Voluntary Argument, Part 4: Smackdown

So like I said, Dimwit presents an opening that I just can't pass up. He starts out by posting a link to an AP article, and adding to it, as an intro:

How do others feel about these thoughts I offered?

One other thought: I think I'd rather die trying and failing to avert a catastrophic collapse than survive under the kinds of conditions you hope to survive. That kind of life might well not be worth living for me. Either way, I'm not most interested in my own survival.

How important is it to you to stay alive, even if the life you're left is one in which most of the people you love have died, maybe horrifically, when there has been a massive dieoff, that's still continuing, when you're struggling from day to day just to feed yourself and provide adequate shelter, to fend off those who are trying to take what you have built up? What kind of life is worth living for you?


The person who originally started the thread made some good points in her response:

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. The life of the people who are the subject of this article doesn't seem bad to me, except in their isolation. I guess that the questions you've asked aren't the relevant ones to me. To me, the reason for surviving the crash is to protect the landbase, and hopefully leave a seed of a sustainable culture for my place. The quote from Derrick Jensen that I use in my signature embodies my view of a role for me in the collapse of civilization. ["What does it mean to dismantle civilization? What it means is: Depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and to destroy the world. I can't give a better definition than that."--Derrick Jensen]

I responded only with a supporting comment that as more people adopt that kind of lifestyle, they'll be less isolated.

I have to say, though, that I think I have a broader view of "people I love" than you do. The list of people I love includes the fish people, the frog people, the tree people, and more, whom I love and depend on. Many of these people are unlikely to continue to survive much longer unless civilization is dismantled.

Getting back to the quote. I think it may offer some guidance. If dismantling civilization means, "Depriving the rich of the ability to steal from the poor and to destroy the world," then it implies an active role in guiding collapse. It means ensuring that the ones to survive are not the ones who are most capable of continuing the destruction.

Have you read The Road by Cormac McCarthy? I didn't find it particularly helpful to my understanding, but it seems to be more in tune with your thoughts on collapse.


Dimwit chimes in again, and finally states explicitly what his problem is. His entire response to her, with my responses to him interleaved:

No, I haven't read The Road. I have quite enough fears about how horrific the future may come to be without that vision in my head, though it's been highly praised. I watched Children of Men last night, and I think that's enough dystopian imagining for me for a while. I thought it was very well done but nothing I really needed to spend 2 hours of my short life on.

I believe this finally makes clear Dimwit's problem. He's still in denial, and can't handle the idea that things might (most likely will) get really bad. It threatens to push him over into the Depression stage. Meanwhile the rest of the world is still Bargaining, trying to hedge and find some way to make things not-quite-as-bad without fundamentally changing anything.


It wasn't the life that the people described in the article are living now that I was referring to, but the life that they imagine themselves to be preparing for. This also ties back into Stableboy's earlier message about making preparations and learning skills to go off into an isolated area and survive the crash. As I recall, he didn't necessarily mean "isolated" in the sense of geographic distance; could also be in the sense of a less-hospitable (for folks like us) ecosystem, such as the desert.

Granted, they "can imagine marauding hordes" of people who don't make such preparations, but they're not envisioning misery either. "Breault said she hopes to someday band together with her neighbors to form a self-sufficient community." What is so bad about that?


I love those other species in the community of life, too, but I doubt I'm abnormal in that I love the human beings in my life that I love--my friends and family--more than those other species, who are less like me and with whom I do not have close personal relationships. I think it's safe to say that Mother Bears love their cubs far more than other species, or other bear species, or even other bears of their own species. This is to be expected because it's what works in evolutionary terms.

That's fuzzy too. Most animals will run off (rarely kill, simply because it means they're likely to sustain some injury themselves) a member of their own species (that's not an immediate prospective mate) in order to protect their territory - which means their food supply. Therefore they put a higher priority on other species than on other members of their own species.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable, then, to say that I value the ecosystem in general and many non-human individuals in it over any given human that I don't know and care about personally.


