The World After Abundance: Sleepwalking through one of history's major transitions.

[Karmadillo]

If you like writing that addresses a future for which we are woefully unprepared, the Archdruid Report is one of the best places to go. Greer's discussion of monastic retreats as one alternative as our decline continues reminds me of Morris Berman in The Twilight of American Culture. Maybe this sort of thing is misguided and the civilization that fills the earth with people and the Gulf of Mexico with oil will rise to an even greater level of material abundance, but it doesn't seem all that likely.

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/05/world-after-abundance.html

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What all this implies, in a single phrase, is that the age of abundance is over. The period from 1945 to 2005 when almost unimaginable amounts of cheap petroleum sloshed through the economies of the world’s industrial nations, and transformed life in those nations almost beyond recognition, still shapes most of our thinking and nearly all of our expectations. Not one significant policy maker or mass media pundit in the industrial world has begun to talk about the impact of the end of the age of abundance; it’s an open question if any of them have grasped how fundamental the changes will be as the new age of post-abundance economics begins to clamp down.

Most ordinary people in the industrial world, for their part, are sleepwalking through one of history’s major transitions. The issues that concern them are still defined entirely by the calculus of abundance. Most Americans these days, for example, worry about managing a comfortable retirement, paying for increasingly expensive medical care, providing their children with a college education and whatever amenities they consider important. It has not yet entered their darkest dreams that they need to worry about access to such basic necessities as food, clothing and shelter, the fate of local economies and communities shredded by decades of malign neglect, and the rise of serious threats to the survival of constitutional government and the rule of law.

Even among those who warn that today’s Great Recession could bottom out at a level equal to that reached in the Great Depression, very few have grappled with the consequences of a near-term future in which millions of Americans are living in shantytowns and struggling to find enough to eat every single day. To paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, that did happen here, and it did so at a time when the United States was a net exporter of everything you can think of, and the world’s largest producer and exporter of petroleum to boot. The same scale of economic collapse in a nation that exports very little besides unpayable IOUs, and is the world’s largest consumer and importer of petroleum, could all too easily have results much closer to those of the early 20th century in Central Europe, for example: that is, near-universal impoverishment, food shortages, epidemics, civil wars, and outbreaks of vicious ethnic cleansing, bracketed by two massive wars that both had body counts in the tens of millions.

Now you’ll notice that this latter does not equate to the total collapse into a Cormac McCarthy future that so many people like to fantasize about these days. I’ve spent years wondering why it is that so many people seem unable to conceive of any future other than business as usual, on the one hand, and extreme doomer porn on the other. Whatever the motives that drive this curious fixation, though, I’ve become convinced that it results in a nearly complete blindness to the very real risks the future is more likely to hold for us. It makes a useful exercise to take current notions about preparing for the future in the survivalist scene, and ask yourself how many of them would have turned out to be useful over the decade or two ahead if someone had pursued exactly those strategies in Poland or Slovakia, let’s say, in the years right before 1914.

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Some of us, in the process, may catch on to the subtle lesson woven into this hard necessity. It’s worth noting that while there’s been plenty of talk about the monasteries of the Dark Ages among people who are aware of the impending decline and fall of our civilization, next to none of it has discussed, much less dealt with, the secret behind the success of monasticism: the deliberate acceptance of extreme material poverty. Quite the contrary; all the plans for lifeboat ecovillages I’ve encountered so far, at least, aim at preserving some semblance of a middle class lifestyle into the indefinite future. That choice puts these projects in the same category as the lavish villas in which the wealthy inhabitants of Roman Britain hoped to ride out their own trajectory of decline and fall: a category mostly notable for its long history of total failure.

The European Christian monasteries that preserved Roman culture through the Dark Ages did not offer anyone a middle class lifestyle by the standards of their own time, much less those of ours. Neither did the Buddhist monasteries that preserved Heian culture through the Sengoku Jidai, Japan’s bitter age of wars, or the Buddhist and Taoist monasteries that preserved classical Chinese culture through a good half dozen cycles of collapse. Monasteries in all these cases were places people went to be very, very poor. That was the secret of their achievements, because when you reduce your material needs to the absolute minimum, the energy you don’t need to spend maintaining your standard of living can be put to work doing something more useful.

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[tavalon]

1. I bookmarked that site

I've long hated that there seemed to be polar opposite camps of everythings fine and we're doomed. This is measured and interesting. Thank you.

