[dohboi]

David Orr is one of the deeper thinkers on our current predicament that I have come across. Here's a link to his latest:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014- ... swan-world

And choice morsels to entice you to read the whole context:

...the idea that we can improve resilience at scales ranging from cities to global civilization is becoming an important part of policy discussions, but mostly in reaction to crises like the global economic crisis of 2008 and the prospect of rapid climate change. If we are serious about it we will have to improve not only our capacity to act with foresight but also develop the wherewithal to diagnose and remedy the deeper problems rooted in language, paradigms, social structure, and economy that undermine resilience in the first place...

...While better technology is certainly a large part of societal resilience, the definition of 'better' is seldom obvious. The reason is that we do not simply choose to make and deploy single artifacts, but rather, unknowingly, we select devices as parts of larger systems of technology, power, and wealth.

The [first commercially successful steel] plow, for instance, represented [not only] the ingenuity of John Deere, but also an emerging, yet seldom acknowledged agro-industrial paradigm of total human domination of nature with:

>commodity markets,
>banks,
>federal crop insurance,
>grain elevators,
>long-distance transport,
>fossil fuel dependence,
>chemical fertilizers and pesticides,
>crop subsidies,
>overproduction,
>mass obesity,
>soil erosion,
>polluted groundwater,
>loss of biological diversity,
>dead zones, and the
>concentrated political power of the farm lobby representing oil companies, equipment manufacturers, chemical and seed companies, the Farm Bureau, commodity brokers, giant food companies, advertisers, and so forth.

The upshot is a high output, ecologically destructive, fossil-fuel dependent, unsustainable and brittle food system that wreaks havoc on the health of land, waters, and people alike...

... Perhaps when we come to a fuller understanding of the discipline and restraint that sustainability and resilience will require of us, we may, like Thelma and Louise, prefer to go off the cliff in a blaze of glory...

...Historian Ronald Wright describes our autism as the result of a progress trap. "Technology," he writes, "is addictive.

Material progress creates problems that are, or seem to be, soluble only by further progress."

(My formatting and emphases.)

[careinke]

Nice summary on why Agriculture is evil.

[dohboi]

Yes, but that was just an example of the broader issues he's discussing.

If you liked that bit, do read on.

[joewp]

It's all based on the concept of "ownership". Once you "own" something, you pretty much feel like you can do what you want to it, including the environment that makes it possible for you to live.

We think we "own" the world. The planet has some nasty surprises in store for us. Like one native American saying said "The Earth is your mother, how can you own your mother?".

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature...

(Note: and it turns out that old commercial was spot on since margarine isn't all that good for you after all, butter is better)

[dohboi]

"How can you own your mother."

Ironically, some trace the ultimate origins of the concept and practice of ownership to the control of women's bodies. Personally, I think it originated with domestication of animals, beginning with dogs. But slavery of various kinds probably followed not too much later.

[Whitefang]

Looks like bad apple from that pristine Eden garden, knowledge and indulgence coming together to create our downfall as a spiecies, collective suicide by consumption. Agri and culture leading to the edge of everything, the end.
I do not think we are as stupid as we act.

Everybody who is aware of our internal struggle and dialogue knows the rotten root, laid bare by silencing yourself and see for yourself that personality story, a drag, is using your personal power by talking onstantly , thus creating the world as we know it, a flimsy but practical, manageable description, an affair we take for granted.
The real world includes gigantic Earth as a being, not mommy or daddy dearest.......spirit as well as filled to the brim by non organics......bbrrrrr......an endless ocean to explore instead of sitting on this tiny island we call universe A to Z.

Personal sobriety, curiosity and saving personal energy can break the spell we are under. Break this personal bubble world.
Social programs, institutions can do nothing, they are an offspring of our predicament, to be controlled by a dialogue that is not natural to our being, the terror and miracle of being here and there.

[FrY10cK]

Personal sobriety, curiosity and saving personal energy can break the spell we are under. Break this personal bubble world.
Social programs, institutions can do nothing, they are an offspring of our predicament, to be controlled by a dialogue that is not natural to our being, the terror and miracle of being here and there.

Nicely written.

[Ibon]

We think we "own" the world. The planet has some nasty surprises in store for us. Like one native American saying said "The Earth is your mother, how can you own your mother?".

All mothers will reprimand when an infant bites down to hard on the breast.

[dohboi]

And the wisest mothers do so by pressing their child's head into the breast so much that they are briefly deprived of breath so they quickly release in panic.

We have bitten so deeply, that our 'mother' is likely to go on smothering us in her 'warm' embrace.

[Ibon]

I finally read the linked article. It is very good and quite comprehensive in defining resilience and what that would entail in terms of redundancies and regulations etc. Also that this is not about treating symptoms on the periphery with band aids but rather re-engineering almost everything we do from energy to living arrangements to our economic system etc.

Before civilization humans lived in ecosystems that had these components of resiliency honed by millions of years of evolution. Modern civilization is only several thousand years old and we are only now reaching the limits because of overshoot where there will be selective pressures to move our ingenuity in directions that will increase our resiliency. In other words, we have to imitate the resiliency we find in ecosystems and apply this to civilization, something humans have never had to do. We have had no practice. Self regulation touches on all aspects of life from reproduction to consumption, building design, energy, water use, distribution of energy and food, design of economies. Something that happens "naturally" in ecosystems. When you take a moment to consider what humans will have to do to function with true resiliency in a modern civilization it is truly daunting (makes me at 57 years old want to join Desu in a major tirade just thinking about it ) .

