, air conditioners fail, massive infrastructure collapse.

These are events that build resilience. The survivors pick up the pieces, we have a reduced population and we prioritize mitigations to prevent a repeat event.

Our global society is vulnerable like the bromeliad because we have not had these type of events to build resilience.

This applies to many aspects of our modern civilization. We create financial bubbles by avoiding at all costs corrections and the result is reduced resilience.

We are so long overdue for existential events that will hone us to a higher level of resilience.

110 degree fahrenheit in an urban and suburban environment in August after an EMP event will blast the political polarity out of the sky, the survivors will pull together, the population maybe reduced by 50-75%, good will and renewal will blossom and entitlement will fly out the window, we will be united again as a nation.

We need these type of events to get our priority straight.

Why do we fear so much the solutions??

Who is going to go to Walmart and buy plastic shit when the EMP event unfolds? Priorities change and we need to get reacquainted with raw survival.... we have become soft and indolent.

Personally the moment any such event occurs, knowing full well it might take me and my loved ones out, I will never the less feel a sense of relief.

Just another perspective on a cheery sunday morning!

[Ibon]

I am quite a privileged human in my refuge forest on top of the mountain and yet I can express these sentiments.
Think about the unemployed and disenfranchised members of the US population, those that voted for Trump.

If I can access the thought of calamity and collapse generating renewal and increasing resilience think about that unemployed rust belt citizen. He certainly enjoys similar fantasies.

This represents the major threat to the status quo, this growing shadow desire in the population at large for catastrophic events that cleanse.

These sentiments are growing globally as well. Of course in balance with strong desires to keep the status quo intact.

It is an interesting time where there are all these vested interests to keep the status quo going at the same time as in the shadows this desire for collapse. It is a logical response to feeling check mated which is what human overshoot is in its final days when human agency has become obsolete as a solution.

My internal crystal ball is finely tuned to this interplay between the desire to keep things intact and what lies in the shadows desiring a breakdown. This functions in the shadows and yet has a profound influence on politics and the economy and choices being made by nations.

When we are within carrying capacity a death wish for destabilization is an aberrant and socio pathological position. This death wish in times of human overshoot though is actually not pathological and aberrant, it becomes adaptive. This is what modern humans have failed to grasp. The environmental external conditions are decisive in whether a sentiment is pathological or adaptive. Sentiments that ripple through the collective have profound effects on who we choose to be leaders.

[Ibon]

Germany in the G20 with Merkel was spearheading this consensus building unity keeping the status quo intact. China with its huge global infrastructure program is as well. China in particular is not yet jaded with modernity having only a couple of decades of opulence. They want their moment in the imperial sun so they are a major force to keep the global status quo juggernaut intact. Russia is another kettle of fish. They also desire stability having gone through some lean years after the wall fell in 1989 but they are a smart and resilient culture, very pragmatic, and confident wit their resource base that they could weather a global collapse of sorts having been honed in the 90's. Germany depends on stability globally for their economy and imports of energy.

So we see these competing interests around this topic of wanting to maintain the status quo and this collective shadow desire for bringing on a collapse.

How will these forces play out. Trump, who wants to make America great again, is using this as doublespeak because hidden in the shadows of his agenda is a constituency that wants collapse in some romantic notion of getting back to some wholesome base line without large government.

Remember that despots and demagogues when they gain momentum and traction are only the tip of the iceberg you can see, the great bulk of which lies in the shadows and is made up of those unspoken desires in the collective for destruction and renewal.

Are we courageous enough to NAME IT?

I think this starts with recognizing ones own sentiment in this regard. I will start. I do harbor these sentiments of inviting collapse to renew and cleanse. As part of a cyclical pattern that in many ways mirrors ecological processes in populations, weather, ice ages, tides etc.

One way linear growth requires corrections to maintain resilience. We have gone a long time in an unatural linear trend line...... the longer you game the system to prevent corrections the bigger the final blow. Many small earthquakes relieve pressure. When decades go by in a fault line without small quakes that is when the big one is coming.

How many find this analogy relevant to our global civilization, having boxed itself into to human overshoot?

