"This year’s Earth Day in Ashland, Oregon, where I live, featured an interfaith service at the local Unitarian church, and I wasn’t too surprised to get a call inviting me to be one of the presenters.”
That was the opening sentence of the first post ever to appear on The Archdruid Report, Real Druids, which went up ten years ago this Friday. When I typed those words, I had no clear idea of what I was going to do with the blog I’d just started. The end of the publishing industry I wrote for in those days was just then waking up to the marketing potential of author blogs; I was also in the third year of my unpaid day job as head of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), a small and old-fashioned Druid order distinctly out of step with the pop-culture Neopaganism of the time, and hoped to use a blog to bring the order to the attention of anyone out there who might be interested in something so unfashionable.
So I sat down at the computer, logged into my Blogger account, clicked on the button marked new post, and stared blankly at it for a while before I started to type. That, as they say, is how it all began.
In terms of the perspectives with which this blog deals—the grand sweep of human history, and the much vaster sweep of geological and evolutionary deep time—ten years is less than an eyeblink. In terms of a single human life, though, it’s a considerable span. Over that period I’ve moved from Ashland to Cumberland, Maryland, the red-brick mill town in the north central Appalachians where I now live. My writing career has burgeoned since then, too, helped along considerably by the two novels and nine nonfiction books that started out as sequences of blog posts.
My other career, the unpaid one mentioned above, also went through plenty of changes—if any of my readers ever have the opportunity to become the presiding officer of a nearly defunct Druid order and help it get back on its feet, I certainly recommend the experience! Still, twelve years in the hot seat was enough, and at the winter solstice just past I stepped down as Grand Archdruid of AODA with a sigh of relief, and handed the management of the order over to my successor Gordon Cooper.
There have been plenty of other changes over the last ten years, of course, and quite a few of them also affected The Archdruid Report. One that had a particularly significant impact was the rise, fall, and resurgence of the peak oil scene. Most of a decade before that first post, a handful of people—most of them petroleum geologists and the like—noticed that oil was being pumped much more quickly than new oilfields were being discovered. Now of course this turn of events had been predicted in quite a bit of detail well before then; back in the 1970s, in particular, when the phrase “limits to growth” hadn’t yet become taboo in polite company, plenty of people noticed that trying to extract an infinite supply of oil from a finite planet was guaranteed to end badly.
That awareness didn’t survive the coming of the Reagan counterrevolution. More precisely, it survived only on the far fringes of the collective conversation of our time, where the few of us who refused to drink Ronnie’s koolaid spent most of two decades trying to figure out how to live in a civilization that, for all intents and purposes, seemed to have succumbed to a collective death wish. Still, our time in exile didn’t last forever. It was 1998, as I recall, when I found the original Running On Empty email list—one of the first online meeting places for people concerned about peak oil—and I stayed with the movement thereafter as it slowly grew, and the rising tide of data made the case for imminent peak oil harder and harder to dismiss out of hand.
Two books published in the early 2000s—Richard Heinberg’s The Party’s Over and James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency—helped launch the peak oil movement into public awareness. Not incidentally, those were also the books that convinced me that it might just be possible to talk frankly about the predicament of industrial society: not just peak oil, but the broader collision between the economic ideology of limitless growth and the hard realities of a fragile planet. The Archdruid Report came out of that recognition, though I thought at first that its audience would be limited to the Druid community; I figured that people who had embraced Druid nature spirituality might be more open to the kind of intellectual heresy I had in mind. The blog turned out to have a much broader audience than that, but it took me quite a while to realize that, and longer still to recognize its implications.
Meanwhile the peak oil movement hit its own peak between 2008 and 2010, and began skidding down the far side of its own Hubbert curve. That’s standard for movements for social change, though it was probably worsened by the premature triumphalism that convinced many peakniks that once they’d proved their case, governments had to do something about the impending crisis, and that also led some large peak oil organizations to spend money they didn’t have trying to run with the big dogs. At this point, as the fracking bubble falters and the economy misbehaves in ways that conventional economic theory can’t account for but peak oil theory can, the bottom has likely been reached, and a much shorter period of exile is duly ending. Talk about peak oil in the media and the political sphere is picking up again, and will accelerate as the consequences of another decade of malign neglect bear down with increasing force on the industrial world.
One of the things I find most interesting about this trajectory is that it didn’t impact The Archdruid Report in the way I would have expected. During the years when the peak oil movement was all over large portions of the internet, my monthly page views and other site stats remained fairly modest. It wasn’t until 2010, when the peak oil scene was beginning to falter, that my stats started to climb steadily; my first breakout all-over-the-internet post came in 2011, and thereafter readership has remained high, wobbling up and down around an average of a quarter million page views a month. All ten of my top ten posts, in terms of total unique page views, appeared between 2011 and this year. On the off chance my readers are interested, here they are:
1. Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush, June 30, 2012
2. Donald Trump and the Politics of Resentment, January 20, 2016
3. How It Could Happen, Part One: Hubris, October 3, 2012
4. How Not to Play the Game, June 29, 2011
5. An Elegy for the Age of Space, August 24, 2011
6. The Next Ten Billion Years, September 4, 2013
7. Into an Unknown Country, January 2, 2013
8. Fascism and the Future, Part Three: Weimar America, February 26, 2014
9. The Recovery of the Human, February 1, 2012
10. The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem, April 29, 2015
(I discovered in the process of making this list, by the way, that the Blogger gizmo for tracking all time top posts doesn’t actually do what it’s supposed to do. Like so much of the internet, it provides the illusion of exact data but not the reality, and I had to go back over the raw numbers to get an accurate list. My readers may draw their own conclusions about the future of a society that increasingly relies on internet-filtered information as a source of guidance.)
None of these posts are only about peak oil, or even about peak energy. You’ll find references to the hard physical and geological limits of the energy resources available to our species in most of them, to be sure, and quite a few detailed discussions of those limits and their implications among the other 489 posts that have appeared here in the last decade. That said, those limits aren’t quite central to this blog’s project. They derive, like the other common themes here, from something else.
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer noted that his treatise The World as Will and Representation, massive though it is, was simply the working out of a single idea in all its ramifications. The same is true of this blog, though I’m an essayist and novelist rather than an analytical philosopher, and thus my pursuit of the idea I’m trying to pin down has been somewhat more discursive and rambling than his. (I make no apologies for that fact; I write the way I like to write, for those who like to read it.) Not all ideas can be summed up in a few words or a snappy slogan. In particular, the more thoroughly an idea challenges our basic preconceptions about the nature of things, and the more stark the gap between its implications and those of the conventional wisdom, the more thoroughly and patiently it must be explored if it’s going to be understood at all.
Even so, there are times when an unexpected turn of phrase can be used, if not to sum up a challenging idea, at least to point in its direction forcefully enough to break through some of the barriers to understanding. Thanks to one of my readers—tip of the archdruidical hat to Mgalimba—I encountered such a turn of phrase last week. That came via a 2014 talk by cutting-edge thinker Donna Haraway, in which she challenged a currently popular label for the geological period we’re entering, the Anthropocene, and proposed her own coinage: the Cthulhucene.
She had specific reasons for the proposal, and I’d encourage my readers to see what she had to say about those, but I have somewhat different reasons for adopting the term. H.P. Lovecraft, who invented the squid-faced, dragon-winged, monster-clawed devil-god Cthulhu for one of his best stories, used that being and the other tentacled horrors of his imaginary pantheon to represent a concept as alien to the conventional thought of industrial society as the Great Old Ones themselves. The term Lovecraft used for that concept was “indifferentism”—the recognition that the universe is utterly indifferent to human beings, not sympathetic, not hostile, not anything, and that it’s really rather silly of us, all things considered, to expect it to conform to our wishes, expectations, or sense of entitlement.
Does this seem embarrassingly obvious? The irony, and it’s a rich one, is that most people nowadays who insist that the universe is indifferent to humanity turn around and make claims about the future that presuppose exactly the opposite. I’ve long since lost track of the number of committed atheists I’ve met, for example, who readily agreed that the universe is indifferent to our desires, but then insisted there has to be some other energy resource out there at least as cheap, concentrated, and abundant as the ones we’re currently using up. That claim only makes sense if you assume that the supplies of matter and energy in the cosmos have somehow been arranged for our benefit; otherwise, no, there doesn’t have to be any other resource out there. We could simply use up what we’ve got, and then have to get by without concentrated energy sources for the rest of the time our species happens to exist.
That’s far from the only example of stealth anthropocentrism I’ve encountered in the same context. I’ve also long since lost track of the number of committed atheists who reject the idea of a caring cosmos out of hand, but then go on to claim that technological progress of the kind we’ve made is irreversible. That claim only makes sense if you assume that history is somehow arranged for our benefit, so that we don’t have to worry about sliding back down the long slope we climbed so laboriously over the last five centuries or so. If history is indifferent to our preferences, by contrast, the way down is just as easy as the way up, and decline and fall waits for us as it did for all those dead civilizations in the past.
Then there’s the most embarrassing claim of all, the devout insistence that humanity’s destiny lies out there in space. “Destiny” is a theological concept, and it’s frankly risible to find it being tossed around so freely by people who insist they’ve rejected theology, but let’s go a step further here. If the universe is in fact indifferent to our wishes and desires, the mere fact that a certain number of people have gotten worked up over science-fiction visions of zooming off toward the stars does not oblige the universe to make space travel a viable option for our species. There are in fact very good reasons to think that it’s not a viable option, but you won’t get many people to admit that these days. We (or, rather, some of us) dream of going to the stars, therefore it must be possible for us to go to the stars—and before you claim that human beings can achieve anything they can imagine, dear reader, I encourage you to read up on the long history of attempts to build a working perpetual motion machine.
I’ve picked on atheists in these three examples, and to some extent that’s unfair. It’s true that most of the really flagrant examples of stealth anthropocentrism I’ve encountered over the last ten years came from people who made quite a point of their atheism, but of course there’s no shortage of overt toxic anthropocentrism over on the religious side of things—I’m thinking here of those Christian fundamentalists who claim that Christ is coming soon and therefore it doesn’t matter how savagely we lay waste a world they themselves claim that God made and called good. I’ve met atheists, to be fair, who recognize that their belief in the absence of purpose in the cosmos implies that no providence will protect us from the consequences of our own stupidity. I’ve also met religious people who recognize that the universe defined by their beliefs is theocentric, not anthropocentric, and that human beings might therefore want to cultivate the virtue of humility and attend to the purposes that God or the gods might have in mind, rather than assuming in blithe arrogance that whatever humanity thinks it wants, it ought to get.
The dawn of the Cthulhucene represents the arrival of a geological period in which those latter ways of understanding the world will be impossible to ignore any longer. We are beginning to learn no matter how hard we scrunch our eyes shut and plug our ears and shout “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” to the rest of the universe, the universe is not going to give us what we want just because we want it: that the resources we waste so cluelessly will not be replaced for our benefit, and we will have to face every one of the consequences of the damage we do to the planetary biosphere that keeps us alive. In place of the megalomaniacal fantasy of Man the Conqueror of Nature, striding boldly from star to star in search of new worlds to plunder, we are beginning to see a vast and alien shape rising before us out of the mists of the future, a shape we might as well call Cthulhu: winged, scaled, tentacled, clawed, like a summary of life on earth, regarding us with utterly indifferent eyes.
In those eyes, we balding social primates are of no more importance in the great scheme of things than the trilobites or the dinosaurs, or for that matter the countless species—intelligent or otherwise—that will come into being long after the last human being has gone to join the trilobites and dinosaurs in Earth’s library of fossil beds. The sooner we grasp that, the easier it will be for us to drop the misguided anthropocentric delusions that blind us to our situation, wake up to the mess we’ve made of things, and get to work trying to save as many of the best achievements of the last three hundred years or so before the long night of the deindustrial dark ages closes in around us.
Given that the universe is simply not interested in pandering to the fantasies of omnipotence currently fashionable among influential members of our species—given that no special providence is going to rescue us from the consequences of our assorted stupidities, no resource fairy is going to give us a shiny new energy source to make up for the resources we now squander so recklessly, and the laws of nature are already sending the results of our frankly brainless maltreatment of the biosphere back in our faces with an utter lack of concern for our feelings and interests—how should we then live? That’s the theme that I’ve been trying to explore, in one way or another, since this blog got under way. It’s a vast theme, and one that I haven’t even begun to exhaust yet. I have no idea if I’m still going to be blogging here ten years from now, but if not, it won’t be due to lack of things to talk about.
323 comments:
I wanted to congratulate you on the 10th anniversary of this blog. As a reader once commented: "I barely find enough time to read all of your output, I wonder how you manage to find the time to write it." I wanted to take a moment to reflect and to tell you about the influence your writing has had on my life.
I have made my way through both of the worldviews so often discussed on this blog. In my teenage years I was certain about Humanity's destiny among the stars. I was enthralled by Ray Kurzweil's book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. I was convinced that by now I would have been part machine and on my way to be uploaded on to a computer to live my life in eternal bliss.
In my early twenties I flipped over to the apocalypse narrative and lived in perpetual anxiety that "TEOTWAWKI" (The end of the world as we know it) would come any day and tip the world into chaos. During this period I spent all my free time reading doomer blogs and "prepping".
At some point during this time I came across a book by Jacob Lund Fisker called Early Retirement Extreme. This book is what economist Tyler Cowen calls a “quake book.” It completely changed how I lived my life and how I saw the world. I started reading Jacob's blog and one day he wrote a post about The ecotechnic future and early retirement extreme. This is how I first stumbled across the Archdruid Report.
Down the rabbit hole I went.
I consider your writings on this blog the second quake book of my life. Through your writings I have changed the way I view the world. And as you have said I have also changed how I live my life.
I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you. Seeing the ebb and flow of the world's events though the lens of history has given me a sense of calm that I did not have before. Living with L.E.S.S. has put into action a conviction that I have long held, deep down. I have started trying to document this process on my blog. In the hopes of fostering community I have started a Green Wizard's group here in Australia, which has been more successful than I expected and demonstrates the reach of your writings.
Please use some of the beer that has been brewed for the 4 horsemen to toast yourself on this success.
As always, I look forward to this week's Archdruid report.
Marcu
5/4/16, 6:08 PM
Damaris Zehner said...
5/4/16, 6:19 PM
pygmycory said...
5/4/16, 6:28 PM
Pinku-Sensei said...
"Then there’s the most embarrassing claim of all, the devout insistence that humanity’s destiny lies out there in space."
Some of your readers might find it ironic that you posted this today, Star Wars Day, which is as much dedicated to the idea of a future (actually a past, but never mind that) in space, no matter how fantastic. However, I've found an appreciation of irony is necessary to get through life. Besides, there are things that Star Wars can teach us, even if they belong on your other blog.
"[W]e balding social primates are of no more importance in the great scheme of things than the trilobites or the dinosaurs, or for that matter the countless species—intelligent or otherwise—that will come into being long after the last human being has gone to join the trilobites and dinosaurs in Earth’s library of fossil beds."
That's almost exactly the example I use to drive home to my students the logical result of accepting an ecosystem-centered environmental viewpoint looks like. We are not going to save the planet. If we're lucky and careful, the planet might save us--for a while. Having started my scientific career as a paleontologist, I can come to no other intellectually honest conclusion.
"Given that the universe is simply not interested in pandering to the fantasies of omnipotence currently fashionable among influential members of our species...how should we then live?"
So you've discovered that your blog is a discursive meditation on philosophy in an age of limits. I like that. May you continue your exploration of that theme for at least another decade!
5/4/16, 6:28 PM
Joel Caris said...
So again, thank you and congratulations. I definitely hope for another ten years!
5/4/16, 6:29 PM
Doctor Westchester said...
Congratulations on the ten year anniversary of ADR. I found your blog in late 2008 or early 2009. It has been a beacon of sanity in what sometimes seems an insane world.
In honor of the creature that the title of this post refers to and for those of us who stoop to using Facebook, but are tired funny cat pictures, I offer something a bit more tentacled - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154063744880842&set=a.10150373340620842.371156.524530841&type=3&theater
5/4/16, 6:33 PM
latheChuck said...
5/4/16, 6:34 PM
Cathy McGuire said...
P.S. - Who're you calling "balding"?? "Receding", yes... pretty much everything is receding (including mind) except my hips. LOL!
5/4/16, 6:36 PM
Karl K said...
5/4/16, 6:36 PM
DaShui said...
ADJMG,
Even Before Lovecraft, Crane discovered the Cthulhucene
A Man Said to the Universe
BY STEPHEN CRANE
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
5/4/16, 6:43 PM
whomever said...
Meanwhile, reality keeps intruding. The middle east keeps collapsing; I haven't seen this published much in the US, but there are riots among guest workers in Saudi Arabia: http://www.arabnews.com/news/saudi-binladin-workers-burn-company-buses-makkah
5/4/16, 6:45 PM
Degringolade said...
Cthulhucene
That says it all.
Thank you so much.
5/4/16, 6:45 PM
Bruno B. L. said...
It was in 2012. I'm Brazilian, but at the time I was living in California, studying in Berkeley. It was a summer program, the kind of thing I did abroad, from my 18th year of life to my 26th. I was 26, so it was going to be the last one. I was taking, amongst other things, a class in Energy and Environment. I had a paper to do about - you guessed it - peak energy. I googled a few things, and eventually your blog showed up. I don't remember exactly which article drew my attention first, but it had to do with nuclear energy. As I found your thoughts extremely interesting, I spent a whole night of mid-July reading your entire blog. When I went to sleep, it was one or two hours before sunrise. I've been a regular reader ever since - never missed a single post, although I do not comment very often.
Now, as for changes the knowledge acquired through your writings made me do, well, there were some. A particularly small one, which somehow I find important, was that I no longer find cars - motorized vehicles - interesting anymore. They were a passion for me since my childhood - I learned how to read through car magazines - but no more. It was as if a spell has been dispelled. Another change is how I regard nowadays the sheer amount of energy, resources and waste my chosen profession, medicine, is responsible for using and generating. I regard as one of my main objectives on this life finding a way to make anesthesia - my area of practice - sustainable in a deindustrial world.
That was all I had to say, I guess. Thanks for reading. Keep up the good work!
5/4/16, 6:46 PM
Graeme Bushell said...
I'm sure I echo the sentiments of many here when I say that your blog is keenly anticipated each week, and possibly THE most rewarding corner of the internet. Certainly the most consistently so.
Congratulations on a prolific and much appreciated ten years. You have genuinely changed my perspective - that's some powerful magic you're wielding there!
In answer to your query last week as to whether I would be crunching the numbers on global poverty ranking, I suspected you would ask that, and yes, I will be. I'm developing some ideas on what to do, but life being what it is I'm unable to offer any kind of delivery date on that. I'll no doubt write it up as a blog post when I'm done.
Thanks again for your your insights and delightful prose.
Cheers,
Graeme
5/4/16, 6:49 PM
JimK said...
5/4/16, 6:50 PM
Eric Backos said...
On behalf of the members of Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association, Tower Number 440, and Ruinmen’s Guild, Local 440, may I congratulate you on your remarkable success in publishing The Archdruid Report for an entire decade. We also desire to extend to you and yours the very best of good wishes for the future.
Sincerely
Eric R. Backos
5/4/16, 6:56 PM
Ray Wharton said...
Maybe this is a product of my youth, or maybe it is something of disposition, and maybe it is a general trait, but I find that the more I explore a thought, the more surprisingly it transforms.
5/4/16, 6:56 PM
Eric Backos said...
On behalf of the members of Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association, Tower Number 440, and Ruinmen’s Guild, Local 440, may I congratulate you on your remarkable success in publishing The Archdruid Report for an entire decade. We also desire to extend to you and yours the very best of good wishes for the future.
Sincerely
Eric R. Backos
5/4/16, 6:56 PM
Rosalie O'Leary said...
5/4/16, 6:59 PM
Blogger profile said...
5/4/16, 6:59 PM
talus wood said...
5/4/16, 7:02 PM
Paulo said...
5/4/16, 7:03 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
Thank you for these posts the last ten years. I'm a newcomer to this little community, but I like what I see. I enjoy reading this blog, and although I disagree with some of it, there has never been anything that failed to make me think.
However, here comes a complaint: I'm a little disappointed that the Heresy of Technological Choice did not make the list of top ten posts. Personally, I found it resonated very much with my experiences, especially the "you can't go back" aspect. When I tried to get rid of my Facebook account, my friends lost it: "How we going to plan and keep in touch with you?!" I got it back and started using it again because the effort to do without is not worth the personal costs of irritation from people just yet.
The irony is I had a cellphone. Now that I'm planning to get rid of my cellphone, same thing. I wonder if they realize how strange it is to feel the need to have multiple ways to get in touch with people. Personally, I'd like to keep my methods of communication to one source: having more things to check is a pain I'd rather do without.
Likewise, I don't want air conditioning. I'd rather hot humid air than stale, synthetic, reprocessed air. Nor a microwave: food cooked with a stove or oven tastes far better to me, so it is worth the time.
To the extent this comes up, I'm regarded as eccentric, a harmless eccentric most of the time, but sometimes interesting responses come up. I've been accused of judging people because I personally don't like my phone. Apparently people think I'm judging their phone use because I don't like it. I'm also surprised with all the people who bring up worst case scenarios and then claim "That's why you need a phone!" My personal favorite, was "What if you're mugged and lose your wallet and bus pass?"
However, the most irritating thing is that even when other people make comments like "Well there goes any way to contact you," (someone who has my facebook, email, and lives a few minutes from me), and I then point this out, I'm the crazy emotional angry person. I'm beginning to think it may be more work to figure out how to deal with people's reactions to my heresy than to adjust to not having a phone again.
Sorry for the rant, but I figure it will go over much better here than most other places.
5/4/16, 7:04 PM
GawainGregor said...
Gawain
5/4/16, 7:07 PM
John the Peregrine said...
Congratulations on maintaining this project for 10 years. That must have involved a lot of grueling work and delayed gratification along the way. Did you ever have moments of doubt or discouragement? Speaking as a chronic procrastinator, I often start up a project, fired up about the possibilities, only to realize the amount of work I'll have to do to make any progress, and then I abandon it, until the next project attracts my attention, and the cycle repeats itself. How have you managed to remain so focused on your work for so many years?
5/4/16, 7:18 PM
Yupped said...
fwiw Collapse Now and Avoid The Rush was my favorite post. And Wealth of Nature is my favorite of your books, although Star's Reach is a close second. And, also fwiw, yours is one of only 2 blogs that I continue to read, from the probably dozens that I browsed through regularly in the 2000s. It turns out that one of things that I much have LESS time for now is the Internet.
Thanks for everything, and let us all hope that you are here to write the next retrospective in 2026. Unless the Donald snags you for the VP slot.
5/4/16, 7:19 PM
Jeff BKLYN said...
5/4/16, 7:21 PM
fudoshindotcom said...
You've pointed out a phenomenon I encounter everywhere, namely the frankly ridiculous belief that evolution somehow came to a screeching halt with modern Man. How a reasonable, intelligent person could convince themselves of this fallacy or blind themselves to the glaringly obvious fact that it did not is beyond me. When pointing this out in conversation one common response is a frozen, glassy-eyed stare as if they'd received a bell-ringing physical blow. It's entertaining to watch the wheels turn as they grapple with an undeniable truth they are absolutely unwilling to accept.
Along the same lines. I watched an interview with Ted Turner in which he discusses his notion that we will face a dark future in 30-40 years if we don't reduce population. He goes on to say, " The rest of us will be cannibals living amidst the rubble." Interesting that he believes himself to be one of the survivors still alive in another four decades given that he's north of seventy now. Apparently money can buy immortality. Who knew?
5/4/16, 7:24 PM
steve pearson said...
I guess I have been following the blog for the entire 10 years.JMG, did Adam's Journey (I think I have the name right) come before you started the blog or after?
Thanks again.
Cheers,Steve
5/4/16, 7:27 PM
FLwolverine said...
I'm very interested in what you have to say about how to live in this world. It's hard work to keep the blinders off and to keep reality in focus, but what's next? (That's sort of rhetorical - I know you have provided suggestions, such as Collapse Now........)
5/4/16, 7:29 PM
Quietfox said...
Please continue your efforts, although I may have quibbles about some of the minor details of what you present, the premise of your writings are entirely sound in my opinion.
Not certain my previous comment will make it, can't get the technology to do things the way I would want. Clearly 30 plus years playing/working with computers must mean I am not capable. Bye the bye, your views on the future of the internet are bang on.
Quietfox
5/4/16, 7:31 PM
Darren Urquhart said...
I have to admit I declined to click on links to the "Archdruid Report" for a couple of years just on account of the name. Druids? No thanks.
The first time I climbed down of my high horse and actually read an essay I was hooked. Every Thursday (Australian time) I navigate to your site and start hitting refresh on the browser until the new post appears.
Thanks JMG for the time and effort. If you have been engaging in magic, it certainly worked on me.
5/4/16, 7:31 PM
Peter VE said...
5/4/16, 7:36 PM
Unknown said...
5/4/16, 7:38 PM
casamurphy said...
5/4/16, 7:41 PM
Clay Dennis said...
5/4/16, 7:44 PM
beetleswamp said...
5/4/16, 7:46 PM
M said...
5/4/16, 7:50 PM
Grebulocities said...
The discussion of peak oil reminds me of a question I have for you and everybody else: what would happen if the EROEI of available fuels fell to something like 3-6? It seems to me that there is a very large amount of petroleum (loosely defined to include tar sands) and coal available for those sorts of returns. If industrial society can be made to work at those sorts of EROEI values, the damage we're doing may just be beginning and Hubbert's curve may have a very long tail. That sort of EROEI is possible from renewables as well even in a whole-system sense - they can't compete with is high EROEI fossil fuels, but tar sands may be another matter.
Obviously one consequence of that would be that our energy extraction infrastructure would have to take in 1/6 to 1/3 of all the energy we use, far more than it does today. Energy prices would be high (and fluctuating wildly) relative to economic output, which would provide major headwinds. But how does that cause industrial society to fall apart, rather than just growing an enormously bloated energy sector and keep chugging along at a roughly steady state? Are there any sources that give some constraints for how low EROEI can go, and what happens when it goes too low?
I'm trying to get some idea of how long scarcity industrialism might last and how much marginal fossil fuel we might blow through. I don't know of any good reason that scarcity industrialism can't just keep clunking along at a long-term growth rate of something like 0, not growing as it did during the golden age of the mid-20th century but not collapsing either, until it's so utterly devastated the planet that it can no longer support itself at all, which might take on the order of 100-500 years.
5/4/16, 7:50 PM
Compound F said...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfHNIe6vIHM
5/4/16, 7:51 PM
Mark Roe said...
5/4/16, 7:59 PM
foodnstuff said...
5/4/16, 8:00 PM
avalterra said...
Also - damn you may be right about Trump. I still hold that Hilary beats him in the end but I am definitely having my doubts!
AV
5/4/16, 8:05 PM
Clay Dennis said...
I had an experiance over the weekend that relates more to the last couple of your posts than this one. I was attending a 2nd wedding of one of my highschool friends that was held at a posh central oregon resort nesteled against the still snow capped cascades. As I looked around at the guests ,I realized something I had taken for granted before your last two posts. It was a gathering of almost exclusivly salary class white folk. Your comment about how precarious and clueless this group was at this point in history struck me. No mention of politics, or economics or the forces bearing down on us was uttered. If you didn't know better it could have still been 1979. The surroundings mirrored the brittleness of the crowd. Built in the early 1970's this mountain golf resort is a sort of Marthas Vineyard of the Portland Monied class. A giant 300 acre meadow is surrounded by shake clad wooden vacation homes that are hidden in the trees ( by building code). It appears to be a pristine wilderness but that hides a secret. This area is often ravaged by forest fires, and only the most aggressive intervention by tax funded fire crews has kept this enclave of the rich from being burned to a cristp. With climate change on the prowl and declining state a federal fire fighting budgets it is only a matter of time before this gated hideout of the salary class is burnt to the ground just like the class itself.
5/4/16, 8:05 PM
gwizard43 said...
I've found answers here, in the pages of this blog, that have offered me not just the comradely solace and comfort that come from knowing I'm not alone in wrestling with this existential dilemma, but also and above all a set of practical ways to move forward.
As such, I cannot adequately express the level of appreciation I feel for having discovered this blog, and your other work. You've enriched my life, and those of many friends I've turned on to the blog, some of whom are now also avid readers. So I'll take this opportunity to say, simply: thank you.
And for my part, I hope you're still posting this blog ten years out!
5/4/16, 8:05 PM
Steve Morgan said...
Unquestionably affirmative. The tools, concepts, writers, and resources you've introduced to me over the years have been inspiring and eye-opening. Oh, and I've gotten a couple great books to read as well!
"Given that the universe is simply not interested in pandering to the fantasies of omnipotence currently fashionable among influential members of our species... how should we then live?"
This is exactly why I am happy to follow when you go out on a limb. You always end up showing a new perspective centered around the same theme: given what we can know about our world and our place in it, what does a life well-lived look like? It's refreshing to read such reflections when so much around us is focused on separating us from our money, our experiences, and our responsibilities.
I raise a glass to you. Congratulations on an impressive decade, and may your next ten years be as fruitful and rewarding to you and your readers.
5/4/16, 8:17 PM
PukeSkywalker said...
Wow, I was doing that and didn't realize it. Peak Oil is definitely about to make a comeback. Thanks for all of your hard work.
5/4/16, 8:17 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
Or perhaps this is more to your taste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knp9-GY6fHE
Either way: Happy tin anniversary!
I'm curious about something, though: does indifferentism go all the way up and down? Is Reality just as indifferent to the desires of the gods as to the desires of mortal humans? I know the answer will depend on the tradition, but I'm curious as to your take on it.
5/4/16, 8:17 PM
Martin McDuffy said...
Thank you for them all. Oh, and I like the Well of Galabes too!
5/4/16, 8:27 PM
MayHawk said...
Congratulations on your 10 years of the Archdruid Report. I want to thank you from my heart for all the insights and clarity you have brought to my thinking and feeling.
