Don’t Bother. You’re All Doomed Anyway
Just in case any of you were having too pleasant of a week, allow me to come along and just drag you down into a bottomless pit of despair.
I’ve taken some time for reflection over these past few days on the subject of change. And no, I don’t mean the campaign slogan of the last presidential campaign. I refer, instead, to what seems to be the presiding theme of the history of our world, both in terms of the global environment over billions of years and the evolution of human society over, at best, a few hundred thousand.
In terms of the ecosystem, I think there is a tendency for us to take for granted the unbelievably favorable, temperate climate we have enjoyed over the past couple of hundred years while America struggled up from a handful of upstart colonies to a global superpower. Yes, there have been some highs and lows, but the weather has generally been about as favorable as you could realistically imagine. In times past, we know for a fact that fluctuations have created serious problems. Miniature ice ages have caused wide spread famine. Hot spells and broad droughts have pushed us toward staggering death tolls. Looking back further, the globe has frozen over, covered with glaciers, and heated up to sauna-like conditions.
And please take note… I’m not even talking about anthropogenic global warming here, no matter how you feel about that theory. These are just the natural fluctuations which have taken place in our complex biosphere. If there were not one sentient being on the face of the planet capable of banging two rocks together to start a fire, change would still come. It always does. To think that we’re going to go on enjoying the mild, benevolent conditions we’ve seen this past century is foolish. Change is coming. The only question is when. And any change is almost certainly not going to be for the better.
Human society has mimicked the ebb and flow of the climate, and the two are frequently intertwined. Civilizations rise and they fall. Power is accumulated and then it bleeds away, either slowly through decay or catastrophically through revolt and conquest. And the one thing these transitions most often have in common is that the fall almost always begins from within, not from outside aggression. Rome ruled the world once, but it came crashing down in time. It wasn’t the barbarians at the gate who threw down the empire. They merely picked off pieces of the carcass when it was already rotting. It fell from within through decay, abuse and corruption. Bread and circuses only last for just so long, and it’s the people who are the problem, not the theory of government.
Every effort of humankind at long term civil stability seems to be created with the seeds of failure baked into the cake. And this is a curious thing, given how many different forms of government we’ve attempted over the course of recorded history. When you stop to think about it, nearly all forms of government look pretty good at first glance. (And this is the portion of the column that will enrage my conservative friends, but bear with me if you will.) Even communism, that government theory most hated by lovers of democracy, looks fairly appealing in the advertising brochures. A society where everyone works as hard as they can and the general prosperity is assured for all? What’s not to like? But as sure as the sun rises, sooner or later one of the pigs comes up with the idea that yes, all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others. And then, before you can say Snowball, the barn is in flames and the windmill is a pile of rubble in the field.
Even an absolute tyranny can work out fine for everyone, but only if you find a tyrant who is a true benevolent despot who channels all of their energy and resources into the benefit of the masses. The problem, of course, is that you so rarely find two benevolent despots in a row.
Monarchies can and have worked out over long periods of time, but only as long as the serfs have fairly tolerable lives. Then, your monarch winds up vacuuming too much wealth out of the base to fund his wars and castles and crowns and fancy balls. Before you know it a mob has shown up with pitchforks and torches, shoving a Magna Carta under your nose to sign, either in ink or your own blood.
So why should we be so confident that this great American experiment of ours – this democratic republic – should last forever? Sure, in the early days when everyone was struggling and there wasn’t much wealth to go around, we could all pull on the same oars. But once you get a long term dose of prosperity, power and wealth begin to accumulate in specific places as they always do. The government moves from a system of powerful independent states to an increasingly controlling federal base of control. In the private sector which makes up so much of the system, vast wealth accumulates in the hands of a very rich and powerful few and the middle class feels increasingly squeezed out. Sooner or later the ones who wind up in the bottom 95% being to grow disgruntled. It’s the same old pattern, just with new name tags stuck on the lapels.
