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BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 25 May 2018, 12:56:10

I think we have mostly run out of things to talk about on this site. I am with Ibon and a few others here who recognize that nothing much can be done to prevent a wholesale Collapse and that this will create havoc and that the only hope is this is what will precisely motivate and force the remaining humans to reorgnize their societies. We know the overriding mandate is to create societies that function at every level in a sustainable way. I just hope that the Earth will still be able to accomodate a reasonable amount of people and not be so scarred as to prevent more than a scattering of people to survive.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 25 May 2018, 14:32:31

"Collapse" is the term you used. Without disagreeing with your overall conclusion, I want to make the point - one more time, since most of you seem to be neglecting the implications - that collapse is NOT AN EVENT.

TEOTWAWKI began around 1800, has been occuring for over two centuries, and will continue for another couple of centuries, at least. Both you and your great-grandparents have lived your entire lives surrounded by the end of all things, as will your great-grandchildren.

TEOTWAWKI is a process, something that begins happening when humans - or natural disasters - do damage to the environment faster than it can heal itself. We experienced a brief period of TEOTWAWKI from 1180-1340 when Ghenghis Kahn and his successors conquered most of the known world, killed millions, sacked cities, and destroyed fertile croplands.

This present bout of TEOTWAWKI is associated with the Industrial Revolution and Fossile Fuels. I believe that the majority opinion here holds that the oil supply peaked in the recent past, and is in decline. That condition is and of itself ENTIRELY SUFFICIENT to produce TEOTWAWKI, nothing else such as nuclear war, dubious claims of climate change, pandemics, or anything else is even required, the simple decline of Cheap and abundant oil will killl most humans over the next couple of centuries.

Kunstler called it "The Long Emergency". That's a fair description IMHO. My entire point is that many here are breathlessly waiting for some identifiable EVENT, which IMHO is nver going to happen. The basic timeframe for TEOTWAWKI is 1800-2200AD. You exist within the context of the end of the world, you will never know anything else.

The popular misconceptions here are that there is something about human civilization that is fragile, epheremal, and will abruptly collapse. This is an entirely flawed concept, the human species is tough, flexible, adaptable, persistent, and even downright stubborn. Even in decline - which has arguably started already - we will persist without a lot of sudden change, and our kids lives will resemble ours to a great degree.

So don't go holding your breath, or be wondering which aspects of life will disappear first - I firmly believe that aside from somebody pressing the nuclear button - which is quite possible with both Iran and North Korea in the nuclear club - no actual EVENT that one would recognize as TEOTWAWKI will ever be perceived by any of us.

Because we are entirely immersed within TEOTWAWKI already. As natural disasters go and compared to the worldwide cataclysmic events of the past, the FF Age has been sudden, intense, and far briefer than prior cataclysms.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby jedrider » Fri 25 May 2018, 14:50:35

Good Movie to see:

Experimenter (2015)

In 1961, famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of radical behavior experiments that tested ordinary humans' willingness to obey authority.

The movie demonstrates why BAU will NOT change until it is cornered against a brick wall.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 25 May 2018, 18:32:41

jedrider wrote:Good Movie to see:

Experimenter (2015)

In 1961, famed social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of radical behavior experiments that tested ordinary humans' willingness to obey authority.

The movie demonstrates why BAU will NOT change until it is cornered against a brick wall.

Saw the movie. Thought it was great and revealing of human psychology re authority.

Respectfully disagree with your premise, however.

Who is forcing people to continue BAU growth? People are doing that because of habit or the desire to "better" their lives, not because they're compelled.

Marketing? If you hate marketing (as I do) then just ignore it or turn it off. The reason I never watch TV (aside through commercial free streaming services) or listen to the radio or go to movie theatres is I just got sick and tired of endless stupid marketing. So I don't think we can say that marketing compels us (though it may tempt us if we let it).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 26 May 2018, 07:44:08

The perfect metaphor are glaciers. They don't melt in a day but they are slowly doomed. It is not an event but a process.

