The Disgrace of Sacrificing a Generation

And the acidification of oceans, too.

I don’t know why, but 99% of Americans feel the gravy train is endless. We think they’re wrong. Culture and media aside, what does that say about human nature?

It’s either humans are a mindless ape or the small minority is very deluded. I hope I am deluded; )

In perusing the comments to articles in Salon and Slate tonight, which I feel is a pretty good proxy for non Tea Party literate Americans who have remained in the middle class, it is apparent that most all are neo liberals now. They firmly believe growth is simply a matter of choosing proper policies. They believe the EU is based upon and functions under democratic principals. They believe everything the NY Times and the administration say about Putin. Ooops, I mean Russia.

If most might be somewhat skeptical of these sorts of things viewed through a neo liberal lens in relation to how things function in the US on issues ranging from police power, voting rights, the banking giants or the environment, the moment they look offshore it’s all ‘America, we’re #1, We’re #1’!

The thing with Russia takes the cake however. The need to feel superior is as strong today as it was in 1957. In that regard the war there which we helped fomen and which none of them see as economic, is a move of pure genius to support the status quo.

I had a small restaurant across the street from the Oregon state University and just blocks from a big high school. I talked to hundreds of young people about all of this for years and but for a few exceptions they all absolutely refuse to accept that growth and the big “the world is my oyster” party is ending.

I believe that when ,and it is when they understand this simple fact they will not be happy. What they will do I have no idea but I suspect that it won’t be pretty.

By the way I cut my carbon foot print, which was never very much to begin with, in half 10 years ago. My two kids are dealing with it all in different ways but still a degree of denial.

Ilargi – the average person can’t even balance their bank book. They have absolutely no idea what’s coming and if they did, they’d get it all wrong anyway. And you can’t even call it IQ because, as we’ve seen over and over, highly educated idiots (economists/politicians/educators/scientists, etc.) do nothing but call for more and more growth to maintain or exceed the status quo. No mention of over-population, environment, ever. It’s just, “Hey, let’s get another Green Revolution going and we can crank this puppy back up.”

Just give them bread and circuses and watch the ants dance, and entice them with riches if they would only get that degree in whatever: geoengineering, law (we can never have enough lawsuits), finance (yay, more derivatives!), blah, blah. Dangle that granite in front of their noses so that they rush out with no money down and buy a house two, three or four times the price it should be, saddling them with debt, but bailing out the bankers and all who bought before them. We’ve just got to keep this Ponzi going!!!!!

In my travels around the blogosphere, I find that few really care. Someone can lay out compelling reasons why this has to stop, and the next person is asking how they can profit off of a particular turn in the markets or they’re cheering for whatever position they’ve cornered for themselves. They don’t appear to care what this is doing to people’s lives, families, the environment, just that they might profit. It’s actually sickening.

Everyone I talk to about what’s going on looks at me like I’m a freak. My own mother called me a “radical”. Because I see what’s going on and call them on it, I’m a radical. Well, so be it.

Do I think people’s views are going to turn around? Yeah, but on a slow boat to China. I do see more people talking about morality, the loss of kindness and being genuine, integrity. It will take time for people to see the nightmare that we have created.

I wonder how many people on here have children. I also wonder how many of our children actually really “admire” us for what we stand for.

Everybody above me:

Ken Barrows
lessof
rapier
Jef Jelten
jmackenzie
Raleigh

Gets it. Not a troll among us. To overcome the constant rain of denial propaganda remember we are not alone. We are not crazy or deluded. If enough others can begin to see things as they really are. If we spread the word. The day may come when ambivalent apprehension happens in people who don’t understand and embrace dignified sustainability. Then what will be accepted as normal will be reversed.

I think today’s essay may go a bit too far. Yes, people love their own children, but they do not share the same love for their children’s entire generation (or the generations that come after them). And its human nature for a sizable majority of humanity to overconsume, take on too much debt, and fail to plan for a rainy day.

I think we can pitch this idea that we are saddling the next generation with a huge debt burden they will never be able to work their way out of. Debts that cannot be paid will not be paid. Wealth that is stored in the form of debt will vanish overnight. Oh, the debts will be paid in nominal terms, but not in real terms. Hyperinflation as the grand finale of a deflationary collapse will solve a lot of problems. It will bring a few months of chaos, but all of that debt will vanish. So will standards of loving, but the debt in real terms will be gone.