These things, both globally and socially, seem to have a habit of repeating. So there you have it. The climate is going to go to hell no matter what sort of cap and tax scheme you impose. Nations will go to war, not over oil or gold, but over water and the last scraps of grain coming from the remaining bits of arable land. And the social fabric will start looking more appealing to the wolves than the sheep. In short, we’re all doomed.
Happy Tuesday. We’ll be back tomorrow with an examination of why all your children will grow up to hate you.
36 Responses to “Don’t Bother. You’re All Doomed Anyway”
Past weather fluctuations were all caused by Bush/Cheney, so at least we won't have to worry about that once we eliminate global warming by outlawing electricity.
Yes, change is coming, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Yes, Rome fell, but Italy is alive. There will still be Greeks in Greece even if their country defaults. The Brits have managed to find their way throughut the centuries. The US will lose its dominance, but there will still be Americans in America.
66% of the gas price in Germany is tax. It won't be outlawed, just taxed out of existance
Oddly enough….traffic in my current city is just as bad as Los Angeles. You can't social engineer Germans out of their cars.
“But, not yet. Not yet”. – 'Gladiator'
Huh I was just talking about this in another thread. It's called eternal recurrence:
“Nietzsche calls the idea “horrifying and paralyzing”, and says that its burden is the “heaviest weight” (“das schwerste Gewicht”) imaginable.”
I couldn't agree more about the favorable environment point, I believe that we are way over carrying capacity if we go back to even a “typical” environment. The other point I'd like to mention is that failure is a result of success, not in spite of success. What you are referring to is known in systems theory as “over optimization.” That is the propensity for humans (well life in general) to get good results doing something, and so we increasingly do it and become mroe and more dependent and get more and more success…until we have squeezed all the tolerances out of the system and any minor change leads to major negative outcomes. This is what I was talking about on the political level with the Bunning thing (although “success” is definitely a relative measure haha). It is also what we are facing with trying to get off fossil fuels, or the fact that so many people live in areas that typically have been underwater or confronted with major hurricanes and earthquakes frequently. A systems' theorist would say that if you want stability then you should allow for tolerances in the system, meaning a certain (and relatively high) level of inherent inefficiency.
“Huh I was just talking about this in another thread.”
Yeah, I read this and thought TMV was trying to warp my mind.
Good article. For once I feel good about being old, in that I won't live to see many of these changes you are predicting. Thanks for cheering me up.
Yeah uh that happens to me…a lot. There is the concept of a zeitgeist or what Carl Jung calls synchronicity, the point of both is that there is cultural information and “thought” that occurs on a systemic level, and people that seem disconnected will have the same idea or product or art at around the same time due to being plugged into society. I tend to be pretty plugged into the zeitgeist to the point that at least once a month I will have an epiphany and start going on to a friend or relative about it and then within a week it will suddenly be all over the media, only to fade back into obscurity once again. My uncle jokes that I'm like the main character in Pi since it's almost like I see the underlying “mathematics” of the world. Of course it is starting to drive me kind of insane, and I don't want to be like the guy in Pi and have to drill a hole in the cognitive part of his brain…so I've strongly considered stopping paying attention to the news and reading blogs and such. That might be TMI, but just take that feeling you have and imagine it happen constantly and that is basically my life and the people that are dumb enough to talk to me on a daily basis.
The “climate change” fad is the biggest of our apocalyptic 1960s-onward “crises,” that has lasted a long time and become extensive, as are the goals of the zealots. (Bad goals for us, no matter how truly good some of the proponents may actually, perversely, believe them to be.) Whatever happens to the climate and to our environment from pollution, realistically we should be able to deal with it. No need to be crazy.
Challenges to come and tough times to come? Yep. Not only with aging and a growing burden from our governments, but with resource challenges. The Southwest will need more water. The Southeast (“the South”) will, too, as many people in the Northeast and Midwest relocate to the Southeast. There will be a need for more electrical power production. Conservation alone cannot solve the need for more power.
