Baltimorei

[LDAHL]

So our alternatives are:

1) A voluntary return to the Stone Age.
2) An involuntary return to the Stone Age.
3) Submission to a new, incorruptible regulatory elite with the power to dictate how we eat, breed, travel and trade. This would need to occur quite soon on a global scale to have any hope of success.
4) Muddle through, in the hope we can find technology fixes sooner than we can completely overhaul human nature.
5) Extinction.

[kib]

I like Jensen, but IMO that's horse hockey. My guess is that we will either burn/gas/wash ourselves out in large degree because the rest of the world will try to emulate our consumptive western lifestyle -OR- our emerging technology will blossom just enough and will coincide with a giant "oh $#!+" moment and those of us who survived environmental catastrophe will carry on a little wiser and a lot more humble. It would be lovely if that happened before the big slap was necessary, but we don't seem to be on that course yet.

Does Jensen say we will deconstruct society? My interpretation is that he's saying we must if we don't want to become extinct, but we probably won't. Closer to your POV than you think, in other words.

[Gregg]

On another forum I posted something in a conversation about sustainability, and I used "everything is connected" as the premise from which I started. Several people told me I was an idiot, everything is obviously not connected, that's ridiculous. I have a feeling a lot of them are young...

Then again they may not be young so much as disconnected. Others have already brought that idea up, but in a larger sense we could solve a lot of other crises if we solved our crisis of conscience. As in the lack of conscience guiding our decisions. My conscience can be pretty quiet if I don't know about the end result of my actions so I'll give the same benefit of the doubt to clergy and kings alike. There's a scene in the old movie Erin Brockovich where Julia Roberts pours a glass of water for the PG&E legal team. As they're about to drink it she tells them its from the town where everyone got sick. Its a great scene. We need to figure out how to give people that kind of wake up call if we're going to change the world. I want to believe most people will choose to do no harm if they realize their actions are harmful.

[kib]

So our alternatives are:

1) A voluntary return to the Stone Age.
2) An involuntary return to the Stone Age.
3) Submission to a new, incorruptible regulatory elite with the power to dictate how we eat, breed, travel and trade. This would need to occur quite soon on a global scale to have any hope of success.
4) Muddle through, in the hope we can find technology fixes sooner than we can completely overhaul human nature.
5) Extinction.

Are you saying that's how you see it and, from what I've read, you're hoping for #4, or that's the options you hear being given, in which case, what is your option #6?

[Gregg]

Does Jensen say we will deconstruct society? My interpretation is that he's saying we must if we don't want to become extinct, but we probably won't. Closer to your POV than you think, in other words.

That was essentially my take on it. I disagree with the deconstruct part. From my POV we need each other more now than we ever have.

[kib]

Then again they may not be young so much as disconnected. Others have already brought that idea up, but in a larger sense we could solve a lot of other crises if we solved our crisis of conscience. As in the lack of conscience guiding our decisions. My conscience can be pretty quiet if I don't know about the end result of my actions so I'll give the same benefit of the doubt to clergy and kings alike. There's a scene in the old movie Erin Brockovich where Julia Roberts pours a glass of water for the PG&E legal team. As they're about to drink it she tells them its from the town where everyone got sick. Its a great scene. We need to figure out how to give people that kind of wake up call if we're going to change the world. I want to believe most people will choose to do no harm if they realize their actions are harmful.

Yep. I said somewhere that if my nice Vanguard statement came with a second page that told me how many jobs went awol and how many egrets were lost to make my balance so pretty, I might think twice about celebrating it.

[LDAHL]

Are you saying that's how you see it and, from what I've read, you're hoping for #4, or that's the options you hear being given, in which case, what is your option #6?

That's what I'm seeing discussed here, of which #4 seems to be the most likely outcome to me based on the Doomers' past performance and my optimistic nature.

[Gregg]

Deleted double post...

[kib]

Sigh. We need each other IF we can stop grabbing and competing long enough to focus on getting balance back. If not, perhaps tipping society (not humanity, just social constructs) into the drink could at least temporarily stop the machine and let nature re-balance in a way that's not just our own shaky understanding of how the living system functions.

I wonder how it would affect long term models both mathematically, socially and from a standpoint of changed attitudes if the human race were asked not to reproduce for one year. No sterilization, no eugenics, no imprisonment, just "do your best to put it off a year." If we could for one year cut the birth rate perhaps in half, what would that do. Another observation of mine is that nearly everything we do that is a problem has to do with instant gratification. I don't just want it, I want it NOW.

[kib]

So our alternatives are:

1) A voluntary return to the Stone Age.
2) An involuntary return to the Stone Age.
3) Submission to a new, incorruptible regulatory elite with the power to dictate how we eat, breed, travel and trade. This would need to occur quite soon on a global scale to have any hope of success.
4) Muddle through, in the hope we can find technology fixes sooner than we can completely overhaul human nature.
5) Extinction.

How about a combination of a little 1 and a little 4. Combined with a little bit of option #6, which might be stated as, "overhaul human nature". I think we need to scale down, we need to try to step back from our attitude of competition and "aggressive defense", and we need to keep looking for new technological advances that will allow us to exist in tandem with nature rather than swallowing it whole.