[MonteQuest]

What the hell does he have to back up his statements?

History, reality, and the links he provided for starters:

Systemic breakdowns tend to progress unpredicably. You can see my article about North Korea for a sample of this (Pfeiffer, Dale Allen; Drawing from Experience, Part 1, in The End of the Oil Age; Lulu Press, 2004), or Dmitri Orlov's excellent material on the collapse of the USSR (Orlov, Dmitri; Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century & Our Village, in GRITS; Lulu Press, 2005; also archived at http://www.survivingpeakoil.com).

[backstop]

Monte -

re the Common Page that Dale has written, I'd put it a little diferently.

As I see it the complex system that generates the symptoms of impending collapse reflects an underlying ideological disfunction,
or, less technically, a cultural heresy, that can fairly be described as Anthro-supremacism.

This goes right back to the cock-up in Mesopotamia, quite some time ago.

That said, that page has been my understanding same as you.

regards,

Backstop

[crapattack]

One of the tools I learned in clinical psychology is that behaviours, even distructive ones, are often tied to "gains" for the subject and often have multiple and complex connections to other behaviours. Any behaviour can rightly be called a system, and that if you are looking for why a behaviour persists, first of all look to what the behaviour gains for the subject. Applied to addictive behaviour, in particular, no change can be made taking the client off the distructive object until the there is more perceived gain in switching than there is in staying. Meaning the client must gain something by shifting onto another object, and these gains almost always have to be immediate and tangible. This means you can't simply scare people off their behaviour, they have to "get something out of it" that is better than what they get staying on it.

[grabby]

The natural solution.

If no more children were born our population would be half in 20 years, so will our oil.

It will be 1/4 in in 40 years

to keep the lifestyle we have today,
this is what would help.

This is of course the proverbial lead balloon.

As the last generations move up in school the lower grades would permanently close down.
soon all schools will close. You know how much money that would save?


There would be more food, less on high chairs and the floor and the wall.


It could be done without a dieoff if the loonies don't go nuclear on us.
Which they will so just forget it,.

[grabby]

no change can be made taking the client off the distructive object until the there is more perceived gain in switching than there is in staying.

So are you saying we are basically selfish and will do nothing until it benefits us?

I agree. I didn't know psychology was so blunt, I always thought everything was the white males fault...

[Ludi]

Grabby, how would you selll your "solution"? Having children is seen as an absolute good in our culture. How would you change this very longstanding idea?

[Revi]

We are wired to try to perpetuate our clan. The idea of nobody having children is going to be a very hard sell. The birthrate will go down with a depression, however. I don't think people react instantly to a new reality, but in time they will. Let's see what happens when we can't afford to feed all those mouths. It's happening already even here in the US of A.

[RdSnt]

We are wired to try to perpetuate our clan. The idea of nobody having children is going to be a very hard sell. The birthrate will go down with a depression, however. I don't think people react instantly to a new reality, but in time they will. Let's see what happens when we can't afford to feed all those mouths. It's happening already even here in the US of A.

We are hard wired to breed, in the end it's not even about clan. Men die with a hard-on, even in sudden, violent death ejaculation is not uncommon.

[mmasters]

We are wired to try to perpetuate our clan. The idea of nobody having children is going to be a very hard sell. The birthrate will go down with a depression, however. I don't think people react instantly to a new reality, but in time they will. Let's see what happens when we can't afford to feed all those mouths. It's happening already even here in the US of A.

We are hard wired to breed, in the end it's not even about clan. Men die with a hard-on, even in sudden, violent death ejaculation is not uncommon.

We are hardwired for survival, then breeding.

It's understandable people could see breeding as a first priority since our survival has been so sugar coated in the past 50 years.

I suppose it's like we're dogs and cats in good neighborhoods, if we don't get neutered we breed like there's no tomorrow.

The solution: neuter the masses

[Doly]

I suppose it's like we're dogs and cats in good neighborhoods, if we don't get neutered we breed like there's no tomorrow.

The solution: neuter the masses

The masses are already neutered. Haven't you heard about contraception?

[EnergyUnlimited]

The solution: neuter the masses

Silly guy,
Better reopen Austhwitz... and paint it green... and make more fertilizer (calcium phosphate) there to replant lost forests.

[gg3]

Contraception: Hardly.