There is still room for progress. With transportation, we could and should raise road travel speeds to the practical limit, of absolute safety or energy inefficiency relative to air travel, or around 120-125 miles per hour, making highway travel more productive than ever before, and enabling road trips few of us attempt at today's lower speeds. (A nearer-term practical improvement is to remove all bottlenecks, including all toll booths and other backward-culture obstructions on the roads, to permit all Interstates to be traveled at 80 miles per hour.) Where high-speed rail eventually makes sense (regional, bearing in mind shifts of population south and west and growth in later years with Baby Boomer retirements), speeds could be raised up to a practical likely service speed limit, approaching the onset of compressibility while trains operate in “ground effect” (somewhere around 250-300+ miles per hour).
I regret we won't proceed beyond these challenges, and we may not have the capability and the willingness to make the nation better and correct deficiencies elsewhere, such as in our system of government, modernizing it, rationalizing and revising the system of states and possibly regions, and relocating our federal capital to the physical center area of the nation where it belongs, near the future mean center of population and in some other signification location (between East and West, between northern and southern states). (That location would be Oklahoma City based on 2000 Census data and projecting population shifts to the year 2100; it will be interesting to review changes from the 2010 Census.)
“You’re All Doomed Anyway”–not me, I still have access to the bomb shelter the old man had carved into the bedrock the last time you went down this path.
But incentives do matter. Germany doesn't have the urban sprawl we have, because gas prices are high.
on what authority or expertise do you make this declaration?
Yes, I went from a normal day, to making profound life experience connections that will have my face buried in books for months. The problem for me and these moments is this almost dirty feeling of not knowing enough to honestly evaluate what is going on in my head. What Jung calls zeitgeist is similar to what was taught at an organization I was involved with The Self Realization Fellowship. I was not a member, but I took in a lot…learned a lot. Toss in eternal recurrence, combined with a firm belief that all things in life are circular….and I need a nap.
Urban sprawl is a problem here too, but I agree, incentives do matter. Germany is an interesting place. It is hard to get urban sprawl in a country where it is a tradition to build a home, plant a tree, and live their forever. People just aren't very mobile.
It's also a lot smaller, which would probably limit the amount of urban sprawl. What about the Ruhrgebiet?
Yikes, talk about a warping of the mind. Have you ever read Limits to Growth? Its written by the same author that both DLS and mikkel have linked to in separate threads. At some point, we just aren't going to be able to grow anymore.
I don't know if there's something in the tea or the coffee or whatever, but it seems like TMV is turning into some strange mini series where discussions on one thread blend into those on another thread. I guess its time for a refill
I read the book reviews. I might pick it up more for my wife than myself. Her field of research deals with stem cell systems.
And another thing that was freaky is that my wife was seriously into Nietzsche all throughout college.
“realistically we should be able to deal with it”
…
“what authority or expertise”
History to date, among other things (not including leftist hype and hysteria). History alone is sufficient here.
The real questions belong leveled at the hystericists. They don't have the right to throw their misused precautionary principle away, or invert it, and insist we must rush to behave stupidly (which is what the rapid decarbonization and the rest of their agenda constitutes, if we keep it kind).
that's neither authority nor expertise. merely vague hearsay.
although, i suppose i shouldn't be surprised. you've just accuse people of insisting we rush to behave stupidly. i'm pretty sure no one is advocating acting stupidly. now, you can describe what they want to do as stupid. your argument seems to be based on pejorative word salad.
“At some point, we just aren't going to be able to grow anymore.”
Spaceship Earth is finite. (Is that scary for some of you to see?)
“you've just accuse people of insisting we rush to behave stupidly”
Do you seriously believe the demands related to Kyoto and Copenhagen?
Enough, already.
Not to divert your attention, DLS, but since you recommended a book earlier (that I ended up checking out today) I was just curious if you have had a chance to read the one I recommended to shannonlee by the same author. I have not, but am seriously considering it (one at a time is usually my max).
