Let’s continue looking back at my earliest and least accurate set of predictions about the future, published twenty years ago in the first months of my original blog The Archdruid Report. The ongoing depletion of fossil fuel energy, the shared theme of the last two posts we examined, was the main driver of the changes I saw coming down the road in those days, but I realized from the beginning that the implications of fossil fuel depletion weren’t limited to whether people could get gasoline for their cars or electricity from the grid. The economic impacts of the impending energy crisis, I believed, were at least as important, since nearly every form of economic activity in the industrial world at that time depended on fossil fuels in one way or another.
That hasn’t changed noticeably over the last two decades. It’s a source of bleak amusement to me that so many people think, for example, that solar PV and wind turbines have done anything to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. Quite the contrary, they’ve increased it. To begin with, nearly all the massive energy inputs needed to manufacture, transport, install, maintain, and decommission these allegedly green technologies comes from fossil fuels.
At the same time, since both sun and wind are distressingly intermittent, the more solar and wind power you install, the more backup generation capacity that can be stopped and started instantly has to be put in, and that means fossil fuels—usually, though not always, natural gas. If you’ve wondered why all those PV farms and gargantuan wind turbines haven’t done a thing to slow the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, why, now you know.
So our dependence on fossil fuels hasn’t changed. Neither have the two standard reactions to the predicament we’re in. Most people, presented with the hard facts of declining energy supplies, either brush them aside with thoughtstoppers of the “Oh, I’m sure they’ll think of something” variety, or freak out completely and become convinced that the great-great-grandmother of all economic crises is about to break over all our heads sometime very soon and hurl us straight into a Mad Max scenario. In the post we’re reviewing this week, I tried to do something about that latter habit, by identifying it in advance as “the Y2K fallacy.” The post appeared on September 27, 2006; you can read it here.
I’m not sure how many of my readers even remember the Y2K noncrisis after a quarter century, so I’ll summarize it here. In the mid-1990s computer geeks discovered that most older computers weren’t prepared to handle the moment when the year 1999 changed to 2000, because in the days when computers were simpler and every digit cost money, most software treated the year as a two-digit number and there was no provision for 99 to give way to 00 when the year rolled over—thus “Y2K,” short for “year 2000.” Early tests suggested that a lot of old software would simply freeze up once that happened. Since by that time computers already ran the power grid, banking, and many of the other basic functions of modern life, word got out that most of these were likely to shut down unless something was done in a hurry.
Enter the apocalypse lobby—that large and vocal segment of society that turns every crisis into an excuse to predict overnight cataclysms and mass death. Lurid predictions of an overfamiliar kind got deployed all through the media and the newborn internet, whipping a great many people into a frenzy of trembling anticipation over images of continent-wide blackouts, economic collapse, and mindlessly rampaging mobs. I knew a significant number of people who huddled in their basements on the night of December 31, 1999, convinced that the world would crash to ruin as soon as the clock struck midnight.
Of course that didn’t happen, and there was no reason to think that it would happen. Once the warning went out, governments and corporations went on a spending spree, buying new Y2K-compliant computers and software at a headlong pace that sent tech firm profits soaring and helped drive the stock market into an epic bubble. Meanwhile everybody who had the necessary skills to tinker with old programs was working as much overtime as they wanted and raking in money at a ferocious pace. By the middle of 1999 it was clear to anyone who was paying attention that the only disruptions that would happen when the new year came would be sporadic and easily repaired. A great many people, however, weren’t paying attention—or rather, to be more precise, they were clenching their eyes shut, stuffing their fingers into their ears, and shouting at the top of their lungs, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you.”
This is hardly the first time, or the last, that the apocalypse lobby has fixated on a potential source of imminent doom and gone out of its way to ignore all the signs that the necessary preventive measures were taking place. Exactly the same behavior was on display all over the peak oil community in the autumn of 2006, just to cite the obvious example, and it continued at full roar thereafter. Scores of websites and a steady stream of books insisted in the usual shrill tones that the only possible outcome of the impending peak of world petroleum production was, you guessed it, a sudden, shattering economic catastrophe followed by rampaging mobs. Every few months, somebody or other online announced that the end really was nigh and the long-awaited crash would happen in the next year or two.
They were wrong, and not just a little bit wrong, either. As events showed, they were totally, spectacularly, embarrassingly wrong, quite literally as wrong as it was possible for them to be. When economies worldwide lurched downwards in 2008, helped on their way by the dramatic spike in petroleum prices that year, the result wasn’t the out-of-control doom spiral that the apocalypse lobby had been proclaiming from the rooftops as an absolute inevitability; it was an ordinary financial crisis followed, in the usual way, by stabilization and recovery. Nor was the reason for this outcome any mystery.
The issue was quite simple. The would-be prophets who proclaimed that peak oil would bring on the long-awaited doom of the industrial world, like those who assigned the Y2K glitch that same role, assumed that nobody in government or industry would do anything in response to an obvious, imminent threat to their wealth and power. Instead, the apocalypse lobby assumed, everyone everywhere would sit on their hands, making aimless plaintive noises, while ignoring the robust set of crisis management tools that government and industry have at their disposal, and have used so enthusiastically in past crises. That frankly idiotic assumption was hardwired into all the fast-collapse scenarios, and guaranteed their failure.
What fascinated me at the time, and continues to fascinate me now, is that even these repeated humiliations so rarely made people ask whether maybe, just maybe, there was something wrong with their assumptions. Most of the time, believers simply switched from one apocalyptic claim to another, and then to yet another, maintaining all the while the same emotional state of fevered expectancy, the same rhetoric, and the same fantasies of rampaging mobs and cities aflame. Now and then I used to read angry outbursts by people who just couldn’t understand why the sudden cataclysm of their dreams kept on stubbornly refusing to show up on cue. Taking the obvious next step and realizing that there was a lesson to be learned from all those failures was relatively rare, though. I didn’t do a survey, but my impression was that maybe two or three people in a hundred got that far.
When ordinarily intelligent people continue to cling to a belief system even after its predictions fail repeatedly, it seems to me, it’s not unreasonable to ask why this should be. In this case, it’s pretty clear that the emotional payoffs of apocalyptic fantasy are potent ones, and they’re shared by enough people that true believers in impending apocalypse can be confident they won’t be called to account for buying repeatedly into a failed belief system. I’ve talked about the main force behind this on my blogs, but it’s been quite a while, so it’s probably worth going over the broad outline again.
Psychologists have a concept called “provisional living.” This is something that many people do when they’re unsatisfied with their lives, but for one reason or another don’t want to make the changes that would be needed to improve things. Instead of doing something about their problems, they find something to serve as the imaginary doorway to the better life they dream of having, and then make good and sure never to go through that doorway.
We’ve all met people who do this—and indeed many of us, at one point or another in our lives, have done this ourselves. It’s always “when X happens,” whether X is quitting that miserable job, losing forty pounds, marrying somebody, divorcing somebody, or what have you—that’s when all the wonderful things we like to fantasize about are going to happen. Then we make good and sure never to quit the job, lose the weight, make the proposal, file the divorce papers, or what have you. We marshal legions of excuses why we’ll surely make X happen one of these days but not just yet, and spend our time instead sitting around with friends, tipping back our beverage of choice, and glowing with unhappiness and misery as we rabbit on by the hour about how unfair it is that our lives suck.
It’s at least a little risky to build the fantasies of provisional living on something that we can actually do, however, because there’s always the creeping terror that someday we might do it and bring the whole castle in the air crashing down. That’s why some of the most popular and enduring sources of provisional living are things over which we have no control. Winning the lottery is one of the top contenders here, not least because people who pile their fantasies of a better life on a lottery ticket have a good excuse to waste money they can’t spare, and make themselves even more miserable than before.
The collapse of capitalism and the imminent arrival of the glorious socialist future used to be another popular contender, and of course it’s coming back into vogue now among surplus members of the managerial elite and their hangers-on. That’s quite understandable as the elite replacement cycle now under way picks up speed, and layoffs decimate the cubicle class, whose members thought they had a first-class ticket for the rest of their lives. The alternative is accepting the wrenching changes now under way and the sharp drop in cubicle-class income and status that those changes bring with them; as I noted in a previous post, that’s an immense challenge for anyone, and especially so for those who were taught to cultivate an inflated sense of entitlement, as our managerial classes were.
It’s fair to say, though, that the decline of industrial society threatens an even more drastic shock to our collective sense of entitlement, not to mention to the vast and tottering structure of privileges and comforts in which the inmates of the world’s industrialized nations have spent their lives. Over the next few centuries, as the resource base that supports industrial production dwindles to irrelevance and most of our current technologies become laboratory curiosities if they aren’t simply abandoned and forgotten in the struggle to adapt, most of what counts as a modern lifestyle will go away forever.
That doesn’t mean that we’re headed back to the caves. I’ve pointed out repeatedly that it’s quite possible that when the decline bottoms out, much of the world will have technologies not too different than it had in 1800. In that year, it bears remembering, most urban societies around the world were literate and cosmopolitan, with international trade supplementing local economies, thriving education systems, some degree of health care available to most people, and burgeoning artistic, literary, and musical scenes. What’s more, certain technologies such as shortwave radio and ultralight aircraft are likely to survive the transition, and so will the knowledge needed for such useful things as indoor plumbing, effective sanitation, and intensive organic farming.
Seen objectively, it’s not that bad of a prospect—especially when compared to some of the other possibilities! The problems with this are, first, that accepting it requires us to surrender a whole series of wildly overinflated fantasies of collective entitlement that can be lumped together under the label of “progress;” second, that nearly all of us will have to learn a great many skills we have forgotten and get used to putting in a substantial amount of robust physical labor; third, that the way there will involve hard times and the loss of many things that people treasure. If your identity is caught up in your profession, your net worth, or your class privilege, in particular, you’re likely to have a very hard road to walk in the years ahead.
Fantasizing about imminent apocalypse is a highly convenient way to avoid all this. If you don’t want to think about the future, insisting that there will be no future is one way to do it, and claiming that everything will fall apart and nothing can change that fact absolves you of having to make changes in your own life. In the usual way of provisional living, apocalyptic fantasy also gives people a place to park their daydreams of a better world. I long ago lost track of the number of times I heard people in the peak oil scene, for example, waxing rhapsodic about the happy lives close to nature that survivors would have once the rubble stopped bouncing.
Ask them why they aren’t taking steps to live such a life here and now and you could count on hearing whole armies of excuses on the march. Push a little and you’d sometimes get a glimpse at the rage of a privileged class that formed the dark heart of the fantasy—though you really had to go to the climate change movement to see that last feature in full flower. It still amazes me that even now, so few of the clueless rich, the people who flew private jets to Davos to listen to Greta Thunberg put on her shrill act, realize that everyone else knows perfectly well what was going on: they wanted the rest of us to give up fossil fuels so that they didn’t have to.
None of this has changed since 2006. I can predict with serene confidence, therefore, that as the next round of energy and resource crises begins to bite, we’re going to get yet another round of apocalypse-mongering. Fairly soon some date will be picked for THE END, as 2000, 2012, and 2030 were chosen in their day; I’ve started to see references to 2050 being bruited about as the world’s next pull date, so if you’re minded to place a wager in a betting pool, dear reader, that may be one to consider. If it’s not that, it’ll be some other year around the same time, far enough in the future to give plenty of time for fantasies to build, and also to give plenty of time to find a new date once it gets close enough that the inevitable failure is getting hard to dodge.
What’s more, it’s equally safe to predict that once people commit themselves to some such delusion, nothing, but nothing, will make them let go of it. No matter how much evidence you marshal, no matter how many historical parallels you show them, no matter how many times their predictions land in the pool of time with a prodigious bellyflop, they’ll keep clinging to the claim that surely next time will bring the burning cities, the rampaging mobs, and the rest of the overworked stage properties of the apocalypse fantasy. I used to wonder, in my autistic way, why this was. It took me most of two decades of watching it up close, but I finally realized that the people who make these claims know perfectly well that none of it is going to happen. What makes such claims emotionally necessary to them is that it lets them avoid thinking about what they know is actually going to happen.
What makes all this crucial to understand is that we’ve got some very hard times ahead: not apocalyptic by any means, but difficult enough. The United States is effectively bankrupt at this point, driven so deep into debt by fifty years of bipartisan looting of the public coffers that there’s no way the debt can ever be paid off. Default is the usual recourse of nations in that situation, and when that happens—and it will—the global economy will undergo a drastic shock and so will what’s left of the productive economy here in the US. In the shorter term, we’re in the middle of a gargantuan speculative bubble in tech stocks, centered on the AI craze, which is being propped up by giddy circular financing schemes that have set new benchmarks in the history of financial folly. Those, for that matter, are just the biggest sharks in a very full tank.
In posts to come we’ll talk more about all this, and also about the disintegration of the wildly unbalanced arrangements of global trade which until recently allowed the 5% of humanity who live in the United States to monopolize a quarter of the world’s energy resources, raw materials, and manufactured goods. All of us are facing wrenching changes and the loss of things that many people value—and yes, this even applies to the godzillionaire techbros who just now are scrambling their way onto the bridge of our slowly sinking ship. Most of their notional wealth consists of vast teetering heaps of hallucinatory finance that can never be cashed in, and it’s a safe bet that none of those unpayable IOUs will keep their value as things proceed.
There are plenty of options available for those readers who want to deal with the cascading crises of the future ahead of us, and we’ll be talking about a good many of them in detail in the posts ahead. The one thing they all require is a willingness to give up the habit of provisional living and make changes now, in our own individual lives, while there’s still time to do so. Dreaming of apocalypse is of course much easier, but it’ll offer cold comfort at best as an unwelcome future takes shape around us.
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I know I’ve only had a month off since the last time this happened, but once again we’re in a month with five Wednesdays, and by longstanding tradition that means the commentariat of this blog have the chance to nominate and vote on the topic of the fifth Wednesday post. What do you want to read about on the 30th, dear readers? Inquiring retired Archdruids want to know.
Speaking of getting oil and gas into your car, part 7 of my series on American Hauntology, is up, and it focuses on my favorite George Lucas movie and the history of a town that was as much of a backwater as Tattooine. It also discusses the time when hot rodders liked to cruise around town with nothing much to do other than look for liquor, stay out all night, and try to get it on at make out point. So, no it’s not about Star Wars, but was set in the glut when driving a V8 didn’t matter much, after the oil shortages of WWII. The film itself came out just before the OPEC oil embargo of 1973, which I’ll get into with a daze of confusion later. In the meantime this film ushered in a wave of hauntological nostalgia for the gushing prosperity and “simpler times” of the decades that had just passed.
Happy upcoming Labor Weekend to everyone…
https://www.sothismedias.com/home/book-end-the-summer
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/book-end-the-summer
Of course, for me, I wasn’t there in those years, but I remember exactly where I was when Y2K was supposed to destroy the world. And I remember exactly where I was when 9/11 made a much more tangible impact on life in America.
Well said Mr. Greer.
Overpopulation is another apocalypse that didn’t happen, at least not according to the prophecies made in Paul Ehrlich ‘s “The Population Bomb”.
On the other hand, many underpopulation hysterics now are just as hysteric, with some predicting human extinction at a time when the human population is over 8 billion and growing….which is far larger than the human population has literally ever been in our species history.
Many even single-handedly blame Paul Ehrlich for the collapse in birth rates (this ignores how Ehrlich didn’t invent the notion of overpopulation for one, it was quite popular in the Golden Age of Eugenics) rather than the more natural cause of density dependence. And density dependence can be seen even in single-celled, asexual organisms. They will multiply rapidly at first but grind to a halt when they run out of room.
“I’m sure they’ll think of something”
Who’s this they?
I’ve been awake and alert since shortly after the 9/11 hoax. It’s been hard, but I’ve resisted the urge to bunker up with piles of food and ammo a few times now. Others I know weren’t able to contain their apprehension, and did bad things like max out their credit cards thinking they’d never have to worry about paying them off.
The latest apocalypse cult in my area of North Central Idaho are people listening to a woman who is supposedly in contact with Aliens known as ZETA. They are convinced the a polar shift is about to happen, and the Earths crust will suddenly slip causing the North and South poles to be at the equator. This will cause the oceans to slosh across the continents, washing away most of humanity. They are fervent believers aggressively recruiting anyone who will listen.
My current worries center around the depopulation campaign being waged by the Oligarchy, so I spend a fair amount of time wondering what they will do next to kill off more of the unwashed masses.
I’ve abandoned any though of taking any injection of any sort from anyone. We are now acting as our own doctor/ dentist, and trying to minimize any suspect foods, as well as many, many other precautions. Interesting times…
Thanks again John
Provisional living is a common problem for those caught in alcoholism or drug addiction: i.e if only I had a better job/wife/house/etc. I could quit the thing that is killing me. The thing is, none of those better things are possible while you are living the problem.
The lessons should be obvious, but sometimes it takes a heavy slap in the face from reality before people take effective action. In the 40 years since I cleaned up my own act, that is one of those lessons I have learned from drunks and junkies.
For a fifth Wednesday post how about the topic: The Pagan Revival in the West: Early Boosters… thinking here of anyone from Thomas Taylor to Robert Graves as well as the general theme.
The AI bubble shares a pattern with the real estate mess of 2008.
“During the teaser period, everyone wins. The seller reports backlog growth that compounds at rates no operating business has ever sustained – Oracle’s RPO grew 363% in a single fiscal year. The buyer – a frontier lab burning cash at historic rates – books no expense because the capacity does not yet exist. The market capitalizes the booked number as if it were revenue and ignores the billed number as if it were a technicality. And then, on a schedule fixed at signing, booked compute becomes billed compute. The take-or-pay clock starts. From that day forward, the frontier labs and the hyperscalers incur those costs regardless of utilization. The invoice is a function of the contract, not of demand. That is the reset.
The parallel to 2006 is exact and it explains the single most-cited absurdity of this cycle: How does OpenAI, a company with some $40 billion of run-rate revenue, sign $1.4 trillion of compute commitments? The same way a household with $60,000 of income signed a $600,000 mortgage: because the terms at signing do not require the payment yet, and because everyone at the table – borrower, lender, and the market – believes the growth will arrive before the payment does.”
https://www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-period-why-the-ai-boom
So in 2028 the contracts kick in, payment is required and cash flow either can or can not cover the bills. The federal deficits fuel inflation forcing interest rates up, the debt can not be rolled over so defaults will happen. We don’t know will default, but someone will.
Just like 2008 everyone knows this is going to happen. And just like 2008 “As long as the music keeps playing you have to keep dancing”. Greed won’t let them get out gracefully before it blows.
Technological regression would be a very welcome phenomenon, given the current shrill demands for AI In Everything All At Once.
I would NOT, however, wish to be limited to technologies that were available prior to about the year 1775: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/explore-the-collection/explore-by-topic/business-finance-and-innovation/toilet-design/
On the eve of December 31, 1999 I saw a possum for the first time. It walked past, I caught a glimpse of it on the other side of a sliding glass door while I was laying on the floor watching a movie. I thought it was an ROUS out of Princess Bride. It was, of course, but not of the fairytale variety. That was the most memorable and world altering thing that happened in my life that night.
This may not be a subject that interests you, because it touches on folks’ religious beliefs, but I am curious about your thoughts on the overlap between the of apocalyptic fantasy you describe and salvation from it in the form of the second coming of Christ, his reign and the promised utopia it will bring. I ask, because one form of avoiding change or abiding in limbo is the belief that there’s no reason to change because a higher power will intervene and solve everything (ostensibly to your liking). It’s a mainstay of the culture in which I was raised and much of what is happening now is being read, giddily, as portents of that type of end of times.