The rising tide of desire to deconstruct is there in spite of the fear this engenders.

We still collectively have not lost our instincts of cunning intuition. We all know the day is coming when we will collectively engineer collapse through wars.

How many more years or decades?

Is North Korea just another possible opening act? Like the middle east? Or the old cold war conflict with Russia. Which one will unleash the hidden desire in the shadows of the collective?

[Newfie]

It's all very confusing, very confusing. There are so many contradictions.

On the one hand we want stability. On the other we see the coming crisis and, on some level perhaps subconscious, we want it here to engage the fight rather than endlessly either our time waiting. But the fight will be brutal.

Speaking for myself alone, I see the inevitable struggle but will not mourn its delay until after my personal demise. I'm lazy and comfortable. Im also convienced that there is exactly zero I can do about the coming crisis.

What I can and do is to be prepared to survive in as enjoyable manner as possible. I too am lucky that it has all fallen together for me.

I'm deeply upset about the dieback. I'm deeply upset it hasent progressed further already. The longer it is delayed the greater the suffering. But does that even make any sense? How does one measure suffering? I suffer with gout, oh do I suffer a full attack. That is a very personal event. If one person suffers to death that is a tradgedy. But does suffering accumulate? Is suffering worse if 1,000 or 1,000,000 die of hunger? The suffering is only experienced on a personal basis. And if it's only personal, and does not total up, the on it doesn't matter when the die off begins, at 7.5 billion or at 10 billion, there is no more suffering in the later case. Anyhow, that's the way humanity is approaching the issue, allowing the human tally to run up knowing the extra films will all die painful deaths. Humanity, taken as a totality, just doesn't care.

I am deeply upset about the dieback, but I'm merely an observer of a tradegy. Or at least strive to be so.

The action is always in the verb, what to do???? We have committed to our choices, which are to maximize flexibility. Which has its own odd constraints. Never a garden for example. All things in life are compromises.

[Cog]

MAGA is not about collapse and it contains no desire of die-off. It is a rejection of globalism in favor of nationalism. It is a rejection of an international body making decisions for Americans. It is letting people rule themselves instead of being ruled by Washington DC. In all of that die-off and a return to primitivism is simply not there.

Those who voted for Trump want illegals out, a return in industrialization of the rust belt, a respect for individualism and a rejection of the collective.

Dreams of die-off more correctly belong to the more progressive and liberal voters. It has nothing to do with MAGA and Trump.

[SeaGypsy]

Back to IT- i read Ibon's question as- it's one thing when it's different folks a long way away, but to consider at what point does an ordinary Joe & Jane become agents of chaos & disruption?

Government is far more vulnerable than it wishes to portray itself- why else so much illogical pandering, investment in the paranoia state? If they made sense they would not need to be so paranoid, genuine long term planning may take a generation, but we ain't started yet before de-growth becomes the central global political agenda.

The longer it takes the more the problems compound. The fundamental lie of endless economic growth forces grown ups everywhere to recognise our government, our institutions, are insane.

While the lunatics are most certainly in charge of the asylum, able to provide & sustain the illusion of freedom & safety, the somewhat sane will tolerate, the sane will go mad.

[Newfie]

MAGA is not about collapse and it contains no desire of die-off. It is a rejection of globalism in favor of nationalism. It is a rejection of an international body making decisions for Americans. It is letting people rule themselves instead of being ruled by Washington DC. In all of that die-off and a return to primitivism is simply not there.

Those who voted for Trump want illegals out, a return in industrialization of the rust belt, a respect for individualism and a rejection of the collective.

Dreams of die-off more correctly belong to the more progressive and liberal voters. It has nothing to do with MAGA and Trump.

Denial is strong in that one, yes. Humph!

[Newfie]

Sea,

Nice post. It truly is insane.

[Cog]

The only people who discuss die-off in glowing terms is more adequately described as being on the left side of the political landscape. I use the members here as clear examples.

Destroying an over-reaching federal government doesn't mean that the right doesn't like air conditioning and Bro trucks.

