JHK
Executive Summary
- Understanding the broken narratives we are telling ourselves about:
- Energy
- The Economy
- Our Education system
- Financial markets
- Western exceptionalism
- And why we will continue to hurdle farther off course until we decide to look at our situation truthfully
If you have not yet read Part 1: Reality-Optional Economics available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
It is in the interest of healthy adults to remain sane, even when the powerful matrix of society is going crazy around them. I don’t think you can overstate the capacity of societies to go crazy. We still marvel at the murderous cruelty of Germany and Russia in the mid-20th century, the sickening slide into industrial barbarism, and the technical proficiency they achieved in pursuit of their lunatic ends. And what provoked those terrible journeys into collective madness? Isn’t it part of the horror that no explanation seems to suffice. They were both losers in the First World War. Boo hoo. Many societies sober up when they lose a war. Both opted for organized mass murder instead. Joseph Stalin summed up Russia’s collective psyche in that period when he said, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The regime that promoted that particular view of the human condition lasted seventy years and then dissipated like a mere bad dream, an extremely fortunate outcome for Russia, and not so easy to account for, either.
And so what of us in this new century, faced with the gravely serious problems of resource scarcity, ecocide, climate uncertainty, demographic stress, cultural breakdown, and financial bedlam? How do we…
On The Fast Track to Crisis
PREVIEWExecutive Summary
- Understanding the broken narratives we are telling ourselves about:
- Energy
- The Economy
- Our Education system
- Financial markets
- Western exceptionalism
- And why we will continue to hurdle farther off course until we decide to look at our situation truthfully
If you have not yet read Part 1: Reality-Optional Economics available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
It is in the interest of healthy adults to remain sane, even when the powerful matrix of society is going crazy around them. I don’t think you can overstate the capacity of societies to go crazy. We still marvel at the murderous cruelty of Germany and Russia in the mid-20th century, the sickening slide into industrial barbarism, and the technical proficiency they achieved in pursuit of their lunatic ends. And what provoked those terrible journeys into collective madness? Isn’t it part of the horror that no explanation seems to suffice. They were both losers in the First World War. Boo hoo. Many societies sober up when they lose a war. Both opted for organized mass murder instead. Joseph Stalin summed up Russia’s collective psyche in that period when he said, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The regime that promoted that particular view of the human condition lasted seventy years and then dissipated like a mere bad dream, an extremely fortunate outcome for Russia, and not so easy to account for, either.
And so what of us in this new century, faced with the gravely serious problems of resource scarcity, ecocide, climate uncertainty, demographic stress, cultural breakdown, and financial bedlam? How do we…
Executive Summary
- A middle ground approach is best at this stage
- While the Deep State is threatened by its own dysfunction, a collapse will not be pretty for citizens
- How not to volunteer for victimhood
- Where hope lies
If you have not yet read The State of the Deep State, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
On general principle, the sort of odious operations represented by the Deep State, including warrantless police actions, immersive surveillance, and even assassination, ought to be opposed by Americans who care about their country and the ongoing project of remaining civilized. The Deep State’s totalitarian tendencies are self-evident. Therefore, “we the people” are obliged to dismantle it as expeditiously as possible, ideally by voting for electoral candidates who vow to work toward that end, but by resistance if that fails. Political actions might include getting rid of all the redundant “security” agencies piggybacked around the CIA since 9/11; voting the Patriot Act out of existence; and introducing legislation to re-define the “personhood” of corporations and their putative “rights” to “free speech” as defined by flinging money at elections.
However, the electoral process, being subject to the depredations and manipulations of the Deep State, may itself be too much a part of the problem at the present time. Resistance, on the other hand, can beat a fast path into the perilous realm of revolution and sedition, inviting punishment by the Deep State. For the moment then, the preferable action probably lies in the middle ground: political persuasion, speaking out against the Deep State. There is simply not enough of this now, especially among serious people in positions of authority. This, by the way, was exactly what turned the nation against the folly of the Vietnam War.
It begs the question: where are the Bobby Kennedys, Gene McCarthys, and William Fullbrights of our time? Where are the visible people of stature willing to take a stand, to put their careers on the line? Not just…
How To Oppose the Deep State
PREVIEWExecutive Summary
- A middle ground approach is best at this stage
- While the Deep State is threatened by its own dysfunction, a collapse will not be pretty for citizens
- How not to volunteer for victimhood
- Where hope lies
If you have not yet read The State of the Deep State, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
On general principle, the sort of odious operations represented by the Deep State, including warrantless police actions, immersive surveillance, and even assassination, ought to be opposed by Americans who care about their country and the ongoing project of remaining civilized. The Deep State’s totalitarian tendencies are self-evident. Therefore, “we the people” are obliged to dismantle it as expeditiously as possible, ideally by voting for electoral candidates who vow to work toward that end, but by resistance if that fails. Political actions might include getting rid of all the redundant “security” agencies piggybacked around the CIA since 9/11; voting the Patriot Act out of existence; and introducing legislation to re-define the “personhood” of corporations and their putative “rights” to “free speech” as defined by flinging money at elections.
