I’ve been writing online for 17 years or so, if you don’t include forums, in which case it’s 25 or so.
And I’ve never known how to say this.
We’re really fucked up. Really. We’re cruel to each other in ways that just aren’t needed. We have more houses than homeless, enough food to feed the hungry. More than enough.
It’s crazy. Just crazy.
We have enough resources to fix our environmental and climate problems. Building and neighbourhoods can be made into net positives. We can, as humans, make ourselves a positive for life as whole.
We can fix this shit.
There are always going to be problems. There is pain beyond imagining that is possible in human existence (visit a burn clinic if you don’t believe me. Or just believe me, ’cause I’ve fucking been there.)
But basically, we can make this into a near paradise any time we get serious about it, just by adhering to the rule of always creating more good than evil, and not tolerating those who tolerate evil.
There’s plenty of complexity to it, aye. But at its heart, it easy. Don’t let people do evil, do more good than evil.
Some of us are so totally broken we don’t–we can’t–get this, but it’s this simple.
Create more good than evil, and this place, despite being, shall we say, metaphysically shitty (we eat each other, and that’s true even if you’re a vegan), would be heavenly.
I just don’t know how to get this across to people. I just don’t.
Don’t burn down forests. Don’t be cruel. Do good. Don’t do bad. You know what such things are.
You do.
And I, and others, shouldn’t have to be screaming “Don’t do fucking evil!” as the world moves towards apocalypse.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
Ten Bears
Fokin’ aeh.
Hugh
As I have said before, this kind of discussion reminds me of 1 Corinthians 13:11
New King James Version (NKJV)
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
11 ὅτε ἤμην νήπιος, ἐλάλουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐφρόνουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐλογιζόμην ὡς νήπιος· ὅτε γέγονα ἀνήρ, κατήργηκα τὰ τοῦ νηπίου.
We as a species are at childhood’s end. It is time to put childish things behind us and act as adults. No more ducking our responsibilities toward each other or the planet.
Eric Anderson
Yup. Interesting I was just thinking along these lines myself, Ian. Remember the line from the movie The Usual Suspects? “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
I don’t think the line goes far enough. I think the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us that we were made in the image of some nebulous benevolent diety, rather than what we really are … the children of Beelzebub.
But just plain old repression and projection work to create this dynamic as well.
Paul Harris
We like to think that we can do these things.
The evidence shows that we cannot. Never have done so and never will be able to do so.
someofparts
Well, what you’re saying today is how I felt after reading your post about the rainforest yesterday. I think my heartbreak over it all pales in comparison to the grief my brother will feel because he has two sons, wonderful young men just reaching their thirties, that he loves with all his heart. I can’t imagine how awful it is going to feel for people who see beloved children destroyed by what we have done.
If we had ever been good, listening to indigenous people would have stopped us from this carnage before it ever started. Years ago I made friends online with a first nations woman from Maine. Over time I noticed that whatever awful things the rest of us on the forum complained about, none of it ever surprised her. Eventually I realized that in her community they have understood the full depth of our evil for generations. Finally one day she put a question to the rest of us and asked what we imagined our world would be like seven generations from now. There were no responses. Not one single woman in that community had ever given the matter a moment of thought.
I look at my dog and wonder, what must it be like to go through life without ever suspecting your own mortality. Doomed to die eventually as are we all, but living every moment of life with no suspicion at all that such a thing will happen to you one day. What must that be like? Now I sit here and realize how blind I was to imagine that we are any different from my furry companion. All around me people are going about our business, fussing and obsessing over trifles, while utter doom waits for all of us just around the corner.
Sometimes I’ve felt that I have a modest expertise in evil, having been obliged to live in such close proximity to it most of my life. What I can tell you about the evil ones is this – their eyes are dead, their faces are blank and unresponsive, they are like automatons who only whir into action when they hear the phrases they have been trained to hear. This horrifying disconnection from their own natural perceptions, from the honest flow of thought and feeling in themselves, is exactly what Hannah Arendt describes as the totalitarian personality. They have been purged of their humanity and are no more capable of hearing humane appeals to thought and feeling than we are capable of hearing a dog whistle.