Though we (humanity) will never meet a real "Spock" out among the stars still I will wish to you "Live Long and Prosper!"
Sincerely my fondest Regards
Mayhawk.
5/4/16, 8:28 PM
RPC said...
5/4/16, 8:31 PM
Chris Balow said...
I'm happy that you took the time for a retrospective--it's prompted me to reflect upon the time I've spent reading your weekly posts. As such, I'd like to take a moment to thank you.
It's fair to say that I've always felt a little "lost" in this world. The feeling might be likened to that of an alien who, while ignorant of his origins, is still fundamentally aware of the stark difference between his own constitution and that of the world that adopted him. That feeling has led me, my whole life, to search, and search, and search.
I was searching, I think, for somebody who could explain this world--this strange, confusing world--to me. All my life, the messages I'd received from my culture felt hopelessly inaccurate, as though there existed some massive conspiracy designed to convince me of the same lies that everyone around me seemed to believe.
And while this searching brought me to many different voices, and to appreciate many different perspectives, none of them seemed to stick with me for too long. For one reason or another, the "alternative" voices I encountered inevitably showed glaring weaknesses. Though they'd all offered valuable contributions to my own understanding, they all seemed to be just pieces to the puzzle.
But you're different; you really are. You brought the picture into focus.
I hope you see it as no small compliment that--from somebody who has spent the last 15-some years in an obsessive pursuit of a cogent summary of what is going on in this world and why--I see you as being in a class of your own. Your writing is a guiding light. And, though I know it is my own responsibility to decide what place I am to take in this world, your writing has defined the landscape in an indispensable way. You are truly a person who has lifted himself out of the muck of cultural conditioning and ascended to a height at which the true landscape becomes visible, and have graciously reported the lay of the land back to the rest of us. For that heroic feat, I thank you.
5/4/16, 8:31 PM
Dunedruid said...
My gratitude goes to you...
I have been reading your posts since 2008 and it helped me clear and organize my thoughts quite a bit.
I have never commented on anything on the internet ever and I am making this one exception for you just to be able to say thank you!
I have been avoiding the rush by going back to my former means of income being a musician instead of keeping my job as a servant of the education industry, which means doing with considerably LESS :-)
I raise a garden bed and volunteer at a Permaculture and experience that as being as rewarding as being able to read your blog and some of your books that I ordered via one of the local bookshops.
From the dunes of the Netherlands I sincerely hope you will still be writing about all possible topics relevant to the predicament of our time ten years from now...
I will be 56 by then if the cosmos allows me....hehe...
If I am not reading your blog by then it probably won't be because I lost interest.
Please keep it up, High regards,
Dunedruid
5/4/16, 8:32 PM
Mister Roboto said...
With regards to your now-viral post about Donald Trump, I came across this article by famous Internet pollster Nate Silver supposedly debunking the idea of Donald Trump's working-class support. I was just wondering if you had anything to say about it? My own fuzzy-minded feeling about it is that we're know entering into a socio-political era in which polls are less reliable than they once were (but of course you're going to have a difficult time convincing a pollster of that).
Also, I live in a very working-class neighborhood in a major Midwestern city, and the descriptions I've read of Trump rallies really do make it sound as though conservative-minded working-class people tend to be heavily represented in them.
However, I think this fairly lengthy transcript of an interview with a well-educated social-scientist does a pretty good job of giving a fuller picture of the sort of people who support Donald Trump and why.
5/4/16, 8:39 PM
jessi thompson said...
I think all of humanity could use a dose of humility. We are no more important than the ants we squash in the grand scheme of things, and we have become blinded by our own success in controlling our carefully manufactured pseudo environments. Does a hurricane care where your house is? We are blinded by an illusion of control.
I do like the idea of sifting through the last 300 years to find things that are salvageable. I also like the idea of exploring how to live. In my case, how do I extract myself as much as I can from a suicidal system, while still living in its midst? I like Noam Chomsky's line, "You can't be neutral on a moving train," I feel myself stuck on this train and I know I can't stop it. I want to minimize the damage I cause but I can't get off it. The darkest part of me simply wants to watch it reach its bitter end so that I will know that it's over and never coming back. Industrial civilization relentlessly destroys the wild lands that I have always loved. I watch so much pointless destruction to create a way of life that's inherently miserable and starved of connection. I see the damage I cause as a civilized human being and have no idea how to stop causing damage, let alone how to turn the tide and start making things really, genuinely better.
Thank you for all your wisdom, I look forward to each new post.
5/4/16, 8:42 PM
jessi thompson said...
5/4/16, 8:50 PM
Joe McInerney said...
5/4/16, 8:56 PM
onething said...
It is a cause of some cognitive dissonance to me that I disagree with you quite a bit on nearly all important topics (more than you know) while at the same time agreeing with so much of what you say and it seems to me that you actually agree with me (more than you realize) because, well, sometimes it doesn't quite make sense to hold certain ideas in one (single) head that don't actually align, but at any rate, despite that I do not think we live in an indifferent universe, in no way does that negate the several of your paragraphs in which you explain that people err to think that the universe ought to comply with childish expectations.
No, not a tame lion at all.
5/4/16, 9:10 PM
Ondra said...
ten years of writing with such a regularity is an achievement in itself, you have my big respect.
I came across this blog in 2010, because it was then translated by some enthusiasts to Czech language. The first post I've read was "The Twilight of Machine" - and the idea that humans could have advantage over machines was fascinating.
Since then I have read most of your older writing (especially on this blog), and probably all subsequent posts. But what is more important to me is that from that point on I always measured my life options by the perspective of approaching limits. We inherited small house in the village with my wife, so we moved there and reconstructed it, because it was way to stay clear of debt, and also to learn some hand skills and gardening.
I also found my qualification in social sciences as something, which will be increasingly useless in the world of shrinking economy, so I decided to study something else (it is still for free in Czech republic, thanks God). I was again inspired by this blog, and began the course in mechanical engineering with focus on railway vehicles, as these can probably survive the decline of industrial society for a little bit longer than sociologists or marketing specialists...
There is, however, one thing, which I still wasn't able to figure out - what will I do in the world after The Archdruid Report.
Regards
Ondra
5/4/16, 9:23 PM
Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...
Dear JMG,
Congratulations on keeping your blog so relevant, so courteous, and so clear for a whole decade. I have not at all given up reading you, when I have given up in boredom with various other, admittedly worthy and virtuous, social commentators.
Please, in so far as it may lie within your power, consider ways of maintaining your stream of commentary over the coming decade, in the teeth of possible increasing challenges.
I believe (in part from one or two things you have said here) that you are making contingency plans to address possible future Internet failure.
I hope that you are also making contingency plans to address possible future USA government clampdowns on the current freedom of cyber expression.
I know that traditional ink-on-paper printing interests you.
But perhaps a backup low-tech server, located outside the immediate control of the USA, is a further possibility to be investigated? Less important than the full over-engineered panoply of Google's "blogger" software, which you are now using here (and which I am using in my own blogging, in our present shared situation of cyber-affluence), would be the capacity for some kind of rudimentary, scaled-back Internet outreach, as a fallback - say, by serving out no-graphics Web pages, coded not as http://www.myserver.org/foobar.html but (in flat ASCII, without markup tags) as http://www.myserver.org/foobar.txt. Many of us here, myself included, are in a position to give at least some technical advice and help, and many of us even to some extent have our own arrangements for not-completely-obvious servers, independent of the big corporations. Do please reach out to potential cyber assistants as necessary, by private e-mail or traditional telephone.
Ah, those dear, now half-forgotten 1980s... The US Robotics dialup 1200 baud modem, plugged into a Macintosh with 1 meg of RAM, two floppy drives, and no hard drive at all! The AOL subscription! The busy streams of flat ASCII, on topics of deep importance, not in Estonian or Latvian or Lithuanian but in the lingua franca which is English - "Well, here is what our guys are doing Friday in Tallinn (or Riga, or Vilnius)"; "Yes, info duly noted: we now eagerly await the response of Mock-bah..."
What you have been doing, and must continue to do as conditions become more difficult, is analogous not only to the Gorbachev-era cyber-activism which I have just recalled but is additionally analogous (if more distantly) to what the mediaeval monastic chroniclers did - Balthasar Russow, and earlier Henricus de Lettis, in my own family's part of the world; some kewl anglo-saxons in Old English, still earlier, in the kingdoms emerging from erstwhile Britannia; and so on.
Sincerely,
Toomas (Tom) Karmo
Toomas(dot)Karmo(at)gmail(dot)com
647-267-9566
member of Estonian diaspora,
in Richmond Hill, near Toronto in Canada
blogging Tuesday mornings at
http://ToomasKarmo.blogspot.com
5/4/16, 9:32 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Damaris, you're welcome and thank you. "How should we then live?" is the question that confronts any person who wakes up out of the trance of collective chatter; it's just a little more insistent a question these days.
Pinku-Sensei, the irony is duly noted. Do you happen to know if anyone's ever worked through the implications of the claim that Star Wars happened "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away"? Did they, for example, use up the resources that made interstellar flight possible, and that's why we're sitting here on an isolated planet with no way off, ever? ;-)
Doctor W., thank you! I've been collecting Cthulhu mythos images off the web for a while now, as visual raw material for my Lovecraftian epic fantasy seriesThe Weird of Hali; that's a good one. May I respond by sharing another?
DaShui, and it was ancient in Crane's time; Hesiod was there in the 8th century BCE.
Whomever, I saw that. Watch that space carefully.
Graeme, I'll look forward to your post -- not least because it'll be good to have that information to hand.
JimK, I think you forgot to include the URL of the link!
Ray, I came to this project in my mid-forties, after decades of reading and brooding over exactly these points, so I have a hard time finding anywhere my thinking has changed dramatically over the course of writing this blog. My attempts to state the various aspects of this blog's theme have, I hope, become more nuanced and better argued, but I find nothing in the early years of the blog that I wouldn't affirm enthusiastically now. The one thing that's consistently surprised me has been the willingness of my readers to follow me way out there on one strange journey after another, and that's involved a series of recalibrations: will they put up with a discussion of magic? Really??? Okay, then how about the religion of progress?
Blogger, er, have you considered that maybe it's because your personal take on the purpose of the universe isn't shared by everyone?
WB Jorgenson, understood! My most popular posts aren't necessarily my favorite posts, either, and I thought The Heresy of Technological Choice was pretty good, too. Maybe it would be interesting to ask readers to nominate their favorite post of all time, and see how the list comes out. As for dealing with people who flip out over your unwillingness to kowtow to the latest technotrash, I wish I had a simple suggestion; "get yourself a new set of friends" only goes so far, of course.
5/4/16, 9:34 PM
Nancy Sutton said...
Another one I always pass on is Acts, 4: 32, because the numbers make it easy to remember, and the early Christians sound like communists :)
Fellow travelers are few and far between, in my experience... glad you're there/here and writing and responding ;)
5/4/16, 9:47 PM
Wizard of Tas said...
Seven and a half billion minus a million equals seven and a half billion.
It simply wouldn't make a difference, and the rest of us would still be stuck here. That's our destiny.
5/4/16, 10:00 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Yupped, hah! Fortunately, as I've noted in a previous post, I don't have to worry about anything so dire as a phone call from The Donald asking me to stand next to him when he becomes The POTUS. Being an eccentric intellectual has its benefits...
Fudoshin, Turner's delusion seems to be astonishingly common among the privileged. In point of fact, of course, if the world actually were to plunge into some kind of cannibal frenzy, he and his rich friends would be on the grill well before things wound down, courtesy of their own hungry security guards. In the Cthulhucene, a sense of entitlement is the equivalent of a "KICK ME" sign taped to your behind!
Steve, you nearly have the name right. Adam's Story was my second essay into peak oil fiction on this blog; here it is --
Twilight in Learyville
Nanmin Voyages
Banners in the Wind
Tillicum River
Uncharted Waters
Darren, of course it is. It didn't really start out that way, but once it became clear that a significant number of people were willing to pay attention, I started using the blog very deliberately as an initiatory ceremony. That was never a secret; I even explained that in so many words in one post, so that anyone who was uncomfortable with it could go read about the Singularity or what have you instead. Compare the structure of the arguments on this blog to the structure of any of my books on ceremonial magic and you'll see how that's done: in both cases, I present a series of exercises and activities that allow people to initiate themselves into a different mode of being in the world, and let 'em pursue that path if they choose to do so. By and large, it seems to work!
5/4/16, 10:01 PM
Ray Wharton said...
I think so many have lined up for this ride, wherever it may go, because of the bleak scarcity of other sensible and interesting narratives. There is a certain freedom, and very real joy to be found in a Universe that isn't felt to be prying on us with scrutiny. Though history does not have any requirement to follow our ideas; we do have the option of letting our ideas adapt to history as we find it. Truthfully, I think that human though and intentions are in amazing concordance with the world around us. Considering what an particular arrangement we are, that we can exist at all is quite nice. But that is because we have been shaped. Attempts to shape ourselves, when isolated from feed back, are crippling; with feedback (and a substantial tolerance for failure) they can be quite cool. Like water in a cup, it is a tight fit.
Thank you for posting this blog, and for your work of condensing the lessons of history topical to this project into a format that can be put to use.
5/4/16, 10:05 PM
Compound F said...
5/4/16, 10:10 PM
Raymond Duckling said...
Congratulations this 10th aniversary of your project. You are a voice of sanity in a crazy, drooling world. Thank you very much!
And to answer Jorgenson's question, my personal favorite is 2014's Refusing the Call: A Tale Rewritten. I cried the first time I read it, and for some reason or another, I end up reading it again every year sometime around the Nones of May. Being more of a dwarvish temperament, rather than hobbittese, I find this a healthy remainder to avoid going digging into the mountains.
5/4/16, 10:28 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Grebulocities, that's a question that's seen some discussion on the peak oil blogosphere. The general consensus so far seems to be that when you get below an EROEI of 10 to 12, you no longer have enough left over to maintain an industrial society. Remember that you don't just have to cover the costs of petroleum extraction -- you have to make all the things that use petroleum directly and indirectly, complete with all their dependencies and supply chains, and you also have to cover the rising costs imposed by climate change and other environmental blowback. I'll see if I can fit in an updated post on where we are in the trajectory toward the next dark age fairly soon, and cover this in more detail there.
Avalterra, as I noted in response to Ray above, the only place where I've really changed my mind on these subjects was in discovering just how far people are willing to follow me out into taboo territory. Now of course I've made my share of mistaken predictions, and 'fessed up to them, but those were mistakes of detail rather than reevaluations of basic principles. I did plenty of the latter over the course of my twenties and thirties, while I was groping my way toward the ideas that guide this blog, and at this point I'm pretty much satisfied that the ideas I'm using to understand the future actually do make sense.
Clay, excellent! I've sometimes thought that when CS Lewis wrote the climactic scene of That Hideous Strength, where the villains' dinner party dissolves into meaningless babble and madness, he was thinking about that kind of experience -- the moment when you realize that the distinguished, respected figures around you are actually clueless, isolated, and profoundly vulnerable to the things they can't see.
James, thank you! I admit that for a tin anniversary, the music that comes to mind is something a little more like this. ;-) With regard to your question, I tend to favor the traditional polytheist view that gods and goddesses are part of the cosmos, not superior to it, and it's as indifferent to them as it is to us, to pond scum, and to everything else. The Norse were famous for that conception -- Ragnarok waits for the gods, no matter what they do -- but the same recognition runs all through the old polytheist faiths, along with the related recognition that terms like "omnipotence," "omniscience," et al. are what Whitehead called metaphysical flattery rather than meaningful labels that can be applied to any being whatsoever without generating nonsense. Even Great Cthulhu must sleep in R'lyeh until the stars are right!
Martin, true, though I'm grateful when my readers buy my books. :-)
Chris, I know the feeling. I had the same experience of finding something that made sense of the world when I first read William Catton's Overshoot, and again with several other works, notably Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West. I'm glad I could pay it forward!
5/4/16, 10:38 PM
Mister Roboto said...
5/4/16, 10:57 PM
Robert Douglas Castle said...
When I first started reading, I had already come to the conclusion that we were all royally screwed and that hard times were ahead because of our utter dependance on fossil fuels and the fact that they would not last forever, or likely even for the next few decades. In the past 2 years I've given some thought to what it is that attracts me so much to this blog and I've isolated 3 main points.
First are the many implications of our predicament. I haven't read your entire paper on catalytic collapse but believe I've gotten the basics from reading your posts. Your general outline of future history seems very well reasoned and a useful guide for determining the future course of society. Of course, individual unpredictable events will have their own special effects, but that can't be helped or planned for. The overall course of resource wars followed by a salvage economy followed eventually by a dark age seems to be very likely. You have apparently been putting a lot of thought into these matters for a long time and have incorporated knowledge from a wide variety of subjects into your analysis. This has given me many new insights into our predicament that would have taken me a long time to work out myself, if I was ever able to do so.
Second, and more importantly, is your emphasis on what to do about it all. So many blogs simply deplore the foolishness of our actions, wringing their hands in remorse without offering any useful courses of action. Other blogs offer some salvation in the form of alternative energy or fusion or something else that a bit of research will show are insufficient to the task of continuing our hi-tech society. Your posts have helped me decide how to spend the rest of my life as I approach retirement. I now plan to get heavily into organic gardening and adopt a low-tech lifestyle as much as possible. Your posts have introduced me to books like "Farmers of 40 Centuries", technology like fireless cookers, and many other ideas that will prove very useful in the coming years.
Third, and most invaluable of all, is how you have made me aware of my own faults and unproductive modes of thinking. A recent post that illustrates this is "Donald Trump and the Politics of Resentment". The division of society into investment, salary, wage, and welfare classes was one I had never considered and found very instructive. Even more useful, although it made me uncomfortable, was the realization that I have been guilty of talking about wage class people in the dismissive, insulting terms you described. This is all the more shameful to me because I spent the first half of my career in the wage class and know from personal experience that the great majority of them are good people trying to survive and prosper in an uncertain world. Time and again you have forced me to reevaluate my own opinions and habits of thought and this is what I most appreciate about your essays. I believe I am becoming a better person because of it.
I apologize for the length of this comment - most will find it tl;dr. But on the occasion of your 10th anniversary I wanted to let you know how much your work has meant to me. And I've never been good about expressing my opinions in 140 characters.
R. D. Castle
5/4/16, 11:00 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Jessi, if you're on a moving train, and you know it's headed toward a collision with a brick wall, you can get up and start walking toward the back of the train, away from the first class section, which is going to be hit first and hardest. That is, collapse now and avoid the rush!
Onething, understood. You can get to the same place by believing that the universe (or its creator) is, as you say, not a tame Lion at all, and that human interests and values are of very little relevance in the face of a divine reality. As to whether you should pray, good heavens -- did you think that the point of prayer was to have an effect on the being to which you're praying? I always figured that the point of it was the effect it had on the one who's doing the praying -- and a very positive effect that is.
Nancy, nah, it just takes a while for updates with comments to propagate through the ever so slightly fraying fabric of the internet. As for Acts 4:32, I had to go look that one up, and it would indeed cause a good many rock-ribbed American Christians to lose it right there in public!
Wizard, nicely put, and of course dead on target as well.
Ray, exactly. Exactly! Since the universe is under no obligation to do what we think, there's rather a strong case to be made that we should adjust the way we think to adapt to what the universe actually does.
Compound F., a lot depends on what you mean by that word "improvement." Evolution doesn't improve, it just adapts. As I understand it, clades branch out into different grades over the course of evolutionary time, as different populations within a clade adapt to different conditions; eventually the divergence reaches a point where, at a single point in time, the different populations are biologically distinct, thus belong to different grades. In some cases you can find a specific branching point in time at which a population began to diverge from other populations within the clade, and started developing into a distinct grade. In other cases you can't -- and there's also the awkward habit that trees in particular have of hybridizing across grade lines, so that (for example) red oak and white oak are ideal types, and most of the oaks you actually find growing in the woods occupy the notional space between those types.
It's risky, though appealing, to apply the same logic to what we can metaphorically call sociocultural evolution; in that case, might this blog function for some as a branching point, sending people from the clade of "people in the industrial world" into the nascent grade of "scruffy lookin' Green Wizard"? Maybe so.
(Readers who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about might find this link helpful.)
5/4/16, 11:08 PM
Juhana said...
That you have readers as alien for your daily surroundings as me and couple of my friends (more occasionally, Trump essay was a minor hit around here) just proves that you touch some very cosmic choirs in your essays. Been born into Scandinavian society, into blue-collar family living about thirty kilometers away from border zone with Soviet Union, my life has not shared many characteristic with your American one. After Soviet Union collapsed and border opened, I have met Russians and other ex-citizens of CCCP practically daily in my old home town, but I have only rarely met Americans. We are both children of high-tech industrial country, but similarities stop there. Still your essays are understandable here, at least for some of us.
Instead of writing for your fellow Druids only, you have gathered quite a disperse crowd of listeners here in the void of Internet. There must be many like me, feeling vaguely that we are heading into hard times, but not having ability to pin the feeling down, who get comfort and new ideas for actual arrangements of their lives from this blog. That's quite an achievement, you know.
One request. I have just bought your book "Atlantis". Is it possible you write more about this cycle of civilizations, their natural life circle, here also? There is some neolithic rock art near my usual forest trail, where I usually go hiking. I often stop in that place, and it is quite humbling to understand that people had something to say at this very same place long, long, long time ago. Now they are gone, and when looking from historical perspective, soon we shall be gone.
5/4/16, 11:17 PM
Morgenfrue said...
Not least, I have your writings in mind with regards to the next generation here, which sees (and occasionally participates in) the gardening, cooking, sewing, knitting, mending, and so forth. Many thanks!
5/4/16, 11:34 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Mister R., were you by any chance one of the readers I got by way of Jason Godesky's "Archdruid Watch"? A number of neoprimitivists came here by that route.
Robert, glad to hear it. This blog is a natural habitat for teal deer -- certainly I get crabby comments from time to time expressing that point of view!
Morgenfrue, also glad to hear it -- 45 meters should be enough to keep you safe for the next few decades, at least.
5/4/16, 11:37 PM
Phil said...
I've been a reader (and very sparse poster) for about a year and half, regularly (almost religiously!), and I wish to say thank you and congratulations for the many fine hours of reading and provoked thoughts. As I write this, Fort McMurray (of the tar sands fame) in my home province here, has completely evacuated of all citizens due to a raging wildfire that sprang into voracious motion in the matter of an afternoon. The local fire chief used language that described it as some kind of creature, a "dirty nasty fire with no forgiveness... hunting for houses that it hasn't burned." I would like to add this creature to the many faces of the Cthulhucene as it slouches towards decline. Roughly 100,000 people were evacuated overnight with no injuries or death, and as of yet, no missing individuals - a remarkable feat.
I have recently been wading into the murky waters of the alt-right (with very strong mental galoshes), and the Cthulucene description resembles a concept held by many NRx-ers, or neoreactionaries. They posit a kind of God-beast called Gnon - "Nature's God," a kind of crab-like deification of Darwin's evolution that brooks no pity for anyone who stepping out of line with reality. I have a feeling that our good druid is aware of this concept - many NRx folks read Julius Evola, and Rene Guenon with admixtures of Nietzche thrown in.
What is surprising about the alt-right crowd is that they are very right-wing, but not very conservative at all. Instead they sling the epithet of cuckservative to most republicans, libertarians and constitutionalist types. They are also young, smart, tech-savvy, ironic, and darkly hilarious, and not very nice. They are what happens to (mostly white male) millenials with too much time (not enough employment), and a penchant for baiting smug liberals and their favorite target, the SJW. Time magazine featured a piece on Richard Spencer, Milo Yiannopoulus has a good breakdown on Breitbart (if you can stomach the ads): http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
I have a feeling that with Trump shifting the Overton Window several hard tugs to the right, these folks have climbed in and the conversation is beginning to take a very Weimarian tone, very quickly.
5/4/16, 11:44 PM
Compound F said...
5/5/16, 12:04 AM
ed boyle said...
Due to el nino the heating cycle of Global Warming is hidden in ocean depths for many years at a time allowing same media skeptics who currently dismiss PO to dismiss GW. 2016 could be for record book similar to the 147 USD WTI oil price in summer of 2008. It will cool again by 2017 or 2018 but remain, like that long time 100 dollar oil price, way above what we had before, ratcheting up to the next crisis level.
The whole process would be very interesting to observe under laboratory conditions but under the circumstances it reminds me of the Edgar Allen Poe story, Maelstrom, where the doomed man, fascinated with the phenomenon, forgot his own danger, observed that round objects ent dow sllower and was able to save himself by strapping himself to a barrel. Where is your barrel?
My kids are prototypical atheist technoenthusiasts. I posted a link at Orlov's blog abut 12 russian commandments. The man said in gulags, optimists die first, pessimists survive. Pessimists being realists of course and incapable of disappointment. Here is the great Russian advantage. American, even Western optimism, is inbuilt into our humanist philosophy. The dark winters and deep vast loneliness of the taiga, similar to Alaska, where I grew up, with its temperature and night and day extremes forms the soul. Expectations are bleak. Western European climate is a comparative paradise of mildness, with people, culture, rules, civilty. This is like the holocene, a goldilocks scenario, where nobody is hungry, a light jacket always is enough, and politeness to all is normal. The Cthulcene is a -50 winter and +50 in sommer with no guarantees of politeness or rules or even cultural norms. Passing marauders isis style. Expectations come from experience. German discipline combined with Russian cynicism and American can do might save an individual who can find his proverbial barrel. Flexibility is the key.
5/5/16, 12:40 AM
Rita Narayanan said...
the veneer of culture hides a multitude of illusions.
5/5/16, 12:49 AM
Grebulocities said...
I would still wonder what happens if renewables do end up topping out around EROEI = 5 or so, on a whole-system basis. From that point, the EROEI is stable, not contracting. Climate change and other environmental damage will be ongoing and imposing costs, of course, but it seems likely that some industry will still be maintained in favorable areas, although the "happy days" of the second half of the 20th century will obviously never happen again. But as I'm writing this I realized that's just the ecotechnic future - a society that manages to live off diffuse, low-EROEI energy flows, retaining whatever from the industrial era that still makes sense under those circumstances and happens to be remembered through the dark age, while discarding and/or forgetting anything that doesn't.
I still would like to see references to the EROEI ~ 10 claim, if anyone on this site happens to know of any. Once my last final is over on Friday I may dig through the abandoned ruin of The Oil Drum and see if I can unearth any artifacts.
5/5/16, 12:55 AM
Ursachi Alexandru said...
The internet, with its many flaws, has nonetheless brought you a global audience. For the 3 years I've been lurking around here, it's been an insightful look into your country's complex history, society and culture, and how it relates with and still influences much of the world. A finite world where no one can escape the laws of nature and history.
Cheers!
5/5/16, 1:18 AM
O. Hinds said...
So... Yeah. I'm still not finished coming to terms with it myself, really, and a part of me would probably prefer to have kept the comforting illusions right up until they were impossible. There's another very small part still saying "But... it can't really be _real_, right? This is just another apocalypse story, even if it's more drawn out and detailed. They have to think of _something_!"
There's also been the social effect. If I find someone I need or want to be on good terms with talking about the glorious monotonically improving future, what do I do? Do I, if I can, say nothing? Do I try to play along as best I can for fear that the relationship will sour? Do I try to talk less hopefully with them about it, risking that they'll get upset with me and shut me out? Even if I trust that that is not a concern, do I want to inform the happy pilgrim of the sad death of their deity? Would I, in fact, were it brought up, find mutual relief in the realization that we were both turning the very same questions over in our minds? Not the most comfortable position.
Still... whatever the details of my somewhat complicated soup of emotions regarding your blog, they seem to balance out, somehow, on the positive side. I suspect it has much to do with the good done in my life by you being indeed good done by you while the harm is merely from things you've pointed out. The collapse of industrial civilization, after all, would be going on even if you'd never written a single post. The fall of the American empire, which I benefit significantly from by virtue of my birth in it however I might have grown to feel about it, is not some conspiracy of druids (or communist alien lizard jews disguised as druids, or whatever). So, thank you, John Michael Greer. You have pointed out some hard things and done your best to help your readers understand and cope with them. At the very least, you've been (and I hope will continue to be) entertaining even in the discussion of the fall of our civilization.
5/5/16, 1:48 AM
Mikep said...
I would be interested to read your ideas on people shaped machines and the magical thinking that underlies them.
On the subject of the Anthropocene it might be better to talk about the "Anthropic Event" rather than the Anthropocene as this would better put it perspective on a Geological timescale. If in ten million years time or so an intelligent species has evolved from long tailed mouse opossums or weasels (my money is on weasels as they're already starting to take a keen interest in High Energy Physics) they may well be able to infer the existence of some kind of event from the disappearance of many types of animal and plants from the fossil record at the same moment even if there is by that time no direct evidence of exactly what it was that killed them off.
5/5/16, 1:57 AM
frozenthunderbolt said...
I came to you by way of the Oil Drum in my late teenage years with my mind in a sate of Stygian despair and anxiety about the future.
You writing and further readings tempered my melancholy, and drew me into increasingly productive, introspective and discriminating thought patterns.
While I rarely comment, I eagerly await your next discursive thinking stimulus each Thursday (New Zealand time).
My partner of 9 years and I are 'collapsing now to avoid the rush' having just purchased a farmlet on which to collapse and provide for whom, with what we may - it will be good to have something to apply the C.C. principles outlined in your green wizardry series to.
5/5/16, 2:07 AM
Karim said...
Dear JMG,
All I can say is "Congratulations to you!"
It is an amazing effort few could have carried out the way you have done it.
Over the years this report has become my weekly drug, a shot every Thursday morning now supplemented with a monthly shot of the Well of galabes.
My only regret is that given the distance between the US and Mauritius, I may never have the pleasure of meeting you in person and listen to your lectures live!
Well, you can't have everything in life.
5/5/16, 2:20 AM
Kevin Price said...
5/5/16, 2:36 AM
thecrowandsheep said...
