Excellent post! We certainly do have 'interesting' times ahead.
Our ‘democracies’ have been mostly theatrical in nature and arisen as a result of significant surplus energy. As that surplus energy fades into the distance we will witness the true face of our large, complex society’s ruling caste; and it won’t be pretty for those of us that have grown up believing we have agency in the sociopolitical realm…
B, I like your observation that true wealth comes from indigenous cultivation. Everything else is extraction. When our local municipal governments are cut off from the federal and state grants they use to fund their extractor projects, they will come after what we have cultivated in spite of them. Let us hope that the mutual aid networks we're growing now will render municipal governments harmless, or moot.
Thank you for this good summary that shows our fate. I would like to provide some background information on how trade, economy, ruling power and money emerged in the first place:
I think it is important to know that state, property, money and economy form an indissoluble mesh, which had to evolve together. Capitalism and democracy are just the logical consequences and fossil fuels were the turbo booster.
But like Stefan Gruber wrote in "A book for no one":
Democracy is first created by a revolution and is later maintained by prosperity. It ceases to exist, as soon as it is no longer affordable. [...] The narrow-minded disputes of their fathers and grandfathers of democracy and the arrogant looking down on 5000 years of history from the egocentric perspective of a civilization that once thought it had made it once and for all with democracy and human rights will be an embarrassment to the last people.
Thank you for your clarity in these confounding times. As you have exquisitely pointed out, the problem is acceleration in the name of efficiency. An efficiency that has exceeded society’s ability to digest and integrate, displacing our traditional ecological knowledge and enslaving us to never getting enough of what we really don’t need.
I comment from the organic food sector, slower practice of patient arts, where ecology is our guide: Healthy soil sustains healthy plants which sustains healthy creatures which sustains healthy societies which sustains the health of planetary systems ever metabolizing to return healthy soil to feed us all; in a virtuous cycle of sustainable consumption based on nature’s genius of ‘no waste’.
We need to offer new paths to redirect our wasteful consumption of ultra processed food, ultra processed information, and ultra processed technologies. We need to challenge how easily we are seduced by algorithmic capitalism to believe they will sustain! Too many of us are in denial about the addiction and suffering it creates.
How to break this cycle? I believe we can restore our reliance on organic relationships of kinship by cultivating rings of small-holder farming, small businesses and artisan practices around our communities. And by allowing the beauty of the world to slow us down. This will not be a regression. We can seek to grow deeper roots into the social earth we have already created. We can seek to better digest what we do consume. We can use gratitude as our measure. Politically speaking, we can teach ecological literacy in K-12 to balance the one sided, polarizing, accelerants of the currently fashionable STEM education.
I agree with your understanding that the collapse of capitalism is already underway. We can prepare for the collapse by teaching our next generations to love the earth, to know kinship, and to let gratitude be our measure. Keep writing!
The article I reference from November 2021 is his favorite link of mine. His work is always good, and not possible to pigeonhole. He is a broadly competent human.
Yours in Service, John Day MD, fired 2 years ago for vaccine-refusal on principle, still living amongst the untermenschen, while bicycling and growing vegetables. drjohnsblog.substack.com
great artcle, thank you. I can't even begin to interpret the first photograph (spaceX launch) objectively, because what do we actually see, apart from what we are meant to be seeing? that little puff of cloud at the end of the white trajectory's column is intriguing - poof.... but going where, exactly?
Thank you B🙏
Excellent post! We certainly do have 'interesting' times ahead.
Our ‘democracies’ have been mostly theatrical in nature and arisen as a result of significant surplus energy. As that surplus energy fades into the distance we will witness the true face of our large, complex society’s ruling caste; and it won’t be pretty for those of us that have grown up believing we have agency in the sociopolitical realm…
B, I like your observation that true wealth comes from indigenous cultivation. Everything else is extraction. When our local municipal governments are cut off from the federal and state grants they use to fund their extractor projects, they will come after what we have cultivated in spite of them. Let us hope that the mutual aid networks we're growing now will render municipal governments harmless, or moot.
