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Page added on February 7, 2014
John Michael Greer: The Steampunk Future
For those of us who’ve been watching the course of industrial civilization’s decline and fall, the last few weeks have been a bit of a wild ride. To begin with, as noted in last week’s post, the specter of peak oil has once again risen from the tomb to which the mass media keeps trying to consign it, and stalks the shadows of contemporary life, scaring the bejesus out of everyone who wants to believe that infinite economic growth on a finite planet isn’t a self-defeating absurdity.
Then, of course, it started seeping out into the media that the big petroleum companies have lost a very large amount of money in recent quarters, and a significant part of those losses were due to their heavy investments in the fracking boom in the United States—you know, the fracking boom that was certain to bring us renewed prosperity and limitless cheap fuel into the foreseeable future? That turned out to a speculative bubble, as readers of this blog were warned a year ago. The overseas investors whose misspent funds kept the whole circus going are now bailing out, and the bubble has nowhere to go but down. How far down? That’s a very good question that very few people want to answer.
The fracking bubble is not, however, the only thing that’s falling. What the financial press likes to call “emerging markets”—I suspect that “submerging markets” might be a better label at the moment—have had a very bad time of late, with stock markets all over the Third World racking up impressive losses, and some nasty downside action spilled over onto Wall Street, Tokyo and the big European exchanges as well. Meanwhile, the financial world has been roiled by the apparent suicides of four important bankers. If any of them left notes behind, nobody’s saying what those notes might contain; speculation, in several senses of that word, abounds.
Thus it’s probably worth being aware of the possibility that in the weeks and months ahead, we’ll see another crash like the one that hit in 2008-2009: another milestone passed on the road down from the summits of industrial civilization to the deindustrial dark ages of the future. No doubt, if we get such a crash, it’ll be accompanied by a flurry of predictions that the whole global economy will come to a sudden stop. There were plenty of predictions along those lines during the 2008-2009 crash; they were wrong then, and they’ll be wrong this time, too, but it’ll be few months before that becomes apparent.
In the meantime, while we wait to see whether the market crashes and another round of fast-crash predictions follows suit, I’d like to talk about something many of my readers may find whimsical, even irrelevant. It’s neither, but that, too, may not become apparent for a while.
Toward the middle of last month, as regular readers will recall, I posted an essay here suggesting seven sustainable technologies that could be taken up, practiced, and passed down to the societies that will emerge out of the wreckage of ours. One of those was computer-free mathematics, using slide rules and the other tools people used to crunch numbers before they handed over that chunk of their mental capacity to machines. In the discussion that followed, one of my readers—a college professor in the green-technology end of things—commented with some amusement on the horrified response he’d likely get if he suggested to his students that they use a slide rule for their number-crunching activities.
Not at all, I replied; all he needed to do was stand in front of them, brandish the slide rule in front of their beady eyes, and say, “This, my friends, is a steampunk calculator.”
It occurs to me that those of my readers who don’t track the contemporary avant-garde may have no idea what that next to last word means; like so many labels these days, it contains too much history to have a transparent meaning. Doubtless, though, all my readers have at least heard of punk rock. During the 1980s, a mostly forgettable literary movement in science fiction got labeled “cyberpunk;” the first half of the moniker referenced the way it fetishized the behavioral tics of 1980s hacker culture, and the second was given it because it made a great show, as punk rockers did, of being brash and belligerent. The phrase caught on, and during the next decade or so, every subset of science fiction that hadn’t been around since Heinleins roamed the earth got labeled fill-in-the-blankpunk by somebody or other.
Steampunk got its moniker during those years, and that’s where the “-punk” came from. The “steam” is another matter. There was an alternative-history novel, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, set in a world in which Victorian computer pioneer Charles Babbage launched the cybernetic revolution a century in advance with steam-powered mechanical computers. There was also a roleplaying game called Space 1889—take a second look at those numbers if you think that has anything to do with the 1970s TV show about Moonbase Alpha—that had Thomas Edison devising a means of spaceflight, and putting the Victorian earth in contact with alternate versions of Mars, Venus and the Moon straight out of Edgar Rice Burroughs-era space fantasy.
