Debt Rattle June 25 2014: We Live in Our Own Past
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Harris & Ewing Kids, police motorcycles with sidecars, and streetcar, WashingtonDC 1922 I’m going to step into uncharted territory, a for lack of a be
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 25 2014: We Live in Our Own Past]Maybe the past wasn’t what we thought? Since “The Big One,” (Great Depression) and the conglomeration and control of media, a good portion of the last 80 years, media have been subject to authoritarian filtering of information. An Ed Bernays era, if you will.
Add constant revisionism, and the past becomes questionable. Enter the Internet Revolution, and even more questions arise re; what we think we know of history. An example? Would an intervention into Syria have been preventable in 1939? Don’t think so. We most likely would have been well entrenched there before the public had been privy to the info.
On sameness, alikeness, conformity and regimentation, these are symptoms of
collectivism. Variety requires a strong sense of individualism, something bureaucracy fears like a vampire fears garlic. Knowledge of the average human’s fear of stepping out of line is taken advantage of by political classes.And, as always, history is written by assorted victors, military and ideological, no?
Perhaps the World after the 30’s debacle really never regained it’s bearing. Maybe it’s institutions have been on a sort of life support ever since the rout? Might be what made the mass destruction and carnage of WWII even possible. Korea? Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan?
One diversion after another, to keep the game going another little while? And now, machinations becoming evident of another attempt at proving the “Broken Window Fallacy” false, OD Green equipment is piling up in military depots everywhere. Just need to refine
the consensus building apparatus a tad, and all this dangerous, anti social, liberty, rugged individualism talk will yield to nationalism and we can get the show on the road.“See, I think that perhaps the longer we insist on pretending this is our future, not our past”
My take on it is, not only can we not go back, I see it all as Evolution. Can’t really be stopped, and it can indeed be harsh at times. Entire species can be wiped out by it’s wrath. Sort of natures version of Joe Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction.”
And Man is not immune.
You make an interesting point. And I don’t think that it is crazy at all. Though as a practical matter we might be doing better if we really did live ernestly in our own past; in the past we were forced to live sustainable lives and as a rule were more aware of our surroundings.
These days, most of us live in a dream state, as if drugged. The drug of course is a toxic cocktail made of distraction media, corporate propaganda, government lies, stylized violence, and war. Whoever is drinking it ends up fogged over, self-deluded, detached from reality and yes essentially dead from the neck up. You can drink it for a day and end up drugged for a year, drink for a year and end up drugged for a decade. It doesn’t help that the cocktail is really, really tasty and highly addictive, nor does it help that most of us have been drinking it from birth.
IMO we in “the west” are not going to make it, not going to turn the corner. We’re toast. I limit my observation to “the west” because I don’t have any personal experience with the situation in Asia, Africa or S. America. However my guess is that everyone is so economically and politically entangled now that I can probably just say “we” and mean most of humanity — are not going to turn the corner.
But it is as you observe a self-limiting kind of problem. We will become less confused — and necessarily fewer — and we will become so shortly, is my sense.
c@
“For the rest of you, please tell me if you ever have the same feeling I do when you look around where you live, that you’re really looking at a society that has already died.”
Short answer: yes. I frequently find myself surprised at the fact that things are still humming along without a glitch: the supermarkets are still packed with a decadent choice of goods, whenever I want to fill up my gas tank, I merely need to pull over, and the ATM’s keep producing euros every single time I pull out and insert my BNP Paribas Maestro card.
And literally every single time I wonder: for how much longer? I mean this, literally every single time that depressing thought flashes through my mind. And I also wonder: all those people around me, are they really not aware of the predicament we collectively find ourselves in? Well, no.
But IMO our just in time economy will prove a deadly enemy when things suddenly spin out of control. And that is the only question that remains unanswered: when will this great disconnect manifest itself?I believe we are living in the perfect past that never actually was….a Warner Bros movie set constructed after WW II for the benefit of those industries and investors due for a major decline after the war time economy came to an end.
