as an avid reader of your stuff B, I think you will be interested in this pdf of a book written by Jevons (he of paradox fame) in 1866, on energy consumption---well worth taking time out to digest it
This planet may have been lucky to have had coal in order to create technology. Without it, nothing advanced would have been possible. In that context, I wonder if there have been or are many galactic civilisations that never actually made it to interstellar radio communications.... or the nuclear bomb.
Edit: Also on the website linked, there is an excellent article "Alice Friedemann: When The Trucks Stop Running". It's a gut wrenching read.
Whenever I fill in Drakes Equation, even when I try optimistic numbers, the result is always "Less Than One". Mind you, it does just focus on one galaxy.
That's a bit of bio-geological history I was unaware of. I though coal was forming all the time! So it too is a one-off.
Well, the civilised Europeans - I mean the pre-Rome era civilisations - according to this book were already experimenting with electricity. They definitely had advanced automata, and insanely complicated machines such as the Antikythera mechanism.
It's not a stretch to see these Mother Religion cultures as developing advanced science and industry, but only on small scale, rather than as mass consumerism, had the Roman Empire not come along and decided all research except military was verboten.
But we can't know how that might have turned out, unless a Doc Who goes back in time and nukes Rome before it got started... It's a dream, nothing more.
I'm in the operations and maintenance of a critical infrastructure facility. Before that, manufacturing for a defense contractor. I can vouch for the downstream effects of these instabilities. Parts we need to maintain our facility have significantly longer lead times and the cost, while varying greatly, always seems to be trending up. We count on the taxpayers to fund these services. The costs will eventually be passed on.
Who let that bull into the China shop in the first place? Thanks for your excellent and well thought-out analysis of the China shop after the bull was loosed.
We cannot perpetuate modernity and expect to survive its downfall. Thank you, B, for reassuring us that phantom cargo is still imaginary. We are already living in the downgrade, and making do with less is far better than relying on hopium.
When times get bad, the privileged will prefer to destroy everything rather than reduce their privileges. Their privileges came from "God", or their own natural superiority, after all. Not from mere human choices that can be reversed.
Democratic societies can change their patterns, as Cuba did once the USSR fell, and initiated a worker-coop structure to fend off disaster. Authoritarian fascist dictatorships like the Western societies will instead reach for the machine guns, as they are so used to doing, to attempt to force the desperate workers to accept the dire conditions. And the tech-bros are looking at a future where their wealth and electronic control enables them to enforce a totalitarian slave/peasant society. How pretty.
Perhaps the real reason we haven't found any "Intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy", is because its WE who are not really intelligent. We are looking in the wrong way, for the wrong things.
Cuba's approach to having almost all its fuel being deleted after the fall of the USSR is probably about as best case as it can get. They didnt starve, but they certainly needed to reduce their dietary intake. Still, they muddled through, and continue to do so. It helps being in a climate where food can be grown year round.
Dmitry Orlov talks about how Russia managed to get through the fall. Everyone grew a food garden over their entire property, as they always did. There was also so much redundant inventory that machines could be serviced for years, and used to rebuild their economy. People were just given the home and property they lived on, free and clear. This kept life inexpensive.
These are interesting case studies. In the west, we have none of this ready for a collapse event. If David Webb is correct with his Great Taking, then no one will own any of the land or equipment needed to reboot like Russia and Cuba were able to. I can't imagine how we would be able to pull off something like that in say, Canada. Northern cities; I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one starting about... now.
I've also seen Orlov's video on that - and it doesn't sound pretty. He's back in Russia now apparently - doesn't want to go through it again, this time in the Western Empire.
The West has made everything "Efficient" - but what that means in practice is "Efficient at funnelling all money to the wealthy", there is no slack if/when things go belly up. And the banking clans are utterly amoral in their greed.
No doubt the politicians and talking heads will STILL be mouthing off about "Defending Western Liberal Democracy" while the citizens are being gunned down left and right by the security forces.
