[BILL_THA_PHARMACIZT]

I know this is probably some hippy shit to some people on this forum...

Personally I think the root of adapting and dealing with peak oil is going to be as much a cultral challenge as anything....
The reason we have dug ourselves into this whole mess is because we have a culture of denial....
and its a reflection of a common psychological mechanism wherby you rationalize violent or destructive behavior for short term personal gain.....

and its the same cultural pattern that has exibited itself in different ways all throughout human histroy ...

However, I think the European conquest of the planet took those traits and accetuated them....and basically put them on sterioids....

I think if we want a "sustainable" culture and way of life, we're going to have to radically develop a different way of looking at the world that underscores the European nation-state model of organization....as well as the corporate structure and economic system that have grown out of it.

[Viper]

violent or destructive behavior for short term personal gain

Can be perfectly rational. It doesn't always need to be rationalized. This isn't kindergarten, and we are not here to learn to share, hold hands and sing Kumbaya. We are here to make sure that our genes get a leg up on your genes in the resource pool. Everything else is window dressing.

its the same cultural pattern that has exhibited itself in different ways all throughout human history

Its not about what you want to do, its about what you were built to accomplish. After such a long and varied history of digging dirt, one would think that you would realize that you are a shovel.

as well as the corporate structure and economic system that have grown out of it

So, what you seem to be saying is that rather than wait for some terrible event to come and destroy our wonderful technological civilization, we should just go ahead and destroy it ourselves? That if it just wasn't for those pesky Europeans, we wouldn't be looking at loosing our wonderful technological magic because we wouldn't have had it in the first place?

Sure...<ahemm> we'll all drink the Kool-Aid, but <cough> you go first....

-Viper

[Sedona]

With less than 5% of the world's population, we consume roughtly 40-50% of all the energy and resources. We have a culture that is based upon taking more than our share and setting it up as a standard of living. If we use that as a base, even if the world had unlimited oil and resources, you could only sustain another 5% or so.

Mother Nature batts last and always will. Capitalism is fine, investors are not if their only goal is to make money by indebting the people. Every single dollar in circulation is borrowed money. If we all paid our debts, the money supply would disappear. Read a little about fiat money and how money is created and you will see the root of much of our ills.

So, yes, we must have a big change in our idea of what kind of cultures the earth can sustain. We need to look back at the way the Indians and the Aborigines tried to live in harmony with nature. I see many posts on here lamenting the trials that "peak oil" will put on the Third World. They are used to doing without, we are not...and we will not go quietly.

[Viper]

With less than 5% of the world's population, we consume roughtly 40-50% of all the energy and resources. We have a culture that is based upon taking more than our share and setting it up as a standard of living. If we use that as a base, even if the world had unlimited oil and resources, you could only sustain another 5% or so.

How is it in any way in our interest to bring up that other 5%? I figured we would just keep them making our shoes indefinitely. Now, if you are predicting that the original 5% will shrink, now we might be having a problem. However, I am willing to wager that a modest amount of effort will keep one who is already in the 5% on the nice side of whatever % we manage to maintain.

-Viper

[gg3]

Viper, your posts in this topic come across as nothing less than abject barbarianism. Do you have any moral principles? and if so, what are they?

(sharpening my scalpel here -snick-snick-snick-...)

Violent behavior "doesn't always need to be rationalized." True, criminals and terrorists are like that. As are various cultures that have self-destructed, failed to evolve, or stagnated & imploded. As are numerous species of predatory animals.

"This isn't kindergarten, and we are not here to learn to share, hold hands and sing Kumbaya." That's an insinuation rather than a reasoned debating point. Now if you invert the negatives and apply reasonably accurate antonyms, what you get is: "We are adults, we are here to learn to steal, attack each other, and shout each other down." That is also a prescription for barbarianism.

Barbarians do not develop science and technology, their standard of living stagnates, they remain in the caves with their primitive superstitions and prejudices firmly intact throughout the course of their miserable and short lifespans, and they usually die of bacterial infections caused by poor sanitation. Would anyone here willingly trade civilization for that?

"We are here to make sure that our genes get a leg up on your genes in the resource pool." Specious at best. Would you care to define how your genes differ from mine in any manner that science considers significant? In fact, it can't be done; the genetic differences even between such obvious groups as "races," are vanishingly small. My genes and your genes are an illusion: it's *our* genes, all of ours.

If by your own genes, you mean your individual personal genes, you're psychiatrically diagnosable for impaired reality-testing: any uniqueness of your own personal DNA basically disappears in three generations or at most four. The genetic imperative of the individual is an illusion, similar to the Tooth Fairy.

What does endure, however, are ideas. Plato, Aristotle, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Lincoln, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Newton, Galileo, DaVinci, Einstien, Heisenberg, Feynman, Watt, Franklin, Edison, Morse, Jacquard, Babbage, Venn, Fleming, Bell, Tesla, Strowger, Watson, Ransome, Carnegie, Waring, Wood, Turing, Shannon, Shockley, the list goes on and on and on.

