[Pops]

I'm not a spiritual person but a greater respect and reverence for the natural world might ease our recovery from the fossil age. Gail said a higher power might fix the situation by making the transition smoother for us humans, I don't see much evidence he's paying attention. But if he is, he might inspire us to come to grips with the fact that the book was wrong, that we don't have dominion and that we are about to go forth and multiply ourselves to extinction.

The book was right in one instance at least, pride comes before destruction.

[Paulo1]

Very well said, Beery.

There are practical approaches to take and positive things to do, imho. If some of them fail and need changing, then so be it. Many are living in dreadful circumstances right now, and there but for the Grace of God...... however, one thing has always been constant is change, both good and bad.

Personally, I would like to have a little 'shake my fist chat' with old Mr. Higher Power. The caveat is always 'the fu..ed up stuff is human fault, the infinite wonderful possibility is 'his', and if only you would do this and that then.... Pardon my attitude, but even I could make a few improvement suggestions to this wonderful design. Sometimes misery and misfortune are capricious and unfathomable, beyond understanding. If fairness, justice, and compassion are human constructs after all, well good on us. I don't buy the human bad/God is good meme, and never have, despite ancient Sunday school attendance and confirmation. That was another life and world ago.

All we can do is our best, and if it isn't good enough then we'll deal with that too. I might feel thanks to a Higher Power for whatever, but maybe with free will comes responsibility and consequences. As they say, pride goeth before the fall, but if we are going to fall and fail anyway as per doomer vision, then let's go out trying.

Paulo

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - Your comment reminded me of line from the TV show M.A.S.H. When asked why God didn't answer all prayers: "He does answer all prayers. But sometimes the answer is no."

[sunweb]

What ever "higher power" is it/he/she should stay out of it. We don't need more burning bushes, California has enough and we don't need the carbon in the air. And the instruction manuals are violent, prejudicial and sexist.
And the higher power believers scare me:
Atran, Scott. 2002. In gods We Trust. Oxford.
Avalos, Hector. 2005. Fighting Words. Prometheus. New York.
Berreby, David. 2005. Us and them : understanding your tribal mind. New York : Little, Brown and Co.
Docker, John. 2008. The Origins of Violence: Religion, History and Genocide. University of New South Wales.
Ellens, J. Harold. 2007. The destructive power of religion : violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
Eller, Jack. 2006. Violence and Culture. Thomson. Canada.
Eller, Jack David. 2010. Cruel Creed, Virtuous Violence. Prometheus. N.Y.
Kirsch, Jonathan. 2004. God Against the Gods. Penguin. N.Y.
Kirsch, Jonathan. 2006. A History of the End of the World. Harper. N.Y.
Larsen, Stephen. 2007. The fundamentalist mind : how polarized thinking imperils us all. Trade paperback. N.Y.
Newberg, Andrew. 2006. Why we believe what we believe : uncovering our biological need for meaning, spirituality, and truth. Free Press. N.Y.
Phillips, Kevin. 2006. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Thorndike. Maine.
Proctor, Robert and Schiebinger, Londa. 2008. Agnotogology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford. Stanford.
Prothero, Stephen. 2010. God is not One: The eight rival religions that run the world- and why their differences matter. Harper. N.Y.
Rozenblit, Bruce. 2008. Us against them : how tribalism affects the way we think. Kansas City, MO : Transcendent Publications.
Rue, Loyal D. Religion is not about God. Rutgers University Press.
Schimmel, Solomon. 2008. The tenacity of unreasonable beliefs : fundamentalism and the fear of truth. Oxford University Press, USA.
Schwartz, Regina. 1997. The Curse of Cain. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.
Volkan, Vamik. 2004. Blind Trust. Pitchstone. Virginia.
Newberg, Andrew. 2006. Why we believe what we believe : uncovering our biological need for meaning, spirituality, and truth. Free Press. N.Y.
Phillips, Kevin. 2006. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. Thorndike. Maine.
Proctor, Robert and Schiebinger, Londa. 2008. Agnotogology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance. Stanford. Stanford.
Prothero, Stephen. 2010. God is not One: The eight rival religions that run the world- and why their differences matter. Harper. N.Y.
Rozenblit, Bruce. 2008. Us against them : how tribalism affects the way we think. Kansas City, MO : Transcendent Publications.
Rue, Loyal D. Religion is not about God. Rutgers University Press.
Schimmel, Solomon. 2008. The tenacity of unreasonable beliefs : fundamentalism and the fear of truth. Oxford University Press, USA.
Schwartz, Regina. 1997. The Curse of Cain. University of Chicago Press. Chicago.
Volkan, Vamik. 2004. Blind Trust. Pitchstone. Virginia.
Wentz, Richard. 1993. Why People Do Bad Things in the Name of Religion. Mercer University Press. Georgia.