Horrific and brutal. The amount of barnyard animals living on the island of Cuba is beyond what the island can sustainably support. Cannibalism and horrific violence will run rampant. It will be a microcosm of the collapse the rest of the world will experience. Especially for the barnyard animals copped up in these massive cages referred to as "cities". Cities will become deathtraps. They are fully sustained by importing massive amounts of food and materials. Made possible by diesel. Diesel keeps the cities alive. Once the diesel runs out the trapped animals will turn on each other and attempt to flee. Anyone who is successfully living a self sufficient lifestyle will be quickly overrun and consumed as well. There is a book called Blip that was released in 2019. Covers all topics that B talks about. The end of the book is dedicated to eco-villages and self sufficient communities. The author states that even these people who are living the "right" way will be destroyed alongside the collapse of industrial civilization because the city folk will surge forth from the cities looking for food and the small pockets of self sufficiency will be quickly overrun. Its grim and depressing stuff.
Indeed... the preppers will be targets for the hordes... they will pour through the farm gates and rip the preppers to shreds... and rape their women...
The reason no intelligent life has been detected is more likely to be that, wherever it might arise, it will be subject to the same physical/geological constraints that we are.
Their planets will be made from the same elements, the same processes will apply... they might get to roughly where we have, only to reach the same limits, imposed by physical reality.
I'm not so sure. It's really just a couple of ideas, or cultural memes that 'we' developed, that have fucked us over.
The concept of "Evil", for one. Invented by Zoroaster, it has fermented a Manichaenist, winner-takes-all anti-feminine, anti-Natural world view.
Without this, we likely wouldn't have had overpopulation (the "Go forth and breed" nonsense), we'd have had serious birth control under the rights of women, no colonialism, no imperialism, no genocides of more natural cultures.
We might have developed advanced technology without the rapid resource depletion caused by minority "ownership" without true democratic oversight, without the mass consumption/pollution overdrive.
We might have been able to discover 'innerspace' communication, and taken communication with the intelligent other living species on THIS PLANET more seriously.
What peaceful space race would take seriously the idea of letting US move onto their planet, as we are now?
It would be Pandora before you could blink.
If you think of the extreme measures in Herbert's 'Godmakers', humanity would literally fail the first test upon first glance.
But a peaceful society COULD develop high tech, keep their population low (Or more in tune with their natural environment), and survive long enough in a technological state to achieve that potential interstellar travel. People HAVE probably been visited by aliens - the experience by the schoolkids in Zimbabwe is an extraordinary tale - although my take is that much of this is psychic, rather than physical.
With just a FEW changes, such as no Zoroaster, and most specifically, no Rome, we might have made it.
I agree that things might have been different... if only the Romans hadn't invaded, or the Normans, or guns or chainsaws hadn't been invented etc etc etc... but all those things happened. There's no point lamenting it now.
You rightly call out politicians for having no morality, then later say the concept of evil has contributed to humans' downfall. But if good and evil don't exist, then it makes no sense to talk of any action being moral or not.
Did the concept of evil foment the anti-Natural worldview you mention, or merely describe it?
Also, no advanced technology is sustainable, because the exotic metals etc it requires necessitates mining, and that process is always extremely destructive of the natural world. There is no such thing as 'sustainable mining'.
In the far future, long after all technology has disappeared, after the flash in the pan of fossil fuels (and the tech they enabled) have faded from memory, surviving humans may be happy again, free from technology, governments, jobs, control... Free just to be.
That's why we don't see any super-high-tech alien technology. If their species live long enough, they go *past* technology and come out the other side, having failed to make a dent in the enormous distances between the stars.
I was raised as a catholic until 5, a proddy until 14. I was brainwashed in the same way. It was Richard Bach (Author of Jonathon Livingstone Seagull, One, and several other excellent 'hippy' books) that broke the conditioning.
There is good and BAD. That is for real. Have you raised a pet? When they do something wrong, did you say to them they were bad, or EVIL?