Likewise I think the hype about peak oil and peak cheap energy is a bit overdone. Sure, energy will become a lot more expensive. But so what? People will adapt. Household budgets will adapt. Sure, people might spend 40% of their budget on energy, or even 80%, but that might still be better than trying to work the farm with a pair of oxen.

Sure, there will be chaos and upheaval in the years ahead. But life will go on, at least for some of us. For me the real question is whether our elites will deliberately cull the herd by bringing war or pandemic upon us to reduce the global population. If that happens who knows.

Raleigh, I don’t think there is much disagreement here, just a difference between the world the way it ought to be and the world as it is. As a result of original sin (in the eastern sense, not the Augustinian sense), the strong instinct in all of us is some variant of “me first” or “me and my family first” or “me and my country first” or “me and my — fill in the blank — first” and it takes work, real work, to overcome that instinct and collectively reach an agreement to set policy that puts something else first. Even when that something else is what we all need. Making things worse is that the psychopaths are the ones with the strongest lust for power, and it takes work for everyone else to keep them in check.

I recall something David Stockman said a few years ago: Austerity is not something people choose. “Austerity is something that happens to you when you’re broke.” That is the way the vast majority will experience the new reality we live in.

I do not mean to suggest that “hyperinflation, technology will take care of everything.” As I said, hyperinflation will destroy the standard of living of the great majority of people. However, there will be a silver lining, and that is that the debt will be gone. And that will be a good start. But will be go back to where we were before? No, I never meant to suggest that.

As for ebola? Sure, it might wipe out half of humanity. Unlikely, but possible. But in the end it is just a virus. If it becomes a priority, treatments will improve and the disease will be overcome. The sun will come up tomorrow!

There is much dis-order. We observe this in the great many cracks & cervices within the foundation of our arrangements.

Be it Economic, Social, Political… secular division is wide-spread.

Information is widely used to confuse, distract and delay. Rare is the moment of pure truth, fact perhaps, but even truths are shrouded in information that is quite likely leading or misleading,

Personally, my convictions are clung too – quite basic, fundamental truths of humanity and the universe we are within. The cacophony of surreal gestation I have witnessed in merely one generation places me squarely as an outsider to the present social construct of our culture and its attendant way of life.

Many here apparently have similar feelings.

It has been a lonely road for a great many years, although I do see many more wayfarers with each passing day.

Odd bobadi, not quite my uptake.

The “central issue” is far more likely our anthropology.

Wealth should be reward for one’s successful expression of energies and not systemic predation upon the beholden.

“Free Markets” do not exists – they did, they no longer do. Centralized & well organized reality programming is far more akin to our present arrangement.

There are a great many things wrong with our arrangements, a great many.

The blame can be shouldered by a great many participants for a great many actions and reactions.

Nothing appears to be functioning all that well, there are certain rights which should be held in high regard for humanity, they are not and it is not “Capitalism” which is to blame, it is each and every one of us who permitted this decidedly incongruent series of “Systems” to predate upon us all.

I would agree that “anthropology” certainly is key to understanding the central devastating issue of capitalism. What Social Darwinists miss is that capitalism and its destruction and waste is such as it has stepped outside our human evolution as a sustainable tribal species.
At that time, the pillars of the community, those respected and celebrated before the advent of the destruction of nature by agriculture were measured by the tribe in how much one could give freely and share with that tribe, which was wholly to the benefit of all. Notice how this has been reversed under capitalism? Our society is burdened by the usurper, the oligarch, the libertarian, taking to hoard as much “wealth” as possible for himself, and this has been the new paradigm for all of us; we now must hoard as much as possible in worries of our declining years or misstep, or face the curb as an outcast that we just don’t understand that we have already become. All of us are outcasts from one another, outcasts of nature, outcasts within the most ugly “society” imaginable, one that is a mockery of the word itself. “Capitalism” is more aptly described as a cancer on life, and obviously a terminal one as is being uncovered daily.