Those and a few other sources of inspiration like them got artists, craftspeople, writers, and the like thinking about what an advanced technology might look like if the revolutions triggered by petroleum and electronics had never happened, and Victorian steam-powered technology had evolved along its own course. The result is steampunk: part esthetic pose, part artistic and literary movement, part subculture, part excuse for roleplaying and assorted dress-up games, and part—though I’m far from sure how widespread this latter dimension is, or how conscious—a collection of sweeping questions about some of the most basic presuppositions undergirding modern technology and the modern world.
It’s very nearly an article of faith in contemporary industrial society that any advanced technology—at least until it gets so advanced that it zooms off into pure fantasy—must by definition look much like ours. I’m thinking here of such otherwise impressive works of alternate history as Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt. Novels of this kind portray the scientific and industrial revolution happening somewhere other than western Europe, but inevitably it’s the same scientific and industrial revolution, producing much the same technologies and many of the same social and cultural changes. This reflects the same myopia of the imagination that insists on seeing societies that don’t use industrial technologies as “stuck in the Middle Ages” or “still in the Stone Age,” or what have you: the insistence that all human history is a straight line of progress that leads unstoppably to us.
Steampunk challenges that on at least two fronts. First, by asking what technology would look like if the petroleum and electronics revolutions had never happened, it undercuts the common triumphalist notion that of course an advanced technology must look like ours, function like ours, and—ahem—support the same poorly concealed economic, political, and cultural agendas hardwired into the technology we currently happen to have. Despite such thoughtful works as John Ellis’ The Social History of the Machine Gun, the role of such agendas in defining what counts for progress remains a taboo subject, and the idea that shifts in historical happenstance might have given rise to wholly different “advanced technologies” rarely finds its way even into the wilder ends of speculative fiction.
If I may be permitted a personal reflection here, this is something I watched during the four years when my novel Star’s Reach was appearing as a monthly blog post. 25th-century Meriga—yes, that’s “America” after four centuries—doesn’t fit anywhere on that imaginary line of progress running from the caves to the stars; it’s got its own cultural forms, its own bricolage of old and new technologies, and its own way of understanding history in which, with some deliberate irony, I assigned today’s industrial civilization most of the same straw-man roles that we assign to the societies of the preindustrial past.
As I wrote the monthly episodes of Star’s Reach, though, I fielded any number of suggestions about what I should do with the story and the setting, and a good any of those amounted to requests that I decrease the distance separating 25th-century Meriga from the modern world, or from some corner of the known past. Some insisted that some bit of modern technology had to find a place in Merigan society, some urged me to find room somewhere in the 25th-century world for enclaves where a modern industrial society had survived, some objected to a plot twist that required the disproof of a core element of today’s scientific worldview—well, the list is long, and I think my readers will already have gotten the point.
C.S. Lewis was once asked by a reporter whether he thought he’d influenced the writings of his friend J.R.R. Tolkien. If I recall correctly, he said, “Influence Tolkien? You might as well try to influence a bandersnatch.” While I wouldn’t dream of claiming to be Tolkien’s equal as a writer, I share with him—and with bandersnatches, for that matter—a certain resistance to external pressures, and so Meriga succeeded to some extent in keeping its distance from more familiar futures. The manuscript’s now at the publisher, and I hope to have a release date to announce before too long; what kind of reception the book will get when it’s published is another question and, at least to me, an interesting one.
Outside of the realms of imaginative fiction, though, it’s rare to see any mention of the possibility that the technology we ended up with might not be the inevitable outcome of a scientific revolution. The boldest step in that direction I’ve seen so far comes from a school of historians who pointed out that the scientific revolution depended, in a very real sense, on the weather in the English Channel during a few weeks in 1688. It so happened that the winds in those weeks kept the English fleet stuck in port while William of Orange carried out the last successful invasion (so far) of England by a foreign army.