The only thing left to do is find what joy we can while we can. Do kind things as often as possible. Care for each other as much as possible. Love this beautiful place while it is still here in the form that has sustained us. Avoid people with dead eyes and empty faces whenever possible.
Dan Lynch
We have enough resources to fix our environmental and climate problems. Building and neighhbourhoods can be made into net positives. We can, as humans, make ourselves a positive for life as whole. We can fix this shit.
Disagree. And not to brag, but I am disagreeing as a mechanical engineer who is trained to think in terms of energy, unlike AOC, Bernie, etc..
All human activity has an environmental cost.
Want to manufacture solar panels? That has a significant environmental cost, including, but not limited to, carbon.
Want to manufacture wind generators? That has a significant environmental cost, including, but not limited to, carbon.
Want to manufacture electric vehicles? That has a significant environmental cost, including, but not limited to, carbon.
And so on down the line.
The budget we need to be most concerned about is the carbon budget. All the Green New Delusion activities have to paid for with carbon up front before you can reap the benefits. So in the short run, a GND will make carbon emissions go up, not down. That might have worked if it had been implemented 100 years ago, but it’s way too late for that now.
Don’t believe me? Look at China. They have been implementing the Green New Delusion wish list — solar panels, high speed rail, new housing, new infrastructure, electric vehicles, etc.. China’s emissions have gone up, not down. And even if emissions did go down 10% or 20%, that would not make a dent in global warming.
Due to the greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere, due to the heat that is already stored in the ocean, and due to the positive feedback mechanisms that are already evident, I’m skeptical that climate change can be stopped — but I don’t know that for sure, so I acknowledge that we should try our best to stop it, just in case my pessimism is unfounded. We need to quit carbon cold turkey, and the only way to do that is rationing and de-peopling. The Green New Delusion won’t work.
And getting back to the crocodile tears for the burning Amazon, here’s a constructive proposal: for every acre of Amazon that burns, offset that by de-peopling one acre of land in the S.E. U.S. and allowing that acre to revert back to nature. Cease all human activity on that acre (no GND workers required, if you don’t believe me look at what has happened to Cherynobyl since humans evacuated). Relocate the displaced people to AOC’s district since she welcomes climate refugees.
You think I am being unkind? Ian, wait until the famines hit, and the wars, and the waves of refugees. You ain’t seen nuthin yet.
Joan
The sentiments in this post are why I read this blog, and am working my way through your book. I feel the same way but don’t have the words for it.
Starting in my early twenties when I became very disillusioned with the system and realized how powerless I was to make any positive change for the environment, I came up with a plan of the things I could actually do. I have downgraded most of the modern lifestyle and switched to a low budget that most would consider extreme. This has reduced my impact on the environment as well.
I don’t make much money to begin with, but on this low of a budget I am able to accomplish some savings. The plan is to buy a piece of land and keep it from development. I have a friend who does seasonal work all over North America, trail restoration at national parks, all kinds of forestry work. Our plan is that he would live on that land and keep people from touching it, since he himself already has the skill set to do this. As for me, I’ll keep living in my apartment on my low budget and saving what I can.
someofparts
Joan:
“I have downgraded most of the modern lifestyle and switched to a low budget that most would consider extreme.”
I would love to hear more details on this. I assume it means no car, although I’m guessing it allows for having a computer since you are at this website.
nihil obstet
As children, we need adults for survival. Unfortunately, that opens our emotions to hierarchy. Then, when we’re taught that hierarchy is good and natural and that people on the low end of the scale deserve less than their betters, the simple rational evidence that we’re all better off as equals doesn’t penetrate the emotional crust encasing those who think equality will leave them with less respect, dignity, and worth.
Joan
Sure. Do you have specific questions, so I don’t rant?
And yes: I currently pay monthly for internet and own a computer, because one of my jobs is tutoring online. One goal is to get enough local income that I can drop the internet payment and just check my email at the library.
