In the air of our times

The Age of Salvage Societies

2007-10-25T11:50:00.000-07:00

from Archdruid by John Michael Greer

The industrial economy currently lurching toward history’s compost bin, after all, did not rise to global dominance because the people of the world agreed to make that happen. Nor did the world’s elites, if the political classes of the world’s various societies deserve that name, make that decision; of course there were cabals of industrialists who did their level best to further its spread, but there were plenty of leadership groups in other, competing societies who staked everything they had on resisting it, and failed. Industrial civilization had its day in the sun because, in a world where plenty of cheap abundant fossil fuel could be had for the digging or drilling, the industrial mode of production was more efficient than its rivals, and enabled the communities that embraced it to prosper at the expense of those that did not.

In turn, as the industrial system undercuts the environmental conditions that allow it to thrive, new forms better adapted to the new reality will elbow today’s industrialism aside and take its place.

The Age of Salvage Societies

John Michael Greer's analysis of the present derives from his understanding of the "long haul history". Modernity treated the citizens of tribes as "savages" and now in late-modernity are emerging the roots of our future "savage societies". The core of Greer's argument is that we are entering an area of "resource nationalism". Peak resources is preparing us "a mode of industrial economy – scarcity industrialism – that pursues resource nationalism rather than the mirage of a global economy, and shifts the allocation of energy and other scarce resources from the market to the political sphere".

The present geopolitical maneuverings are essentially early signs of "resource nationalism" as the Western answer to "peak oil" that foreshadows a coming "scarcity industrialism". As Alan Greenspan noted Iraq is all about the oil... as is the posturing towards Iran.

I tend to agree that peak resources shall foster a scarcity industrialism where the market is going to be superseded by central planning. Seen in this light the retrenchment of individual freedoms that we observe presently all around the Western world starts to make sense. This retrenchment of individual freedoms should be understood as early signs of a process of strengthening of the political institutions. But for this to work it should be accompanied by the strengthening of a culture of obedience in a common worldview.

Strong public institutions have always taken the substance of their power over their citizens from the gluing of those citizens behind a common vision of the whole of reality what is otherwise called a common worldview. Animism was the holistic worldview of pre-agricultural tribal societies, religions served to assure the power of kingdoms and empires that grew out of the population growth that followed agriculture, individualism fostered the justification for the spread of the logic of capital that is basically responsible for peak resources and all the side-effects of modernity.

Scarcity industrialism and salvage economies will act like a transitioning from modernity to what comes after, what Greer calls, ecotechnic societies. Such ecotechnic societies (postmodern societies) will answer the necessity to assure their reproduction and, in all likelihood, will foster a postmodern worldview (shared on a worldwide scale) combining elements of animism with elements of technicity.

Technorati tags: environment, collapse, worldviews, society,

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Stung. Where have all the bees gone?

2007-08-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

in The New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert

Among the many possible contributing factors that the report cited are habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and introduced pathogens. May Berenbaum, a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois, chaired the National Research Council panel; she recently characterized C.C.D. as "a crisis on top of a crisis."

"We can't count on wild pollinators, because we've so altered the landscape that many are no longer viable" she said.

As the National Research Council report noted, invertebrate extinctions don't tend to have much "marquee appeal". Yet if it's a bad sign when an ecosystem loses its large mammals, it is probably an even worse sign when it can no longer support its insects. The report put it this way: "Pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape and structure of the terrestrial world."

Stung. Where have all the bees gone?

ILLUSTRATION: ARNOLD ROTH
The conclusion of the US National Research Council panel on CCD could not be more on the mark:

"Pollinator decline is one form of global change that actually does have credible potential to alter the shape and structure of the terrestrial world."

In other words modernity and its ideology of rationality have fucked up with their godly games! And it seems that the best we can do now is simply to observe where and how modernity's induced global change is driving the principle of life.

What we assist at is not the demise of the principle of life on earth. But in all probability humanity shall pay a heavy price in the form of:
- or the collapse of its present-day societal stage of evolution: civilizational collapse.
- or what could even be worse (for us I mean) the extinction of the specie as a whole.

Blind followers of the ideology of rationality and the servicemen of science shall want to "counter-act" the consequences of that global change. Those apostles of rationality are already busy preparing "terra-forming" projects meant to save us from what they un-leached. And they would now like us to think about them as our saviors. Technology is going to take care of all our ills is it not?
But how long will we continue to take this kind of bullshit? And more importantly how are we going to behave collectively once a lot more people start to understand that modernity has really fucked up? That's the real question of importance I guess.

Technorati tags: environment, collapse, worldviews, society,

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ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA

2007-08-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

in Speaking Truth to power by Carolyn Baker

The 2004 documentary, "End Of Suburbia", produced and edited by Barry Silverthorn and written and directed by Greg Greene, was a stunning and chilling cinematic landmark which placed the issue of Peak Oil and its consequences squarely on the world stage and connected the dots between the unsustainable suburban lifestyle and perilous issues of the twenty-first century such as food production, population die-off, and economic meltdown. Recently, Greene and producer, Dara Rowland, have released the sequel, "Escape From Suburbia" which examines the journeys of several individuals who have fled or are in the process of fleeing from civilization. It highlights how they are building new lives and new subcultures which offer the possibilities of deepened humanity and sustainability. Unlike "End Of Suburbia", "Escape" spends less time interviewing the usual Peak Oil experts and follows the escape routes of ordinary people who are passionate about removing themselves from a culture of over-consumption and extinction.

ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA Review
ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA Documentary

Interesting documentary and thought provoking review.

Escape from suburbia is about the development of personal responses, in the present, to the collapse of civilization. I have been there in the seventies (some 30 years ago) for, I guess, the same reasons as those who "are jumping the ship" presently. After experiencing another way of life for more than 10 years it appeared more and more evident to me that the "individual" solution was a mirage.

What I learned is that along the road of survival and tribulations of humanity we, the individuals, are like atoms of a societal whole. Quitting society for an individual escape is like H and O atoms jumping out of a glass of water in the hope to recombine into molecules of H2O out of the glass. It just does not make sense, for, the atoms derive the substance of their being from being in the glass under their particular combination. Our societal belonging sustains our existence as individuals. Without this societal belonging we fast dry out, die, without any chance to reproduce. It's indeed our belonging to a societal grouping that makes the reproduction of the individuals feasible.

The only valid answer to a societal road leading to collapse lays inside society itself. What I mean to say is that the ideas and actions of the most innovative individuals, in time, succeed to drive society to follow their path... But this mechanism of change is time consuming and it is not a sure thing that we dispose of the necessary time today to avoid the societal collapse that we feel and see coming.

Technorati tags: collapse, change, environment,

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