The only difference with our species is that in very slow increments, every generation is raised under a different set of collective expectations based on the available resources and health of the environment. Which for the next several generations will be declining as human overshoot corrects and our population declines globally. Obviously consumption will decline as well as fossil fuels peak. So culture will shift also as a process and not an event as each generation redefines its collective values.

As much as this is a process and not an event we can expect some non linear punctuated shifting of climate, culture, politics, etc. After all, volatility goes up as constraints create stresses.

The other thing to remember is that this process reaches a point where "healing" starts to become visible, as vast areas of former human habitat go feral and natural ecosystems recolonize. Culturally, there will also be a recolonization of isolated populations organizing themselves in novel ways around economics, politics, spiritual values.

The great monoculture of industiral internet civilization will fragment and diversity will return to isolated human populations.

As KJ mentioned that this is a process we have no business really indulging more than say 10-15 minutes a day contemplating this.

My time is up....... see you tomorrow or the next day!
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 26 May 2018, 08:12:21

As KJ mentioned that this is a process we have no business really indulging more than say 10-15 minutes a day contemplating this.

Hence, my point of running out of things to talk about :-D
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby asg70 » Sat 26 May 2018, 12:42:17

onlooker wrote:Hence, my point of running out of things to talk about :-D


This is a big reason why the active poster count here has dwindled.

Once you do you go through all the stages of grief there's little left to really talk about other than dueling short-term predictions.

This site has been stuck in the sport of dueling short-term predictions for many years by the looks of it, which is why it devolves into ad homs. It might as well be arguing over college sports or the Kentucky derby.

ETP was just the most recent centerpoint of "betting", and you're only a month or so shy from having to follow through on your concession.

But what all of us have to deal with is that doom does not move in sync with the short-time-horizon of our fight-or-flight impulses. This is exactly why people lapse into denial, but it's also why uber-doomers attempt to over-play the end-is-nigh card, as if to try to bio-hack their system to not lull themselves into complacency.

We all have to plan out our lives according to a more gradual decline, one that allows for BAU to coexist and actually continue to offer more and more sci-fi-like creature-comforts in parallel with a degrading biosphere. It seems contradictory, but it's not.

The future in Ready Player One is a good example of where we're headed in the medium term, where we increasingly amuse ourselves to death, continue to enjoy full bellies, but the planet keeps turning into an overpopulated shanty-town shithole around us.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 26 May 2018, 14:31:14

The images that persist in my mind are from the 2013 film Elysium:

In the year 2159, humanity is sharply divided between two classes of people: The ultrarich live aboard a luxurious space station called Elysium, and the rest live a hardscrabble existence in Earth's ruins. His life hanging in the balance, a man named Max (Matt Damon) agrees to undertake a dangerous mission that could bring equality to the population, but Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) vows to preserve the pampered lifestyle of Elysium's citizens, no matter what the cost.


Image

The space station I feel absolutely will come about, in fact many such stations. I have been a firm believer and have tracked the space habitat designs over the years since the L5 Society came about. But with today's AI systems and massive computing resources, we can create and manage simplified biomes with pure air and food and water, possible only because of the effectively unlimited 24X7 solar power in space.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 26 May 2018, 15:03:09

st-cloud2.jpg
Kaiser, the Elysium story seems to have been taken from a Star Trek, episode called " The Cloud Minders" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_Minders
We are living on Earth with a roughly comparable social order, it seems to me. With the middle class in rich countries being the main difference.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 26 May 2018, 15:28:48

I remember that episode, especially one particular female costume that ALMOST got the show censored:
Image
..because it revealed a female navel (something Barbara Eden was forever denied as a certain genie). It was somewhat odd that in the 1960s, the only even remotely explicit costumes were in SF series, vampire films:
Image
....and of course, Tarzan movies:
Image
...we are only today reaching more or less the same level in cable channels.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby jedrider » Sat 26 May 2018, 16:32:48

Outcast_Searcher wrote:Saw the movie. Thought it was great and revealing of human psychology re authority.

Respectfully disagree with your premise, however.