Broad strokes: I don’t fly or drive, no smartphone or AC.
Bill Hicks
Evil is what Americans are–our whole lifestyle is diametrically opposed to the natural word or living within our means so that we don’t exploit the rest of the world. The faster America collapses, the better. There’s no other way forward for humanity.
Herman
Most people are not evil, or at least not in the way that most people use the term. I think most people are just weak. There is simply too much pressure to not care about all of these problems. The environment is a good example. There is huge social pressure to live a very consumerist, environmentally-destructive lifestyle. We associate social status with having a big house, a fancy car, taking vacations to exotic locations, expensive gadgets and other things that contribute to environmental destruction.
A person could theoretically downgrade their lifestyle but it will likely come at considerable social and professional cost and most people are not willing to go that far. This is why ethical consumerism and lifestyleism don’t work no matter how commendable such approaches might be on an individual level. Similar observations can be made about other problems other than the environment.
As for trying to wake people up, most people simply don’t care about most of the issues we discuss here. Even with the huge increase in access to information most people avoid hard news and prefer to consume celebrity gossip or entertainment or sports or whatever. This is not because people are stupid but because they know that they have little power to change the system and they find these issues to be depressing. Avoiding these issues is a good way to avoid stress and anxiety. Even among well-informed people there is a tendency to fall into partisan tribalism as we can see with the depressing state of politics in the United States where the biggest issues are often trivialities.
You can call it defeatism but I am becoming increasingly accepting of the idea that only a catastrophe will wake up the population and the elite class to the need to do something about our coming nightmare. Right now things are “normal” enough for many people to ignore the signs that we are headed for disaster. When the pain starts to hit the more affluent portions of society maybe something will be done because nobody seems to care when it is mostly the poor who suffer.
anon y'mouse
i am sorry for your pain. it is my pain, too.
it is everyone’s pain. many, maybe most are simply desensitized to it.
appears as though we will not even go down swinging. unless it’s a shovel digging that hole deeper.
very disheartening.
Ten Bears
At Childhood’s End introduced the notion that not all nightmares – repleat with wings, horns and folked tail – echo down out of the past, but may be prescient: echos of a future. If as it has been suggested is necessary we within a generation find a way off this ball of rock and step out to the stars there’s no coming back, we will have been turned out of the garden, and in time forgotten.
Hugh
Actually, Dan Lynch, you can offset the upfront CO2 costs of a GND or climate change mitigation through conservation. The backend savings are self-explanatory. We can do what we need to do. We can not control for everything that goes on in the rest of the world. But doing nothing or business as usual is suicide.
Tom
All this reminds me of Babylon 5 S2E18 Confessions and Lamentations. The fictional Markab Race knew for a year that a deadly disease was spreading through their species but didn’t do anything because they were afraid of a religious backlash. Thus they went functionally extinct.
Now its a question of what gets us first? Siberia is also burning and that is all peat which is a carbon sink…
The US Military uses so much fuel everyday trying to keep its 800+ bases around the world supplied that it is contributing 25% of the carbon produced each year…
We are deliberately poisoning children with lead contaminated water in several cities now, because we let Snyder get away with it in Flint, Michigan rather than arrest, try, and convict him of genocide and then execute him.
Well, there is nothing left to say.
someofparts
Joan: The car was the main thing I was thinking of. Doing without air would be daunting.
Willy
Some people have a natural, instinctual sense of what evil is. Others need to be told, usually by their culture or in group, and they’ll follow most of those rules the best they can while hiding/rationalizing the rest. A few couldn’t care less, and most of those are not in prison. Very few of anybody will actually brag about being evil. Outsiders will never see David Miscavige suddenly burst out sinister snickering while rubbing hands together. But a few insiders have seen him beat people up, who just stand there watching, or limply taking the beating. Me, I’d beat the living crap out of him if he tried and I knew I could outrun his goons. We haven’t figured out yet how to program all kinds of people to defend actual demonstrable common good.