We are fortunate that Infinity and Beyond + 1 magazine has decided to publish our story as they usually only accept submissions that has humanity playing snooker with the stars. Although dismayed at Josepth E. Quantummy's burgeoning religiosity, I&B+1 mag were impressed with his straight thinking in a world of ignorance and superstition.
Infinity & Beyond + 1 magazine, where mere Infinity is a risible constraint on the limitless potentialities of human development.
5/5/16, 2:39 AM
tim palmer said...
I haven't always agreed with you, but I welcome your challenge and I welcome the thought processes that go into digesting your output.
I do what I do for my 2 little girls... foot soldiers (horrible phrase)for a hugely uncertain and unstable future, but witnesses to what I have termed the Great Equalisation of the 21st Century - it will affect us all no matter what our beliefs, economic power, or geographic location. Your writing has helped me to help them and for that alone I cannot express my gratitude in words.
With fondest gratitude
Tim
palmer-permaculture.blogspot.com
5/5/16, 3:05 AM
Nestorian said...
I remember those words from 10 years ago distinctly, as I have been a follower of your blog from the beginning. I got my referral to your blog from Leanan over at the old Oil Drum website.
Congratulations!
5/5/16, 3:13 AM
John D. Wheeler said...
I do disagree with your projection of the future of the peak oil meme. Even when it becomes painfully obvious that oil production is declining and will never rise to its former heights, I think the idea of a peak oil supply will have been supplanted by another concept: peak debt. If only more people would borrow more money, they will say, oil production would rise. They will ignore the fact that it is the geology that makes the oil unaffordable.
And, please note, while peak debt is mathematically certain at some point in the future, it may already be in the past: https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/world-debt-vs-brent-oil-price.png?w=933&h=560 Note how the decline in total world debt corresponds to the steep decline in oil prices.
5/5/16, 3:44 AM
Alex Blaidd said...
This blog, when I first stumbled across it via a link for a podcast interview you did on some very obscure part of the internet (I can't remember the name of the podcast now as it wasn't one I particularly followed - it's amazing how something so small can have such a significant impact on one's life) helped me see my own lack of commitment to any one of the different philosophies of which I have tried to practice, and made instant sense. Since then I have felt like my thoughts are my own. If anything that has made my thoughts even more alien to those around me! I now no longer speak the language of progress, and thus I might as well speak another language! Like Clay says above, it's now a surreal experience to find myself back in those same social situations with the same faces and find them to be so clueless and as you say vulnerable.
So for that and so much more I thank you dearly. And none of that is to say anything of the growing impact Druidism is having on my life, which you also introduced me to.
I was surprised to find that I hadn't quite read all of your top ten most-read posts, and having just read How Not To Play The Game, this sentence resonates strongly with me today, "Those who turn their backs on the things being fought over, and distance themselves from the battlefields, have a very good chance of staying clear of the resulting difficulties." combined with your comment above about moving towards the back of the train. The polar opposite to what our culture preaches us to do.
And finally, like Grebulocities above, I would appreciate a post on what level of EROEI is needed to sustain industrial civilisation, for the reason that many of my friends and peers believe that solar/wind is going to simply replace oil/coal. understanding this further would help me put another nail into that coffin.
5/5/16, 4:49 AM
donalfagan said...
With regard to Mister Roboto's FiveThirtyEight link, and JMG's response, my first take on Silver's assertion was that it jibed with my observations of relatively well-to-do relatives and in-laws that support Trump. Trump is leveraging the people who are accustomed to a certain level of success and prosperity, but see it getting harder for them and almost impossible for their kids.
My second take was that Trump supporters, being older than Sanders supporters, should be expected to farther along in their earning path.
5/5/16, 4:54 AM
Just Because said...
"If history is indifferent to our preferences, by contrast, the way down is just as easy as the way up, and decline and fall waits for us as it did for all those dead civilizations in the past."
I'm reminded by this passage of my learning of the concept of "regression to the mean", which made me realize I often predict things in the opposite direction of what I should. Some trends are just noise and it is best to guess things will move toward what is typical. So, I would say for humans the way down is actually EASIER than the way up. The last few hundred years have been very atypical of human history. Statistically speaking, the likelihood of continuing to have the stars align for a resource-intensive society is not a 50/50 proposition just based on chance, even ignoring all the other objective reasons this is unlikely.
5/5/16, 5:02 AM
Robin Datta said...
A Fligth through the Uriverse, by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
5/5/16, 5:12 AM
Alexander Leong said...
I discovered your blog around March of 2014. 22, a year away from graduating college, practically about to fall out of my shorts wondering about the rapidly deteriorating set of conditions I observed all around me in America and in my native land of Malaysia. The cognitive dissonance between what society told me and what I could personally observe made me what one might call an angry young man. Then I stumbled upon this blog and others like it. Much like our species has irresponsibly burned through half a billion years of fossil sunlight in the last couple of centuries, I (somewhat) irresponsibly burned through almost a decade of your blog posts in a month or so. Your insights, along with those of everyone who's commented on this site, have helped me gain a clearer understanding of the geological, social and political forces that currently converge on the present moment. Words alone cannot express how thankful I am for that.
After I graduated I returned to Malaysia, where I've since taken up a post as a high school geography teacher. This past term I have been teaching my students about environmental conservation - and found some time to have a serious classroom discussion about the ramifications of peak oil. Perhaps it is because most people in Southeast Asia have never been accustomed to the level of material comfort Americans take for granted, but these children responded quite readily to the notion that a) infinite growth simply isn't possible on a finite planet and b) we may very well be heading into a deindustrial future. So hope for the future persists, such as it is.
I now consider it one of my main duties as an educator to equip my young charges with a better understanding of the conditions they have been born into, and the murky uncertain waters they will someday find themselves in. Once again thanks for the blog, and I hope TADR will be around for at least another decade.
5/5/16, 5:21 AM
Don Stewart said...
Can you elaborate a little on:
'the economy misbehaves in ways that conventional economic theory can’t account for but peak oil theory can'
What, specifically, are you thinking about in terms of 'misbehaving'?
Thanks...Don Stewart
5/5/16, 5:35 AM
trippticket said...
Slowly, tentatively, I started clicking on the occasional ADR links dropped in Kunstler's comments section, and after a few read-throughs, I made the switch wholesale, and never went back to JHK. I don't remember the title of my first ADR post, but aside from a couple periods without internet access, I've never missed your weekly. I force myself to wait until Thursday morning, when I wake up ahead of the rest of the family, to read and occasionally comment. Early on I probably commented more than you and some of your readers cared for! Now, it's more likely that I will reread your post to my wife over coffee, and restrict my discussion to the confines of our little house.
Which is a bit bigger and more comfortable than the "house" I lived in when I started reading the ADR! I may be one of the few here who has actually come AWAY from more extreme radical austerity as a result of your influence, hopefully demonstrating your skills as an "optimizer" rather than maximizer, or in this case maybe minimizer. As an ecologist your arguments about operating within a sere appropriate to the period stuck in my craw, and we drew back from the radical descent in which we were fully engaged. We had gotten down the mountain too far, into very lonely territory, and are now having a picnic on a sunny flat spot waiting for the rest of our company to arrive.
So I've been reading your blog for about four years now, and my favorite post is "Life Preservers for Mermaids". That one really broke the spell of religious zealotry in both first and secondhand forms for me. And for that I can't thank you enough. I have purchased and read about ten of your books and ask for more every Winter Solstice, and will undoubtedly follow you into print media after this internet medium disappears. You have changed me profoundly. So has your very sharp collection of commenters from around the wereold.
Thank you so very much for your time, sir.
5/5/16, 5:36 AM
Lawfish1964 said...
Most of my friends think I've got a screw loose, but I could never go back to living the way I used to. Thanks in large measure to you, Mr. Archdruid!
5/5/16, 6:01 AM
fudoshindotcom said...
Exactly! But, what is the root of that delusion? The source of the "Currently Privileged" influence is money, something they must be aware of. Once fiat currency is removed from the equation their influence evaporates. What do they think will insulate them from the realities of a post-industrial society, One they are less equipped to deal with than their "Servants"?
BTW Hearty congratulations on ten years of the Archdruid Report! You've certainly succeeded in inspiring a great deal of "out-of-the-box" thinking.
5/5/16, 6:04 AM
RPC said...
5/5/16, 6:07 AM
Don Plummer said...
Congratulations on ten years and on reaching such a wide audience during that time. Important stuff, this. Very important.
5/5/16, 6:16 AM
Breanna said...
All of which is to say, thank you.
5/5/16, 6:36 AM
James Hick said...
Many thanks for all the work you've put into this blog and your books JMG - here's to another ten years and more.
5/5/16, 6:43 AM
C.L. Kelley said...
Firstly, thank you. For everything.
I would like to join those who are sharing personal narratives of the ways their lives have been impacted by this blog. I was raised with a keen awareness of environmental limits, social issues, peak oil, etc by remnant hippies on a sailboat, who gradually sold out and bought into the general consensus over the course of my childhood and teenage years - by the time I left for college they were living in the suburbs, yachting on the weekends, replacing cars semi-annually, etc...
In college (where I was blessedly smart enough to take what little college savings my parents had for me and invest it in an actual education from a community college, thus escaping debt-free,) I gravitated naturally towards the leftist activist/hippie scene, and being on Capitol Hill in Seattle, I got front-row seats to the implosion and circular firing squads that followed in the years after the WTO protests in 1999. Deeply disillusioned, I checked out of politics and noodled aimlessly around the art, gardening, and software scenes in the area for a few years, waiting for the world to end, until my brand-new partner (now husband) and I ended up in rural Guerrero state, Mexico, taking over a small surfer's hostel.
Shortly after we arrived there and took over, I stumbled across your blog via some of Sharon Astyk's writing, and proceeded to spend the next several weeks catching up on the last five years of your writings (and some 90% of the collected comments!), discussing and digesting them all. It was something of a shattering experience for both myself and my husband, though his upbringing and practice as a Zen Buddhist gave him more resilience in this area than I had (which is another MAJOR way your writings have impacted me - from Angry Atheist (tm) to tentatively practicing nature spirituality.) Your writing on the fate of perceived members of the elite living on the geographic fringes during the fall of empire, so clearly illustrated by the hijinks of the local narco gangs towards some of our more affluent gringo neighbors in the area, were instrumental in not only our decision to leave Mexico, but where & what we did when we returned to the US.
Continued...
5/5/16, 6:52 AM
C.L. Kelley said...
Returning to Seattle was jarring to say the least, given the dual culture shocks of two years in a truly impoverished area of the globe, living on a par with the locals (our combined monthly income was less than $300 the entire time we lived in Mexico) and the new perspective we had gained from your writing. So we left. We decided to be near family, for the support of extended social networks, away from very large population centers but also not completely isolated from towns/small cities.
We ended up in a small town in rural Maine, a longish drive but a very short sail (very steep coastline just here, with the town at the top of the hill and no projected hazards to navigation as the water rises) from large markets in Portland and points south. Shorter drive and downright easy-peasy sail to visit the in-laws just a bit down the coast. We've gone into business for ourselves, as debt-free as possible, and are continually increasing the resilience of our operation, a small bakery/cafe. I've been elected to the town government, and am actively building a network of like-minded young folks in the area - my position in the downtown cafe gives me a pretty good way to connect people who need connecting, while not leaving me much time to be personally involved, but there are now projects to replace downtown shade trees with fruit- and nut-bearing trees for public harvesting, to replace the bloated school with a one-room schoolhouse in the 18th-century model, to construct a sail freight pier on the deepwater harbor, and to make an outdoor, nature-oriented forest school for young children. Three years ago, when we bought our bakery, everyone I spoke to told me that ours was a "tough town" and "drying up, dying" after the mill closures and death of the shipbuilding industry.
Today, we have nearly a dozen new businesses, at least that many new farms in the organic/sustainable model (several running on horse traction!), a handful of new community organizations based on DOING, not meeting, an increasing population of young families, a new sail freight project, a boatbuilding school for high school students that don't wish to attend college, and many other new things in the works that will contribute to riding the decline a little (maybe a LOT) less uncomfortably than we otherwise would.
None of this would be happening without your clean cuts through the cobwebs of conventional consensus.
Thank you, sincerely. My life would be unrecognizable, and I daresay a lot more unhappy, had I never found your writing.
Cheers,
C. L. Kelley
5/5/16, 6:53 AM
hapibeli said...
Oh yes! I have no problem acknowledging your contribution to my education on all of the concepts you have put forth JMG. You have made what was a fog of unknowns, into a well of clear understandings. I knew that we were of less importance than I was taught, but you've clarified the vision.
Thanks John
5/5/16, 6:56 AM
Thomas Mazanec said...
5/5/16, 7:14 AM
Peter VE said...
Meanwhile, although my house is about 160 feet above MSL, much of the infrastructure is down lower, and once the waters come, the house will be left to its own devices. Every year I tighten it up a little more.
5/5/16, 7:15 AM
Jenny Fuqua said...
I just scored a copy of your book, The Wealth of Nature. I'm looking forward to learning what I can from it.
I can't wait to get back into Retropia. Cheers!
5/5/16, 7:16 AM
margfh said...
5/5/16, 7:17 AM
Eric S. said...
I started reading weekly with Clarke’s Fallacy, when it first came out in 2011 and started reading 2 or 3 essays a week from the beginning, working my way through to the front in order to catch up. I first started reading your books with the Druidry Handbook back in 2008, and broke into the topics of this blog when I read The Ecotechnic Future in 2010. And I also got to see you speak at a UU church in Maryland, and at the OBOD East Coast Gathering in PA. I’ve now, for the last year, begun discussing your essays weekly over the phone with my mother, and they’ve begun to seep into the way we’ve begun planning the long term future of our family, we’ve started working through the Master Conserver and Green Wizardry handbooks with my grandmother’s house in Memphis, which unless something particularly cataclysmic happens in that neighborhood is probably where I’ll be settling after she dies, and we’ve been preparing the soil, getting a self-sustaining garden going, and doing the home repairs necessary to make it a place I could live in a world of limits. So definitely thank you for everything you’ve done and written, I’ve still got a long way to go, but I’ve come farther than I ever could alone, and my life is actually starting to look outwardly like a life that reflects my inward values, which is something I’d sometimes never thought could happen.
My one question: over the last ten years you’ve been writing on this topic and running this blog, what are your thoughts in the trajectory the world has taken? Have things been moving slower, faster, or about on point with your expectations? I think the biggest surprise to me has been that the environmental aspects of catabolic collapse have unfolded much more slowly, much less linearly, and less overtly than I’d expected them to, while the social aspects have moved much faster, which means that major societal crises are hitting fast and hard, drawing huge amounts of attention and energy while the underlying environmental roots remain hidden within externalities, invisible, unspoken and not responded to.
5/5/16, 7:22 AM
hhawhee said...
Sadly, our intellects are the product of contingent selective forces operating in specific environments and so there is no guarantee that they are up to the task of understanding the entire universe or of getting us out of pickles that don't correspond very well to the environments in which our brains evolved.
5/5/16, 7:48 AM
onething said...
I feel the need to explain that Juhana indulged in the Cyrillic alphabet here, which has some letters in common with English, some that are utterly different, and some that look the same but have different sounds. CCCP is SSSR, which stands for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
5/5/16, 7:52 AM
dltrammel said...
A short article about the wave of bankruptcies in the oil and gas sector, foretold here
"U.S. oil industry bankruptcy wave nears size of telecom bust"
5/5/16, 8:24 AM
Ceworthe said...
5/5/16, 8:40 AM
Aubrey Romero said...
5/5/16, 8:43 AM
Lucretia Heart said...
5/5/16, 9:02 AM
Unknown said...
Rain Waters
5/5/16, 9:08 AM
El Gaucho said...
5/5/16, 9:14 AM
Matt and Jess said...
5/5/16, 9:21 AM
Atilio Baroni Filho said...
I'd like to thank you heartily for being one of the most influential writers/thinkers in my life, not because I agree and follow your every word, but because it makes me stop and (re)think my own life constantly. The value in this is hard to express! I'll continue to support your writing whenever it's within my means, as I've done through your books over the years, and hope it's another drop that, in the end, counts.
Keep up the good work! :)
/|\
Atilio
5/5/16, 9:28 AM
Emmanuel Goldstein said...
Seriously, this blog and the comments of the readers are a high point in my week and a great help in keeping the swirling craziness in perspective. Best wishes to you and your wife, and keep up the good work!
5/5/16, 9:40 AM
Mister Roboto said...
5/5/16, 9:41 AM
temporaryreality said...
Possibly like Mister Roboto, I arrived via Jason Godesky's site back in… something like late 2006 or early 2007 (first comments were under the handle "neighbor"). Peak-ness made sense but I needed (and still appreciate) the solid grounding of your thought on the practical ways to ride these turbulent times. I went back, while you were on hiatus this spring, and re-read from the beginning of the blog. It's still a good read (though I've only made it through 2009).
As my family (like so many others who've gone before, are in the process and will follow shortly after) slides a rocky slope downward, I had some sleepless nights in which I also read the comments from those early posts. Nice to see some of the "old timers" whose thoughts I've appreciated so much over the years.
I'd like to ask about one early commentator who doesn't appear of late and who, it seemed, you know/knew in real life. Is Danby still around? I just wanted to note his absence and mention that I appreciated his consistently reasonable and informed comments. (The same could be said of so many others here: Bill Pulliam, patriciaormsby, Deborah Bender, Violet Cabra, Ray Wharton, buddhabythelake (David) and on and on…).
Anyway, I struggle to garden, am the steadfast LESS representative in the family, tinker, DIY whenever possible, try to look for the 3rd path out of the binary, and use all my skills to make my family more resilient and cushion our descent. That we're on a descent is something that at least my youngest child understands - so perhaps there lies my true success.
For readers who are interested in some of the many ways its possible to 'collapse now' there is a work-in-progress (and lacking in some departments) list of community generated ideas available on the Green Wizards site. A "Collapse Now" Checklist Come, join in and add your expertise!
5/5/16, 9:43 AM
Bobo the Dorkboy said...
It's sad, and I admit it also _really_ pisses me off, but if I had a nickel for every time they responded with, "Oh, is this that 'Archdruid' feller again?", followed by a snort and their attention rapidly going elsewhere, well, I'd have me a whole lotta nickels...
Again, a very heartfelt thank you.
Bobo
5/5/16, 10:10 AM
Steve in Colorado said...
I would add to our host's comments, that while Silver's numbers may well be correct (I have no reason to doubt them), having more then the median income does not not necessarily relate in any way with the feeling of having been slighted or cheated by events. I have met quite a few "well off" working people who still have strong feelings that the "system" was/is screwing them.
The flaw in the article is the implied use of income level as a measure of alienation (with a negative relation). There is a lot more dissatisfaction with the system out there than those in power are willing to see, and this article is just one more attempt to hide and obfuscate what is going on from those who should be seeing it.
5/5/16, 10:23 AM
nrgmiserncaz said...
5/5/16, 10:32 AM
redoak said...
5/5/16, 10:45 AM
SLClaire said...
And to you, JMG, thank you for everything you've written about on this blog (and the Well as well). I found you through a not-overly-favorable review of your book The Long Descent which appeared in Permaculture Activist magazine, as it was then called, in late 2008 or early 2009. Maybe it's another illustration of being fortunate in your enemies - not that the reviewer was exactly your enemy, but he did think that you ought to drop your fixation with 1970s style appropriate technology and get with all the cool new stuff the permaculturists had come up with. All I can say is, I'm still reading you and you make more sense than ever, while I've just dropped my subscription to that other magazine. I may end up saying more about that sometime on my own blog.
The question of what I should do with my life turned out to have a spiritual dimension I had no clue about before encountering you. Thank you very much for being willing to write about your theme in its magical and spiritual dimensions as well as its material dimension. As much as the material dimension matters - you've inspired me to take living with LESS farther than I had and to start a blog to talk about some of what I've learned - the magical and spiritual dimensions matter more to me. Because of what I've learned, I won't waste the remainder of my life.
5/5/16, 11:06 AM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
Regarding the indifferent universe and learning to adapt ourselves to it: In the taxonomy of prayer, it seems an immature form of prayer is to use it as a method of bargaining with god(s), or to think of god(s) as some sort of ATM machine--prayer in, prosperity out. More spiritually and psychologically mature seems (to me at least) the prayer that indicates acceptance and concurrent understanding of one’s own humility, the prayer that seeks strength and helps one understand our place and the direction in which we should go. It is a form of post-initiation theurgy, I suppose.
Quakers have a phrase: "as way opens.” To "proceed as way opens" means that actions are taken meditatively, attentively, as appropriate, as a way forward is seen, as conditions warrant, rather than trying to force a path or indulge in wishful thinking. And there is the discipline of ascertaining how the way is opening and considering consequences and/or ramifications. There might be some expectation that correct action might be "shown" to one, but it might not be as planned or expected. More theurgy, I suppose.
For me this kind of attitude, discipline and resultant practice that leads to changes in one’s way of life is conducive to, even completely mingled, with earth-centric ethics and behavior—the way humus not only structures, but actually is soil. To paraphrase that old speech, ask not what the land can do for us, but what we can do for the land. :)
5/5/16, 11:10 AM
Bruce Turton said...
As to the universe not giving a damn, I am reminded of part of a verse in Matthew 5: "...for he makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unjust."
As for the quote from Acts 4:32, it would seem to be a repeat of Acts 2:42. Have used these and other snippets on those who claim that the "truth" is obvious in the Bible. Cannot get away from devilish mischief!!
Came across this comment by Aldo Leopold: "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. An ecologist must either harden his/her shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his/her business, or s/he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise."
This evokes my own consternation about openning up any conversation about the probabilities for the future of my kids and their kids.
Thank you again for your voice and its consequences.
5/5/16, 11:11 AM
Adrian Ayres Fisher said...
On a practical note: we just finished insulating our old, drafty, not so big house. What a difference! So far we’ve been content with our long-ago decision to adapt in place.
5/5/16, 11:13 AM
Kim Arntsen said...
As a life-long atheist, it was a bit of a shock to discover that I actually had a lingering childhood religion after all, as a moderate member of the Religion of Progress. Along with other developments in my life, this blog helped me put that notion to rest once and for all, and helped me come to terms with the most likely bleak prospects for our current industrial civilization.
I'd also like to thank you for putting in the work to make this one of the absolute best comment pages on the entire Internet. I know that doesn't happen without quite a bit of effort, but the level of discussion here really throws into stark relief just how bad it is almost everywhere else.
And since we're talking about favorite posts, my nomination has to be An Elegy for the Age of Space. Beautifully written, poignant and a great summary of our predicament.
5/5/16, 11:30 AM
Tidlösa said...
Otherwise, I liked a posting (or was it a series?) about the Industrial Revolution, or rather the idea that there were several different Industrial Revolutions, only one of which was based on oil. Meaning that we don´t have to "go back to the Stone Age" just because cheap oil runs out. I´m something of a pessimist as a person, but since the idea of a Cthulhucene is too pessimistic even for me, I tend to like your more, shall we say, upbeat postings. ;-)
I discovered the peak oil scene circa 2010-2012, so it was interesting to note that it was during its "peak" and decline. But then, I´ve always been a contrarian, so there´s a certain logic in this too.
You came to my attention, interestingly enough, during a discussion about UFOs! But that, as they say, is an entirely different story...
5/5/16, 11:51 AM
Tidlösa said...
5/5/16, 12:01 PM
baba t said...
5/5/16, 12:11 PM
Jason Heppenstall said...
5/5/16, 12:30 PM
Pantagruel7 said...
5/5/16, 12:43 PM
lorganiste said...
5/5/16, 12:56 PM
Jon from Virginia said...
Economics: The Sound of Aunt Edna’s Knitting, and
Peak Oil Advice from German Poets.
After leaving there, two more kept coming up-
Looking for Roong Thisdara, and
Strange Bright Banners
and the dice kept finding these six, though not as often-
The Tarpaper Shack Principle
The Care and Feeding of Time Machines
Solving Fermi's Paradox
Solvitur Ambulando
A Failure of Mimesis
Hagbard's Law
I reread them this morning after extracting this from my history file. Perhaps I should take up divination.
5/5/16, 12:59 PM
stevenstrange said...
"I write the way I like to write, for those who like to read it." -JMG
I'm definitely one who likes to read it. Your novels and many of your non-fiction books are in my library. The Long Descent is one I go back to again and again.
If I've ever read anything more consistently thought provoking than your work I can't remember it. Your point last week that puts me in the global 1% was a well needed whack to my head.
5/5/16, 1:06 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
I have to say "find new friends" may not be a possible or ideal solution: aside from this my friends are good people, and since I prefer to walk as much as possible, the people I associate with are somewhat limited to walking distance, especially since as much as possible I prefer human interaction over electronic. And yes, I realize the irony of posting this on a blog.
I also have a request: would you mind writing a post on what implications the fact humans evolved has? I'm curious what you think it means for our thinking, our sense of self and reality, other intelligences on Earth, etc. If possible, this would be great, I find myself trying to figure this out myself, and I would love to see another view on it, given how most people who say they believe in evolution seem not to have thought through the implications, or in some cases, actively resist doing so.
I realize you write what you want, and I would not have it differently, but 'tis worth asking, no?
5/5/16, 1:19 PM
Ezra Buonopane said...
http://www.radiolab.org/story/cellmates/
It's about the possibility that the existence of complex life on this planet is utterly dependent on a single, stunningly improbable event that occurred once about 2 billion years ago and no evidence currently suggests that it ever happened again. My first thought after listening to it was "maybe complex life is a lot less common in the universe than we originally thought". It's disappointing, and I really, really hope it isn't true. I, as is the case with a great many people, a have a lot mentally staked on the universe being full of complex, sentient life, but this may be yet another example of the aforementioned point.
Of course, we still certainly aren't the only planet anywhere with complex life and tool-using animals, the universe is just too big for that. But the next inhabited planet may be very, very far away.
Thank you for all the great writing on this blog. I only came across it in mid 2015; the first post I read was "The Suicide of the American Left". I had long been puzzled as to how the vast majority of recent attempts to achieve meaningful social change have failed, yet the people making the attempts didn't even think to examine their methods to see what they might have been doing wrong but instead thought that they could succeed just by trying the same things more and louder.
5/5/16, 1:24 PM
Macando said...
Thanks for all the good prose,
Mac
5/5/16, 1:41 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
I very much recommend you suggest to people not that "we probably won't go to the stars", or "We won't live to see humanity go to the stars", but "humanity will never go to the stars", as that last one rather reliably triggers very good reactions to prove how embedded it is in our culture's thoughts.
I've always been a contrarian, and I enjoy provoking people, but that got more angry reactions than anything I've ever tried to argue. Despite (or perhaps) because what I argued was in fact sound and the people I debated with could not refute any of it, everyone walked away with the impression I was incapable of clear thought and my reasoning was horribly flawed.
Finally, the other thing I noticed there: people were surprised I could hold a view in which "there is not meaning for life" and yet still be happy and reasonably well adjusted. I still can't quite ignore that last part, because it scares me a little that to many people, the meaning of life is to reach the stars someday. 42 makes a much better meaning than that. :P
5/5/16, 1:53 PM
Hubertus Hauger said...
For instance I was reflecting, that I sometimes mention, being a catholic. Sort of slightly stating what I believe in.
Actually, my faith assists me in this insecure times. From what I religio-historically know I do recognize, that the bible, building one strong foundation of the faith, is spanning over 1.000 years and does encompass a broad variety of experience by many generations of people. In addition it originates in times frequently been determined of aeons for its poverty, misery and hardship. This reflecting through the books of the bible reassures me in my own troubles and gives me real hope for a future, which feels for me as if it may become similar of how the past was been already.
So I want to reflect in this post more from different angles, from where the rich religious ancestry and heritage is giving me insight into us sliding down from the heights.
5/5/16, 1:53 PM
Vicky K said...
One thing that struck me about this week's essay was the claim of an indifferent universe. I do agree that a special case for homo or other self-conscious species as favored or having a role in the development of the universe is unwarranted. However there seem to be experiences of seeing and feeling the world as sacred or holy in some manner. Or feeling that the universe is somehow benevolent, yet not partisan. Rather than indifferent, which implies a bit of uncaring, benevolence implies a specialized kind of caring.
My solution to this possible paradox is that evolution of living creatures (including the simplest ones) requires that life is perceived as worthwhile enough to continue living. Essentially, survivor's have access to rewards for following their instincts. A depressed or unhappy creature is less likely to survive and reproduce. Evolution will favor the sufficiently happy (and well nourished) with good feelings such as bliss or peace of mind and heart. So it may be possible to say that the Universe as a whole is entirely indifferent, but that Nature as a living component is biased to happiness in order for continuation of the evolution of living creatures.
5/5/16, 1:54 PM
Steve D said...
It's hard to pick a single favorite post, but I think it was probably your series on the rise & fall of the American Empire back in 2012 that served as my "Wow, this guy really gets it!" moment and I've been gleefully hooked ever since.
I no longer drink, but I'll raise a glass of virtual stout to you - Here's to as many more years of The Archdruid Report as the Internet can provide. Many thanks & all the best!
5/5/16, 2:04 PM
sara drew said...
Congratulations on your ten years. I found your blog last September and it has had a major effect. I have learned a great deal - and have been moved to laughter and tears - I'm thinking of your post on Atlantis and the next ten million years - and feel an affinity with many other posters. What value my comments? But that's not the point really. I have let go of attachment to doom scenarios as well as singularity/ rapture - in fact I have been welcoming all the fresh Spring green leaves on their fourth return since the supposed 2012 apocalypse!
It is fascinating to see your broader analysis and gain more insight into the cyclical nature of the historical process. Your post about the quest not taken mentioned above I found deeply moving, I have loved Tolkein all my life and believe the part of Devon I live in is the Bree land; in fact our local town of Honiton is affectionately known as Hobbiton.
Here's to the next ten years!
Sara
5/5/16, 2:21 PM
Carolyn said...