In the 70’s I listened to my coworkers as they embarked onmajor spending and investing sprees so they could hurry and catch up to the new middle class ..this tasty mirage they saw I front of them. It was fueled on the the bountiful overtime and newly available consumer credit. The boomers who are now so vilified really were stock players in a gigantic fake movie..
They and their children are in way too deep now to not keep up the pretense….even if they could see it as such.I can sympathize with your befuddlement. My orientation has generally been toward the energy component of the limits you describe. I remember driving down I-5 toward Seattle in the 70’s, looking at all the cars, each of which had an engine that 100 years earlier would have been able to power a small industrial facility, and thinking that this profligacy had to end in tears.
For me, the limits to growth have always been obvious. One big question, as you so clearly point out, is why so many fail to see the obvious? But a bigger question for me was, “What do I do about it?”
My wife and I are products of the post WW2 U.S. culture, so even though we made earnest attempts to conform our lives to the obvious, we were not psychologically able to go all the way to truly sustainable living circumstances. We lived in the country, grew and hunted food, and generally tried to become self-sufficient. I made a career in renewable energy research and development. We have powered our off-grid homes with solar and wood.
But despite this modicum of good, we were also hypocrites. We had two children, owned cars, worked for money, flew in airplanes. I always feel a sense of shame for that hypocrisy . We still live in the country and are still trying to become as self-sufficient as possible in anticipation of what must inevitably come, but we will always need to atone for our carbon-burning sins. Time to get away from this computer, wash the breakfast dishes and plant some more trees.
Yes, Ilargi, you are certainly correct. Inasmuch as we base our actions on our experience (probably not actually that much) we base it on the past–and things have always kind of worked out…
But a couple of things came to mind:
In my research on behaviour and the brain, I ran across someone who said, “Imagination is just memories of the future.”
But also, David Quammen’s Planet of Weeds.
This article, End of the Wild, references Quammen, and introduces Relic and Ghost species. I think this is where our culture is at–not humans as organisms, but our oilindustrial culture:
“Living on the margins in ever-decreasing numbers and limited spatial distribution are relic species. Relic species cannot thrive in human-dominated environments—which now nearly cover the planet. Facing the continual threat of extinction, relic species will linger in either ecologically marginalized populations (e.g., prairie dogs and elephants) or carefully managed boutique populations (e.g., pandas). Most, including the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), and virtually all of Hawaii’s endemic plants, will require for survival our permanent, direct, and heavy-handed management, including captive breeding and continuous restocking.
Other relics, such as rare alpine plants, may survive in isolated patches through benign neglect. Over time they will experience progressive genetic erosion and declining numbers, and will rapidly lose their ecological value. In essence, they will be environmental ornaments.
But a large fraction of the non-weedy species will not be fortunate enough to have special programs to extend their survival or will be incapable of responding to such efforts. These are the ghost species—organisms that cannot or will not be allowed to survive on a planet with billions of people. Although they may continue to exist for decades, their extinction is certain, apart from a few specimens in zoos or a laboratory-archived DNA sample.”
Hi Raul
I believe that we individually all wear the Emperors new clothes, we consent to the nakedness of others, so that our nakedness won’t be exposed. I would recommend reading “You are the Placebo” by Dr Joe Dispenza. A very brief summary – we get emotional (hormonally) addicted to our repetitive thoughts (i.e. the past), and once addicted, if the body doesn’t get its hormonal hit, it sends a request to the brain for the hormone, the brain can only produce the hormone if it repeats the associated repetitive thought, and so we become stuck in the past.
The book allowed me to come to the awareness of why people live in the past. If we are to avert disaster, it won’t be because of some grand societal plan, but because individually by saving ourselves (by being present) we become authentic and the authentic self doesn’t need to identify itself with objects (consumption). I would also suggest reading the below link:
Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren: A Hopeful Vision for Post-Occupy Humanity circa 1930
I would imagine that you might think quite differently about Keynes after reading this. For the record I think Keynes would disagree with most people who identify themselves as being Keynesian.
