Episode 120: C-Realm Podcast Interviews John Michael Greer about his new book
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('C-Realm', 'K')MO welcomes author and Archdruid, John Michael Greer, to the program to discuss his new book The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age and explore the possibility that Peak Oil may play out more like a fall down the stairs than like a plunge from a third floor balcony. Do the worldviews of Peak Oil aficionados, Singularitarians, and Trekkies all spring from the book of Revelations, and are modern visions concerning progress and the human future really just ancient religious myths in secular drag?
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The Long Descent
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The Long Descent
by Carlhole » Fri 19 Sep 2008, 11:21:36
Amazon
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Amazon Reviewer: M. Gorsuch \"The Fool\" (Brooklyn, NY USA)', 'F')rom start to finish, this book is both practical and inspirational. He begins with a clear explanation of our energy predicament, and makes the novel claim that this is not a problem to solve - it is a situation that we must adapt to. Cheap, abundant energy is slowly becoming a thing of the past, and we must make the best of what we have.
The author does an excellent job of disarming two common responses to Peak Oil by bringing their myths to the surface: the myth of progress and the myth of apocalypse. The point is made that allowing one single narrative to rule over your identity is dangerous. Instead, we must look to history to see how past civilizations have fallen and understand that this is a natural process and that we are not exempt. Civilization does not collapse over night - it is better to recognize that it is a gradual stepping down that takes place over the course of a couple hundred years. It won't be great, but it doesn't have to be Armageddon either.
After making sure that the reader is clear on these essential points, Greer then proceeds to offer suggestions as to how we can begin preparing for the gradual downslope. As I think is proper, he makes it very clear that these changes have to originate from the individual. It is too late to expect a government solution to the problem, and only individuals and communities can take action now.
All in all, this is the best book I have read on this topic. It is a sober and sane take on where we certainly seem to be heading.
- Carlhole
Re: The Long Descent
by Heineken » Fri 19 Sep 2008, 12:47:11
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Amazon Reviewer: M. Gorsuch \"The Fool\" (Brooklyn, NY USA)', 'T')he point is made that allowing one single narrative to rule over your identity is dangerous.
But that's exactly what we don't do---not here on PO.com, anyway.
We also talk about global warming, rising food costs, deforestation, erosion, dying oceans, economic madness, etc., etc. It all goes together.
"Actually, humans died out long ago."
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---I & my bro.
---Abused, abandoned hunting dog
"Things have entered a stage where the only change that is possible is for things to get worse."
---I & my bro.
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Re: The Long Descent
by Carlhole » Fri 19 Sep 2008, 12:53:08
Rapture of the Nerds, Not
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Steven Smithy', 'I') can take a joke, even a boring old joke that implies I’m a robot cultist, but it irks me when jokes become a substitute for thinking. There’s always someone in discussions on the topic who uses the comparison to fringe Christian beliefs about the End Days as if it’s some sort of argument, a reason why all the developments postulated by those who do take the singularity seriously will fail to materialize...
...Now, it could be that if there’s a close similarity between the singularity and the rapture, this points at some sort of psychological flaw shared by believers in both, a seductive but irrational attractor of the human mind that sucks people in, with those raised religiously dressing it up in terms of God, and us technologically-oriented atheists imagining a human-made God-substitute. But that image of a shared psychological flaw is itself so seductive that it has distorted people’s view of what the singularity is about into a kind of geek-bible-wielding strawman — singularitarian ideas are assumed to parallel fundamentalist Christian ideas even where they don’t, just because the comparison is apparently so much fun. “Oh, look at those silly nerds, aping the awful fundies without even knowing it!” In this post, I will list some (but not all) ways in which the singularity and rapture resemble each other less than some people think.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Steven Smithy', 'I') can take a joke, even a boring old joke that implies I’m a robot cultist, but it irks me when jokes become a substitute for thinking. There’s always someone in discussions on the topic who uses the comparison to fringe Christian beliefs about the End Days as if it’s some sort of argument, a reason why all the developments postulated by those who do take the singularity seriously will fail to materialize...
...Now, it could be that if there’s a close similarity between the singularity and the rapture, this points at some sort of psychological flaw shared by believers in both, a seductive but irrational attractor of the human mind that sucks people in, with those raised religiously dressing it up in terms of God, and us technologically-oriented atheists imagining a human-made God-substitute. But that image of a shared psychological flaw is itself so seductive that it has distorted people’s view of what the singularity is about into a kind of geek-bible-wielding strawman — singularitarian ideas are assumed to parallel fundamentalist Christian ideas even where they don’t, just because the comparison is apparently so much fun. “Oh, look at those silly nerds, aping the awful fundies without even knowing it!” In this post, I will list some (but not all) ways in which the singularity and rapture resemble each other less than some people think.
I really like KMO's show.
Informed authors on the subjects of Peak Oil (pro/con), The Technological Singularity (pro/con), and the subject of Earth Consciousness/Shamanism (pro/con) are brought on each week to elaborate on their ideas. You get a more in-depth presentation from each person on his/her ideas and you get a balanced treatment of these subjects - the blend of which which creates a very interesting mix indeed.
In Episode 120 with John Michael Greer, there had been some "singularity bashing" so KMO read the above article written by someone who would not have completely agreed with Greer.
It's interesting to point out that Greer himself would not completely agree with the Peak Oil Doom Cult which asserts itself at the fall of a feather here on PO.com. I sort of imagine the doom crowd as crossing its legs and pinching its crotch in anticipation of imminent civilizational collapse. Conversely, Greer thinks this will be a slow, drawn-out process in which humanity slims down dramatically, possibly develops an "eco-technic' society and fails to live up to the cave-dwelling promise of the Olduvai Gorge Theory.
You know, if he is right, and the decline of industrial civilization is a long, drawn out process, I don't see why people consider here so ridiculous to comtemplate things like machine intelligence, aspects of transhumanism, fusion energy, etc. We would still have so many decades in which to see advances. That's a long time to hold your pee, Doomers.
I look at the explosion in population and the technological society we live in as a "blossom" of sorts that will ultimately produce something fundamentally new and game-changing. Blossoms never last forever but they are the seed of something new. The healthy pulse of science and technology is pumping more strongly than ever before. Even of this immensely important trend turns out to be an "S-Curve" rather than a Kurzweilian Law of Accelerating Returns, there will be a fundamental "accomplishment" at the end of it.
Life on Earth has been growing more complex and sophisticated for billenia (if that's a word). I see no reason why the accomplishments of human beings will not contribute to this very long term trend. And even if the souffle of industrial civilization peaks and declines, this knowledge will not be lost. And people will not suddenly stop being curious about what else is possible.
- Carlhole