As a direct result, the reign of James II gave way to that of William III, and Britain dodged the absolute monarchy, religious intolerance, and technological stasis that Louis XIV was imposing in France just then, a model which most of the rest of Europe promptly copied. Because Britain took a different path—a path defined by limited monarchy, broad religious and intellectual tolerance, and the emergence of a new class of proto-industrial magnates whose wealth was not promptly siphoned off into the existing order, but accumulated the masses of capital needed to build the world’s first industrial economy—the scientific revolution of the late 17th and early 18th century was not simply a flash in the pan. Had James II remained on the throne, it’s argued, none of those things would have happened.
It shows just how thoroughly the mythology of progress has its claws buried in our imaginations that many people respond to that suggestion in an utterly predictable way—by insisting that the scientific and industrial revolutions would surely have taken place somewhere else, and given rise to some close equivalent of today’s technology anyway. (As previously noted, that’s the underlying assumption of the Kim Stanley Robinson novel cited above, and many other works along the same lines.) At most, those who get past this notion of industrial society’s Manifest Destiny imagine a world in which the industrial revolution never happened: where, say, European technology peaked around 1700 with waterwheels, windmills, square-rigged ships, and muskets, and Europe went from there to follow the same sort of historical trajectory as the Roman Empire or T’ang-dynasty China.
Further extrapolations along those lines can be left to the writers of alternative history. The point being made by the writers, craftspeople, and fans of steampunk, though, cuts in a different direction. What the partly imaginary neo-Victorian tech of steampunk suggests is that another kind of advanced technology is possible: one that depends on steam and mechanics instead of petroleum and electronics, that accomplishes some of the same things our technology does by different means, and that also does different things—things that our technologies don’t do, and in some cases quite possibly can’t do.
It’s here that steampunk levels its second and arguably more serious challenge against the ideology that sees modern industrial society as the zenith, so far, of the march of progress. While it drew its original inspiration from science fiction and roleplaying games, what shaped steampunk as an esthetic and cultural movement was a sense of the difference between the elegant craftsmanship of the Victorian era and the shoddy plastic junk that fills today’s supposedly more advanced culture. It’s a sense that was already clear to social critics such as Theodore Roszak many decades ago. Here’s Roszak’s cold vision of the future awaiting industrial society, from his must-read book Where the Wasteland Ends:
“Glowing advertisements of undiminished progress will continue to rain down upon us from official quarters; there will always be well-researched predictions of light at the end of every tunnel. There will be dazzling forecasts of limitless affluence; there will even be much real affluence. But nothing will ever quite work the way the salesmen promised; the abundance will be mired in organizational confusion and bureaucratic malaise, constant environmental emergency, off-schedule policy, a chaos of crossed circuits, clogged pipelines, breakdowns in communication, overburdened social services. The data banks will become a jungle of misinformation, the computers will suffer from chronic electropsychosis. The scene will be indefinably sad and shoddy despite the veneer of orthodox optimism. It will be rather like a world’s fair in its final days, when things start to sag and disintegrate behind the futuristic façades, when the rubble begins to accumulate in the corners, the chromium to grow tarnished, the neon lights to burn out, all the switches and buttons to stop working. Everything will take on that vile tackiness which only plastic can assume, the look of things decaying that were never supposed to grow old, or stop gleaming, never to cease being gay and sleek and perfect.”
As prophecies go, you must admit, this one was square on the mark. Roszak’s nightmare vision has duly become the advanced, progressive, cutting-edge modern society in which we live today. That’s what the steampunk movement is rejecting in its own way, by pointing out the difference between the handcrafted gorgeousness of an older generation of technology and the “vile tackiness which only plastic can assume” that dominates contemporary products and, indeed, contemporary life. It’s an increasingly widespread recognition, and helps explain why so many people these days are into some form of reenactment.
