by Guest » Wed 14 Dec 2005, 12:28:42
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Matt is helping give people a fighting chance and I'm all for it. More damage than good? Bullshit. Knowledge is power and I'm all for giving the serf's the power. Lots of people are going to survive this and they will rebuild a society. whether you think the hrace is worth it or not, and they'll need some advance warning and survival skills.
If you think that everyone can survive because they have knowledge then you must assume that we can go on into the future with a 6+ billion population and that peak oil will have no effect on the population levels. All we need is the knowledge that oil is running out and we just make a few little adjustments and all is well for everyone.
I think this is not the case. This planet cannot support 2 billion, much less 6+ billion, and it is only using the saved energy of the sun from maybe 160,000 years that we have managed over the last 400 years to to make this huge jump away from sustainability.
If you recognize that there will be a dieoff of major proportions, then knowledge may be power if a small fraction of the population has it, but if everyone has it then it is worthless; it is a survival tool that everyone equally has and if 5/6 the of the population cannot possibly survive, then it is the same thingl if all have the knowledge or nobody has it; it has no effect.
The only way knowledge is power in a competitive life and death struggle is if only small portion of the population has knowledge. Think of knowledge as currency. If we all have equal amounts of currency then we all have an equal claim on the production of the economy, and nobody has an advantage.
And remember, advantage is the process by which nature makes its selection (natural selection); those with survival advantage continue while those disadvantaged competitors eventually are selected out.
If you want your knowledge to have a benefit to you then do not give it away to your competetors. Communism has a deplorable history and it will not help with the coming catacilism.
Gego, The brush you paint with is very broad. I don't think that we have nearly enough information to know how many people that the world can support, and if we could I am not sure just how useful that would be in our individual struggles to survive anyway. Undoubtedly there will be area's where food is short and people will starve. There will be violent places, and there will be peaceful places. The world is pretty heterogeneous, and I think it will remain so. Knowing about Peak Oil will give people time to reorder their lives, prepare, get new skills etc. I think in this new world that one of the skills we will need will be cooperation.
My parents recently moved from a little town in western Colorado where they had some good associations with a local Mennonite community. This group of Mennonites moved to the area over the course of a couple of years, one family spearheading, other families staying behind in established situations to lend support -notice, no bankers/loans etc. were needed. The lead family scouts out the area, starts a couple of service type business (very skilled at many things) and pretty soon they have things going well enough for some of the rest to come. In a year or two the whole group has made an orderly migration, have homes and businesses established in the new area without a lot of debt being aquired. With less debt, they don't need to have as much money..... so their businesses are very competitive and they thrive. They help their children with homes when they marry, and of course they encourage them to marry in their religion, but not in their group. My point being that in this new world that is coming our way that cooperation is the most successful form of competition. Going it alone with rugged indivualism will be a poor way of handling things, and I think that our communities will form watches, protection groups even to ensure the sanctity and safety of the communities and neighborhoods.
A lot of the panic and feeling of alone-ness with the whole PO issue is that we have forgotten how to cooperate, and while we have neighbors, we don't really have a sense of a neighborhood, or community because we are always in our cars. We move every five years or so, and often don't put down roots and get to know people. Friendships are often formed by shared burdens. That is why it takes so long to form them sometimes. You will never be as close to a fishing buddy, or golfing partner as you will to someone that helps you with a sick spouse or child. If that recreational friend is the one that you help, or shares your burden, so much the better. I think we are coming to a time when none of us will be strong enough or smart enough to stand alone against the world, and that we will be foolish if we try. Heck, it helps me a lot to know that there are others that are having this feeling of dislocation....so it is a burden shared. We will have a lot of burdens to share - financial, physical, emotional, intellectual, lots. Having knowledge the PO is coming, and much sooner than most people anticpates gives us time to evaluate our situations and remedy to a great extent, the shortcomings in our lives.
So I am glad that I heard about this. It complicates my life, makes me a little alone and sets me apart from my family and friends for a while. If time is really short and things fall apart in the next few weeks, I probably didn't have enough time and it will be rough. But if it takes a year or two to come to the 'event horizon' as they say about black holes, I am sure that there will be many teaching moments when the barriers are down with family and friends and I can share some or all of my concerns with them.
With painful, mind bending news like this, people aren't usually stong enough to take it all in. But there come moments when you can talk and agree on some general points (petroelum is a finite resource, our lives are much easier with lots of it, if there is money involved both countries and companys are likely to give the most optomistic reserve estimates, etc.), if not specifics (timeline for PO, etc.). Each person that becomes convienced also becomes convienced of how powerless they are to change the course of events of the world. Some despair, some prepare. Change dispair to prepare, and you start to build a community, and you start to share each others burdens.
Enough. Thanks to Matt and every one that takes a minute to educate someone else.