Grew up with a lot of fiction involving nuclear warfare. Fantasy of doing a Jeremiah Johnson in the Canadian wilderness. Then marriage, raising 4 trolls, much real estate, surviving corporate weasels kept me grounded in the real. But reading the oil drum and your early work gave me some new suggestions on crash now avoid the rush. My four are now in solid fields that will survive the salary class thrashing about as the PMC world sinks. I’m enjoying my sailboat as I live a simple life in the gulf islands. Looking forward with wary caution but optimistic now.
The thing that is throwing me for a loop is the Iran war. I really and truly believed that if you shut down oil from the Middle East you would get a recession/ depression. But here we are 6 months later and the economy seems to be chugging along without too much difficulty. But the chemical company i work for, has reduced our output by ~33%. The company is pretty well integrated into the wider economy and usually when we have downturn so does the wider economy. (we make color, inks and coatings and those types of products are associated with just about everything sold.)
So either the company i work for is having a randomly tough year ( not impossible, but not likely either)
Or there is something broadly wrong in the economy, and we are being actively and successfully lied to, (also not impossible, but not likely that they can lie successfully to so many people either. )
So my mental model and company activity are saying we are in serious trouble
The internet, the government and local economy say it is situation normal.
I know i can be wrong but I also know lies are endemic today.
JMG,
I remember Y2K well. I had a modest amount of money in the stock market and was convinced it would all be wiped out when the giant computers that kept track of everything went down. So I went down to my stockbroker ( we still had such things) and had him get me paper stock certificates for every one of the stocks I owned. I took physical delivery of those certificates and kept them in a hidden locked box.
Later I had to take them back to the broker by hand when I wanted to sell the stock when my kids started going to college. I still have they Enron stock certificate in a frame on the wall as a reminder of those times.
5th Wednesday. OK, here goes. I still would like to see, somewhere, among intelligent persons of good will, a discussion of the American constitution. Has it in fact served us well for 275 years or thereabouts? What parts should be amended? I am inclined to think presidents should be elected for one 6 year term. That is time for a party or faction to enact its’ agenda and the executive won’t be distracted by having to prepare for a new election. I question the usefulness of a VP office. The Senate can elect its’ own presiding officer, just as does the House now.
Among folks who claim we are now “post-constitutional”, if you please, the only suggested replacement I have heard is some variation of My Faction, which was ordained by God, should be in charge of all the rest of you no account jokers.
The issues you bring up, JMG and others, about preparing for gradual descent and preserving what can be preserved, the Green Party ought to have been promoting a similar set of policies.
Sorry about the ramble, I’m doing laundry today so I have time while the wash is in.
_______________________________
The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout; the tower of nine storeys rose from a (small) heap of earth; the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step.
Lao-Tse
________________________________
I suppose that there isn’t all that much in this piece that I can disagree with. I plead guilty to being a not-completely-indoctrinated prepper-doomer back during the early 00’s.
I still have cans of freeze dried, nitrogen packed food for the Apocalypse that I have now decided were just plain silly. They are being eaten as soups (the rate of consumption will go up in the winter because soups make me happy then). But now I suppose that I am trying to guess what the path that the upcoming reversion will take.
In my mind, JMG quite correct about the nature of the downhill slide. It is going to take as long to work our way out of the problems that we face as it took to get here. My guess is that the endpoint will be an approximation of 1900 instead of the 1800 that he proposes. But as he and I aren’t going to be around for the landing, this is all just speculation.
The immediate future that we face is going to take some thinking and some work. It is simple stuff (“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”), but my plan is to not try to get to 1900 now, I am thinking about maybe trying for a lifestyle and expectations appropriate to the year of my birth (1953). Hell maybe a better first step would be 1970 (I will ponder it).
Air travel is out. Rich folks can have it. Rail is back. Cars are not all that common compared to now. Air conditioning is gone, Restaurants struggle and are fewer. Home cooking is vastly simplified and pantries are bigger. Houses are smaller and renting isn’t a mark of shame. White collar jobs will be a lot thinner on the ground.
Most of all, expectations are going to be lower. I am hoping that conveniences will start being seen as that. Most of what got us to the impasse that we face is a false belief that the conveniences we have let into our lives are essentials.
But the exterior methodologies that we use to get there are going to be different. Phones will still me around, but they will use a wireless technology and they will cost about the same as you paid back in the days of Ma Bell. Banks will stay connected on the web and you will be able to get cash, but your card will still work. Internet will be there, but it’ll cost you.
Mostly, I think that folks will need to create a new relationship with the society. When I mention the idea of going back to an approximation of the 1950’s folks seem to point out that
they don’t want to go back to the problems that they had then, but that isn’t the point. I think that at a personal level, the choices of technology and consumption are never right of wrong, they are just manageable or unmanageable.
At this page is the full list of all of the non-faith-specific requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts (printable version here, current to 8/28). Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests, selected from the fuller list.
May Trubujahs’s mother-in-law, Helen, who is currently recovering at home after gastrointestinal bleeding related to stage 4 pancreatic cancer, be filled with vitality and be healed of all cancer and any ailments relating to it; may she and her family find the strength and support they need throughout.
May Trubujah’s best friend Pat’s teenage daughter Devin continue to make progress in her healing toward full mobility, and prayers for strength and support for her family.
May Atmospheric River’s gall bladder full of gallstones heal and be filled with such vitality that her current stones diminish, her comfort increases, and her gall bladder remains free of new stones.
May Northwind Grandma’s husband Jeff, who passed away unexpectedly on July 22, be blessed and make a peaceful transition to his next destination; may he be healed of the “wound in his heart” that he held in life.
May Jeff’s cat Henry accept, twice a day, Northwind’s giving him his Flovent inhaler dose and pill, and let her take him to the veterinarian once a month for an injection.
May Anonymuz get the strength and resolve he needs in his endeavors for justice, and may truth and justice be served.
May Lukeszy’s father’s post-surgery swelling be healed.
May Helen in Oz be free of inflammation in her biceps and shoulder, and may she be successful in the slow process of regaining pain-free range of movement and increased muscle mass and strength therein.
May JC of Geauga County, Ohio, who is fighting cancer, be blessed and uplifted so that he may receive the healing he needs and recover as best as possible.
May 1Wanderers’s partner Cathy, who is still undergoing chemotherapy in preparation for a surgery, be given the physical and mental strength to fight it, and tolerate the treatment; may she enjoy a full and permanent recovery.
May Dustin, a relative of Brenainn, who still has some lingering issues in his ongoing recovery from a heart condition, be healed and strengthened.
May Brother Kornhoer’s son Travis’s reconstructive surgery on his left ureter go well; may his right kidney heal; and may his empty nose syndrome abate.
May Brother Kornhoer be able to afford his son’s international surgery.
May a safe and happy home environment be enjoyed by Laurelmirror, her daughter, and her mother, as well as protection from evil influences. May their family situation be resolved in such a way that Laurelmirror’s mother will get a chance to recover physically and mentally from the stresses it has caused.
May Geoff G’s sister Lindsay, who suffered a stroke at the end of May, recover to the fullest extent possible, and be blessed and supported in her mental wellbeing throughout.
May Mathew Damon Gallowglass, who has been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, be treated successfully for his condition and make a full recovery.
May Lisa C be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from breast cancer.
May 6 year old Max be blessed and protected during his parents’ contentious divorce; may events work out in a manner most conducive to Max’s healthy development over the long term.
May Bob W of Lake County, Ohio’s treatment for cancer go well so that he may heal and recover as quickly as possible.
May Larry Mulford, who has entered hospice after a year battling with pancreatic cancer, pass in the smoothest possible manner, and may his wife be enveloped in our love.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
* * *
Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
The best part about Y2K was that it spawned the best time traveler story ever, John Titor, which also spawned the best time travel visual novel / anime ever, Stein’s Gate.
As for apocalypse pining, couldn’t it also be that group of souls you spoke of earlier who aren’t supposed to be on Earth, longing for an apocalypse to rapture them back to where they belong?
A little background on the Y2K Problem: Today computers store information in binary (1’s and 0’s) as base-2 numbers. Eight binary digits (bits) make a byte, and depending on your system either 32 or 64 bits make a “word,” which is the fundamental unit for storing numbers. A 32-bit word can hold a number between 0 and 4,294,967,295. (This is oversimplifying but it’s enough to understand the issue.)
But back in the 50’s and 60’s when computers first started to be used heavily by businesses, governments, etc. essentially none of this was set in stone. Bytes ranged in size from about 6 bits to 12 or more, and instead of storing numbers in base-2, it was common to store them in decimal using a system called Binary Coded Decimal (BCD), where each 4 bits encoded a single decimal digit.
Today time is usually stored as a base-2 number holding the number of seconds since 12:00 AM UTC January 1, 1970, called the Unix epoch. (Times before this are stored as negative integers.) But a lot of older code assumed you were using BCD, and dates were therefore stored as decimal digits. Because it was the convention and to save space, two digit years were often used.
No one at the time believed they would still be using the same code thirty and forty years later. Unfortunately, they were wrong. So when 2000 was approaching, a lot of code would start storing years a “00” which they would interpret as 1900, and this would cause various bugs in the code.
It’s an easy problem to fix, just incredibly tedious given how much code there is. One simple temporary patch is to simply rewrite the code to treat years below some arbitrary cutoff (the oldest date in the dataset, say) as starting with 20 instead of 19. This kicks the can down the road in the hope that someone at some point will rewrite the code later. A longer-term solution, but more costly, is to add two more digits, or switch to a base-2 format, and reprocess all the data. A combination of those strategies ended up being used.
John,
Interesting thing about provisional living. I work at a public park and so I have plenty of experience interacting with the homeless population. One thing I’ve learned is that every single one of them is living provisionally. Whether it’s an imaginary legal settlement that will give them a windfall of cash, or a wealthy relative that is just about to bequeath them an inheritance, or what have you. One guy says he’ll be moving to Hawaii any minute now (He’s been a vagrant at my park for years.) I hear these stories with such regularity from the homeless. This self-deception helps them avoid the changes that would actually help their situation (quitting the methamphetamines, for instance.)
Well, now you’ve given me a word for it and pointed out that normies aren’t so different either. And at a broader level, our society is one big crack addict, and the stuff is running out fast.
I mean, the burning cities, the rampaging mobs, and the rest of the overworked stage properties of the apocalypse fantasy will eventually come. The problem is that those won’t come until 2-3 centuries in the future, when state authority has completely broken down and replaced by warlords in the future dark ages. But people don’t want an apocalypse a few centuries in the future, they want an apocalypse now or in the very near future.
I think it’s important to acknowledge that a lot of people are also drawn to the apocalyptic fantasy or other “when x happens” fantasies because they are actually unable and not unwilling to make the hard change. There’s some blindness about what costs are actually necessary and which ones are actually luxuries we’ve convinced ourselves are necessary, but even if you cut out everything but the barest necessities, most people still don’t have enough margin to get out of the hole they’re stuck in. That kind of constant pressure can make the fantasy of “the government has collapsed, my student loans are gone, and every decision that I make now is 100% my decision, freed from the burden of paying 7/8ths of my income to various government agencies or insurance corporations for the privilege of existing in a crappy rental unit I can’t even paint to suit my tastes” a very appealing daydream.
@Justin Patrick Moore (#1):
Thanks so much for that nostalgia trip. I’m about two years older than Lucas, and I spent my ‘teens in Berkeley rather than Modesto, but the world of American Graffiti is the world that even a nerd like me came of age in. Fond memories there …
One small caveat. The generation that American Graffiti is set in is actually the late Silent Generation, not the early Boomers. There was a truly major cultural shift between those two generations, and it seems to me to have occurred quite abruptly around 1965, at least in California. We Silents were perplexed, and more than a little alienated and annoyed, by the cultural innovations of the early Boomers in the later 1960s.
JMG,
I enjoyed this essay on provisional living. I wonder if you could comment on the similarities between the psychology of provisional living and the mythic stories of apocalypse found in later portions of the Bible. I wonder if provisional living a psychological manifestation of a belief in the myths of Christian apocalypticism? I seems to me that these two things are closely related.
All the best,
MRD
JMG,
I’m curious about your thoughts on the Space Race 2.0 (which includes AI) and seems to be pushed as inevitable progress? It seems like there will be some type of big cultural disappointment/awakening when the money spent on space exploration doesn’t end up providing a Sci-Fi Utopia? Could this eventually lead to less apocalyptic doomerism because we realize that Earth is our only home when alive on this plane of existence.
Thanks!
Hello JMG, as a longtime reader and also a Canadian, I’d love to read a piece on what you think is going on in Canada currently and what you think will happen in/to Canada as the decline continues. I’m not sure what time frame would be sensible, the next 10 years, maybe 20? I know you focus on the US because that’s where you reside, but we’re right up here, directly north of the US and the vast majority of us live right near the border. I’m sure you’ve noticed that things up here are already getting pretty weird.
Thanks much for considering this topic,
FSH
Suggestion for the 5th Wednesday Post:
You’ve mentioned previously to “do what you can, with what you’ve got, right now.” What are some practical things members of the cubicle class, like myself, can do RIGHT NOW to collapse now, and avoid the rush? The things I’ve seen on this blog and elsewhere;
– Reduce debt
– Cut unnecessary expenses
– Build ties within your local community
– Get an older, reliable car you can work on yourself or take to a local mechanic versus having to take to the dealership
– Workout and eat healthy, so you can avoid expensive medical bills
What am I missing?
I have several essays about living provisionally that can be accessed here: KimberlySteele.dreamwdth.org/tag/living+ provisionally
Provisional living is part procrastination and part laziness. For instance, one of my worst habits is worrying about my cats having enough to eat despite the fact they are extremely well fed and spoiled. Instead of saving the “good” can of food for a rainy day, I take an “every day is Caturday” approach and I don’t worry about the future, whether it is near future or far. This is, of course, very beneficial for them, but it’s more beneficial for me, because it stops me from worrying about things I cannot control in the future. Living provisionally sucks. It stops you from appreciating anything good in your life because the good is always in the future, even if it is preceded by the extremely bad, such as an apocalypse.
thx for the essay! on the stability of the internet, you gave a link to your article from 2006. But that article had a link at “http://www.oilcrisis.com/whatToDo/decline.htm” that is dead. Do you have that anywhere?
As a “computer jockey” that did make a lot of cash remediating old oracle db’s (and I could tell it was not needed but it was fun to play with the code), my vote for the next pull date is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem (I plan to come out of retirement for this 🙂 )
thx
Jerry
“That’s why some of the most popular and enduring sources of provisional living are things over which we have no control. Winning the lottery is one of the top contenders here, not least because people who pile their fantasies of a better life on a lottery ticket have a good excuse to waste money they can’t spare, and make themselves even more miserable than before.”
There is an interesting case, locally, of a person who actually won the lotto, and, believing that it was because the person had nailed a foolproof numbers system, spent most of the winnings (and very probably more) continuing to live provisionally, and to buy more lotto tickets, until such time as the person would win it AGAIN.
Needless to say, the dream failed, along with many other “quality of life” issues – like job, family, health and etc…
Perhaps an illustration of the fact that if it is PROVISIONAL living you are committed to, you are somehow ruling yourself out of actually benefiting in any way from the “provision” which you have laid down for yourself… even if it comes to pass.
I realized I didn’t really believe in sudden climate disaster when I noticed that I was reacting the same way to “Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas the same way I react to Grand Theft Auto.
I’m a lawyer, a few years in now, and I’ve honestly never liked it.
I’ve been job hunting in other fields for months, with zero luck so far. What’s wild is almost everyone I know is in the same spot, working outside their field, or going back to school because they
can’t find work in the one they trained for. Civil engineers studying nursing, lawyers going into psychology or medicine.
It’s everywhere.
The worst part is the uncertainty.
I can’t stand law anymore, the endless bureaucracy, but I don’t know what to do about it. Should I go back to school? If so, to study what?
And nobody gives good advice on this either. Some say to go deep into AI, others say to focus on healthcare, others say skip college entirely. It seems that everyone agrees the future will be rough, but nobody can actually guide younger people in how to weather the storm.
When my younger cousins ask me what path to follow, I have no idea what to tell them. The only ones doing well here in Brazil seem to be those who went to medical school (unaffordable for most) or people lucky enough to know someone who got them a decent job.
Most of my law school classmates aren’t even in law anymore.
The ones I know who are most content in life are a couple who ditched law profession and are working as baristas in Germany, and a friend who studied graphic design and opened her own tattoo studio.
@JMG
I haven’t crunched the numbers in great detail, but I don’t think it would be inaccurate to say that the energy budget of a post-fossil future – provided it’s properly managed – would be of the same order as that of Imperial Germany. Yes, I know that Imperial Germany had coal, and had begun to use petroleum big time, in addition to the chemical industrial expansion with the Haber process, etc. – but then, with the explosion in STEM knowledge since then, both qualitatively and quantitatively, has been such that it can allow us to comfortably use reduced energy resources to make and build tech that is what Schumacher would call “intermediate tech”. I deliberately mentioned Imperial Germany because, among all the big Western powers of the time, it was the best-run power, with a highly-educated, competent and incorruptible civil service, and great attention to applied science, industry and medicine – an example of a dream-tier, cultured society, that lived extremely comfortably on an energy budget that is more than an order of magnitude smaller than what Modern Germany lives on. So maybe, with proper socio-political and administrative policies, coupled with the knowledge base of applied STEM that we have today, it is possible to have an Imperial Germany-level society in the future?
JMG,
It’s weird that humans are adaptation machines but… the question of “What if I can’t adapt to what comes next?” fuels the apocalyptic fantasies and keeps you from changing your habits.
Your capable of throwing any assortment of material, equipment, and labor at a problem, you will probably solve that problem, it just might not be as quick or as easy as it was for the other guy. But … hey you solved the problem, the rest of it matters way less than you think it does.
I vividly remember the Y2K apocalypse. I was still knee deep working in the computer industry. Even back then I thought it was hyperbolic and the world was not coming to an end. People tend to forget or dismiss that systems and organisms of most kind tends to adapt or even change to their environment.
The Hudson River in NYC was once so polluted in the mid 1940’s because pretty much everything was dumped into it including raw sewage, that swimming was banned. George Carlin says he never got sick or caught a cold because swimming in the Hudson River made his immune system, battle hardened and battle tested. He says it was tempered in raw s***.
Once the dumping stopped, over a period of time, the Hudson River snapped back and fish reappeared. Although, not sure if I would eat fish with three eyes and seven gills, j/k
Another excellent post JMG.
For the fifth Wednesday I’ll vote for the relationship between reincarnation and the size of the global population – souls ‘entering’ other intelligent species etc. love to see what you would do with a whole post of that.
Ha, you never cease to amaze me how you can pull an insight out of a review. Ok, no, I have been doing your courses, this is actually not surprising, it is a feature.
You just nudged me into reflecting on my own thoughts and reactions about the “cascading events”. And at the same time forced me to go on with the next step in a project, that “will get me a better future, just as I get to it.” I’ll put in a call for the next batch. 😉
As for a 5th post; I’ll throw a bone to the Amis and vote for the magical geography. Of north America or else.
Best regards,
V
Hi JMG, Your post this week has reminded me that changing even the simplest habits is a daunting task, requiring many iterations and practicing for the sake of practicing. Awhile ago you mentioned one of your mentors and writings [The Order Of Essenes], and it intrigued me sufficiently to action, I read the first meditation, and since I was also doing some work on practices, decided to start my day with drinking water. I have done that practice every day since that first day. I know that we humans have automatic ways we deal with life’s issues, and agree that living provisionally is built into our medulla oblongata. The extremes of apocalypse and nirvana like lottery winning, leaving the middle to as you say, go by, because really changing our habits is daunting seems to me to be built into our protective proclivities. Your tidbits of information about the energy balance needed to produce the green machines that tout being the way we will produce stuff in the future on our path to linear progress, points the way with cogent arguments to learn a trade, don’t get rid of those timber framing mallets and slicks, sharpening stones, files, hand saws, froes, braces and bits. And, to contribute to anyone wanting to learn about how to use these, as a way to help pass on methods that don’t need much fossil derived power to use.