[Ibon]

You have identified the devil, now you need your savior.

Get yourself a marketing team man!

There was a time, not very long ago, that humans would do all they could do to pursevere and have lives of dignity at the same time as they surrendered with a sense of the sacred to forces and events that held our species in check. You can find this most commonplace response across the whole suite of spiritual beliefs and religions that all had their origins during times that our species was indeed held within carrying capacity.

It is not a marketing team required to "sell" The Overshoot Predator. This goes way deeper than a sales job. Deeper than an ideological movement.

It is what emerges in a culture that rediscovers it's place once events and consequences rip through the self entitlement and illusion of control without limits, without worshipping a force greater than ourselves. Fusion is possible; science, reason and a sense of the sacred. If calling it a "higher power" smells too much like the invisible man in the sky than just consider he/she no longer is invisible but very much present before our very eyes with the feedbacks unfolding in our biosphere.

We are wounding our planet as a species. The very home that nurtures and supports us. Just watch what happens when our mother earth fights the symptoms of this human germ by getting a fever. There will be very few humans clinging only to rational science and denying a higher power when that happens.

The sense of the sacred will be reborn when we no longer bite the hand that feeds and nourishes us.

We will never engineer our place in the universe, but we will rediscover a sense of the sacred as a result of our failed attempts to do so.

[Rod_Cloutier]

I posted this as a comment on her webpage:

Gail,

I suggest you read Neale Donald Walsh’s book ‘Conversations with God’. He claims it is a direct modern age conversation with God and many of your concerns are covered. The most interesting parts were how our civilization compares and contrasts with other intelligent evolved beings in the universe. Even if read as a work of fiction, (the author claims it is non-fiction), the book is as good as anything ever written by Kurt Vonnegut, and just as interesting.

Thank you for your insights !

Here's a link to the interesting parts of Neale Donald Walsh's claims of how humans compare with 'Highly evolved beings' elsewhere in the universe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYbJ7Cx ... ge#t=25889

(audio book except)

[Ibon]

I don't know about you folks, but I'm busting my hump not to be one of the casualties until my natural time is over. I also want to leave what we have built for our children.

paulo

This is the prime directive that is a hallmark of all life on our planet. To survive and leave progeny. All creatures, those sentient and those not self aware play out their lives by this fundamental truth. Each life a small building block through more than a half billion years of evolution taking us from one celled Precambrian organisms to this wonderful flowering of biodiversity we see whenever we walk in a deep forest or even on the curb of a roadside.

Paulo, let us examine your comment one step further. What is it you want to leave for your children? You said "that which we have built" At some point, as we all suspect, that which we have built is causing already or will soon cause a major threat to our progeny.

Your motivation to leave "that which we have built" comes from desiring for your progeny fruitful abundance, security, health and resilience. And yet "that which we have built" is the single greatest threat to all of that which you wish for.

This is the fundamental cognitive dissonance our species is playing out at the moment from lacking a sense of the sacred and from not surrendering to "a higher power" limits to "that which we have built".

We are currently the only species blindly trashing our mother earth in pursuit of the prime directive. Why is this so?

That is a good place to start meditating on the theme of this thread.

[Ibon]

In contrast to my more subdued posts I will try a more adolescent rant, dedicated to some of our more younger readers. As follows:

It seems to me it would be logical that when the status quo is resilient we are then at our most conservative and least likely to take risks in order to preserve and strengthen business as usual.

It is when the status quo is being undermined by externalities that it is most logical to take risks as you have nothing to lose. And yet we see the masses of humanity huddling like scared little bunnies as external threats start to surface. We clusterfuck in fear holding tightly to a dying ideology, worrying over peak oil, climate change, financial collapse, ebola viruses, ocean acidification, NSA surveillence, the Russians........ should I fill the rest of the page with such nonsense?

Go ahead a move forward 20-30 years. You will look back on your life as the crisis deepens and you will think the following; "shit, I knew this was going to happen way back in 2004 when I read it on peakoil.com and what did I do for the last 30 years? I obsessed with fear over systemic threats to my existence and I hunkered down trying to preserve whatever I could of a dying paradigm".