And given the “upbeat” nature of the original post, I heard an excerpt from Howard Bloom on a song called New World by the band Leggo Beast. For the full thing, you can go here. Its only a few paragraphs, but I'm not even sure how I would excerpt it. I don't really know who the guy is, but he seems to be an optimist.
“Her statement that goals that optimize subsystems will sub optimize the functioning of the total system, is truly profound”
I'm still trying to deconstruct that one, so I'll just quote what mikkel said in the other thread:
The bolded part is an example of a completely counterintuitive statement that completely changes your thinking once you've grasped its implications.
i don't really care. and it has nothing to do with the efficacy of your argument.
yes. please. enough with the shitty arguments.
“I was just curious if you have had a chance to read the one I recommended to shannonlee by the same author. I have not”
Have I read “Limits to Growth”? No. I'm familiar with the Club of Rome and with how this was hyped (in the same familiar “crisis” and scare-mongering fashion that began with the “population explosion” scare). I have seen a critical treatment of it (“Models of Doom”), that claims the Limits work is flawed. I may be tempted to review Limits after I read the book I recently bought. Who knows; I may end up reading that “30 year update” version of Limits as well. (I wonder how much that newer work is tainted by the “climate change” giga-fad.)
“enough with the shitty arguments”
The UN may have gotten the message with the IPCC.
[chuckle]
I still want to see what you think because as I've pointed out whenever you bring it up, the actual Club of Rome stuff was concerned about 2030 and beyond and although I need to read the specifics (and critiques) I don't see anything wrong with their general concerns since we have continued on the path that they were afraid of.
Well, this is a wintery post.
Take care of yourself, Jazz.
1. “I still want to see what you think.”
I looked at the book for a short time last night (was impressed by some insights in it) and I plan to look at it in more detail later this evening as well as tomorrow evening.
2. If you like systems, aside from the Budyko book if you can get hold of it (“Global Ecology,” Progress Publishers, the good old Cold War Moscow source), the still-classic work on global warming by Flohn (quoted in other works like John Gribbin's book “Greenhouse Earth”) is a gem and the institute where he did this may be of interest to you.
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/
(Here's to mesoscalar thinking!)
For once I feel good about being old, “
Ditto. Best comment for a Tuesday. Five meows for you.
I still have access to the bomb shelter”
How does that work with a glacier over your head? LOL
i'm pretty sure no one is advocating acting stupidly. “
I guess you missed three hours of the “Bachelor” last night. Forget Nietzsche and Jung, it's all over.
Okay, now I'm jealous.
My bomb shelter will be under water due to global warming.
“what you think”
First impressions — start of book begins a bit clumsy, and lightweight or fluffy. It gets better, though. With systems you're talking about generalities, anyway, and that's probably a risk any systems book may take. It's got a lefty nature to it (quips here and there)– nothing really interfering with the subject. It has a number of real-world cases as illustrations of what she's trying to explain. The one noteworthy observation I had in scooting through the book were feedback and other effect diagrams that sometimes featured oscillations. (It makes me think of helicopter aviation and oscillations with the flight controls, in some instances being naturally unstable versus stable, increasing versus decreasing oscillations. When I saw the oscillations diagrammed on some pages in this book, I thought of the helicopter and my mind went, “click!” Certainly we wish to avoid inducing any effects that result in instability to the environment. [Click] Has political and economic applications, as she notes, too…) You'll love the basic diagrams featuring the “plumbing” with stocks and flows.
To the extent that the impression I have is negative I have to say it's due to the reader's newness to the book and his deficiency.
@NewCat–this old cat agrees–makes me feel glad to be 75 years old.
It's not only age that makes me philosphical about this. Something that impressed on me the human fate is this: our satellite technology has made us able to find the sites of great, long forgotten, never imagined, cities and centers of commerce in Africa. Nothing is totally lost. Or, as G. M Hopkins wrote, “And for all this, nature is never spent.”