I don't like that quote from Derrick, though this may be only because I'm seeing it from out of context. It seems to me to imply that "the rich" are the villains of the piece, when I think they have been acculturated to their role in the same way most other people have been acculturated to their role. As long as most people want to be among "the rich," it doesn't really matter who the individuals among "the rich" are.

Well, yeah, the rich are the villains. How they became the villains doesn't make any difference. The rich (and therefore powerful) have the power to take advantage of anyone who's not rich. As long as the system is the way it is, yeah, people are going to want to be rich, because then they'll be in power, and nobody else will be able to keep them down anymore. Which means that the system needs to be pulled apart before people will stop wanting to be "rich". Like I said before, those in power are not going to voluntarily relinquish that power.

And my response to his first question, the "What do you think about my thoughts?" question at the top of this post:

Honestly, those thoughts strike me as faux-noble cowardice. It sounds to me like you're saying, "I find what you describe so distasteful that I'd rather die than stoop to that level."

If you just wait for the civilization to end, then your quality of life is likely to be pretty low. However, if you build shelter, and plant fruit trees, and arrange for armament/defense, then your worries about those things later will be greatly reduced. Not that it'll be easy, but it won't be nearly as hard as you're making it out to be.

As for loved ones dying, I've lost loved ones in the past. I'll lose more in the future. Nothing anyone does will prevent that. Everyone dies. Get over it. But just because they're dead, or going to die at some unknown time in the future doesn't mean that I should roll over and die too. Absolutely not. In fact, I'm going to do what I can to make sure they survive as well. Which means assembling the necessary equipment, paraphernalia, and vegetation to allow for their survival.

He didn't like that. He didn't actually respond to any of the points I made there, he just asked about the alias comprising my e-mail address (and this is just too funny not to repost):

Wherever did you get the appellation "Ribbons the Friendly Viking"?

Could we hear from someone else now? Please?


The woman who started the thread wrote back to me, saying:

I think we have a slightly different perspective on survival, and part of it is probably based on age. At 59, I'm very much aware that I've lived more of my life than I have to come, no matter what happens. You (and my sons) potentially have more of your life yet to come. Mostly, I agree with you.

As for The Road, it's a post apocalyptic novel of a father and son roaming around, living off the remnants of civilization. The only non-human life to appear (well, maybe there were pets) were some morels. The central issue was whether the father would kill his son before he died so that the son wouldn't have to continue without him. For me, not a very useful story.


At this point the thread breaks off in a completely different direction. If it proves interesting/relevant, it'll end up here as well. But for now, this series of posts is done.

Voluntary Argument, Part 3: Further Dimwittery

So we've now completely moved off of the whole "voluntary" thing, and we're now into the real discussion. Continued from the last post:

I almost took offense at your message, but then I reminded myself that you don't know me. I've been a community activist for years, writing and giving talks and having conversations with people and putting out various brochures around town and helping to organize events. Will it work? I dunno, but the only thing I can see that will save us is the very kind of cultural change on a broad scale that Quinn wrote his books to foster. And change is happening all around us, though never quickly enough for my taste.

There is no way to "save us" at large. We're living fundamentally unsustainably. The human population will be reduced. There is no way to avoid that. The trick will be making sure that you're one of the few to survive that culling. And speeches and brochures won't help you there.

The real problem is that, as you say, "change is happening all around us". The problem is that it's not social change, it's contextual change. See below for more on that point.


It seems clear to me that individuals and small groups will have very little survival value in a catastrophic collapse

Individuals and small groups will have a higher survivability than large groups in the event of catastrophic collapse. Of course, that does depend on your definition of "small" relative to "large", but I have no intention of being within easy walking distance of anything larger than a small town, and preferably not even that.


not only because their numbers will be so small compared to the masses of desperate people with weapons but because the civilized are so far from having the skills necessary to live without any of the infrastructure of civilization to support them. I doubt there's enough time to learn what one would need to learn to survive except perhaps in the most favorable of geographic locations, and KC is not one of those, IMO.

