An 8-point Manifesto on the Collapse of Global Industrial Civilization

[GliderGuider]

Last edited Sat May 5, 2012, 09:57 PM - Edit history (1)

1. Modern industrial civilization is intrinsically unsustainable. This means that it will inevitably collapse.
   
   
2. Any effort spent trying to prevent that collapse is pointless and misguided. It would serve only to prolong civilization’s death throes and the continued destruction of the natural world.
   
   
3. Industrial civilization is created and supported by institutions that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, at virtually any cost.
   
   
4. Any effort spent trying to bring it down is pointless and misguided. It will be met with massive resistance from civilization’s guardian institutions – our corporations, politicians, police, schools and mass media – and will foster unnecessary violence.
   
   
5. Since collapse is inevitable, adapting to that change is the only sensible approach.
   
   
6. We cannot count on the institutions of civilization to help us adapt to this change – it’s simply not in their interest to do that. Even worse, they can’t even comprehend the idea.
   
   
7. That leaves individuals and small communities (aka tribes) as the only historically proven agents of adaptation.
   
   
8. As individuals, the single most effective thing we can do to prepare and adapt is to awaken.

Comments are encouraged...

[Odin2005]

1. Screw that, I'm living forever and helping colonize the galaxy.

[GliderGuider]

18. Good luck with that! nt

[IDemo]

2. Assuming we're talking about something this side of Mad Max

It would seem that the sensible early adopters will ultimately become the low-hanging fruit for those not so prescient. The sentiment was exemplified by a poster on another board who stated "Why should I get my hands dirty gardening? I'll just bring my AK and take what you're growing". Expand that outwards to villages and entire nations and you have armed conflict as the adaptation method of choice.

Won't be a problem in my case if things get completely out of hand - insulin is tough to produce in the garden.

[villager]

3. The thing is, "AK guy" will eventually come across another "AK Guy," and if neither of them

...knows how to grow, eventually, after even more "natural selection," those who plan sustainably for the long haul will be left...

[Speck Tater]

5. Eventually a band AK guys will form a "kingdom"

and put the serfs to work growing food FOR them, in exchange for protection from the neighboring band of AK guys.

It's called Feudalism, and it's where we always end up when things fall apart.

[Zalatix]

13. At least until someone sets the farm on fire.

[IDemo]

6. The dynamics of the AK guys will vary

Many would take each other out in the initial stages, but many would also join forces to improve their chances and cover a wider area. Unless the sustainable types are existing in an extremely remote area or are suitably equipped to fend off armed individuals and militias, the ravenous hordes are probably going to overwhelm them. I don't see anyone coming out comfortably, regardless.

[ret5hd]

10. You are thinking that the early adopters don't have AK's also.

I'm a pacifist, but I will "early adopt" to new realities.

[IDemo]

24. I'd never think that

I'm in a part of the country where guns are more popular than gardens. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It's just that the number of those who have failed to garden is going to be one or two orders of magnitude greater than those who do, armed or not.

[saras]

4. As soon as we get over romanticizing information flow, things will work out

The exploitation of productive minorities is inevitable as long as the exploiters can find the productive minorities. This is why information as well as material production needs to be localized. It's a fairly elementary bit of game theory - if perfect information is available, no minority can create a more cooperative, more productive subculture than the worst exploiters in the system will tolerate. With limited information flow (i.e. post-collapse), cooperative groups have a chance to thrive and develop the ability to defend themselves before exploiters find them.

[GliderGuider]

17. Now THAT is a fascinating insight. Thanks!!! nt

[truedelphi]

7. Thank you for this post.

The Biggest Firms control the politics of the major nations. We not only have a fascist society, we have fascist global situation. (Fascism, is by definition, the control of government by the corporate world.)

We just witnessed the Secretary of State realizing that her visit to China was an indication to one of China's most beleaguered dissidents that it was now or never. So he planned a retreat to an American Embassy so he could have the USA restore his rights. This was at first was embarrassing tot he USA - how awful that our ignoring of the many Chinese civil rights violations occur and are now emphasized while we wanted to talk "free trade." (I guess it is really really free trade when rich people in San Francisco can go to the Far East and obtain a Chinese prisoner's kidneys for a fraction of the sum they would pay here - and without any waiting lists!)

But now the State Department woke up and realized they can spin this story to show how beloved our nation is, in terms of dissidents wanting to come here.

But what rights do we in this nation possess? Not only do we have to hope no one we know is under surveillance, and avoid visits with them, as that young San Diego man recently found out the hard way, ** Meanwhile we can sit back and as the major "experts" tell every developed nation under the sun that only "austerity" will help out the financial crisis looming above us. Never mind that the austerity measures are only for us peasants, and involve things like cutting back Social Security, which will actually HUIRT the economy, but then who cares? You are either very very rich and truly matter, or you are SHIT out of luck.

Those of us who realize we are SHIT out of luck now must indeed create intentional communities, turn to barter, and turn to other methods of survival.