Whether it’s the new Middle Ages of the Society for Creative Anachronism, the frontier culture of buckskinners and the rendesvous scene, the military-reenactment groups recreating the technologies and ambience of any number of of long-ago wars, the primitive-technology enthusiasts getting together to make flint arrowheads and compete at throwing spears with atlatls, or what have you: has any other society seen so many people turn their backs on the latest modern conveniences to take pleasure in the technologies and habits of earlier times? Behind this interest in bygone technologies, I suggest, lies a concept that’s even more unmentionable in polite company than the one I discussed above: the recognition that most of the time, these days, progress no longer means improvement.
By and large, the latest new, advanced, cutting-edge products of modern industrial society are shoddier, flimsier, and more thickly frosted with bugs, problems, and unwanted side effects than whatever they replaced. It’s becoming painfully clear that we’re no longer progressing toward some shiny Jetsons future, if we ever were, nor are we progressing over a cliff into a bigger and brighter apocalypse than anyone ever had before. Instead, we’re progressing steadily along the downward curve of Roszak’s dystopia of slow failure, into a crumbling and dilapidated world of spiraling dysfunctions hurriedly patched over, of systems that don’t really work any more but are never quite allowed to fail, in which more and more people every year find themselves shut out of a narrowing circle of paper prosperity but in which no public figure ever has the courage to mention that fact.
Set beside that bleak prospect, it’s not surprising that the gritty but honest hands-on technologies and lifeways of earlier times have a significant appeal. There’s also a distinct sense of security that comes from the discovery that one can actually get by, and even manage some degree of comfort, without having a gargantuan fossil-fueled technostructure on hand to meet one’s every need. What intrigues me about the steampunk movement, though, is that it’s gone beyond that kind of retro-tech to think about a different way in which technology could have developed—and in the process, it’s thrown open the door to a reevaluation of the technologies we’ve got, and thus to the political, economic, and cultural agendas which the technologies we’ve got embody, and thus inevitably further.
Well, that’s part of my interest, at any rate. Another part is based on the recognition that Victorian technology functioned quite effectively on a very small fraction of the energy that today’s industrial societies consume. Estimates vary, but even the most industrialized countries in the world in 1860 got by on something like ten per cent of the energy per capita that’s thrown around in industrial nations today. The possibility therefore exists that something like a Victorian technology, or even something like the neo-Victorian extrapolations of the steampunk scene, might be viable in a future on the far side of peak oil, when the much more diffuse, intermittent, and limited energy available from renewable sources will be what we have left to work with for the rest of our species’ time on this planet.
For the time being, I want to let that suggestion percolate through the crawlspaces of my readers’ imaginations. Those who want to pick up a steampunk calculator and start learning how to crunch numbers with it—hint: it’s easy to learn, useful in practice, and slide rules come cheap these days—may just have a head start on the future, but that’s a theme for a later series of posts. Well before we get to that, it’s important to consider a far less pleasant kind of blast from the past, one that bids fair to play a significant role in the future immediately ahead.
That is to say, it’s time to talk about the role of fascism in the deindustrial future. We’ll begin that discussion next week.
23 Comments on "John Michael Greer: The Steampunk Future"
DC on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 4:56 am
The arch-druid sells us short. I own a copy of the Gisbons,Difference Engine, Good book. While I dont always agree with everything the AD writes, hes spot on in one this regard. People in this age DO think we live in the best of all possible worlds. That we have the best ‘tech’ and people that lived in less ‘enlightened’ ages than we do, suffered horribly because of it. Having worked around our ‘tech’ all my life,computers in my instance, I am quite Un-impressed with how poorly its made, and how leaky and unstable (most) of it is. The AD understands better than most than most of our ‘stuff’ is shoddy beyond description.
I would say the only truly advanced technology we have truly perfected, is marketing. How our corporate elites have managed to convince so many, that our manufactured products are so damn wonderful, and accept this even when its falling apart in there hands(requiring of course, a trip to the ‘mall’ in your gas-powered financed car to buy a equally shoddy replacement), well….