[SeaGypsy]

Unless the fundamental economic paradox is solved, die off won't be a once off event.

[onlooker]

This is a very interesting train of thought on this thread. I would say that the reason that this deep desire exists to change or destroy the status quo is because it is NOT functioning adequately for many around the world. People begrudge the inequality and injustice of it. They are also repelled by the corruption and the wars of conquest that the US seems to have spearheaded. But what is also being seen in the horizon is that this System cannot survive much longer and some like us here are seeing the deeper basis of destruction being the Environmental unbalance and degradation. So some wishing the end of this status quo and some seeing that it is going to happen. On the other side of the spectrum are the wealthy and elite power holders who are doing everything possible to maintain the system which disproportionately favors them. But this unfolding dichotomy of consciousness will be torn asunder once truly devastating consequences hit and threaten every corner of the Earth. Then the survival mechanisms will kick in and people will be awoken to the reality of change and necessity for it. At that point societies will be attempting to manage threats and to mitigate destruction and in that sense, they will no longer resemble the societies of today which are not designed with these issues at the forefront. And presumably nobody will still cling to a world which does not and cannot exist any longer.

[Newfie]

It's a really difficult discussion because each of us comes from our unique perspective informed by our position in the world and our world view. How would we feel if we were European, Indian, African how would we feel? How would we feel if we were living in near poverty in the Bronx? So I think what is being presented is a uniquely Western perspective, and a fairly elite one at that as most of us are pretty well educated and relatively well off.

I doubt most of the world would share our concerns and opinions, or maybe they would. I'm sure in no position to know.

Bartlett used to say humanities failing was the inability to understand the expotential function. Much truth there. Our inability to deal with events outside our immediate future is at least as big a deal. It seems most of us can't plan a menus for a week, 3 days is about the limit.

Some folks need to be reminded that there is no joy in looking forward to the crisis. It's more like having a gangrenous leg that threatens you life. It needs to come off. You don't like it, you hate it and are terrified. If you want it DONE, to be over it, to have the pain and anxiety be DONE. Then, perhaps, if you survive, you can start healing and getting on with life. Even if it is just to repeat our mistakes, as Seagypsy points out, and I concur.

[KaiserJeep]

Again, I observe American citizens, as a class the most priviledged and wealthy and fortunate, complaining about their lot in life, at a period when they have more food, wealth, and economic freedom than ever before.

Folks, the status quo as you call it includes having all of you on the top of the economic pyramid. The last time I made this point, it was with charts and tables of average pay and cost of living and the luxurious conditions of those collecting welfare in America.

Of course, you get to watch the glitterati on television, and see Trump waltzing in and out of the tower that bears his name. You get to live in a house or an apartment or a condo or RV or boat as suits your preferences. You get to ride a car or truck or SUV or EV or bicycle or motocycle or horse or skateboard as you prefer.

More than a quarter of the food grown and distributed in America is discarded without being eaten. If you don't pay for health insurance, you can still get treatment. If you don't work, you still get money loaded into what appears to be a normal credit card, nobody knows your shame.

As a class, Americans are the most fortunate in the World, for all of the History of the World. 335 million people who consume at least 10X their fair share of everything, in a World where 7.2 billion humans have less than do we.

Thanks to petroleum (currently glutted with the stuff), coal (got far more than we ever should burn) and natural gas (fracking gave us a glut of that as well) we will be continuing our lifestyles. Americans in their temperate climate own more A/C in residences and vehicles than the rest of the world, which is why we pretty much don't really care if the globe is warming.

We live in newish homes that average 2400 sq ft. We eat thousands of excess calories daily, while spending only 6% of our incomes on food, including restaurant meals. We haul our lazy carcasses around in tons of upholstered metal, spewing petroleum fumes.

Yet you who have the least to complain about, are complaining.

The PBS Weekend News just reminded me of our priviledge and power when it devoted much of yesterday's program to Venezuela, the country with the largest known petroleum reserves in the world, and triple digit inflation because somebody persuaded them that an Idiot name Karl Marx knew something about economics. Yet if Bernie Sanders had been elected instead of Donald Trump, many of you would be cheering as our country changed course from continued prosperity to the slippery slope of economic ruin.