Ven
The issue about evil is that it is a necessary corollary of living at scale. One becomes anonymous, in a throng of humanity busily going about their pre-programmed lives to earn a living for their family – and, of course, a few that seek to capture far more than just a living. So an individual becomes de-sensitised to what is going on – you just try to make your way through life, clinging on to whatever friends and family you have. Evil often becomes a matter of inadvertence, turning a blind eye, or just ignorance.
Scale also means organisation and hierarchy. And as soon as you have hierarchy, you have competition to get to the top, you have the people at the top spending whatever it takes to maintain that position, and people near the top genuflecting in order that they may also one day move up the ladder.
The beauty of hierarchy is that it entails the maintenance of the status quo, especially by those in the middle rungs. And those in the middle rungs all go to the same universities, are taught the same neoliberal / entrepreneurial fantasises, are are imbued with the same set of career ambitions. The chattering classes chatter within the boundaries of a system that most have been educated to intuitively believe has come about through natural selection, and is the best means of organising. The journalists who set the agenda for debate, who supposedly hold power to account, are the most co-opted of these chattering classes.
And then as individuals, most don’t want to give up our flying, going on holidays, driving I favour of living a simple, peaceful life.
What is required is a total overhaul of the system; and it can only really be overhauled when we as individuals stop following hierarchy. But how is that possible, when most people don’t have the education to see the causal factors? And when the 0.1% pay and educate the 1% and 10% to ensure that the system is maintained.
In vedanta philosophy, it is said that the wise man, on gaining enlightenment, will live without ambition, choicelessly like a dry leaf blown by the wind, neither afflicting the world nor being afflicted by the world.
Joan
@someofparts,
Re Car: It took me two years to finally sell my car after deciding I wanted to do it. My primary concern was safety, and my secondary concern was making sure it actually amounted to monetary benefit. If I sold my car but paid for multiple Ubers everyday, that wasn’t going to work.
I recommend treating it like a science experiment. Get a notebook just for this and record all the factors playing into what you need your car for. Then as you experiment and try to find your way in your own circumstances, you can take notes on what worked and how to improve what didn’t.
My motivation was the money side of things. I kept a list of how many months of rent my car added to my yearly expenses. Car insurance was another month of rent. Tags, parking, gas and incidentals was another. So in a year in which I had no car payment, did not need to update my all-season tires, and got zero maintenance done on the car, I was still paying fourteen months of rent for twelve months of time. That kept me motivated to figure out the safety issues I was concerned about, and to keep working toward a solution.
As for AC, I now live in a place that gets up to 100F for a few days and coasts around in the 90s for much of the summer. I won’t pretend that’s not miserable, but it’s also not impossible. When I grew up playing outside, I was out in those temperatures having a good time anyways. I get a cross current in my apartment, but have to lock the place down pretty early in the day because the front windows get direct sunlight. At night we sleep with the windows open. I sewed a bandana around an ice pack and tie it around my neck when I’m at home. My building is too old to have AC, so that’s just the default here. If it ever got truly bad, there are a couple of businesses in town with AC, so I could go sit there and work on my contracts until the sun set, but I haven’t had to do that yet.
Stormcrow
@Paul Harris:
Intraspecific violence is literally bred into the bone in our
species.
Cordwainer Smith’s fictional “littul kittons” didn’t evolve
as intraspecific murderers.
We did. Same as chimps and bonobos. Read Steven LeBlanc
and Katherine E. Register’s “Constant Battles: Why We Fight”.
Except that we do something chimps and bonobos don’t. We supercharge this, by using social communication to drive toolchain improvement. What we call “invention” is usually socially mediated toolchain optimization on steroids. Most tellingly, in the service of murder.
Of course, the same social processes drive us to “invent” new forms of essentially pointless cruelty as well. Obsessions aren’t rational, but once they’re in place, they still compel us.
@Joan:
The problem with First Nations methods is that they already failed us, long before we even knew the North American continent existed.
More than 4000 years ago, when our own Old World versions of First Nations societies fell prey to their agrarian neighbors, and vanished into a memory hole so dark and deep that most of us don’t even know they ever existed to begin with. Look at some of Robert Drews’ work for an outline of what we know about this process from archaeology. Particularly “Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe”.