Can you locate the present-day products of the genes of any of these individuals? Hardly. Can you avoid encountering their ideas and the products and offspring of their ideas? Hardly.

My dear Mr. Viper, you over-value your own sperm and under-value the human brain.

"Everything else is window-dressing." That statement is terribly imprecise. Please specify what you mean by "everything else." In the context given, it can be taken to imply that anything beyond the propagation of one's DNA is superfluous. Imagine trying to tell that to anyone on my list of names a couple of paragraphs ago. You are simply wrong.

"Its not about what you want to do, its about what you were built to accomplish." Yes, and imagine telling *that* to anyone on my long list of names above. Most of them would be polite in their demurral, and then privately question whether you yourself achieved anything worthwhile or even worthy in your own life.

The accomplishments of any of those individuals tower far above the mere feat of projecting one's semen into the next generation. No matter how satisfying the latter act may seem at the time it occurs, it hardly holds the proverbial candle compared to founding a philosophy, composing a symphony, elucidating a theory, or developing a technology.

"After such a long and varied history of digging dirt, one would think that you would realize that you are a shovel." I forgot to mention Otis, the inventor of the Steam Shovel, the machine that excavated most of the inspiring civil engineering works of humanity from the late 1800s through the mid 20th century (presently to evolve into the modern hydraulic excavator). Imagine telling Mr. Otis that you are merely a shovel. He would say you had run out of steam.

"So, what you seem to be saying is that rather than wait for some terrible event to come and destroy our wonderful technological civilization, we should just go ahead and destroy it ourselves?" Incorrect assumption, faulty reasoning, incorrect conclusion. Plainly and simply wrong. About which more in my next posting.

"That if it just wasn't for those pesky Europeans, we wouldn't be looking at loosing our wonderful technological magic because we wouldn't have had it in the first place?" Mr. Viper, if your position was held by the majority, we would not even have steam shovels, much less nuclear reactors and the internet. We would have traded kindergarten for caves, handholding for combat with clubs, and Kumbaya for the Ku Klux Klan.

"Sure...<ahemm> we'll all drink the Kool-Aid, but <cough> you go first"
In fact, Mr. Viper, that nasty little cult was basically an operationalization of your very own apparent value system.

Continued...

[gg3]

Back to Bill's point.

Yes, denial. Unfortunately humans tend to be wired for that; the cure for which is a course in probability & statistics.

However, denial itself is not sufficient to plunder a planet. Avarice and the absence of empathy are key ingredients in the stew. These are also cardinal sins against which the founders of most of the world's religions have inveighed.

Another key ingredient is projection: the deliberate localization in another person, of a characteristic one knows at some level belongs to oneself. This is interesting in light of the present-day "moral crusades," which are primarily concerned with the scapegoating of sexualities other than ones' own (e.g. denial of civil rights to gays in the USA, to women in the Muslim world, etc.). It is as if the extirpation of "alien" sexuality (for example woman-as-other is operative in e.g. Saudi Arabia) becomes a smokescreen for failure to confront deeper and more pervasive moral failures. Yet it is precisely the combination of greed, laziness, and apathy that is presently killing us.

Greed by itself can be channeled productively enough; if combined with basic humility and a strong work ethic, each person's gain can raise living standards for all. Laziness hurts only oneself and one's family, if confined to one's own lack of ambition; and about apathy one can say the same.

Combine them and you have a net tendency to covet wealth without working for it or being concerned how it is acquired: the formula for slavery, resource depletion, and externalized costs of all kinds.

European culture is not unique in kind, only in degree. Every other culture has exhibited similar tendencies. Now here's a truly nasty little secret for you: Guess where the Europeans learned about chattel slavery? Nope. They got it from the tribal kings and rulers of Africa: black men who sold other black men into chains for a price. Those kings of Africa got the Europeans hooked on the idea, and continued to supply Europe and the Americas with slaves until the "peculiar institution" took off based on its own profit motive.

As in Europe and Africa, so in the Americas: slavery among the native peoples, including the trading of slaves among certain tribes of the Pacific Northwest. They developed the idea long before the Euros trekked across the continent. It is probably a simple matter to find similar examples in the histories of almost every geographic region and ethnic group.

Statistically, someone was bound to be first to spread across the planet and claim conquest over those who might have done likewise later. It happened to be the Europeans. In the 20th century, Imperial Japan could have done similarly. At another time it could have been China. It could have been Stalin, or Hitler, or even Gandhi in his own more uplifting way.

So those of us with partially or entirely European ancestors are not the only ones with inherited blood on our hands. However it is our cultural legacy that presently needs to be cleansed and reborn in order to avoid the otherwise near certainty of being the proverbial hand on the tiller when civilization runs aground.


More in a subsequent post on another day.