The only antidote for our malaise is to start rebuilding communities at the local level. The decades of centralization and propaganda have left our culture impoverished. Nothing on TV is worth watching and the vast majority of new books aren’t worth reading. The materialist lifestyle has been an escape in itself, but one that is very very hard to escape from. Everybody knows that, but the only thing that will change it on a wide scale is necessity. Sure, a few adventurous and forward-thinking souls might form communities like Atamai ecovillage or Finca Bellavista. But most of us are content to stay on the treadmill, eyes glued to the internet, shaking our heads and saying “Something is definitely wrong.” We know what we have to do, and we know what we will do when necessity pushes us. And when that happens, I think many will look back and say that it was all a change for the better.
Rebuilding our local communities will be like returning to our past, and in that sense I think Raul is onto something. It’s not really happening yet, though there is a growing consciousness that it needs to happen. My prediction for the future is the rise of more local secessionist movements, something reminiscent of the utopian communities of the 19th Century. But it will take time before these pick up momentum.
I would join or found one now, but am I really ready to leave my job? Nope. No way. Not yet. But when the collapse does come, I will embrace it, and I think it will be liberating. In 2008 when things started to collapse I thought that the system would reset, and I looked forward to it. Instead we got more can kicking and policy response was to drag things out slowly. For the last 6 years I feel like I have been living in a suspended time warp, and history seems to have slowed to a snail’s pace. Maybe that’s what you are talking about, Raul?
My grandmother lived through the depression. I asked her what it was like. She said it made no difference in her life. “We lived on a farm and we grew our own food, so we were not affected very much.” Of course many farmers were affected because of debt and falling crop prices. But for most people who lived on farms and who were not overleveraged, life went on as normal. When the collapse comes I will move back to the countryside, to the farm community where my wife’s relatives live. They grow their own food. They breathe clean air. They wake up to the sound of the bird chirping. They all know their neighbors.
It’s exactly what I need. But not yet.
Well with the future being generally painted as terribly bleak the past seems a natural enough safe haven. Yet as a college student in the mid 1960’s I remember quite a few writers that felt we were about to starve. I Remember “The Population Bomb”, by Paul Erhlich as my biggest influence. I also remember the hands on advice of Helen and Scott Nearing and their coaching us on do it yourself and grow your own food. Many did so at least for a few years. So combine these two into hope that something may come up roses again just like our former agricultural advances and that for now we can learn to live lean and deleverage. Of course one can still get a cheap loan as to interest and keep the consumption ball a rolling.
I am sometimes sympathetic to the ‘all that’s needed is more money’ crowd because the alternative it too terrible to imagine. Not that it actually would have to be terrible but most of the worlds peoples, cultures, societies and nations are organized around money and absent more and more of it there is no alternative but collapse. The result of which would lead to terrible suffering.
I am not aware of any history of human society beyond tribal groups (perhaps some?) that have offered an environment allowing most their basic needs that is free of a lot of physical hardship and suffering and violence and coercion and ignorance and the opportunity for let’s call it maximizing their potential before the current age of economics, and money. We do not live in some hell on earth and in fact there is probably less absolute privation and violence now than ever before in history.
It’s hard to lose sight of that when one becomes immersed in what might and probably will be going forward. Nicole always points out that the root of things is energy and that finance and economics is just part of the field on that ground. The more money/debt crowd have no cognizance of that so their views make some sense within the limits of a world of money. The dead hidden debt isn’t so bad compared to a world that would devolve into privation and violence without more and more money. (I am not sure this makes much sense)
The Modern Monetary Theory movement, which is putting lipstick on the idea that honest accounting of debt as an asset serves no good purpose, is sort of working. Still it’s good to study debt and I recommend Margret Atwood’s ‘Payback’ and David Graeber’s ‘Debt, The First 5000 Years’ to try and get a handle on how sooner or later the debts will have to be accounted for. In some sense I take the explosion of debt/money as an attempt to create a substitute for energy. The sad thing being this has lead to the insane project of burning as much as quickly as possible leading to an almost chicken or egg first dilemma in trying to find the cause of the coming troubles. Don’t be confused, it’s energy first. Money/debt is just making it worse, faster.
I do understand you point of view.
My mind works a litle different.
The world has changed and the easy way to create wealth exausted. The old theories and equations don’t work anymore. The companies will not have profits to employ people.