Think long and hard about that difference.
Good versus bad is the basis of morality. All moral codes are based on that opposite. Not 'doing unto others as you would have done to yourself' is bad, not evil. If you' Do unto others what you would not like done to yourself' is bad, not evil.
Evil is a redundancy for morality.
It really is. This isn't 'nihilism', it's naturalism, and common sense.
OK. Take the concept of "evil". Is it in the act itself, or the person themselves? You can't answer that, when you try you'll get tied up in knots. And yet it's the most blindingly obvious question.
The origins of the concept are most instructive. Within 2 years of Zoroaster coming up with it, the Zoroastrians were butchering their way across Persia, murdering every Pagan, every follower of the Nature religions, every "Uppity Woman and man who protected them", by deeming them "Evil", beyond redemption, and worthy only of torture and death. It was no coincidence that the "Christians" did the same to the surviving Pagans just a couple of centuries ago, using the very same flimsy arguments.
The concept of "evil" begets evil behaviour. The word-concept created itself.
To take it back to now, how would you regard a fanatical Christian who whenever their child misbehaves, accuses the child of being "EVIL!".
You would regard that child as being in severe danger, if there is any humanity in you, wouldn't you?
I'll take that as read. And that child is going to turn out EXTREMELY fucked up, if they don't end up murdered.
Is the problem in the child, or the parent?
Or this belief in "evil"?
No child automatically accepts this concept of "evil", and every child wonders when they hear it if it applies to them. Now BAD - we all get, immediately. Same as pets do. Can you imagine trying to teach your pet what "Evil" means though? Children have the same problem. This is why I said it is brainwashed into us. It's never explained, it is simply used as a mechanism for fear and guilt. Those accused of being "evil" lose all rights, they are dehumanised, associated with scaly "dark angels", and can be murdered with impunity.
"Evil" is what our enemies are, and "Enemies of the Church" - and now "Enemies of the State". It's a mindfuck TOOL.
Think of something "evil" in the natural world? If a wounded hungry lion eats a human because that's all they can catch, its not "EVIL!", we can understand its motives. Even though we don't like to be eaten. That's definitely bad.
Good versus bad is the basis for all morality. Throw "Evil!" in there, and you don't have morality anymore - you have amorality. As I said, I was programmed the same way. It took years to deprogram that one, and unpick its knots.
The only source of "Evil" is those who believe in it. THEY are the ones that act evil when they act upon that belief.
----
On the mining thing, I'm 50/50. I can see both sides. The old Nature religions also opposed all mining, they considered it harmful to the Mother Earth. Then they were wiped out or integrated by those culture who did smelt metals, and made weapons out of them.
On the other hand, a global population of say 100m so-smart-they're-dumbfuck upright monkeys would be able to mine for a VERY long time before they run out of resources, especially if the resources were seen as valuable and highly recycled, without an 'elite' producing 'wealth for themselves' with every ton mined. Are there energy technologies we haven't discovered yet too? Quite possibly.
Have you seen that video of Zimbabwean schoolchildren who met the UFO? It turned my scepticism in its head. Mass psychosis I can believe in, but those kids EXPERIENCED something. Google "Zimbabwean school children meet UFO", there's now tons of links (I saw a couple of good ones, but bookmarks lost recently). It's all based on the same material, but you know the varying quality of YT, lol.
Oh hey, as an addendum, this is the trick Richard Bach gave in his novel to undermine that programming.
Think of some "evil" things. Now replace "...is evil" with "I don't like ....."
Unless you are odd, there will be a 100% match.
Why on Earth is this important? Because what you have done is subjectify the thought process.
If you spend but a few minutes on this thought experiment, you'll find your thinking changing. I used to meditate a lot, so spending a few minutes thinking was not a burden.
Well said. I like your explanation that the source of instability comes from two inter-related factors, the decline in natural resource availability and the purely human (mis)management of a very complex global economy. When both of those factors increase instability at the same time, dramatic changes can happen via extreme positive reinforcement cascades: tipping points.