Take a step back, regain your perspective, and reconsider your despair. Yes, the World is running out of stuff and is oversupplied with people. In a couple of centuries, that is really gonna hurt. But for Americans at least, there is no pressing reason to worry. TEOTWAWKI began about 1960 IMHO, and most of you grew up while spending your whole lives immersed in a dying civilization. The awareness of this is beginning to sink in, allow me to remind you that it is your great grandchildren who will suffer, not you.

No reason not to continue your consumer dreams or your silly climate fears or your whining about your personal circumstances, whatever floats your boat, so to speak. But you should be cognizant of your position atop the economic pyramid as you do so.

When a correction for human overshoot is needed, it will happen. Until then, your dreams about stopping FF consumption, halting AGW, and damn near everything else that occupies your feverish brains, is just mental masturbation.

[onlooker]

Okay, I appreciate your narrative Kaiser reminding us where we and some other rich country denizens sit on the Economic pyramid. It is all true. But I think you are too harsh with us here on this site. We do care and that is the point and why we are here speaking about all this. I do though have a strong disagreement with your time line about when catastrophic events will unfold. In fact in some countries already are experiencing catastrophe. However, some of these countries who right now are already subsumed in economic deprivation and environmental stress cannot change in any way their situation. They are the walking dead. When the time comes the rest of the world cannot and will not help them. We are talking about places like MENA.
So in regards to your timeline it is to optimistic in the coming of really bad outcomes related to peak oil and climate change. So, when I spoke about those who disproportionately benefit from the status quo, I said the wealthy and we as you eloquently pointed out are just that. But the rest of the world again as I said is pushing back on this unequal and unjust condition of the few having so much while the many have so little. That is a tug of war. Terrorism is part of that pushing back. We are not mentally masturbating. We are discussing rationally the state of the planet and its people and we all offer interesting insights and have differing opinions.

[Ibon]

Everyone of us here, regardless of political ideology, would find their most cherished values enhanced on the other side of a correction.

1) More personal freedom
2) More social justice
3) Less government regulation
4) More jobs
5) Greater income equality
6) Less polarization and more social cohesion
7) More personal self worth as a survivor rebuilding greater resilience.


Why the current entrenched polarity? In an overcrowded world with increasing complexity the costs to address effectively any of the above exponentially increases in a declining resource base with growing population and growing consumer appetites. Add to that historical disparity of wealth. The sense of entitlement increases whether it be a cherished value of the political right or political left.

Maybe just as important as the challenges of fulfilling the immediate physical well being is the sense that the trajectory into the future is going to enhance security and stability. This might actually be the most important driver of this shadow desire toward deconstruction, the increasingly obvious truth, regardless of where you are in your political ideology, that the trend lines are destabilizing for our future and that as Newfie suggests this creates a highly confused cognitive dissonance wanting to keep the dysfunctional status quo somehow resilient when it itself is the contributor to the growing lack of resilience. This is the economic paradox Sea Gyspy refers to as well.

This is what breeds in the shadows this desire for a reset. This is what is never spoken about. This is why we stay in this La La land of stupidity in regards to the media, politics, etc. As each year passes this impasse acts like a pressure cooker on the collective global society and the historical way these impasses were dealt with was war.

I did share that I embrace this sentiment and in that regard I started something personal. Maybe that was a mistake. What I am sharing here is NOT a personal perspective the way KJ's post suggest, that we Americans are so wealthy and whining about it. It has nothing to do with that. This shadow movement toward deconstruction is happening in the collective and on one hand yes it is a current made up to hundreds of millions of personal individual voices but more important it is in response to external forces and to the consequences of human overshoot.

Lastly, when I read Cog's comments about defending personal liberty I get this chuckle when I remember Asimov's parable of democracy in 20 people sharing one bathroom. I have this thought of 20 Cogs having to figure out how to exercise this personal freedom in using one bathroom when a Katrina type event would force him and 19 like minded into a YMCA facility after a crisis.