We need to stop doing statistics from the past events as the base for our future. We need to make an R&D about the current status of our society and project the future. Without it, we will see a road to nowhere to drive us. This is worriesome!
The lack o leaders will drive us to chaos.
The blind mind about the future will make no leaders.
But the entire society keep talking about the past.
Everybody is rejecting new theories.
I think the chaos will teach us about the necessity to discuss some new ideology.I think people are fearful of change, but rather than realize they are fearful, they just deny the truth to themselves. People seem to live in the past or the present, but seldom in the future (except for the short-term) because to many the mere thought of the future produces anxiety. It’s an unknown.
What makes me think of the future is the love I feel for my children. I want this beautiful planet we live on to continue to be beautiful for them. Instead, it seems we can’t ruin it fast enough.
We would rather be ruined than changed.
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
W.H. AudenLuckily, at lot of these problems are in our mind. No where else. Energy? Like our food supply, we must waste half of it driving to soccer games, plugging in vampire cubes (20% of grid load), heating and cooling rooms we don’t use, and so on. Just stop. And when the price is high enough, we will stop. Boom, done.
Food is something people fret about, but food production rises sharply with the addition of 1 human worker per acre. Most of our food is presently tractor-grown, so most of the acres (and the people) are available for more intensive handling. That’s not a threat, that’s a vast opportunity both for food production, and unemployment, and human meaning.
Heat and climate are the same. Here they despair over beach homes being destroyed. Hey, no kidding, right? Who saw that coming, raise your hand. Why did you build your home within sight of the water? And if every one of them vanished tomorrow, there are some 20M vacant homes in the US, not including homes that could fit 2 (or 3, or 4) families, vacant warehouses, commercial space and the like. The one thing the US has is way too much, idiotically, stupendously, hilariously too much enclosed usable space. Those houses should never have been built. Why would I care if they vanish as they should? Like much of America, they were “malinvestments” in energy-intensive infrastructure that will vanish. Now is as good a time as any to demolish them, sell of the pieces, and mock the builders of such mammoth hubris and waste in song and story for generations.
Similarly, the heat. So…which would you prefer on planet earth, a heat age or a cold age? So which grows more food? Heat, clearly. Previous wipeouts follow COLD, not heat, as in the little ice age and its failed crops. With heat, I suspect net-net MORE crops can be grown as we open up the vast north away from mere rye and into wheat, while in the south we transfer from corn to olives. Or oranges, or whatever. And speaking of that, we could also change WHAT we eat from low-yield (like wheat) to high-yield (like barley and rye). The issue is we don’t WANT to. We prefer for other men to go hungry instead, complain about them being lazy, and kill them. But that’s a social decision, not a physical one. Desertification is also an issue, but one provably solvable for decades now. Just no one bothers to do it. Then complains. It’s not the climate’s fault that men won’t grow the appropriate crops in the appropriate way when the information on it is available worldwide.
Conclusion: most of these problems are in our minds. Great!
Problem: most of these problems are in our minds. That’s why no one will solve them. Because, throughout history, if one thing has been true, it’s that people would rather die by the millions rather than change their minds and their ways.
But it’s a disservice to repeat scary stories about collapse, energy use, climate changes, etc, because THEY …. are not the problem. We are. That’s why we need to advertise solutions, not problems. Because only then does it become inescapable that we need to pick up a shovel and get to work.
Since you have links to Jay Hanson’s work on the home page, you probably already know this, but it is worth repeating. It takes a long time to adjust to a new reality. In the case of Hanson, he is mainly interested in energy. I’m also interested in energy, but more so food production.
After going about 15 years w/o much gardening activity, due to excessive shade, I moved to a new home and started gardening again. Despite having a decade of gardening experience in my distant past, it still took me about three years to really get up to speed again.
The next time you are out and about, make a conscious effort to peak into as many back yards as you can. This is particularly easy in newer subdivisions with few tall trees. Less than 5% have vegetable gardens. What are all these people going to do when food no longer comes from the supermarket, or the prices rise by 5 times relative to income?
