[PenultimateManStanding]

A simple life would seem viable for those who were born into it. But not for us. There is no going back for us. We are parts of a whole and have recieved from the past how to function within our collective arrangements. How much do any of us know about how to function in the world of 1905, let alone the African existence you mention. The degree of complexity that we all live in as individuals is a one-way street.

[bart]

I agree, Ailricson, a low energy future will cause a paradigm shift like the one you suggest:

1. Extreme mobility will come to an end. No more flying to Paris for a weekend shopping trip. A trip to Europe will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and only a minority will be able to afford even that. Most people will lead their lives in an area with a radius of 50 miles.

2. Global trade will shrink to a trickle. Most goods will be used where they are produced.

3.Disposable goods, unnecessary packaging and planned obsolescence will appear as insane to later generations.

4.Suburbia and commuting will be seen as a 20th century mass delusion.

5. Ideas and attitudes will change more quickly than we can imagine.

We're not just going back to 1905, PenultimateManStanding, we're going back to 1805! However, if we are smart, we will retain the learning and inventions (like the Internet) from the Age of Fossil Fuels.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Paradigm is a trendy pseudo scientific word which really just means a model. It doesn't seem mean anything the way you are using it, Ric. Bart, how are we going to to go back to 1805? What do any of us know about life in those times? The people of 1805 had their reality handed down to them from previous generations. What we have had handed to us from previous generations won't help us much to get through what lies ahead and we can't go back to the old ways which we know nothing about.

[Dromescape]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A') simple life would seem viable for those who were born into it. But not for us. There is no going back for us.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dromescape', 'P')ossible that there is only the "Now".

[SilverHair]

It is was so much easier to change from the old way to the new way while we were marching up the positive side of the oil age exponential curve. It will be so much harder to learn the new way demanded by the move down the negative side of this exponential curve (or should I say collapse of this exponential curve). On the way up we had excess energy to make the learning easier; on the way down we will have a deficit of energy.

We know where we must end up, i.e., in balance with nature absent the stored hydrocarbons. Hopefully we will be able to salvage a little from the understanding of the world gained during this period of opulence that can make life a little easier than the time period in the past equal in energy consumption to where we end up.

Market crashes from exponential curves are always nasty. The collapses of other species out of balance with their environment have always been nasty. No logical conclusion would make our collapse any less nasty.

I think it is so bizarre that many of us alive today will be here when we shift directions. Of all the human beings that have inhabited this earth, what fraction has had the privilege of living at the peak of human civilization? What good luck to have lived this life, even considering the bleak future post peak.

[bart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'B')art, how are we going to to go back to 1805? What do any of us know about life in those times? The people of 1805 had their reality handed down to them from previous generations. What we have had handed to us from previous generations won't help us much to get through what lies ahead and we can't go back to the old ways which we know nothing about.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ailrickson', 'W')hat is the paradigm that the average human will have once we reach this stage? What are the changes necessary in our current paradigm in order to reach it.

[Dromescape]

A blip indeed. Or maybe a buzz.

Quoted from http://ranprieur.com/essays/saveearth.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')9. Save human knowledge. When people of this age think about knowledge worth saving, they usually think about belief in the Cartesian mechanical philosophy, that dead matter is the basis of reality, and about techniques for rebuilding and using machines that dominate and separate us from other life. I'd like that knowledge to die forever, but I don't think it works that way. Humans or any other hyper-malleable animal will always be tempted by the Black Arts, by techniques that trade subtle harm for flashy good and feed back into themselves, seducing us into power, corruption, and blindness.

Our descendants will need the intellectual artifacts to avoid this -- artifacts we have barely started to develop even as the Great Bad Example begins to fall. In 200 years, when they are brushing seeds into baskets with their fingers, and a stranger appears with a new threshing machine that will do the same thing with less time and effort, they will need to say something smarter than "the Gods forbid it" or "that is not our Way." They will need the knowledge to say something like:

"Your machine requires the seed to be planted alone and not interspersed with perennials that maintain nitrogen and mineral balance in the soil. And from where will the metal come, and how many trees must be cut down and burned to melt and shape it? And since we cannot build the machine, shall we be dependent on the machine-builders, and give them a portion of our food, which we now keep all for ourselves? Do you not know, clever stranger, that when any biomass is removed from the land, and not recycled back into it, the soil is weakened? And what could we do with our "saved" time, that would be more valuable and pleasurable than gathering the seed by hand, touching and knowing every stalk and every inch of the land that feeds us? Shall we become allies of cold metal that cuts without feeling, turning our hands and eyes to the study of machines and numbers until, severed from the Earth, we nearly destroy it as our ancestors did, making depleted uranium and polychlorinated biphenyls and cadmium batteries that even now make the old cities unfit for living? Go back to your people, and tell them, if they come to conquer us with their machines, we will fight them in ways the Arawaks and Seminoles and Lakota and Hopi and Nez Perce never imagined, because we understand your world better than you do yourself. Tell your people to come to learn."