Absolutely not, which is why I'm getting the hell out of here. I do also recognize how few of those survival skills I currently possess, which is why I'm trying to learn them. I've also got a handful of other people already on board with my grand delusions, who are also working on picking up other complementary skills. I have no intention of going it alone. The more people I've got working with me, the larger composite skill sets we can accumulate, and the more likely we are to be able to survive collectively. A big part of that is going to rely on isolation from the "masses of desperate people with weapons". Isolation will also contribute to having more available resources, because there will be fewer other people around to compete with (in an ecological sense).


Why are you a member of this group if you don't think voluntary cultural change is possible?

Honestly, I've been wondering about that myself recently. I used to think that Quinn's way, voluntary gradual cultural change, was right. The problem is that there's no time for that anymore. If people had gotten serious about those kinds of changes 30 years ago, after the first oil crisis, when people first started worrying about overpopulation, if the hippies had followed through with any of their ideology, then we might not be in such dire straits now. But as it is, it's too late.

Look around, the End Times are upon us. Armageddon, Apocalypse, Ragnarok, Rapture, the end of the Mayan Long Count, whatever you want to call it. It's not just that, as you note, "we are rapidly running out of time to prevent catastrophic climate disruption", there's also Peak oil, the economy tanking, global politics, everything is hitting right bloody now. If we had the luxury to deal with these problems one at a time, we could probably manage them, but in combination, and as much as they're feeding into each other, it's impossible. The game is over, people just haven't realized it yet. The ones who survive are going to be the ones who learn the rules of the new game quickest.

Who's waiting? I don't know about you, but I'm not waiting, I'm learning and teaching and being compassionate, as best I can. Everyone I know who has become B was once a pretty "normal" American, so I don't see any reason to write off "normal" Americans as being unable to change "until things are so bad that they're unfixable." I think many people would be ready for change--if only they didn't assume, like you, that voluntary change is impossible.

The time scale that we have left to work with is too short for the scope of voluntary change that you're talking about to be possible. The time for talk and education is over, the time for skills and action is here.


And I think we have to change the larger culture (at least in the sense of reducing its destructive impact dramatically) or even the coolest neotribal experiments will almost certainly be dragged down in the crash.

While it's a definite possibility that "even the coolest neotribal experiments will almost certainly be dragged down in the crash", given that it's too late to avoid the impending crash, what other option is there than to do everything possible to weather the crash? Averting the disaster has failed, it's time for the contingency plan.


Someone else jumped in here:

I see the options are: 1) Destroy Civilization (Jensen's idea), 2) Revolt or Reform (Change it), 3) Create Something Better (Make Civilization obsolete). Maybe I'm getting caught up in semantics here. But I heard several things said in this thread that seem to come from a "revolt or reform" point of view. For instance, the need to persuade a large amount of people or power-brokers BEFORE we can have change and take effective action; "taking away" power from powerful people; the need to takeover and stop the system before it kills everything; and our actions and changes being constrained (defined) by the system's limitations.

To which I responded:

I'm not talking about destroying, reforming, or revolting. Civilization will destroy itself in short order, which obviates the possibility or necessity of revolt or reform. I'm talking about option 3, starting over, outside of civilization. The big problem with Quinn's Tribe of the Crow or anything analogous is that it's only viable as long as civilization exists. Once things start seriously deteriorating, there will be plenty of crows around, but progressively less for them to feed off of.


Back to my exchanges with Dimwit:

I think you overestimate your ability to get away from the desperate masses with guns. Any place you could go to that might be far enough away by distance is probably going to be unsurvivable for other reasons--the desert, the arctic, and so on. And, given the likelihood of armed conflict in a collapse, you might not be safe even if you could figure out how to survive in an unfamiliar and challenging ecosystem.

Possibly. Isolation isn't just about distance, though, it's also about environment, and as I said before, I'm getting the hell out of here.

When I referred to KC not being ideal, I wasn't referring to the metropolitan area of KC but to the geographic location with its climatic characteristics. You might do better than me, but I'm not sure I'd survive a single winter without heating.

I agree there too. And survivability will be radically increased by preparations ahead of time.

I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree, though, given how far apart our views are.

It was pretty clear from the beginning that there was no point in trying to convince you. The real reason for a public debate is to sway the people who are still on the fence, the undecided.