I've often argued that capitalism is more a symptom of energy abundance (and yes, technology to harness it) than the true cause of our predicament.
As they though they had identified the culprit long time ago, it usually makes anti-capitalist people quite distressful and/or angry...
The Borg ... is all powerful ... but eventually it destroys itself.
Good riddance
Keep mind ... when the Borg is destroyed .. we die
Thank you for this good summary that shows our fate. I would like to provide some background information on how trade, economy, ruling power and money emerged in the first place:
https://un-denial.com/2023/06/14/by-marromai-energy-economy-and-the-role-of-money/
I think it is important to know that state, property, money and economy form an indissoluble mesh, which had to evolve together. Capitalism and democracy are just the logical consequences and fossil fuels were the turbo booster.
But like Stefan Gruber wrote in "A book for no one":
Democracy is first created by a revolution and is later maintained by prosperity. It ceases to exist, as soon as it is no longer affordable. [...] The narrow-minded disputes of their fathers and grandfathers of democracy and the arrogant looking down on 5000 years of history from the egocentric perspective of a civilization that once thought it had made it once and for all with democracy and human rights will be an embarrassment to the last people.
Thank you for your clarity in these confounding times. As you have exquisitely pointed out, the problem is acceleration in the name of efficiency. An efficiency that has exceeded society’s ability to digest and integrate, displacing our traditional ecological knowledge and enslaving us to never getting enough of what we really don’t need.
I comment from the organic food sector, slower practice of patient arts, where ecology is our guide: Healthy soil sustains healthy plants which sustains healthy creatures which sustains healthy societies which sustains the health of planetary systems ever metabolizing to return healthy soil to feed us all; in a virtuous cycle of sustainable consumption based on nature’s genius of ‘no waste’.
We need to offer new paths to redirect our wasteful consumption of ultra processed food, ultra processed information, and ultra processed technologies. We need to challenge how easily we are seduced by algorithmic capitalism to believe they will sustain! Too many of us are in denial about the addiction and suffering it creates.
How to break this cycle? I believe we can restore our reliance on organic relationships of kinship by cultivating rings of small-holder farming, small businesses and artisan practices around our communities. And by allowing the beauty of the world to slow us down. This will not be a regression. We can seek to grow deeper roots into the social earth we have already created. We can seek to better digest what we do consume. We can use gratitude as our measure. Politically speaking, we can teach ecological literacy in K-12 to balance the one sided, polarizing, accelerants of the currently fashionable STEM education.
I agree with your understanding that the collapse of capitalism is already underway. We can prepare for the collapse by teaching our next generations to love the earth, to know kinship, and to let gratitude be our measure. Keep writing!
Thank You, Honest-Sorcerer.
You might already read John Michael Greer, the Archdruid, and I see influences of Nate Hagens in your well-expressed thoughts, also.
Let me introduce you to The Ethical Skeptic, please, another worthy thought-warrior-for-Truth:
https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/11/15/chinas-ccp-concealed-sars-cov-2-presence-in-china-as-far-back-as-march-2018/
The article I reference from November 2021 is his favorite link of mine. His work is always good, and not possible to pigeonhole. He is a broadly competent human.
Yours in Service, John Day MD, fired 2 years ago for vaccine-refusal on principle, still living amongst the untermenschen, while bicycling and growing vegetables. drjohnsblog.substack.com
Thanks.
Aldous Huxley spoke about this loss of liberty 65 years ago ... https://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com/articles/Mike_Wallace_interviews_Aldous_Huxley_May_18_1958.html
great artcle, thank you. I can't even begin to interpret the first photograph (spaceX launch) objectively, because what do we actually see, apart from what we are meant to be seeing? that little puff of cloud at the end of the white trajectory's column is intriguing - poof.... but going where, exactly?