I am of the opinion our marketing science and technology far surpasses anything we can actually build anymore.
Meld on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 9:43 am
Marketing and science has taken the place of religion to some extent. The narrative/religion of progress is deeply embedded within advertising and the minds of the scientists of our time. Humans love a good narrative and so one could say that humans have ‘perfected’ the art of story telling for this time period. Of course if we went back 1000 years with the same advertising slogans and techniques that we use now, whose to say the Saxons and Normans would do anything but laugh at our poorly constructed narratives. It’s hard to know whether we have perfected advertising or whether we have simply figured out how to manipulate this particular civilisation very well.
I agree that people in this age do think we live in the best of times, we certainly live in a time when life expectancy on average is higher than any other time but does that make it better?
Subjectively it’s naturally better for each of us that we live longer (as long as our lives are good and virtuous) But objectively is an elephant better than a bee because it lives longer? There is no ‘truth’ in nature, just the stories we tell ourselves to avert pain and suffering.
Beery on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 11:13 am
Nice essay, but let’s brace ourselves: the Arch Druid is going to talk about fascism next week – that means he’s going to go onto one of his ill-conceived rants about history and politics, the two things that make him look most like a boob. So let’s savor the lucidity of this week’s article while it lasts, and prepare for next week’s nuttiness.
ghung on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 3:26 pm
….and where does the ‘steam’ in steampunk come from?
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 3:29 pm
Based on the recognition that Victorian technology functioned quite effectively on a very small fraction of the energy that today’s industrial societies consume
The Druid makes a valid plan B statement here for navigating a collapse. I have over the years collected info from sources like the Oil Drum that analysis early industrial revolution era technologies. rope/Pully, windmills, cable power, watermills, and many others. The issue will be resource depletion, skill obsolescence, environmental degradation, lacking infrastructure, and time. I do think we will more and more return to the 19 century technologies especially for food production. We can look to the Amish in the US as a blueprint. They have a mish mash of the old and new. Their reasons for technology adoption are primarily based on community integrity then practicality. This philosophy has worked very well for them. The problem with the Amish is the large families needed inevitably if you are using 19 century technology. Last I heard we have a population problem. When the population declines as it must we may see the large families again. In the transition time this could be made up by cooperatives of families. No one wants to hear this but I imagine slavery will return and a peasant class like we saw in Russia pre-Bolsheviks. Women get ready I doubt your advancements are going to fully hold up that is unless we turn to a matriarchal tribal arrangement. I imagine division of the sexes, labor, and ages will return. The young will be employed with menial chores, the women home economics, the men in traditional heavy labor work. The traditional alcohol culture and string instruments will return. None of these ideas are assured but I see them as possibilities.
ghung on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 4:12 pm
“I imagine slavery will return…”
Slavery never left. It just morphed into having debt slaves to pay for and operate energy slaves, and has continued to morph into computer-controlled energy slaves, leaving the debt slaves to use credit to buy the stuff made by the energy slaves and to figure out how to pay off their unpayable debts.
Slavery is when others have claims on your future. It’s the basis of our economic system.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 5:17 pm
Damn good point ghung!! A slavery even more insideious. A psudo-slavery at the very heart of our system.
Here is a quote from my favorite Native American Big Soldier:
“I see and admire your manner of living, your good warm houses, your extensive fields of corn,
your gardens, your cows, own workhouses, wagons and a thousand machines that I know not the
use of. I see that you are able to clothe yourselves even from weeds and grass. In short, you
even do almost what you choose. You whites possess the power of subduing almost every animal
to your use. You are surrounded by slaves. Everything about you is in chains, and you are slaves
yourselves. I fear if I should exchange my pursuits for yours, I too should become a slave. Talk to
my sons, perhaps they may be persuaded to adopt your fashions … but as for myself I was born
free, was raised free and wish to die free”
Northwest Resident on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 5:45 pm
DC and Meld — Right on. Marketing and Public Relations and manipulation of the masses through scientifically proven and frequently used methods is a mainstay of our modern age. Most people especially in America and “the west” are walking automatons, with the broadcast media beaming thoughts and opinions and “needs” into their receptive minds on a 24/7/365 basis. Very few can disconnect from that mind control, or ever discern a need to do so.