The only thing that’ll happen when we attempt to recreate those societies from scratch is the same old bloody horror story.
Bottom line is that we’re an evolutionary dead end and we’ll be literally dead, i.e. extinct, inside another two centuries at most.
I’m pushing 70 and thankful I don’t have kids. And I’m already so totally disgusted with the species I’m part of that it’s imminent demise doesn’t trouble me very much. What does trouble me is that when we go, we’ll probably take the planet so close to an abiotic state that other more promising species are going to be wiped out right along with us.
Eric Anderson
“In vedanta philosophy, it is said that the wise man, on gaining enlightenment, will live without ambition, choicelessly like a dry leaf blown by the wind, neither afflicting the world nor being afflicted by the world.”
Sounds a lot like the Tao.
Genuine Hippie
You said it.
We have the resources and the know how to create utopia. We\’re just not doing it.
I said that to a friend. He\’s a fellow musician– that\’s how I know him– and a worker, family man, nice guy. Had very little interest in politics before Trump. Paid no more attention to it than I pay to professional sports. Very little knowledge of history, economics. In other words, normal.
Recently he reminded me that I\’d said that to him some time back, and told me that it changed the way he looks at the world and at politics.
It seems so obvious if you already know it, but maybe it hasn\’t occurred to most people.
ven
Eric – yes it is very similar to Lao Tse and Chuang Tse. It is perhaps the only sane refuge in these times.
Joan
@stormcrow,
Was that comment really meant for me? I hadn’t mentioned those things…
Whether or not we go extinct, I think it’s still worth it to reduce personal emissions, for the sake of whatever life does survive. I know you weren’t arguing against that, I just wanted to say it.
Stormcrow
@Joan,
No, I wasn’t arguing against it. I think it’s enough of a good idea to do it myself.But reducing personal emissions scales so poorly that it’s like trying to put out a forest fire with a teaspoon. In order to shift the problem, you need to not just reduce, but essentially eliminate industrial scale emissions.You can’t turn a planetary industrial ecosystem on a dime even if your ruling elites aren’t a bunch of psychopathic nihilists.And ours surely are; that’s what our social systems select for.
Joan
@stormcrow,
Thank you for clarifying. And yes, I think we’re in agreement. The teaspoon of personal reduction is still worth doing, but ultimately it remains a teaspoon.
atcooper
If humanity survives the coming correction I have a little faith we’ll be a better species. It really is a time of horror now though
Stirling S Newberry
Hugh: (some Greek)
Google: As a toddler, They cry as a toddler, They cry as a toddler, It is thought that a toddler; As an infant, I abolished the toddler.
I think I am safe as an ancient Greek translator, in this case, koine.
Ian Welsh
“You think I am being unkind? Ian, wait until the famines hit, and the wars, and the waves of refugees. You ain’t seen nuthin yet.”
Dan,
I expect all of these things. They are in my standard model.
someofparts
Joan:
My first instinctive reaction was to say how hard it would be to live without some of the things you are renouncing, but then, thinking about it a bit more I realized that I’ve had enough experience of living without the things you have given up that I realize doing without them would not be a calamity. Instead, a person’s energies just get directed in different directions. Giving up something that seems indispensable often opens the door to enjoying something else that you couldn’t savor until giving up that distraction that seemed so indispensable.
Now, after saying all that, doing without air still sounds hard. I live in a climate as hot as yours and we get very high humidity in the bargain. I grew up without air, and I don’t remember it being especially awful. We had an attic fan and used it strategically, running it at night and early in the morning. In the heat of the day, we had heavy curtains for the windows that got strong sunlight. It’s also a good plan if one’s schedule permits it, to nap in the heat of the afternoon and then get up and go about the rest of the day later when it starts to cool down.
Stormcrow
@Dan Lynch:
“We need to quit carbon cold turkey, and the only way to do that is rationing and de-peopling.”
