[MonteQuest]

Predicting the future can be an express ticket to the Hall of Fools, but here's my best shot based upon a lot of reading and just common sense. What the public certainly doesn't understand about the world energy situation is that we don't have to run out of oil and gas for life to turn upside down in this country. All you have to do is squeeze the supply, jerk the price, and all the systems and sub-systems we depend on will de-stabilize creating a domino effect that will clatter its way through our entire economy. I don't believe you have to be a cynic or a "pessimist" to recognize this. It would appear patently obvious. For those who question that assumption, I invite you to read my posts on this subject:

http://peakoil.com/fortopic1545.html

http://peakoil.com/fortopic1514.html

Since our economy at any given moment consists of sixty million people scurrying to the next "blue light special" to buy goods on credit made by people 12,000 miles away, we can expect some pretty far-reaching consequences. From what I have read, we are going to have to give up suburbia, Wal-Mart, and industrial agriculture. We will have to live locally in a way that does not require us to drive cars all the time. We will have to grow more of our own food closer to home. Small-town America will find themselves miles away from essential goods and looking forlornly over their shoulders in the direction of where Charley's Hardware store used to be before Wal-Mart came to town. There will be an extravaganza of default and repossession of homes and property such as the world has never seen before. With the recent easy and low credit access, people have been induced to trade in the equity value of their homes for lump sums of cash to buy SUV's and other "toys." We can assume that some of them are already in trouble with credit card debt. Connect the dots.

We will need to downscale everything, especially agriculture. It will be one of the first systems to fall apart in a world of higher-priced and less reliably available energy, and when it goes down people are really going to suffer. We need to change directions in a big way; from competition to cooperation, and from profitability to sustainability. Think outside the box; try to think of ways to not use more resources.

A lot of jobs and vocational niches are going to vanish--forever. Every "leisure oil use" activity and all their associated industries and jobs will disappear over night. Expect large-scale unemployment and a drastic drop in wages. In China today, $5/hr in a factory is about average. Get used to the idea. In world of greater resource scarcity, the salvage of existing material is going to be a huge business. A lot of the retail of the future will consist of recycled refurbished goods. I can see the railroad system of the US replacing the long-haul trucking system; more efficient and you don't need "tires." We will look back at the 20th century as the "Age of Manufacture."

The biggest question about these massive changes is how much disorder will attend them as nations jockey to contest resources. The downscaling of America is our agenda for survival in the 21st century. It implies a lot of difficult adjustments and even hardship, but we just may find a culture of quality and purpose in a world where a culture of quantity once ruled. Prepare for austerity. We will all be paupers for a while.

[Grond]

One of the reasons why society has considered itself "advanced" these past few decades is because the standard of living has risen and the life expectancy has lengthened.

Though I firmly believe life expectancy has increased soley due to advancements in the medical field. Better sanitation, antibiotics, and technology like MRI's and CAT scans to detect illness in the early stages are the bigest reasons why we live longer now.

Quite frankly, America is an obese nation. We can all stand to eat less and I doubt it would affect our lifespans any. Probably increase life spans for many by cutting out harmfull cholesterol and excess fat. Beyond that, it doesn't take much to provide the basics of of life.

Although your scenario has people living as "paupers", I really only think a slight attitude adjustment is necessary for all Americans to continue living perfectly happy, fulfilling lives without all the bells and whistles that the industrialized consumer economy has to offer. Just so long as we focus our remaining energy into the medical field, and provide a liveable existance to all men, there really should be no hardship.

What I see happening now is 1% of the population controlling 99% of the wealth, and therefore resources. Overcoming that hurdle will be the hardest part. As cheap oil become extremely expensive oil, I believe we will see a world where 1% of the population still live morbidly "obese" lives while 99% of the population starves to death, or the equivilant. or more to the point, I see 1% of the population directing 99% of the population into Total War while they sit in their ivory towers

I like the Saudi quote. But I think it needs to be updated to reflect modern attitudes:

"I rode a camel, my son drives a car, his son flies an airplane. His son sits on a camel in an airplane sipping champagne. His son will walk"

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')lthough your scenario has people living as "paupers", I really only think a slight attitude adjustment is necessary for all Americans to continue living perfectly happy, fulfilling lives without all the bells and whistles that the industrialized consumer economy has to offer.