The achievement of industrial civilization I'd most like to save is safe, effective, reliable, and widely-available birth control. I think that's been a tremendous boon to our species--humans have been trying to control their fertility for as long as there have been humans, and we just recently got good at it. But I wonder if it isn't too dependent on industrial infrastructure to survive into the coming dark age.
If we can't save that, then I vote for the game Dungeons and Dragons. All you need for that are the rule books, pencils, paper, and dice, and it can entertain a small group of people for a great many hours. I think there are worse choices for things we could carry with us into the dark.
5/5/16, 2:37 PM
Bike Club Vest Prez said...
5/5/16, 2:43 PM
Jeff Gill said...
5/5/16, 3:16 PM
willow said...
Greetings everyone,
The Cthulhucene….. I love it!
I am a long-time lurker (reader) of both your blogs JMG, and this is my first time commenting (for reasons which have nothing to do with my desire to comment). I also purchase/own as many of your books as I can afford. I have truly become such a JMG fan-gal that I have taken to the habit of asking every bookstore I wander into to please consider carrying your full selection of books (if they do not already do so). It’s very fun for me to plant JMG seeds in my travels, and don’t worry, I do so with respect and grace. At least, I hope so! ;)
I was trying to remember my first encounter with your blog. It was in the peak oil community sometime around 2007. I remember feeling so joyous and relieved. I felt like I had finally found my community in your words. I have felt the same ever since, and have become even more deeply grateful to you, and the community here, as time has passed. For me you are like an oasis in the desert. I cannot put into words how deeply appreciative I am of all your efforts JMG. Thank you for sharing yourself and your writing, and for creating a space which for me feels so respectful, deeply connected, accessible, and inspiring. I look forward to reading everything you write. Congratulations on ten years! I hope for many more to come.
BTW, I really enjoyed hearing how this blog began for you. It’s interesting to hear your personal story. Some favorite posts for me are: Atlantis Won’t Sink, Experts Agree, The Next Ten Billion Years, and The Heresy of Technological Choice.
Toasting you with my teacup… Cheers from California!
willow
5/5/16, 3:53 PM
Justin said...
One prediction that you made years ago, that the alt-right right is starting to prove is that there have been permanent changes in society with respect to gender roles, racism and tolerance of homosexuality - of course there is a natalist, anti-gay, white-supremacist faction of the alt-right, but they're just a faction. I would enjoy reading your thoughts on the phenomenon.
I've noticed the way you've been ahead of quite a few trends lately too in your discussions about culture and economics in the West. Hypothetically, if a 'respectable institution' offered to interview you, would you go for it?
5/5/16, 4:00 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Oh, and a large part of Florida is expected to be underwater within a matter of decades and much of what's left will be uninhabitable salt marshes and desert. Soon, there will be lots of other submerged cities joining R'lyeh at the bottom of the sea.
But hey, global warming and climate change are a myth, right? At least that's what all those pseudoconservative politicians, corporate shills and bought-and-paid-for think tanks keep telling us...
5/5/16, 4:11 PM
Katelan said...
It's one of the more common modern forms of doublethink ... to allow that of course the universe we experience is a mental construct rather than an objective reality, and then to turn right around and insist that some currently popular features of that mental construct - the deadness, mindlessness, and meaninglessness of the cosmos, for example - are objectively real truths, while features of mental constructs that our culture doesn't encourage - the presence of life, mind, and meaning in the nonhuman cosmos, for instance - are just plain wrong.
(If anyone's interested see Atomic Sea, and as a tiny gesture of appreciation for your ten years of fascinating writing, Archdruid readers can download it free for a month with coupon code MW37D from Smashwords.)
So thank you again for ten years of imagination and wit and hard work.
5/5/16, 4:13 PM
Patricia Mathews said...
5/5/16, 4:29 PM
Unknown said...
The psychological term for this sort of thinking is "ego defense". It's usually an adaptive trait that allows people to concentrate on living the finite lives they have without being preoccupied with their own mortality.
Naturally, a previously adaptive trait may become maladaptive if circumstances change. Witness my own body's tendency to store food in preparation for dire Scandinavian winters (I live in Florida).
5/5/16, 4:33 PM
Mister Roboto said...
During the primary for who would be the Democratic contender in the recall election, the unions threw four million dollars at an incompetent political hack from Madison who was very unlikely to win, simply because this hack promised the unions the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. And the hack would have been as bad in a liberal-Democratic way as Scott Walker was in his conservative-Republican way. But Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett succeeded in winning this primary because Democratic voters in this state knew the hack certainly wouldn't win. Tom Barrett probably could have used at least some of that wad of union money. (Though how much he would have been allowed to use would have been limited by the constraints placed by Wisconsin state law on recall-election challengers.)
Also, last year, Milwaukee County bus-drivers, who are the best paid bus-drivers in the entire state, orchestrated a three-day work stoppage because they wanted this, that, and the other thing that the county government simply couldn't afford to give them. And the bus-driver union had this obvious "cat that swallowed the canary" attitude about what they were doing while so very many poor people who had it a lot worse than they did got badly screwed over. I wouldn't be surprised if that silly union fails to realize to this very day how badly their little stunt blew up in their faces!
5/5/16, 5:03 PM
Geoff said...
5/5/16, 5:05 PM
Justin said...
I remember reading about how the most intellectually fertile period of Greek civilization was marked by relatively austere living conditions, not because life was so tough, but because they simply had better things to do than to ornament their houses and feast on delicacies - and they weren't busy in the fields either, they had slaves for that. It seems to me like there's a parallel there between the golden age of Ancient Greece and the USA/USSR in the 60's and 70's. As someone who barely experienced the 90's, I can only look back at an imagined version of those 20 years, but I do wish I could have experienced them.
I'm of course complicit in this, but it is quite a shame how we lost trust in our collective ability to do amazing things and bought into a model of individualistic consumerism that in the end, accomplished nothing but producing suburbia and its trappings. We could have done so much cool stuff. I can't find it, but I remember seeing a supposedly historically accurate 'aerial photograph' of Paris during Notre Dames' construction, and I was struck by the size of the cathedral relative to the city and the humbleness of most of the buildings. It is humiliating to think that building Notre Dame must have been much more expensive than the Apollo Program in relative terms, and yet they did it.
5/5/16, 5:09 PM
Kevin Patrick Beckett said...
This post, excellent as always, brings to mind a segment from David Brin's novel Earth.
The novel deals with a number of subjects related to the near-term depletion of Earth's biosphere, the climate change and other "doomer" issues - the author even admits that his vision in the novel is an optimistic one - and not likely to be the favorable outcome as noted in the book.
At the end of the novel, due to "Checkov's rifle issues" the planet comes alive and broadcasts that to the universe at large.
"It gets cold between the stars. Most of space is desert, dry and empty.
But there are, here and there, beads that glitter close to steady, gentle suns. And though these beads are born in fire and swim awash in death, they also shimmer with hope, with life.
Every now and the, as if such slender miracles weren't enough, one of the little spinning globes even awakens.
"I am......" it declares, singing into the darkness. "I am, I am, I am!"
To which the darkness has an answer, befitting any upstart.
"So what? Big Deal, Big Deal...... So What?"
You continue to be an inspiration - and I hope that you will continue to scatter your wisdom for another decade or more (even if we move back to a paper based model)
5/5/16, 5:25 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Can't believe its already been ten years. I was an early adopter back in 2007, although I didn't begin commenting on this site until much later. I stumbled onto this blog via Jim Kunstler's site, because one of the commenters was recommending it and since I was reading everything I could about Peak Oil at the time, I decided to come check it out.
I also remember the Jason Godesky days and his weekly rants about the Archdruid Report. I still remember that discussion thread where Godesky proved the reality of Godwin's Law and got 86'ed. Godesky's website remained up for years after he and his fellow neo-primitivist bloggers decided to call it quits, but it seems to have vanished into cyberspace.
Thanks for everything and the best of luck in your future endeavors.
@ Onething: Most if not all Americans (and I am certain most if not all Europeans as well) who grew up during the Cold War knew exactly what CCCP meant, even if many of the young 'uns these days don't.
5/5/16, 6:17 PM
EntropicDoom said...
The Washington State Democratic caucuses for Legislative Districts were weeks ago and the Bernie supporters were the majority, but the Clintonites were much more entrenched and had throughly infiltrated the party operations. The outcome was a source of frustration and a sense of loss. However, for me the bright spot was asking people, do you read the Archdruid Report?
For those that recognized my inquiry, a light went on. Other bloggers such as Orlov and Kunstler were mentioned by many. But the outcome was many people are reading ADR. Your books were the next thing we discussed.
Reading ADR means developing an awareness. Spread the word and tell others. I post select essays on the kitchen bulletin board. Start discussions on ADR. This could be a dinner table discussion or waiting in line somewhere. I did a lot of that at the recent Demo-lition convention where we had to wait up to two hours to sign in.
Each week, even if I don't write a comment, I write out notes. Writing can clear up my thoughts. Rarely do I send in comments. If a comment mentions another item on the web I look it up and watch it or read it. If there is time I read all the comments and references to past ADR posts. Readers can also find JMG on YouTube giving interviews and talks. Look them up and listen to them for more JMG appreciation and inspiration.
The chain of involvement is Read ADR, Read JMG Books, Start Discussions, Watch JMG Videos, Document Personal Views and lastly, but important: 'seeing.'
Seeing means looking at the world around us differently. When I painted watercolors I saw the world in washes after an afternoon of painting. Following ADR means seeing the current world around us in its eventual de-industrial outcome. The scenes in daily life now have expiration dates or lifespans. The practices and the devices in everyday life become temporary aspects of an outlandish time.
It is like in The Matrix; seeing things as there really are. What will replace the wasteful in a few years? How will this be done in a future with less gas, I ask myself? I would have to walk there or not go, without a car. How will these items be made and transported without fuel? Can those be made anymore or imported without fuel or energy? Cars are no longer desirable and stylish to my eyes, but users of a limited fuel supply and only as able as their current supply of gas will last.
Looking at the world and seeing it with ADR glasses means seeing the “before” scene for our changing age and marveling at the waste and the assumption it is all permanent. It is already changing and getting back to the original way things were done with less energy. Collapse is a returning to reality, not a retardation from our path to the stars.
The current fires in Alberta give us a vision of the next step we will all share. The everyday life we lead will become very different, very quickly, without the massive amounts of fuel and energy to move us further down the finite road of over consumption. All along Highway 63 leading south out of Fort McMurray, Alberta, are hundreds of abandoned vehicles that ran out of gas. The station pumps are dry and ironically this area is a leading producer of crude oil. A remote part of our behemoth civilization has collapsed in flames. Abandoned all along the highway are the 'dynamic' vehicles; now powerless and toasted wrecks, without the diminishing supply of gas to power them.
Lastly I think we should all practice baby steps such as less heating and having lower temperatures in the house. Less driving and more walking. Cancel TV watching. Helping others in the neighborhood. Plant a garden and grow some of your own food. Be conservative in the old fashioned way. This is the end result of following ADR, becoming more aware and finally beginning to practice a collapsed life style well before it is trendy and necessary.
5/5/16, 6:18 PM
Ron M said...
I have not missed an ADR post since I “discovered” it six years ago. The breadth of topics you cover and the depth of your analysis are truly breathtaking. In terms of the loftiness of your vision and practical nature of your solutions I can only compare you to one of my favourite authors, E.F. Schumacher. This, plus your superb writing style and the high calibre of commentators you have attracted, makes ADR is the only blog I care to read (other than Well of Galabes). Your books, too, are rare gems.
I cannot thank you enough for the sanctuary of sanity you have created in a world gone mad. May you continue to be blessed and inspired to use the gifts that you have cultivated and share so generously with your readership.
5/5/16, 6:19 PM
John Roth said...
5/5/16, 7:19 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Now, on to some specific responses...
Juhana, thank you! I know the American experience right now is way off on one end of things; ours is really rather an oddball culture, all things considered, and it's been warped into some truly bizarre shapes by a century of imperial adventurism and its consequences. That's one of the reasons why I don't try to tell people elsewhere what they ought to do; conditions are just too different.
Phil, I probably need to follow the Alt-Right scene more closely than I have done to date. I chuckled over your description of them as "Right but not conservative" -- that sort of political non-Euclideanism is a good sign that the basic political alignments of a society are shifting rapidly.
Compound F, duly pinged!
Grebulocities, I'd be interested in seeing further information on the "EROEI <10 = no industrial society" discussion if you can find it. Intuitively, it makes a great deal of sense to me -- the energy cost of the infrastructure you need to put energy to useful economic work tends to get left out of a vast number of discussions of this kind.
MikeP, some people are beginning to grasp that space travel is simply a literary device, no more to be taken seriously than (say) the assorted miracles that land the Pevensie children in Narnia. There's a fascinating website -- well, fascinating to those of us who grew up reading science fiction -- exploring the Old Solar System, the far more colorful solar system in which we thought we might be living before space probes banished Barsoom and Amtor to the realm of might-have-beens. Still, I've encountered a very, very large number of people for whom space travel still fulfills a religious need, and who lose it completely if you point out that no, we're not going to the stars, and here are the reasons why.
With regard to the Anthropic Event, exactly. We don't refer to the first epoch of the Cenozoic as the Cometocene, after all. Down the road a bit I plan on doing some posts more or less riffing off "The Next Ten Billion Years," in which I'll offer a proposed geological name for what we're facing: the Cenozoic/Neozoic Transition, C/N Transition for short.
Thecrowandsheep, got it, and you're in the contest. Did you send me your email address, by the way?
John, there I disagree. Debt is simply one facet of the game of tokens we use to distribute real, nonfinancial goods and services, and to my mind, its rise and fall is an effect of changes in the production and distribution of real wealth, not a driving factor in its own right. More on this in an upcoming post!
Just Because, hmm! I like the idea of applying regression to the mean to history -- potentially very useful. I'll want to brood over that for a while.
5/5/16, 7:31 PM
onething said...
Ah, but human beings are at least middling in caliber, quite impressive sometimes, and not only that but probably something like a fractal upon the larger and more consequential forces of being; I doubt they disparage us so completely! if only because we have potential to overcome our stupidity and indeed I think we have some sort of spiritual illness causing us to waste our undeveloped greatness for a time.
Perhaps it is a necessary lesson to counter the hubris and immaturity of people's outlook, but it always struck me wrong when I would read the ancient spiritual literature such as the Desert Fathers and they would refer to the things of this world as being like filthy rags compared to their visions of the spiritual world. Well, I was given such a glimpse one time; I was granted to see a soul, and it was the lowest quality soul at that, and then I understood why those saints wrote the way they did but it is damaging to get people to disparage the beauty of this world by such comparisons. It is even unseemly and borderline blasphemous to say such things of the creation of the Christian God. Rather we go from beauty to greater beauty of a new and different quality.
Of course you would do no such thing and perhaps I ought to erase the above, but it has bothered my mind for years, so I'll just leave it stand.
As to prayer, what I meant was, if the universe is indifferent to us, why speak to it?
5/5/16, 7:54 PM
Dennis D said...
5/5/16, 8:10 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Can anyone honestly imagine Hillary Clinton inspiring the kind of enthusiasm we can see in this video or at Bernie Sanders' rallies?
At the Democratic caucuses in the town where I live, the local Democratic activists were overwhelmingly in favor of Sanders and there was a huge turnout and enthusiastic turnout of younger voters in favor of Bernie. But guess who got most of the delegates from the state where I live when all was said and done? It's one of the more grotesque ironies of our time that the Democratic Party is considerably less democratic than the Republican Party.
As was pointed out in the discussion thread for last weeks post, Hillary has had to resort to hiring paid trolls to counter the thousands of enthusiastic Trump and Bernie supporters on the Web. There are an awful lot of people in America, from many different races and backgrounds, who are sick and tired of being screwed over by a senile elite exemplified by Hillary.
I have been reading Toynbee and re-reading Spengler lately. I don't think we are far along enough in the cycle for full-blown Caesarism, but I think there is a good chance we are looking at the American equivalent of Marius when I watch that video...
PS - Speaking of Hillary, there are reports there may be an indictment coming soon over the email server scandal and allegations she mishandled top secret information. Even if she manages to avoid being indicted, there are likely to be more embarrassing revelations coming out and there are rumors that Republican operatives have thick files full of Clinton scandals they won't release until she gets the nomination.
5/5/16, 8:29 PM
Ray Wharton said...
But ignoring the complete distance of the infinite, we still might take interest in what magnitudes of finite stages we occupy. To the scale around ants my work in the garden is like a passing demon. One moment like any other turns, with the swing to a shovel, into a slaughter, an end of all projects and goals that the morning brought. All for no reason, and my sympathy, on those day's I have any, does not recover the hundreds of bodies cast into the cart, and taken... away.
Similarly the joyous union of oxygen and carbon in enthropically preferable conditions in the Canadian woods is to we humans a disaster. The stages are diverse in kind as scale beyond any accounting, and vastly less diverse, yet still diverse beyond accounting, are the stages of the human drama.
Let me put forth the grandest scale I can imagine the human attempt as constituting in the evolutionary history of the Earth. There once was a small animal, it likely lived in a burrow, but we cannot be sure. It had four legs though, a spine, and strangely two kinds of teeth. But what was the really strange thing is that it produced a secretion which its offspring could use as sustenance. There were lots of relatives to this animal which followed the typical route of animal evolution. Thousands to millions of years of wild experimentation followed by extinction. But this little creature, had more children that Abraham! That power to give milk, carried through several species for many millions of years. With out foreknowledge of what was to come far later it could be dismissed as a quirk, a strange feature of an exotic group of animals. But, eventually that power would be tested and found useful enough to be carried into niches of vast difference in form. Though the mammals will go extinct eventually, they were very influential, and defined a tact to the way countless stages would be acted for a very long time. A question, between humans as a typical species and humans as between a God and a Animal. Is anything that we do, anything special to us, that could be as useful, net beneficial, or adaptable, as the power to give milk?
5/5/16, 8:51 PM
Ahavah said...
I must say that you helped me be less freaked out in some ways about the whole peak oil issue, but ironically more concerned about the broader economic issues that led me to be interested in peak oil in the first place. It was your idea to try and save some useful old fashioned pre computer era homemaking and small business skills - nobody else gave saving important bits of knowledge and culture any serious thought back then, that I recall. (They still don't, actually.) The prepper scene never appealed to me. You gave me a middle option between being a crazy hoarder of freeze dried fake food and a just as crazy despair induced dissipated hedonism. IIRC, no one else was offering a better way, and I thank you.
It has been extremely difficult to learn to discard black vs white dualiastic thinking, but I have been trying to learn your lessons. And like some others here I grew up with a deep love of star wars, star trek, Battlestar Galactica, lost in space, and other similar shows and movies - and never questioned the myth of progress. Lazarus Long and Podkayne of Mars seemed perfectly doable. Now I realize I should see those stories in a different light, as social and political commentary and not predictions of life in the stars. It was hard letting go.
Hard, too, being completely unable to get my friends, family, and community to take the long descent/emergency seriously. I know now how the prophets felt. It is hard to see the future coming towards you like a freight train when you can't get off the tracks. Meanwhile, the others on the track aren't even trying to get off and can't understand why they should. You can see, hear, and feel the rumblings but they think the light is a good sign.
Lately I have discovered the Well of Galabes, too. It is also full of wisdom and insight. And I also have several of your books...
You have made a real difference in the world, and I hope you keep doing so for as long as you can. There is precious little out there so well written, intelligent, high-level and relevant as your blog and the comments here, and all of us would be worse off without you, wherever we are in the journey back to sanity. Thank you again for all your hard work.
5/5/16, 9:00 PM
aiastelamonides said...
Congrats, etc!
A certain kind of person likes to say that Christianity is based on the "just world fallacy," that is, they believe in good things only because they have unconsciously taken "the universe is fundamentally good to humans" as an unshakable axiom. Christian belief does sometimes have this element, though more often in my experience it does not, at least not in an outwardly noticeable way. But this Cthulhu business suggests a religion based on the JWF in a very different way, one that gives it a place analogous to that of the fleshy desires in Christianity. It would be seen as humanity's besetting flaw, the ruin of naive ethical codes, disruptor of judgments, painful to resist but so very sweetly liberating to overcome. It would also be the sin to succeed Greek hubris and Christian pride as the queen of blasphemies. There is certainly a family resemblance.... I don't know if this sort of thing could catch on, though I personally find it more terrible and beautiful than anything in Christianity. Then again, I'm an atheist with little intuitive understanding of faith, so my ideas on that topic are likely to be way off base. Thoughts?
5/5/16, 9:03 PM
Ray Wharton said...
Always thought Forest Gump could use a follow up. The son has the same name as is reported to be clever. In Forrest's generation will all his disabulity he could accomplish anything. With Forrest Jr. a clever man... who I think would be in his late 20's now, can't catch a break, and his well intended father cannot understand what his son is doing wrong.
5/5/16, 9:30 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Don, according to conventional economic theory, the vast torrents of money dumped into the global economy by way of quantitative easing schemes and zero interest rates on credit should have sparked an inflationary boom. Nothing of the sort happened. Why? Because the soaring whole-system costs of energy extraction from resources with lower and lower net energy acts as a tax on all economic activity -- and that's a concept for which there is no room in conventional economics at all. That's the most important example just at the moment.
Fudoshin, granted. I see the delusion of the omnipotence of money as one aspect of a broader issue, which is the flight into abstraction I've discussed in any number of previous posts. Money is an abstract representation of access to real wealth, and it has doubtless never occurred to Turner that that's all it is. When all his money fails to keep him off the barbecue grill, or for that matter the lamppost, the last thought in his mind is likely to be logically equivalent to the famous saying: "I can't be overdrawn, I still have checks left!"
Peter, thank you! I've been reading Lovecraft's less known stories on Mr. Loucks' site for the last couple of years, and he's getting an acknowledgment in the afterword to my Lovecraftian epic fantasy, along with Boyd Pearson, whose Clark Ashton Smith website "The Eldritch Dark" has been just as essential. As I get closer to The Weird of Hali: Providence, I'll certainly be in touch.
Eric, I originally thought the economic crisis would hit harder sooner -- I hadn't yet absorbed just how much resilience is built into the global economy, though I learned a great deal from the 2008-2009 market crash and adjusted my expectations appropriately. I also thought that the impacts of anthropogenic climate change would take longer to arrive -- I figured they'd hit sooner than the official reports claimed, but the rapidity of the Greenland ice sheet meltdown took me by surprise. I was impressed by how short-lived the wave of peak oil denial generated by the fracking bubble turned out to be. The social transformations, though, were about in line with my expectations. All in all, we're pretty much on track.
Hhawhee, well put. Faith in the omnipotence of human reason is the besetting sin of ages of reason, and that's why ages of reason inevitably end with the humiliating failure of human reason to live up to the inflated expectations loaded on it.
Dltrammel, yes, I saw that! The fracking bust is shaping up to be a whopper. I hope that all my readers who got told "Peak oil's a myth, fracking will save us" will take the time to remind the person who said that of the conversation, once the sheer magnitude of the fracking boondoggle becomes impossible to evade.
Mister R., yes, I used to get neoprimitivist true believers here now and again, and you're not the only one who noticed the similarity to the worst sort of campus radical. Congrats on your escape! ;-)
5/5/16, 9:57 PM
Phil said...
A few links for later perusal: Clarkhat, formerly of a non-partisan/libertarian law blog popehat.com, has a intro to neoreaction on his new website: . He does not quite go as much into what neoreaction IS, so much as what is against. Most NRx-ers would point to neoreaction.net (link tags not working) as a good starting point, it has helpful links to its history, and philosophical roots (lots of Carlyle). Most of this comes through Mencius Moldbug, the pen name of one Curtis Yarvin.
Yarvin mapped the salary class and wage class to symbolic brahmin and vaisya castes among other things that seem to reflect the tone of the latest few posts.
Trenchantly, Clarkhat, himself an traditional Catholic anarcho-capitalist, has been calling for Civil War 2.0 for about half a year now, mostly because of a mixture of center-periphery issues with Washington DC elites becoming completely separated from the rest of the country, in particular the rust belt, the south, and the midwest.
When I hear ancaps, alt-rights, and my favorite archdruid all say similar things, my hackles are raising. Interesting times indeed!
5/5/16, 11:09 PM
LewisLucanBooks said...
I'm not an intellectual, or, a deep thinker. Sometimes, I have to re-read some of the posts. Some of the commenters are beyond my small intellectual gifts. But, the ADR has changed the way I think about things and view things. And, has sometimes made me deeply ashamed of myself. The occasional good dose of shame can lead to profound change. And, has.
I've made good friends, on here. Chris, Cathy McGuire, Tripp. My life is so much richer, knowing these people. The books and podcasts the commenters have lead me to, have value, beyond price.
My life has certainly changed. Through circumstances, it looks like I'm winding up my four years of living in the country, in a rental. Not entirely by my choosing. But it was not time wasted. It was an apprenticeship in collapsing early and avoiding the rush. In comfort, if not style. I may be trembling on the edge of buying my own semi-rural place. Where I can really pull out all the stops and dive deeper into Green Wizardry. We'll see. What happens, happens.
No need to respond to my post. The dam has burst, and we don't want "our" Arch Druid (ret.) to go under. Lew
5/5/16, 11:20 PM
James M. Jensen II said...
Your reply to Robin raises an interesting question: if the universe as a whole is conscious, what would it be conscious of?
5/5/16, 11:27 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Adrian, certainly that analysis fits my experience. Dunno why it is that Quakers and Druids keep on talking about the same things in the same way, but there it is...;-)
Tidlösa, that'd be The Four Industrial Revolutions from April of 2014, one of the core posts in a still incomplete sequence on retro technology as the basis for a near-term ecotechnic society. I need to put those posts together and start filling in the blanks. As for the level-headedness, that's just me -- more precisely, it's what resulted from the somewhat odd combination of decades of training as an operative mage and an equally long interest in philosophy and the sciences. If the scientific community wasn't so completely fixated in its inherited jihad against magic, the fusion of the methods of the sciences with the disciplined subjectivity and reflective awareness found in the best occult schools could give rise to impressively powerful systems of mind- and personality-training.
Pantagruel7, I don't object to "impactful" for its Orwellian qualities as much as for its sheer unadulterated ugliness. The English language has so many clearer and more attractive ways to say the same thing!
Jon, how were you using the dice to get those? Aspiring internet diviners want to know.
WB Jorgensen, oh, I know. That's why I noted the limits to that advice. As for your request, I've already written a few things about the impact that evolution has had on our minds -- here's one example -- but there's much more to be said about the implications that unfold from accepting the idea that we have evolved from other organisms and share so much of what makes us ourselves with those other organisms. So I'll definitely consider it.
Ezra, possibly so, but I'm thinking here of that recent researcher -- I've misplaced his name -- who took the Prigogine equations that show that energy flow through an open system increases the complexity of that system, and showed that this means that life has a very high probability of emerging naturally whenever you have a chemically complex environment with energy flowing through it, such as the surface of a planet with some kind of liquid on it. One way or another, I actually hope we never find out; there's a value to having some questions left permanently unanswered as an invitation to wonder.
5/5/16, 11:52 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Carolyn, let me turn that back around at you. Can you think of a way in which you, personally, can help preserve safe and effective birth control as an option for the deindustrial future? If not -- and I'd encourage you to consider doing some research on that -- then you might see what you can do about establishing a D&D archive or the like. (Maybe it's just me, but I always liked the original, non-Advanced D&D, in the staplebound booklets. Those would be small enough to engrave on bronze tablets or something.) ;-)
Justin, if a respectable institution wanted to interview me, I'd be perfectly willing -- I see no reason to be prejudiced against mere respectability! ;-) As for the changes in the Alt-Right, could you point me to some sources? As I noted above, I haven't kept up with that movement to the extent I probably should have.
Yellow Submarine, why, yes -- I talked at some length about the latter two in this post among others. We may be a lot closer than most people realize to major coastal flooding of the kind that causes cities to be abandoned. And of course, if you'd like to talk of cities being abandoned, yes, Fort McMurray is a good poster child. I really should do a post on the nature of ecological blowback soon.
Katelan, delighted to hear it, and thank you! I'll check it out.
Mister R., yes, I remember that. The thing is, I'm in favor of unions, and of any form of voluntary organization that allows people to defend their own interests against the powerful. The trouble with American unions isn't that they exist, it's that they've been allowed to become corrupt vassals of the political establishment, and a significant number of them are too busy profiteering to do the job they were originally created to do.
Justin, grand projects are a very common phenomenon of a certain stage in the lifespan of every society. Then that phase passes, and so do the conditions that allow grand projects to be done. One of the reasons I find history comforting is that it reminds us that things like this are nobody's fault, any more than it's anyone's fault when hair turns gray.
Kevin, interesting. I haven't read that Brin book yet -- I find a lot of his more recent stuff very preachy -- but I'll consider it.
EntropicDoom, if my blog just convinces a certain number of people to get rid of their televisions, it will have done immense good. I really do think that the habit of staring at little colored pictures on glass screens, instead of having a life, has a massive role in making our problems more intractable than they would otherwise be.
5/6/16, 12:01 AM
John Michael Greer said...
And the world, far from being "filthy rags," is stunningly beautiful. It's not particularly merciful or caring -- a planet on which every single living thing survives by eating the corpses of other living things is not going to be one big warm bundle of benevolence -- but beautiful, yes.
But that's my religion; your mileage may vary.
Dennis, good. This is what I was talking about when I spoke of the transition to a salvage economy. You can't support an industrial society on salvaged solar panels, but you can provide important economic and practical benefits to deindustrial communities with them, and that's worth pursuing on its own account.
Yellow Submarine, if the Dems nominate Clinton, it's entirely possible that the Democratic Party will go the way of the Whigs over the following decade or so -- so many people who normally vote Democrat are sick of business as usual, and of course that's all Clinton has to offer. I'm still hoping that Sanders can force a brokered convention, and the fact (and I think this is a fact) that he can beat Trump, and she can't, convinces enough delegates to swing his way to give him the nomination. A Sanders vs. Trump race, with the self-proclaimed elite left on the sidelines, would be choice! But I don't expect that; I expect Clinton to get the nomination by whatever combination of hooks and crooks are required, and then to go down to a historic defeat in the general election.
