The Four Industrial Revolutions | John Michael Greer

[Tace]

April 9, 2014 (Archdruid Report) -- Last week’s post on the vacuous catchphrases that so often substitute for thought in today’s America referenced only a few examples of the species under discussion.

It might someday be educational, or at least entertaining, to write a sequel to H.L. Mencken’s The American Credo, bringing his choice collection of thoughtstoppers up to date with the latest fashionable examples; still, that enticing prospect will have to wait for some later opportunity.In the meantime, those who liked my suggestion of Peak Oil Denial Bingo will doubtless want to know that cards can now be downloaded for free.

What I’d like to do this week is talk about another popular credo, one that plays a very large role in blinding people nowadays to the shape of the future looming up ahead of us all just now. In an interesting display of synchronicity, it came up in a conversation I had while last week’s essay was still being written. A friend and I were talking about the myth of progress, the facile and popular conviction that all human history follows an ever-ascending arc from the caves to the stars; my friend noted how disappointed he’d been with a book about the future that backed away from tomorrow’s challenges into the shelter of a comforting thoughtstopper: “Technology will always be with us.”

Let’s take a moment to follow the advice I gave in last week’s post and think about what, if anything, that actually means. Taken in the most literal sense, it’s true but trivial. Toolmaking is one of our species’ core evolutionary strategies, and so it’s a safe bet that human beings will have some variety of technology or other as long as our species survives. That requirement could just as easily be satisfied, though, by a flint hand axe as by a laptop computer -- and a flint hand axe is presumably not what people who use that particular thoughtstopper have in mind.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/the-four-industrial-revolutions-john-michael-greer

[AverageJoe90]

1. Good Reads? This is honestly more suited for Creative Speculation, in all truthfulness.

The fact that he talks about oil being nothing more than "stored sunlight".....that alone is a dead giveaway that this guy is a complete and total kook. A kook who may be well-meaning, but still a nutter nonetheless.