[Pops]

One thing I’ve noticed in the last months looking for property has been the tiny, nearly abandoned towns spread across the US. I had meant to start a thread on that but haven’t had the time so I’ll interject it here.

In the less mobile future I can see those thousands of towns no more than two days wagon (or electric car) ride apart once again become populated and the little cobbler shops returning right along with Charley’s Hardware.

Why were they abandoned in the first place?

Mobility. More and better jobs, restaurants, walmarts 60 miles down the road in an air conditioned Delta 88 is why. Bigger and bigger farms exporting not only 200-300 miles but all the way around the world meant fewer and fewer rural jobs and less need for local services.

When there is more small-scale farming going on, and a trip sixty miles down the road is a major investment, Charley’s may once again be viable.

Of course maybe I just hate China-Mart.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n the less mobile future I can see those thousands of towns no more than two days wagon (or electric car) ride apart once again become populated and the little cobbler shops returning right along with Charley’s Hardware.

[fred2]

MonteQuest wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e will need to downscale everything, especially agriculture. It will be one of the first systems to fall apart in a world of higher-priced and less reliably available energy, and when it goes down people are really going to suffer.

[lowem]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'E')xpect large-scale unemployment and a drastic drop in wages. In China today, $5/hr in a factory is about average. Get used to the idea.

[Riddick]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Grond', '
')What I see happening now is 1% of the population controlling 99% of the wealth, and therefore resources. Overcoming that hurdle will be the hardest part. As cheap oil become extremely expensive oil, I believe we will see a world where 1% of the population still live morbidly "obese" lives while 99% of the population starves to death, or the equivilant. or more to the point, I see 1% of the population directing 99% of the population into Total War while they sit in their ivory towers

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('fred2', ' ')
I would think it the other way round. Increased food production, locally, will become very important. Expect government to have increased control of oil, artificially adjusting prices so that agriculture is both (a) subsidised, and (b) gets enough of the stuff.

[fred2]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('fred2', ' ')
I would think it the other way round. Increased food production, locally, will become very important. Expect government to have increased control of oil, artificially adjusting prices so that agriculture is both (a) subsidised, and (b) gets enough of the stuff.

[JackBob]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('fred2', '
')In the initial stages we can expect governments to try to implement reductions in oil consumption through taxation; taxing motor fuel much more harshly will push people to truly focus on increasing MPG. And if that doesnt work, yes, rationing. Expect large taxes on civil aviation fuel. A lot of aviation is pure leisure and could easily be dumped...

[k_semler]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n the less mobile future I can see those thousands of towns no more than two days wagon (or electric car) ride apart once again become populated and the little cobbler shops returning right along with Charley’s Hardware.

[MonteQuest]

Cool! I almost forgot that one by Alan! Good post!

[big_rc]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hawkcreek', 'D')on't know how I missed this thread till now. It is a good one.

I just wanted to add that I think in a lot of cases, having more "stuff", is just a filler for not having enough "connections". Most of us used to have connections to that "little man" Alan is talking about. We saw him every day, and in a lot of cases, he was us (probably not proper grammar). I can remember pumping gas and washing windshields for the same old folks at the gas station in my old home town. They knew my name, said good morning, and smiled. When they didn't smile, I wondered what was wrong. When I graduated from high school, some of them were smiling at me when I walked past with my diploma (probably amazed that I made it).
Our lifestyle has taken most of these connnections from us. Even worse, our strongest connections - to our own families - have been weakened to the breaking point ---- past the breaking point in many cases. We don't have time any more. That is the most valuable thing that the politicians, corporations, and constant advertisement propaganda have stolen from us. In the pursuit of low quality toys, we have enslaved ourselves.

It may take a total breakdown in society just so we can have enough time to smile at one another again.

[gg3]

"In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose." (President Jimmy Carter, 15 July 1979)

---

The dominant economic philosophies, by which I include communism as well as capitalism, are all based on the idea that more is necessarily better. This is the core of the tradeoff between quality and quantity, and it leads directly to the kinds of excesses that are killing us.

Obesity is an obvious symptom, and we recognize it as a sign of trouble because of its relatively immediate health consequences. Because it's clearly unhealthy, we assign it a negative aesthetic value, that is, a visceral dis-incentive which says "don't over-eat, you'll end up looking like *that!*"

But there is a more far-reaching form of generalized obesity in the culture: when I was a kid we called it "conspicuous consumption."