[Which is also, obviously, the point of posting all of this here, for you, my three readers.]

One other thought: I think I'd rather die trying and failing to avert a catastrophic collapse than survive under the kinds of conditions you hope to survive. That kind of life might well not be worth living for me. Either way, I'm not most interested in my own survival.

No way to know now, not until you see. It's a lot easier to kill yourself later should you so decide than to decide later that you should have put more energy into living. But if you don't make preparations, that will significantly decrease your quality of life.


The only thing in that entire last e-mail that he responded to was the last paragraph, to which he answered:

I suppose that would matter to me if I thought there was time to become meaningfully prepared, but I don't think there is. We either bring this flying machine in for a crash landing that most survive or there's a massive dieoff, and I'm okay with being among those who die off. Seriously, if there's going to be a dieoff, why would I think I should be among those who survive? Let those who've remained indigenous to their place, those whose ancestors never gave up a sustainable way of life, have the world. And I wouldn't want to live through the death of almost everyone I know and love, either.


I didn't actually respond to that at the time, though Dimwit reposted later asking what people thought of his previous statement, the "I'd rather die trying than survive in those conditions" thing, and I tore him open then. Stay tuned.


One more thing before I break. Another different person chiming in, and my response:

I don't much like [Stableboy's] message; I don't like to think about collapse. But I must admit, I am hard pressed to rationally argue that is not where we are heading. I wish it weren't so. Like Jackson Brown used to sing, "I got this feeling that it's later than it seems."

I don't expect people to like my message. But it doesn't matter if anybody likes it. The appeal of an idea has absolutely nothing to do with how true it is. You can argue with gravity or evolution all you want, that doesn't affect their veracity. You can argue with overpopulation all you want, it won't change the fact that we have way the hell too many people on the planet, and most of them are going to die in the not-too-distant future. You can argue the positive things that civilization has provided for us, that won't change that the system is already coming apart at the seams, and will soon start deteriorating in earnest. Life sucks, get a helmet. :)

Continued, in the final installment.

Voluntary Argument, Part 2: Dimwitted Demonstration

The rest of the discussion was basically Dimwit and I going back and forth. His first response to me, in its entirety:

Hi, [Stableboy]. I'm glad to see someone new chiming in. To be clear, though, I didn't intend for anyone to think that I was saying that "an action becomes involuntary when the person becomes aware of the negative consequences of not changing." To my mind, change remains voluntary unless or until the person is forced to change in a particular way--they have no other option. For example, I've considered living without a car again (I did so for a little over 6 years before buying a Honda Insight Hybrid 3 1/2 years ago) but have never made the voluntary choice to do so even though I've been well aware that by driving I'm contributing to global warming and climate disruption, air and water pollution, the perpetuation of the American empire, repression of indigenous peoples, and more. Tonight I was in a collision that may well have totaled my car (only minor injuries to me and my passenger, though, thankfully) and it's possible that I won't be able to afford to buy a different one, at least not any time soon. If that happens, the once-voluntary choice to not own a car may become involuntary.

I also think you've overestimated the power of the people in power to force change on the masses if the masses aren't ready to change. This hasn't worked easily with air and water pollution and endangered species legislation and regulations, and those changes to our culture's business-as-usual were a lot less challenging than what we need to do to end the ongoing extinction crisis and avoid catastrophic climate disruption. It's really hard for a small number of people to force a large number of people to do things, though it can be done with a large enough armed force. I doubt one could mount a large armed force to require people to do what's necessary to save the world, though.

Finally, I think you underestimate the power of large numbers of ordinary people to change things even if their so-called leaders don't want to change. Those leaders only have power as long as a sufficiently-large percentage of the people are willing to let them have it.


I'm posting all of that here, partially to show what a deluded, self-absorbed twit he is, but also because I cut a bunch of irrelevant bits out when I took it apart and threw it back at him:


To be clear, though, I didn't intend for anyone to think that I was saying that "an action becomes involuntary when the person becomes aware of the negative consequences of not changing." To my mind, change remains voluntary unless or until the person is forced to change in a particular way--they have no other option.