[Hannah Bell]

2. the monks may not have been rich, but the church & the monasteries were.

and so were the aristocrats they co-ruled with.

and they'll continue to be this time, too. because this isn't about objective resources, but about class war.

and the rank & file monks didn't go into the temples "to be poor," but to eat, being as they couldn't just go somewhere & hunt & grow vegetables -- land belonged to the church/monasteries, aristocracy, warlords. they were *already* poor, for the most part; they didn't need to join a monastery for that. the church/monasteries were an avenue for advancement, like joining a corporation today. The monasteries were military & economic formations as well as centers of learning. And they got swag & tribute, just like the roman soldiers had.

[enough]

3. Thanks for this dose of clarity, Hannah. (nt)

[Karmadillo]

5. Good points. Greer and Berman seem to believe

things are going to get a lot worse than they are now. The monastic option is suggested as a way of preserving knowledge during the coming dark ages to be handed down when/if things get better. I don't think either of them see the monastic option in a religious sense or in a preserve the rich and screw the poor way. They would, though, probably both acknowledge that if we continue down the road we're stumbling, the poor will suffer mightily.

If the social regionalism Mike Davis writes about doesn't come to pass, and I hope history shows I'm too pessimistic in thinking it won't, a secular, egalitarian monastic option might be worth a try. Anyway, here's a summary of Berman that gives an idea of what he's talking about:

http://poiemaportfolio.xanga.com/682662981/book-review-the-twilight-of-american-culture-by-morris-berman/

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As might be expected, Berman reaches back into history in order to compare America's decline with that of Rome and other ruined civilizations. In reaching back, he "pulls out a plum"-- a little gem of an idea on which he chooses to base the theme of this book:
the monastic option.

"....civilizations rise and fall, and a class of 'monks' is always necessary to preserve the treasures of the dying civilization and use them, like seeds, to impregnate a new one. In the process, they create an authentic life for themselves' the personal benefits of such activity are as important as the possible historical outcome."

The lens through which I view life is Biblical, so these thoughts readily stirred to my remembrance the many times the nation of Israel was reduced to a "remnant," a small nucleus of people who were faithful to preserve scripture, tradition, and culture on behalf of future generations.

Berman does not write from a spiritual perspective, and his worldview is different from mine. Still, I find his thought intriguing. He says,

"One of my intentions in writing The Twilight of American Culture was to create a kind of guidebook for disaffected Americans who feel increasingly unable to fit into this society, and who also feel that the culture has to change if it is to survive. (snip) I have argued that we are in the grip of structural forces that are the culmination of a certain historical process, so a major change is not likely to be quick or dramatic; but individual shifts in life ways and values may just possibly act as a wedge that would serve as a counterweight to the world of schlock, ignorance, social inequality, and mass consumerism that now defines the American landscape. At the very least, these 'new monks,' or native expatriates, as one might call them, could provide a kind of record of authentic ways of living that could be preserved and handed down, to resurface later on, during healthier times."

The "new monks" that are spoken of in the above quote are, of course, not religious in any sense of the word. They are only monk-like in that they preserve and transmit culture as did the Irish monks after the fall of Rome. Berman sees them creating "zones of intelligence" in private, local ways. Notice the word private; they are not in this for recognition or to be in the limelight.

What types of activities might these new monastic individuals (NMIs) engage in?

craftsmanship- bucking the trend of buying imported, cheap junk and opting instead to create and invest in quality.
preserving scholarly works* more on this later
exercising stewardship over the environment~ could include gardening or agrarian pursuits
rejecting consumerism- perhaps opting for a simple Christmas celebration?

Berman admits that there are no guarantees that these NMIs will succeed in their endeavors, however, that individual will reap great personal rewards in putting forth the effort to contribute to the future. He states,

"You and I can lead the 'monastic' life, and we can start to do it right now. And don't worry about being marginalized; this is good."

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[hunter]

4. The theme of my monasteries is going to be Steam Punk.

It will be a place where the fading technologies of the past are artfully preserved and practiced.

There will always be a hot pot of soup in the kitchen, some stimulating beverage like tea or coffee, and beer or wine.

How about that?

[Karmadillo]

6. +1

nt

[eppur_se_muova]

8. Sounds a little like "Anathem". :^)

:)

[JCMach1]

7. Our decline is greatly exaggerated...

We have all the 'hard' power our country needs and 'apparently' we aren't afraid to use it.

[depakid]

9. Being very very poor also meant that people didn't envy or attack you to take what you had

A more practical, less philosophical rationale for such behavior.