There is, of course, a classical method of “de-peopling”. The Roman method. The same one Chinggis Khan used in Khwarazm. That’ll work. You betcha. After the Mongols got done with the place, the population was about a quarter of the size it’d been when they started.
China tried more or less peaceful “de-peopling” for more than half a century, with a totalitarian government to back it up. Their population doubled.
So. We’re back to Roman methods.
Well, that’ll happen.
The refugees are, as you note, already coming. And they’re not exactly being welcomed with open arms anywhere in the world. The ones pouring across the southern borer of the US are stuffed into concentration camps, guarded by people whose indoctrination isn’t all that different from that of the SS-Totenkopfverbände of days gone by. The ones trying to cross the Mediterranean are forced back out to sea to die, by our kinder gentler European cousins.
So in another few decades, the refugees will start arriving with as much preparation as the utterly desperate ruling elites who send them can manage. Their thinking is likely to go as follows: “if the ‘host countries’ won’t accept them voluntarily, (and we all know by this time that they won’t) those countries can be depopulated in their turn”. In other words, “lebensraum”, driven by utterly justified panic fear and seasoned with applied physics and biosciences several decades advanced over our own. If a couple of Australian wildlife researchers could accidentally run up a slate-wiper virus with table-top equipment 20 years ago, it’s not hard to imagine what’ll be possible for people intentionally trying for one 20 years hence.
Everybody with a working brain understood, as the victims of two atomic attacks were busy dying 70 years ago, that the next total war we fought would be the last one humans ever fought. Well, hold on to your hats, that’s where we’re bound.
That’ll deal with anthropogenic global warming, all right. No humans, no anthropogenic global warming.
Hugh
Actually, Stirling, for once Paul was saying something profound, and it sounds as good or better in the original Greek as it does in English.
Ten Bears
Meh, variations on a theme: the schoolbook version of the riddle of the sphinx. Which is not the Riddle of the Sphinx. And no, she’s not going to throw herself screaming hysterically into the bottomless pit over some snot-nosed punk’s notion he has somehow “owned” her. Oy vey.
Because the awakened one puts himself behind, he steps ahead;
Because he gives way, he gains;
Because he is selfless, he fulfils himself;
The still is the lord of the restless.
Joan
@someofparts,
Yes exactly. And of course the point of the whole exercise is not to strive for instantaneous perfection on the first try, then give up when that doesn’t work out. I think people have a remarkably short fuse when it comes to these things.
If you’ve already got central AC or some other setup in your home, then the easy experiment is to use it less often. Jot down your findings so you can compare things afterward. We have reflective film on our windows, a more expensive kind so we can actually see out.
That’s why it took me two years to finally sell the car: I was very worried I would sell it and then be forced to buy another car because I hadn’t worked everything else out beforehand. Anyway, good luck with anything you decide to try, and if you have ideas you want to bounce off me, I’d be happy to.
Oh btw, there are probably cheap options for dehumidifiers, if that’s something you’re considering. My husband needed a purifier for his allergies, and found a German company that posted their schematics as a PDF on their site. He was able to build one from your typical Home Depot materials, so we saved money, and the purifier that allows the windows to remain open is a fraction of the energy of AC. Just a thought.
Ché Pasa
I don’t doubt that the genocide “to save Western Civilization” from the Brown Hordes is prepped and ready to launch whenever the pressure of war and climate refugees becomes too great for whatever – powers – that – are to withstand by the usual methods. Instant incineration via nuclear annihilation is an option, of course, though the likelihood of it is still relatively small. There are other ways, many other ways, to do the deed without the use of more than a very few strategic nukes.
We’ve normalized the Mad Emperor scenario, however, so anything is possible going forward, and few but the victims will give it more than a passing glance. Too many other things to worry about, eh?
But I wonder if the future-gamers have considered that as often as genocide has been employed to “save” or conquer this or that, it’s less and less successful. Once, wiping out entire populations for the benefit of the few had a salutary effect, at least for a while, but then the tables often turned… the powers-that-were fell or were transformed, and the victims of the genocidal aims of their persecutors ultimately prevailed one way or another.