Hi JMG,
For the fifth Wednesday, I would love to know your views on why some people are prolific creators and others have no desire to create anything. Is it simply a fifth house matter in the natal chart, or is there something deeper going on? Thanks.
Dear Retired Archdruid, Thank you for this most sensible essay.
As for a suggestion for a 5th week essay, I’d be very interested to read what you have to say about the underappreciated and/or misunderstood nature , both material and spiritual, of trees.
PS I often fantasize about winning the lottery but I do so not as way of avoiding action in my life but as a formal thought experiment that, by eliminating any and all of my financial concerns / excuses, helps me to focus on what I ultimately, truly want. Of course that thought experiment inevitably brings me to see things that money cannot buy, or that actually require very little money. I always find this highly amusing. Being a billionaire really can be such a drag.
Well done again Mr Greer. I do not know if it would make a good blog post but I do have a question. Most sources on appropriate technology focus on living well in a temperate climate. As a resident of the deep south (we can grow pineapples outside most of the year), I was wondering if you knew of any sources of information focused on warmer climates. Rocket mass heaters are VERY cool but last year we experienced freezing temperatures for exactly one day.
Thank you for all you do and God bless.
JMG, Ouch. This one (I predict) will rank up there in stirring up irrational responses. I had never considered the exact, specific psychological angle behind it, besides just knowing that people fall into this. This makes perfect sense, AND…is the only viable explanation standing for why people reliably behave this way over and over and over again (even if it wasn’t “perfect” sense). So…basically Reality will slowly slowly sink in, and bend the bar back to what IS, and what has to be. But they will go kicking and screaming the whole way! You know…I think I concur with this diagnosis in the entirety! It’s seeming to be playing out. Thanks for all the various psychological angles (eg., the incentive for ruling class to get their act in gear and pull levers, when alarmed over their status, etc.). Very carefully thought out, and the various angles looked at, along the way. I’m wondering, 2050 may not be the “big one” (as in apocalypse) but it seems like about right for “America loses Empire and defaults on the debt” (if we do make it that long…).
Provisional living seems related to the Shirky Principle in that whatever system is established will first, foremost, and sometimes only, act to perpetuate itself with as little change as possible. And maybe that has to do with Bateson’s point that evolution is actually conservative–it isn’t a recipe for success for species to make big changes willy-nilly and then find out those adaptations were only suited to one particular winter of one particular year, followed by a mass die-off when things normalize. What it often takes for us to change, personally and as a society, is the kind of event that lets you choose between “change, or die.”
I know I still struggle with this in my own life. For example, having been laid off I know I need a new career path, but it’s really hard to figure out what to do, and sometimes it feels like I’m biding my time until the decision becomes more obvious and inevitable. To that extent, I have some sympathy for people who don’t collapse before they have to to avoid the rush, because it takes a feat of understanding and will beyond the human default of preserving what has worked to the bitter end.
I think, at least in my case, part of the issue is that I can only see it as running away from a negative (the inevitable loss of the current system), rather than towards a positive (no clear alternative in mind yet), which is bad magic according to Dion Fortune. It’s like abandoning a ship that’s clearly sinking, but slowly, before the rescue boat has appeared on the horizon.
So it makes sense why you do things like write Retrotopia or prepare the Technonomicon: it’s the positive vision of the alternative which makes a difficult change feel like less of a crapshoot. Since people are so invested in business as usual, I wonder if it’s best, when talking to them about this topic on a personal level, to avoid the triggering arguments of limits on energy, etc., and just be the weirdo who is super excited to tell them and show them early 19th century practices for their own sake.
Sometimes I think that the only thing the North took from the South after the Civil War (after getting rid of much bad, and much good), was the Plantation Economy…which seems to be how it’s running right now: Neo-feudalism – all of the bad, none of the good. Hard times coming to the Plantation America!
Hello JMG and commentariat:
Another new post, with very interesting ideas, usually outside MSM and social media commonplaces. I’m glad this blog goes on working well, like another online sites which aren’t usual echo chambers. I’m not interested in shared boring views, even when come from “my” people. I think constructive criticism is a strange and rare virtue today.
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I’ve begun reading your today post, and well John, I agree the solar and wind great hope for the legendary “transition” toward a post-fossil world, has failed, but everybody pretend it’s working. Rosy narrative about those energetic sources has been one leg of “transition”. Second leg seems to be full electrification of everything. The two legs were going to let the industrial/capitalist body be walking toward an unending cornucopian future. Oh wait…something isn’t working…or maybe nothing is working as we were told. Transition? What transition? So you’re right.
It’s interesting how Greta Thunberg has become a nuclear power supporter, maybe to keep dreaming with full electrification and less CO2 (what could be wrong with nuke power?).
***************
I remember there were here some silly news in 1999 about the Y2K thing, and a bad TV disasters movie in a private channel, but I’d say there wasn’t any doomerist hysteria outside usual online freaks (though I can tell you my access to internet was very crappy then).
On the other hand, I remember very well “old good times” of peak oil echo chamber…err…community, in its Spanish language variant. Yes, a very embarrassing attitude and behavior by people who apparently had some science education (ahem). If you didn’t support their doomerist bias (for example, shouting next year cannibalism was going to be the last fashion), you were booed, in those times previous 2008 crisis; but it was a very minoritarian doomerism, methink, only for “connosseurs”.
I’m puzzled you haven’t written about the silliest doomerism fear of this century. Of course, I’m talking about the very popular 2012 no-event, the fake Maya prophecies: no comments.
By the way: I’ve never won any lottery…oh!
I guess “Provisional living” seems linked with procrastination, methink.
Gunstone # 2:
Overpopulation fear has getting old badly. I can say I didn’t live the overpopulation “panic”, because I’m not old enough, but during my teens I could read some books printed before the ‘80s from my parents and granparents, which warned about impending population apocalypse. I bet “Soylent Green” movie was shot more or less during the overpopulation paranoia golden times. I remember I scratched my head because this idea was quite counterfactual during ‘90s, too old fashioned.
I suspect every armchair psychologist here has half an answer to the provisional living problem, and if it is any worse than it’s ever been for humans. It might just be that there are far more of us and that the internet allows us to put it on display. It’s only through exposure to this blog and the source materials you’ve consistently repeated for decades, plus the practices you have taught that have enabled me to at least have some dim awareness of the subconscious habits of mind that make provisional living so seductive and pervasive.
It’s actually damned hard to stay ahead of it, particularly in certain social circles. I’ve had to ditch many friends over it, as it’s near on impossible to get around it. They moan about their lives, I offer kind advice about getting out of the specialisation trap, and they howl about how (and my gang of fellow weird professional travellers) couldn’t possibly be profitably working across many specialties that are traditionally seen as having hard barriers.
Interestingly these are all “middle” class younger folk, university educated and struggling. The seriously rich folks I know happily employ me, and the working class folks I know laugh at my stories of battling bureaucracy and professional capture and arrogance, and also employ me.
John Maynard Keynes did say that it is better for the reputation to fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally 🙂
Hi JMG,
Thank you‼️
It sounds like “provisional living” is a mere stair-step up from “quiet desperation.”
I have never heard the phrase “provisional living” before, but know the syndrome well.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Sorry, can I please request an essay for the 5th Wednesday of the month on the Supernatural, in the theme of your previous essay about the subnatural.
What constitutes human flourishing? Get a sensible answer to that question, and then define progress as that which increases human flourishing.
Hello, I have a question. Let us say you have an over estimated self worth. How do you recognizes that and how do you bring it down to size.
for my fifth Wednesday vote. A magical geography of the United States
Thanks as always
Will O
I wonder if one of the reasons for the Y2K fallacy you mentioned, is neoliberal market fundamentalism, which holds that no government intervention in the market can ever do any good, that it can only cause a ‘distortion’ that will offend the invisible hand (their god), and cause that invisible hand to slap them around more such that the intervention can only ever worsen the crisis.
As far as Y2K goes a lot of systems weren’t really that interconnected deeply at that time, and would mostly carry on doing whatever it was doing and not really care it thought it was 1900.
JMG,
Despite reading and mostly agreeing with your work for all these years, I find myself falling into the doom-and-gloom type writers out there and I have to wonder why that keeps happening. I’ve made constructive changes in my life based on the LESS philosophy and collapsing before the rush. Maybe there’s a bit of provisional living that I’m doing that’s going unexamined.
Writing this out, I realize what I need to do: meditation and journaling about that part of me that wants some kind of sharp end to how things are. I’m a little afraid to look there, but wasting my time browsing the work of doomers isn’t doing me any good anyways.
When you encounter folks who are gung ho about electrification and how that will fix climate change, is there any way to gently broach the reality that electrification relies on fossil fuels, and hence displaces rather than replaces its use?
Thank you for being one of the sane voices out in the wilderness!
First of all, thank you all for your Fifth Wednesday suggestions and votes! All have been tabulated.
Justin, thanks for this as always. I also remember where I was at those two moments.
Gunstone, I know. I’ll be discussing the depopulation hysteria in an upcoming post.
Annette, you’ll have to ask the people who say that. I could never get a straight answer out of them either.
Bob, good gods. Pole shift fantasies again? I don’t suppose any of these people have read that classic work When Prophecy Fails…
Raymond, interesting. Thanks for this.
Siliconguy, granted. For me, it’s mostly setting off tech bubble vibes, but then I was in Seattle when that boomed and busted, and knew people who went all in on internet stocks and lost their shirts.
Old Steve, that’s why I mentioned indoor plumbing.
Brandi, I know this will probably annoy some of my Christian readers, but I consider that kind of belief in the imminent Second Coming just another form of provisional living. Year after weary year, people put off doing anything useful with their lives because they’re sure God will fix everything before long…and he never does. You’d think they’d consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it’s our job…
Longsword, and that’s certainly an option.
Dobbs, we’re going through a complex economic transition. Here in the US, the Persian Gulf doesn’t matter that much, as very little of our oil comes from there; it’s other countries that are getting clobbered. Your company, on the other hand, is being hit by the collapse in the cubicle economy.
Clay, ha! Not a bad thing to frame.
Degringolade, excellent. Yes, that seems sensible.
Ecoprayer, thank you for this.
Dennis, it’s possible!
Slithy, thanks for this. I’m aware of this, but summarized in the interests of space.
Nephite, fascinating. Thanks for this.
JMG
Neat synchronicity, I’ve been looking into the CCRU and Nick Land’s works and the people inspired by it. Provisional living seems like one of the concepts that they’ve come up with “hypostition” as opposed to hyperstition. I’ve been trying to come up with a concrete definition for their term (as well as come up with some others, but they aren’t relevant to the post). You might appreciate what I came up with for hypostition:
Hypostition – A self-defeating fiction or psychological defense mechanism where a person or culture believes in a future, potential, or identity, but actively sabotages its realization by always placing it in the near future.
Example: “Nuclear fusion is 20 years away,” is a hypostition because people perpetually believe that nuclear fusion is 20 years in the future. This causes the problem to always get pushed onto the nebulous future group of people called “they” as in “they will figure it out eventually.” Because of this, even if practical nuclear fusion were possible it will never come to exist because physicists will always pass the hard work of figuring it out onto “they.” This hypostition is a defense mechanism for the reality that practical nuclear fusion is not possible with our current understanding of physics and we have no reason to believe that any breakthrough will change that.
I was working at the Crestar Bank operations center in 1999 when the Y2K thing was going on. We had a lot of people going over computer code back then. I was working down in the basement in the mailroom so I didn’t have to bother with that stuff. I do recall that a door fell off one of the elevators, but beyond that everything worked out just fine.
5th Wednesday nomination: A magical/occult commentary on the Zen Oxherding Pictures
Comments on dobb’s comment on the economy,
“Together, the AI categories contributed 0.97 percentage points to real GDP growth in the first three quarters of 2025,”
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2026/jan/tracking-ai-contribution-gdp-growth
Total growth is 2.5%. That leaves 1.5% for the rest of the economy which is considered pretty much stagnant. It’s consistent with a rolling recession, one sector at a time swings negative. Eventually everything gets ground down by varying amounts but it is not a complete kersplat like 2008.
“Retrenchment must occur!” Mr. Elliot proclaims, but he simply rents out the estate and moves to lower cost quarters in town, Bath in his case. He treats the symptom, not the problem.
The voltaic pile (a dependable source of electricity) was invented about 1800. It was cutting edge in Jane Austen’s time. So 1800 technology with a bit of electricity is a valid post collapse target. But the U.S. has 80 years of natural gas to burn so don’t hold your breath. The powers that be are sweating the diesel supply though.
Hi John Michael,
Man, it’s great we live in such a wasteful civilisation, because a dude can cut back on demands for stuff and energy, thus reducing the income and payment burden, and get by just fine. It’s been my observation that maybe one or two people in a hundred, will decide to spend less as an adaptive strategy. Everyone else will wants a higher income. That baffles me, but then I enjoy a somewhat ascetic life involving physical labour – it suits my wiring. Still, property taxes have to be paid, so a bloke has to render unto Caesar and stuff (a fine comment by the Big J don’t you reckon?)
I’d place you in that strategic camp too, and it’s been my observation that this has served you well.
Cheers
Chris
I do like the Y2K analogy, it was an interesting problem that while was legitimate in its function, was completely blown out of proportion. 99% of stuff that would have been impacted was very easily fixed. The stuff that couldn’t easily fix in much older mainframe stuff, they got ahead of it well in advance.
But there is another one coming up in 12 years time, the Unix time problem also known as the Y2038 problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
That one will be interesting as well, simply because Unix systems nowadays are so heavily embedded, massively layered on and now at a giant scale, that it will take a considerable amount of time to resolve these issues.
As this has been known about for a long time and is already being addressed. For instance, Apple switched all their devices off this system a decade back years back. I suspect we will have the same amount of fear mongering as Y2K with the same non-event on the other side of it.
But it will be fun to see what gets missed, those embedded systems designed to run or decades, something incredibly boring like a set of traffic lights switching to the wrong sequence a few hours early. World end stuff there. 😉
@ Gunstone RE : Paul Ehrlich’s population bomb.
There is no doubt that Ehrlich’s initial prediction was a complete miss but the overall theme’s he was going for at least have some fundamentals that cannot be ignored.
Even Norman Borlaug, ‘father’ of the Green Revolution, himself admitted his invention of hardened grains was fundamentally unsustainable in terms of resource inputs and side-effects. That when he accepted his Nobel prize, explicitly said that Paul Ehrlich was fundamentally right but his invention had merely kicked the can down the road.
Thnks John, I appreciate posting hete and sharing links, the friends I’ve made and all the conversations.
Does anyone remember tne Public Enemy song 911 is a Joke? Could haveen Y2K is a Joke.
Okay, I’ll own it. I’m a provisional liver. “I’ll get a girlfriend when I get in shape. I’ll pursue my goals when I cut back on beer and TV”. Problem is, 4-5 years ago, I did get in great shape while focusing on spirituality all while not watching TV. Although, in retrospect it seems like I was pursuing some meme of virtue. This led me to going through a dissolution of self that was 10x more intense than the one time I took LSD. I returned to square one after that and have been there the last four years, although I’ve been evolving spiritually in a way more indicative of wholeness than before. With my last MM question in mind, it seems like it’s time to cut down the bad habits and get in shape again. I did take a nice body shot at one of my habits since the last Magic Monday. My goals now seem more defined and mature. I want to be a master of the Quadrivium and more generally occultism. Obviously the Quadrivium gives one a creative outlet which is something I lacked before. Maybe this sequence of posts is a sign that I need to step into the unknown of goal pursuing goals again. This call to abandon provisional thinking synchronizes well with what I’ve been thinking lately. Maybe I’m oversharing, but flock it.
Chris, it always blows my mind that frugal living is such a non-starter for people in the professional class. We all had to go to Uni, so we all lived like students, right? So just keep doing that for a while (maybe buy a cheap car and upgrade your groceries a bit). It’s not even unpleasant – just socially awkward. Do it on a professional salary for long enough and you’ll get an emergency fund, then a house deposit, then a retirement fund.
JMG,
I would propose a corollary to the Y2K fallacy. The Y2K fallacy is relevant if and only if we are speaking of organizations or societies that still retain some degree of resiliency, self learning, self reflection and competency. In Organizations or civilizations that have been totally hollowed out by corruption, elite senility, confirmation bias, delusional thinking and ossification a final problematic situation can remain unresolved and its eventually triggering will push that organization or civilization in to total failure or a drastic step down the stairway of decline.
Mary Bennet 13
> I still would like to see, somewhere, among intelligent persons of good will, a discussion of the American constitution. Has it in fact served us well for 275 years or thereabouts?
I will “me too” this. Put me down for the American Constitution. I myself have been wondering this exact thing.
In the next few days, if you witness me giving a different vote, ignore it, because it means I have forgotten this here vote: I plead Age + Memory thing.
——
> much of the world will have technologies not too different than it had in 1800
And girls and women will braid their hair again. And wash their hair once a week, like in the olden days of the 1960s (and before).
——
The following is a random thought, being I live in farm country:
Farmers, I don’t know if now or how long in the future, would be good to build cottages in locations that are pleasant spots around their farms, which will be used to house farm-labor families.
I don’t mean hovels. I don’t mean outdoors on the side of a hill.
I mean small houses that keep the bad weather outside, keep heat inside when it is cold, keep cool inside when it is hot, have a source of potable water, have a suitable place for a food garden, have a LARGE fireplace at which to bake, and has fixtures to place a large Dutch oven or two, have a couple bedrooms, perhaps a loft, you know, Little House on the Prairie type thing. Cozy. A Miss Marple type cottage. Perhaps eventually a barn, with a horse and a cow. (I suppose one could interpret this as a prayer.)
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
On my previous comment, I talked about Paul Ehrlich, I think I should have mentioned that I think he was right about the over population but was wrong about the pace of the collapse scenario. The demographics collapse we are in now is what over population resolving itself looks like. It corrects over centuries not years.
@JMG, if only there was a book about failed doomsdays, it could be called something like “Apocalypse Not – A history of the end time’. Maybe it should go back into print, say around November this year via Aeon books? 😉
@ Bob #4 “My current worries centre around the depopulation campaign being waged by the Oligarchy, so I spend a fair amount of time wondering what they will do next to kill off more of the unwashed masses.”
I would like to think they are smart enough to realise those masses are what gives them power, that is unless they have become true believers of their AI non-sense and are eager to kick out the legs on the chairs they sit. I hate that the second one is so plausible.
@dEREK #23 “I’m curious about your thoughts on the Space Race 2.0 (which includes AI) and seems to be pushed as inevitable progress?”
Personally, it is impressive at just how well folks like Elon/Bezos have managed to maximize the money extraction process using others mental space of 20th century sci-fi as an ahem… launch pad.
@FSH #24 ” I’d love to read a piece on what you think is going on in Canada”
Canada is what happens when you leave a central banker in charge. Guts out the bottom 90% to prop up the upper 10% until the whole thing folds over like a house made of tiramisu.
@ Casa ” I often fantasize about winning the lottery but I do so not as way of avoiding action in my life but as a formal thought experiment that, by eliminating any and all of my financial concerns / excuses, helps me to focus on what I ultimately, truly want.”
It shocks people when I them what I want as it is very modest.