That's a fine line between being practically involuntary and morally/ethically involuntary, and one I don't care enough to argue. For the vast majority of people the ethical side never enters into their considerations, so I'm ignoring it here too, since we are talking about the populace as a whole, rather than our supposedly "enlightened" self-appointed crowd.

Which does lead me to another point, the problem of identifying too strongly with "normal" people, the ones who come home from their nine-to-five and plop down in front of the TV for the next five hours, the ones who aspire to 2.3 kids in a single-family-home on a nicely-manicured lawn in suburbia. If you're on this mailing list, odds are you're not one of those people, and you don't think they way they do. For starters, you're more likely to be thinking at all, in the first place. It's so easy to lose sight of how pathetic, closed-minded, tunnel-visioned, and locked in denial the average person is.


For example, I've considered living without a car again ... and it's possible that I won't be able to afford to buy a different one, at least not any time soon. If that happens, the once-voluntary choice to not own a car may become involuntary.

So what? So you personally will have to do without a car. That's not going to force other people to relinquish their own cars. It's not going to make other people realize that their existence is unsustainable. Only when people start running out of options do they figure out other solutions.


I also think you've overestimated the power of the people in power to force change on the masses if the masses aren't ready to change.

I think you underestimate the power of the government, and the money and media it controls, to influence what people want. We've become a consumeristic society because the government told us that's what we wanted, and the media supported it. We invaded Iraq because the government told us they had WMDs, and the media propagated it. People believe that we're now experiencing a minor recession, and that we'll recover shortly, because that's what the government is telling the media.


This hasn't worked easily with air and water pollution and endangered species legislation and regulations, and those changes to our culture's business-as-usual were a lot less challenging than what we need to do to end the ongoing extinction crisis and avoid catastrophic climate disruption.

Because the government continues to subsidize the industries causing all that destruction.


It's really hard for a small number of people to force a large number of people to do things, though it can be done with a large enough armed force. I doubt one could mount a large armed force to require people to do what's necessary to save the world, though.

It doesn't require any armed force, it just requires the careful and elegant manipulation of (mis)information, to make people think that they want to do things that are against their best interest. For example, the Republican party has historically convinced the religious-but-poor to vote for them using catchphrases like "Protect Marriage", and then proceeded to legislate against the economic interests of the majority of their supporters.


Finally, I think you underestimate the power of large numbers of ordinary people to change things even if their so-called leaders don't want to change. Those leaders only have power as long as a sufficiently-large percentage of the people are willing to let them have it.

There's currently only a very small percentage of people who want to take power away from the system. The vast majority would never think to overhaul, let alone toss the system and replace it with something that actually works. They just want to change who's in charge of the system, to get the results they want. Your hypothetical "sufficiently-large percentage" is not going to materialize until the enveloping context (referred to earlier in the discussion) changes to the point that that many people are miserable, destitute, starving, etc.


He also responded, in a separate post, to something I'd said earlier:

The people in power are not going to voluntarily divest themselves of that power.

with:

If enough minds are ever changed, we'll take the power to destroy the world away from anyone in power whose minds hasn't changed.

Do I really have to say how naïve, idealistic, and system-perpetuating that thought is?

The following few e-mails were fairly short and to the point:

Your hypothetical "sufficiently-large percentage" is not going to materialize until the enveloping context (referred to earlier in the discussion) changes to the point that that many people are miserable, destitute, starving, etc.

Perhaps, but I see no value in being so pessimistic about the prospects for change nor so critical of "normal" people. They are what they've been acculturated to be, but they can change. I was once a very "normal" American myself.

I see no value in being optimistic about waiting for people to change. There is no evidence to support the manifestation your phantom groundswell until things are so bad that they're unfixable. It makes no difference whatsoever why people are now the way they are, except in that it will prevent them from changing in the opposite direction.