Who is forcing people to continue BAU growth? People are doing that because of habit or the desire to "better" their lives, not because they're compelled.


I see it differently. CONFORMITY. Even the LEADERS conform to their script. It is the only script they know.

I like the video of a person getting into an elevator and everyone turning around the wrong way (where did I see that?).
Last edited by Tanada on Sat 26 May 2018, 23:40:37, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: fixed broken quote
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 26 May 2018, 22:23:27

Jedrider you are unto it but I think it goes deeper. Think of money. Everyone on the planet needs money to live, for their basic needs. Now think, of the role of FF and how this source of energy became practically ubiquitous. We are stuck in a BAU scenario because we constructed and designed our world under and via these parameters. And because our leaders and decision makers are the least willing to change as their priviledged positions depend on BAU. And on a deeper level, we in rich countries would rather not as our lifestyles are valued and we see wholesale change as threatening to those lifestyles. And finally, we are at a point whereby true change seems practically impossible given what I just stated and given that we have little options in lieu of BAU.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 28 May 2018, 08:56:23

We build the TPTB and BAU as these huge impenetrable pillars that heed any kind of alternative. Baha's post is an inspiration. FUCK TPTB and BAU!!!!

There are so many cracks in the machine where one can thrive. Stop focusing on all the dysfunction.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby Cog » Mon 28 May 2018, 11:51:07

American corporations, at least 75% of them are having record profits in the first quarter 2018. I know this information will be uncomfortable for those fearing praying for a fast crash.
\
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/27/investi ... index.html



1. Minting money: American companies are pulling in monster profits right now.

A combination of faster economic growth, lower taxes and soaring oil prices are padding the bottom lines of large businesses. Call it the Great American Profit Machine.
Not only are S&P 500 profits sitting at all-time highs, but first-quarter earnings are on track to surge by 24.5% -- the fastest pace since 2010, according to FactSet.

The blockbuster results even managed to blow away Wall Street's lofty expectations. More than three-quarters of S&P 500 companies -- 78% to be exact -- beat earnings estimates. That's the most since FactSet started tracking the stat in 2008.

"Companies are absolutely crushing it on earnings," said Anthony Saglimbene, global market strategist at Ameriprise Financial.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Mon 28 May 2018, 13:02:33

The facts of life would be that in their priviledged position as the citizens of the country with the world's reserve currency, the USA's citizens will continue to enjoy more than an equal share of energy and other resources.

The approaching iceberg: the Chinese economy within the last two years has outpaced our own. They export goods that we buy, we supply food, coal, and knowledge. But with the trade imbalance, they own more and more of our country as time passes. If the Yuan becomes better regarded than the US Dollar, we Americans (meaning anybody who benefits from NAFTA) are in deep doodoo.

But things are likely to be much of the same, more tightly wound each year, right up until runaway US government spending actually breaks the dollar, and the whole world sinks into another Great Depression. Call me an optimist, but I think you can "kick the can" on this one again and again. The new Great Depression will happen in the late 21st Century or the early 22nd Century IMHO.
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Re: BAU is the final nail in the coffin" .

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Tue 29 May 2018, 13:15:16

KaiserJeep wrote:But things are likely to be much of the same, more tightly wound each year, right up until runaway US government spending actually breaks the dollar, and the whole world sinks into another Great Depression. Call me an optimist, but I think you can "kick the can" on this one again and again. The new Great Depression will happen in the late 21st Century or the early 22nd Century IMHO.

Let's say that's what happens, just for a thought experiment.

When it hits, the grandchildren of the current doomers can tell the grandchildren of the cornies or the slow crashers, "See, I TOLD you so!!". To which the response should be: After millions of wrong predictions for a good century or so from the fast crash doomers, we're supposed to take your predictive ability seriously?

....

I'd say that given the change we've seen just in the past four decades, in another eight decades the world and its people and problems will be so much different than today or even than any of us can predict that such forecasts are just guesses.

Nothing wrong with that. But probably not worth a few generations of doomstead building.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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