[Ibon]

Self reflection on over 40 years of engaging on the topic of the human juggernaut and the forces moving forward? I was definitely quite reductionist with the topic of peak oil some 20 years back seeing that the carrying capacity of a species is all about energy flows and since fossil fuels enabled the bloom of humans its depletion would be the agar in the petri dish being spent. Overlooking so many other factors as to be singularly blinded. Conclusion? We live in a complex world and when you combine physical boundaries with human stupidity and ingenuity well good luck in predicting anything!

One of the biggest fallacies I held on to 20 years ago was the catalyst of consequences and that since we were not able to rationally engineer optimal mitigations to macro systemic issues then consequences would force us against our will to do so and consequences would thus bring us together and move us toward rational transitions. What a fallacy that was? Haha. It is actually the opposite. In the face of pandemics or climate change or threats to the status quo or threats to imperial dominance the reaction is a dumbing down and return to white nationalism, racism and xenophobia or energy stupidity like watching China move forward scaling up renewables while the response of US energy strategy has been? Doubling down on fossil fuels. So the catalyst of consequences is actually functioning but a catalyst toward making us more stubborn to hold on to the unsustainable rather than wisdom to transition. I miscalculated severely this point. In hind site though it seems obvious just look at who the American citizens have chosen as their leader with a the dead slogan that he can make America great again going back to white supremacy.

The internet empowering individuals was the early utopian promise. What a joke as again it has done the opposite. Becoming a conduit that herds us all like sheep into making us dependent and susceptible to algorithms that dumb us down. There is more enlightenment to be found in a 19th century one room country school house than what you see today on the internet.

The promise of AI ? Is anyone naïve enough to see this as anything else but an externality that will only dumb down humans further? Homogenize us further? Corral us together down a more powerful conduit of enslavement. While the tech bros abandon going to Mars in favor of being feudal overloads.

What’s going on with this peakoil.com site anyway? It seems to be inhabited with two or three posters who got stuck years ago in some internal narrative loop that they can’t escape from? Why aren’t their mothers or girlfriends or wives slapping them? Or maybe they left….

When I left posting on this site years ago I also left behind engagement with the topic at large. Retreating somewhat in my focus to where I have some expertise. Ecology and immersing myself in a new bio region the cloud forests of Mesoamerica. I share that knowledge with others and that brings joy of sorts. In my private musings I still ask the big questions of macro systemics of the fate of humanity and human overshoot? I still do follow Nate Hagens who started as a financial advisor and moved into ecology, was a major poster on the Oil Drum years ago and today has a podcast called the Great Simplification. He is smart and multidimensional combining finance, ecology, science and metaphysics. Shares most of my world view.

But I don’t orbit around these topics like I used to. I am much more focused on our project in Panama, the guests that come up here, the local community, growing specialty coffee. Immediate organic sphere of influence that I can manage. Panama doesn’t have private equity destroying small family owned business. The country has too small a population to become corporatized. And that hints at one of my current foundational conclusions regarding the USA, the country of my birth. Split it up into several autonomous nations. Would be great for US citizens and the world at large. This way the monkey of a dying imperialism can get off the back of every American and channel resources locally.

Whenever I do feel inspired to share macro systemic forces like human overshoot or resource depletion with guests I quickly see the glaze coming over their eyes so I change the subject. This is a deep irony we would not have predicted years ago. 40 years ago when information was limited to newspapers and a few TV stations and there was due diligence of sorts in what information was available (yes at times biased) people were not overwhelmed with all the flood of information uncensored like we have today. Or worse the algorithms that feed us the information and the manipulations behind this. 40 years ago you could discuss systemic macro topics and folks could engage better because the signal to noise ratio was stronger. Today every conspiracy theory finds its way mixed in with rational science and your average joe or even your intelligent bird watcher coming to Mount Totumas cannot navigate this. Yeah probably by design by those evil elites amassing all the wealth as we become serfs to the techno wizards. Bla bla bla

So you blow a fuse and move on. That is what I have done. A lot happier for having broken out of the reductionist peak oil doom loop.

I am almost 70, becoming obsolete, a younger generation emerging with a whole new set of interests and priorities. Reality churning over defying most of our predictions. As it should be.

Newfie, I had robotic prostate surgery this year, my PSA is now back to 0.00, I have regained my continence and recovered well except for an inability to get it up….. maybe that will come back but I am not fretting over it……… I take that as a metaphor of our macro systemic short comings since as a species we can’t get it up anymore…. ! I have not lost my sense of humor including self deprecation.

I got through this whole msg without a single curse word. Isn’t that fxxking amazing!

[mousepad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'r')eturn to white nationalism, racism and xenophobia

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', ' ')Conclusion? We live in a complex world and when you combine physical boundaries with human stupidity and ingenuity well good luck in predicting anything!

[Newfie]

Ibon,

Glad to see you are still around. The health issues are a bummer but it sounds like you got adequate treatment. The Wife and I have also had brushes with medical stuff over the past few years Se are fine but clearly this won’t last forever.

Your post above touches on some common topics for myself also. I comfort myself by knowing that Malthus had the right of it except he underestimated human ability to postpone the inevitable. People think the fertilizer “green revolution” proved him wrong, it. Did not in the grand scale.

The guys who laid the foundation for “Global Footprint” have talked pretty clearly about how things are unfolding. How Earth has finite energy inputs and how the resources we draw from are finite. It is the same story as Malthus, we are cleaver about delaying. The problem is the delay just makes the eventual crash worse.

I tried starting a thread here about “Degrowth” but it never really got legs, i think because it is so very difficult to comprehend. The spell checker just reminded me that “degrowth” is such a little used word it is not in the standard dictionary.

I follow Peter Zeihan a bit and find him quite good. He goes on about how our future demographics will be pretty ugly for the Capitalist crowd, how growth will suffer. More importantly he briefly mentions that while something sill eventually follow the eternal growth myth we don’t what it will be.

For centuries, before the industrial revolution we lived in a pretty static world. During the middle ages we lived in a static world, and the Black Death made it a degrowth time. So perhaps that is what we will revert to; feudalism. Trump seems to be pushing in that direction.

I would not be too hard on myself for making mistakes. They were hopeful mistakes looking for a better world. At least you kept the flame alive, and sometimes that is quite significant.

[Tuike]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'T')he internet empowering individuals was the early utopian promise. What a joke as again it has done the opposite. Becoming a conduit that herds us all like sheep into making us dependent and susceptible to algorithms that dumb us down. There is more enlightenment to be found in a 19th century one room country school house than what you see today on the internet.