Beery — I’m with you. Archdruid makes some very good points from time to time, but I find myself in total disagreement with him more often than not. But regarding slide rules, I used to know how to work one of those, and I can testify that they are nasty buggers. There is nothing noble about having to use one — it is pure drudge.
Davy and ghung — I have been a slave to debt and the need for an income to maintain my socially accepted (and required) role for a long time. Freedom? Give me a break. I have a certain amount of “freedom” compared to others, but if it wasn’t for societal expectations and the need to “earn a living” in this modern high tech world I’m sure I would have tried to return to my “native American indian” roots a long time ago. Living longer is definitely not equal to living a better life. My ancestors, the Indians on both sides of my family, had a much better and more free life. Think about the Novi in the movie Avatar — not a bad life, until the high-tech energy-mongers show up, that is.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 6:14 pm
NR, we have allot to learn from the Native Americans in a time of collapse for a couple of reasons. One reason is they were the last sustainable people here in North America. We should review their wisdom and practices for survival skills. We can also review how their wonderful societies were ripped apart. Their land raped and pillage. Their languages, cultures and traditions stamped on. What goes around comes around or something. We can review their pain and suffering if we are curious what collapse feels like. I hear allot of complaints about BAU like we have a light at the end of the tunnel when it is gone. Don’t kid yourselves guys that light is an oncoming train of death and destruction in a world of one tenth the carrying capacity of the BAU world we have today. If you think we are going to walk with Moses to the promise land think again. Maybe a very select few may find some kind of better life. A better life is 1000 years down the road if we ruin our life support system.
I might add you can bash the Maya end date but their 2012 deal looks valid to me in the sense of most indications I see are a paradigm shift of monumental proportions like nothing the world has ever seen.
DC on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 6:30 pm
The ‘steam’ part refers to a technology that is essentially based on a combination of analogue, mechanical or manual methods. Thus, the ‘steam’ part. Most all SP ‘stuff’, is in fact…steam-powered. Ships, vehicles, planes, even clocks.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 6:33 pm
Davy — As you know, before the Europeans came to America, the native tribes had forests and prairies full of wildlife, the rivers and lakes and oceans were full of fish, no pollution anywhere, all natural. There is no way in hell that we will be able to return to the “indian way” of life in any near or probably distant future — you know that, just stating the obvious. But we may have some advantages over the indian tribes — we have more “know how” when it comes to growing crops (talking permaculture/sustainable), we have scientific knowledge that will be applicable even in a low-tech world, and when a nearby volcano is getting ready to erupt we know to run like hell rather than sacrifice one of best females. Maybe a few other advantages too… Did I miss any obvious ones?
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 7:00 pm
yea, was thinking a little bit about their spirituality too. I mean the connection to the land, plants, and animals. Their tribal traditions and culture. Us prep-ers seem to be very practical on the subject and tend to avoid spirituality for fear of alienation. I accept that none of us likes a sermon
I am not sure what we will ultimately take away from the modern world. So much is lost in just a few generations unless there is some stability. Humans could be little more than heathens in just 100 years. This is part of the reason I harp about allowing for a soft landing by doing all we can now including BAU strategies. Knowledge and technology is very delicate especially today when it is increasingly digital. Even books will quickly mold and disintegrate unless, like the dark ages, monks save them
Northwest Resident on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 7:13 pm
Davy — all true. But one thing I know for sure. Neither I nor any of my descendants for generations to come will be cursed with the need to use a slide rule. I have about ten photo-voltaic powered calculators in a box in my garage, brand new, and those will be passed down through the generations. And, you know me, I personally believe anyway that “TPTB” are going to pull the plug on this current version of civilization in the near future, sit tight on already-secured oil supplies and other strategic assets while the great die-off sweeps over planet earth, then reboot with a significantly smaller population and enough oil/energy to keep that highly controlled and maintained population powered into the far distant future. I do not believe that we are going to witness a long drawn-out period of BAU until the bitter end and subsequent repeat of the dark ages. But that is just me.