The monster-house, the monster-SUV, the unbridled appetite for energy-consuming luxuries, the monstrous accumulations of wealth beyond any capacity for utilization; these are also forms of obesity.

But we don't say "that's a fat house" or "a fat car" or whatever. Or do we...?

In fact the current slang uses the word "fat" (typically spelled "phat") as a synonym for "cool," i.e. very good, excellent, or as an acronym, "pretty, hot, and tempting."

So now we have the inversion of the core meaning of the word. But if we get down to the root of it, there's a grain of truth in the slang: wasteful luxuries are a form of obesity. And yet, this form of obesity is being extolled by the culture as a virtue

---

What I think has happened is, our culture has given in almost wholly to its baser instincts: the primitive chimpanzee and reptilian parts of ourselves; as Aldous Huxley would characterise it, "Ape" rather than "Essence," our animal-nature rather than our God-nature. In secular terms, instinct rather than reason.

Chimps instinctively grasp at anything that is sparkly or new. They also fling their feces at each other in moments of anger. When confronted with a surplus of bananas, they stop sharing, start hoarding, and fight over the spoils. Sound like any humans you know?

---

We need to get our moral compass in order, by which I do not mean indulging in crusades, or scapegoating targeted groups, or asserting moral superiority by denying moral standing to others. The standard of "compared to someone else" has done much harm, as much in the moral realm as in the material realm. What counts is "what is my standing in the eyes of God?," or its secular equivalent, "what is my standing in terms of my own conscience?" Not as compared to someone else, but standing on one's own merits and shortcomings.

I tend to believe that the capacity for evolving to something higher, is as hard-wired into us as the capacity for devolving back to barbarianism. I use the term "Homo Noeticus" to mean "God-knowing human" or "rational human," an evolutionary potential for achieving something beyond the habitual ways of our chimpanzee heritage.

So I think it is entirely possible that a widespread crisis that takes away the "surplus of bananas" could restore the sense of purpose that Carter noted the loss of. In the process, it could also give us a basis for sorting the wheat from the chaff, in terms of what's really important.

---

Where Monte makes reference to "cooperation rather than competition," some clarification is in order. The implicit definition of competition as the equivalent of warfare by other means, isn't quite accurate; it's the byproduct of the last two decades of cut-throat-ism foisted upon us by the "greed is good" crowd. If you go with the more traditional definition, "vying for a goal within the boundary of defined rules," competition is clearly as much a healthy dynamic as cooperation.

Healthy social dynamics include competition (vying for a goal within agreed rules), cooperation (working together for a goal within agreed boundaries), and symbiosis (reciprocal benefit in pursuit of individual goals). Predation and parasitism are the unhealthy dynamics; in each case there are no rules and one actor attempts to gain something from another at the latter's expense. Predation can mimic competition, and parasitism can mimic cooperation or symbiosis. These may seem like unduly fine distinctions, but they're useful.

I don't think we will (or should) see the end of competition. I do think we'll see a rise of predation and parasitism during the crisis, which should not be unexpected, and which will call for strong & clear response. The question is whether humans and their social institutions will evolve or devolve over the long run.

[MonteQuest]

Great post, gg3! I agree with your clarity on competition. I was hoping that this thread would start this kind of dialogue. We need to find that moral compass again. Less is more. Keep up the good posts, my friends!

Monte

[cthulhu]

1. That Man has two real existing principles, Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call'd Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call'd Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.


The following Contraries to these are True:
1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body: and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

-- William Blake

If God made this world why is a world of suffering? Reasonable people want to know. For any God who made this world would have what kind of morality? Said Satan one day, fallen to his knees to pray, "Oh Heavenly Father may I one day be as sinful as you." Ah, energy is eternal delight!

If there is such a beast as morality point it out. All men differ in customs so what is this bedrock morality of mankind that is a production of our rationalisation? The most powerful inflict their predjdices on the weak and call it moral, or civilisation, or this or that.