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dromescape', '
') They will need the knowledge to say something like:

"Your machine requires the seed to be planted alone and not interspersed with perennials that maintain nitrogen and mineral balance...

(Civilization will eat itself)

[Woodchuck]

Maybe the paradigm shift can be something like "outer" to "inner".

Maybe most people at a certain point (sometime after PO) will look around and say to themselves:

"I've been lied to, and I've been lying to myself. There is no more oil for me. There is no more job for me. There is no more community for me. I don't seem to matter anymore. It seems that I am just another competitor in a gigantic competition for attention. I don't have much fun. I don't care about things that I used to care about. I don't like this place anymore. I want something better."

"But I know deep down inside that I do matter. I know deep down inside that I can do good things, and see beauty in myself and things around me. I know deep down inside that I can make things a little better, and that place is right here, right now. I have a lot to do, and I want to do it. I want to do it in my own way, in my own time. I know deep down inside that I can succeed, if I believe in myself. I do believe in myself"

[PenultimateManStanding]

Here is a classic example of a paradigm shift: Prior to the 1970's geologists had a working model of the Earth's structure which featured things called 'Miogeosynclines' and 'Eugeosyclines.' It was actually rather confusing to me as an undergraduate studying Earth Science. It (the old paradigm) got tossed as a result of some amazing studies of geomagnetic reversal patterns around the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There have been other famous examples of one model of reality supplanted by another one greatly different. If we are to use this word to mean more than mere 'changes of attitude' in a broader context than just scientific models then it would seem to imply a question such as this: How will modern humans at large react when they find out the real mess we're in? When the true situation is revealed to the masses? Or perhaps this 'paradigm' shift' issue could be more narrowly defined to mean: how in fact will we roll up our sleaves and 'fix' the problem? That's the problem with fuzzy, inept use of language: it muddies things up and makes real thinking seem hopeless or pointless. George Orwell taught us that.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'T')here have been other famous examples of one model of reality supplanted by another one greatly different. If we are to use this word to mean more than mere 'changes of attitude' in a broader context than just scientific models then it would seem to imply a question such as this: How will modern humans at large react when they find out the real mess we're in?. When the true situation is revealed to the masses?

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

yes, there must be a change in the current trend of thinking. However, the self-absorbed attitudes have become so ingrained in so many people are so diverse and in both big an little ways that even the most aware of us are hard pressed to identify.

IT will I think take something as drastic as the SHTF to change it. People know on some level they should care about others, that they shouldn't be self-centered, but they WILL have to be forced. Without the threat of loosing their own lives unless they start banding together for mutual benefit, nothing will change.

this is one thing that might be a benefit of PO. it will be hard for ALL of us. I don't like being dependant upon others, I wasn't raised that way. Now, we may all be fooling ourselves with this idea of independant homesteads. that may prove to be impossible in the new future. we may have to truly become communities again.

if given the choice to be a community working for the best of all in a focused manor or be lead by some mayor/feudal lord, would we choose the community (or what is in all our best interests) before it was too late and were left as pesants again?

[PenultimateManStanding]

I tried, believe me, I tried. English Language: RIP! (Maybe its a French plot to avenge the loss of North America. Stick that in your 'paradigm" and smoke it)

[PenultimateManStanding]

Down on Beale Street everything's fine
All them cats is drinkin' that wine
Now you gotta nickle
I got PARADIGMS
Let's get together
And buy some wine!

[MonteQuest]

Ailrickson,

There is already a thread on this. In the future, please do a site search before starting a new thread on a subject that has already been posted on. Add to that existing thread rather than start a new one. As the site grows, this gets to be a big issue.

Thanks!

MQ

World Views; How did we get in this mess?
http://peakoil.com/fortopic2444.html

[PenultimateManStanding]

Just got back a while ago from working all day. I have some other things I want to say about the issue raised by the sloppy use of the word 'paradigm'. This doesn't relate so much to the puge (whatever that means) as it does to the sad state of our language. I went to an Education College here in San Diego. I can tell you that I was both shocked and depressed by the phenomenon of empty verbiage. People unsure of their own intellectual appraisal of reality will attach themselves to words as if these words had magical powers. Other people, equally unsure about anything, search the horizon for a WORD to cling to. POWER is ascribed to these magic words and people rally around them. This is an example of primative thought. We see it all around us in the world and we have it right here in this weird cult-like forum. I like it here, though, or I would bother you with what I think.

[bart]

I think I've got to support Ailrickson about "paradigm," even though I think I would have used a different word, for the same reason PenultimateManStanding dislikes it. Perhaps "worldview," "world outlook," or to be classy, "Weltanschaung."

The web definitions of the word (via Google) are in line with with Ailrickson is getting at. For example: $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') a general agreement of belief of how the world works; what could be called ``common sense''.

A set of beliefs that defines the ways in which we think and act. Paradigms categorize information as a way of compressing it; however, information which does not fit the paradigm is usually ignored.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Thank you Bart for responding. I'm relying on my educational background and what the dictionary says. I think the general problem I refer to is real. If otheres disagree, then so be it.