Null Hypothesis on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 10:35 pm
I’m looking forward to see JMG eat his words after the financial system totally collapses. We should all make a record of every time he’s dismissed the doomers and insisted that humanity’s demise will be a series of small steps down, kind of like the mirror image of the ride up. I agree that we will see steps down, but they will be larger than JMG wants to admit.
He seems to argue that because it didn’t collapse in 2008 that it won’t this time, not seeming to realize the lengths to which the central banks went to prevent that implosion. All they did was prevent the ponzi scheme from bursting by inflating it further. The problem is now many times larger and more pervasive, and the central banks more powerless. He doesn’t understand the financial system and has no basis to make his claims.
Null Hypothesis on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 10:42 pm
Actually, I am not predicting a financial crash in the near future (but it could happen…). The gyrations we’re seeing are from the Fed lowering its money printing from $85 b to $65 b per month. That’s hitting the emerging markets which was part of the plan, to get liquidity moving back into the “safety” of the US debt and equity markets. The rumblings will continue for a while until the Fed comes out and says we need to increase QE to $100 b a month, then $120 b, etc., until the world runs out of gold and we get a hyperinfationary supernova, the complete destruction of the financial system. The economy will still lurch forward of course, since I’m sure some people are going to be trading items with each other using some medium of money! But it won’t be based on dollars.
ghung on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 11:22 pm
@Null Hypothesis- Greer hasn’t said that there won’t be some big steps down that I’m aware of. His take is that it won’t be apocalyptic, globally. My only disagreement is with his insistence that it won’t be. I’m not personally expecting the rapture or anything apocalyptic, but haven’t eliminated the possibility of a nuclear war that sends humanity back to a neo-stone-age sort of condition, or worse. I actually think some sort of limited nuclear exchange is a likelihood at some point, or some sort of biological war.
Further, while I take Guy McPherson’s NTE predictions with a big grain of salt, I do take climate change very seriously, and don’t think that there’s a zero chance he’s right My expectation is that there will be (must be) a dramatic human die-off at some point, but I don’t dwell on these things too much. Seems pointless when one is already responding to these things as best one can.
Then again, if we force the oceans into an anoxic state….. [oh my.. it’s Friday; decides to open the bar a bit early..]
Northwest Resident on Fri, 7th Feb 2014 11:30 pm
Null — I have big doubts about that step down collapse that JMG envisions too. I think that Gail the Actuary has made some pretty good arguments against the step down theory. To sum her point of view up, and mine, when you have your first “step down” of any significant size, that pretty much blows the lid off of any of the hopium and “BAU forever” illusions. Once that curtain is pulled back and the world sees what really is happening, there will be panic and dismay of epic proportions. The intricacy of our entire just in time and other trade/credit/delivery systems requires constant ongoing input — basically, the point that Gail makes way better than I am here is that once you stop all of the “systems” that keep our economy and BAU machinery going, it will be extremely difficult and almost impossible to put them all back together again. Especially, I think, when investors have lost everything or are running for the hills, when the credit-grantors realize the end of growth is here they won’t be issuing anymore credit in a downward spiraling world and basically without credit the whole machine just freezes up, end of story. I can see a few “little” steps, but a big step — it is game over, IMO.
Another point on this, the “step down” people like to point at the Roman Civilization and how it collapsed over a long extended period of time. No comparison, IMO. Our civilization is built on intricately linked complexities and massive inputs of fossil fuel energy — none of which the Roman civilization had. That is the huge, huge difference.
ghung on Sat, 8th Feb 2014 12:01 am
Cheers!