What we need is to reduce the population to something like ONE QUARTER of what it is today, IMMEDIATELY. Aside from assassinating a few popes in a row (that would make an interesting video game, eh?) and dropping plenty of atomic bombs on various festering swamps of humanity around the world (the game version of that one's already been done to, uh, death), I don't think we're going to make those numbers, do you?

Then comes the question of how to support X number of retiree-bees with one-fifth the number of worker-bees. The choices there come down to either a) literally kill off the retiree-bees or b) socialistically redistribute the wealth of the worker-bees.

You see, we're either going to end up with ecofascism, ecocommunism, or a raging dieoff that would make either of those look positively humane by comparison.

And it's going to happen in our lifetimes.

Hey don't forget to take your antidepressants today.

[EnergyUnlimited]

When this guy talks about complex systems, where does he get his ideas from? Certainly not from mathematical texts on chaos theory and complexity theory. What the hell does he have to back up his statements?

A basic introduction on complexity theory can be found here:

http://complexity.orcon.net.nz/intro.html

If you find something about complex systems necessarily collapsing, tell me.

Complex systems are collapsing once energy imput required to maintain them STOPS or diminish below required level.
They are simply falling victim of enthropy.
As we know, entropy is ALWAYS growing in any closed system.
This mean that ALL complex systems in Universe are BOUND to collapse.
You may avoid this fate if you consider Universe an open system with "free" energy imput from somewhere. Sadly we have NO evidence that this is the case.
Chaotic systems *can* generate TEMPORARY complexicity as long as this exercise allows for even more efficient dissipation of energy and faster growth of overall enthropy.
This is from where life came and this is why it will go away.

[EnergyUnlimited]

You see, we're either going to end up with ecofascism, ecocommunism, or a raging dieoff that would make either of those look positively humane by comparison.

We could also get rid of ecologists and run business as usual for dosen of generations at least.
Meantime solution will certainly be found (either as technofix or by natural means).

More wealth is an answer. In wealthier countries population is stabilized (or even droping NOW).
Poor countries?
Problem will solve itself naturally once charitable give away of food is stopped.
Biofuels (say corn to ethanol) may help.

[Ferretlover]

I am no great brain, so would somebody please enlighten me?
Why does everyone keep talking about the importance of economic growth? Are we talking about personal and corporate greed “More!! Give me more!!”?
Isn’t it possible that humans should instead have been striving for intellectual growth? Shouldn’t improving the quality of our species and our environment have been the goal of our existence once we got past the basic survival needs (shelter, food)?
This is coming out jumbled, but I hope someone can understand what I am attempting to say.

[Ferretlover]

Isn't Africa, with all its problems, a preview of the future?

[MonteQuest]

I am no great brain, so would somebody please enlighten me?
Why does everyone keep talking about the importance of economic growth?

Because, without growth, our current money system implodes. It is debt-based. No growth= no growth in the money supply=deflation. Massive unemployment.

We are not saying it is so important, but that our way of life and society is based upon it growing infinitely forever.

In a declining energy environment, that is rather dubious...to say the least.

[Ludi]

Our way of life and society are based on growth, and we don't have another model of how to live in place right now. Not to say there aren't other models (the choices not limited to "ecofascism" and "ecocommunism") but those other models aren't in place, another way of life isn't waiting for us to step into it, but must be built from scratch. Unfortunately, so many people believe so very strongly in the current model, they can't even imagine another way to live, let alone feel capable of giving up what we have for something different, and so, I think, they will cling very hard to the old dying way of life. I wish this weren't the case, but I fear it is. It's hard to even get people to talk about other ways to live.

[Ibon]

Radical change arises from the ashes of dying paradigms.

[MonteQuest]

Isn't Africa, with all its problems, a preview of the future?

Perhaps Russia is a better model for the USA. The break up of the USSR was the result of glasnost, perestroika and democratisation. These reforms allowed the problems of the USSR to be uncovered and become public knowledge.

Also, the war in Afghanistan had drained the country both economically and psychologically, much like the war in Iraq is doing to the US right now. As a result of post-Soviet poverty, Russian death rates have soared due to, substance abuse, disease, stress, depression, and other problems. Like the US with Mexico, they are looking to allow Chinese workers to come farm their abandoned fields. Chinese workers, who by the way, are coming into the country illegally.


Will peak oil uncover the neocon's agendas and the actual state of our economy? Will post-peak poverty initiate widespread substance abuse, disease, stress, depression, and other problems for us also?