btu2012, I am not a "fan" of Daniel Quinn, I would like to talk to him but probably we would both be talking about the same thing.
I told you that my view of the world was almost exactly like the one in his book, so when I read it I was happy to see I am not crazy and alone with only a few people somewhere on the internet sharing this view

You say he does nothing ? He wrote a book, there is nothing else to be done. I myself see humans getting smarter and changing their ways, as the only solution.
I am not against technology , as a solution to peak oil I want to do what has been done in Cuba in 1990, organic and local agriculture. Stop this "economy" game. Technology is good, simple life is good, protecting nature is good, it can be done if people stop , just for 5 minutes, stay still and look around (in my dreams )
Books like those written by Daniel Quinn help a few people do exactly that. So we must spread them around.

I am sure about the collapse , and the worst thing that could happen is that people do not become smarter after it, and reinvent the "consumerist society". Same thing appears in the book, so we must use the internet, we have this chance now of communicating our ideas , we must do it before everything collapses into the dark ages

We cannot become hunter gatherers again, even if I would want to

http://www.storyofstuff.com/ - a story about our society

[snip]

I am more concerned whether there will be any humans left if we collapse with all the NBC arsenals we have. We cannot afford to collapse in the manner of the Western Roman Empire.

Whatever the faults of this civilization, we have to somehow avoid an endgame of all against all.

How will you feed a massive population without fossil fuels? I would suggest Biointensive gardening and permaculture, myself, but I don't know if it could support our population. Montequest doesn't seem to think it can.




That's your opinion, which I don't share. I don't see that a gradual change to another way of life would lead to the demise of billions. I just don't understand why that would be necessary.

Maybe you can explain why it would be necessary for billions to die for us to live a different way than civilization.






I'm hardly a propagandist. I am simply expressing anger that you mischaracterize this author who I happen to like.

Don't behave like an asshole.

Please post in another thread what actions you advocate to avoid catastrophic collapse.

Thank you. It may be an important thread. Please start it if there isn't one already.

The population has to be reduced without devising murderous programs. The question is how could one organize large scale permaculture etc with a tribal system ? I am all for simple living but the tribalist story seems utterly impractical.




Because you can't support anything near the level of our current population otherwise. It would be extraordinarily difficult to achieve a peaceful transition to a sustainable world using all the means of civilization, but utterly impossible if one also wanted to try a tribalist experiment at the same time.




Your personal attacks are getting interesting. Quinn isn't God and in my opinion he isn't right either. I also think that he is self-absorbed and that he does enjoy his quasi-Guru status on some level. It is also my opinion that he mis-represents anthropological data and the history of religions and civilizations.

This is my opinion of him and what he is doing, and I have the right to my own opinion, irrespective of how much you would like to quash criticism of him and his work (which does constitute propagandistic behavior).

I would appreciate if you stopped your attempts to bully me into agreeing with your estimation of Quinn.

Ludi, btu, please be nice to each other (or at least civil).

Thank you.

Dear Ludi,

I don't take orders from you about what threads to start or about what I post.

I also think that you don't have much basis for calling me a liar and an asshole.

Who is giving orders? I'm asking you to post something which might be interesting to people. Why do you think a request to post about a topic is an "order"? I ask a lot of people to post about things which may be interesting to others. Why are you feeling picked on?


Why are you being a bully? You called me a propagandist, you accused someone else of being blind. You practically accused Quinn of being a murderer. So it's ok for you to call names but not for anyone else? I think that is "interesting."


Who said Quinn is God? I never did! You seem to be implying, if not outright saying, a lot of really unpleasant things.

Why? Why is it impractical for people to give support and get support from others? That's the tribal model Quinn promotes.

Do you feel the groups would be too small? Why could they not work with other tribes in a larger organization? Bill Mollison* gives a model of this in "Permaculture: a designers manual."


*I don't think Bill Mollison is God.

Maybe because you called me a liar and an asshole ?

Yeah, well, you called me a propagandist and implied I think Quinn is God!

So I guess we're even, huh?

Quinn makes much stronger claims than that.

Tribes are like extended families, they tend to have insider/outsider dynamics which can be quite complicated and dangerous.

One of the basic problems with human organization is the famous in-group/out-group dynamics. In tribal systems each group develops its own "story", to use a Quinn term (i.e. rules, customs, mythology, culture etc) which creates a group identity in opposition to other groups. In our present system you can see a similar phenomenon on much larger scales with national identity etc. Extensive studies of social groups show that group politics arises and develops as soon as one has more than 3 members, with marked tendency towards manipulation, power systems etc arising well below the tribal limit.



Phew. I am relieved.