As always according to the still operational standard paradigm, Crisis is an Opportunity.
Stormcrow
@Ché Pasa:
“I don’t doubt that the genocide “to save Western Civilization” from the Brown Hordes is prepped and ready to launch whenever the pressure of war and climate refugees becomes too great for whatever – powers – that – are to withstand by the usual methods. Instant incineration via nuclear annihilation is an option, of course, though the likelihood of it is still relatively small. There are other ways, many other ways, to do the deed without the use of more than a very few strategic nukes.”
None without literally incalculable risks, though.
The problem with any measure of that sort, given multiple sovereign powers with practical access to the technology of mass murder, is that you might give the wrong bunch of somebodies the jitters.
Then you’re slag, or a slate-wiper bug has run through 90% of your population, or both. Either way, you’re out of the picture.
People seem to have this illusion that the US can win any fight it enters. Not just right-wingers either. Often, lefties have the same delusion.
Why this idea has persisted through the last 60 years of hopeless and ultimately lost American colonial wars is beyond me.
We’re NOT living in 1900 any more. Nobody is. Not the US, serially humilated in Vietnam, Iraq, and most recently, Afghanistan. Not the West Atlantic European nations that used to have extensive overseas colonial empires, all lost inside of a 30 year time span. Not the Russians, who lost in Afghanistan faster than we have. Not the Chinese, who lasted about 3 weeks when they tried to hammer Vietnam under.
Nobody is living in 1900 any more.
The “wogs” have GOT the Maxim Gun. They may not have much else, but by whatever gods they pray to, they’ve got that. And on their own turf, that, and a heaping helping of courage (which is really as common as crabgrass) usually suffices.
Fuest
You’re right, it’scrazy. More crazy and stupid than evil. The evil is just stupid venality on a massive scale.
Have you tried to have a political discussion with a *typical* American lately? Anymore it’s like talking to a homeless lunatic. You’re lucky if they’re just ignorant. Mostly they are so full of misinformation and disinformation that you end up speechless because you are not familiar with whatever crackpot “facts” they cite like gospel. And Anything you bring up, they’ve got an equally crazy set of facts to refute.
To me, that is becoming the most disheartening thing about this runaway train heading into the mouth of hell. As long as there is Fox News and its like, there is no way that as a society there can be any rational discussion of what to do. They are not just climate change deniers. They deny almost all of reality.
I used to think the biggest obstacle was the self satisfied Conventional Wisdom of the NPR set. Not that I see anyone making any progress with those people, but the idiocy just seems to grow exponentially everywhere you look
Hopefully “civilization” will collapse sooner rather than later so that someone or at least something survives.
different clue
@Ian Welsh,
Explaining these things many times to the same set of people will not reach as many people with these things as explaining these things to ever-fresher groups of new people. The explanations are good. The question is how to bring some new people over to read the explanations.
Perhaps some of the readers and commenters here can help with that. They/We can refer to Ian Welsh posts on other blog-threads when relevant. That might open glide-paths from “there” to “here”.
Also, if there were a very-low-additional-labor way to create a periodic ( perhaps once-a-week) feature which might appeal to a whole new set of people once they become aware of its existence; that whole new set of people might regularly come here and read it. Some of them might stay to read other things besides the new once-a-week feature, perhaps even reading these basic explanations.
Turning Tony Wikrent’s once-a-week Weekly Economic Wrap Up feature into a feature here is a model for doing that.
If the idea seems worthy of any consideration at all, I would suggest a weekly feature every Saturday , to be called the Saturday Survivalism Roundup or some such thing. It would focus on specific and detailed pieces of actionable information about how to solve one or another shortage-mitigation problem, or survival-problem, or some other material world problem. If no specific thoughts on actionable survival subjects occur to the blogger to write about on any one particular Saturday, the Saturday Survivalism Roundup could be an Open Thread for that Saturday . . . an Open Thread where readers bring particular information or particular links or particular resources about some aspect of successful survivalizing.