I'm not in agreement however with your assertion that "shifting focus away from GDP growth and consumption, as well as decentralizing political power and reducing inequality could go a long way to reduce the strain on society and to prevent an abrupt collapse". This change in focus, urgently needed for the last century or so, is no longer a choice that any politician can make.
Highly urbanized, modern industrial countries have long ago wholly committed themselves to the present system. And even if they wanted to change things with all their heart, political leaders couldn't do much to help more than a token number of people escape the modern techno-industrialism of city life. People who live in cities are trapped there, cannot live anywhere else, and will suffer the consequences of collapse as an urbanite, always completely dependent on industrial supply chains for their very lives.
You have clearly explained the nature of the tipping points in those supply chains, which means that when it comes, it is likely that collapse will indeed be very abrupt. Store shelves might empty over days and weeks. This will be terrifying and people will panic and cast about for some way to escape, only to find that there is nowhere to go. Their lives will end where they now live.
The famine also gave rise to wild tales of murder, cannibalism and a black market trade in human flesh. The true extent of cannibalism in the Great Famine is unknown.
Nevertheless, some Russian academics have researched and catalogued examples of cannibalism and corpse eating, while American relief workers also observed these behaviours. Cannibalism was most common along the Volga River basin, in areas where the famine was most severe. Starving peasants there were observed digging up recently buried corpses for their flesh.
Accounts of murder or euthanasia – followed by butchery and feasting – were reported. One woman refused to give over the body of her dead husband because she was using it for meat. Parents and siblings ate the bodies of dead children.
As the death toll increased, an illegal trade in human flesh also emerged. Quantities of nondescript meat appeared in markets in Russian towns and cities, some of it undoubtedly human. An aid worker wrote of the situation in late 1921:
“Families were killing and devouring fathers, grandfathers and children. Ghastly rumours about sausages prepared with human corpses (the technical expression was ‘ground to sausages’) though officially contradicted, were common. In the market, among rough huckstresses swearing at each other, one heard threats to make sausages of a person.”
When the tipping point arrives.. 8B+ angry vicious starving humans.... will flood onto the streets... and there will be an orgy of violence... like the world has never seen
In the near future of declining fossil fuel resources, rapidly diminishing fresh water supplies, and worn out farmland, self sufficiency is going to be critical to the survival of countries and whole societies...e.g. NATO did Russia a favor by sanctioning food imports, so Russia began exploiting its own farmland and not only can feed itself, but is a leading wheat exporter...Japan and China import most of their food...that will diminish gradually, then suddenly, in the next decades..and I think their leaders are aware of this fact, and are little concerned about their diminishing fertility..
Europe, where unproductive immigrants have been imported to replace the natives, is most likely going to crash into the 18th century...with few fossil fuels left, and an accelerating energy crisis, the necessity of being supplied by Russia's vast energy resources will become all too obvious at some point...but what will Europe have left to trade?
In some obvious ways, however, the 18th century was a lot more civilized than the 20th century, and quite certainly a world population around 1 billion was preferable to the current 8 billion...
as an avid reader of your stuff B, I think you will be interested in this pdf of a book written by Jevons (he of paradox fame) in 1866, on energy consumption---well worth taking time out to digest it
https://www.inist.org/library/1865.Jevons.The_Coal_Question.Macmillan.pdf
Speaking of coal, and in reference to Gnuneo's thoughts on civilisation in this comment section, I found this interesting:
Why Coal was Only Created Once
https://energyskeptic.com/2025/why-coal-was-only-created-once/
This planet may have been lucky to have had coal in order to create technology. Without it, nothing advanced would have been possible. In that context, I wonder if there have been or are many galactic civilisations that never actually made it to interstellar radio communications.... or the nuclear bomb.