Ray, I like it! To my mind, this is exactly the sort of perspective that's demanded by the Cthulhucene -- an awareness of humanity as one species among many, alive at one not particularly important moment of the Earth's long history, dependent on the biosphere and thus with every possible incentive to keep it alive and healthy.
Aias, good. To my mind, the lesson of the Cthulhucene is precisely that it requires the recognition that the universe is in fact just -- that is, that it measures everything according to its proper importance, and doesn't assign one particular species of social primates on one little dust-mote of a world circling a nondescript sun toward one side of an undistinguished galaxy a fantastically inflated and thus wildly unjust and unfair importance! The idea that an overdeveloped sense of entitlement might come to be recognized as humanity's core failing, to be overcome through spiritual discipline, makes a great deal of intuitive sense to me -- but I'll have to brood over the concept for a while.
Phil, thanks for the links! I'll follow those up.
James, the universe would be conscious of itself, of course, rather the way you are in a state of meditation.
5/6/16, 12:17 AM
Mikep said...
5/6/16, 2:08 AM
patriciaormsby said...
@ W.B. Jorgenson: I always attack 'em right back, and the Bioninitiative report is just one of a multitude of sources to keep you supplied with ammo-blammo. But I went through the initial stages of withdrawal from the techno-nightmare nearly two decades ago, and tend to forget what it was like to cross yet another good old friend off the list. I still field snide remarks from relatives, who are stuck with me and vice versa. I just brush it off. Other than that, my friends are people who accept me the way I am, and switch the blasted phone off, or at least keep it at a fair distance or in "airplane mode." The Arch Druid Report is a nice community full of people who sympathize with your point of view. Finding friends in your area is also important, but this bog is a big help in the meantime.
Just keep in mind that this is the fate of people who have stepped away from the milling crowd and faced new realities ahead of their time. Be brave! I'm cheering for you.
5/6/16, 2:59 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Congratulations and you have achieved a truly remarkable body of work. Respect.
I'm not afraid of hard work. It is the work that I haven't done, that actually needs doing, that I fear. ;-)! And wow, do we need to roll our sleeves up and get into it as a society, or what? But of course, such sentiments are unfashionable and I'm truly grateful that you take the time to talk about them.
Hey, I burned much midnight oil over the past few nights re-wiring the battery room so as to be able to install a few more solar photo voltaic panels over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, entropy reduces the panels output as the years progress, and so a person needs far more generating potential than they ever require so as to account for this. I posed a thoughtful question to the recent Green Wizards meet up group which was: How comfortable would people here be if the government commenced constructing a new brown coal (which is the worst of the worst) generator plant? It was a thought provoking question because I know too well that even those monsters can only operate for so long and many have gone on well beyond their original life spans with no sign of replacements.
That is interesting to hear how your blog posts create themselves via the medium of yourself. Interesting, and perhaps also speculation for your other blog. In case you are interested I tend to tell a story and then wrap the weekly activities around that story. Where those stories originate, I can guess, but mostly they pop into my head at unlikely moments. Stories tend to need to be told. And you are most certainly telling a massive and complex story - which unfolds as it should. It is a pleasure to be a part of that and also to feed into the story (if at all possible).
Your occasional mention of Ashland led me to look into the culture there a bit deeper in the past and it reminded me of the horrid experiences (yes, that is twice which is too much for one lifetime) I incurred at the town of Nimbin down here which is not dissimilar culturally. I unfortunately could peer through the facade and it annoyed me no end and no locals seemed to be able to see just how sad the local hippy museum was... Grump, grump, grump! Hehe!
It is interesting that you wrote about the Hubbert Curve and the Peak Oil scene and social movements. Since I became aware of the inverted bell shaped curve, I've often noted how it maps many a social trajectory beautifully. In fact the term: Jumping the shark which I relayed to you its origins with the TV show Happy Days is very apt. The funny thing is that I don't believe that it has to be the case, and I did applaud your decision to step down as the head of the AODA. That was a rare thing to do, and not many people are capable of that recognition. Don't get a big head or anything, but I salute you!
cont...
5/6/16, 3:33 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Yes, well guidance is sometimes to be mediated, is it not?
What this rambling business? Now that you mention it, apart from the titles there does seem to be a lack of snappy sound bites in your writing. Hehe! I'd be very disturbed to read snappy sound bites in your writing. I'd actually believe that someone had hacked your blogger account (you can take backups by the way).
Unfortunately, your mention of the Cthulucene has left me with a mental image of the descendants of rats talking amongst themselves in the far distant future: "Yes, back in the Cthulucene, our descendants appeared to be small furry creatures that survived the planet wide species die off by sheer cunning. Pass me the cheese, will you". Sorry, I digress.
For what it is worth, space seems like a rather uninviting place for a human. Just sayin...
Oh, that reminds me, a couple of Mormons were lurking around the area today, and unfortunately, I was way too busy and had to make a trip down to the tip shop instead. I love the tip shop - it is awesome. And unfortunately I missed their visit, otherwise I would have enjoyed my conversation with them about how they reconciled themselves to their ostentatious display of wealth and Jesus's teachings. They were driving a very expensive vehicle which seems very weird, given what they were trying to achieve. Maybe the underlying message was, join us and you can have access to this expensive vehicle and also the funky same, same suits. What's with those suits anyway? It was really hot here today, but of course they may not have noticed that global warming seems to be accelerating. Am I going into some sort of demonic pit for saying that above stuff? ;-)!
It's been a fun ride, that's for sure! As they say down here: Keep up the good work, mate!
Cheers
Chris
5/6/16, 3:33 AM
shrama said...
My heartiest congratulations to you on completing 10 years of superlative writing. Although I can't say that I have read all of your blog entries I have read most of them starting from the very beginning.
I came to your blog via the oil drum and remember vividly the day I clicked on a link from a post by Leanan (bless her) to your blog post on Fermi's paradox. That was the very first time I read this blog and it came as a breath of fresh air. After that over the years you have both challenged and affirmed so many of my beliefs that I have come to see you a veritable guru – a guru on the other side of the planet whom I have never met and probably will never meet.
In my youth I did hold the covert belief that the universe owes me something. The hard knocks of life knocked those silly ideas from me. In India, for complex reasons having to do with our colonial past, misinterpreting every bit of Indian philosophy to insist that somehow we Indians are the darlings of the universe seems to be the raging fashion these days. Its end will probably be a lot worse than the end of America's delusions.
It was around the time that I was coming around to the idea of an indifferent universe that I discovered your blog and immediately saw in you a kindred spirit and for which I can only express immense gratitude to the gods that caused our paths to cross in the otherwise nothingness of cyberspace.
Once again my best wishes to you and may you continue blogging till the last day of the internet.
5/6/16, 3:43 AM
Sherril Bowman said...
This is (after much angst) how i finally made peace with what's going on and i don't know if i would have gotten there without your writings. So i add my deep thanks to all the others.
5/6/16, 3:56 AM
Daniel Najib said...
5/6/16, 4:26 AM
Twilight said...
From there began an ongoing adventure of learning, and many great changes for me (in accordance with will) in terms of how I perceive the nature of ourselves and our universe. The extremely well presented ideas of the Archdruid have been a wonderful help along the way – thank you!
These days I don’t get too worked up about Peak oil. It’s just an obvious reality – one impact among the interconnected many that the masses go out of their way not to understand, such as the burning of Fort McMurray.
5/6/16, 4:44 AM
Nestorian said...
Christianity properly understood regards death as an intrinsic evil, and as an unnatural intrusion upon the primordial creation.
Analogously, one may extend that principle to any form of earthly suffering or deprivation short of death. All of it represents an unnatural intrusion upon creation, from the Judeo-Christian standpoint.
The theological and metaphysical function of Christ's death on the cross is that of gaining a decisive victory over death, understood in the sense sketched above.
What makes the view that tends to prevail among the commenters on this blog decisively different is that there is an acceptance of suffering, decay, and death as part of the natural order of things. This implies the view that suffering, decay, and death are as intrinsically good as the cosmos of which they seem to be a seamlessly integrated component.
It is precisely that premise - i.e., that decay, suffering, and death are as intrinsically good as the cosmos itself of which they are a part - that the Christian sensibility decisively rejects.
For me, writing as a traditional Christian of the specifically Nestorian variety, this crucial point of difference raises interesting questions in the psychology of religious belief. (Note here that I agree with our host in considering atheism to be a particular form of religious belief, as it is not scientifically demonstrable; as such, the origin of a belief in atheism is as amenable to being explicable in psychological terms as is the belief in Traditional Christianity.)
Specifically, I myself, as a Christian, cannot conceive how the conviction that suffering, decay, and death can possibly constitute the basis for anything other than ultimate despair.
But I have had to learn from this blog that it is at least psychologically possible for persons who accept suffering, decay, and death as part of the natural order of things - and thus intrinsically good - at one and the same time to maintain a posture of ultimate hope in the face of this conviction.
5/6/16, 5:42 AM
blue sun said...
I remember how I first came to your blog through a review of The Long Descent on Energy Bulletin. I think it was the summer of 2008. It's been a great ride. Here's to another ten years!
5/6/16, 5:44 AM
David said...
I'm a bit late to the party this week, but I'd like to add my thanks to those of the other readers. You have been instrumental in the development of my understanding of this world, its dynamics, and my role therein. I stumbled across TADR with the first installment of "How It Could Happen," which had been reposted on Resilience.org, and I've been hooked ever since. Among other things, you have helped me progress through the stages of understanding/grief with respect to our present situation -- that the system cannot be saved, nor should it necessarily, and that our present role is one of preservation for the coming winter so that our (far) descendants will be able to have something of our better accomplishments when spring does come again.
Totally OT, but I had a crazy thought this morning at breakfast which seems less and less crazy the more I consider it. The chatter re Trump is now all about his running mate selection and how he isn't going to find anyone who will help him in any way. What if he had a young, smart, striking, successful businesswoman on the ticket? One word -- Ivanka. It's just the sort of thing he would do. And it brings to mind the (continued) transition from democratic to dynastic rule (Meriga, for example). Out there, I know, but somehow it seems plausible...
Thank you again for your wisdom and your insights. Please keep writing.
5/6/16, 5:51 AM
Steve Welsh said...
I have what I like to think of as my three wise men that are "Must Read" every week - Kunstler, Orlov and yourself. All good, but I hold you in esteem head and shoulders above the other two.
In the meantime, life here in Hungary continues its leisurely course and I must go and feed my pigeons and check on my goats :)
5/6/16, 6:08 AM
Myriad said...
I don't think I've ever told the story of how I found this blog, five years ago. A new member came to the skeptics' form I was (and still am) active on in late 2011, talking about Peak Oil and the questionable future of the Internet. For some reason, Peak Oil had never been much in discussion there, in contrast to 9/11 Truth that had had so much discussion that a separate sub forum was created just for that topic. (I later speculated why, in this post, which I present partly as a confession of sorts, but please keep in mind that my then assessment of both scenes is now four years out of date, though I can see in it some of my present feelings and attitudes beginning to take shape there.)
In the course of the discussion, the new arrival described many of the Archrduid's ideas. Unfortunately, that individual also mixed in a hefty dose of his or her own ideas regarding the need to dispose of the "useless and burdensome" members of society (like my intellectually disabled twin brother, perhaps?) and the need for racial purity. The poster didn't directly attribute those concepts to Mr. Greer (I read back and re-checked later), but wasn't so careful about clearly distinguishing them either. As a result, I'm afraid that during the discussion, I made my own share of snarky dismissive comments, not about Mr. Greer personally whom I didn't know, but about things like "crazy Archdruids" in general.
But by the end of that discussion a few days later, I had read a few dozen ADR posts and their comment threads, and had begun to defend JMG and the qualities and value of this blog in the skeptical community, something I've continued to do.
The fundamental difficulty getting JMG's ideas accepted among secular skeptics appears to stem from the differences between perception and logical reasoning as mechanisms of cognition. Perception is more computationally powerful (the reason it's much easer to program a computer to play chess than to recognize the chess board in an image of a room) but less reliable (according to skeptics, at least). I find ongoing and impending slow collapse impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt by a logical process, for similar reasons that it's difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a tree in a photograph is really a tree, rather than some other upright elongated brownish object surrounded by a large number of small green objects. The perception-based arguments, such as historical analogues, abstract models, and current trends, don't carry as much weight among that community. I've had to address the problem from the roots, so to speak, by trying to promote a deeper understanding of narrative, myth, and the actual practices and purposes of religion instead of the red herring of "belief" that skeptics including myself (I still practice that discipline) are pre-disposed to want to focus on. Signs of success in that effort have been subtle but, I think, promising.
Spanning two worlds does stretch one out, in both uncomfortable and rewarding ways.
5/6/16, 6:21 AM
Mister Roboto said...
5/6/16, 7:02 AM
Eric S. said...
There seem to be shifts on all sides of the aisle, I know true blue progressive democrat friends who are seriously considering Trump, old fashioned Republican friends who are seriously considering Clinton but fighting to get Bernie through because they find him preferable. And I’ve seen more people rushing towards the third parties than I’ve ever seen. So there are lines being redrawn all over the place. I see the Republican party at this particular time as being a lot more vulnerable, though, just because of the fact that Bernie’s quite willing to step in line behind Clinton, and the “vote blue no matter who” movement is attempting to bully people into voting Clinton as part of a consolidated bipartisan seems to be going fairly strong, forming a bipartisan anti-Trump movement. I think the democratic party may be heading towards this sort of schism soon if things continue along their present path, but right now it seems to be at least pretending to hold together. Meanwhile, there’s a huge faction of Republican leaders who are absolutely refusing to support Trump even though he’s now the nominee. We may wind up with something very similar to the election of 1912. In the long run, if anything like the Republic as it stands prevails, we might wind up going through a few decades with multiple major political parties who actually hold congressional seats and are taken seriously. Ultimately, though, it’s looking like we may be Spain in the early 1930s... where a series of messy elections and riots pushed the country into a decade of civil war pitting anarchists, socialists, nationalists, and republicans against each other followed by 35 years of the Falange.
5/6/16, 7:19 AM
Hubertus Hauger said...
Both ideas struck me. By realizing, that I shared experiences with forefathers from ancient times, I recognize, how connected I was and that my doubtful contemporary form of faith was the connection-point I better remain with, than leave it behind. I feel that relationship with everyone and everything.
Even, as one of the narrative if the bible, very much at the beginning shows Abel and Cain, where a tight connection is easily cracked. In this contradiction between connection and separation life is stretched. As Religion gives that contradiction a framework, in order for us humans, to cope with. So we may be afraid, but future can come!
5/6/16, 7:48 AM
Clay Dennis said...
An event, unfolding right now,that might make one question the idea that the cosmos is totaly indifferent to humans is the massive fires now engulfing Fort Mcmurry in Canada. I don't want to make light of the human tradgedy or damage to the forests and native lands but it does seem like it is more than coincidence that a fire of biblical proportions is wiping out a small city whose sole purpose was to ravage the land and forests of northern canada to produce sticky black goo in hopes of keeping industrial civilization going a few more years. Among the other wounds to the earth, the tar sands are probably the most concentrated and significant in such a short time. I myself am more partial to mother nature or Gaia, and this looks to me like she is pissed. Then again, perhaps this is not the handiwork of a malevolent god, but just the banquet of consequences we have brought upon ourselves.
5/6/16, 8:25 AM
Ben Johnson said...
Speaking of the universe not caring about the fate of humanity; I do find it a little ironic that Fort McMurray, which makes it's living pushing the climate out of normal by strip mining tar sands, is right now burning to the ground because they had a very warm, dry winter on the Canadian plains this year...
I'm not anthropomorphizing the climate, and I'm not taking joy in the suffering of others. Its just darkly amusing when the broken clock gets the time right.
5/6/16, 8:32 AM
Jon from Virginia said...
We look on the right side and see that complete years date from 2006 to 2015, so we roll the dice.
6, so 2011-2015 ,using the normal D&D d6 as coin flip convention, odds vs evens, with odds being first half.
4, so 2014, click on triangle by 2014 to bring the months up, and roll
6, so 2nd half of year
5, so 5 + 6 gives November
5, roll again, 4, gives
Dark Age America: The End of the Market Economy
since we're doing divination instead of seeking sanity,
I asked a question first
1 or 2 seek answers in links or comments, 3-6 in text
5, so seek answer in text
This is the one that features Higg son of Snell and an introduction to how feudalism actually works, I so interpret the answer as "wrong question"-but what do you expect when you ask a binary question to the Archdruids tool? Unless it says I should try for the most useless possible intermediary position, or give an oath to my Better and seek oaths from my Inferiors.
So I washed the dishes upstairs and the clothes downstairs to give my subconscious time to come up with a better question. What it came up with is, "What intermediaries are useful or necessary where and when I am?"
So,
4 is even, gives us 2011 to 2015 again
1 gives us 2011
3 is odd so first half of year
4 gives us April
5 is roll again
3 gives us "Alternatives to Nihilism, Part One: A Dog Named Boo"
5 says seek answers in the text. (1 or 2 would mean links or comments)
Mmmmmm. I could use some help interpreting this one
What I expected, if I expected any response at all, was someone to ask how I knew what articles came up the most.
That one I can answer. The browser history is just a text file, so I made a copy and built a pipe that
First, extracted text with the string "archdruid" in it
then sorted the strings, and
then use the dup tool, ie, turn bill, bill, bill into 3, bill
and then sort by number
and used my eyeball to look for odd things, ie, the Hillary post would have six weeks of checking for comments, so I discarded that.
There should be simpler modern tools, but being an eldergeek I go with what I know.
Still need some help on that last divination, though. I think this one requires a whole nap for my subconscious to answer.
5/6/16, 8:32 AM
Martin B said...
As someone who read and was influenced by The Limits to Growth and Small is Beautiful, I find your viewpoint confirmatory rather than revelatory. But I appreciate the depth of scholarship and clear thought you bring to a subject I believed in but never paid close attention to.
It's also inspired me to take action in a small way. Yesterday I made three jars of sauerkraut, this morning I hand-washed and line-dried my laundry, this afternoon I baked sourdough bread and checked my tomato and spinach plants. I now realize that being self-sufficient in food is a pipe-dream. Things only grow when they want to, and they grow so damned slowly.
I have dropped a little something in the tip jar for your anniversary. Don't get excited -- it will clear my conscience about using the product of your labor without paying, but hardly boost your finances.
Regarding the Cthulhucene: Hmf! Every day is bacteria day, and has been for four billion years since they arrived on a wandering comet. They rule the earth, including those funny two-legged latecomers who have given them rides to visit their cousins on Mars and wave to their buddies on Pluto on their way to the Oort cloud.
But meditating on Cthulhu brought a chilling thought: something as remorseless and indifferent as Cthulhu is debt. It never rests, it never sleeps, it doesn't care if you can pay or not, it must have its due or squeeze you even harder.
5/6/16, 9:18 AM
T Ruddite said...
I've been along for the ride here for almost all ten years although this is only my second comment. I have to add my voice to the chorus of those who have been profoundly impacted by your clear, relentless and dedicated analysis. I have (very slowly) spread some of your insights to those close to me, which has helped to ease the sense of isolation that can come from holding a very unpopular perspective that nonetheless influences every element of my life. I can't thank you enough for your work here and your books and the community that has sprung up around this site, which has been a touchstone for me in world that often seems completely oblivious.
The commenters here also deserve my gratitude for the quality of posts (no doubt arduously filtered by JMG) and links to things that have brought me further insight and created a sense of how things are unfolding in other parts of the world.
I would like to offer a link to a song by an independent band from Halifax that comes along with an interview and music video rich in symbolism that I think taps into the growing (mostly subconscious) cultural understanding (especially among young people) about our predicament:
http://mic.com/articles/141903/wintersleep-s-heartbreaking-amerika-uses-a-donald-trump-speech-to-a-devastating-effect#.sw2KPpSye
It ties into the conversation here about Trump, civilizational decline and the personal way that we each struggle to find meaning and relate to each in the face of these challenges and the inevitably of our mortality. Seeing art like this makes me feel a little less alone and I hope it does the same for all of you.
Thank you again to JMG and to all of the wonderful commenters here. Your impacts extend beyond what can you see and while no one can be sure if the director of this music video or the songwriters were influenced by ADR, we can be sure that they are grappling with some of the same issues.
We are not all alone,
Ruddite
5/6/16, 9:30 AM
Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...
Nestorian wrote the following, in a post timestamped by the blogger software as "5/6/16, 5:42 AM":
Christianity properly understood regards death as an intrinsic evil, and as an unnatural intrusion upon the primordial creation.
Some of us will feel uneasy about this, in rather the same way as will feel feel uneasy if we read or hear Christian fundamentalists denouncing sex as evil.
It cannot be denied that death is a terrible and fascinating mystery. It is also fair to say that in the Christian theology of Easter, death is asserted to lack the final word. But if evil, then why did Francis of Assisi say in his Canticle that the Lord is to be praised through "our Sister, bodily death" - Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale?
Toomas (Tom) Karmo
Toomas(dot)Karmo(at)gmail(dot)com
Catholic in Richmond Hill, near Toronto in Canada
blogging Tuesday mornings at
http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com
5/6/16, 10:03 AM
David said...
I just realized (as you and others will point out, I'm sure) that my crazy notion of Ivanka as Trump's running mate would run afoul of the constitutional requirement that the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates be from different states. Assuming that Donald and Ivanka are both New York residents, that ticket wouldn't qualify. Oh, well. Thought I was on to something there for a minute! Too bad, because she'd otherwise be eligible and they'd make a dynamic pair.
5/6/16, 10:22 AM
Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...
Well, more now on Francis of Assisi and "Laudato Si'" (a writer whom I cited in a blog posting a few minutes ago), this time a propos of spetialmente messor lo frate Sole, "and praised specially through brother Sun".
Mikep, in a comment timestamped by the "blogger" software as "5/6/16, 2:08 AM", remarks that "the nuclear processes taking place in the heart of the sun are anything but highly energetic". Mikep has made an accurate and useful remark, which deserves underscoring now.
We first note (in a mildly peripheral, context-establishing way) that the actual part of the Sun that is accomplishing thermonuclear fusion is by no means the entire solar interior, but a minority part - a sort of tangerine buried at the core of the overall solar pumpkin.
Next (this is central and crucial) we note that the energy output of that tangerine is comparable not to the output of a thermonuclear weapon, but to our own human body, before it meets what Francis of Assisi calls in a happily affirmative tone "Sister Death".
I forget, alas, which of the following two comparisons is correct, but one of them is indeed correct: (a) "The energy output of a kilogram of solar gas at the solar core is similar to the energy output of a kilogram of living human flesh;" (b) "The energy output of a cubic metre of solar gas at the solar core is similar to the energy output of a cubic metre of living human flesh." But whichever statement is the accurate one, the point remains that the Sun is a gentle energy source, large in its output only because the volume of that buried tangerine is (while small in comparison with the entire pumpkin, nevertheless) large.
(PS: Some might say: cannot BOTH statements be accurate? But no. So severe are the pressures at the solar core that a cubic metre of solar-core gas has a mass vastly in excess of a a cubic metre of our own living human flesh. I think, subject to correction by other readers, and without bothering to look this up, that the ratio is something like 100:1 or 1000:1.)
Hastily,
Toomas (Tom) Karmo
(working on SOME topics of physical relevance - if not, today, solar physics,
at any rate today on derivation in spherical, i.e., "r-theta-phi"/"radial-zenithal-azimuthal", 3-dimensional analytical-geometry coordinates of standard formula
for the "gradient" vector-calculus operation)
5/6/16, 10:27 AM
Esquon said...
5/6/16, 10:36 AM
Twilight said...
5/6/16, 10:53 AM
weedananda said...
I simply must add my voice to the burgeoning chorus singing your praises and offering heartfelt thanks and congratulations! I had the great good fortune to follow a link to your blog in its very first week and have read every post at least twice since then (and most of your books). Your influence has been immensely transformative in my life and I am profoundly grateful. Every accolade here is entirely deserved.
One of my favorite 'signature' phrases in your work is "It is with wry amusement". It never fails to elicit a grin and I am truly learning to employ the perspective implied in it in all my affairs. Good medicine indeed.
The Cthulhucene is priceless! Here's a link to a searing version of Everything Is Broken by Bob Dylan -- quite an apt theme song for the epoch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXgtKUpu4Sw I may write in Cthulhu if I can stomach going to the polls in November but am still hopeful Deez Nuts and his running mate Bugger Datt will get on the ballot for the Peak Absurdity Party!
Thanks for slapping me upside the head each week with the Cold Wet Mackerel of Reality! Who knew how gratifying that could be?
Jim
5/6/16, 11:10 AM
LewisLucanBooks said...
You mentioned the Quakers. I've always been interested, in them. As the member of a 12 Step Program, for a number of years, it's interesting, to me, how often bits of Quaker philosophy pop up in The Program. Lew
5/6/16, 11:32 AM
Quin said...
I'll actually start by thanking Patricia-- thank you, Pat, because soon after I started to meaningfully absorb JMG's writing, it was you who became my first living, breathing example of someone in my own life who I was aware of having gone through both a spiritual and a Peak Oil initiation. Which is to say, you're an inspiration to me, and I'm supremely grateful I know you!
Now back to you, JMG, as it's your party.
The not-quite-metaphorical metaphor of initiation that a couple of people brought up earlier is really spot on. I read my first post here sometime in 2012. And I really didn't realize at the time the impact it was having on me, but in retrospect it was something rather like a solid brick to the chest. Inspired by your words, I soon started to experiment with different ways of interacting with the world around me, and then… BOOM. Cherished models of reality, gone in a conflagration. Absolutely necessary, of course. Houses of straw and stick must go down before any brick or stone can go up.
Now it's hard to believe I'm living in the same universe that I was four years ago at all. Inside, new eyes. It's like I entered a different, more fertile country. I still don't really know my way around yet, but man, the air is fresh and the colors are pretty. Plus this new sense that I can connect with everything around me if I just make the effort. And beyond all that, there's all the external changes that have resulted in my life-- a new city, a new job, and even-- as of this past Sunday-- a new wife!
This is not to say that life is perfect. And this is not to say that all the good things in my life are thanks to you. But you know what? You've made a significant difference, in ways that are really quite enormous when it comes down to it. For instance, for reasons I won't go into now, I can say with some certainty that I would not have become close to, let alone married, the awesome woman I did if it weren't for the influence of your writing. So please accept my virtual shake of the hand. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I mean that deeply and sincerely.
I see this blog as a kind pilot light. You keep it lit, and when people are ready and primed for a spark, they too can come along and… BOOM! :-) Thank you for continuing to tend the flame. It's really quite a beautiful thing.
5/6/16, 11:44 AM
beneaththesurface said...
Story-uncovering and story-making are so essential; everything else rests on them. Lately, when people ask me what my main interest is in life, I hesitate, because I have so many interests! But then I say, well, my main interest is stories of all kinds, especially how they relate to the unraveling of the industrial age and the future beyond it. All my other interests connect to that.
I've also appreciated how you've brilliantly tied together eclectic topics and subjects that interest me: ecology, geology, physics, history, anthropology, religion, psychology, mythology, philosophy, etc. I appreciate how you value both the intellectual discourse and practical skills; a balance between the two is essential to my own sanity. I know when I sit down to read your work I will read something that's different than what other people write, will offer new perspectives, and challenge me in some way. Perhaps that is the main reason I keep coming back. I am also thankful for the commentary on this blog; while most understand limits, we come from a variety of backgrounds and political perspectives and this makes the journey all the richer.
More specifically, this blog has been the catalyst for lots of little changes in my life. For example:
--I took a week-long workshop in letterpress printing last summer (and I hope to further my book arts skills in the future)
--You've inspired me to start writing fiction again, that I might have something worth saying.
--I'm perfectly content with my decision to work part-time (even though many others still don't understand why wouldn't I want a full-time career when I have that option?) and spend the extra time reading, studying, doing domestic work, learning new skills.
--While I had rejected many new technologies prior to reading you, you have helped me feel confident about such heretical lifestyle choices. You've helped me find words to explain why I choose this lifestyle when others ask.
--Not only have I read many of your books, but this blog has giving me a reading list of many other books which have greatly influenced me.
I also chuckle at some quirky aspects of my current life, which are ultimately because of this blog. For example:
--I now make my own toothpaste using ground egg shells (a commenter once mentioned this option). Some people in my life find this amusing.
--Because of a commenter's suggestion, I checked out the restaurant (which happened to be within walking distance where I work) that serves grasshoppers. I rarely eat out, but when I do with my 8-year old nephew, this is where he wants to go! I recently made him a "Memory Game" gift consisting of matching cards with depictions of memories of times together. For one picture, I drew a grasshopper taco. It was fun to draw!
You will never know the full extent how your writing has rippled out to influence the world, including the future on the far side of Hubbert's Peak.
5/6/16, 11:57 AM
Varun Bhaskar said...
A hearty congratulations to you on ten successful years.
I first started reading your blog when one of my relatives recommended it to me at my brothers wedding reception. I went home and looked up “How it Could Happen,” and took the dive from there. After a dozen articles, I promptly went to a bar and spent the next two days on a bender trying to convince myself that what you were saying was nonsense. Couldn't run away from the truth, especially not since everything you talked about eliminated several contradictions that had emerged when I was analysing global events using the standard economic model.
It doesn't surprise me that your blog has become the standard for the doomer community. Not only do you host a good conversation, but you're also self-critical. A characteristic that's missing from people like Kunstler, and the a large portion of the doomer crowd. His only solution seems to be everyone should learn to speak English well! Your solutions are more grounded, not only do you tell us to be the change we want to see in the world, but you also hand us hundreds of ideas we can start using immediately.
The real solutions are the things that set you apart from the crowd.
Much respect to you sir!