Our discussions here aren't making a difference to all those people who need to be woken up. If you really believe things can change, go talk to them, rather than preaching to the choir here. I, on the other hand, am going to go pursue my own plans for survival once the fit hits the shan. I don't even know that I'm going to have enough time for my own preparations, and I've been thinking about this stuff for a good long time. I have no faith that other people who haven't "seen the light" will be able to survive the crash, but if you think so, go help them.

What do you think will cause this grassroots revolution to come about, before it's too late? What are you doing to cause it?

At this point, things start getting lengthier again, so I'm gonna end this post, and start over with the long diatribes.

Voluntary Argument, Part 1

Another debate I got into recently, on another mailing list. One of the early points, before I got into it, was on whether people will change voluntarily. In an attempt to address this question, someone posted the definition of the term:

from the American Heritage Dictionary via dictionary.com
vol·un·tar·y adjective

1. Done or undertaken of one's own free will: a voluntary decision to leave the job.
2. Acting or done willingly and without constraint or expectation of reward: a voluntary hostage; voluntary community work.
3. Normally controlled by or subject to individual volition: voluntary muscle contractions.
4. Capable of making choices; having the faculty of will.
5. Supported by contributions or charitable donations rather than by government appropriations: voluntary hospitals.
6. Law
- 1. Without legal obligation or consideration: a voluntary conveyance of property.
- 2. Done deliberately; intentional: voluntary manslaughter.


The problem was that people still weren’t using it quite the same way. So I chimed in:

One of the biggest issues I see here is semantic, in the application of the word "voluntary". Twenty years ago, someone who renounced the Dominant World Culture, bought some land, built a solar home on it, and started farming it themselves organically would be said to do it voluntarily, by most of the definitions presented (though arguably not #2, since there was definitely an expected reward from making that change).

These days, we (those who see the impending collapse of civilization) would say that making that change is not voluntary, because the only alternative to making that choice (or something similar, complementary, etc) is death when everything goes to hell. Those who aren't "in the know" at this point would still see making that transition as voluntary, because it's not necessary in the immediate sense.

When the crash comes, there will be no viable alternative to small-scale agricultural communities, and therefore that lifestyle will not be voluntary in any sense, but mandatory, because most other options will have evaporated. The changes at each step aren't just the cultural context, but the subject's awareness of it, and evaluation of its consequences.

Granted these are my own views and opinions, but I see no reason to think that the agitating of a relatively few people will overcome the inertia of the culture as a whole. (See above about individual evaluation of consequences.) Dimwit’s point that an action becomes involuntary when the person becomes aware of the negative consequences of not changing is valid, but too black-and-white, and Dimwit actually makes my point for me, though at a larger scale: "The default position is for people to go along with the norms of their culture because this is their best hope to thrive and prosper under most circumstances."

Think of the battered woman who voluntarily stays with her abuser, or the laborer who stays in his low-paying dead-end job his entire life. These people have to see that they'd be better off changing their circumstances, but they don't out of inertia, a fear of change, a fear of losing what little security they've got in exchange for the possibility of an improvement. Though we on the outside would say that it can only get better at that point. Like so many other things, it's a perspective issue. "Freedom" is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Back to one of the other earlier points, accumulating sheer numbers is the slowest way to accomplish change. It's not enough to change a bunch of people's minds, those people have to be in the position to make their mindsets felt by other people. While the average person doesn't do much more than add another ping to the gross number of people with changed minds (#12 on Meadows' list), people in politics and the media (which are horribly and incredibly incestuous) control all 12 of the factors on the list.

While it's kind of a truism that if you change a sufficient number of minds, the culture will change, there's a lot of wiggle room in that "sufficient". You can change over half of the minds in a population, but if those people have no power, it won't do any good. On the other hand, a handful of changed minds in the right places can make all the difference, regardless of the mindsets of everyone else.

Political policy lags public opinion by a large gap. The people who manage to get elected are going to be more likely to hang onto outdated policies rather than risking their positions by making waves. I don't believe (and Dimwit makes this point as well) that we've got the time remaining before the crash for the politicians to come around (or to elect enough new politicians) to get the necessary changes made. I'd love it if I were wrong on this, but I can't make myself believe it. These political changes would also prevent whatever resulting practical cultural changes from qualifying as "voluntary", because then they'd be mandated (or subsidized, or whatever) by the government.