Get out of the current job so that I can help others on my own terms, pay off what is remaining on the house, buy a nice chair. That’s about it. Otherwise, I am the worst thing to the system – Content with myself.
Again, all votes have been tabulated.
Anon, nope. The cities will slowly decay and empty out, the mobs will only show up here and there in response to local issues, and the rest of the fantasy will be equally false. We’ll get warlords, warbands, and the collapse of the rule of law, but that’s another matter.
Calliope, that’s true in a modest number of cases, but my experience has been that the great majority of people could get out of the hole if they were willing to pay the price. I freely admit that it’s a steep price, but remember that keeping a first world lifestyle isn’t going to be an option for most people anyway!
Mrdobner, they’re not merely related, they’re identical. Waiting for the Second Coming to change your life for you is no different from waiting for the lottery, or the glorious socialist revolution, or the collapse of civilization to do it for you. I don’t claim to be a Bible scholar, but I don’t recall anywhere where Jesus told people to sit on their plump pink backsides and wait for him to fix everything for them.
Derek, I see the current rehash of the Space Race is identical to the recent fad for movies based on superhero comics that were popular in the 1960s: a generation about to go through history’s exit doors is trying to avoid contemplating its failures by reliving its youth. It’s not going to go anywhere or do anything, but you won’t be able to tell people that.
Nick, at this point, for most people in the cubicle class, it’s too late. The logic of “collapse now and avoid the rush!” assumes you get going before the rush…and for many people in your class, the rush is here. If you turn all your assets into cash, eliminate all your debts, quit your job, move into a cheap rental room, and use your remaining money to get training in bookkeeping or some other skilled trade, that might do it, but you’ll be in competition with millions of young people who got the memo before you did — and if you don’t move quickly, you’ll also be in competition with millions of older people with your background and skills. I don’t think most people in the cubicle class realize that their situation is as desperate as that of the millions of people living on investment income who were left high and dry by the Great Depression; in the years ahead, most jobs like yours will go away forever, and those that remain will by and large have sharply lower salaries and benefits. Remember all the working class people whose lives and futures were destroyed when their jobs got offshored? That’s what you’re up against.
Kimberly, thanks for this.
Jerry, might as well make some money off clueless corporations! As for the essay, here it is:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2005-03-04/long-road-down-decline-and-deindustrial-future/
Scotlyn, exactly. I was talking to somebody the other day who knows a guy who won the lottery almost by accident. He hadn’t been living provisionally beforehand, and he dealt with the sudden influx of money very intelligently, by clearing his debts, investing his winnings, and upgrading his lifestyle only within his expanded means. He’s happy these days. Contrast that to your example and it’s clear that provisional living really is the problem.
Cynthia, ha! I trust GTA isn’t that dull.
Cesar, it seems to me that you’ve answered your own question. Follow the example of the people you know who are happiest with life, and get comfortable with making much, much less money than you’re used to.
Viduraawakened, in a strict sense, yes, but most of what made Wilhelmine Germany work was a vast amount of social capital that had been built up over past centuries. Very few nations have that now, or will for centuries to come.
GlassHammer, in a certain brutal sense, apocalyptic fantasies are a way of adapting. I’ve noted that a great many people these days seem to have embraced a two-step plan for facing the future: (1) pretend that everything is well until crisis hits, and then (2) die. As long as you don’t mind that second step, it’s viable!
Rodster, the Providence River in Rhode Island was biologically dead half a century ago. These days it’s full of fish and waterbirds. The world can heal if we let it.
Larry, and yet it’s not hard to give yourself new habits if you want to. The problem is not that it’s hard, it’s that it conflicts with our collective sense of entitlement.
James, since I don’t do well in hot climates I’ve never looked into it. Anybody else?
Celadon, so far people are handling it much better than I expected. As for 2050, I doubt we’ll get that far before a default, but it’ll be just one more step down among many.
Kyle, so noted, but don’t dawdle too long. As layoffs sweep the cubicle class, getting into any alternative at all will be increasingly difficult.
Celadon, um, I take it you don’t know a lot about feudalism. Here’s a piece I wrote about that a long time ago:
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/fascism-feudalism-and-future.html
Chuaquin, I wrote an entire book about the 2012 business! It’ll be reprinted next year.
Peter, for some reason it’s always the middle class that clings like grim death to conceptual rigidities like that. Not sure why that is.
Northwind, I got it from a psychologist I know. It’s a good thing to be able to name.
Greg, what if what constitutes human flourishing varies completely from one person to another?
Will, that’s not really on topic for this post, you know. Please ask me again in this month’s open post.
Mawkernewek, that’s an interesting speculation. I had a non-Y2K compliant computer back then; I simply manually reset the date to 1949 and went through the changeover to January 1, 1950 without a hitch!
Tim PW, good — meditation and journaling are excellent starting points. Start with why you want an apocalypse, and work back from there. As for the electrification types, oh, they know perfectly well what the issues are. You can’t get people to deal with reality when they’ve decided to hide from it behind thoughtstoppers.
Anon, down the road a bit I need to post about CCRU and their ideas — fascinating stuff, if flawed. The concepts of hyperstition and hypostition are among their most useful contributions.
Moonwolf8, that must have been fin to watch!
Chris, bingo. Wilkins Micawber’s rule has always worked for me: “Income twenty pounds, expenses nineteen pounds nineteen shillings sixpence, result happiness; income twenty pounds, expenses twenty pounds sixpence, result misery.” All you have to do is spend a good deal less than you earn, and the doors open wide.
Michael, clearly old Unix hands are going to make a lot of money.
Luke, take it a little less gung-ho this time, and you should be fine.
Clay, and yet what history shows is that on the level of civilizations, even the most spectacularly decadent still takes its time falling. Beware of the words “but it’s different this time…”
Michael, oddly enough, I was thinking something very much like that. 😉
Cesar 30
> Should I go back to school? If so, to study what?
Look into trade schools. Also known as vocational schools. Such schools go by different names depending on counties, states, and countries they are in.
These are the up-and-coming schools, for sure.
Study up on which of the trades you say, “❣️Now that’s interesting❣️”
Don’t be deterred by how old you are, or, for that matter, if one is male or female. I am sure if one is over the age of, say, 19, one will get some taunts, but laugh them off,— you WILL have the last laugh.
Animal, plant, mineral.
Metal. Wood. Air. Water. Earth. Fire.
Reading. Writing. Arithmetic. Cook. Bookkeeper. Nurse. Janitor. School-teacher. Heating/air conditioning. Lumberjack.
One of my great-grandfathers Mitchell (born 1860s) (a farmer from Ireland turned city-slicker) and his son, my grandfather Clement (born 1890s) (100% city-slicker), were awning-makers in Brooklyn, New York, from the late 1800s to the 1950s. Clement went to trade-school in Manhattan (Cooper Union, no charge) to learn how to work with canvas (very hard to handle) and whatever the metal-turny-thingies (handles?) are called that roll outdoor awnings up and down. Clement handmade (and his small business of no more than ten employees) outdoor awnings for rich and poor alike, because awnings were THE temperature-control prior to air conditioning. Believe you me, outdoor awnings will be making a comeback as air conditioners break down, and people look for cheaper alternatives to cool their homes and offices.
Plumbing, smith (blacksmith; whitesmith/tinsmith), woodworking (many specialties, like cabinetmaker and house framer).
Farmer, dirt, water, outdoors, sky, clouds. Frame of mind: how on earth do centuries-old farm families deal with uncertainty?
By the way, dirt is absolutely fascinating.
If one wants formal training, there are agricultural degrees. One gets to study dirt — yahoo❣️(if I were younger, I would study dirt.)
Farmers know just about every skill known to man. Am I right? They certainly need to be astute mechanics, because they have fixed their own machinery for eons, daily; if they don’t make their own repairs, it is the axe for them (goners; kibosh; curtains).
Also in the mix is the possibility of re-location. JMG has mentioned locations that have more than one thing going on:
An example, one thing that comes to mind because one branch of my ancestors did this (for at least two generations in the USA, and before that, in England, likely in prior generations), is where farmland-meets-canal. Or better yet, where farmland-meets-canal-meets-suburb.
May your study of the trades (if you so embark on it) be fruitful and bring you much happiness and reward.
💨🫥🛠️🪵💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
A fifth Wednesday suggestion, if it’s not too late in the conversation: a practical discussion of the ‘Mentat’ chapter in Retro Future – i.e. how to develop and put into practice a program to improve memory and critical thinking.
Regarding provision living, it feels like the co-conspirator of ‘The achievement society’ as defined by Byung-Chul Han.
The achievement society idea is that if you can encourage people to be excessive aspirational for self improvement within the systems definition, the “you can be anything you want!” sense, that means your failure to be a billionaire astronaut sex magnet that builds a sentient AI on the Moon is entirely your fault! Try harder!
That, if you are constantly putting the finish line on your self achievements a foot away from where you stand, you will never get arrive. And so long as your never arrive, you will never stop trying to win the system while simultaneously contributing to it.
Provision living is that flipped on its head. You don’t change because external factors don’t fall into place and thus you also stay in the system.
I have known people who are in an office job and have that aspiration of “I would be brilliant as stand up comic, but I have never had the opportunity.” The worst thing for most of them is if they ever had the chance, it would move from an escape fantasy to a reality. And if it doesn’t pan out, it would take away that one exit from the dead end job they had. But that could be a good thing, if you get rid of that illusion, then there is the possibility to have an honest thought about their current position and future.
Side story. While I didn’t have that same aspiration in any serious means, it was always something I had wondered about. Just out of curiosity. So a few months I went to a Q&A event with a comedian at a big theatre in town and they had an open mic and very few people asking questions, I figured why not jump on the mic and ask some questions while giving some jokes a go. Personally, it went down very well, yes I can vaguely do the stand up thing. But afterwards it was really strange in that just felt so hollow. Yes I can do that, but I just didn’t care for it at all. I would rather get a close group some friends and family in stitches than a room of a thousand anonymous people. A valuable lesson there. I wish more people would at least just jump out and try that thing, at least it isn’t left in limbo but is either opened as a path forwards or closed so you can seek out something else.
I second Justin’s suggestion for fifth Friday: Western Pagan Revival.
A recent, fascinating book review about Aztecs as a topic got me thinking about how terribly insecure they were when it came to getting the attention of their gods. The book review in question is here: https://open.substack.com/pub/thepsmiths/p/review-aztecs-by-inga-clendinnen As someone who used to be solidly atheist only 10 years ago, from what very little I understand is that the beings that notice sacrifice and bloodletting are not ones that you want to attract the attention of. The Aztecs/Mexica resorted to amazing levels of cruelty, all in the pursuit of the ultimate form of provisional living. They were grateful in their strange way for their beautiful and complex society, but instead of sitting back and enjoying what their “gods” gave, they constantly jonesed for more and mass tortured their own citizens to death in order to get more goodies. They trapped themselves in a living hell where at any moment, any person could be mowed down and sacrificed and eaten.
From my limited understanding and from the few gods I’ve had the honor of developing relationships with, there are shortcuts to getting a god‘s attention, none of which involve murder or child abuse or even drugs. One is music. Music is a weird shortcut through the astral plane via sound. Another one is humor. Humor is more astral, of course, but it is so powerful, it can kill demons. The third is gratitude, which is the ultimate shortcut anyone can do, even if they are not a natural musician or comedian.
And with that, I’m going to suggest a magical analysis of the Aztecs or Mesoamerican societies in general for a fifth Wednesday post.
Since I do not see a comment with this phrase yet, please allow me to utter it: “but China!”.
You write very eloquently about the problems with solar PV and wind being unable to replace fossil fuel powered energy generation, “but China” seems to be well on their way to accomplish just that. I don’t know if it is worth a 5th Friday post, but could you please enlighten the audience why you did not mention the Asian countries that seem to be striving towards progress. Or should I write “progress”?
Hi All,
I haven’t read Paul Erlich’s book but my jury’s still out on overpopulation. Some of his ideas are valid, if not the lurid and rapid demise predicted. All organisms must respond to the “carrying capacity” of their environment because all organisms, from single celled amoeba to very clever humans rely on the resources of their environment for their existence. Humans have been very good at utilising the resources of most of the planet’s surface with the help of fossil fuels.(ff) (that’s been pretty apocalyptic for other species but is beside the point here). We have a lot of people. We can grow plenty of food (if we use fertilisers- ff) and can keep population density in fertile areas down if we transport it (ff) and refrigerate it (ff) and process it (ff). We can have shelter in any climate but only thrive if heat (ff) or cooling (ff) come to our aid. Of course people have always lived in extreme heat and cold but exposure and hunger tended to keep their numbers down (the lower carrying capacity of the habitat). Some of these factors are in play.again today. The expense of heating/cooling and food are picking off the old and frail and causing younger people to delay or avoid having children. So far, so ecological. And not apocalyptic. However, I wonder, when it becomes apparent to some of the 8 billion people that they need to gain closer proximity to food sources, whether humans will respond to the increased density and competition with the stoic pacifism of single celled organisms? I suspect they’ll put those oppositional thumbs and other evolutionary advantages to use in a way that may feel quite “apocalyptic” locally.
Greetings all
I second Nicks’ suggestion as follows: “Suggestion for the 5th Wednesday Post: You’ve mentioned previously to do what you can, with what you’ve got, right now.”
To Nick : very clear and concise list! I like it!
The things I’ve seen on this blog and elsewhere;
– Reduce debt
– Cut unnecessary expenses
– Build ties within your local community
– Get an older, reliable car you can work on yourself or take to a local mechanic versus having to take to the dealership
– Workout and eat healthy, so you can avoid expensive medical bills
May I add:
-Have a good library of good books!
-Learn a practical skill.
Regards
JMG and someone within commentariat (I’m sorry, I can’t renember who was exactly), have pointed the Y2K fake apocalypse had only a negative effect in real world: computer or digital bubble (as I like to name hi tech bubble). Of course, especulative bubbles always end, soon or later, with more or less problems. So I also think (like the commenter whose name I can’t remember), there are some similar ominous aspects between that old bubble and current LLMs (AIs?) frenzy. Of course, today bubble will collapse some day in near future, but I don’t know when. And there will be likely problems, but I’m very skeptic about usual boring and rehashed claims for a new/old apocalypse.
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I don’t have any proposal for the 5th Wednesday(by now). Maybe I’m waiting to choose between the most popular topics proposed by the rest of commentariat.
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More about “overpopulation bomb”:
I can tell you I never heard nor read at school and high school about that topic in any study matter. I was a teen student during late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and neo-Malthusianism was outside studies plans, maybe due to being despised by serious social scholars then. There wasn’t any doomerism in those years then, but its opposite (and also reckless) irrational optimism: we were in the EEC, Soviet Union was collapsing and so on…”Happy ‘90s” were beginning.
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JMG # 52:
I’m not upset by your view about a link between some Christians ideas for Christ Second Coming and doomers hysterias. Indeed, I’m a fringe Christian, so no problem for me. I think Second Coming is more a spiritual “event” than a material historical event.
By the way, your answer in your comment has made me remember one of the few voices of reasons within the fringe peak oil “community” here between 2006-2008. An anonymous commenter answered to usual peak oil doomerism that they were moral supremacist doomerists (millenarists) disguised with fake science (cherry picked facts). I think that comparation was fair, because for example Jehovas Witnesses love to believe they’ll be saved and outside the Chosen People, everybody will be annihilated. Let’s see usual arrogant feelings within doomers against the “zombies” outside the Chosen Ones (cough). I feel the end of the world always seems near (in all the times disasters and wars have happened), but it’s always cancelled…
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Justin P. # 59:
Yes, I remember that song, in spite of not being very fan of rap/hip hop music.
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Well, it seems we’re nearer to 2030, and its (in)famous agenda nor the worst doom predictions have happened. So maybe next 2030 will be 2050. It’s a pity, with some luck, I’ll be then an old man, to “enjoy” the no-event…
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(Slighty off topic, but a likely sign of times).
Last Monday, I read in a local newspaper (international page, near a full page), there would be soon a referendum in Iceland to decide wether to go on its government negotiations to join the EU or give up them, staying outside it. Pundits were near sure Icelanders would chose Yes to EU.
Yesterday, I read in a corner in international page (oops!), that Iceland voters had decided by an evident majority NO trying to join EU. Bad news for usual EU elites narrative (more and more countries joining it and blah blah blah), weakened since Brexit. Why not to join EU? I think Iceland is a small country (and they can remember how “well” Brussels treated Greece after 2008); actual only strong bond which seems to join its members is their shared hatred against Russia in high spheres; and recent Ceuta events have fuelled ugly arguments between some countries (“Union”? What union?).
Iceland people isn’t stupid.
JMG # 65:
Oh, your book about 2012 doom
business was under my radar attention, so I’ve missed it: thanks for your answer…I take note of it.
2012 “panic” was the silliest doom tendency within the silliest and more irrational doom fears in recent history…
I still remember laughing how bad and unrealistic was certain movie shot by a German origin mainstream filmmaker, specialized in disasters movies (ha ha).
**************
Lottery:
I’ve heard for years that some people who won a big lottery prize here, especially adult men, were reckless and stupid enough to spend all their money in drugs, expensive prostitutes and uncontroled gambling. Of course, they ended being poor again, after wasting all their money fastly, and even a few of them died in sad circumstances. Sometimes, winning lottery isn’t a blessing, but a damnation. Of course, if you’re smart enough and not a gambling addict, you can live well the rest of your life after winning a first prize in lottery.
Thank you for pointing out our delusions du jour . I’d like to suggest as a topic a review of what I’ve come to appreciate as the fertility of German culture, at least until it halted in the mid 20th century.
I will cast my 5th wed vote for an *archdruidical* post on “the underappreciated and/or misunderstood nature , both material and spiritual, of trees.”
Hi Kfish,
Well done you and total respect. Exactly, it is the easiest of all strategies to use. 🙂 Why this is not obvious to everyone baffles me, but the dark arts are arrayed against us all willy nilly at every opportunity. Your words suggest that like myself, fluffy doesn’t give a flock! 😉
It’s a nice thing to have a roof over your head which keeps the rain off, and reserves with which to pay the property taxes, but: friends; hobbies; and a sense of purpose, are what feeds the state of contentment.
Cheers and thanks for the shout out!
Chris
Hi John Michael,
If I may add, the old timers used to say that: God helps those, whom help themselves.
Obviously it is not possible to know of the desires of deities, but a person would imagine that at least one aspect of economic theory cannot be argued, and it’s that human wants are unlimited. Deities may act stupidly upon occasion, but I reckon they’d have that chunk of knowledge sorted.
Cheers
Chris
Re: Pole shift
You have to admit, as far as these stories go, this one is really sexy (it’s got blitz and pizzazz!)
Nucley R. Maggedon ? The man is a joke, a piker. A relic from the cold war.
If we ought to end up in a big kaboom, a pole shift with a side of Earth crustal displacement is sure to tickle. Note to self : purchase rubber boots.
The amateur historian of ideas in me wonders : did the Channeling Lady from Idaho steal material from Ben Davidson (@SuspiciousObservers) ? The other way ’round ?
@Robert Mathiesen #21:
Robert, thank you for taking the time to read through my piece, I appreciate it! I will make a note about the film portraying late Silent rather than early Boomer in my file for the piece. What you say is really interesting to me:
“There was a truly major cultural shift between those two generations, and it seems to me to have occurred quite abruptly around 1965, at least in California. ”
I am drafting the next piece in the series now and it focuses on the film Dazed and Confused set in 1976 in Texas. (Director Richard Linklater group in Huntsville, and its based on his highschool experience, so its safe to say that could be where the film is set… it doesn’t give specifics beyond Texas). That time would be in the overlap between the late Boomers and early Gen X.