Edit: Also on the website linked, there is an excellent article "Alice Friedemann: When The Trucks Stop Running". It's a gut wrenching read.
we know that the composition of other galaxies is the same as our own, so the same physical laws will apply there as here
given the number of galaxies out there, and the number of planets within them, the conditions for life forms must exist elsewhere.
even so, the number that might have reached our level of toolmaking must be infinitesmally small---if we are not in fact unique.....that's possible...
fossilisation of sunshine appears be the critical factor, plus the ability to make constructive use of it.
Whenever I fill in Drakes Equation, even when I try optimistic numbers, the result is always "Less Than One". Mind you, it does just focus on one galaxy.
That's a bit of bio-geological history I was unaware of. I though coal was forming all the time! So it too is a one-off.
Well, the civilised Europeans - I mean the pre-Rome era civilisations - according to this book were already experimenting with electricity. They definitely had advanced automata, and insanely complicated machines such as the Antikythera mechanism.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Terry-Jones-Barbarians-Alan-Ereira/dp/056353916X
It's not a stretch to see these Mother Religion cultures as developing advanced science and industry, but only on small scale, rather than as mass consumerism, had the Roman Empire not come along and decided all research except military was verboten.
But we can't know how that might have turned out, unless a Doc Who goes back in time and nukes Rome before it got started... It's a dream, nothing more.
I'm in the operations and maintenance of a critical infrastructure facility. Before that, manufacturing for a defense contractor. I can vouch for the downstream effects of these instabilities. Parts we need to maintain our facility have significantly longer lead times and the cost, while varying greatly, always seems to be trending up. We count on the taxpayers to fund these services. The costs will eventually be passed on.
Council rates are rising double digit % ... relentlessly ....year after year.... that is the real rate of inflation.
Who let that bull into the China shop in the first place? Thanks for your excellent and well thought-out analysis of the China shop after the bull was loosed.
We cannot perpetuate modernity and expect to survive its downfall. Thank you, B, for reassuring us that phantom cargo is still imaginary. We are already living in the downgrade, and making do with less is far better than relying on hopium.
When times get bad, the privileged will prefer to destroy everything rather than reduce their privileges. Their privileges came from "God", or their own natural superiority, after all. Not from mere human choices that can be reversed.
Democratic societies can change their patterns, as Cuba did once the USSR fell, and initiated a worker-coop structure to fend off disaster. Authoritarian fascist dictatorships like the Western societies will instead reach for the machine guns, as they are so used to doing, to attempt to force the desperate workers to accept the dire conditions. And the tech-bros are looking at a future where their wealth and electronic control enables them to enforce a totalitarian slave/peasant society. How pretty.
Perhaps the real reason we haven't found any "Intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy", is because its WE who are not really intelligent. We are looking in the wrong way, for the wrong things.
Cuba's approach to having almost all its fuel being deleted after the fall of the USSR is probably about as best case as it can get. They didnt starve, but they certainly needed to reduce their dietary intake. Still, they muddled through, and continue to do so. It helps being in a climate where food can be grown year round.
Dmitry Orlov talks about how Russia managed to get through the fall. Everyone grew a food garden over their entire property, as they always did. There was also so much redundant inventory that machines could be serviced for years, and used to rebuild their economy. People were just given the home and property they lived on, free and clear. This kept life inexpensive.
These are interesting case studies. In the west, we have none of this ready for a collapse event. If David Webb is correct with his Great Taking, then no one will own any of the land or equipment needed to reboot like Russia and Cuba were able to. I can't imagine how we would be able to pull off something like that in say, Canada. Northern cities; I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one starting about... now.
I've also seen Orlov's video on that - and it doesn't sound pretty. He's back in Russia now apparently - doesn't want to go through it again, this time in the Western Empire.
The West has made everything "Efficient" - but what that means in practice is "Efficient at funnelling all money to the wealthy", there is no slack if/when things go belly up. And the banking clans are utterly amoral in their greed.