The media is beholden to the politicians (as well as its own corporatocracy), and generally can't take its own stand. (Obviously that's not true on small scales, but when we're talking about the transition from small-scale to large-scale change, with whatever model, we have to look at what's preventing the changes at that large scale.) The mass media may not actually control everything in the second (more powerful) half of Meadows' list, but they at least control the perception thereof, which is at least as powerful. And as long as the vast majority of people pay attention to the mass media and its government-induced obfuscation, the culture as a whole cannot possibly change.

Here we run into the problem of the (relatively) few of us, who have awakened to the desperate need for change fighting against the majority who believe what the media is telling them, that everything will be fine, that the problems we're seeing now are only temporary, that there's a myriad of technofixes on the horizon, etc. What's necessary to jolt these people out of their TV-induced comas is further contextual change.

Ask around, and the vast majority of people will acknowledge that you can't trust politicians and the media, but they still rely on these sources for their information. It's going to take something really significant before people finally quit believing the sources they know to be lying and start believing what they're actually seeing in the world around them.

We all know that part of the trick is showing people what they have to gain, rather than what they're losing, but when it looks like they're losing so much, it's tough not to cling to that. If the policies and the infrastructure were in place now, it would be a lot easier to at least begin to walk away and become a sustainable society at large. But they're not, largely because the politicians have been so beholden to corporate interests and hidebound by their own desire for power.

And people aren't ready to believe that they're going to be losing those comforts regardless. That realization makes it less of a "voluntary" transition, and more of an inevitability, and that it's better to make preparations now rather than to simply hide and wait for the end.


Obviously the guy’s name isn’t really Dimwit, but I had to change it to post here. Keep reading, he’ll show himself dreadfully clearly to deserve the moniker. Another guy, Naïve, responds first, though, and references something else that had come up earlier in the thread, Premise 6 from Derrick Jensen’s Endgame: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Naïve’s post, and my responses:

If I get past my mental stumbles, I hear DJ saying in premise 6 that the majority of people will not change until their way of life becomes completely unworkable, when they have no other choice but to change immediately--when there is no work to go to, no fuel for engines, no way to pipe water to homes or factories, no electricity, no food at the grocery.
...
Those predictions sound pretty dire to me, but I don't agree with them. I think people can change before their current way of life becomes impossible to maintain for one more day. Many people have already reached that point and begun casting about for some other way. Will a majority change? I believe so. It'll take some more time, but it will happen, and happen faster every day. I think it is also a toss up as to whether the environment would fair better in a rapid collapse scenario. A slow descent may be preferable.

Yes, people can change before they're forced to. Yes, many people have already changed. But relatively few people will change before they're forced to, even if it is a large count. As more pressure is brought to bear, more people will convert, either because they'll have to (involuntary, by whatever definition) or because they'll "see the light", but as time goes on, and resources deplete, and fewer options are available (if we don't have the materials and energy to produce solar panels, they won't be available to produce electricity), fewer people will be able to successfully manage the transition.

As for the rapid collapse vs the slow descent, the big question there for me is, on that downslope, will people still be clinging tooth and nail to their old way of life, in which case a rapid collapse would do less damage, or will they be trying to reengineer their lifestyles to a completely new paradigm? In the latter case, it would make life easier if there were a gradual decline, and this is another example of a yawning gulf between what I'm personally hoping for and what I can actually make myself believe will really happen.


I do agree that it will take more than just changing minds. The context does need to shift further. Its doing so now though. We might help it along too: make it harder to profit from destruction of the earth's resource, harder to exploit the poor, make unwanted behaviors more costly. Tax shifting would likely have a hugely beneficial affect.

All things that require having changed minds in positions of power, which is inherently problematic, as I mentioned in my previous epic. As you also said, "the existing system is quite robust". Not that these things can't happen, they just won't, or at least not soon enough on any scale sufficient to make a significant difference. The people in power are not going to voluntarily divest themselves of that power.


This post is getting pretty long, so I’ll break now, and post more separately.