Those overlap periods are interesting, and I might be writing more about the generational aspect for that piece. Any further insights you might have, I’m ears…
My father is a late boomer, youngest of five siblings, born in 1955, and he was a hot rodder. In 1976 he took his 1934 Plymouth Coupe, with flames painted on the side, out on a road trip between Maine, where his older brother had settled after being stationed there in the Navy, and California… he tried to take it up to Alaska but the roads were tearing up the car.
I never got into cars myself, but I have loved American Graffiti since I saw it as a kid on afternoon television one Sunday, even though its kind of dark in its way. I think it helped me connect with my dad. There were pictures of him from the seventies that some photographers took of him with his car and a bunch of girls… very much like a recreation of the early sixties portrayed in the movie. He did autobody work and stuff, and then became a welder, working in a more industrial setting, repairing huge industrial equipment, and later worked for the city.
Anyway, my point is, I feel like my love of the movie, and other things like that was my way of connecting to him through my mind. I felt disconnected from that side of things because I liked to read etc. growing up and had/have little mechanical aptitude. He couldn’t afford to have hobby cars when I was growing up… but when his brother from Maine passed away in late 2001/2002 from a quick unexpected illness, he was given his 64 Galaxy Convertible. In retirement he belongs to a car club with his brother in law in Lexington, KY… so all this stuff still lives on.
I have to say I love the music, and of course, Wolfman Jack. The Border Blaster stations are of particular interest, the North American answer/equivalent to the pirate stations that played rock in the UK…
For these pieces of American Psychogeography I am endeavoring to write about some of the more mainstream areas of popular culture I’ve been interested instead of all the obscure stuff, and finding ways to mix in with the pop culture criticism & history, themes that have been pertinent to this blog and myself as a longtime reader of it, oil, energy, economics, but also the built environment and things of that nature. Hoping to find a wider audience and get it in print. So instead of just focusing on music, and music liked by a minority at that as I already have (and my second book turned down by my publisher), I am trying to cast the net to movies and some books as well. It seems a good way to explore questions of American identity and the like. If nothing else, I enjoy the writing and learning process, and hopefully it will keep me out of trouble.
I won’t lie. On December 31, 1999, I was in full survivalist mode. Even stayed up that night to fend off any marauders. It really was a case of people saw a problem and fixed it before any trouble happened.
For the fifth Wednesday, I’d like to vote for population decline. The last decade in East Asia are already a window into the future, and I’m curious what the consequences are going to be if Western governments begin to restrict immigration.
P.S.:
I am tempted to get into the whole history of the greaser subculture, but it seems like a sidequest at this point and I already have 1/3rd of a manuscript… so have to start thinking about space. Could still be a future article though.
Regarding the comparisons of Future energy availability to past periods in time, it strikes me as a very dodgy line of thinking to draw close analogies here.
Say we get to have the energy per capita of the German Kaiserreich. Yet we also have insights, materials, and technologies invented since then. We‘re sitting on centuries worth of plate glass from skyscrapers, for example. Electric lights are LEDs now, and huge progress has been made in building techniques, much of it utilizing low-energy-input materials such as hemp and clay. While innovations in less energy-intensive agriculture are still quite fringe now, I don’t see why they wouldn’t spread given the incentive landscape of a permanent economic contraction.
What I‘m trying to say is, it’s very hard to say how the cultural and technological changes of the last hundred years or so are going to play out on a smaller resource base. My feeling is, the future will look less Victorian, or German-imperial than we may think. The energy base of a past age does not equate with the way of life of said age.
“[They] assumed that nobody in government or industry would do anything in response to an obvious, imminent threat to their wealth and power. Instead, the apocalypse lobby assumed, everyone everywhere would sit on their hands, making aimless plaintive noises”
To be maximally fair to the apocalypse people, that’s not a totally groundless assumption to make. After all, that’s exactly how the powers that be have decided to deal with climate change, or economic inequality, or Peak Oil itself. I suppose the lesson is that our elites can still handle short-term crises, if they really want to, and at the expense of the future. They just can’t deal with anything long-term. I also don’t think a fast collapse can be dismissed out of hand, considering how our civilization has gone so all-in on very complex and fragile systems with no margin for problems. All that said, I agree that the long descent is much more likely, and none of this invalidates your larger point.
As for provisional living, like Luke Z. above, I’ll plead guilty to doing my share of that over the years. I’m still not immune, but thankfully I’m better these days. Funnily enough, one of the things that helped me overcome the trap was just what you were talking about in a reply on the most recent Magic Monday: really thinking about what my most important goal in life should be, and in what specific ways I’d need to change my life to fit around that. I had a sort of conversation with myself that went along the lines of “Okay, you’ve been thinking and saying to yourself for years now you want to do X, that that’s so important. Are you actually going to do it, or just daydream about it? Because this is probably the point where you have to choose.” And a year on, I’m not there, but at least I’m closer than I’ve ever been. All this may or may not be related to getting fully serious about GD practice around the same time…:)
For fifth Wednesday, I’d like to add my vote to “the magical geography of America”.
Excellent post, as always. Thanks JMG!
I worked a Y2K IT contract at large publishing company, which used a mix of Windows, Unix and mainframes in their environment. We were staffed to gills and ready for anything New Year’s eve, 1999. After 30 mins of a few minor issues at the stroke of midnight, somebody noticed the digital clock in the cubicle bay had rolled over to “January 1, 1900”. One of the staff had a digital camera, and we all posed for a few shots of the most serious problem of the evening…
I was very wrong on some of the aspects of Decline, including the pace and how human nature trumps reality. Now with 20+ years of observations under my belt, I still have a muddled view of what comes next. I don’t know what happens as the “wealth pump” of the U.S. flies apart, and how politicians and other leaders are making so many wrong decisions (ie, green energy, fusion) but yet are moving forward allowing privatization of remaining resources (esp real estate, oil and fresh water), and how the hoarding actions of the Uber Wealthy will play out versus the drop in living standards of the masses. Economic collapse, war, famine and plagues are all possibilities that can make anyone affected go from “everything is copacetic” to “everything has gone to hell” in a minute. I rarely see the word “mitigation” used in discussions of today’s issues – most everyone still believes in problems, not predicaments.
Finally, I’m not sure what several posters are thinking about describing the “population bomb” as not happening. These “migrants” across the globe are least partially motivated by lack of resources and wanting to improve their lives – which cannot be done easily where they live now. Isn’t that a sign of population pressure?
@Cesar (#30)
My advice to anyone deliberating a career-path decision is this: forget education, forget professional schools, forget AI, forget white-collar anything; the biggest drain on the world’s economy now is the overburden of clerks and managers getting paid stupendous salaries for doing work that mostly does not need to be done. What does need to be done? Plumbing repair. Appliance repair. Roofing/siding/window repair. Lighting/wiring repair. Automotive repair. Furniture repair. Learn to do any of these things proficiently, and (as long as your labor rate is reasonable) you’ll never lack for work.
We had our roof redone about 2 years ago; we had been looking for someone who was ready/willing/able to do it (and do it properly) for us ever since we bought the place 18 years previous – that’s how scarce good roofers are!
Hello,
I would add my vote to those asking for an essay on magical geography.
Thank you,
A
Hello JMG
The apocalypse memes were a lot weaker here in the UK, at least where I am. The media was mostly look at those crazy Americans. What is strong is climate denialism. Mostly centred around the summer of 1976 which had a annonmalous six week very hot and dry spell in a very cool and wet decade. Every heat wave or series of them since then is dismissed as natural climate variability. Add to which climate cooling was a scare in the 70s in the UK and is remembered by those of a certain age allowing them to dismiss climate change science as wrong then so wrong now. Yes, I do have a book on the cooling prediction published at the time.
So apocalypse predictions can result in a reverse effect that is more damaging but over a longer time frame. There must be a word for this effect?
PS just remembered the word for the denialism effect :- Hubris
I don’t like to think about Y2K–my poor dad, who went off the rails when Mom the family financier died and wouldn’t listen to a word I said, “invested” in a lot of get-rich-quick schemes, including one that involved selling manuals on how to survive the Y2K apocalypse. Not that it was the worst “investment” he ever made, that would have been the prophesied oil well in Israel. Mom had to let him have part of his retirement bonus for that stroke of genius; at least she got a really nice set of living room curtains out of the remainder.
I would like to follow up on our exchange last week and vote for discussion of the souls/group souls of animals. Side trip into trees and/or other plants would be welcome as well.
@ JMG,
I would like to cast my 5th Wednesday vote for Scotlyn’s idea:
“Scotlyn says:
September 3, 2026 at 6:15 am
I will cast my 5th wed vote for an *archdruidical* post on “the underappreciated and/or misunderstood nature , both material and spiritual, of trees.”
I’d like to hear about millennials entering mid life. There’s been much wondering about how millennials are going to live out their mid life crisis. One recent Dave Ramsey caller was a wealthy software engineer that was living in his car mostly by choice, worried about his job. It was apparent he gave up on living provisionally and wanted to enjoy life instead of servicing a mortgage.
For 5th week, I vote for the magical geography of America.
As for the ongoing decline and probable economic crash, I live among people (myself included) who, when it happens, will be toast, as surely as a Chinese old lady with bound feet in Mao’s reign. I have neighbors, friends, and acquaintances in power chairs, many of whom are grossly fat. Most of us have several sorts of disabilities, and some can’t remember what they did yesterday. It’s not really provisional living nor apocalyptic thinking to know and accept this, and hope they have children and guardians who aren’t as steeped in conventional-liberal-elite thinking as my daughter, who, when she mentioned replacing her windows and I suggested getting energy-efficient ones, said “Whatever for?” And when I mentioned stopping the massive energy leakage from her house, reacted like a Pope asked to spit on the cross. (How to cope: take a tablespoon of Epictetus several times a day…….and try to stay as independent and mobile as possible.)
Song soundtrack here “A Bird in a Gilded Cage……”
I confess that I was a victim of the Y2K hoax. But that made me more skeptical of the rest of the possible hoaxes or fake news that I have faced so far.
Once again, all votes have been tabulated. So far there’s nothing even close to a frontrunner, so please keep voting!
Michael, hmm! Yes, that makes a great deal of sense. Can you recommend a source on Han’s concept? I want to look into that.
Kimberly, if you ever have the chance, I’d encourage you to read William Sullivan’s The Secret of the Incas: Myth, Astronomy, and the War Against Time, which is mostly about the Incas but provides fascinating clues to the mindset of the Aztecs as well. The evidence he gathers suggests that it wasn’t just insecurity — that Incas and Aztecs alike believed that the cycles of heaven were driving their world toward a nightmare future, their only hope was to get the gods to get those cycles to move in reverse, and extreme measures were called for. The fact that they got the nightmare future they feared, in the form of mass death via pandemic smallpox followed by Spanish conquest and the complete destruction of their nations and cultures, makes this all the more fascinating. There’s good reason to see this sense of impending doom driven by the precession of the equinoxes as a general thing over much of the world in ancient and medieval times — that’s one of the reasons so many people took refuge in religions that claimed to offer an escape hatch from material existence, just for starters.
Michael, getting accurate information about what exactly is going on in China is much more difficult than many people in the West realize, as their information flows are entirely controlled and administered by the government and the concept of freedom of communication is not known there. China’s clearly doing something, but what? At a time when credible analysts are suggesting that the Chinese population may be drastically lower than official figures claim, it’s very hard to say.
Hermit, I take it you don’t know that global reproduction rates are moving into negative figures at this point and a relatively rapid decline in world population will be under way well before the end of the century. I’ve written about that here:
https://ecosophia.net/an-unfamiliar-world/
Chris, hmm. The thing that fascinates me is that most people are satisfied with so little. There are always exceptions, to be sure, but there’s a huge gap between what people think they want and what they want in any sense real enough to make them get up off the sofa.
Thibault, most likely they both got it from earlier writers. Oldtimers will recall this version of the same claim, published in 1986:
And those whose memories go back even further will recall this one, from 1968:
When physicists set out the various laws of conservation, they seem to have forgotten the Law of the Conservation of Apocalyptic Theories, which appears to be as ironclad as the laws of thermodynamics.
BorealBear, there’s a difference, a huge one, between broad theoretical constructs such as peak oil and anthropogenic climate change, on the one hand, and concrete immediate crises on the other. There’s a good case that political leaders are wise to delay action on the former — imagine for a moment if world governments had all taken the global cooling scare of the 1970s seriously, and done their best to raise the planet’s temperature! Once a specific crisis is impending, though, the crisis management tools come out.
Drhooves, most of the migrant flows are being paid for and supported by corporate interests in search of cheap indentured labor. The result is suction, not pressure!
Philip, it’s hubris, but it’s not just hubris. You’re right that there needs to be a specific label for the effect we’re seeing, which is related to the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” but also involves the abuse of authority. Hmm.
Sister Crow, sorry to hear this! It’s a useful reminder, though, of the human cost of this kind of delusion.
Patricia M, and there’s that. I’ll hope, for your sake, that the slope of decline is shallow where you are.
JMG,
It is popular to suggest that the best solution to one’s fall from the cubicle class ( or other non-cubicle portions of the petroleum/easy credit economy) is to learn a trade or skill. This is a good suggestion for many but in my mind the need for well compensated trades like electrician, welder, blacksmith, and bookkeeper will not expand enough to replace more than a small portion of the cubicle class. Yes, by all means get there the first with the most. Plus I totally agree that learning as many skills as possible will help greatly with maintaining a collapsed lifestyle.
But in the medium to long run history tells us that the majority of the population will be employed as agricultural labor. There is only two reasons we now feed ourselves with such a small portion of our populations involved in growing, collecting, and preparing food and biomass fuel. Plentiful Petroleum and its close cousin synthetic petroleum based fertilizer. As soon as those two are greatly diminished most of us will have to go back to working the land. For some of us it will be as farmers with field hands, or for others subsistence farmers but for most it will be working the farms, fields and processing sheds for others like my grand parents and great grandparents.
In her Quareia course, Josephine McCarthy reccomends that practicing magicians, occultists and mystics shouldn’t take up any form of gambling. Her argument was interesting and had to do with the karmic consequences a person would incur if they received a large sum or other windfall at once. She had written before about “resource pots” that each person or magic practitioner has. Different for each of us… but a large draw from one of the resource pots for something like money might mean those resource pots aren’t as available when it might be needed for magic that serves a purpose beyond catering to wants. She wrote about the person on the path having their needs met, but not all their wants.
She contrasted the general situation in the west where a person winning a lottery or gambling with someone who gambles in a tribal situation. She had lived on a reservation in the US for sometime, so had some experience and connections there. Her point was that in a genuine tribal society people would give back to others whatever they had won from gambling, so its not as much of an issue on a magical resource level as it is for the regular USA or British citizen living in an atomized society where that windfall wouldn’t spread so much to the community.
Whatever the truth of the matter, I think its an interesting perspective.
@ Sgage #92
Glad your vote joins mine, but the credit for proposing it belongs to @ Casa #38… 🙂
@ Patricia Mathews # 94
“take a tablespoon of Epictetus several times a day…”
A very decent and useful prescription! 🙂
To Michael Meier (no. 71) about China — Not gonna lie, I doubt I would be upset if China took Taiwan and commandeered/hoarded all of that wonderful computer chip technology for itself. That would certainly cut the legs out from under new data center construction here in the west, and it would also amputate the American/Israeli war machines along with the new nuclear power plants frantically being built and renewed for said data centers. If China wants unlimited data centers built with Taiwanese microchips sucking up water they don’t have, I say go for it. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
China isn’t the green energy miracle it has paint-washed itself to look like. We Americans have ghost malls. China has entire GHOST CITIES built on broken dreams and shoddy investments. https://kimberlysteele.substack.com/p/the-great-decoupling-from-china
I don’t envy the Chinese at all in their current predicament and if I have any say in the matter, I will not be reincarnated within the land of China anytime in the next 500-1000 years. Look at the insane Chinese beauty standard through the eyes of someone who speaks English and Chinese https://www.youtube.com/@Wonnylol or observations of the Chinese dating scene https://substack.com/@terminallydrifting/p-191558302 and you’ll see that something is very off about Chinese culture these days.
Brenda # 67:
I’m a fan of Herberts “Dune” books series, so I’m glad for supporting your Mentat topic proposition, in a wider sense than that legendary sci fi masterwork. So my vote for 5th Wednesday post goes to Mentats.
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Kimberly S. # 70:
I also think humor can kill demons, and I believe healthiest humor happens when you laugh at yourself (the best antidote against our own arrogant godlike complex and low self steem alike, methink). At least, sometimes I try it.
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Chris # 79:
It’s a good realist phrase, known here too. God helps people who help themselves (it seems there are several versions).
Another popular saying here (slightly more irreverent) is: “God helps good people…when they’re more than bad people”.
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I guess there’s another “provisional living” complex in an human group far from the doomers “hordes”, if I’m not wrong. As an European, I’ve seen how fast usual fans of the almighty EU (?) block and fool themselves against its real decline. They’re usually blind in front of some nasty hard facts and events, because they prefer to think current troubles for Brussels and its vassals…err…citizens, won’t last. I think this hope for better times toward future EU global apotheosis is a refined form (but also a dangerous one) of provisional living, waiting for a time that won’t never arrive.
It’s interesting these EU fans tend to be middle and high class people. Of course, they have never suffered EU hard economical politics after 2008 crisis, like working class people here…
For Fifth Wednesday, I’m with Mary Bennet and Northwind Grandma: my vote is for the American Constitution.
Philip…# 89:
I see the fake Y2K apocalypse business was much weaker in UK than in USA, according your memory. It was a similar situation in Spain, at least in my town. I can tell you we had a few “look at these crazy Americans” in MSM for our amusement, too (maybe reinforcing our usual European slightly arrogant view, ahem).
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JMG # 96:
I agree with your answer to Michael. It’s always a bad idea to accept information (or maybe full propaganda?) offered to you by a dictatorial regime, in which evidently nobody can make any serious criticism against its official narrative. It’s a “little” problem usually ignored by naïve western China fans, who ironically live in declining democracies, with some free speech yet for pointing govts mistakes in MSM and internet. I’d like to know what the heck is really happening now in China like you, too…I bet they’re doing good things and bad ones alikes, but I don’t know in which proportion.
JMG, that’s a great essay, appreciate it. “A feudal society is a legal hierarchy of decentralized force. In feudalism, the place of every human being from monarch to serf is measured precisely by that person’s ability to wield violence, and is matched by an elaborate hierarchy of rights and responsibilities…” . I was using “neo-feudalism” analogously as a term, in this case, “the ability to monopolize, dispose of, and wield money (as a substitute for violence)” substitutes in your original definition. From my perspective, the governmental cycle is feudalism > neo-feudalism that is functional > neo-feudalism that is dysfunctional. You never really get away from feudalism. It’s not a snarl word to me, just where we are at, in the cycle. Probably just the way my mind works. But no, no quibbles with that essay, au contraire, and thanks for this too!
I wonder if the people here have considered this: after decades, the so-called “myth of progress” has long since collapsed. As Maarten Boudry said, the myth of progress peaked in the 1960s and has been in decline ever since.
https://maartenboudry.substack.com/p/the-future-used-to-be-better-33d
if you want to make art in a 21st-century European welfare state, your work better attack modern welfare, technology, and consumerism. And if you’re hoping to snag some government subsidies—milk from the capitalist cash cow—then you’d better declare yourself an enemy of capitalism.1 An insolent artist celebrating modern technology and consumption? No dosh for this buffoon!…but over the past half-century, we seem to have completely soured on the idea of progress. Even so-called “progressives,” as I write in my book *The Betrayal of Enlightenment*, have turned their backs on progress. Socialists like Karl Marx and Sylvia Pankhurst dreamed of a world of abundance for all and infinite growth, celebrating plentiful energy and denouncing the scarcity mindset. By contrast, many progressives today warn that economic growth is a dangerous fetish, that “technofixes” won’t save the climate, and that the best energy is the “energy not consumed.” (Progressives are, of course, not the only ones distrustful of technology. But it’s more surprising when such disdain for technological progress comes from progressives (what’s in a name?))