And yet you had the greatest opportunity and no excuses to abandon and try something different, to take the last of your resources and attempt something novel, joining with others.

F**king cowards aren't we all ?

What is the component lacking in our collective psyche that fears so much death that we huddle like bunnies in fear. I thought we were a top predator after all......

You fear death when you fear life. And you fear life when you have surrendered your integrity to a machine that does not nourish your soul.

And we look with disdain at the idea of developing a sense of the sacred?

It is not only hubris to deny a "higher power"

It is the petty small minded fearful rabbit that denies the "higher power"

Look in the mirror and stare at your eyeballs for 5 minutes and ask yourself again and again....... What do I want to make of what remains of this miracle of life? To cower in fear?

What is the greatest single source to combat this crippling fear?

I suggest that it is very very much related to surrendering to a "higher power"

I am not talking about the invisible man in the sky.

I am talking about the visible man in the sky. Worshipping The Overshoot Predator.

[Quinny]

I know where you are coming from Ibon but love life even at our new subsistence style living. Went to beach for a picnic today. Had a wonderful feast of home made/grown/laid food and then sat looking at the view and almost wept at how lucky I am.



Watched a limpet trying to open (or hug) a cockle yesterday - it didn't manage it and slunk off. Don't want to 'worship' the overshoot predator. Just want to try and spread a philosophy of needing less and power-down and take the edge off the predators hunger. There is no higher power.

[taw]

In theater, Gail's solution would be termed dues ex machina, or 'chariot of the gods'. If a playscript had written the hero into a corner, a chariot could suddenly swoop down and lift him out of the fray.

Well you can just slap me upside of the head if that happens in this case, because that was never considered a valid answer in my physics classes. 'Got to admit, I was stunned to see Gail go through a logical progression and then revert to a magical solution. Well, she's done a great job of bringing attention to this part of our dilemma. I admire that. If she doesn't have a solution, thats okay.

[Pops]

There was a time, not very long ago, that humans would do all they could do to pursevere and have lives of dignity at the same time as they surrendered with a sense of the sacred to forces and events that held our species in check. You can find this most commonplace response across the whole suite of spiritual beliefs and religions that all had their origins during times that our species was indeed held within carrying capacity.

It is not a marketing team required to "sell" The Overshoot Predator. This goes way deeper than a sales job. Deeper than an ideological movement.

I like the way you lay it out here but I disagree that a sales job and ideological movement are not needed. Personally I don't care what dystopian god a future remnant wandering tribe worships, could be a Dr Pepper bottle for all I care. My concern is for the people I know and how they transition. Not that I hold out much hope but I can still wish that they become disciples rather than martyrs.

[Ibon]

There was a time, not very long ago, that humans would do all they could do to pursevere and have lives of dignity at the same time as they surrendered with a sense of the sacred to forces and events that held our species in check. You can find this most commonplace response across the whole suite of spiritual beliefs and religions that all had their origins during times that our species was indeed held within carrying capacity.

It is not a marketing team required to "sell" The Overshoot Predator. This goes way deeper than a sales job. Deeper than an ideological movement.

I like the way you lay it out here but I disagree that a sales job and ideological movement are not needed. Personally I don't care what dystopian god a future remnant wandering tribe worships, could be a Dr Pepper bottle for all I care. My concern is for the people I know and how they transition. Not that I hold out much hope but I can still wish that they become disciples rather than martyrs.

I compartmentalize two views. One like you is concerned specifically for loved ones, family and friends. That is Jeffrey thinking (my real name). The other, just as important, looks through the lens of a demographer, cultural anthropologist, ecologist, economist, pathologist etc etc and tries to measure the state of affairs and the forces and limitations both culturally and physically that are pressing down on our species. That is Ibon thinking.

On the topic of reverence, worship, holding sacred, higher powers, etc. I have some thoughts incubating that I would like to put down in writing and add to this thread......just waiting for the "write" moment

[Ibon]

Had a wonderful feast of home made/grown/laid food and then sat looking at the view and almost wept at how lucky I am.

Don't want to 'worship' the overshoot predator. Just want to try and spread a philosophy of needing less and power-down and take the edge off the predators hunger. There is no higher power.

Historically we lived with the constant presence of the OP and we didn't worship but feared him. For the vast majority of our past living in his midst we experienced the extremes in both anguish and pleasure in our daily existence. A far deeper sacred and spiritual relationship with our planet and loved ones.

In this very very short interval that the OP has been held in check we live more cynically, less intense, less gratefulness, less pain, less bliss. Exploring why this is the case will be my next post on this thread.