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 8th Feb 2014 12:04 am
NR, I see a step down possibility because of all the built out infrastructure, the tremendous human skill set, plenty of resources, and large standing armies. The next step down could be the big one after these things are ravaged by entropic decay and cannibalized. What is clear is the current complex global system of trade, travel, information, and culture will end pretty quickly. Yet I see vestiges of this system remaining here and there and maybe consolidating in areas much like the Byzantine did after Rome fell. There is no reason things can’t go critical very quickly with all the weapons and 400 plus nuke plants around the world. Our ability to maintain all the nasty modern industrial apparatus will quickly diminish. We are stuck with a toxic legacy that is much more dangerous than people realize. All these folks calling for the end of BAU but forget BAU has lots of baggage we are stuck with. This is global baggage of nuclear, chemical, and bio-hazards. A nasty mix of evil shit is what a collapsed and stressed people will be left with. So NR, I pray for a shallow 1st step so maybe some of this evil shit can be dealt with in some way. If not I fear it is all she wrote for humanity and many of the other critters that share this earth. It will only take a few spent nuke fuel ponds to burn up to end life as we know it. Forget the end of Business as usual we are talking maybe all complex life.
action on Sat, 8th Feb 2014 2:24 am
Berry! Nice of you to grace us with your presence, its been a while. Maybe you should update your picture.
I’m an engineer so I’m allowed to say that math is over rated and completely not necessary for survival. I think that’s where we went wrong – math. The ancients way over thought things. Our species should be a small group acting as gods, and instead we’re no better than a bacteria replicating itself until the container is full. All because of math and a lack of recognition of the importance of feeling. Fuck math.
Northwest Resident on Sat, 8th Feb 2014 3:15 am
Davy — In a lot of ways I hope you’re right about the step down scenario. I’m in no hurry for any kind of collapse. But it looks and feels to me like it isn’t far off, just trying to be objective. I’m one of the minority “doomers” who think that there are powerful forces in this world that actually have a plan and the ability to take control of the situation. Mentally projecting myself into that group, I would be very concerned about burning up all of the reasonably accessible fossil fuel and pushing climate change to the brink of disaster. And for what? Just for the sake of continuing BAU a few more years? It doesn’t make sense. That group, if it exists and has any sense of what’s best for the human race not now but going forward far into the future, must decide to stop the waste and reboot human civilization, sooner rather than later. I personally would like to see humanity progress, to continue to develop technologically but in a much more responsible way, and to continue to evolve. Without enough oil or in a world decimated by pollution and/or climate change, I don’t think we stand a chance.
Makati1 on Sat, 8th Feb 2014 3:32 am
Fascism: noun
1. an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
synonyms: authoritarianism,
totalitarianism, dictatorship, despotism, autocracy; Nazism, rightism;
nationalism, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism; jingoism, isolationism;
neofascism, neo-Nazism.
We (the West) are fast moving into this system of control. No? Why do you disagree? NWO? IMF? WB? UN?
The old Nazi party is showing it’s head in Europe again and the use of Executive Orders instead of passed laws in the US is not Democracy. Japan is moving towards a war footing. None of those countries can continue their current Socialism much longer.
I’m anxious to read JMG’s next installment as, in my mind, he is spot on in many areas and gives background to his thoughts that often jive with my idea of the world and how it works.
Yes, advertisement/propaganda brought Americans Obama and Europe the EU and Euro. Both are destroying the middle class to make way for the coming central world government which will have to be a dictatorship disguised as some form of ‘democracy’, for a while. Felling the chains yet?
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 8th Feb 2014 3:57 pm
I see here in the US martial Law soon enough. Who else can even begin to keep order at least in the short term. I don’t think we will make it to fascism Makati. Maybe some local version. If we are lucky to have a local