Perhaps we should find time to discuss how the disillusionment with progress has finally taken hold in academia, with even mainstream progressives opposing it, and how we should cope with the collapse of this myth of progress.
I was still working in corporate IT shops back in the late 90s and spent several years on Y2K prep. Lots of hard work was done to avoid the problems that definitely would have happened at midnight 01/01/00, but as you say it was the work that made all the difference. Every tech-dependent organization in the world leaned in and did that work, spending a lot of time and money and forgoing other priorities – I guess because the problem was simple to understand and deeply embedded in every software stack built since the mid 50s. So there was no turning away from it, and the deadline was obvious. And it was also doable, and necessary to keep the current ship afloat.
Now we face a much bigger set of problems and all we can come up with is the green new deal or drill, baby, drill or various other thumb twiddling maneuvers.. But after 20 years of living low, gardening seriously and chopping a lot of wood, I have learned one thing – it is very hard work, and not always fun or even particularly satisfying. Definitely harder than sitting in an office reading through thousands of working storage sections and adding a couple digits to the date field.
Oh well, que sera sera and all that 🙂
On Christian ideas of apocalypse:
The 16th century was one of the periods of great expectation that the Second Coming was near. Martin Luther thought those expectations were quite realistic, but there is a saying of his that is rather famous in Germany even today: “If I knew the world was coming to an end tomorrow, I would plant today an apple tree”.
Tangentially related, I used to walk to the bus past a little house near Botafogo beach in Rio that belonged to the Marine and showcased a pretty wall of painted tiles with the letters CARPENT TUA POMA NEPOTES – your grandchildren will pluck the apples/fruits. Now I don’t have a very high opinion of the Brazilian Marine and its politics, but I liked that quote. Years later, I (re-)encountered the whole verse in the Eclogues:
Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes.
Graft the pear [branches], Daphnis, your grandchildren will pluck the fruits.
I am told pear trees take particularly long before they start to bear fruit. I think such acts are the best antidote to provisional living.
re Christian apocalypticism and preparing for the rapture/2nd coming: my reply is that the bible said we won’t know the day or the hour, so playing guessing games and trying to assign dates is a losing proposition and a waste of time.
And we could also get run over by a bus tomorrow. So we should try and live well and follow Jesus. Then if we get hit by a bus or the rapture happens we’re good, and if we live to 100 we’re still good. It doesn’t actually change what we need to do.
Basically the whole thing acts as a giant distraction.
@JMG
I figured you understood most of my explanation but I admit I’m a little surprised you knew about Binary Coded Decimal!
It strikes me that “provisional living” might also be called “delusional living.” Way back in the 1500s Sebastian Brandt observed that “the world wants to be deceived” (Ship of Fools, chapter 65). As then, so now.
Re; China and coal.
“China’s use of coal for electricity grew in the first half of 2026 as a record amount of wind and solar power was wasted through curtailment, new research has found.
The world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter brought 30 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity into operation in the six months to June and coal-fired generation rose 3% after falling last year, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and Global Energy Monitor (GEM). Only 2.7GW of coal power was retired in the same period.
The coal expansion stems from a surge in power plant approvals that followed power shortages caused primarily by high coal prices in 2021, when blackouts and factory shutdowns hit roughly 20 Chinese provinces. Local governments responded by fast-tracking new coal projects as insurance against future outages.”
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/08/06/china-wastes-clean-power-stopping-coal-use-from-falling/
China’s renewable energy capacity is now larger than its coal capacity, but they still have the night problem. The batteries aren’t up to it yet. They are not willing to turn the data centers off at night either.
If I may ask, are you still planning on returning to the Situationists? If not, I’d like to place my vote for 5th Wednesday for one more post on them, or maybe the Surrealists, if the latter would be easier to do a single post on.
JMG
There is a phenomena that I think has some relevance. During the Covid lockdown and following restrictions millions of people were forced into a quasi-provisional living situation where their life was put on hold for years. I know multiple people who were unemployed for Biden’s entire term because of the vaccine mandates. This hit younger Millennials and Gen Z the hardest, having this happen in their early to mid-20s. They’re now in their late 20s and early 30s asking “where did the time go?” I wonder what the long term implications of this will be? Probably not good.
Can you use divination to answer the question “why the heck did I decide to incarnate in these interesting times”? I really want to have a word with whoever thought this was a good idea (i.e., me).
For 5th Wednesday, I second Kimberly Steele’s suggestion of a magical analysis of the Aztecs, especially since these gods seem to make a comeback. And maybe you can explain why old gods are coming back, instead of new ones appearing. I mean, nobody remembers the gods of the Stone Age anymore, so there had been a succession of gods. Why is it different this time?
Right now, the most amusing form of provisional living I see in the US is the decidedly bland flavor preferred by our beloved Neo-Cons: all of the exciting things they will finally be able to do once they manage to take over Iran and Russia. In fact, they’re addicted to living provisions upon provisions, as their Iranian and Russian wet dreams are simply necessary stages in order to finally be able to contain China — that’s when they’ll really start living, you betcha!
President Trump amid his cabinet of yes-men (few of them actually sworn-in Neo-Cons) look to have let themselves get trapped in the sticky web of the hardliners addictive provisional habits. Now Trump can’t let go of all the dreams he should so easily be able to fulfill… if only he can win the Iran and Russia wars (with new munitions won in the lottery perhaps?) Why, he will be able to win both houses of Congress in the midterms… if only he can declare some kind of a win in the Iran and Russia wars. He will finally be able to rename everything that still goes by native monikers to “America” and rebrand everything else to “Donald J. Trump”… if only he can declare some kind of a win in the Iran or possibly the Russia war. His approval rating will be able to jump back up out of the crater it’s in… if only he can declare some illusion of winning in Iran or Russia or Greenland or Cuba or maybe some little Canadian island in Lake Ontario (hey, we might actually stand a chance of pulling off that last one.)
I guess that’s why we haven’t tried to take any Canadian islands or sand bars: we might actually be able to succeed at such a modest exploit, which would bring the whole provisional-living facade crashing down on our Tomorrowland dreams. Let’s just keep them safely there in that distant provisional Tomorrowland and focus on completely unattainable war goals instead. At least we don’t have to worry about ever winning those!
Navel gazing at all the talismanically protective provisions we heap one upon another is a wonderful technique for keeping the status quo rigidly glued in place, but, once that normalcy has been shattered, embracing the mysterious unknown is far more adaptive. Why resort to fearing that which we can’t hope to ever control? (Somehow that sounds like a potential theological question as much as an epistemological one.)
As a dreadful, magnificent, unimaginable, terrifying, glorious, and undreamed of future takes shape out in the murky darkness beyond the reassuring halo of the streetlamp under which we keep looking for keys we lost somewhere else, we can go on cowering blindly in our mechanical false illumination or venture out into that unknown darkness. Perhaps that darkness will turn out to be magically illuminated, though that would be quite challenging to assess from within our man-made glamour. Dare we venture out beyond our provisional comfort zones to discover how enchanted our world might actually be?
Hi JMG!
Could you help me understand what it means that the US dollar has been the global reserve currency, and why that is changing? My understanding is that everyone traded in dollars because everyone wanted to have dollars to buy US …oil? stuff? in the past, and now they are slowly adapting to trading in other currencies that are seen as more stable, and that everyone wanting some of your money means you can take out a lot of debt, and people wanting your money less means you have to pay on the debt or default. Is that true? If not, could you help me understand better? The whole thing is confusing to me because money is this big digital illusion, so I don’t even know what “having US dollars” means anymore, or what that ever meant for global trade.
Thank you!
Sama
“…there’s a huge gap between what people think they want and what they want in any sense real enough to make them get up off the sofa.”
This does make for an easy test:
Question “how much do I want that?”
Answer – “how prepared am I to get up off the sofa to get it?”
On the other hand, I once heard a test similar to this used to describe the layperson’s distinction between a cold and a flu.
Question: “Someone sends you a message telling you they just left $50 in an envelope on your porch. Do you get up out of your bed to retrieve it?
Answer: If Yes – it’s a cold. If No – it’s a flu.
“What do you want to read about on the 30th…?”
The life and works of Edward E. Peach aka Ophiel.
(You may have said no for reasons before, but I’m a hermit and borderline luddite regarding keeping up with comment section replies, so, thanks for your consideration anyway.)
I think my counselor and I have been dancing around the topic of “provisional living” for some time. I don’t really think I have imagined a single event that would make my life better, but I do worry that I’m stuck in a rut and can’t find a way out. Currently, I’ve been applying for jobs and trying to make friends, but for whatever reason, that’s really hard to do in the modern world. Doubly so for expecting parents.
Thankfully, my wife and I have solid support networks through family and church and decent, if sometimes distant, friends. I’m still toying with the budget to ensure we can get by comfortably.
One aside, with the passing of Peter Cullen, I’ve been getting back into the Transformers franchise. There are some very fun print stories, including the old “Wings Universe” collections and the IDW comics. One curiosity that’s always fascinated me is that the Cybertronians, despite being spacefaring robots, are deeply entrenched in magic. They are birthed from the body of their god, Primus, the Primes are demigod figures, and they have everything from magical artifacts to ghosts as part of daily life. Much of what you find in Transformers, especially in its better outings, is more in tune with mysticism than run-of-the-mill sci-fi. It’s a fun dichotomy: the lives of the ultra-high-tech robots are magical, not scientific.
That could be a potentially fun topic for a fifth post: the relationship between technology and magic in fiction. Many franchises from Transformers to Battlestar Galactica play with the idea of machine spirituality. I’d be curious to see your take on that, either looking at it from within the fiction (“does this unit have a soul?”) or analyzing the trend.
White’s Law., named after Leslie White, which was coined in 1943, roughly states that, ceterus paribus, behind every unit of GDP/GNP/economic activity lies a unit of energy, usually very energy dense hydrocarbons .
Some catastrophic collapse advocates’ motivation is thinking more money, i.e. greed, can be made on the highly improbable event. Cornell’s Organic Chem prof Dave Collum’s aphorism, a fav, is “the end of the world only happens once.” Another fav is TickerGuy Karl Denninger’s “you can’t win a bet on the end of the world; you’re either wrong and lose the bet or you’re right and can’t collect.”
@Athaia #105
Many polytheists have reported that their experience of the gods differs sharply in some ways with their portrayal in the old myths. JMG has speculated that two millennia ago, the gods really did “die” — that is, move on to other things — and the ones coming back are new spirits cast in the old roles.
So I suspect the answer is that many if not all of them are new gods, but they are showing up in the forms most-readily recognizable to us to help ease us back into polytheism. After we make that transition, they can start to move us toward guises they prefer.
I also vote for the discussion on the Western Pagan Revival.
JMG,
It occurred to me while thinking about the need for many to reduce expectations of status there will be a good opportunity for employment of some in the PMC. As we have discussed we are in the midst of an elite replacement cycle where the PMC class is being traded out for the entrepreneurial class.
The last time the entrepreneurial class was in power was the gilded age. In the later portions of the gilded age and on in to the 40’s. 50’s and 60’s one of the ultimate signs of status for the wealthy was a British Butler or Chauffeur, and a proper English Nanny or Governess for the kids. This only happened because at that time the British Empire was coming to its end and the number of wealthy members of the Britain who could afford trained domestic help was on the decline forcing 3rd and 4th generation domestic workers to immigrate to America where the money was. You can see this in the movies and TV of the time.
With the new tech royalty and Billionaire class the ultimate sign of status will be a Butler or Chauffeur that is an upper class wasp with a prep school and Ivy League education. Well mannered history and sociology majors from Brown, Princeton and Yale will not be destined for the fields but instead find employment ( with some training ) to be butlers, chauffeurs, nannies and perhaps maids. They will probably not be as hard working or efficient as todays recent immigrants from poor countries but that will be part of the status, affording inefficient servants who look good and project class. One aiming at this field should avoid tattoos, facial piercings and unusual hair colors.
This trend will peak when the War lords take over. Can you imagine the new strongman ruler of the San Fernando Valley just arrived from Cartel headquarters moving in to his Encino Hills mansion with his Wasp Butler fresh off the crew team at Harvard, and his Governess straight from Ms. Porters and Brown. His guests will chuckle at the help’s Locust Valley Lockjaw* pronunciation of helpful requests around the house. They will have them dressed in preppy outfits right off the tennis court or yacht club. So don’t fear if your son or daughter just graduated from a fancy school with a useless degree, they could have an exciting career ahead of them.
* accent used in Hollywood in the 1950’s, originated on the North Shore of Long Islan think Katharine Hepburn
Good Afternoon,
My vote goes for : The Pagan Revival in the West: Early Boosters including the Druid Revival coming to the Hudson River Valley.
“when all the wonderful things we like to fantasize about are going to happen.”
I recall New Years 2000 celebration quite clearly. Being the graduating year for our high school class. We had gathered for a ‘grown up’ party. With the appetizers, the collared shirts, and millenium turning over, this particular Party etched in my mind more than others.
I had a basic knowledge of computers following my father’s ownership of a RadioShack in the 80’s and 90s so I figured the scare was overblown and was communicating this to others casually. I recall a sense that the I was killing some of the excitement and that the Y2K scare added to the flavor of the party, like a soft drug that released a little dopamine when the conversation came up. I think most shared the same idea I had, but nothing was really going to happen. But, as a group, the unspoken consensus was not to dispell, but to allow the thrill to flourish.
Once again, all votes have been tabulated.
Clay, granted, but the life of a subsistence farmer is a very hard one. The life of a skilled tradesperson is both easier and more lucrative. There’s a reason why every aspiring peasant in the late Middle Ages tried to get at least one son apprenticed into some kind of trade!
Justin, interesting. I’ve noticed the same thing, though my teachers explained it to me in a different way. Their take is that when you take up magic seriously, and begin to take conscious control over your life, the immense gains have to be paid for by certain losses, and one of the things you lose is the right to get things you haven’t earned. That’s why so often, when people use magic (or related methods such as New Thought affirmations) to get money without earning it, they suffer sudden unexpected losses instead. I’ve noticed the effect in my own life; I routinely buy tickets for charity raffles (Freemasons get these offered to them quite regularly) but I never, but never, win anything. (I don’t mind — I consider the ticket price to be a donation to the charity.) Native traditions are different — among the tribes I know best, winning in gambling is understood as a great opportunity to get stuff to give away to others — and so the magical rules that affect them are doubtless not the same.
Celadon, I suppose you can define “feudalism” so broadly that it encompasses any possible system of political economy; in that case, though, does it still communicate anything at all?
林龜儒, oh, but the people who proclaim themselves enemies of capitalism are even louder about our need to “progress” beyond it! In the same way, attacking modern welfare, technology, and consumerism combines perfectly well with blind faith in progress — all you have to do is insist that we have to progress beyond those. Is your book available in English yet, btw? Dutch may be mellifluous but it’s not one of the few languages I can read.
Yupped, there’s another difference, of course. The Y2K crisis was a problem, and problems have solutions. The end of cheap fossil fuel energy is a predicament, and you can’t solve a predicament — you just have to live with it.
Aldarion and Pygmycory, exactly! You can believe that the Second Coming will happen someday, if your faith teaches that, without using it as an excuse for sloth.
Slithy, I read a lot of articles about the Y2K business in 1998 and 1999.
Robert, mundus vult decipi! James Branch Cabell used that as the motto of the coat of arms of his imaginary French province of Poictesme, as I recall.
Slithy, I certainly hope to do so, and also to two other incomplete threads, the nature of enchantment and the occult history of the United States. Still, I’ve included your vote in the tabulation.
Anon, fascinating. Yeah, that’s relevant.
Athaia, try journaling — write the question at the top of the paper, clear your mind, and then write whatever comes to mind without editing or censoring any of it. You know more than you think you know. As for the gods, we don’t have the least idea what gods and goddesses were worshipped in the stone age — for all we know, they may have been a very familiar set…
Christophe, one of the reasons I like to mention provisional living from time to time is precisely that it explains so much and shows up so reliably. I’m trying not to get into the same trap by hoping that someday, if I just do that often enough, other people will catch on!
Sama, that’s going to be the subject of a post in the not too distant future, and it’ll take a post to explain it. Very briefly, though, the US and the Persian Gulf oil states cut a deal many decades ago that oil would be priced and sold solely for dollars; that forced every nation on earth to stockpile dollars and dollar-denominated assets, and by and large every other industry then followed suit, so that most international trade was handled by an exchange of dollars. That’s what permitted the US to run such absurd deficits — the treasury bills could be sold to foreign banks who needed to backstop dollar transactions for international trade. Now that’s breaking down as the US weakens and deficit spending rises to unsupportable levels. More on this soon!
Scotlyn, it’s a good distinction!
Oisín, it’s been added to the list.
EchoEcho, hmm! I’m a little too old to have caught the Transformers franchise, but this doesn’t surprise me. I was around when the rationalists staged their coup, took over science fiction, and tried to squeeze all the magic out of it. One way or another, I should do a post on that!
RCW, yep — my human ecology classes at the Huxley College of Environmental Studies in 1980-1983 covered White’s Law in quite some detail.
Clay, excellent! Yes, I think you may definitely be on to something there.
Cheers JMG, during your last visit to NYC, you spoke about the USA birth chart. There was mention of Saturn’s placement and an abrupt, spectacular end for the nation. Much in line with this post, the country and the people continue, but the specific political entity that was the United States of America ends with the same fervor that it began with. Unless this is more book material, that chart, Saturn and the rest of it is my vote for the fifth Wednesday.
With thanks to #38 casa for inspiration, my 5th Wednesday vote goes to “the underappreciated and/or misunderstood nature , both material and spiritual, of trees.”
John, I am curious as to your take on the carrying capacity of the continents when fossil fuels are largely gone, taking into consideration the factors of soil exhaustion, lack of artificially made fertilizers, the current state of major water aquifers (which in California, for example, has been greatly depleted)…I have read, for example, that historically sub Saharan Africa only had 10-15 million people)….
In a lot of ways, I think an 1800 level society would be beneficial,,,but exactly what would it look like?
The collapse will be difficult, not least because so many people are mentally unprepared to deal with it, with their provisional living and focus on Tomorrowland. In fact, that bit about provisional living strikes a chord, since I’ve used that form of escapism more than a few times. But at least I have a clearer understanding of overall society than with my personal life, lol.
Hopefully, computers & internet can be preserved to some limited extent, even if it’ll be scaled down from how it is now. Lots of fascinating digital culture, especially (but not only) video games. Information technology also goes a long way towards redundancy of data, which enables the archiving and preserving things into the future.
As for 5th Wednesday, my vote is for astrological ages. There’s been a fair amount of discussion on the ending Age of Pisces (Axial religions), and the coming Age of Aquarius (invention), along with some coverage of the preceding ages of Aries (conquest) and Taurus (megalithic structures), and a brief mention of Capricorn (getting practical). But I’d like a complete guide to the signs, with a concise summary of how each one affects civilization for good or ill. Such an article would be very informative!
Hi John Michael,
What constitutes human flourishing definitely varies by person. So the question becomes the extent and nature of these variations. If there is a complete difference in flourishing among enough groups of people, then the notion of progress (at least universal progress) collapses into the particular interests of universal tribes or individuals. In that case, progress for one group is often a regress for some other group.