However, the electoral process, being subject to the depredations and manipulations of the Deep State, may itself be too much a part of the problem at the present time. Resistance, on the other hand, can beat a fast path into the perilous realm of revolution and sedition, inviting punishment by the Deep State. For the moment then, the preferable action probably lies in the middle ground: political persuasion, speaking out against the Deep State. There is simply not enough of this now, especially among serious people in positions of authority. This, by the way, was exactly what turned the nation against the folly of the Vietnam War.
It begs the question: where are the Bobby Kennedys, Gene McCarthys, and William Fullbrights of our time? Where are the visible people of stature willing to take a stand, to put their careers on the line? Not just…
Executive Summary
- In a future defined by diminished economy, due to depleting resources, what can we expect?
- A return to "old-style" cultural norms looks inevitable for:
- Spirituality
- Trust & Reputation
- Values & Virtues
- Leadership & Order
- Education
- Commerce
- Jobs & Work
If you have not yet read Are You Crazy To Continue Believing In Collapse? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The journey to where we’re going, the transition to the next economy and the society that comes with it, is liable to be harsh and disruptive. Network breakdown will be the order of the day. Money and goods will stop moving. People will lose a lot. They’ll lose property, imagined wealth, comfortable routines, faith in institutions and authorities. In some places they may lose personal security or freedom. Depending on how disorderly politics gets, we may lose family, loved ones, and friends. People will be very unsure of who or what they can depend on. We might expect pervasive desperation, anger, and despair.
One thing I fully expect is…
How Life Will Change
PREVIEWExecutive Summary
- In a future defined by diminished economy, due to depleting resources, what can we expect?
- A return to "old-style" cultural norms looks inevitable for:
- Spirituality
- Trust & Reputation
- Values & Virtues
- Leadership & Order
- Education
- Commerce
- Jobs & Work
If you have not yet read Are You Crazy To Continue Believing In Collapse? available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The journey to where we’re going, the transition to the next economy and the society that comes with it, is liable to be harsh and disruptive. Network breakdown will be the order of the day. Money and goods will stop moving. People will lose a lot. They’ll lose property, imagined wealth, comfortable routines, faith in institutions and authorities. In some places they may lose personal security or freedom. Depending on how disorderly politics gets, we may lose family, loved ones, and friends. People will be very unsure of who or what they can depend on. We might expect pervasive desperation, anger, and despair.
One thing I fully expect is…
Executive Summary
- The case for a regional fracturing of the US
- Why the balance of power will shift from the Federal government to local seats
- How each US region will likely fare during this transition, given their idiosyncrasies
- Why chaos will trump order moving forward
If you have not yet read Part I of The Disenchantment of American Politics, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The last time the USA faced a comparable political convulsion was the decade leading into the Civil War, but this time it will be more complex and confusing and it will have a different ending.
A Preview of What's to Come?
In the 1850s, the dominant Whig party choked to death on its own internal contradictions — mainly its failure to take a coherent position on slavery — and morphed into the Republican Party. The original Democratic Party broke apart into southern and northern factions. All of the doctrinal and legal debates of the day — states’ rights, property rights, et cet. — could not overcome the growing moral revulsion against human bondage. When Lincoln was elected in 1860, seven southern slave states seceded from the Union before his inauguration. The ferocity of the ensuing Civil War — the world’s first industrial-strength slaughterfest — came as a great shock to many who had expected little more than a few symbolic romantic skirmishes on horseback preceding a negotiated settlement.
I believe we are headed now into a breakup of the nation into smaller units, but this time there will be no reconstituting the original USA as in 1865. I realize this is a severe view, but the circumstances we face are more severe than the public seems to imagine. To some degree the coming political rearrangement would appear to be the unfinished business of the 1860s. The old animosities remain, mainly in cultural rather than economic terms. But the real driving force of schism will be catabolic economic collapse expressing itself in scale reduction of all our support systems: food production, energy production, transportation, finance, commerce, and governance. Everything is going to have to get smaller, get more local, and be run differently. Just as political rhetoric failed to contain the revulsion against slavery, all the debates of the Left and Right in our time will not overcome the geophysical limits of energy resource scarcity and its affect on the other major systems of everyday life. Environmental degradation (including climate change) will amplify the journey downward in the viable scale of human operations…
Get Ready For Strange Days
PREVIEWExecutive Summary
- The case for a regional fracturing of the US
- Why the balance of power will shift from the Federal government to local seats
- How each US region will likely fare during this transition, given their idiosyncrasies
- Why chaos will trump order moving forward
If you have not yet read Part I of The Disenchantment of American Politics, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
The last time the USA faced a comparable political convulsion was the decade leading into the Civil War, but this time it will be more complex and confusing and it will have a different ending.