No doubt the politicians and talking heads will STILL be mouthing off about "Defending Western Liberal Democracy" while the citizens are being gunned down left and right by the security forces.
They have no shame, no honesty, no morality.
They still have some energy... the blackouts are periodic...
Imagine Cuba with no electricity ... no diesel... no petrol.... no fertilizers.... no food.
Horrific and brutal. The amount of barnyard animals living on the island of Cuba is beyond what the island can sustainably support. Cannibalism and horrific violence will run rampant. It will be a microcosm of the collapse the rest of the world will experience. Especially for the barnyard animals copped up in these massive cages referred to as "cities". Cities will become deathtraps. They are fully sustained by importing massive amounts of food and materials. Made possible by diesel. Diesel keeps the cities alive. Once the diesel runs out the trapped animals will turn on each other and attempt to flee. Anyone who is successfully living a self sufficient lifestyle will be quickly overrun and consumed as well. There is a book called Blip that was released in 2019. Covers all topics that B talks about. The end of the book is dedicated to eco-villages and self sufficient communities. The author states that even these people who are living the "right" way will be destroyed alongside the collapse of industrial civilization because the city folk will surge forth from the cities looking for food and the small pockets of self sufficiency will be quickly overrun. Its grim and depressing stuff.
Indeed... the preppers will be targets for the hordes... they will pour through the farm gates and rip the preppers to shreds... and rape their women...
Prepping is a very BAD idea
I thought it was because we're made of meat?
http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/
LOLLOLLOLLOL!!! :'D
Thanks for the share, I hadn't seen that before. :)
The reason no intelligent life has been detected is more likely to be that, wherever it might arise, it will be subject to the same physical/geological constraints that we are.
Their planets will be made from the same elements, the same processes will apply... they might get to roughly where we have, only to reach the same limits, imposed by physical reality.
No Fermi 'paradox'. No mystery, really.
I'm not so sure. It's really just a couple of ideas, or cultural memes that 'we' developed, that have fucked us over.
The concept of "Evil", for one. Invented by Zoroaster, it has fermented a Manichaenist, winner-takes-all anti-feminine, anti-Natural world view.
Without this, we likely wouldn't have had overpopulation (the "Go forth and breed" nonsense), we'd have had serious birth control under the rights of women, no colonialism, no imperialism, no genocides of more natural cultures.
We might have developed advanced technology without the rapid resource depletion caused by minority "ownership" without true democratic oversight, without the mass consumption/pollution overdrive.
We might have been able to discover 'innerspace' communication, and taken communication with the intelligent other living species on THIS PLANET more seriously.
What peaceful space race would take seriously the idea of letting US move onto their planet, as we are now?
It would be Pandora before you could blink.
If you think of the extreme measures in Herbert's 'Godmakers', humanity would literally fail the first test upon first glance.
But a peaceful society COULD develop high tech, keep their population low (Or more in tune with their natural environment), and survive long enough in a technological state to achieve that potential interstellar travel. People HAVE probably been visited by aliens - the experience by the schoolkids in Zimbabwe is an extraordinary tale - although my take is that much of this is psychic, rather than physical.
With just a FEW changes, such as no Zoroaster, and most specifically, no Rome, we might have made it.
I agree that things might have been different... if only the Romans hadn't invaded, or the Normans, or guns or chainsaws hadn't been invented etc etc etc... but all those things happened. There's no point lamenting it now.
You rightly call out politicians for having no morality, then later say the concept of evil has contributed to humans' downfall. But if good and evil don't exist, then it makes no sense to talk of any action being moral or not.
Did the concept of evil foment the anti-Natural worldview you mention, or merely describe it?
Also, no advanced technology is sustainable, because the exotic metals etc it requires necessitates mining, and that process is always extremely destructive of the natural world. There is no such thing as 'sustainable mining'.
In the far future, long after all technology has disappeared, after the flash in the pan of fossil fuels (and the tech they enabled) have faded from memory, surviving humans may be happy again, free from technology, governments, jobs, control... Free just to be.