My hope is that there indeed exists an “ecology of human flourishing” where the varieties of human flourishing sustain each other. If everyone flourished in the same way, I wonder if we’d have the equivalent of an ecological desert, like when all of the new trees being planted in a clear cut region are all of the exact same species.
One example: nutrition. Progress in nutrition might be the availability of nutrient-rich, pollution-free food couples with the ability to identify and tailor nutrition to the needs of a particular individual on particular occasions (during an illness vs when healthy, growing child vs mature adult, etc.) Progress in nutrition might include food becoming subjectively tastier without becoming less healthy. To some extent, progress in this area depends on the willingness of individuals to develop healthy eating habits, taking full advantage in the progress of available means.
Another example: One person flourishes as a visual artist, another as a mechanic, yet another as a researcher, yet another doing something we don’t even envision at the moment, etc. One measure of progress might be a society that allows individuals to develop their abilities. Think how much in trouble we’d be if everyone had exactly the same abilities; we’d have our own economic ecological desert.
The problems of a universal notion of progress arise from the cussed side of human nature: zero-sum status seeking, sadistic psychopaths, etc.
I briefly became a climate doomer in 2023, the year of the Canada wildfires, but soon discovered your writings and thought that the Long Descent (and taking into account paleoclimatology) makes much more semse than apocalyptic fantasies.
However, I have been expecting WWIII and a nuclear exchange to break out Any Year Now for a long time. Recently you commented that we can’t have another world war, as our civilization lacks the resources to wage one (with non nuclear weaponry, I assume). That makes sense explaining why the Ukraine or Iran wars didn’t escalate to world war levels, and is a relief.
@JMG I remember a media analysis that focused on apocalypse movies, particularly on the common plot element in which the isolated male hero, an isolated female love interest, and one or more orphaned children find each other and begin living as a nuclear family. The analysis argued that the audience for these movies is socially isolated men who fantasize about acquiring a wife and kids without having to go through the courtship process. Since then, from what I’ve heard, the manosphere has become explicit about this, with some participants absolutely slavering for a future in which law and order breaks down and women need men to protect them, “when the bullets start flying,” as if women were incapable of using firearms.
@James Johnson I suggest you start here:
https://www.ecomena.org/natural-cooling-with-evaporation-and-night-sky-radiation/
If you are in the humid South where evaporative cooling doesn’t work, you might want to skip down to the “Radiant cooling” header. Disclaimer: the only thing on this page that I have personal experience with is elastomeric roofing compound in a pale color, which transformed the finished attic of a house I once owned from a dreadful oven of a space in summer to actually usable.
@Kfish: It is my longstanding belief that ambition, the desire to rise in rank within the social group, is a basic social animal desire, observed in the behaviors of many social species in addition to ours. In a market-oriented mass society like this one, quite a lot of social rank expression is done through conspicuous consumption. You have to be to some extent oblivious to normal social life in order to live frugally without constantly worrying that people don’t respect you.
My vote the subject of the fifth Wednesday post is the child murderer Lindsay Clancy and her femme-uber-alles supporters.
I vote for the mental health impact of loss of faith in Progress individually and/or collectively, speculating on how people will deal with this, or fail to do so and flip out in one way or another, which may be somewhat related to the mention in #114 of how today’s young adults deal with midlife in a world that doesn’t reflect the way they were led to believe.
#124 I’m not really convinced that the current tech oligarchs and billionaires are really an entrepreneurial class, they’re generally not much of innovators themselves, but piggybacking off the work of others, I see them more like a degenerate form of the existing ruling class enriching themselves from the financialization of everything, and any real entrepreneurial class is something that could arise after them.
My vote for the 5th Wednesday is the American Constitution.
Clearly, it’s been modified quite a bit from the original draft. Some of these changes seem to be normal reactions to changes in attitudes that happen over time (like allowing women to vote), and that flexibility was built into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers . For others, it’s much less clear what the motivation for changing it was, or if it really benefited the Republic (like having the Senate elected by popular vote instead of being appointed by the States).
I would love your clear-eyed, historically-informed take on these changes, and the Constitution in general.
Man makes plans and the gods laugh.
I made my quip and planned to follow it up but I had someplace to go so figured I would post that when I got back. It started to rain just before I got home. The storm hit while I was eating supper. And what a storm. Steady lightening and the rain coming down in sheets. And strong winds. My power went out and didn’t come back on until this morning. Welcome to the future. Except I’ve been through lots of power outages.
So this is the follow up to my earlier quip:
I was having a discussion of peak oil with another person,
Other person: “I’m sure they’ll think of something.”
Me: “Who’s this they?”
OP: “Well, you know, the people who know these things.” Shrugging of shoulders, waving of hands.
Me: “You mean the people who are saying that we are royally and truly fracked?”
(Only coming from a mining town and being politically incorrect I used another F word.)
Then she decided she had to go somewhere and quickly exited my presence.
Your picture of the underground house reminded me of one I had visited several times in Central Ontario, which is quite hilly. I felt like grabbing a shovel and building my own, knowing it wouldn’t be that easy. But I loved that house. Maybe I’m part Hobbit. Although after the downpour we had in Toronto last night, I would want a downward slope and good drainage.
Hi John Michael,
Man, it’s hard to comment upon your observations, without employing sweeping generalisations. However, since you raised that aspect, my best guess is that what you mentioned, is a result of training from the very earliest of years. Sorry for the simplistic reply, but if it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and looks like a duck, it probably is a duck! 😉
I reckon we’ve been discussing free will for well over a decade now, and it is a fascinating subject which both taunts and tantalises, and is hard to grasp. If I may, it takes effort to get off the couch, and if we’ve been trained since day one to sit, well, how would anyone even know that they can stand?
This is a choice our culture made which needn’t be, but is, and look at the robust discussion a few weeks ago about people individually (or as a group, say the Amish) to make active choices as to what technology to burden themselves with. Both are expressions of the individual and collective will. What western civilisation has handed over, is discernment (I’m guessing). They deliver the goodies too, otherwise the spell would be broken wouldn’t it?
Dunno, this stuff is complicated.
Cheers
Chris
JMG, I vote with Cynthia for the dynamics of the situation in modern America where we can extreme supporters of Lindsay Clancy . No so much about Lindsay herself but the situation where large quantities of mostly woman support her publicly. What does this mean, how did it happen.
Also, for the 5th Wednesday, I will go with Sam’s (#34) request for a post on reincarnation and a dwindling global population.
@JMG “Yes, that makes a great deal of sense. Can you recommend a source on Han’s concept? I want to look into that. ”
Absolutely, this comes from the book he is most notable for, ‘The Burnout Society’. It is a short read at only 72 pages long, but he makes up for brevity with keeping it fairly dense.
He also has books as a responses to these issues. Namely 2023’s Vita Contemplative : In Praise of inactivity and 2025’s In Praise of the Earth: A Journey into the Garden.
Han never gives any form of interviews and we know very little about him, thus it lets his works do all the talking. I don’t agree with everything he writes but he is at least a deeper thinker than many.
And again, all votes have been tabulated.
Pyrrhus, that’s complex. In the dark age that follows the decline of industrial civilization I expect human population to fall to less than half a billion — it’s pretty standard in the aftermath of a society that practices intensive extraction of nonrenewable resources for population to bottom out around 5% of peak. From there, as ecologies stabilize and nature heals, I expect human numbers to wobble unsteadily upwards, reaching a ceiling of a billion worldwide or a little less. I’m far from sure I believe that figure for African population, btw — scholars in temperate climates very often massively underestimate the potential of tropical climates as human habitat. I can remember when it was standard for historians to insist that tropical societies never had cities…before the archeologists proved that they were smoking their shorts. As for what it would look like, it would be much more sensible to ask what they would look like — there’ll be many different societies in different regions, with much less uniformity than now.
Xcalibur/djs, it seems unlikely to me that computers will be manufactured during the deindustrial dark ages, though a few may survive, maintained by people who couldn’t make them the way Roman aqueducts were in medieval Europe. The internet? The fantastic energy and resource consumption of even the most modest network of data centers will be completely unsustainable long before we hit bottom. Remember that to keep a data center running, multiple truckloads of new components have to pull up to the loading dock every single day to replace those that will burn out the next day. At most, surviving computers may be networked via shortwave radio, in those parts of the world where the necessary knowledge and hardware survive.
Greg, sure, but if the varieties of human flourishing are that diverse — and I think they are — then we’re in a situation where what fosters one kind of flourishing works against others. At that point the entire notion of progress collapses into individual value judgments — and this, I suggest, is what “progress” has been all along: “What I want to happen,” basically.
Patrick, bingo. We’re not quite to the point that any nations that engage in major war will collapse from the economic burden, but it’s closer than many people realize.
Joan, women are perfectly capable of using firearms, but male and female biology in humans have evolved over millions of years to handle different kinds of endurance. I doubt most men could handle labor and childbirth without collapsing completely, but I’ve also seen what happens consistently when a woman, even a strong and well-trained one, tries to go mano a mano with a trained male fighter; it’s not pretty. What the guys in the manosphere are saying, expressed in less sarcastic terms, is that male capacities, including the capacity to handle and deal out extreme violence, have been undervalued and despised for most of the last century. That’s a normal event in human societies, which alternate between eras of violence (which value male capacities and corresponding values such as freedom) and eras of tyranny (which value female capacities and corresponding values such as peace). The guys in the manosphere are looking forward to the pendulum swing the other way, when their natural capacities will be valued once again.
Annette2, ha! Thanks for this. I’m too much of a city boy to want that kind of hobbit hole, but green urbanism certainly works for me — with adequate drainage, to be sure.
Chris, granted, but every complex society selects for passivity, especially in its later, decadent phases. That’s one of the reasons such societies fall.
Michael, thanks for this!
I realize this is late in the day and that I am proposing a new topic (though related to Sama’s question about the US dollar’s roll as the global reserve currency), but here goes: given the growing instability of the US dollar and that that instability will have global implications if one were do divest from investments into cash what would be the currency of choice? And, if currency of all kinds suffers from instability, which it will, well, should one develop a barter mindset and just use what ever currency is expedient in your area until it is not? In short: we’ve touched on collapsing goods and services but what about collapsing “value” of money…especially while still facing the economic reality of rendering unto Caesar what’s Caesar’s just to keep Caesar out of your business?
Re my vote for 5th Wednesday, the way Clay Dennis said it is more like what I meant. Thank you, Clay.
What countries supposedly now have a sustainable balanced use of the earth’s resource and decent living conditions.?I asked for those which have a one planet ecological footprint and a score above .7 on the Human Development Index, a measurement of living standards. The result – Cuba Colombia, Ecuador, Algeria, Jordan Jamaica Sri Lanka, Georgia. Though I think the industrial, manufactured products that are imported by these countries aren’t included in the resource and energy use calculations. Also these countries are in warmer climate with Georgia somewhat of an exception.
As you can see from this list of “poorer” countries that even with best practices, conservation, green wizardry, appropriate technologies and efficiency lifestyle and resource use while adequate would be quite different far from the current American, Japanese, South Korean or Western European experience.
“Chris, granted, but every complex society selects for passivity, especially in its later, decadent phases. That’s one of the reasons such societies fall.”
That’s also a reason why none of the apocalyptic fantasies will come to pass, because the population becomes so passive towards the later phases of a civilization that they end up just accepting whatever changes come to them.
JMG, a topic for the fifth Wednesday post:
In Kek Wars you showed how the chaos magic of the “chans” released the Moon / Changer Archetype manifested via Trump.
Well, the “empire” struck back and managed to release something that manifested itself as the COVID reaction, which was one of the main weapons that led to Trump’s election loss in 2020.
That the COVID response was the result of some powerful magic became apparent to me one morning in the winter of 2020/21. I was at the gym absent-mindedly watching muted TV programming while excercising. There were no subtitles, either. Suddenly I felt as if something dark and evil was oozing out of the screen. When I felt that I started paying attention and in 15-20 seconds realized that they were talking about COVID. [In general I am a total normie in that respect. Such or similar things happenned only a couple of other times before in my lifetime. I think in that case I was somewhat slightly more sensitive due to not having a TV at home.]
And of course there was that infamous Biden speech on September 1, 2022. (I did not watch or listen to it, but I read it afterwards and saw the screenshots.)
I tried to search on this blog for your take on that subject. I found some hints, but no coherent exposition on the COVID magic.
Moreover, it feels to me that the imprint and the risudual miasmas of that magic are still with us.
I’d be curious to hear your extended thoughts on that subject.
Justin Patrick Moore 81
Early Silent Generation
October 1929 Stock Market Crash was a dividing event.
Late Silent Generation
At least through 1939, but does this include during World War II (1940-1945)? Wikipedia says yes. So that would make 1939 ‘Mid’ Silent Generation.
Late-Late Silent Generation (or simply Late Silent Gen?)
(two things: (1) Europe’s end of World War II, May 1945, was a dividing event. (2) Pacific’s end of World War II, Sept 1945, was another dividing event.
Early Baby Boomer
Late 1945 onwards (the minute that US military service men set foot onto US soil, they married quickly; their wives had kids quickly. (In those days, out of wedlock births WERE stigmatized.)
Mid Baby Boomer
1952 (me; I was a Korean War baby)
Late Baby Boomer
John F Kennedy’s assassination (Nov 1963) was a dividing event.
Late 1963
1964 and later: Up someone else’s alley.
💨🫥🐣💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
JMG, you mentioned 1800 level technology as a long term result with some residual later technologies in the mix, and a population of around 1 billion, which was the approximate population in 1800.
Many years back, my grandmother received an old Packard Bell computer with an early release build of Windows 95 on it. I set it up for her with email, word processing, and a few games. Never noticed anything unusual until I opened the calendar application and saw that the date was (something like) “September 4, 101”. And I was like, “oh, this wasn’t patched for Y2K yet.” It didn’t explode, cause the entire town to lose power, or open a portal to the bad place with a demon coming out through the screen to drag me back in.
More generally speaking, the calendar is a tricky and annoying problem in software engineering. To get computers to talk to each other, we’ve invented things like Coordinated Universal Time (“UTC”) and the Unix epoch. To make the machines actually useful to humans, well, now we gotta deal with mapping those onto the calendar. The most immediate challenge is timezones, which are arbitrary and have an annoying tendency to change for whatever reason (usually political). Does your timezone use daylight savings? When does the change apply? And so on.
This is just assuming that we’re all on the same Gregorian Calendar system, which may not necessarily be the case. The cal command in Linux has an easter egg where if you ask it for September 1752 with eleven days missing (the 3rd through the 13th are dropped), showing when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain.
Computer programmer types tend to assume that you can flatten every phenomenon into a logic problem. But as one can see with the calendar, things have this tendency to carry symbolic, mystical, transcendent, or even just arbitrary bureaucratic elements along. The LLM thing is just trying to do the same thing with language (an effort that can be traced back to the very first programming languages, long before neural networks or AI were a thing).
@ Michael #71 RE : China
As others have said, it is likely that their population is much lower than they are letting on. It is very possible they started cooking the numbers decades back and once you start doing that, you have to keep doing that and it just starts stacking year after year. So you have things like population officially at 1.4 billion that are likely closer to 800 million/1 billion.
I cannot find it now, but I saw a brilliant example of their demographic collapse in action. It was a shot from an building looking down on a high school, grade school and a kindergarten. And the numbers of kids in each pay yard gets significantly lesser than the previous one. They aren’t just having a slow down but what looks like a very hard stagnation. Their 4-2-1 birth problem has compounded into a major issue, so long as they cling to the idea of growth.
Their messaging says, they are a confident and powerful nation, their actions are of a country trying desperately to out run decline. They are going in hard on energy, computer technology, robotics and the military – trying to reclaim Taiwan while they still can, all in the hopes that just maybe they can innovate their way out of their collapse becoming apparent to the outside world. But I see China today in the same way Japan was seen in the 1980’s. Take any article that talks about China today, swap it out for Japan and deduct 40 years and it is all the same. The decline of Japan today is what is coming to China but I suspect their slope downwards is going to be much steeper.
@ Kimbery #101 “Not gonna lie, I doubt I would be upset if China took Taiwan and commandeered/hoarded all of that wonderful computer chip technology for itself.”
I suspect this is why China has been so willing demonstrate their ability to handle oil shocks this year via the whole Hormuz ordeal, it is to send a message to the rest of the world that, they want to take Taiwan, and your usual tactics will not work on them.
In that sense, it is showing they have a big stick and that if you are smart, you will stay out of the way of the take over, and you will still get your goods only they will under Chinese control and not Taiwan. We won’t get cut-off so longer as we do not get in the way.
However…
“That would certainly cut the legs out from under new data centre construction here in the west, and it would also amputate the American/Israeli war”
… The last few years have let the US catch up in a big way. The CHIPS act started under Biden and continued under Trump administration has actually produced some decent results. You know something is vaguely useful to someone when it has Bi-partisan support. The new Intel 14 & 18 plants came out of this and are cutting end chip manufacturing facilities. Intel is also now manufacturing chips for other chip designers rather than just their own designs. In that sense, the US is no longer entirely dependent on the output of Taiwan.
This combined with my earlier point makes any attempt on Taiwan by China much more likely. TSMC was called the Silicon shield but now that they aren’t the only players in town, there is less reason for others to defend the region. If you live in Taiwan, I would be prepared for a change in government in the next few years, hopefully one that isn’t too brutal.
I still think the data centre build out will go down as one of the dumber ideas of our time and will crumble under it own weight, but a supply cut-off from Taiwan wouldn’t hold it up as much as one would think. I could see a future when data centres are emptied out and used as large grain silos. Probably closer than we think.
JMG,
I vote for a post on the rationalists squeezing out all of the magic out of science fiction.
And speaking of Transformers and magic, some real magic happened with the passing of Peter Cullen. Pete voiced the leader of Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots, the good guys in the Transfomers series. He passed away last week on August 26, 2026. 8-26. In the original Transformers: The Movie, Optimus prime dies at 26 minutes, 8 seconds into the movie. That’s the moment the light flickers from his eyes on an operating table while the other characters stand around him shocked and the single human child cries.
This was also the moment that shattered the psyche of a generation of young boys, myself included. I was four years old at the time, and Transformers: The Movie, was the first movie I ever went to.
It’s quite the interesting backstory. The Transformers cartoon was a huge success for Hasbro. They bought an unpopular toy line in Japan, had Marvel create characters for all of the toys, launched a comic book and a cartoon show aimed at preschool to elementary school boys, and made outrageous sums of money off of toy sales.
Then, for the movie, Hasbro executives wanted to introduce a new line of Transformers toys coming from Japan as the old line was being phased out. Being psychopaths, they decided the best way to do this was to kill off the original cast of characters in the first 30 minutes of the movie and replace them with new characters for kids to buy.
There was never any death at all in the original cartoon show. Characters would get shot and shake it off. So, imagine the surprise of all of the young fans and their parents when 4 of the most popular good guys get violently shot up and murdered in the first 5 minutes of the film, multiple good guys suffer off-screen deaths (you just see their corpses for a brief moment), and the beloved leader of the Autobots, intentionally written as a father figure, gets killed 26 minutes into the movie.
Parents were dragging crying kids out of the movie theater and not even finish the movie. Word of mouth got around, the movie bombed, and, with all of its popular characters dead, the show only lasted one season after the movie. It literally scarred a generation, particularly the death of Optimus Prime, and it is one of my first memories.
Yet, it became a cult classic. Probably because of the intense trauma it inflicted. Every five years, Hasbro relaunches it. This year is the fortieth anniversary and it’s being shown nationwide for four days this month in movie theaters.
Given the timing of Optimus Prime’s death in the movie and the date of the voice actor’s death in real life, and the immense emotional reaction of hundreds of thousands of kids at that exact moment in the film, it seems like some sort of spell occurred.
