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Economy
In reply to the discussion: Weekend Economists Making Choices October 24-26, 2014 [View all]Demeter
(85,373 posts)57. A Pink Slip for the Progress Fairy by John Michael Greer MUST READ!
A Pink Slip for the Progress Fairy
...When I mention that I expect the decline and fall of industrial civilization to take centuries, accordingly, people take this to mean that I expect a smooth, untroubled descent. When I mention that I expect crisis before this decade is finished, in turn, people take this to mean that I expect industrial civilization to crash into ruin in the next few years. Some people, for that matter, slam back and forth from one of these presuppositions to another, as though they cant fit the concepts of prolonged decline and imminent crisis into their heads at the same moment...The overfamiliar cry of but its different this time! is popular, its comforting, but its also irrelevant. Of course its different this time; it was different every other time, too. Neolithic civilizations limited to one river valley and continental empires with complex technologies have all declined and fallen in much the same way and for much the same reasons. It may appeal to our sense of entitlement to see ourselves as destinys darlings, to insist that the Progress Fairy has promised us a glorious future out there among the stars, or even to claim that its humanitys mission to populate the galaxy, but these are another set of faith-based claims; its a little startling, in fact, to watch so many people who claim to have outgrown theology clinging to such overtly religious concepts as humanitys mission and destiny.
In the real world, when civilizations exhaust their resource bases and wreck the ecological cycles that support them, they fall. It takes between one and three centuries on average for the fall to happenand no, big complex civilizations dont fall noticeably faster or slower than smaller and simpler ones. Nor is it a linear declinethe end of a civilization is a fractal process composed of crises on many different scales of space and time, with equally uneven consequences. An effective response can win a breathing space; in the wake of a less effective one, part of what used to be normal goes away for good. Sooner or later, one crisis too many overwhelms the last defenses, and the civilization falls, leaving scattered remnants of itself that struggle and gleam for a while until the long night closes in...
........................
One wrinkle many people miss is that were not waiting for the first of the three and a half rounds of crisis and recovery to hit; were waiting for the second. The first began in 1914 and ended around 1954, driven by the downfall of the British Empire and the collapse of European domination of the globe. During the forty years between Sarajevo and Dien Bien Phu, the industrial world was hammered by the First World War, the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, millions of political murders by the Nazi and Soviet governments, the Second World War, and the overthrow of European colonial empires around the planet.
That was the first era of crisis in the decline and fall of industrial civilization. The period from 1945 to the present was the first interval of stability and recovery, made more prosperous and expansive than most examples of the species by the breakneck exploitation of petroleum and other fossil fuels, and a corresponding boom in technology. At this point, as fossil fuel reserves deplete, the planets capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and other pollutants runs up against hard limits, and a galaxy of other measures of impending crisis move toward the red line, its likely that the next round of crisis is not far off. What will actually trigger that next round, though, is anyones guess...heres a narrative sketch of the kind of future that waits for us:
SEE LINK (I'M SUCH A TEASE)
...When I mention that I expect the decline and fall of industrial civilization to take centuries, accordingly, people take this to mean that I expect a smooth, untroubled descent. When I mention that I expect crisis before this decade is finished, in turn, people take this to mean that I expect industrial civilization to crash into ruin in the next few years. Some people, for that matter, slam back and forth from one of these presuppositions to another, as though they cant fit the concepts of prolonged decline and imminent crisis into their heads at the same moment...The overfamiliar cry of but its different this time! is popular, its comforting, but its also irrelevant. Of course its different this time; it was different every other time, too. Neolithic civilizations limited to one river valley and continental empires with complex technologies have all declined and fallen in much the same way and for much the same reasons. It may appeal to our sense of entitlement to see ourselves as destinys darlings, to insist that the Progress Fairy has promised us a glorious future out there among the stars, or even to claim that its humanitys mission to populate the galaxy, but these are another set of faith-based claims; its a little startling, in fact, to watch so many people who claim to have outgrown theology clinging to such overtly religious concepts as humanitys mission and destiny.
In the real world, when civilizations exhaust their resource bases and wreck the ecological cycles that support them, they fall. It takes between one and three centuries on average for the fall to happenand no, big complex civilizations dont fall noticeably faster or slower than smaller and simpler ones. Nor is it a linear declinethe end of a civilization is a fractal process composed of crises on many different scales of space and time, with equally uneven consequences. An effective response can win a breathing space; in the wake of a less effective one, part of what used to be normal goes away for good. Sooner or later, one crisis too many overwhelms the last defenses, and the civilization falls, leaving scattered remnants of itself that struggle and gleam for a while until the long night closes in...
........................
One wrinkle many people miss is that were not waiting for the first of the three and a half rounds of crisis and recovery to hit; were waiting for the second. The first began in 1914 and ended around 1954, driven by the downfall of the British Empire and the collapse of European domination of the globe. During the forty years between Sarajevo and Dien Bien Phu, the industrial world was hammered by the First World War, the Spanish Flu pandemic, the Great Depression, millions of political murders by the Nazi and Soviet governments, the Second World War, and the overthrow of European colonial empires around the planet.
That was the first era of crisis in the decline and fall of industrial civilization. The period from 1945 to the present was the first interval of stability and recovery, made more prosperous and expansive than most examples of the species by the breakneck exploitation of petroleum and other fossil fuels, and a corresponding boom in technology. At this point, as fossil fuel reserves deplete, the planets capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and other pollutants runs up against hard limits, and a galaxy of other measures of impending crisis move toward the red line, its likely that the next round of crisis is not far off. What will actually trigger that next round, though, is anyones guess...heres a narrative sketch of the kind of future that waits for us:
SEE LINK (I'M SUCH A TEASE)
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This parallels my musings .... and highlights why I thought this (different article) was so idiotic
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