You could ask similar questions about gasoline. It takes a long time to get into bike riding shape, especially if you are over weight. And we are an overweight country.
I often think that most or maybe all of us are sleepwalking through life. It may be that living in the past is part of the human condition. In my business we all proceed and plan as if the future will be the same as the past. Even more enlightened types of businesses run in the same manner. The problem is our optimistic projections are turning out to be further and further away from what is really happening. Thank you for your insights and your good work.
The future belongs to those who will have access to “free” energy.
Did that sentence capture your attention?
heheh
In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form.
NOW, don’t shoot the messenger.
Do a google search for “Images for conservation of energy examples”.Here are my examples of “free”. ( I expended little to no energy to get the benefits of the energy output.
Forms of energy
Type of energy Description
Kinetic (≥0), that of the motion of a body
Potential A category comprising many forms in this list
Mechanical data3=the sum of (usually macroscopic) kinetic and potential energies
Mechanical wave (≥0), a form of mechanical energy propagated by a material’s oscillations
Chemical that contained in molecules
Electric that from electric fields
Magnetic that from magnetic fields
Radiant (≥0), that of electromagnetic radiation including light
Nuclear that of binding nucleons to form the atomic nucleus
Ionization that of binding an electron to its atom or molecule
Elastic that of deformation of a material (or its container) exhibiting a restorative force
Gravitational that from gravitational fields
Intrinsic, the rest energy (≥0) that equivalent to an object’s rest mass
Thermal A microscopic, disordered equivalent of mechanical energy
Heat an amount of thermal energy being transferred (in a given process) in the direction of decreasing temperature
Mechanical work an amount of energy being transferred in a given process due to displacement in the direction of an applied forceIt can be dangerous to your health to be near a location that is transforming energy that you can use.
ie. watch out that what is coming down the cliff doesn’t hit you.
Oh yes, it takes a lot of time to change. One’s world as well as one’s mind.
But we knew this in 1971, 1979, 1987, 1994, 1999, 2001, 2008, and now. En masse, we did nothing then, and we do nothing now. When’s the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. Second best time: now.
My point is, if we did nothing in the Oil Embargo, what makes you think we’ll do anything now? And if we don’t, whose fault is it?
…Something about teaching pigs to sing.
“The future belongs to those who will have access to “free” energy.”
Yes, and there are many common place examples. For example, I’m building a permaculture project on an Appalachian hillside that is immediately down hill from a culvert pipe that directs water from washing out a gravel road. I have ‘free’ gravity powered irrigation water forever, at basically zero cost.
“My point is, if we did nothing in the Oil Embargo, what makes you think we’ll do anything now?”
Up until a few years ago, rising prices have been met with rising incomes. That is no longer happening. I’m in the ‘hyper inflation’ camp, but this is certainly an argument for deflation. Anyway, since incomes aren’t rising, price increases will be met with consumption decreases.
It is way too late to do anything now, on a national level. Save yourself.
Yes, Ilargi, I have had that feeling of looking out on our world as if through the eyes of memory, looking at a thing that was, but is dead. It is as if a future “me” is in my body, knowing what comes to pass, and looking out of my eyes at the tragedy, which does not yet know itself.
I first got the feeling in 2006, and I have it all the time now.Ilargi, this article touched me a lot, as you express exactly the feelings I’ve had for some time now – though you express them far more clearly.
This article brought me out of lurking. I have felt this way since 2010 when I was convinced Dec 2009 would be when ppl stopped holiday shopping. Everyday I go to work b/c I have to pay the bills, have family to support. I have been doing what I can to extricate ourselves from the system as much as possible but still the rent needs to be paid…
The past is the empty set.
Besides reminiscing, I do find myself dwelling on unresolved emotional issues there, but can never manage to change the past, or change the present by altering the past, because the temporal past contains no elements subject to gravitational potential (will), all such elements having been moved and configured into the present time by now, if not misallocated by melancholy.Conversely, The conceptual past is a useful device in moderation.
Interpersonal retrospection is essential for emotional and social understanding whereas learning necessitates remembering. Ethical and aesthetic conscience also requires proper awareness of moral memory.
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