"Sense of Purpose", smells like manifest destiny. Mankind can evolve into something higher? Well get moving for some of us already have, but unfortunately there is one large problem, what do you do with those that haven't evolved? Must you needs liquidate them; for after all evolution isn't like education, you can't teach someone to evolve. Quite the moral delimma, should you kill the lower form of life that threatens your new life or do you allow them to continue on their destructive path which could result in the failure of you as an experiment by mother nature? Tricky. I'll get back to you on what we decide.

Lol.

[backstop]

The issue of assumptions concerning human nature has been surfacing all over the site. I've had a go at pointing out the dynamic effect on others' conduct of our expectations of their nature, and the resulting limitations on the options we're willing to evaluate, but to no discernable response.

So, for what its worth, here is one (50-year-old) ecologist's perspective on these questions.

First, I'd observe that we carried lethal hunting weapons for something over a million years, during the formative development of our species, without apparently resorting either to reliance on a development of defensive walls or any very significant elevation of the lethality of our weaponry.

Come the Younger Dryass event, about 10,500 BP, during the final retreat of the ice age, there was a massive 8C spike recorded in Greenland's paleo-meteorological record over a 40 year period.

I'm told on good authority (sans documentation) that this was of a scale to impact global temperature and weather dramatically, accelerating the retreat of the northern ice sheets and also perhaps the advance of tropical drylands, followed equally abruptly by this process's reversal.

Not so long after this event, in the isthmus between Africa and Eurasia, the earliest recorded defensive walls were erected; urbo-centric society has degenerated to the use of modern weaponry in the relatively fleeting period since then.

The ratio of the two time periods is of the order of 100 to 1.


In learning whatever I can of native peoples' traditions I've recognised in them cultural values that are vanishingly rare, though are still to be found, in modern urbo-centric society.

Just one example must suffice here:

An elder of the nomadic Gabbra people of Northern Kenya, filmed in the early '90s, surveying one of the seasonal gatherings of the tribe when, traditionally, gifts were given widely, and saying sadly and a bit indignantly,

"These days, the people don't trade for good will: they trade for things ! "

- Beyond those exchanges, if someone had a bad year with drought or lost his cattle to bandits, it was a matter of honour that everyone well off would chip in to get him back on his feet, with no question of recompense later. . . An axiom of the tribe was,

"The poor man shames us all."

That to my mind is a deeply honourable culture. In this brief post it must serve as a rather small hook to carry a quite large thesis:


This is that what we are taught and trained to see as human nature is a mere stunted and stupefied shadow of the underlying reality.


There are two things I would hope to see post peak which will, I surmise, change people's openness to the possibility of a cultural renaissance, a coming together in a time of crisis rather than a retreat into a vicious spiral of warlordism:

The first is an end to the mass-advertizing of factory product which employs mal-psychologists specifically to generate insecure states of mind, with potent effects on culture through stunting the emotional development of the mass of individuals;

The second is an end to urban populations' living with significant levels of volatile fossil hydrocarbons in the air they breathe. In comparing the steadiness, clarity and integrity of mind of minimally-polluted societies with those of traffic-filled urban societies the contrast is far more than obvious.

If this stupefying effect was due to any other common pollutant, such as NOx or Ozone, I would expect the intensive researches into them to have spotted it. By comparison, VFHCs' phsycotropic effects have faced little if any serious research, so it seems a likely culprit.

Given resolute inspiration for the common good, together with cleaner air and a decline in the mass-conditioning apparatus, I personally believe we may see un-guessed-at reserves of integrity and inner courage emerging from within human nature. This is not of course to overlook the profound scale of cultural shock that seems likely in various nations.

Perhaps the crucial resource that has yet to be encouraged is the recognition in ordinary people that what we are seeing is an obvious and wholesale failure and discrediting of an ideology, which I'd describe as being expansionary asset capitalism.

For what its worth these are my views, which I sense in some ways mesh with much of what's already been posted on this thread. I'd apologize here both for the various shortcomings, and for the length, of their expression.


regards,

Backstop

[backstop]

Hawkcreek - your very welcome to it -

I think insight like that can only be a Common resource.

regards,

Backstop

[cthulhu]

Backstop$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')eyond those exchanges, if someone had a bad year with drought or lost his cattle to bandits, it was a matter of honour that everyone well off would chip in to get him back on his feet, with no question of recompense later. . . An axiom of the tribe was,

"The poor man shames us all."