[Carlhole]

Doomer-Author, James Howard Kunstler's, A World Made By Hand paints a bleak picture of post-peak America, circa 2025.

The American government is useless and exists as hardly more than a rumor in the novel. Broad American society has died. Violent anarchy, disease, atrocities, widespread death is prologue to the beginning of Kunstler's tale. A barter economy in the town prevails.

The exhausted people in Kustler's novel have been limping along by improvising, tending their gardens and trading whatever they can for useful materials from the town dump which is savenged by a former biker gang. The biker gang is beginning to grow powerful and has begun to terrorize the town's citizens.

Closeby, a feudal feifdom, surrounding the person of the town's former mayor, has been reasonably successful but it tends to ignore the struggling townspeople who have not sworn alliegiance as vassals to the feudal lord mayor.

A large, fundamentalist religious commune has arrived in town from a strife-torn Virginia. The commune, lead by its charismatic and Bible-literalist leader, eventually does battle with the former bikers, destroys them, and takes over the dump. The novel ends before we see any conflict or synthesis between the religious commune and the feudal feifdom. However, at the end of the novel, the strong men leading each group seem cooperative and friendly.

So, according to Kunstler, religious communism, feudal systems, or gangs will surplant those American traditions which have defined our culture. Individual initiative is worthless, for example. Innovation is dead. There is no democracy. No science. No engineering.

During one episode in the novel, the protagonist visits the State Capitol and actually finds the governor (!) still getting dressed up in a suit everyday and going to his office in a crumbling and decrepit State Office Building and doing nothing all day except delusionally pretending to do the work of the dead and ineffectual state government. Kunstler uses the example of the governor as a pathetic, insane case like the character of Miss Haversham in Dicken's novel "Great Expectations"

(Miss Haversham was the jilted bride who continued to wear her wedding dress well into her old age. She never cleared away the food and settings from her wedding day. And lived in insane squalor expecting her groom to reappear any moment until she burned to death in a fire).

James Howard Kunstler is a doomer who does not believe in America. He does not miss an opportunity to denigrate American culture or institutions in his Doomer novel.

[allenwrench]

Or don't you believe in America?


My beliefs have everything to do with 'what is' and are not based on wishful thinking. or blind patriotism.

When we are all 'yes men' we will get what we deserve.



We're doing something near to impossible, which is to predict the future. Tons of IF's, AND's and BUT's that could happen. We just don't know.

As futurists we try to anticipate future events and the direction the world is headed in and as survivalists we try to prepare for those circumstances.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('allenwrench', '[')i]Or don't you believe in America?


My beliefs have everything to do with 'what is' and are not based on wishful thinking. or blind patriotism.

We're doing something near to impossible, which is to predict the future. Tons of IF's, AND's and BUT's that could happen. We just don't know.

As futurists we try to anticipate future events and the direction the world is headed in and as survivalists we try to prepare for those circumstances.

[StuckInPhilly]

Even Kunstler says that his book is one of the possible outcomes and much depends upon what happens and how people react to it.

It seems that your "belief in America" is just that - a leap of faith not based so much on actual facts as a desire to think that everything will be alright.

Other countries recognize PO and have task forces and studies, we have a few cities that realize what's going on and not much else.

I do have a great deal of respect for science and it's abilities, but it too is hampered by reality. You don't get those wonderful new inventions if they cost too much money to study or make.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('StuckInPhilly', '.')..your "belief in America" is just that - a leap of faith not based so much on actual facts as a desire to think that everything will be alright.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('StuckInPhilly', '.')..your "belief in America" is just that - a leap of faith not based so much on actual facts as a desire to think that everything will be alright.

[BlisteredWhippet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '
')There is nothing innovative about a forge. That's 18th century technology.

Articles like this one, have repeated endlessly that people must return to village life or tribal life. In other words, this vision rejects the great majority of great American innovations of the 20th century.

This kind of Doomer vision counts as completely foregone the sort of continuing innovative thrust that American culture could possibly manifest in the approaching era of declining fossil fuels.

[Carlhole]

...sounds to me like BlisteredWhippet does NOT believe in America.

[Snowrunner]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '.')..sounds to me like BlisteredWhippet does NOT believe in America.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BlisteredWhippet', 'W')hat I'm trying to say to you, and spray it, is this: After 3,000 posts, you need to start improving the content, or the quality of your posts, or we're going to have to have certain important people drop your "Carl-Hole" brand name down a bottomless gutter.

[Narz]

Nothing lasts forever baby.

Why not take the best of what America represents & discard the rest? When libertarians start talking about a "return to the glory days" I have to check out to avoid wanting to wring their necks (a futile emotion for the most part, especially from behind a computer screen). The doomers have one thing right, a return to our "glory days" is as impossible as a return to the era of the megafauna (though who knows, perhaps a glorious "techno-fix", to quote the doomers, can bring them back ).

Fun thread, btw, thanks carlhole.

[Narz]

Carlhole doesn't believe in his own thread!

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'C')arlhole doesn't believe in his own thread!

[firefly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '
')
I have a high respect for Science as an institution.

When Doomers peer into the future and speculate, they foresee a complete disintegration of the country.

Doomers don't believe in America!

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('firefly', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '
')
I have a high respect for Science as an institution.

When Doomers peer into the future and speculate, they foresee a complete disintegration of the country.

Doomers don't believe in America!

[Cid_Yama]

I pledge my life to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Those in power in the United States have demonstrated their total diisregard if not animosity towards same.

We have in power in this country enemies to our very core beliefs.

Your premise is wrong. What you are calling doomers are people that recognize that the Constitution is under threat from the very people you pledge your support.

I think that makes <b>you and those like you</b> enemies to the principles we uphold.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'C')arlhole doesn't believe in his own thread!

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', 'I') pledge my life to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Those in power in the United States have demonstrated their total diisregard if not animosity towards same.

We have in power in this country enemies to our very core beliefs.

Your premise is wrong. What you are calling doomers are people that recognize that the Constitution is under threat from the very people you pledge your support.

I think that makes <b>you and those like you</b> enemies to the principles we uphold.

[VMarcHart]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'T')hat's why energy science and technology is so manifestly unpopular around here - because potential solutions or adaptations are deemed ignorant or "cornucopian".

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('VMarcHart', 'Y')ou do understand that every solution, every invention, every new technology created by man brought us closer to over-population, soil depletion, ocean acidation, smog, deforestation, extinction of species, just to name a few, don't you? What's exactly THE science and technology that will really save us and make us more Americans? I know two, but they'll never ever be implemented. Please enlighten me.