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.