- I wrote this a little while ago. It may show the struggle some of us go through trying to make sense of the present:150 STRONG: A PATHWAY TO A DIFFERENT FUTURE (By Rob O’Grady)“We all share a future with many challenges. The economic, environmental and social systems that sustain us are stressed, and an inevitable period of “the unfolding of consequences” is approaching. The headlines we read on climate change, wealth inequality, geopolitical instability and precarious financial arrangements, represent the realisation of structural flaws inherent in our current system, and it seems that there is little we can do to address these issues within the confines of our existing political and economic arrangements.”A SHAKY LOOK AT WORLD AFFAIRSOur social organization is too big to modify as a whole. The human race evolved in small bands, and prior to the age of agriculture, continued to live in small groups, rarely expanding beyond 150 people. (See Dunbar 150 strong).Society past the age of agriculture, starting some 10,000 years ago, began to be organized in bigger and bigger units that were increasingly complex, having to be managed by armies and organized governments. This was only possible to do with the help of surplus energy (beyond what the sun and biomass could supply). This energy came from slaves. Later, it came from coal. Later still, coal was supported by oil.Complex social organizations have come to depend on very complex financial systems too, banking and debt being prominent among them. But the financial and energy systems, being tightly interdependent, tend to prosper or decline in tandem. They use up natural resources like minerals, fisheries, wood and topsoil. They pollute the atmosphere. Finance, energy, natural resourced are all bonded together within a prevailing belief system that we call civilization. We have now come to the limit of what our civilization can sustain, especially at the quite unprecedented levels of human population (along with lifestyle) that has been increasingly exponentially and has doubled in the last 40 years alone.Something has to give.“Medical treatments for 90 year olds are favored, for example.” I surely agree. Keeping more people around longer will be highly appreciated by such people. It also ought to reduce drag for all kinds of care dispensed by the young for the old. It ought to cut down on contagion too. I could see a whole lot more telemedicine as well. We’re pretty much wasting the available technology. And I agree also that military spending ought to grow…mightily!
Artleads says:What about spending on the Internet? Ability to share information globally could be useful to a self organizing system. I would agree that the poor do not need housing or education expenditure. (A functioning Internet could be a major means of education.) .Neither the rich, IMO. There are a lot of old buildings left to rot. The rich could buy these and fix them up.- Artleads says:To a large extent, the poor never asked and don’t need to be in the boat. They can get by with nothing, providing obstacles aren’t put in their way. What people think the poor are and need is misguided. It might come from never having lived among them. A lot of who are called poor were doing OK on their own till greedy bas tards insisted on selling them things they never wanted or needed.
Fast Eddy says:If they didn’t want or need the stuff — why did they buy it?And if they didn’t buy the stuff …. there would be no jobs…. and we’d end up in a cyclonic disaster
Thanks heaven for greedy ba st ards… and human nature…. and little girls…..
- Fast Eddy says:Check out Soros Greenspan Adelson …. they look like talking corpses… how are these men still alive?If they were run over by a car the birds wouldn’t bother to try to pick the bones clean … there’s nothing but mummified skin and brittle bones there….Could it be that the wealthy are spending trillions on treatments that allow them to live to 150?Or is there some sort of pact with the devil going on here…..
- Your comment is awaiting moderation.Artleads says:
Intuition comes up again and says the situation isn’t hopeless for the continuation of civilization, that civilization is more likely than not to endure. Times aren’t worse for civilization than they’ve ever been; they’re merely different. That’s one way to look at it anyway, and people who scientifically study trends will assure you that we are at the end stage of civilization, owing to all the variables they have studied and measured. Intuition can’t give reasonable arguments against these findings; it can only assert that these are not ITS findings. Part of the trouble is the materialist outlook of Western civilization (civilization). This is a civilization that puts no value on beauty. And if it were to look it into the matter at all, it would do so based on its materialist premises. You can’t measure, weigh and calculate the qualities of beauty, and so, of course, it must be a meaningless and irrelevant.Africa is noted for producing brute strength, ignoring the fact that Africa’s is a civilization run on the energy-enhancing effect of rhythm. This is the premise of beauty. It doesn’t separate energy from aesthetics. Many of its products are energy enhancing and cultural.In the West, even the advocates for fossil fuel don’t think of it as beautiful. But why? There must be hundreds of types of natural and treated oil, and the transparent viscous liquid I put into my car is, to my mind, beautiful. It’s power to take me around is magical, awesome beyond words. If oil was seen and respected as beautiful, you might not have the craze for solar panels and all sorts of shiny so called renewable technology to replace it with. If oil was respected as beautiful it might be used with gratitude and care instead of taken for granted.Much of Western preoccupation is with material survival. But that point of view inevitably puts safety over beauty. And if you do that on a civilizational scale, you will dispense costly safety and security measures that could be avoided. You widen and straighten out roads that might be riskier but more beautiful left winding and adventurous. (The Brits were quite good with the winding ones; the Americans favor the other kind.) You invent all sorts of safety rules for housing, having nothing to do with beauty (or erroneously confusing them with beauty), which results in housing that too many find unaffordable. That puts so much strain on those many that they can’t buy the products of industry.And to top it all off, it might be better for civilization not to think about beauty, since it’s not something you can think your way through, and you end up believing it’s prettiness and all manner and types of trivia…which is a worse outcome. You’ll find beauty as much in a bombing blitz as in an art gallery. I guess it’s the fact that you can recognize it when you see it, and what value you place on that, which matters.