[Ibon]

I mentioned I would address this topic in more detail. Today I was on a flight up to the big NYC to my daughters graduation and on the plane this is what I came up with. I posted this on the Worshipping The Overshoot Predator thread.

post1195515.html#p1195515

[ennui2]

Ibon, I think you are wasting your time spreading your Overshoot Predator manifesto across a series of forum posts. I suggested you write a book before and I will repeat it to you. You have a drive to write, and you are squandering it this way. Gather up your thoughts and put it into one coherent volume.

[Ibon]

Ibon, Gather up your thoughts and put it into one coherent volume.

Who the hell would want to buy a book, no matter how eloquently written, about solutions that focus on worshipping your predators and removing all the assumptions of a long and secure life, even if this does increase the resilience of your species.

We are not ants. We do not advocate any scenario that would risk the individual for the sake of the hive.

Nobody would buy such a book. There is no useful information to prep for your future in such a book.

The truth of the OP is a subversive truth and not reccomended for consumption.

[Vineyard]

I also stopped reading Gail's blog a while ago, because...well, it got boring.

Her articles became more and more recycling of her older articles and nothing really new.

Also, she is using her Secular Cycles graph again in the article, which made me quite angry. Why? Because it is wrong. The cycles in the book describe Argarian societies, but Turchin himself said it doesn't quite fit to modern societies.

Which is the reason why he updated the model to describe America.
cliodynamics.info/PDF/SDAAS_Sep17.pdf

Gail knows that, it was pointed to her months ago. And yet she's using the same old graph again.

Some other points were these articles I found a while ago.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2014 ... a-problem/

Yes, the guy is a big RE advocate, but he is right that Gail has an Anti-RE bias.

http://ergosphere.blogspot.co.at/2010/0 ... um_09.html

Another critical post about Gail from a former TOD contributor. I don't know how influencual she was at TOD, but these accusions are quite disturbing. Specially since TOD is dead know.

That "Higher Power" jabbering is just the final nail in the coffin of her credibility for me.

[Ibon]

Anyone who has experience in academia is familiar with how deeply saturated the supposed "objective" sciences are with politics and turf wars and bias. Even the peer review process has a herding instinct to it where you can find a clustering of support for a given position based on the seniority of a single researcher.

The story of plate tectonics and continental drift is one great example, there are many.

With Peak Oil and AGW this is only exasperated due to the existential nature of the consequences and the fact that it is extremely difficult to model and predict the variables that include geology, economics, culture, climate, technology, black swans, etc. etc.

[Vineyard]

There is also another reason, why I became sceptic of Gail.
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.c ... opment.pdf
http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.c ... -power.pdf
Seriously, she is making doomerish posts on OFW and on the other side she is advocating for....SPACE SOLAR POWER?

And in her news article....
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/06/10/ie ... -is-wrong/
...were she is being critical of RE and PV and is refering to the Weissbach/Ruprecht Study again.

To make it clear:

Weissbach and Ruprecht are working at the german "Institut für Festkörper-Kernphysik" Gmbh, a private company working on a Dual Fluid Reactor.

And guess what Energy Technology is the best in their study? Their own Nuclear Reactor of course. And of course all the libertarian nuclear fans in the net are spreading the words...

[Pops]

Another good post by Gail ...
http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/07/23/wo ... we-headed/

She always give a good overview and throws out a new idea or two, or at least makes me see a new wrinkle, take a look at this picture of KSA & USSR/RU production:


It just never dawned on me that KS doubling their production correlated so closely with the USSR crash. If you were to overlay the demise of the N Sea beginning in the mid oughts, you'd see that it nearly duplicates that same pattern, it falls as RU increases (and in fact the increase in US product exports mirrors that fall exactly).

Now, think about adding the US curve, declining since the 70's and making it's resurgence just now, so - the 3 leading producers are now or soon will be, all producing at or close to their all-time highs for the first time ever. Nowhere to go but up from here right? LOL

--
Here is another good picture - good because it agrees with me!




I've repeated over and over like a mantra that supply equals demand but that demand equals desire plus ability to pay. A few years ago I said that oil prices would not rise to the moon but would stagnate or even fall because declining supplies of affordable oil would hamper the economy and so reduce the consumers ability to pay.



The corollary of that of course is that lower prices reduce the supply because the marginal barrel is more expensive. So far I was wrong in that the price has not oscillated more and more but in fact less and less at the highest average price ever. Whether that price constitutes a long term ceiling is still open.