Regards,
Varun
5/6/16, 11:57 AM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
Well, currently most people I know are rather wealthy (not entirely by choice), perhaps we all haven't yet realized how silly interstellar travel is. And no thank you, I would rather not add that to the list of suspicious internet searches if I can avoid it. Writing (hopefully soon professionally, but as of yet no luck) leads to looking into some odd things sometimes.....
patriciaormsby,
I have no problem with other people using the technology. I think I'm not as sensitive to these things as other people, but perhaps I just haven't realized it yet. Also, I think that give it a little time and my friends will adjust, plus I'm slowly changing friends anyway.
JMG,
Thank you for the link to the post, I have seen bits of your thoughts on what humans having evolved means, but there is quite a lot in this blog to look through, and if you don't know which posts something is in, it can seem a little overwhelming.
Completely off topic, but I have to ask, how do you find time to respond to all these comments?
5/6/16, 12:24 PM
Ezra Buonopane said...
The extremely unlikely event was what allowed single celled organisms to increase the energy flow through them. Prior to that, only archaea and bacteria existed, and they were about 1/10,000 of the size of a eukaryotic cell. What happened then was that mitochondria (a type of bacteria) some how found their way into an archean cell and managed, miraculously, to survive and reproduce without killing the archean cell. The surface of a mitochondrion has about the same amount of energy on it as an equivalent area of a lightning bolt. This gave the new cell the energy required to have much longer genomes than bacteria or archea, and get much larger. That cell was the ancestor to all multicellular life on earth. If this wasn't true, than multicellular life would be more diverse, since it would be descended from many different ancestors
5/6/16, 12:51 PM
Benjamin Palmer said...
Thank you for your commitment to this blog, and to stuffing the heads of your readers with a big pile of healthy suspicion.
-Ben
5/6/16, 1:15 PM
Eric S. said...
5/6/16, 2:00 PM
goocy said...
I came here because you were referenced in the book "Collapse" by Jared Diamond.
I was a techno-optimist, until I started reading and everything you wrote made sense. A scary amount of sense, compared to the vague doctrines of the industrialized world ("growth and competition solve every problem in a free market").
I was ready to accept civilizational collapse, and you showed me how to think more clearly and more rationally.
My life became smaller, I've become more pessimistic and more scared. But I think that's a healthy mindset for facing a catastrophe.
Thanks for warning me.
5/6/16, 2:32 PM
goocy said...
5/6/16, 2:37 PM
Nestorian said...
In the most basic sense, to say something is "evil" is to say that it does in fact exist, but that it would be better if it did not (at least taken in and of itself). In this most basic and general sense, the term does not carry any moral connotations per se. When I used the term in my prior post, I meant it in this sense.
Perhaps certain misunderstandings along these lines could be avoided if one substituted the simpler term "bad" for "evil," with the latter's more convoluted connotations.
As far as death is concerned, I think it is rare for people to look forward to it with eager anticipation - and those who do generally do so because they regard their present state of existence as an ongoing death that is worse than terminal bodily death. I think the previous point may be extended just as readily, moreover, to the way people generally react to death understood in the broader sense - insofar as it denotes suffering or deprivation of any kind.
Death, rather, is something that human beings tend to regard with fear, dread, anxiety, and the like - and consequently also with great dollops of denial. Indeed, a great deal of the stress that people experience in their daily lives is ultimately related in one way or another to their fear and dread of death, in either the strict or extended sense of the term.
I would respectfully propose that this all-too-common, not-to-say near-universal, human psychological reality makes it meaningful and true to speak of death as "evil" in the sense defined above. People come to know with experience that they cannot be spared the experience of suffering, deprivation, and death, but they pertinaciously would still much rather not have to experience any of these things.
They intuitively know, in short, that death is bad - truly bad.
The great ultimate hope of the Cross of Christ in Christianity is that Death in every sense of the term, as this ever-present source of dread and fear, has been definitively conquered through the literal death of the Divinity itself.
As I said before, I fail to understand how people can find a similarly ultimate hope in a world view that effectively affirms death to be a seamless part of an otherwise beautiful cosmos, and thus as a good taken even in-and-of-itself. But that may simply be a testimony to the fact that I am a psychological prisoner of my own ultimate beliefs in some way.
If someone could explain to me how they find ultimate hope with the context of a world view that affirms suffering, decay, and death as an intrinsically good part of a good and beautiful universe taken as a whole, I would be eager to learn about it. Again, there are profound issues in the psychology of religion in play here.
5/6/16, 2:54 PM
jessi thompson said...
5/6/16, 3:09 PM
Unknown said...
Dear Nestorian,
I always find your posts to be of great interest. However, there's a throwaway line in your latest to which I object. Since you dislike having the religious views of the RCC attributed to you, I think you can appreciate why I'm bringing this up.
"Analogously, one may extend that principle to any form of earthly suffering or deprivation short of death. All of it represents an unnatural intrusion upon creation, from the Judeo-Christian standpoint."
Judaism has a variety of approaches to the perennial questions of why human beings suffer and die. Can you identify any that resemble your statement or your post taken as a whole? Are they to be found in the Kabbalah or perhaps in descriptions of what life will be like after the Messiah comes?
FWIW, I don't recall hearing anything like what you wrote from the pulpit of any of the Reform Jewish services I have attended. I see no way to extract your statement out of Jewish interpretations of Genesis 2-4, the prophetic literature, Ecclesiastes, or Job. Or, at the other extreme, from Jewish attempts to make sense of the Holocaust.
I have a patchy and superficial acquaintance with Jewish religious literature. If you can point me to citations that support your interpretation, I'll thank you.
Judaism is not Christianity minus Jesus.
5/6/16, 3:21 PM
Justin said...
I'll preface this by saying that I consider both of the speakers to be broken clocks, who of course are quite right sometimes. And I think a lot of the people who will be joining us when peak oil and other limits become cool again in 2017-19 will have listened to these guys.
http://www.podcastone.com/pg/jsp/program/episode.jsp?programID=863&pid=1648898
It does seem like the right wing is being nourished by the rivers of blood flowing from the circular firing squads of the Rescuers.
5/6/16, 3:40 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Doubtless, there will be other eras that follow the Neozoic, until Sol heats up too much for the Earth to sustain life. That give another billion years or so for the cycles of life and death, extinction and evolution to play out on Earth.
Indeed, I have heard that some paleontologists maintain that the present mass extinction event we are currently witnessing actually started when the current cycle of glaciations began around 2.6 million years ago and the human-induced extinctions we are seeing today are only the peak of the cycle.
I think the term Cthulhucene makes a great deal of sense, particularly as Lovecraft was one of the first to really grasp the philosophical and psychological implications of discoveries that were being made by astronomers, geologists, paleontologists and the like.
Such things are too scary to even contemplate for many, but as for me, I find them both fascinating and mind-blowing. But then again, as a life-long astronomy and natural history buff, avid reader of pulp fantasy authors like Howard and Lovecraft and equally avid reader of historians like Spengler, Toynbee, Ibn Khaldun and Glubb Pasha, I suppose that goes with the territory.
I very much identify with the new, emerging religious sensibility you outlined in a series of posts a few years back.
5/6/16, 3:42 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
"Christianity properly understood regards death as an intrinsic evil, and as an unnatural intrusion upon the primordial creation."
I see death as a part of the natural order of things that was created and ordained by God and therefore not evil at all. As many of the Eastern traditions teach, you cannot have something without its opposite. Death is the natural completion of a given life and leads to the next phase of the cycle that a given soul must follow on its way to God.
So death is neither good nor evil, it simply is. Our culture's attempts to evade and deny the phenomenon of death because we define it as evil is at the root of many of our cultures worst and most dysfunctional tendencies.
5/6/16, 3:50 PM
Lo said...
A fan of less than a year (though I feel like I've drifted over to the Report on a few occasions before), and so a big congratulations on the big one-oh!
I admit that my reason for this very first comment it selfish, however. I've been reading a book "The Energy of Slaves", and it seems to mesh quite readily with the worldview you've been cultivating over these years o blogging. The thrust of the book is this: humans have always been trying to look for ways to maximize energy with the least amount of resources, and this is why there have always been slave economies. Or, that is, roughly up until the second industrial revolution and the discovery of oil. And I haven't gotten there yet, but the author does have things to say about how we might gracefully wean ourselves from fossil fuel dependence without simply replacing our machine-slaves with human ones again.
I suppose I'm just curious if you've read it, and this seemed like a good enough opportunity as any to ask.
Cheers!
5/6/16, 4:02 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
"But this Cthulhu business suggests a religion based on the JWF (just world fallacy) in a very different way, one that gives it a place analogous to that of the fleshy desires in Christianity. It would be seen as humanity's besetting flaw, the ruin of naive ethical codes, disruptor of judgments, painful to resist but so very sweetly liberating to overcome. It would also be the sin to succeed Greek hubris and Christian pride as the queen of blasphemies."
Reminds me of one of Lovecraft's most famous quotes from the Call of Cthulhu:
"That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom."
5/6/16, 4:10 PM
A Post-Millennial said...
I see the article that brought me to your blog in the top ten. The Death of the Internet: A Pre-Mortem was posted on a forum I used to frequent. They thought you were a crackpot of course (what, the internet die? Don't you know we'll all be uploaded to computers by 2042?). However, you helped me make sense of a feeling I'd had for a while, that civilization as currently configured is inherently unsustainable and that we're headed for a reckoning. So thanks for all that.
On another note, please check your email inbox. We're still more than happy to print a monthly zine compilation of your Report; if we can get the ball rolling now, perhaps the first issue could be May 2016 and start with your 10 year retrospective.
All the best,
A Post Millennial
5/6/16, 4:52 PM
Ray Wharton said...
Last fall a friend of mine shared 'Rick and Morty' with me. It is an absurdist comedy about a mad scientist whose crazy tech bring him, and his niave grandkids, onto stages of existence where any standard morality or set of human values is non sense. Some of it works on shock factor, but the weight of the grandkids trying to process the cosmic horror their drunk grandfather is desensitized to is contrasted with the everyday sorrows and tragic perseverance of American family dysfunction.
https://youtu.be/hWFDHynfl1E?t=32s
Its significance to me is a reducto ad absurdum of technology as a source of solace to the universes indifference to human values. Rick has access to almost any tech that sci fy has yet dreamt; and yet all it does is give his access to see how much of the universe operates on a level only familiar enough to humans to mystify or horrify us. Though also, he is aware of how his own existence, throwing that tech around, is a living cosmic horror to entire civilizations; having created and destroyed so much, often for nothing more than a drunken whim, he merely becomes cold to the import of standard morality.
5/6/16, 5:17 PM
Nestorian said...
That is a fair point. Hopefully, I will not make myself guilty of another annoying throwaway line in trying to clarify.
The truth is that I do not claim to speak for Judaism of any kind, except insofar as Christianity itself originated historically as what some might regard as a sect of Judaism.
I myself regard Christianity as the true fulfillment of Judaism. I believe that this is demonstrably true by looking closely at the hundreds of ways in which the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and pending return to earth of Jesus are prefigured and prophesied in the Jewish Scriptures - sometimes with breathtaking accuracy.
This is also precisely the ground upon which St. Paul confuted with the Hellenistic Jews of his time in synagogues around the Roman Empire, and won many of them to Christ. A century or so later, Justin Martyr went over much of the same ground in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew.
So when I use the term "Judeo-Christian," I am referring to the fact that, both historically and theologically, Christianity cannot be properly understood except as an outgrowth and self-understood fulfillment of Old Testament Judaism.
As far as Judaism itself is concerned, my understanding is that, in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation by the Romans, organized Judaism reconstituted itself under the authority of the New Testament party of the Pharisees. Modern Orthodox Judaism represents the direct contemporary continuation of this original Pharisaic reconstitution.
As far as I know, Orthodox Judaism so understood would basically agree with everything about the nature of suffering, death, evil, etc., that I affirmed in my previous posts. Historically, the Kabbalah is a much later development on the Jewish religious and cultural landscape. And modern Reform and even Conservative Judaism are much later developments still, both being developments within Judaism to the Enlightenment and the rise of modernity.
So I could be wrong, but I think it may be the case that everything I have said is additionally "Judeo-Christian" in the sense that it accurately represents the views of the various strains of "Orthodox Judaism" extending all the way back to New Testament times.
5/6/16, 5:49 PM
Nestorian said...
You wrote:
"So death is neither good nor evil, it simply is."
That is the dominant view of the matter among commenters in this forum, and it would also seem to be the view of our host.
So here is my question: When the moment of your own death approaches, and is both distinct and imminent, will you be able regard its arrival with the firm emotional equanimity that your quoted statement about it entails and implies?
5/6/16, 6:02 PM
Kathleen Quinn said...
5/6/16, 6:04 PM
Shivani Arjuna said...
5/6/16, 6:35 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Now, on to the less easily summarized comments and questions...
Patricia, the irony there is that I'd probably take an annual Shinto training course if one was available in the north central Appalachians. One of the pleasures of polytheism is that you're not limited to one and only one way of approaching the gods!
Cherokee, one of the main reasons I stepped down as head of AODA is that I didn't want to engage in shark-jumping exercises. As for Mormons, good heavens -- here Mormon missionaries ride bicycles and wear the sort of ill-fitting black suits UFO believers attribute to Men In Black. You clearly have a more affluent grade of Mormon down under.
Nestorian, fair enough. To my way of thinking -- and I hope you won't take this as any kind of personal criticism; your religion is what it is, and I'm sure you have good and sufficient reasons for believing in it -- what you've said here is an excellent example of the central flaw in all the religions of salvation. They hold up an abstraction of what the world should be like, purged of whatever features the founding prophet didn't happen to like; they insist that this conceptual abstraction is the real world, and then go on to claim that where the world we actually experience diverges from that abstraction, it's the fault of some extraneous factor -- sin in the case of Christianity, ignorance in the case of Buddhism, and so on.
The difficulty, of course, is that the world blithely fails to cooperate with this project. Death, decay, suffering, and everything else that prophetic religions like to banish from the realm of the truly real keep on happening, and they happen just as often to the saved as to the unsaved; the prayers of the faithful are answered about as often, and left unanswered about as often, as those of the infidel; no special providence keeps the One True Faith from experiencing all the usual vagaries of human life, from becoming corrupt, from suffering defeat, and so on. Of course it's always possible to come up with rationalizations for these things, but those wear thin, and the despair you've described is always present as a phantom at the feast. That's understandable; if you've accepted a belief system that claims to offer you a special status in the cosmos with all kinds of neat privileges, and you've committed yourself to it and made sacrifices for that belief, who wouldn't feel despair if it turned out that the belief wasn't true?
Things look very different, though, if you start from the human condition as it is, rather than from some set of conceptual abstractions that promise you things the world is unable to provide. Suppose you had never believed that death was anything but normal and natural; suppose you had accepted all along that suffering was an ordinary part of existence, and that your capacity to suffer is the necessary consequence of your capacity to enjoy; suppose you'd never imagined that you were entitled to anything by the mere fact of your existence. Starting from that point of view, wouldn't it be more likely that you'd be awed and delighted that you had the opportunity to exist at all -- and then to have the capacity for reflective thought and creative imagination to boot! What an astonishing gift to be handed by the cosmos, not because you'd done anything to earn it, certainly not because you deserved it, but simply because the world happened to produce you that way?
(continued)
5/6/16, 6:43 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Myriad, your distinction between perception and reasoning is a useful one, and also a telling one. It was precisely the decision to rely on perception rather than reasoning that marked the rise of experimental science out of a sterile scholasticism -- Bacon, Galileo and the other founders of the scientific revolution rejected the idea that the human mind can know reality by the exercise of reason alone, and called attention to the fact that maybe paying attention to what actually happens in the world provides valuable information you can't get by pure reasoning. It's a fascinating bit of historical irony that the heirs of the scientific revolution have gone all the way back around to rejecting perception when it violates their a priori reasonings!
Eric, maybe so. My working guess is that the Trumpistas will end up taking the GOP away from its soi-disant masters, much the way FDR took the Democratic party away from its former bosses; that the Dems this time will alienate so many people by shoving Clinton down their throats that the Sanders supporters will form an alternative party that, over the next few elections, will supplant the Democrats the way the GOP supplanted the Whigs between 1852 and 1860; and that by 2028 or so, the US two-party system will pit a nationalist, anti-free trade GOP against a social-democrat Progressive Party. But of course I could be wrong.
Clay, to say the cosmos is indifferent doesn't mean that everything that inhabits the cosmos is indifferent -- and no law says that Homo, er, sapiens must be the only conscious, active being in this corner of the cosmos. I don't happen to know much about the beliefs of the First Nations in that part of Canada, but I suspect if you asked the tribal elders, they'd be able to tell you which of their sacred powers is most likely involved in this business.
Jon, fascinating. Thank you.
Martin, the difference between Cthulhu and debt is that human beings created debt. If you want to compare debt to Frankenstein's monster, I'd have no objection!
5/6/16, 7:01 PM
jessi thompson said...
5/6/16, 7:18 PM
Caryn said...
Many congratulations on your 10 year mark, Mr. Greer. May you enjoy continued success in your writing and in your life. I will also join ranks with my fellow commenters who have expressed how much you've enlightened and changed my perspective on life, our society and what we're going through. It has also changed the way I live and the focus of my energies.
My deepest thanks and gratitude.
The first essay I stumbled upon here at ADR was "The Butlerian Carnival". That is still the most inspiring and uplifting of essays I've found here or anywhere else on our current predicament. If that particular essay were not my 'initiation', I honestly don't think I could have stayed with this conversation. Our topic is overwhelmingly frightening at times. "What to do about it", for me is a must-have antidote conversation, and 'The Butlerian Carnival' was not only an antidote, but a joyous path of adventure! "Collapsing" away from today's standard, normal lifestyle in no way means collapsing into a less rich life; quite the contrary. Every step I have collapsed, I've encountered richer, more fulfilling old-tech alternatives, more work, more time-consuming, yes, but where was that time going to before? Facebooking? Shopping for more useless tchatchkies I didn't need? Hardly a richer experience than making soap, baking bread and eating it, or salvaging and repainting old furniture, gardening, etc. I'm a much happier person and still a long way to go in collapsing/ growing in my arty-crafty skillz!
Again; So many thanks to you (and to Green Wizards) for thoughtful analysis, perspective and also inspiration to a better life.
5/6/16, 8:04 PM
Agent Provocateur said...
Recently I looked through your early posts to find when I first started to read your blog. It appears I've been reading your blog for 8 years at least. So it high time I thanked you for your efforts these last 10 years directly. This is not to say I have not exercised my gratitude covertly and in a more pecuniary fashion earlier. I have bought a number of your non-fiction books over the years and enjoyed them greatly. I recommend to your readers that they do the same. If you want to thank the man, please buy JMG's books!
Better yet, just send money! Not the cheap clink of spare change found in the couch but the clean snap of new large denominational bills is what needs to be heard in the ADR tip jar!
Sadly I cannot donate myself. Every penny that goes to you, JMG, is food from my childrens' mouths. Yet strangely I have money to buy your books. Hmm. Well, the kids don't need to eat every day. Moving along.
When I first started reading your essays, I was already well aware of peak oil. The “Oil Drum” website was very helpful in its time; particularly if one was technically inclined. The issue that concerned me most as we passed peak conventional oil was not if it was happening but how it would all play out and what one could do about it. Question like “How fast would the decline be and how will it unfold?” were foremost in my mind. These question created not a little anxiety.
Your blog was by far the most useful source for obtaining a balanced and informed view on these questions. Ultimately no one can know exactly what will happen or how, but your insights into how similar situations have unfolded in the past have been very helpful. This has given me a pretty good idea of where we are at and what to expect next and how soon. With those educated guesses, I've been able to continue to make some (hopefully) useful preparations without being excessively worried that the external changes are going to come so fast and so hard such that my efforts would be pointless.
Thank you very much for taking the worry out of these issues (not to diminish they urgency or importance ... just that Rome did not fall in a day) and thank you for all your hard work.
5/6/16, 8:05 PM
Caryn said...
2) our new flat is at the end of a ruddy, 1 lane mountain road, far far from the city center, in New Territories. There is a large troupe of monkeys we see every morning, so we're armed with a walking stick and bananas when we take the dogs out or hike down to the train for work. Oddly super rural in this over-bustling metropolis! On one of the Gau Lung, (9 dragons), Kowloon, meaning nine mountains surrounding the valley and harbour. Now this doesn't sound like much but it's the biggest stair-step down of all in Hong Kong. We no longer need air con. At ALL!!! It's significantly cooler up here than down in town. (98 degrees, 95% humidity, HK is notoriously uninhabitable without air con). So THIS is how pre-industrial people survived here! they retreated up to these mountains, er, dragons! Not to mention in 1 week, my tiny terrace garden has perked up and is blooming like crazy!! Will have to fight the monkeys over my tomatoes and radishes now. Hmmm, think Green Wizards could help strategize on that? ;)
5/6/16, 8:25 PM
jessi thompson said...
5/6/16, 10:40 PM
John Michael Greer said...
Weedananda, and thank you also for more musical accompaniment!
Varun, a two-day bender isn't a bad response to the predicament of our time. That you picked yourself up after the hangover wore off and got to work doing something more useful speaks well of you, btw.
WB Jorgenson, I have time to respond to comments because I don't own a television. It really is that simple.
Ezra, either that cell was the ancestor of all multicellular life, or more likely, there was an entire species that, due to some mutation or other, adapted more easily to symbiosis than others, and so outcompeted them. There may have been others that were less successful at the game, and so died out. Symbiosis is fairly common on this planet, so it's not surprising that some such event would have happened in the course of out world's evolutionary history.
We also don't know whether there are other ways that you can get to multicellularity, which might have been taken on other planets; once the mitochondria-bearing symbiont got ahead in the multicellularity game, of course, it would have preempted other options, in the same way that chordates have preempted the large land animal niches -- it's a known phenomenon in evolutionary ecology.
Eric, why, yes, I also thought of the comparison!
Nestorian, it's worth noting that different cultures have very different attitudes toward death. The frantic terror of death that's so common in cultures of European origin, it seems to me, has its roots in one of Christianity's main rhetorical strategies -- that is to say, threatening people with a divine boot in the face forever if they don't do what religious authority figures tell them to do. The doctrine of eternal damnation is, to my mind, the reason people in the Christian and post-Christian West panic at the thought of death; it's become so fixed in the cultural imagination that death is the doorway to unimaginable horrors that such a reaction isn't surprising at all. To anticipate your question: I would like to postpone dying as long as reasonably possible, simply because I enjoy being alive, but I don't find death particularly frightening and I expect to meet it calmly. Among other things, I have my own ideas about what happens afterwards, and I'll be most interested to see if I'm right!
Justin, many thanks!
Yellow Submarine, as you probably know, I also identify strongly with the new religious sensibility, and it's been a delight to encounter others here and elsewhere who share that identification.
Lo, I haven't read the book, but I've read a fair amount about slavery as a historical phenomenon, and it's actually less common than some modern theorists make it out to be. There are certain conditions that encourage it, and others that very powerfully discourage it, and most of these are actually economic in nature. I should probably do a post about this one of these days.
Ray, interesting. I suspect that in the future, as people reflect on the disastrous end of the Industrial Age, it will be common to see the limits on human options as a source of protection, for ourselves and other living things.
Shivani, I will indeed.
5/6/16, 10:48 PM
heather said...
I first found this blog from Sharon Astyk's, I don't even know how many years ago. As I recall, you and she were exchanging differing opinions over the speed and shape of the coming collapse. Thus on my first acquaintance with your work, I was smacked in the face with your theory of catabolic collapse, and found myself completely unable to deny its logic and its face validity- it just made sense of so much. Another commenter above described the instant recognition that your perspective is now irrevocably changed- that was it for me too. Since then, reading and digesting your work (and that of some of the greats upon whose shoulders you stand), and trying to at least grasp the perspectives of the commenters here, has become a major intellectual project for me. What's more, putting that understanding into practice in my daily life has become a diverse set of practical projects. My awakening from blissful oblivion and growing understanding of so many difficult truths has somehow, paradoxically, been a great joy and source of peace for me as well. I really can't overstate my gratitude.
As for favorite posts, I am afraid to even glance over the archives, knowing that I will just have to revisit so many "greatest hits" that my garden will never get planted. One that leaps to mind, though, is your satirical obituary for Man, Conqueror of Nature. I greatly enjoy all your fiction and strongly recommend to any readers here who haven't checked out "The Fires of Shalsha" to do so, even if they don't think they would enjoy a work of science fiction.
Finally, I join the others who have expressed appreciation for the work you put into structuring the commentary community here. The careful moderation and thoughtful responses to commenters, and the modeling of genuine discourse, has resulted in a very special atmosphere. I just can hardly be bothered to read online comments elsewhere any more, and am usually sorry when I do. Thank you for creating something so much finer.
Blessings on you and on your work-
--Heather in CA
5/6/16, 11:12 PM
heather said...
This is a very interesting topic. I'm afraid I don't have a very sophisticated background in religious philosophy, so please forgive if my contribution betrays this. But when you define something as evil if it would be better if it didn't exist, aren't you just chasing your tail? How then do you define better? Better for whom? What would life even be without death?
If you take an ecological viewpoint, then no, it clearly would not be better if death didn't exist. How could the cycles of nature, which structure this beautiful world, be enacted without death and the cycling of matter and energy? (I tend to think souls exist in an analogous ecology and so must also pass from state to state, but that's clearly a matter of difference between religious viewpoints.)
From a personal viewpoint, releasing my view of humans as somehow separate from nature in turn freed me from my fear of aging, decay, and death. (I'll admit, I'm still working on the suffering...) Like JMG, I'm in no hurry to get there, but I don't have any more personal fear of the reaper than I do of, say, entering a room full of people I don't know. I don't know what it will be like, exactly, but whatever it is will be OK, I think.
Or is death evil to you because of the suffering of those left behind, who have lost loved ones? I admit, that sucks, but is understandable through the "better to have loved and lost" lens. (I hope this doesn't sound too flip. I don't mean to minimize the pain of those who have lost loved ones to death. Some shorthand is needed due to the enormity of the topic, though.) Losing someone you love is awful to go through, yes, but evil?
My hopeful viewpoint, in the face of death and decay and suffering, is that life goes on, that life is beautiful, and that I get to partake of it for a while. Who am I to ask for more?
--Heather in CA
5/7/16, 12:00 AM
Cherokee Organics said...
Ha! Well, I won't mention that at first when I spotted the Men in Black suits and the black Chrysler 300C, I thought they were gangsters looking for an opportunity to dump a body. Now before, anyone complains, if there is a large bushfire in the area, the police seal the roads all about the place for that very reason. Adversity sometime breeds strange opportunities...
About a year or two ago, the Jehovi's turned up here in a very new looking, large and shiny Toyota Landcruiser. They made a rather unfavourable first impression with that, I would have preferred the dudes on push bikes... Alas, the seem to be better financed down here. Fortunately, Poopy the Pomeranian (who is actually a rather larger Swedish Lapphund with big shiny teeth) took an instant dislike to them also. I was able to restrain him whilst they piled out of the car and so I said to them in my best drawl: "You betta get back in the car, he's not much good with strangers". And wow, I'll tell ya what, Poopy played the part of rabid dog to perfection because they virtually piled straight back in again and left thus saving everyone a whole lot of hassle and unnecessary talk. His reaction has always surprised me to this day. I just sort of go with my gut feeling a lot, but if the dogs tell me things are not good, then they're probably not good. I'm mostly certain that they are on my side.
I do hope that you get around to writing an essay on the economy and money, because, as I've mentioned to you before there are reasons that things are playing out the way they have been. Abstractions can be created and destroyed with impunity (did I use that word correctly and in context?) Meanwhile in the real world, I'm not personally seeing the investment into assets that provide services and returns into the future.
You see, from what I've deduced here is that you need to: have a return for today; have enough surplus to allow for unforeseen events to not unduly affect your day to day return; invest time and resources so that the infrastructure can either be repaired, maintained, or replaced so that it provides a return into the indefinite future; and to put away a bit of surplus to take allow for any future additional demands on those returns. I don't see much of that happening in our society at all, and so when I read proclamations about EREOI < 10 being a problem then I believe even those numbers to be wildly optimistic. Just sayin... And that applies to food production even more so than abstractions or infrastructure.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention it, but this evening at almost 9.30pm it is still 16'C (60.8'F) here and it is very late autumn. Things are progressing (if I may use that misused terminology in this instance relating to global warming) far more rapidly than I ever imagined...
I had something else to say about ecology, but my mind has now gone completely blank – I should have written it down. Ah, the perils of the ever progressing years! ;-)!
PS: I always understood that to be your reason. Too often down here I have seen people hang onto leadership positions well beyond their use by date and it is to everyone's detriment. I'm not suggesting that you were at that point at all, rather that you had the excellent common sense not to get to that point in the first place. If the old stag becomes senile, often the young buck comes along and kicks them hard. I see that here with the kangaroos. A smooth hand over is always far more preferable and beneficial and I respect your choice very much.
Cheers
Chris
5/7/16, 4:36 AM
Nestorian said...
Thank you for your thoughts. They are essentially a reasonable set of expansions on my own speculation, voiced in reference to myself, that the position I have articulated in my recent posts may be evidence that my own rejection of death as inherently bad reflects my imprisonment in the mental categories of my own belief system - at least in part.
A couple of points in response: First, the concept of an unending hell is not a primordial Christian idea. The fact is that the considerable majority of Eastern, or "Greek" Christian Fathers from apostolic times until the 6th century were Universalists. (The Universalist Protestant denomination of the 19th century developed a rich tradition of Patristic research documenting this fact; many of these sources are now easily available in .pdf files with the help of simple google searches.)
We are talking here about major figures such as Origen, Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodore of Tarsus - and even such ostensibly unlikely Western figures as Jerome. Many others may be identified as Universalists as well, but the names I have listed are probably the principal "heavy weights."
It's not that these Greek fathers rejected the reality of hell, it's just that they regarded hell as a period of punishment of finite duration commensurate with the magnitude of the sins to be expiated. The man principally responsible for introducing the concept of an eternal hell in the East was actually the Emperor Justinian. After he basically outlawed Universalism at a "Home Synod" that he forcibly orchestrated in 543, Universalism went into rapid eclipse in the Greek portion of the Roman Empire - though it remains the dominant position of the Nestorian tradition (which is non-Roman) to this day.