A Preview of What's to Come?
In the 1850s, the dominant Whig party choked to death on its own internal contradictions — mainly its failure to take a coherent position on slavery — and morphed into the Republican Party. The original Democratic Party broke apart into southern and northern factions. All of the doctrinal and legal debates of the day — states’ rights, property rights, et cet. — could not overcome the growing moral revulsion against human bondage. When Lincoln was elected in 1860, seven southern slave states seceded from the Union before his inauguration. The ferocity of the ensuing Civil War — the world’s first industrial-strength slaughterfest — came as a great shock to many who had expected little more than a few symbolic romantic skirmishes on horseback preceding a negotiated settlement.
I believe we are headed now into a breakup of the nation into smaller units, but this time there will be no reconstituting the original USA as in 1865. I realize this is a severe view, but the circumstances we face are more severe than the public seems to imagine. To some degree the coming political rearrangement would appear to be the unfinished business of the 1860s. The old animosities remain, mainly in cultural rather than economic terms. But the real driving force of schism will be catabolic economic collapse expressing itself in scale reduction of all our support systems: food production, energy production, transportation, finance, commerce, and governance. Everything is going to have to get smaller, get more local, and be run differently. Just as political rhetoric failed to contain the revulsion against slavery, all the debates of the Left and Right in our time will not overcome the geophysical limits of energy resource scarcity and its affect on the other major systems of everyday life. Environmental degradation (including climate change) will amplify the journey downward in the viable scale of human operations…
Executive Summary
- 'Smaller' will be the major theme in future development
- The general principles for resilient human settlement
- How redesigning our towns & cities offers liberation from the soul-sucking models we live in today
- What we can leverage from the New Urbanist movement
If you have not yet read (Un)Paving Our Way To Nirvana, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Before I review some of the basic rules and principles for assembling a human habitat worth living in and with some prospects of enduring, a few words about demographic change. The failing suburbs will not drive everybody in them to move to the cities. The big cities of America face equal difficulties with resource and capital scarcity, failing infrastructure that won’t be replaced, and problems as yet off the radar screen such as water safety, public health, food shortages, and social turmoil. The big cities will have to get a lot smaller and that process will take decades to resolve.
I’m convinced that the action in this country will move to the existing smaller cities and small towns, especially places that have a meaningful relationship with food production because there ought to be no question that agri-business will fail, and with it the entire food production and distribution process as we currently know it. One implication of this is that we will restore a visible edge between what is urban and what is rural, and what these places are for. As that occurs people will redevelop an appreciation for the distinction. The human settlement will no longer endeavor to be a cartoon of the rural countryside. And rural places will be organized and inhabited differently.
Therefore, a first general principle is…
A Better Human Habitat for the Next Economy
PREVIEWExecutive Summary
- 'Smaller' will be the major theme in future development
- The general principles for resilient human settlement
- How redesigning our towns & cities offers liberation from the soul-sucking models we live in today
- What we can leverage from the New Urbanist movement
If you have not yet read (Un)Paving Our Way To Nirvana, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.
Before I review some of the basic rules and principles for assembling a human habitat worth living in and with some prospects of enduring, a few words about demographic change. The failing suburbs will not drive everybody in them to move to the cities. The big cities of America face equal difficulties with resource and capital scarcity, failing infrastructure that won’t be replaced, and problems as yet off the radar screen such as water safety, public health, food shortages, and social turmoil. The big cities will have to get a lot smaller and that process will take decades to resolve.
I’m convinced that the action in this country will move to the existing smaller cities and small towns, especially places that have a meaningful relationship with food production because there ought to be no question that agri-business will fail, and with it the entire food production and distribution process as we currently know it. One implication of this is that we will restore a visible edge between what is urban and what is rural, and what these places are for. As that occurs people will redevelop an appreciation for the distinction. The human settlement will no longer endeavor to be a cartoon of the rural countryside. And rural places will be organized and inhabited differently.
Therefore, a first general principle is…
Total 22 items
by blaggers