That's why we don't see any super-high-tech alien technology. If their species live long enough, they go *past* technology and come out the other side, having failed to make a dent in the enormous distances between the stars.
I was raised as a catholic until 5, a proddy until 14. I was brainwashed in the same way. It was Richard Bach (Author of Jonathon Livingstone Seagull, One, and several other excellent 'hippy' books) that broke the conditioning.
There is good and BAD. That is for real. Have you raised a pet? When they do something wrong, did you say to them they were bad, or EVIL?
Think long and hard about that difference.
Good versus bad is the basis of morality. All moral codes are based on that opposite. Not 'doing unto others as you would have done to yourself' is bad, not evil. If you' Do unto others what you would not like done to yourself' is bad, not evil.
Evil is a redundancy for morality.
It really is. This isn't 'nihilism', it's naturalism, and common sense.
OK. Take the concept of "evil". Is it in the act itself, or the person themselves? You can't answer that, when you try you'll get tied up in knots. And yet it's the most blindingly obvious question.
The origins of the concept are most instructive. Within 2 years of Zoroaster coming up with it, the Zoroastrians were butchering their way across Persia, murdering every Pagan, every follower of the Nature religions, every "Uppity Woman and man who protected them", by deeming them "Evil", beyond redemption, and worthy only of torture and death. It was no coincidence that the "Christians" did the same to the surviving Pagans just a couple of centuries ago, using the very same flimsy arguments.
The concept of "evil" begets evil behaviour. The word-concept created itself.
To take it back to now, how would you regard a fanatical Christian who whenever their child misbehaves, accuses the child of being "EVIL!".
You would regard that child as being in severe danger, if there is any humanity in you, wouldn't you?
I'll take that as read. And that child is going to turn out EXTREMELY fucked up, if they don't end up murdered.
Is the problem in the child, or the parent?
Or this belief in "evil"?
No child automatically accepts this concept of "evil", and every child wonders when they hear it if it applies to them. Now BAD - we all get, immediately. Same as pets do. Can you imagine trying to teach your pet what "Evil" means though? Children have the same problem. This is why I said it is brainwashed into us. It's never explained, it is simply used as a mechanism for fear and guilt. Those accused of being "evil" lose all rights, they are dehumanised, associated with scaly "dark angels", and can be murdered with impunity.
"Evil" is what our enemies are, and "Enemies of the Church" - and now "Enemies of the State". It's a mindfuck TOOL.
Think of something "evil" in the natural world? If a wounded hungry lion eats a human because that's all they can catch, its not "EVIL!", we can understand its motives. Even though we don't like to be eaten. That's definitely bad.
Good versus bad is the basis for all morality. Throw "Evil!" in there, and you don't have morality anymore - you have amorality. As I said, I was programmed the same way. It took years to deprogram that one, and unpick its knots.
The only source of "Evil" is those who believe in it. THEY are the ones that act evil when they act upon that belief.
----
On the mining thing, I'm 50/50. I can see both sides. The old Nature religions also opposed all mining, they considered it harmful to the Mother Earth. Then they were wiped out or integrated by those culture who did smelt metals, and made weapons out of them.
On the other hand, a global population of say 100m so-smart-they're-dumbfuck upright monkeys would be able to mine for a VERY long time before they run out of resources, especially if the resources were seen as valuable and highly recycled, without an 'elite' producing 'wealth for themselves' with every ton mined. Are there energy technologies we haven't discovered yet too? Quite possibly.
Have you seen that video of Zimbabwean schoolchildren who met the UFO? It turned my scepticism in its head. Mass psychosis I can believe in, but those kids EXPERIENCED something. Google "Zimbabwean school children meet UFO", there's now tons of links (I saw a couple of good ones, but bookmarks lost recently). It's all based on the same material, but you know the varying quality of YT, lol.
It makes you wonder.