The concept of an unending hell actually has a nearly unique historical origination in Latin North Africa. Well-known early champions of this view include Tertullian, Cyprian, and of course the towering figure of Augustine. But this was very much a minority view in the church of the first 5 centuries. As I indicated above, even Augustine's slightly older Latin contemporary, Jerome, is on record as affirming both a personal belief that hell has an end, and as providing testimony to the fact that this belief was widely held in his day.
You are perfectly correct, of course, that the Imperial government of Eastern Rome, as well as then nascent Imperial Papacy of Western Rome, were not slow to make use of the North African tradition that hell is eternal to consolidate their power through the use of spiritual terrorism.
But this view does NOT represent the belief of authentic, pre-Imperial Christianity.
5/7/16, 5:28 AM
Nestorian said...
One of the points I have tried to press is that if you take into account the totality of human experience, particularly the human response to suffering, I think it is fair to say that the overwhelming pre-theoretical response to decay, suffering, and death corresponds very well to what Christianity affirms as its theoretical response to the same realities.
Importantly, it is not merely Christians who happen to have been schooled in the horrors of eternal hell who tend very strongly to react this way. All human beings, in all times and cultures do so - apart from and prior to whatever religious belief system later comes to modify these reactions.
Human beings react to suffering and death with varying mixtures of fear, dread, anxiety, repugnance, revulsion, and denial. All of these responses testify to the fact that the basic pre-theoretical view of suffering and death by the vast majority of humans is one that sees them as inherently bad, or "evil", in the specific sense I defined earlier.
In an important sense, then, the Christian view of suffering and death as inherently bad requires much less to justify itself than the alternative view that suffering and death are neither good nor bad, but strictly value-neutral - i.e., they "just are," as an integral and inevitable given of the cosmos we live in. The fact is that the vast majority of human beings, in the vast majority of moments in their lives, do not react to the prospect of suffering and death with the kind of emotional equanimity that the view of death as value-neutral entails.
Now you might respond by saying that the common human emotional responses of fear, revulsion, etc., are themselves unnatural. But such an assertion needs to be proven, not merely asserted. Otherwise, the person holding such a position is just as open to the charge of being a psychological prisoner of her religious convictions as may be the case with me in relation to my beliefs.
Additionally, it bears pointing out that the burden of proof you face in demonstrating that death really is a value-neutral reality is pretty high. For one thing, it requires showing that there really is something unnatural about the common human response of fear, revulsion, denial, etc., when it comes to the reality of suffering and death. I do not think this is that easy to prove.
But the point where the rubber really meets the road in this dispute is when it comes to the attitudes of those who theoretically hold a value-neutral view of death to the impending reality of their own death.
JMG, you have affirmed that you do not find death particularly frightening, and that you expect to meet it calmly. But how certain are you really that you will be able to maintain this equanimity when death really is distinct and imminent? Are you confident that you will be able to maintain the courage of your convictions at that time of unparalleled impotence? (It also sounds like you have some beliefs about an afterlife, which of course immensely complicates the matters we are discussing.)
Along theses lines, I also extend the question that I posed in an earlier post to Yellow Submarine to the full readership of this blog (at least those who are in the death-as-value-neutral camp):
"When the moment of your own death approaches, and is both distinct and imminent, will you be able regard its arrival with the firm emotional equanimity that your belief about it as value-neutral entails and implies?"
5/7/16, 6:08 AM
Myriad said...
Another strong argument is of the form "earth's sustainable carrying capacity is x, the population is y, x<y, therefore collapse." But the carrying capacity is difficult to compute reliably (assumptions pile up), and many people I've talked to who acknowledge x<y expect a peak and decline of population during this century without collapse of industrial civilization.
I'm often on the receiving end of perception-based arguments for claims that turn out to be unsupportable. ("Of course there were secret explosive charges in the twin towers on 9/11! Just look at the videos, it's obvious if you open your eyes!") So I expect actual practicing skeptics to find and point out where arguments fall short. I'm happy to continue working on better arguments, and also to argue likelihood instead of inevitability. For practical purposes, "likely enough to take action" is as good as "inevitable," and for some audiences is a much more reachable target. Which is probably why classical formal debate is always over a proposition regarding plausible future actions ("evolution shall be taught in all public schools") rather than questions of fact ("evolution is real").
5/7/16, 8:59 AM
edde said...
We had a great Beltane celebration w/over 60 in attendance, including potluck. 16 May Pole Ribbon dancers. Fiddle & pan flute tunes, locally provided;-) Free Earth Day Celebration w/Adventures of Annabelle Lyn also brought out a crowd. Many donated to the band... I personally celebrated 3 neighbors who do and have done amazing work to protect a living earth, CCL provided handouts;-)
THANKS for YEARS informative and encouraging posts, many useful nf books and your post-oil spec history collections.I own and read several, need to get 'em all.
I've been engaged on this path for a while, now. Built a life mostly outside current mainstream expectations & distress, worked to maximize freedom and good health. Your input has been helpful, adaptive.
Best regards and good luck for many more communicative years!
edde
5/7/16, 9:27 AM
ed boyle said...
5/7/16, 10:34 AM
Ed-M said...
Hi!
Well it's been quite a good ten tears, hasn't it? For me, much less. I first got acquainted with Peak Oil by listening to Matt Savinar's interview on the Art Bell Program (Now Coat-to-Coast AM with George Noory). Along the way I found two of your articles: one about the United Kingdom --- no, Britannia after the Romans left and another about your experiences at an ASPO meeting in Auburn Hills, Mich. For some reason your blog didn't have the holding power over me like more doomerish or entertaining sites did and I strayed for a while. Finally in 2013 whilst reading Democratic Undergound I came upon Robertscribbler and a comment there led me to Guy McPherson's (yeah that guy) Nature Bats Last. I stayed there for about a month until someone in that site's commentariat mentioned Guy McPherson badmouthing you because at a certain meeting that year he noted you had nothing to do with him! I though: hey, wait! I know this guy -- IIRC I read a couple of good articles of his. So I came over here and the rest is history. :)
Now touching on the Cthulucene, when I was building a post on the Fort McMurray fire at one of my blogs, 2016 is strange! I found myself thinking, "If there were karmic justice, the fires would head right for the tar sands processing plants". Somehow, somewhere, I have acquired the conviction that the universe is under no obligation to be benevolent to us. This from a former born-again Christian!
5/7/16, 10:44 AM
Lynnet said...
On the indifference of the universe: In 1961 I was a senior in high school, taking an honors English class in the evening. We were reading Camus's book The Stranger. At the end: 'It was as if that first great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.' : [Albert Camus ]
I walked out of the school, into a night spangled with stars, feeling a cool spring breeze, and truly felt that 'benign indifference' for the first time. No devils, no angels, just the great I Am. The universe full of riches, not pushing or pulling me in any direction, just being there.
5/7/16, 10:47 AM
G E Canterbury said...
It is, as JMG trenchantly pointed out, becoming more apparent every year that the spaceship future is much less a realistic prospect than a transposition of the myth of the Ascension into a new key. Our destiny of voyages among the stars runs into hard barriers of energy availability and economics.
But wait! Think twice, and you see our future is indeed among the stars. So is our present. Look up on a clear night, and you can see that the stars surround us. As a matter of fact, we’re floating in a whole darn spiral galaxy!. Just part of the basic condition of our existence. We’re even travelling (12 miles a second toward the constellation Hercules, which seems fast enough for practical purposes). There's really no particular rush, after all. It’s hardly incompatible with finding meaning and joy from the natural world closer at hand. And with the right perspective it can even shed a certain sense of wonder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtZUM0JhLvc
Grant C.
5/7/16, 12:20 PM
Honyocker said...
comments for about seven years now. The quality of your writing and the
comment section is amazing. I often feel like I've wandered into a graduate
level seminar on history, philosophy, or politics and I'm totally unprepared.
I learn something every week and I really appreciate the opportunity.
5/7/16, 1:03 PM
Tidlösa said...
This may be a huge question, but it´s a kind of tie-in to your discussion with Nestorian. If polytheism is true, why does monotheism exist at all? Where do the monotheist prophets get their revelations? Are they misinterpreting communications from a polytheist deity, or are they (in a sense) "making it all up", perhaps for reasons of personal power? Does Jahve/Jehovah, Allah, Ahura Mazda and the other monotheist deities exist at all (but as polytheist deities!), or are they figments of the prophet´s imagination, perhaps an imagination fueled by the sense of entitlement you mentioned?
5/7/16, 1:24 PM
Tidlösa said...
5/7/16, 1:25 PM
PatriciaT said...
Congratulations for ten great years!
5/7/16, 1:31 PM
Yellow Submarine said...
Check out this demonstration from her campaign event the other day in Los Angeles, where she was denounced by left wing activists as "warmonger neoliberal Killary"
5/7/16, 1:53 PM
John Roth said...
I know that the standard narrative is that an archaea swallowed an oxygen-metabolizing bacterium, and that eventually turned into the mitochondrion. I have a lot of trouble with that, since the mitochondrion is nothing like a bacterium except for having a small chunk of bacterial DNA which contains a dozen or so genes that go into two molecular machines. All the other genes needed to maintain the mitochondion are in the main genome. The archaea to euchriotic cell picture is beginning to come into focus, and it’s making the “archaea swallowed a bacterium” picture story look a bit less likely. The only thing it still has going for it is that there isn’t, currently, an alternative.
@Nestorian
I agree with JMG - the fear of death is due to the Christian invention of Hell as a method of dissing their opponents. As a student of the Michael Teaching, I can say two things. One is that there is nothing at risk, so there is nothing that needs to be Saved, second is that Christianity is the third most distorted of the religions that arose from a manifestation of the Infinite Soul. Now back to our regularly scheduled discussion.
5/7/16, 4:36 PM
Yucca Glauca said...
As a side note, the first 50 pages of Green Wizardry are a better introduction to ecology than anything I've seen in four years of college.
So yes, thank you, JMG.
5/7/16, 7:01 PM
Justin said...
5/7/16, 7:07 PM
onething said...
This was funny to me. I have no idea where this thing called Twitter even exists. Does one find it on the net? Is it some sort of account? I thought real conversation was impossible on Twitter?
JMG, I'm not sure when I found this blog, probably about end 2012 or so. I was reading around, I think on 22 Billion Energy Slaves, and someone made a comment about some archdruid's blog, and how you tolerated only praise and sycophantery. Not particularly interesting, except the word archdruid stood out and intrigued me, so I googled something like "archdruid blog" and found it, and began going through the commentary to see how you didn't allow, um, dissensus. Been here every week since, (arguing as necessary). And thank you for your in-depth response. You've given me some food for thought.
As to the size of the universe, my thought is that there is an inner, smaller dimension which links all, so that the center is everywhere and everything is everything. But then, I'm decidedly optimistic about these things. It is one of my beliefs that reality/God/the universe MUST be the best or better than anyone can imagine. How's that for the best of all possible worlds?
Nestorian,
I wish I had something wise to say. I've had the thought that the fall may not have instigated bodily death, but rather that the soul became so blind as to doubt its own existence, which is what fear of death really means. In a general way, I think this conforms to the Christian idea that the fall resulted in spiritual blindness and a soul not in control of the chariot. Part of what it may mean to have a body in control instead of the soul, with the body strong and the soul weak, is that the spiritual eye is not functional resulting in the identification of the self as the body.
Of course, the Eastern Orthodox view is very holistic, expecting a full recovery of the entire cosmos, and regarding the human being as including the body. But I do think that many Christians go too far with this, expecting a body much like this one or even identical to it but good as new. St. Paul makes it clear that this is a mistake, and that the resurrected body will be very different.
Intellectually, I see that death can be a good thing to allow a reset so that souls can progress. (A non-reincarnationist philosophy no longer makes sense to me.) Keeping in mind what Krishna said, “The soul is unborn, eternal, never takes birth, and never dies. The soul is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.”
But emotionally I see death as an utter tragedy that ruins everything because we are never for a moment free of fear, and when someone we love dies you never see them again, all questions go unanswered and the heart has a black hole, unrepairable, with wind ever blowing through.
Those who have seen that their soul will live, such as near-death experiencers, say they have lost their fear of death and I believe them, but others who say it I do not believe.
5/7/16, 7:32 PM
Shane W said...
Like others, I went out and bought all the books, because I wanted to have this information in hardcopy. I've also started to work my way through the recommended readings. I must admit, intellectually, I'm really a piker compared to most on here, and I'm so honored to be in such great cyber company. Thanks for introducing me to such radically unconventional ideas, and opening my mind up in ways I thought it could never be opened.
One of my favorites from your blog, that I invoke often, is the incantation, "there is no brighter future ahead". I often repeat that to myself when I'm in the presence of some cornucopian droning on about the wonderful leap of consciousness that's sure to save us or the bright, shiny future ahead. I love the subtle ways I can look back at the changes you've wrought in both my thought and behavior. I also wanted to thank you so much for the concept of "indifferentism", it really has provided me with my religious grounding and a sense of hope and comfort that the world will be okay, in spite of what stupid things humans have done to it.
Thanks so much for reminding us once again in your retrospective of the promise of the 70s that has been thrown away since. The record needs to be set straight for younger and future generations, and thanks for continuing to tell this truth.
5/7/16, 7:49 PM
Shane W said...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/experts-predict-economic-disaster-trump-recovery-idea-065837562--election.html?ref=gs
5/7/16, 7:53 PM
will said...
Re the limits of space travel - it occurred to me that the 20th c's faith in Eternal Progress Through Tech was paralleled in the art world, particularly in music. Not so much the invention of the electric guitar or synthesizers, but in the general idea that music was "getting better" and was reaching a breakaway point, an escape velocity whereby it could actually serve a revolutionary, consciousness-raising purpose. It was Ezra Pound's 3-word manifesto, "Make It New!" taken to extremes. Modernism, it seems, was in part a self-conscious attempt to accelerate the evolutionary process that would liberate us from the hampering clutches of tradition - much like tech would liberate us from the hampering clutches of Nature and eventually the entire earth itself.
Heh, well, like space travel, modernistic music - all the 12th tone/serial music, etc, the music we were told we'd all be listening to exclusively, the music you'd be virtually forced to compose if you were a student in a music academy - hit a wall. Nobody liked it except for academicians, and I suspect they only said they liked it. Composer Elliott Carter's ridiculously over-complex music may have won Pulitzer Prizes galore, but it never really aroused public enthusiasm. Leonard Bernstein did his level best to get people enthused about Charles Ives's atonal polymusic, but people just weren't buying, and modern classical music began dying on the vine. (which, I think, helped to boost popular music).
The Minimalist composers of the late 60's - Terry Riley, P. Glass, Steve Reich - began bringing tonality back into the picture, this around the same time Stewart Brand and various back-to-the-earth mvts were surfacing.
I think these attempts to sever all links with tradition in order to create a trans-human art form capable of transforming human consciousness ultimately failed because they were rooted in a hubristic effort to, in a sense, overthrow nature. I can certainly understand the excitement that modernism must have conjured up, just as I understand the early excitement re space travel - both promised an ultimate liberation and a glittering Manifest Destiny. But "musical consciousness-raising" can't really be brought about save for changing, deepening, in a spiritual sense, the way we listen, and that necessitates a "going within". If we listen deeply, spiritually, we can feast on Bach, which is certainly New Age music in the truest sense; we don't need a self-consciously created new art form in order to taste a bit of transcendence. Similarly, we don't require material space ships to ultimately reach the stars, an impossibility in any case - we just need to go within.
It does seem to me that the limit on actual, physical space travel is divinely-imposed, in a sense - we have to spiritually "graduate" in and around our earth environs before we can venture outward, and that venturing, if it is indeed required, will not be in our physical bodies. So, for the time being, the sky's the limit, literally.
5/7/16, 9:10 PM
Curtis said...
5/7/16, 10:03 PM
Alex SC said...
I've not been here for 10 years, alas, my journey into reality only started half a year before, but as I read through your books and posts, I realized how you say aloud things I've been thinking secretly for years. It's been refreshing to see I wasn't the only one to see along these lines. Your blog, along with other tematic blogs, was a good encouragement to start my own, and a good kick-start for my research.
An understanding of the Universe that doesn't care is something I realized several years ago and I never let it go since then. It lets you understand a lot of things, especially the most important realization that this world does not exists to fulfil our dreams. That we want something doesn't mean we can always get it. That's one of the biggest human fallacies.
5/8/16, 1:31 AM
Phil Harris said...
I have loved the idea of ‘future thoughts’; those we cannot know just yet. It was just this starting point I needed back when I began reading and thinking about your essays and the comments from others. It restored a lot of value to my own memories, and it would have been exceedingly unlikely otherwise that I would have written my first stories since I was 14, and me being well on in my 70s! Thanks!
Always hard work this life; what with us, time and all those animals. Yesterday I recognised the need to keep cheerful in solidarity with those who lead good (and often cheerful) lives out there without benefit from our industrial age.
That reminds me – I think I read this week somewhere in comments the guy whose response was that he would get round to digging a latrine. My advice: don’t! They are terrible! Read Eve Balfour’s classic ‘The Living Soil’ – like most things, it is possible to make a better job of it.
best
Phil H
5/8/16, 3:18 AM
Shane W said...
some of my favorite posts: where to start? The progress posts, the Fascism posts, the suicide of the American Left, the Trump posts, the Butlerian Carnival, Retrotopia, the Heresy of Technological Choice have all inspired me.
WB Jorgensen,
I really do believe that digital media, "smart"phones, and antisocial media are the modern day equivalent of cigarettes as far as a present day mass stupidity/addiction, and will age just as poorly as cigarette smoking has. I'm fairly certain that today's penchant for staying glued to a device will be as passe as indoor smoking in the near future. At least smoking had a fair amount of glamour in its day, and functioned as a social adhesive instead of a social atomizer, which cannot be said for staring at little colored pictures jerking across a screen. The thing about antisocial media is it is the digital equivalent of saccharin or Aspartame: it's a poor substitute for real, meaningful social interaction, causes damage, and leaves you craving the real thing. You're just as much alone staring into the screen, typing on it, as you are if you just chucked the screen altogether.
It's very bothersome that our society ignores and downplays the very real damage that screens do to us, from the way they rewire our brains, reducing our ability to focus and concentrate, to the effects of EMF/damaging radiation, to the way the internet functions as TV on steroids, reducing us to mouthing pop culture soundbites, making us mindless consumers. A lot of us have been through "digital detox" and can offer support for others. After my last two "smart"phones(JMG's "technotrash") broke while under contract, I tore the last one to pieces and threw it in a recycling bin, and went without a phone for months, finally getting a flip (no contract). I'm kind of transient right now, but the eventual goal will be to go mobile free. I cancelled Facebook years ago. I had a Twitter account, but could never bring myself to Tweet. I hardly use the internet at all except to follow headlines and this blog. You can do it! Once you realized that Silicon Valley is just another evil corporate behemoth a la Walmart, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, GoldmanSachs, Monsanto, that doesn't really have your best interests at heart, it really does tarnish the allure of digital media/technology.
5/8/16, 4:41 AM
Shane W said...
5/8/16, 4:47 AM
Adam Gruen said...
5/8/16, 5:49 AM
Bogatyr said...
If we're going to look at numbers, though, I find it somewhat more interesting that this is the year you stood down as AODA Archdruid after a 12-year tenure. 12 years is, of course, a complete cosmological cycle in Chinese thought - from Year of the Monkey to Year of the Monkey. I wonder, did that in some small way play a part in your decision?
That same 12-year cycle has played its way out in my own life. My connection with China began in 2004, as a confirmed techno-optimist, albeit one who was already questioning the future of our civilisation in the face of Peak Oil. In 2008, I started to read TADR; I forget now how I first arrived here, but it would have been one of the sites dealing with Peak Oil.
Since then, I've lived in China, moved back home to Wales, moved to Russia, and then found myself back in China. I've experienced through the collapse of my career, my wealth, and my health. I've moved from being a committed Western-style liberal, verging on SJW, to mixing with some of the most conservative elements of European society, where I found a commitment to resilience, mixed with a joie de vivre, that I find intoxicating.
The ideas you've been putting forth here have shaped my life considerably, especially given that they've been supported by watertight reasoning. The community you've developed here has likewise been an oasis of sanity, as more and more of my old friends, committed believers in Progress, drop me for my 'weird' views. Well.
So, is the universe indifferent? I get what you're saying, particularly looking at humanity in toto. My own beliefs are in that particularly Chinese blurred and overlapping trinity of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, with one or another coming to the fore according to circumstance. What this tells me is that the Universe may be uncaring; Nature, though, works in a certain way, one in which we evolved, and if we act in a way that accords with Nature's way, Nature - the Universe/ God/the gods/Benevolent Providence - will buoy us up and send us coincidences to help us. That's been my own experience, anyway, not least in my recent deus ex machina rescue from poverty. I suspect one or two Chinese deities may be involved, but I can't be sure. Certainly, though, I need to pay a visit to a certain derelict temple, and light a joss stick to the Dragon God who was once worshipped there, just in case.
Now that I have savings building up again, I can contemplate my plan for the fast-approaching collapse. It's too late for me to save enough for land; even if I could, there's no time to learn the skills. My route forward is going to have to be based on laughter, dancing, and music - not to mention fighting - and on teaching others to do the same.
Thanks again, JMG, for being a torch-bearer - and to everyone else here, for your collective wisdom and experience!
5/8/16, 6:08 AM
Eric S. said...
Watching your thoughts unfold is fascinating to me because my journey took such a different direction. It was the rejection of death that actually drove me out of Christianity in the first place. I thought you might be interested in seeing an excerpt from a letter to my parents when I was 19, (ostensibly trying to convince them I was still a Christian, but in reality trying to reconcile my values and beliefs with a Christian faith it was becoming increasingly difficult to fit within). I was going so far as saying that if there was a hell, it would be existence without death. (Of course like most spiritualities in transition my beliefs at the time were bizarre and barely coherent but the religious sensibility still shines through). So no, rejection of death, even fear of death is far from a universal value:
"I just can't hold to the idea of death as a curse. Death is the thread that connects life on earth. The sun passes energy to plants, and from there on, life is sustained through consumption in a dance of life and death in which plants are consumed by herbivores which are consumed by predators, and all things that die give their flesh to scavengers and decomposers. And through that dance things share in each other... Become a part of each other. When you consume meat or a vegetable, that organism becomes a part of you, just as when you die and are eaten by scavenging creatures, you become a part of them. Death is the medium through which all forces in the living world flow and are transferred, and if there were such a thing as hell... Hell would be the state of being removed from that process forever. It's the emptiness of a life devoid of the opportunity to die, or to partake of death in the natural world that fills me with horror and revulsion. Not the idea of dying. On a spiritual level, I suppose the equivalent of the sort of energy that passes down from the sun and is transferred from being to being is love, which flows down from God. To love is to die to oneself and pass on that energy to another being, just as in nature passing the energy of the sun in the form of sugars requires sacrifice. As for the Fall... I don't believe that there was no death in the garden... If there was a fall, and death came to earth through sin, that curse is that now on death our souls are taken out of that process cut off from death... Which means if there is such a thing as salvation, salvation is a return to the natural expression of death that is expressed on a spiritual level through love. Perhaps before the fall reincarnation was the natural expression of that, and people believe in it out of memory of what is natural for the soul? Perhaps reincarnation with full lucidity rather than eternal heaven is what salvation looks like. Because what is heaven but dying and suffering and growing and being reborn in a thousand forms and being consumed and redistributed through a thousand energy exchanges. Hell in my mind by its very nature means being cut off from the natural cycle of life, and death. Being isolated, unable to love, and therefore, unable to be loved, thus eternally dead, never able to feel the heat of the sun. That is hell. Rooted in a rejection of death, of consumption, and of love... Just as those who refuse to eat starve, those who refuse to partake of Love, too will suffer an eternal state of sterility cut off from the cycles and the suffering and the elation that give existence meaning. Eternal life without ever being able to die and pass my life's energy on to another creature again... That's hell... And I think I'd choose the oblivion the atheists speak of over it."
5/8/16, 7:02 AM
heather said...
I agree with some of your points, but they lead us to different conclusions. Firstly, a calm acceptance of death surely is the minority viewpoint among humans. To me, however, the near-universal aversion to death (let’s save suffering for a moment) does not necessarily indicate the objective recognition of death as “evil” (or bad, if that is the narrower meaning you are choosing), but rather that such behavior is an evolutionary advantage. It sounds trite to say that avoiding death confers survival benefits, but what I am getting at is that feeling horror at handling dead and decaying bodies, avoiding overly dangerous situations with little potential benefit, and so on would indeed allow those who acted on those instincts to be more successful at passing on their genes and helping their offspring survive to do the same. This widespread pattern of behavior just doesn’t equal “death is evil” to me, any more than the widespread and instinctive fear of falling from a height means that cliff faces are inherently bad. Some people, in some circumstances, learn to overcome or deal with this fear, to their benefit (I’m thinking of people who learn to climb the cliffs to get birds’ eggs for nutrition), while others continue to shiver and avoid them. Neither reaction indicates anything at all about the “good or evil” of the cliff. It just is.
As for suffering, here again we run into a problem of definitions, since suffering means “experiencing deeply unpleasant things”. Surely no one likes physical pain, or emotional loss, grief or despair… but different people experience these emotions differently, to greater or lesser degrees, provoked by different stimuli, and likewise are comforted, strengthened, sustained, and healed by different things. Arguing that “no one likes suffering” seems empty if suffering is defined as “experiencing things one doesn’t like”. Further, I wonder if we can agree that suffering can be mitigated by the frame of reference of the sufferer? If one can learn to experience the same thing with more or less suffering, does that mean that the cause has changed, or rather that the cause never was evil, but the interpretation is what made it “bad”?
--cont.
5/8/16, 9:15 AM
heather said...
I think what we are coming down to is whether human experience and interpretation is what makes things good or evil or whether those qualities exist in some abstract sense. Here I am clearly venturing above my pay grade in terms of philosophical training, as these questions have obviously engaged far greater minds than mine for centuries. But I will address your final question, which I do feel equipped to answer, as it asks about my personal experience: Will I be able to address my own imminent death with equanimity when the time comes, in accordance with my belief that it is value-neutral? I would hope so, but honestly, possibly not. I may not feel ready to leave this life, my loved ones, my work. I may feel some fear of the unknown. But what is that supposed to indicate about the objective good or evil of death? All it would indicate is my own emotional state in the moment, hardly a good measure of any larger truth. Part of me was afraid and in pain during childbirth too, (which I believe is a near-universal experience as well), but that passage was not to be avoided, and through preparation and support and a firm hand on my emotions, I was able to traverse the experience all right. (Twice.) I hope that I will be able to deal with death similarly, but if not, I won’t blame death.
I thank you for the invitation to consider a fascinating topic. I also found your discussion with JMG about the differing scholarly interpretations of the nature of hell to be very interesting, as I (unsurprisingly) learned very little about the Eastern branch of the church in school. Thanks for helping me to continue my education.
--Heather in CA
5/8/16, 9:17 AM
Mojoglo said...
Congratulations on the 10th anniversary of your blog! I discovered it about a year into the project and I can definitely say you've been one of the most influential writers in my life.
A question: What is the difference between your Neozoic Era and Thomas Berry's "Ecozoic Era", which I've found a compelling vision to work toward. Is Berry's new cosmology incompatible with your conviction that the universe is indifferent to human concerns? I recall Thomas Berry coming up in the comments of a previous post "Toward a Green Future: The Age of Unreason", and you responded that Berry's Universe Story may not bear fruit because it doesn't go deep enough. Could you elaborate on that?
5/8/16, 11:54 AM
Pinku-Sensei said...
I know you're winking at me while making the suggestion, but I'll answer as seriously as I can--yes and no.
Yes in that people have worked through the idea that Star Wars happened in the past, although that was mostly to find a way to connect Han Solo to Indiana Jones in a way both more direct and more distant than the Lone Ranger was connected to The Green Hornet before different companies bought the rights to the characters. The best I can say about this is it appears to be an attempt to turn commercial entertainment into a new mythology.
No in that I suspect that most of the people who'd speculate on such matters would reject the idea that interstellar travel is so impractical as to be effectively impossible. Whether they realize it or not, they're adherents of the religion of progress, and such thoughts would be blasphemy. In that regard, as I once wrote about those who tried to write histories of drum and bugle corps during the 20th Century, the people who were interested weren't qualified and those who were qualified weren't interested. Consequently, you might be the first.
5/8/16, 12:14 PM
[email protected] said...
I have been following your blog for many years, having been lurking in the peak oil community since the Iraq war when I came across the peak oil theory.
Your blog has been a weekly must read of mine for years and a breath of fresh air in a world of stale, conventional and corporate reporting. Please keep on the good work!
The 2016 presidential elections has been absolutely fascinating and your reporting on it has been absolutely superb. Indeed, I have been inspired to start my own blog which will intend to be a guide for the upcoming decades of crises the world is entering into. Like you, I had a very strong gut instinct that Donald Trump will get into the White House. When I suggested such a possibility in early January this year, the reaction from my politically aware friends was incredibility that I could think such an absurd thing was possible. It is interesting that my left-leaning friend has gone from a Trump hater (and Bernie fan) to now openly considering voting for Trump in November, if he was an American citizen.
If you would like to read some of my comments on the rise of Donald Trump, here is the link... https://forecastingintelligence.wordpress.com/
Keep up the good work John!
Cheers
James
5/8/16, 12:28 PM
W. B. Jorgenson said...
"I'm quite aware that the concept of polite discourse is hopelessly dowdy and out of date, but then so are a good many other things we will have to preserve, or laboriously reinvent, on the long road down from Hubbert's peak."
I wonder if some of our society's issues relate to the loss of the idea of politeness, and social etiquette, or at least frowning upon it. I've been told many times before I'm "too polite", so it's a thought that occurred to me just now when I read the notice about politeness. Has that happened to anyone else?