If the information presented therein were of consistently Serious Survivalist Detail and Quality, a wider circle of people would become aware of it over time, and would come over here to read it.
Some if them might wander over to the Basic Philosophical Explanations posts and threads.
Just an offered thought . . . .
Chipper
We are deliberately poisoning children with lead contaminated water in several cities now,
@Tom
Which other cities? I know Chicago is one, not using enough orthophosphate (which is the stuff they put in the water to keep the pipes from corroding and releasing the lead). I guess Flint was the test case and now they’re rolling it out to other cities.
There are some things people do that are awful, but I at least understand the end goal; this one I do not understand at all.
Hugh
Well, Newark for one.
https://www.nj.com/news/2019/01/the-lead-in-newarks-drinking-water-supply-has-hit-a-jaw-dropping-high-level-tests-show.html
Sid Finster
Sociopathy is the problem. Any system, any organization, no matter how ethereal in its conception, and the sociopaths will sooner or later find a way in.
It doesn’t have to be this way. But as long as we have sociopaths, it will be this way.
Everythings Jake
I think you’re giving yourself too little credit. You’ve been saying it succinctly and powerfully for at least the three plus years that I’ve been reading the site. I might suggest the term clarion call. But, I do think your mind struggles against accepting it (you discussed this to some degree in a post about your inability to call the vote as I recall). And isn’t that the thing for people who fix, who see how to fix – engineers, be they mechanically or socially or politically minded? It’s incomprehensible that it may be irredeemably broken, because it just doesn’t have to be, and it’s so damned simple. But that’s just Utopia vs. Shakespeare. Where the “fault lies,” but doesn’t have to.
The greatest tragedy is that the species is so capable of transcendence, but, in practice, is better and more committed to anything but. I hope you find what Carlin found (those interviews shortly before his passing are quite extraordinary), and maybe Twain too. Relief from the desire, need to, drive to change it. Maybe you’ll just get to be a calm witness, scribbling in your notepad, in Carlin’s words. The world’s always been ending for humanity, and most probably really is this time. What’s the response to be? Same as Wilder’s “poets and saints” have always known and tried to tell us (that’s a play that should have had a much longer run that “Cats” or, ugh, “Wicked”). Laugh, love, be kind. Struggle. Laugh, love and be kind again.
I’ve decided that I’m going to try to foster one of the migrant kids trapped in a hell of our making (my hoped for Tesla Model X will now live in someone else’s garage; and good – probably an attachment I didn’t need anyway). Won’t change a damn macro thing probably, but for whatever reason, seems like it might change everything and enough. And I am capable of doing it, of making at least that difference. I think I’ll extend my own advice (which is really, ultimately, your advice) and delete this site from my bookmarks. Will need additional time to catch up on STEM subjects, never my strong suit, but would be nice if I weren’t staring at the kid asking for help with homework blankly.
Thanks so much for making me feel far less crazy and for being the teacher I needed when I was ready to learn. Graduation day.
Willy
It doesn’t have to be this way. But as long as we have sociopaths, it will be this way.
When I google “psychopath” or “sociopath”, I’m getting far more and better results than I did just ten years ago. Seems it’s becoming more common wisdom. And instrumental testing for their kind is ever improving. So at least there’s that. I’m guessing that about the time human caused climate change is finally handed over to the scientists for whatever kind of possible mitigation, so shall also be the scourge of psychopathy. I envision society happily and willingly rounding up certified psychopaths and sending them to places like Trumps Greenland (or more suitable isolated place) to live out their lives. Maybe their new lives together will form the basis for a reality TV show?
different clue
. . . and following on from my comment up above . . .
In the meantime, running Tony Wikrent’s weekly wrap up as a reliable weekly feature already provides serious information-rich survivalists, sustainable-ists, transitionists, power-downists, etc. to offer such info-dense detail-rich comments with links and sources that our host might consider them worth leaving up.
People might come over time to learn of their steady and reliable existence and might come here to find and learn from those comments which can be learned from. And they might stay long enough to find and read the Basic Articles.