As KJ says we are on the peak as Americans......these sentiments of deconstruction come from the fact that being on the peak allows you to contemplate the horizon and its not looking promising for our grand children and few of us here are psychopaths that enjoy the infanticide we are committing today to our future offspring due to this impasse. It makes us squirm, it is also an important part of the shadow of deconstruction that is rippling stronger through the collective .

[Ibon]

It was about 5-8 years ago when I was living in SE Asia that I wrote on this forum that it is interesting how China is emerging as a global power exactly now in the 21st century when external constraints are on the rise. That China has had the most practice of any society on the planet for hundreds of years of adapting and thriving in constrained environments. Peasants who compost their own poop as one of the most important fertilizers of their small garden plots is perhaps the most symbolic example when contrasting this for example with how Americans regard their own excrement. Hundreds of years of socialization to comply with collectivism in order to prevent social breakdown in an overpopulated society and low and behold in today's overcrowded world China finds itself on the helm of modern economic imperialism at a time when America is exiting the stage intentionally.

Few people considered the Tienanmen Square event through this lens but I was fortunate to have an old Chinese American friend at the time who does work today as a psychologist in China and runs a Confucian center there. He told me that in his college days he had posters on his dorm room in San Francisco of the leaders of the democracy movement that lead to the Tienanmen Square protests. Years later he told me that he went through a 5-10 year major revision of his beliefs before he recognized that had those democracy leaders had their way China would have collapsed into social chaos. The reason is that you cannot take a western style personal freedom philosophy of democracy and allow this to dominate the economic system in China because of the needs of social stability in managing 1.5 billion people. So in the end the failure of the democracy movement was fortunate as it prevented China from starting a pathway that would have lead to American style disparities of wealth. This is very very very relevant to understanding the discussion on this thread.

Go ahead and look up on Google China's One Belt One Road strategy that is going to result in trillions of dollars of infrastructure spending in the next couple of decades around the world to streamline distribution of goods and services as part of the physical infrastructure to allow globalization to have a more resilient foothold on the planet.

Contrast this with America and Trump and his wanting as Cog says to liberate America from international agreements and turn back towards nationalism.

You see, post WWII the USA was in its golden years for a couple of decades. We had no global competition, we exported both energy and finished goods, we had blue collar jobs in abundance that could put your two kids through school, we had it all, an uncrowded world, free of government regulation, abundance period. This is the mythos that we hold today that actually is what Trump tapped into so disingenuously when he promised that his nationalistic aspirations will bring this back to all those disenfranchised in the rust belt and other areas. I do not want to get into the politics here, but the day will come when his failure will back lash as it must because he pegs the problems of America today on the media, or mexicans, or terrorists, or big government. I never heard the words human overshoot spoken by Donald and probably never will let alone accept climate change

Big over regulated government is unfortunately about the only way you can manage a resource constrained world full of overcrowded humans. You can't avoid this unfortunately.

But yes you can...... you can allow the dark shadow of deconstruction to take root and grow and allow the breakdown of all these cumbersome regulations and create a huge reset that includes eliminating 50-75% of the worlds population. Wars and disruption of international agreements. Going Rogue... This is why people are afraid of Trump or love him. China and Germany are freaked by the force he symbolizes. Putin loves him.

Suddenly on the other side, fresh air, fresh space, it feels like 1955 again in America.....

This is what despots and demagogues are going to tap into if they haven't already.

Watch out, this unspoken dark promise is brewing.

[Cog]

Asimov writes great fiction but is a horrible futurist. In the event there were 20 Cogs fighting over the same bathroom, 19 of them would be dead and the remaining Cog would take bubble-baths at his leisure.

[Ibon]

Asimov writes great fiction but is a horrible futurist. In the event there were 20 Cogs fighting over the same bathroom, 19 of them would be dead and the remaining Cog would take bubble-baths at his leisure.

This is exactly the comment I was looking for. You embody the dark shadow I am speaking of.
And I will add perhaps to Newfie's dismay. Your sentiment was psychopathic just a couple decades ago. Today it may very well be adaptive.