Intuition comes up again and says the situation isn’t hopeless for the continuation of civilization, that civilization is more likely than not to endure. Times aren’t worse for civilization than they’ve ever been; they’re merely different. That’s one way to look at it anyway, and people who scientifically study trends will assure you that we are at the end stage of civilization, owing to all the variables they have studied and measured. Intuition can’t give reasonable arguments against these findings; it can only assert that these are not ITS findings. Part of the trouble is the materialist outlook of Western civilization (civilization). This is a civilization that puts no value on beauty. And if it were to look it into the matter at all, it would do so based on its materialist premises. You can’t measure, weigh and calculate the qualities of beauty, and so, of course, it must be a meaningless and irrelevant.
Africa is noted for producing brute strength, ignoring the fact that Africa’s is a civilization run on the energy-enhancing effect of rhythm. This is the premise of beauty. It doesn’t separate energy from aesthetics. Many of its products are energy enhancing and cultural.
In the West, even the advocates for fossil fuel don’t think of it as beautiful. But why? There must be hundreds of types of natural and treated oil, and the transparent viscous liquid I put into my car is, to my mind, beautiful. It’s power to take me around is magical, awesome beyond words. If oil was seen and respected as beautiful, you might not have the craze for solar panels and all sorts of shiny so called renewable technology to replace it with. If oil was respected as beautiful it might be used with gratitude and care instead of taken for granted.
Much of Western preoccupation is with material survival. But that point of view inevitably puts safety over beauty. And if you do that on a civilizational scale, you will dispense costly safety and security measures that could be avoided. You widen and straighten out roads that might be riskier but more beautiful left winding and adventurous. (The Brits were quite good with the winding ones; the Americans favor the other kind.) You invent all sorts of safety rules for housing, having nothing to do with beauty (or erroneously confusing them with beauty), which results in housing that too many find unaffordable. That puts so much strain on those many that they can’t buy the products of industry.
And to top it all off, it might be better for civilization not to think about beauty, since it’s not something you can think your way through, and you end up believing it’s prettiness and all manner and types of trivia…which is a worse outcome. You’ll find beauty as much in a bombing blitz as in an art gallery. I guess it’s the fact that you can recognize it when you see it, and what value you place on that, which matters.
Work gets divided up into so many smaller units that the industry as a whole may better withstand hard times.
At some levels of culture, there are female societies and male societies that have complementary roles. And I'm looking for ways to apply such cultural forms to living today.
As to whether abortions should be legal or not, it shouldn't concern men. Men should have no voice inh the matter, and it could suggest that voting by gender on issues that are gender specific. Men don't bear children.
Repairs with materials that show, therefore turning restoration into art
USE LESS ENERGY
REPAIR SOCIETY
HAPPINESS INVERSE TO AMERICAN DREAM
EXTERNALITIES AND MARKET FAILURE
INADEQUATE INFORMATION
is a not as top down
top down needed for nuclear management, energy supply (to whom?) and basic order--contagion, loss of workers, etc.
the south needs less energy than the north
Enabling free flow of information is not the strength of top down, probably military governance
need for a program dedicated to protecting free flow of information
basic order includes a sophisticated and minimalist health care system that is heavily dependent on prevention, telemedicine and local control
social media connection for exchange of information
Need for council of women who must have veto [power over top down government order
women must be equally represented within all leverage areas of power
women must control their reproductive functions
women must serve in equal numbers in military/top down power structure
no top down intervention in housing, food, education--these must be locally provided to suit local conditions, and they don't have to cost money.
clarify what basic industrial functions are needed and support them (how? who?)
cardboard to be the basic industrial material
no demolition or discontinuity --keep the energy flow going
it will help if the poor and local governance model the future initially.
the aspirations of African liberation and colonial cultural heritage need to be united.
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