Oh hey, as an addendum, this is the trick Richard Bach gave in his novel to undermine that programming.
Think of some "evil" things. Now replace "...is evil" with "I don't like ....."
Unless you are odd, there will be a 100% match.
Why on Earth is this important? Because what you have done is subjectify the thought process.
If you spend but a few minutes on this thought experiment, you'll find your thinking changing. I used to meditate a lot, so spending a few minutes thinking was not a burden.
I have not been brainwashed.
'Evil' just means 'very bad'. A word, with limitations like all words.
No need to get hung up.
Do you think mass murders never happened before Zoroaster?
Well said. I like your explanation that the source of instability comes from two inter-related factors, the decline in natural resource availability and the purely human (mis)management of a very complex global economy. When both of those factors increase instability at the same time, dramatic changes can happen via extreme positive reinforcement cascades: tipping points.
I'm not in agreement however with your assertion that "shifting focus away from GDP growth and consumption, as well as decentralizing political power and reducing inequality could go a long way to reduce the strain on society and to prevent an abrupt collapse". This change in focus, urgently needed for the last century or so, is no longer a choice that any politician can make.
Highly urbanized, modern industrial countries have long ago wholly committed themselves to the present system. And even if they wanted to change things with all their heart, political leaders couldn't do much to help more than a token number of people escape the modern techno-industrialism of city life. People who live in cities are trapped there, cannot live anywhere else, and will suffer the consequences of collapse as an urbanite, always completely dependent on industrial supply chains for their very lives.
You have clearly explained the nature of the tipping points in those supply chains, which means that when it comes, it is likely that collapse will indeed be very abrupt. Store shelves might empty over days and weeks. This will be terrifying and people will panic and cast about for some way to escape, only to find that there is nowhere to go. Their lives will end where they now live.
Think ... cannibalism
The famine also gave rise to wild tales of murder, cannibalism and a black market trade in human flesh. The true extent of cannibalism in the Great Famine is unknown.
Nevertheless, some Russian academics have researched and catalogued examples of cannibalism and corpse eating, while American relief workers also observed these behaviours. Cannibalism was most common along the Volga River basin, in areas where the famine was most severe. Starving peasants there were observed digging up recently buried corpses for their flesh.
Accounts of murder or euthanasia – followed by butchery and feasting – were reported. One woman refused to give over the body of her dead husband because she was using it for meat. Parents and siblings ate the bodies of dead children.
As the death toll increased, an illegal trade in human flesh also emerged. Quantities of nondescript meat appeared in markets in Russian towns and cities, some of it undoubtedly human. An aid worker wrote of the situation in late 1921:
“Families were killing and devouring fathers, grandfathers and children. Ghastly rumours about sausages prepared with human corpses (the technical expression was ‘ground to sausages’) though officially contradicted, were common. In the market, among rough huckstresses swearing at each other, one heard threats to make sausages of a person.”
https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/great-famine-of-1921/
When the tipping point arrives.. 8B+ angry vicious starving humans.... will flood onto the streets... and there will be an orgy of violence... like the world has never seen
In the near future of declining fossil fuel resources, rapidly diminishing fresh water supplies, and worn out farmland, self sufficiency is going to be critical to the survival of countries and whole societies...e.g. NATO did Russia a favor by sanctioning food imports, so Russia began exploiting its own farmland and not only can feed itself, but is a leading wheat exporter...Japan and China import most of their food...that will diminish gradually, then suddenly, in the next decades..and I think their leaders are aware of this fact, and are little concerned about their diminishing fertility..
Europe, where unproductive immigrants have been imported to replace the natives, is most likely going to crash into the 18th century...with few fossil fuels left, and an accelerating energy crisis, the necessity of being supplied by Russia's vast energy resources will become all too obvious at some point...but what will Europe have left to trade?
In some obvious ways, however, the 18th century was a lot more civilized than the 20th century, and quite certainly a world population around 1 billion was preferable to the current 8 billion...