Shane W,
One of the reasons I'm planning to get rid of my phone is that it somehow leaves me feeling lonelier sometimes than not using it, but never makes me feel less alone. It's a weird thing, but it's what I've found too. I have seen far too many people become dependent on the devices as well. And for me, I still have social media, it's a little hard to be a twenty year old without it these days. Maybe later I'll get rid of, it's gonna be a lot less useful without a phone anyway.
5/8/16, 2:53 PM
sgage said...
"... avoiding death confers survival benefits ...
Having admittedly elided your full original statement, this has got to be the aphorism of the week, if not the century. It needs to be on one of those parody motivational posters.
It's right up there with the warning on the virginitorivex medicine bottle (see 'The Drugs I Need', by the Austin Lounge Lizards). "If death occurs, discontinue use immediately".
:-)
5/8/16, 2:57 PM
Jay Moses said...
with respect to the events of the new testament that are supposedly prefigured in the old testament, the great preponderance of jewish scholarly opinion is that these exist mostly in the minds of christians. in fact, some of the most often cited passages rely on misquotations, e.g.: the reference to a virgin birth (isaiah 7:14) is a misreading, intentional or otherwise, of the original "almah"--a young woman.
as lewis black points out so hilariously, there is something rather ironic in christians interpreting a book that was, after all, written by jews and for jews.
5/8/16, 3:15 PM
jessi thompson said...
5/8/16, 3:35 PM
jessi thompson said...
Perhaps so you can understand us better, try imagining a world where one event is both good and evil at the same time. Imagine something that's neither good nor evil. Pagans don't spend a lot of time worrying about what's good and what's evil. We do think in terms of what causes harm. More often than not, everything is harmful to some and helpful to others, so we generally focus on finding a good balance, or minimizing harm. Wayne Dyer says the only difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment.
5/8/16, 3:55 PM
jessi thompson said...
5/8/16, 4:01 PM
Shane W said...
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/donald-trump-just-exposed-americas-210000595.html
5/8/16, 4:29 PM
Kevin Anderson K9IUA said...
I discovered you eight years ago, July 2008, with your "Lessons from Ham Radio" post. I just happened to have done a Google search the week after it was published on the keywords ham radio and peak oil together, and it popped up as a fresh post. I was already well familiar at the time with peak oil from many years monitoring the various RunningOnEmpty incarnations, Kunstler, and other writers. I will admit that I had been seeing an increasing number of search references to your Blog and to the AODA website, but had been dismissing them as an unlikely source without even looking at them. I am so glad I recognized my error and followed the light. Ever since my first honest discovery of your blog, I have been looking avidly forward to Thursday morning when I can read the next new installment with a clear, rested mind.
I have many favorites, but the short list - those that I have bookmarked in my web browser and a couple different computers for quick reference, re-reading, and sharing - are the four ecotechnic stages (scarcity, salvage, etc.), the article when you introduced LESS, the article for collapse now, and the four-part how-it-could-happen to the United States. I'll admit to not having the patience at the time to read the Star's Rich series when it was a blog, but came to love it later when it was published as the novel. I corrected that error as well by now following the Retrotopia series - I can't wait for this newest series to complete and be published, as we very much need good examples of how life can be different and still acceptable.
You have given me much food for thought for eight years now and I look forward to more. You and have also given my wife and I many thoughts that have now have us thinking ahead to how we hope to make adjustments in the next two years or so. Keep up the good work! Cheers/73.
5/8/16, 4:33 PM
rube cretin said...
5/8/16, 4:34 PM
pygmycory said...
5/8/16, 4:45 PM
John Roth said...
Pain is part of the physical experience while suffering is an emotional reaction. Pain is unavoidable, suffering is optional.
@JMG:
Thanks again for a great decade.
5/8/16, 4:50 PM
pygmycory said...
5/8/16, 4:56 PM
Tidlösa said...
It also shows, I think, that Trump doesn´t just appeal to the run-of-the-mill Tea Party conservative types, but also to "liberal" and centrist people who are fed up with the establishment. Once again, interesting! If the Republican establishment decides to support Hillary Clinton (de jure or de facto), and some Sanders´ supporter decides to run as an independent, things could get very interesting very fast. What if we get that nationalist-progressive two party system faster than any one of would imagine? Remember the Berlin Wall 1989? Here today, gone tomorrow...
Funny, didn´t think there could be a *positive* aspect to these years elections?!
The blog sure is diverse today, so let me also say that I found the discussions between Nestorian and his frienldy critics very interesting.
5/8/16, 5:24 PM
Robert Mathiesen said...
For fifteen years I had taught courses at my university on the history of magic, and also on the history of women-led magical religions in the United States from the late 1700s up to about 1970. Like many another professor working up courses on subjects for which there were no published textbooks, I bought and read huge numbers of books on those subjects, some bad, some good, a few excellent. Since I came from an esoteric family (old-line Californian magical pantheism) on my mother's side and a Masonic family on my father's, and also my scholarly expertise was in Medieval philology, I had a background against which I could judge the value of what I read.
Among these many books was John Michael Greer's _Inside a Magical Lodge_ (1998). I instantly recognized the hand and mind of a real master of his subjects. Some years later, in the year I retired (2005), his _A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism_ appeared, and I was again struck by the depth of his insights and the breadth of his scholarship. So I went looking for him on the web in the early years of my retirement, and I found this blog -- IIRC, it was in late 2007 or 2008. I did not have much of a web presence back then, and had been keeping a low profile on line -- as was prudent for professors to do in the 19980s and 1990s. Eventually I began to comment, but under a pseudonym: I was "mageprof." At that time, too, it was not very laborious to go hack and read every previous post and the comments on it, from the very first one onward.
I found your blog very congenial to my wider tastes and world view. The earliest mythology I had encountered as a child was that in _Norse Gods and Giants_, by the d'Aulaires, and there I had learned about Ragnarök, the eventual death and destruction of (almost) all the Gods and Goddesses along with humankind, and the need to see as clearly as possible the real condition of the real world. Because of this, the science fiction that had the greatest impact on me in my 'teen years was such books as WAlter Miller's _A Canticle fo Leibowitz_, Pat Franks' _Alas Babylon_, and Isaac Asimov's _Foundation_ Trilogy. And here, lo and behold, I was reading the sort of stuff Hari Seldon might have written if only he had been more of a humanist, not primarily a mathematician and psychologist. I was well hooked!
So thank you so much, John Michael, for the truly magnificent work you have done here these last ten years, and are continuing to do. You are a wise man and a first-rate scholar, and I am certain that you have actually made a difference already in how the next decades of our nation's history will unfold -- more than any politician or political activist ever could. I see that in many of the comments appearing here week after week. It has been small nudges you've given, nothing more, to a great boulder picking up speed as it rolls down the far side of Hubbert's Peak; but even small nudges can change a run-away boulder's course, saving some lives and lessening destruction.
Muriel Rukeyser wrote, "The world is made of stories, not atoms." The stories you have told here are the stuff of life itself, and I (for one) am richer because of them. Thank you!
5/8/16, 5:39 PM
DaShui said...
The peak oil stuff is great, and I have always been suspicious of progress, however it's Mr. Greer's discussions about the old fraternal and magical lodges has had the biggest effect on me. I joined the local Coast Guard Auxiliary, while not exactly a lodge, it do get something from it that is difficult to get in today's world where relationships are only a commercial transaction. For instance my cousin died suddenly, and we needed a boat to scatter his ashes, it wasn't a problem to contact my fellow members to use their boat, free of charge.
So thank you Mr.Greer, for 10 years of your guidance!
5/8/16, 5:56 PM
Lisa said...
I stumbled on RunningOnEmpty 2 in 2003 or 2004, shortly after moving to a mini farm in the peculiar social environment of the Ashland, Oregon area; possibly Sharon Astek pointed me, there from a homesteading list we were on. When Peak Oil and limits to growth finally was fully integrated, I had to throw out conventional economics and everything I knew.... I went into a panic reaction (pretty typical). Forward a decade - doomer burnout, at least five years of a constant state of expecting everything to fall apart at any moment. has taken something out. There was a lot of doom and gloom written back then. I was reading this blog right from the beginning, and you have always been much more rational and reasonable than most.
Psychologically (at least for me), intellectualizing seems to help a great deal when facing something with a strong emotional reaction.
Anyway, while I don't always entirely agree with everything you say (nor that Sharon says, for that matter), your posts have a much higher content/insite to fluff rate than anything else anywhere on the internet or for the most part, books; a large percent have a remarkable and profound insight, each worth an entire book on their own. (many books have one great idea expanded into a whole book; you seem to go the other way)
Alas, burnout; it's hard to bring on a sense of impending doom any more. We never liked new shiny stuff or debt, the solar is long installed, and it's habit to keep up the big garden.... worrying about the future is not that much fun any more. And I'm also a bit older than I was, so that do-something-even-if-it-makes-no-sense imperative isn't as strong. Your blog posts keep me from being sucked into the World As Usual that surrounds me in the non-Ashland part of Oregon we now live.
Lisa
5/8/16, 9:23 PM
Maxine Rogers said...
5/8/16, 9:34 PM
nuku said...
Thank you once again for sharing your thoughts in the 2 blogs and your books. I look forward to reading more in whatever form they may take in the future.
Growing up in the USA in a Jewish family at the end of WW2 (I was born in 1944), with the Holicaust fresh in the background, the thought of a benign Universe was always an absurdity. Philosophically for me, the "problem of evil“, (eg. blameless babies getting cancer, Jews herded into the gas chambers) was always going to trump any attempt to portray God or the Universe as inherently good, the Job story notwithstanding.
In fact from my personal ringside seat the Universe looked downright malevolent. Over the years I've let go of my early Universe out to get us stance. Now I see evil as existing only in the human world alongside its opposite (many people call that love) in equal measure. How else could it possibly be in a world of duality and chance? That is to say, in the big picture, the sum total of good and evil is always the same and in perfect balance. Locally, both in space and time, huge imbalances occur, but they‘re limited in area and time.
So your premise of an uncaring Universe came as no surprise; what's been surprising is the way you've teased out the implications and ramifications of that premise over all these years.
Lastly, a big think you to all the commentators who have added their bits to the yeasty brew originally mixed by our host.
5/9/16, 2:03 AM
Crow Hill said...
I discovered the ADR in the comments section of the review of a book that glorified Singularity-type progress (I'd come across it accidentally) that had left me depressed.
As I previously wrote, ADR plus the comments section reminds me of those pre-Revolution French intellectual salons, not that I hope for that type of revolution.
5/9/16, 2:46 AM
latheChuck said...
5/9/16, 3:43 AM
Bogatyr said...
This may be a huge question, but it´s a kind of tie-in to your discussion with Nestorian. If polytheism is true, why does monotheism exist at all? Where do the monotheist prophets get their revelations?
I read a book some years ago, written by a former Buddhist monk, which answered this in terms of Buddhist cosmology. (Please make allowances here for the passage of years and the failings of my memory).
As I recall it, his expanation was that there are many planes of reality. Many are inhabited by intelligent entities of various kinds, and any are empty. Communication between the planes is possible, by various methods. Some of the inhabited realms are populous, others may have only one sentient inhabitant. Some entities are very powerful, others may be very weak. Some are insane.
*If* my memory is correct, he explained the revelations of the monotheistic faiths as being the result of communication having been made with one or more very powerful, and possibly insane, entities in otherwise empty realms. These intelligences, having not had contact with other minds, had come to believe that their realms (and others) existed because they themselves had created them.
Take that with a pinch of salt - and please, definitely don't take it as an orthodox statement of "what Buddhists believe" this is simply my distant recollection of what one ex-monk thinks.
That said, I've had some kind of interaction with spirit entities via Chinese folk belief systems, and it seems a workable explanation to me, and certainly a better one than the Anglican tradition in which I was raised.
5/9/16, 4:20 AM
patriciaormsby said...
In your reply to Nestorian, you mentioned Buddhism having the goal of overcoming ignorance. There is probably a lot of variation among the Buddhists on this point. What I was brought up with in Jodo Shinshu was like a mild version of Christianity, in that "placing faith in Amida Buddha" was said to be sufficient to enter nirvana, but I don't know if anyone there "believed" that as such. Zen thought is more difficult to grasp in our human condition, but if they had any faith as such, that was where they were putting it. That was presented to me as a negation of knowledge, with the most important thing being to let go. So it all boils back down to the simple joys of this life as you describe it so nicely, this amazing gift we've received. On the other hand, the Japanese Buddhism I was introduced to evolved side-by-side with Shinto, and they influenced each other in ways that are impossible to disentangle, though the Meiji government tried to. The chief priests at the Kompira shrine said one reason they accepted me was my Buddhist background. If I'd been Christian, the gulf would have been too big.
There is one Buddhist sect in Japan that I won't name that neither my husband nor I consider to be "Buddhism." They insist on everyone agreeing on exclusive views. My husband much prefers Shamanism to Buddhism (and objects to a large number of nuts we know trying to take advantage of Shinto--cynically using the old trick of fear of retribution), because the Buddhism he knows tends to deny the joys of this world, while the animistic religions celebrate them wholeheartedly and continually.
5/9/16, 5:22 AM
patriciaormsby said...
@Lisa, oh thank goodness for burnout! You give me hope that the sense of impending doom I keep feeling this year will fade. I shall speed that along by writing out a long list of things I can do instead of reading the news again--play the guitar, sketch, study Indonesian, go for a long hike, look at local real estate--especially things that get me away from this doggone screen. Like you, we've got most of the major preparations done. I'm just concerned how my husband's going to take this steadily shrinking sphere of luxuries we are certain to face. (Probably just fine.)
5/9/16, 5:49 AM
Alex Blaidd said...
It's more than likely too late now to post this as a comment, and no doubt if you've already seen it, plus it's not really related to this week's post - so this comment is more than likely just for you, in case you hadn't read it.
This is a recent piece by Richard Heinberg in the Yes! magazine. (Am I the only one who sometimes wants to write a counter magazine called No! ?!) http://richardheinberg.com/museletter-286-100-renewable-energy-what-we-can-do-in-10-years
I had always assumed that he was one of the guys who 'got it,' - clearly not. Yet another casualty of the myth of progress I've learned, which has disappointed me though shouldn't really. I don't know enough about much of the technical aspects of energy production to be able to comment on much of it. But what I do know is that the change he expects to happen (indeed he doesn't even see that there is another choice - once again the myth of progress has done its magic) has more than just a few issues as far as the social, political, economic, cultural and psychological aspects of his master plan are concerned. As you've discussed before, we treat everything like a machine that needs to be fixed, and thus it should seem easy to 'fix' the issues of climate change and energy production - just there's a small glitch, and that's that humans are involved in this and are a good deal more complex. I think the only form of government that could even come close to puling this off would be a totalitarian one, and even then, there are geopolitical aspects of this to be taken into account.
There's just so many flaws and examples of beyond-wishful, naive thinking it's hard to know where to start in critiquing the piece.
Once again a lesson for me that the major obstacle is a terminally-ill, senile culture. We really have fully bought into the concept of the myth of the machine and now treat everything as such. Perhaps the term voluntary simplicity got misinterpreted along the way into voluntary mental simplicity.
Anyway none of this is probably news to you, but thought I'd share it all the same in case it was of interest.
5/9/16, 8:36 AM
Bright City said...
5/9/16, 2:19 PM
will said...
For what it's worth, I'm a monodeist AND a polydeist simultaneously! A monopolydeist! Here's how it works: on one hand, I acknowledge that the upper planes are replete with beings of far greater spiritual capacity and power than I - angels, devas, etc., and who knows what else - beings that thought the cosmos into existence and who continue to serve as principles of nature and divine law. These are beings whom I can call upon to a degree, from whom I can learn and spiritually nourish myself, who can inspire and guide me.
They are indeed "gods", and they are many and multi-form.
On the other hand, I acknowledge the "inter-connectedness of all things", the One, the Unity, etc. What we have called "God" is the sum total of everything that exists. God is the hologram-like nature of the universe - each thing contains the Whole, and the Whole = the Many. We also might think of God as being the Great Generative Force, or as Ed Cayce called it, "The Creative Forces". In any event, in reality, we and everything else are all one, and that One-ness is God.
I imagine that this was what the desert fathers, etc., were really getting at with the introduction of the "mono" aspect. Perhaps things had gotten too "poly" and the concept of Divine Unity was being lost, to our detriment. It's fair to say, I think, that over the centuries the "mono" aspect has overshadowed the poly, also to our detriment.
5/9/16, 2:35 PM
onething said...
It's way too simplistic to blame fear of death on the Christian hell. I didn't grow up with much of that and I have feared death, my husband grew up with no religion and barely knows the details of Christianity and he fears death, and so on. Are you saying that people in India, China, Japan etc don't really fear death?
Re birth control and the future: Even if we are talking almost no technology at all, knowledge of the fertile time and sanitation can go a long way to keeping us from sinking into a prior state of helplessness. I think that much of the human suffering and emotional illness arose in the past from the too frequent deaths of children and the too frequent pregnancies. Use of the rhythm method of birth control, plus coitus interruptus, makes for a far better choice than separate bedrooms.
5/9/16, 4:44 PM
latheChuck said...
By the time I have reached the age at which my offspring (if any) are caring for their own offspring (if any), and so even to the third generation, I expect to understand that there is no better thing that I can do for them except get out of the way.
5/9/16, 5:05 PM
Unknown said...
I came across something lots of fun via a link on one of today's (5/9/16) entries on the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog. (And a thank you to whoever mentioned LGM here a couple of weeks ago; it's an awesome time suck.)
Anyway, the link is
http://chrisblattman.com/2016/04/18/roller-coaster-simulation-inflation-adjusted-crude-oil-prices-1946-2015/
This will take you to a two minute long animation of an inflation adjusted U.S. oil price graph in the form of a literal roller coaster ride, viewed first person from a coaster car.
The same site offers a roller coaster version of gold prices over the same period, an even more thrilling ride.
5/9/16, 6:41 PM
nuku said...
re your belief that all humans in all times and places fear and abhor death, and your idea that somehow death is “unnatural”: I wonder, how many experiences you‘ve actually had of personally being present shortly before and at the moment of someone‘s death? It sounds to me like you haven’t had a wide experience of death. It might be a revelation of sorts for you to volunteer at a hospice and experience several other people’s death and observe, not just speculate from the a priori articles of your faith, how other people actually live their deaths. I think you’ll find that some people approach death with calm acceptance, especially if they have lived full and satisfying lives, and not all of those believe they’re “going to heaven” or going to be reincarnated as some exalted being.
I watched my father die; he wasn’t terrified of death, just tired after a long life and ready to let it go. All his friends and my mother had died; the world had changed; he felt that the human stories around him were getting repetitive and stale. Simply “time to go”.
5/9/16, 8:37 PM
jean-vivien said...
Just like other commenters said, I became very scared about Pek Oil, because even if I live in Europe, which is going to face quite distinct challenges, I came to realize all the stuff I depended on in my daily life was nothing I had a hand upon.
I could not fix, let alone build, all the stuff I need for my daily life. At least I came to understand it better, how devices and technology works... but it takes a scary idea like Peak Oil to achieve that level of motivation.
And you did a good job, not only of playing down the scare (which was just another form of hype in disguise), but also of pointing out how ideas work and shape our course of actions. Because those ideas do exist and affect us, and that's sometimes more important than the reality matching them.
Take neoprimitivism for example... The idea that language might be a bad thing, or that it alters the more sensuous experience we might have within the natural world, those ideas do indeniably exist in some books, and sell those books. And that's about it, as far as practical implications go.
That's also why I feel tired of other Peak Oil commenters like Kunstler or Orlov, since I feel they are spinning gears in the void sometimes.
And this is where your blog has always stood out, since you have the honesty of acknowledging ideas as just ideas, and you actually analyze how those ideas can hit the actual road.
I myself have learnt a lot of life experience, but I came to see that what is practical is most often not dictated by grand ideas, and I use those as a broader guidance in life. Somehow I can see that the Peak Oil scare might have been an escape from contemplating small, practical steps that people did not want to adopt daily.
We might have all been more scared of those small changes than of the whole Peak Oil idea...
This also ties into one of the comments on this post, about perceptual versus rational modes of thinking. I think what we lacked was a third mode of approach, which I would call participation.
You and other Peak Oil commenters like Sharon Astyk did a good job of proposing a more participatory focus, while Heinberg or Kunstler are more focused on the perceptual, narrative side.
The need for participation is actually a broad social concern of my civilization which, as you noted, has flown away into abstraction as part of its decline, manifesting itself in church desertions, or in identity crises like the one we face in France. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, there came the embryo of a more participatory manifestation of laicity... but it was lost when the shock and grief gave way to a resume of our daily routine.
5/10/16, 1:33 AM
jean-vivien said...
The same person whom he derailed constantly as a liar, and who in return accused him of being a pathological liar as well,
was now described as "very smart", "a tough competitor", and was wished "good luck".
I got the feeling that now he had to display an appearance of fairness,
but that this very requirement revealed the true nature of the nomination campaign, that is, a game.
The White House Correspondents' Diner (isn't it called "Nerd Proms" as well ?) features a cool tradition, President's Comedy Routine. It's all very cool, but in a way it adds to that feeling of futility, like politics is just an elaborate comedy show...
The stakes are now so high for American people, and for the rest of the world, that doing politics as if playing a game or acting out a comedy show is, a) not a very useful plan, and b) is sending out a very scary message to the people.
After all, if the very moment that all the poor Trump supporters were placing their hopes upon turned out to indeed amount to just a game, while the stakes are so severe, then what next ?
The "politics of resentment" are going to give way to the "politics of disillusion"... the phrase "Final Frontier" taking on a new darker meaning as all the tension accumulated in your society finds a new mode of expression, probably a lot more violent than what has been seen so far.
Or perhaps everyone will just walk away from politics altogether, as we are trying to do here in Europe. It works tolerably well for a very limited period of time, and then back to square one.
5/10/16, 1:34 AM
jeffinwa said...
Even though I read and thoroughly reveled in Star's Reach as a serial, to celebrate your tenth I purchased my very own new copy and eagerly await its arrival.
Keep on working your magic; it's working well.
5/10/16, 8:07 AM
Nestorian said...
5/10/16, 10:00 AM
joe said...
Seems many writers over the ages see it as problematic
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nedlebow/GoldenCh7.doc
5/10/16, 10:16 AM
Friction Shift said...
Reading your blog (and books) is a regular part of my routine and I am consistently impressed with your ability to cut through the mainstream narrative to reveal the essential issues. It's rare in this age of hyper-hucksterism. Thank you.
5/10/16, 12:26 PM
Yanocoches said...
I, too, would like to add heartfelt congratulations on the ten year anniversary of your Report and a sincere thank you for the consistently high quality and thought-provoking essays. I found the blog through the Oil Drum many years ago, read off and on, sometimes very regularly, sometimes sporadically, until the retirement of the Oil Drum by which time I had become a faithful follower, looking forward every week to a new installment of the ADR. The first book of yours I read was The Druidry Handbook. I stumbled onto it in an occult bookstore in the spring of 2010, had to have it, read it immediately, and that was the first year that I started trying to grow more edible plants.
It’s difficult to distill into a few sentences how much your writing has influenced me and how much I have learned about the workings of the world as it is today and how that relates to the larger context of historical patterns, the rise and fall of civilizations. Your writing has also provided me with many different lenses if you will with which to conduct an appraisal of different periods of my life. These retrospective analyses have been quite eye opening, one of the more recent examples being a review of my life in the context of privilege and how the levels of privilege I enjoy influenced my formative years and have brought me to my present circumstances. I also spent some time last fall reviewing the role that television has played in my life and a frank assessment of just how much time I was spending with eyes locked to the TV screen. Then one dark evening during a heavy snow storm last November I simply did not turn on the TV and have probably watched no more than five hours total since then. One of the more dramatic effects of this has been that I am getting a lot more sleep, and it feels great.
I think of you as a National Treasure in all seriousness. You are surely a modern Peladan as you described in your post “A Lesson in Practical Magic.” I say this because you have the strength of character and discipline to resist the lure of the modern magician state and pursue a self-directed course of study thus allowing you to develop an uncommon habitus of mind and the ability to see through and beyond the standard narratives of our time. And then you demonstrate such generosity in sharing your views and teachings with all of us.
Thank you again for your erudition, your patience, your dedication, and for the elevated discourse that characterizes this space. May you continue this endeavor for many more years!
5/10/16, 1:03 PM
sgage said...
I can honestly say that I do not fear death in the slightest - never have.
It's the 'dying' part that I'm not so sure about. Sometimes that can be pretty frightful...
That said, I've seen some very easy deaths in the past couple of years - my mother just this past March (age 94). The whole extended family was there, the Noyana Hospice Singers came and did a beautiful program in the afternoon in her apartment, and though she was semi-conscious, she was smiling throughout (she loved music and singing). That evening, she let out a sigh and was gone.
'Where' is 'she' now? After thinking about it for some decades (ever since my father died when I was 6), here is my considered opinion: As far as I am concerned, it is a Mystery.
5/10/16, 1:40 PM
Emmanuel Goldstein said...
5/10/16, 2:40 PM
rube cretin said...
Suggest you check out this online course on Death offered by Yale. Assure you that you will come away with an enhanced understanding of the subject. http://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176
5/10/16, 2:53 PM
temporaryreality said...
I'm slowly purchasing your books and hope that your publishers remunerate you well. I'm obviously not alone in hoping for many more years of your keen insight and wicked wit... I suppose gods, finances and inspiration willing. :)
5/10/16, 5:01 PM
Candace said...
https://www.rt.com/viral/342565-medieval-festival-drone-spear/
You don't even have to shoot them. A spear will take down a drone :-)
5/10/16, 6:52 PM
Ray Wharton said...
A data point that I think belongs here. I suspect this will give us clues about the future of the American Right.
5/10/16, 7:51 PM
Shane W said...
Death,
my dad went in denial, and I found it horrifying. He was talking about coming home and waxing the floors after he'd gotten the terminal diagnosis and was sent home w/Hospice.
@Patricia,
as the son of a heavy smoker, who was also a heavy smoker from '91-'06, I got an up close and personal experience of smoking's decline in popularity and bans/restrictions, and I was intimately familiar w/the defensiveness and excuses used by smokers towards their addiction. That's why I have such an eerie sense of deja vu as digital addicts use the same defensiveness and excuses regarding their addiction--"geez, how did you quit? I wish I could quit too?", "well, i only use it for XXXX", "I could quit at any time", "how do you XXX without (smoking, 'smart'phones)?", "I need to (smoke, use a 'smart'phone/antisocial media)", "all my friends (smoke, have 'smart'phones, are on antisocial media)", "I enjoy (smoking, using antisocial media/'smart'phones)", "(smoking/digital media) may cause (X, Y, & Z) problems in other people, but it doesn't affect me that way"
@Jorgenson,
I've found more people in the under 30 cohort rebelling against the pervasiveness of digital media than older. For us a lot of oldsters, (Gen X, Boomers), digital media will always be the "cool new thing" and have the "greatest thing since sliced bread" effect. You all who have grown up w/it and take it for granted have a better ability to see clearly its downsides and addictive nature. It's never easy being in the vanguard, knowing a truth, and swimming against the tides to proclaim it. Think of someone who intimately knew the damage of smoking in the late 50s, early 60s, when society was permeated in a cloud of smoke. I once met a woman who got so much grief for breastfeeding in the 60s--everyone was telling her that that was "so retrograde--nobody does that anymore now that we have formula" Have courage, live in your truth, and find others willing to start Lakeland/the Butlerian Carnival today, and once others see the effects of breaking free, they'll join in due time. Ask yourself, "what will my children/grandchildren think 20-30 years from now?"
5/11/16, 4:56 AM
Wiborg13 said...
I have been a reader of your blog for over 9 years. For a while it was "just" an extremely inteligent, clear and well written blog. It become more when you introduced the concept of green wizardry. I remember that I've forwarded to just about everybody I knew your post about birds bats and bumblebees. From that moment on I become a groupie. I was already making voluntary changes to my life, but from that moment on those changes become a pleasure and a challenge instead of a dread.
Thank You.
Thank you also for articulating so well what so many of us think and feel (without being able to explain properly.
Thank You for your erudition, inteligence, patience, for the stories and the magic.
Thank You above everything for being a true inspiration.
And in the future, when the internet comes crashing down, I hope to keep receiving the Archdruid report in paper format.
5/11/16, 5:09 AM
Watt4Bob said...
http://evonomics.com/advertising-cannot-maintain-internet-heres-solution/
5/11/16, 8:26 AM
Κασσάνδρα said...
5/12/16, 4:32 AM
indus56 said...
It seems worth noting in the meantime that the term "indifferent" when applied to the universe (or Universe) would not necessarily mean what we take it to mean when applied to a manifestly sentient creature or to JudeoChristian God, for which I imagine the term "Universe" has routinely been substituted in a discourse about what might once have been termed theodicy.
And I would venture that to say that the universe is "not anything" towards us--whatever its merits--does not necessarily mean to all of us what the term "indifferent" might.
Another difficulty worth noting is the problem of referent when we speak of "the universe"--given that it would seem to refer to everything, and is not so neatly severed or held apart from those aspects, elements or phenomena (often seemingly proximate to us) that are *not* clearly indifferent to our wishes and actions. Even within the scientific discourses, there would seem to be very different understandings of the universe as (over)determined by the cold interstellar depths of space and time and a "universe" primarily or even significantly informed by biology (or anthropology).
It would be much harder to make a prima facie case for the uniform (or universal) indifference (or at least non-responsiveness) of the living world to us (particularly now, at a time of catastrophic feedbacks) but throughout the life of our species, a species shaped by our interactions with entities (humans and non-humans) that have actively hunted us, feared us and at least apparently loved us.
It might be preferable to interpret the world(s) that we co-inhabit , after thinkers such as C.S. Pierce, as ongoingly co-emergent through the interactions of entities more or less responsive to each other and to us, without succumbing to an interpretation of the world overdetermined by our need seek (or eschew) intentionality...
5/14/16, 9:36 AM