** Said San Diego man spent five days in jail, with no one checking on him. No food, no water,. He survived because he remembered you can drink your own urine. His crime: he visited a friend who I guess was someone with marijuana deals on-going. Since 90% of ur biggest banking firms have been busy over the last four decades laundering money of the drug cartels, I think we should just legalize the shit and quit pretending that some college kid who visits a friend deserves to die.

[Zalatix]

9. And thank you a thousand times for this response.

[GliderGuider]

16. And imagine what it would be like if, instead of a San Diego student,

you had the misfortune to be born as a bluefin tuna or a rhinoceros.

[cali]

8. well,

what is the definition of "modern industrial civilization"?

Aren't ALL civilizations intrinsically unsustainable? Everything that has a beginning has an end.

No civilization is static.

How do you suggest "adapting to this change"? What precisely are you suggesting.

How have tribes and individuals "historically proven" that they are the only historically proven agents of adaptation? I'd say it's silly to suggest this is true of individuals and as for tribes, they haven't fared well when it comes to adaptation.

And what do you mean by "awaken"?

[GliderGuider]

15. Good questions.

I define Global Industrial Civilization™ as the web of corporate empires that uses global trade in industrial goods, money and information to bind the planet in a memetic web devoted to ownership, growth and profit.

Yes, all civilizations are unsustainable. What makes this one different from those that preceded it is that it has exceeded the carrying capacity not just of a region but of the planet as a whole, with all that implies for the other life that shares it.

I personally suggest adapting to the coming changes through various mechanisms of re-localization; by discarding the memes of growth and profit to whatever extent is possible; and by rebuilding the links between individuals and the natural world (reconstituting communities and replacing economic views with ecological views). But these are just my suggestions. There are seven billion suggestion-generators on the planet right now, all of them different. what would you suggest?

My comment about tribes refers to the fact that they worked as the primary social organization for hundreds of thousands of years. That's a long track record of success in my book. Individuals have always been the agents of adaptation - they are where the ideas come from.

I'll turn your last question back to you: What would "awakening" mean to you?

[xchrom]

11. In short - or rather my version - stop waiting until we're IN

The crisis to make appropriate plans.

Plan to AVOID the crisis.

Good governance - Good planning & design.

Kinda like Bionic Man - we have the means - we have the ability - we don't have to live like this.

[GliderGuider]

12. I think we're already well into the crisis.

We need to make appropriate plans with that in mind.

[xchrom]

14. i don't disagree. but i do think we need to develop both trains. nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Just read an absorbing article which agrees with you:

He argues are ARE in collapse, and presents a very convincing case.

"What do they think a collapse is supposed to look like?
It seems people just cannot just cannot get past the "Zombie Apocalypse" theory of collapse. They imagine hordes of disease-ridden folks dressed in rags stumbling around and fighting over cans of petrol and stripping cans of food from shelves.
That's not what collapse looks like. It never has been. In fact, there's very little evidence that a Zombie Apocalypse style collapse ever occurred in the historical record.
Instead we see subtle patterns of abandonment and decay that unfold over long periods of time. Big projects stop. Population thins. Trade routes shrink and people revert to barter. Things get simpler and more local. Culture coarsens. High art stagnates. People disperse. Expectations are adjusted downward. Investments are no longer made in the future and previous investments are cannibalized just to maintain the status quo. Extend and pretend is hardly a recent invention."
http://hipcrime.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/what-if-collapse-happened-and-nobody.html?source=Patrick.net

[Odin2005]

20. Something I want to meantion about the so-called "Dark Ages".

There was actually more technological advancement during the "Dark Ages" technologically than during the Roman Imperial period, the Roman Empire was actually quite stagnant technologically. Tacticus tells an anecdote of a metal-worker giving the Emperor Tiberius a beautiful dish made of an unusually light metal that did not tarnish. The emperor asked the metal-worker if anyone else knew how to make this strange metal, and he said no. The Emperor then had the guy killed lest his monopoly of knowledge on this new metal made him a threat, thus it takes until the 1700s before aluminum is rediscovered. Periods of social and institutional disruption are often periods of technological advancement. During the "Dark Ages" a heavy plow that could turn over the heavy, rich soils of the North European Plain was developed, as was 3-field farming, a horse collar that allowed horses to pull plows without choking, and saddles with stirrups. Windmills and waterwheels were known in late Roman times, but they only became common in the early Middle Ages

[GliderGuider]

21. We're not going back to the paleolithic, or even the medieval era.

We will not lose all our technology. What we might lose is the social organization and the cheap fossil fuels needed to employ it effectively.

Much to the relief of Gaia...

[Odin2005]

23. I agree on the social organization part.

But We are not going to regress technologically, we will advance even more rapidly and that advancement will actually promote decentralization and eco-friendly social structures via things like local nano-manufacturing.

Humanity is Gaia's way of reproducing herself, unfortunately she is having issues with gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia...

[Odin2005]

25. Oh, and another thing I thought of...

I think a good analogue of our current situation is with the EASTERN roman empire in the 400s through the 600s as it became the Byzantine Empire. In Anatolia there was political continuity but the institutions of society changed beyond recognition. The old Roman aristocracy essentially evaporated and Anatolia became a land of free landed peasants.

[greytdemocrat]

22. Oh well...

LOL!!!