We do streamline business practices and food distribution and production of goods and services using technology that is quite impressive when it comes to maximizing the bottom line. And we do this supplying energy, goods and services to billions, so we can see that we are actually capable of a high level of sophisticated organization and complexity. We just have done this to date ignoring the externalities while we ravaged and plundered our resource base and planet.

Those externalities long ignored are about to come back as the consequences of overshoot.

So here is the BIG QUESTION: Will these consequences debilitate us to the point of bringing on the collapse and decline of industrial civilization or will these consequences provide selective pressures honing our organizational abilities to design for all those long ignored externalities thereby achieving greater resiliency.

Remember that in overshoot the environment is degraded below the carrying capacity of what existed before overshoot occurred. We are called upon to increase resiliency at a time when our climate will be less stable, our resource base depleted, our fresh water aquifers drained, marine fisheries collapsed, top soil degraded etc etc. etc.

In my view the only chance in hell for this to happen would be with a global population a fraction of what it is today. Trying to juggle this transition with overshoot consequences and a population of 7 billion and growing is a sheer impossibility.

I think we should send Desu to the den of the hibernating Overshoot Predator to scream in his ear and tell him to get a move on it.

[dohboi]

Ibon, I'm glad you liked the article. I was kind of thinking of you when I posted it. I've been a big fan of Orr for a long time.

On your point: "we have to imitate the resiliency we find in ecosystems and apply this to civilization, something humans have never had to do"

I mostly agree. But we also have the records and remaining living scraps of earlier societies to go on. And even some ethics from our not-that-long-ago past could come in useful. Frugality is an ancient, deeply ingrained value that really was only stamped out of most people in the last couple generations. So people know stories and also sometime still have living (great...) grandparents who lived these values for at least the early parts of their lives.

Of course, we will ultimately have to go past conventional forms of frugality. But we don't always have to start from complete scratch here.

When you say: " high level of sophisticated organization and complexity..." I think Orr (and many of those he cites, such as Richart Wright) would say that complexity is part of the 'trap'--solving the problems that arise from complexity with more complexity is a slow (or fast) spiral to destruction.

The challenge, I would say, is finding the right level of low-level organization, that is just complex enough to preserve at least some of the positive aspects we cherish about modern society, but that is not so complex as to create ever more problems from its own complexity, including the problems from 'externalities' that you mention.

I think some combination of early medieval serf living and very frugal monasticism may be about where we might be able to hit that sweet spot, but that won't be much of a selling point for most people.

Also, from what I've read, the only societies in Europe where, for example, the fertility of the soil actually increased over the last thousand years or so up through the 1800's at least, is those known as the Baltic states--Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. It may not be entirely accidental that they were also among the last areas Christianized, and even then, they were arguably not Christianized as thoroughly as most other areas of Europe.

But yes, if populations pressures continue to increase (or even stay anywhere near where they already are), I can't see any kind of resilient society ever forming.

(I'm afraid I'm missing the cultural reference that 'Desu' is supposed to conjure up--Japanese copula??)

[Ibon]

I think some combination of early medieval serf living and very frugal monasticism may be about where we might be able to hit that sweet spot, but that won't be much of a selling point for most people.

Since the generations that at some point will reach a stable plateau of sustainability wont be born from our time they wont need to be sold anything. All we can do is hopefully enter this era of consequences with some degree of grace and dignity.

(I'm afraid I'm missing the cultural reference that 'Desu' is supposed to conjure up--Japanese copula??)

Desumaiden, one of our recent new members here at po.com who is deep in stage 2 of the Kübler-Ross process.

[onlooker]

Remember that in overshoot the environment is degraded below the carrying capacity of what existed before overshoot occurred. We are called upon to increase resiliency at a time when our climate will be less stable, our resource base depleted, our fresh water aquifers drained, marine fisheries collapsed, top soil degraded etc etc. etc.

. Great posts from Ibon and Dohboi. This is in a nutshell the situation we find ourselves in is it not. We are hanging on barely right now in a completely unsustainable manner in terms of our agriculture and food base. The water aquifers will be drained that is inevitable because of the size currently of the world population. Our soils for the most part are lifeless only useful via application of fossil fuel derived fertilizers and pesticides. We know fossil fuels are running out and that implies transport of food as well to localities that depend on such transport. The ocean is providing it seems everyday less and less with the sorry condition that we have pushed it too. So though many such as the author cited have wonderful and sage ideas about resiliency and sustainability, it does not seem applicable to the near future whereby what awaits seems to be calamity on a monumental scale as referenced here and more and more persons agreeing that we may need a huge decrease in population size to even be able to attempt this transition. So short of other-worldly or divine intervention the bottleneck can only be passed with apocalyptic events that will reduce our population to such a degree that whatever or whomever is left standing will certainly be challenged to rebuild human societies to anything resembling civilized culture and all this amid the backdrop of ominous global warming.

[onlooker]

Also, rebooting civilization and society assumes that the infrastructure remains to some degree. Also, Technological wherewithal and general knowledge and wisdom, access to energy, access to edible food and potable water, I believe none of these is a given especially considering the devastation both physically and psychologically that would have occurred if in fact billions perish not to mention if we have further depleted the planet and/or rendered it even more inhospitable. Finally, the status of our nuclear infrastructure would be of highest concern as nuclear requires high technical knowledge and resources to decommission and deal with the waste. So that by itself could doom the remaining people. Sorry to sound grim but i am trying to be as thorough and realistic as possible