Clay Dennis 97
> For some of us it will be as farmers with field hands, or for others subsistence farmers but for most it will be working the farms, fields and processing sheds for others like my grand parents and great grandparents.
If I remember correctly, JMG lately, either stated or implied, that most people (Americans?) won’t be physically fit enough to take up farming as a vocation, something about in order to do farm labor as an ADULT, one must start out doing that kind of manual labor AS A CHILD.
My question: How young a child? While growing up, are we talking about “before” or “after” one’s limbs lengthen? Or it really doesn’t matter as long as one is, say, age 15 years or less? What would happen to an adult if (s)he is NOT physically fit enough to do farm labor, and continues to do farm labor long-term? (Have one injury after another, incapacitating that person, turning him/her into an invalid?)
JMG, is there a “farming physique”? (Train to Be a Farmer. Do this particular [gym] workout, and one can be a farmer, easy peasy?)
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
“I’m not really convinced that the current tech oligarchs and billionaires are really an entrepreneurial class, they’re generally not much of innovators themselves, but piggybacking off the work of others,”
That is true to an extent. Wozniak and Jobs at Apple are a fine example. Wozniak did the technical work, Jobs the non-technical and was the mouthpiece.
However don’t underestimate the importance of the organizers in getting a business started and keeping it running. The third hand at early Apple was Mike Markkula. He did the business plan and got the funding going. Without him the other two would have never left the garage.
@JMG I grew up on the cartoons of the early 00s that preceded the live action films, so the franchise has some deep nostalgic anchors in my psyche. I’m always surprised at how much magic is still in science-fiction like Transformers. The reverence with which the franchise treats mystical artifacts like the evil-dispelling Matrix of Leadership, or the serious spiritualism introduced in the Beast Wars and Beast Machines series, has always struck me as a neat juxtaposition with the high-tech world of the titular bots.
Though the votes have been taken, I always enjoy when the fifth posts go on tangents, I’ll throw my entirely too late symbolic vote behind Jeff B’KLYN or Athaia’s suggestions.
Thank you sir another excellent post. When you mention “the wrenching changes now under way and the sharp drop in cubicle-class income and status that those changes bring with them”, this got me thinking about the strange reversal I’ve noticed regarding which class of people buy into the apocalyptic fantasies more. As I recall, back around 2010, it as largely wage class Americans who expected the Great Recession to really bottom out in a full blown economic collapse bordering on a zombie apocalypse, while the salary class professionals I knew would dismiss any talk of economic decline with phrases like “For every Detroit, there’s a Silicon Valley that’s currently booming”. Such people would also argue that anyone really could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if they just went to college and got the “right” degree. By the 2020s, though, it’s the cubicle class professionals who are warning that robots will take literally every single job, that no person will be able to find work, that no college education can pay for itself, and that the cost of living will never stop rising. I think that sudden change of heart can be summed up by the old saying, “When your neighbour loses his job, it’s a recession. When you lose your job, it’s a depression.” One might add to that, “When someone else’s social class is disadvantaged by the current changes, it’s a totally avoidable situation, but when your social class is disadvantaged by the current changes, it’s an inevitable apocalypse.”
One cure for provisional living might be remembering the bloggers who were aware of the decline but passed away before it really hit. Some examples:
Gordon White – Rune Soup
Johnny Sanphillippo – Granola Shotgun
Michael Ruppert – From the Wilderness
Richard Heinberg – author of The Party’s Over, amongst others.
I am deeply grateful that these writers didn’t use decline as an excuse to do nothing.
I’d also like to add one more vote for ‘the misunderstood nature of trees, material and spiritual’.
Having missed being the first man on the moon, I still had two wishes left over — I wanted to see Halley’s comet, which my grandfather had described to me as an awesome sight, and I wanted to see the year 2000, which I believed would be spectacular in some undefined way.
Halley’s comet was a big disappointment. A fuzzy spot in the night sky. In compensation we got comet McNaught in 2007, easily the most spectacular astronomical thing I have ever seen. (Never seen a total eclipse or the northern lights, nor likely to.)
Y2K found me as a programmer/systems administrator for a small NGO. I had read about the problems, run the free software, and made some minor corrections to our programs, but there was always the nagging worry that something had been overlooked. We closed between Christmas and New Year. On January 1, 2000, I let myself into the silent office, booted up the server, went around to all the workstations and tried them out, found no problems, shut down everything, and went home, very glad that nothing spectacular had happened.
A few folks in the above comments have mentioned Mentats. I believe our host has written something on the topic, but I haven’t read it yet. I also like the idea of Mentats, but without the sci fi flair of the Dune series. In fact, I think it might be the most important thing to get started in this day. I’ve noticed a steep drop in cognitive ability and general education in younger people, and this time I’m not an old man waving his cane in the air and yelling, “These kids today don’t know anything!” I was buying shoes the other day, paid with cash, and the teenage clerk did not know how to count change back. In fact, her supervisor (probably may age) had to come over and show her the coins. And instead of saying, “It’s one quarter, one nickel and one dime,” the supervisor said, “Ok, it’s one of these, one of these and one of these.” The clerk still managed to give me back 5 extra cents, which I made sure to give back to her. As I was leaving, I looked at the clerk and said gently, “Your school system has failed you.” She looked back at me a little sad and a little amused and replied, “Yeah, I know.”
(Side note on this topic, read “Anathem” by Neil Stephenson for a version of the old monasteries where the inmates live a Spartan life and spend all of their time studying.)
Regardless, my high school education in a podunk Southern town 30 years ago made me better educated than people with master’s degrees nowadays, and that old type of education with drill, repetition and learning skills needs to be brought back.
Hi John Michael,
Ah, so are you suggesting that a wider uptake of passivity is a goal of the elites during an end phase? I’m trying to work out whether this strategy arises due to increased complexity of such eras, or even perhaps a goal to, and I’m struggling to find the appropriate words, but perhaps err, reducing competition for ideas which may resolve societal problems? I’d be curious as to your opinion in this regard, but it seems a bit insecure.
It’s interesting that the manosphere has raised its head here. For the record, I have nothing to do with that realm, and zero interest in it. However, you have raised an interesting point. We do actually live in a violent society. It’s not my cup of tea and I don’t watch television anyway, but look at how many shows there are which depict violent endings. And it would be a simplification to say that the shows are aimed only at dudes, for the ladies seem to watch and enjoy them too.
You know what, over the years I’ve had some gentlemen act in remarkably unpleasant ways towards me. Not nice the cheeky scamps, and I comprehend the system which allows this outcome and abide by it. Those who lack control of their baser instincts tend to have souls which were once more comfortable in animal form, and it shows, and such folks are not necessarily exclusively male either.
Years ago you mentioned that Robert E. Howard’s Conan chronicles would be a good read, and were right. What a fine collection of stories too. One of the quotes which struck a chord was: “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”, and that resonated. It displays the two extreme points, and whilst both are equally on display at various times, history swings between one and the other. A sane society would reach for the neglected middle ground, and this is perhaps why we can’t have nice things, at this point in our history as a species anyway.
Cheers
Chris
Hello Mr Greer and the commentariat!
One reason that most people would be unwilling to purposefully avoid the rush in collapsing is how insanely well paid so-called cubicle jobs still are. While these are getting scarcer they are still a reality or at least a realistic prospect for many, and if one is receiving a fortune for doing not that much, it would be surprising for them to introduce major changes in their lifestyle without being forced to in unpleasant ways. Furthermore, for anyone even moderately well socially integrated, the consequences of abandoning a lifestyle that ties them to potential friends and romantic partners seem devastating. That said, work obligations and societal expectations pose such great constraints on the average cubicle dweller that the money they are earning provides them with very little genuine choice. I have personally found that in different circumstances it is possible to keep a similar quality of life on less than a fifth of the income, as long as one is willing to forgo the respectability and (illusory) sense of security that come with so-called good jobs. That makes it attractive to take on low-skilled temporary jobs, or indeed, not to work at all at times, which admittedly is not a suitable long-term approach to this particular phase of the civilisational cycle. It is, however, preferable to getting too attached to an identity in a disappearing social class, and does leave more energy for pondering the alternatives.
Regarding the fascination with the apocalypse, I have an alternative hypothesis that it is a fantasy that serves as a convenient displacement to very real hardships that anyone is liable to experience at some point, usually later in life. Zombies have nothing on the horrors of a typical retirement home or a severe sickness. So fantasizing about the apocalypse might protect against contemplating those less glamorous but much more likely trials.
Finally, as a suggestion for the fifth monthly topic – recently you have written about the New Thought movement. You have mentioned another strand of magical thought that bears close links to psychoanalysis, in that in order to free the Will, it promotes introspective techniques that meditate on individual formative experiences, hidden thoughts and motives, how to become aware of them in order to approach them more consciously or overcome them. An example I am aware of is the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, and it probably did not just spring out of nowhere. I am fascinated with psychotherapy as I see it as a uniquely Western practice that is very powerful, and it has spread to the mainstream in a major way (it is often even a part of the medical system). An essay on the topic, or a link to some related resources would be very welcome. Thank you.
John, when I play split the pot with my ham radio club, in over 10 years of monthly meetings, I think I have only ever won once or twice. Like your charity raffles, I consider this different because half the money goes back to the club, and on the one occasion I donated back what I won to the club anyway. Very true about the tribal societies, at least from my reading. It’s an opportunity to give stuff away and have influence from giving.
For anyone who enjoys old rock and roll and doo-wop, I have a companion piece out to my American Graffiti article today along with two exclusive music mixes that are free for your streaming or downloading. (Though I should note, Radio was the original music streaming service). The piece is title Cruisin’ Through Barrels of Crude and focuses on the album Cruising with Ruben and the Jets, from Frank Zappa and co., the Cruisin’ series of records that recreated rock and roll radio with albums for the years 1955-1970 (including station jingles and commercials), and Little Deuce Coupe by the Beach Boys. My mix is a reimagined soundtrack to American Graffiti featuring covers of the songs from the film done by punk, new wave, & alternative bands among others, and sometimes substituting songs with the same name, but different lyrics. It could be what you put on for a winding, aimless Sunday night drive this Labor Day weekend.
https://justinpatrickmoore.substack.com/p/cruisin-through-barrels-of-crude
One more thing, today is the centenary of the birth of Ivan Illich. Some folks might want to raise a glass to that mind.
Take a look at this for some convivial happenings:
https://dougald.substack.com/p/celebrating-the-philosopher-of-enough
Hi John Michael,
A quick reminder, probably unwise to provide financial advice as I note one of the commenters is asking for. Your country is probably different about such things, but they’re feral about that one down here.
Hey, just a random thought bubble about the economics of the arty-fish-al bubble. It kind of occurs to me that there are only a few entities which could actually be propping up this industry given the astounding capital spend, and I had this weird tickling thought that theoretically speaking, maybe it’s you know, your goobermint footing the bills. I was watching a uttob video on the subject and well, they sort of casually chucked in that the big brain chippie manufacturer has only a few large undisclosed customers. Just sayin, man, this could be weirder than any of us know. Dunno, just a wild thought bubble. Sooner or later, we’ll find out about this one, I guess. Strange days…
Cheers
Chris
Vote for “nature of trees” have a rocking tree quote from Stephen Harrod Buhner teed up. Another guy who saw the decline and is now deceased.
@ DrHooves #86
“These “migrants” across the globe are least partially motivated by lack of resources and wanting to improve their lives – which cannot be done easily where they live now. Isn’t that a sign of population pressure?”
I would like to add a bit of colour to JMG’s reply that we are looking at “suction” rather than “pressure”.
Because the very strongest of motivations for almost anyone to leave the home and people you know, venture to distant and unknown shores, where your new life will pit you against strangers in a condition of *negative* social status, is that your own home having been turned into an unliveable war zone, with its cultural, social and economic systems dismantled.
Many people, for example, are aware that (say) Somalian refugees who have settled in Minnesota, have (as almost every new immigrant group has done), established certain mafias which criminally “milk” the system (while at the same time building the system up, which serves some portion of that state’s elite).
What few people understand is why so many Somalians left Somalia. However that side of the equation becomes much more clear when you realise (and then begin to ask how might you have NOT realised?) that the United States has been at war with Somalia since the 1990’s… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Somalia
Of course, like the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine, it is not labelled a war, but for all intents and purposes it IS a war, complete with frequent bombing raids against Somalian towns and villages, covert on the ground operations, supplying weapons and other military assistance to certain more US-friendly* parties in the region, and etc. And the ultimate result is that large parts of Somalia are no longer liveable for Somalians.
It becomes a complete loop. People who cannot live in the war zone their own homes have become, can easily be drawn into becoming the “cheap, indentured labour” that corporate interests want. They fill up the ranks of the new mafias that corrupt politicians and bureaucrats find useful.
* Friendly, that is to say, to what JMG referred to in the post as “the wildly unbalanced arrangements of global trade which until recently allowed the 5% of humanity who live in the United States to monopolize a quarter of the world’s energy resources, raw materials, and manufactured goods.”
JMG,
After my thought experiment on how the most genteel of the PMC could fit in to the new-techno gilded age as high status domestic servants, I got thinking about likely trades for other members of the PMC cubicle classes when they are swept out during decline. One such sweeping, that is starting to happen now, as you have discussed, will continue rapidly in days and years ahead is the gutting of HR departments in private and public organization when they are realized to be annoying extravagances no-one can afford.
But what to do with the HR ladies after their cubicle days are over? It seems unlikely that many of them will retrain as plumbers or welders. I thought in an earlier time they would naturally be employed by a growing surveillance apparatus within the government. But the computers, cameras and AI will probably displace the future Stasi.
Then it occurred to me, in the near future as things go downhill national, state and local governments will have to transition from their current methods of collecting overdue fees, service charges and taxes which are mail, email and use of a functioning civil court system. As these methods fail, and the organizations become more and more desperate for revenue to prop up their own privilege they will need to turn to on-the-ground tax collection. They will need legions of sneaky, deceptive, morally flexible people to go door to door to collect is owed to them by the struggling population and business.
One day this job will be handled by future war band leaders and local strongmen but for a period it will need to be people who specialize in snooping on members of the community, gathering info on hidden funds and above all being persistent and annoying in getting what they want backed by the iron hand of authority. A perfect match for the skills and temperaments most HR ladies ( and dudes) have acquired in their work. So never fear HR cubicle fauna, when the inevitable axe falls a rewarding future career awaits you as a tax collector. For some reason a Beatles song comes to mind.
My vote is for interactions of humans with trees. I feel very strongly about certain old and majestic trees and about recent incidents in Germany where such trees were deliberately poisoned. There is one tree in a cemetery in Montreal where I followed the urge to bow out of politeness and respect.
pygmycory 109
> So we should try and live well and follow Jesus.
I wouldn’t mind this at all for a spiritual practice for myself.
But then Christians (in the vicinity) say that I cannot also be Buddhist, or practice meditation, or read Buddhist teachings, or go to a Buddhist monastery, as well as listen to other-others who are non-Christian. How dare they dictate this? What is their problem?
This snags me every time. When I read over various churches “What We Believe” sections, the words say nothing about NOT listening to non-Christians or NOT reading non-Christian books or NOT visiting non-Christian places.
To me, there are no conflict between Christian practice and Buddhist practice. I refuse to lie, or hide, or not talk about Buddhism just to make a batch of Christians happy.
In a former Christian church I joined for a couple years, they drummed me out, I suspect because I accepted Buddhism. It is not like I talked about Buddhism a lot, but I wasn’t going to hide it either. From their view, I feel they felt that I had a lot of nerve stating that Buddhism made me a better Christian. Near the end, I believe they viewed me as a heretic.
I have read tons of Christian theology. Nick-picking between denominations is insane, particularly with justification and sanctification. Picky-picky-picky.
I really don’t know where Christians get off telling a person what they can, and cannot, talk about, &tc. It riles me up.
Now that I am writing this, it sounds like I should just say that I am Buddhist, and be done with it. I will be nothing except a circle peg trying to fit in a square hole. The square hole remains steadfastly square.
The whole thing makes me sad, because every one of my ancestors was Christian of one flavor or another. Being a family historian/amateur genealogist, I feel I am betraying my ancestors by NOT finding (local) Christians who won‘t try to convince that Buddhism is wrong.
Am I asking too much of present-day Christians? They cannot “stretch” to accommodate me. They Lord it over. This congenital problem is theirs, not mine.
💨☸️🫥✝️🪓💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
All votes have again been counted. Also, please keep comments at least notionally on topic, and away from extreme hot button issues unless those are specifically relevant to the topic!
BeardTree, exactly — and none of those countries would function in their current way without inputs of resources and manufactured goods from abroad. I don’t think most people have any clue about the scale of the decline we’re talking about.
Peter, yes, exactly. Spengler talks about that in The Decline of the West — the lower classes become apathetic, partly because of the pressures of passivity and partly because they know perfectly well that society is a rigged casino where they can only lose. Mind you, that also means that they refuse to support society in its final crisis, and may even open the gates to the barbarians…
BeardTree, yep. I do occasionally do my homework. 😉
Dennis, thanks for this. I wasn’t aware of any of it.
Northwind, it’s partly physique but it’s also a matter of sufficiently ingrained skills. Farming successfully requires a well-trained instinct for the land and the crops, and if you don’t grow up doing it, your chances of succeeding are fairly low. With regard to physique, it’s not so much musculature as a capacity for immense endurance, and that’s best picked up in childhood.
EchoEcho, there isn’t yet a winner in the contest. You’ll have to tell me the subject you want to vote for, though, as I don’t label them with the name of the original proposer.
Chad, that’s a change I’ve been expecting for a while now — thanks for the heads up.
Kfish, I raise a glass to them all!
Martin, I was in Seattle when Halley’s comet came through, and things were cloudy often enough that I never saw it at all. I hope someday to see a really spectacular comet.
WatchFlinger, I have indeed. Here’s a post from 2006:
https://archdruidmirror.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-butlerian-future.html
Here’s one from 2014:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-04-03/mentats-wanted-will-train/
And here’s one from 2015:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-02-12/the-butlerian-carnival/
Meanwhile, my book of mentat training methods, Renaissance Mind Training, is at the publishers right now and will be out sometime next year.
Chris, the spread of passivity in the latter half of a civilization’s life cycle is partly encouraged by elite classes and partly a result of the simple fact that in a mature society, opportunities for success have usually been sequestered so that they’re only available to the privileged and well-connected, so unless you’re in that class, trying to change your lot is usually wasted effort. A falling tide eventually strands all boats…
Soko, oh, granted. I make what would count as a very modest income by cubicle class standards, and have a comfortable life with a great deal of freedom.
Chris, that’s at least possible.
Clay, ssshhhhh! Don’t give them any ideas!
Northwind (if I may), you might look into your local Episcopalian church. That denomination tends to be very open about cross-religious involvements — they welcomed me, after all.
“What would happen to an adult if (s)he is NOT physically fit enough to do farm labor, and continues to do farm labor long-term? (Have one injury after another, incapacitating that person, turning him/her into an invalid?)”
Yes. I’ve seen it happen. You can build up the muscles but the joints and bones not so much. Even Dad who gave up farming in his 30s had structural damage to his back that came back to haunt him in his 70s.
Not being a doctor I don’t know when you have to start, but I suspect it must be before puberty. Mother was also a farm kid and at age 90 she still has no trouble with osteoporosis. The girls were exempt from heavy lifting in those preliberation times and she wasn’t expected to carry more than one 80 lb bale of hay at a time.
Switching topics, there is an interesting take on Warren Buffet who did not indulge in provisional living or being trendy.
https://www.safalniveshak.com/cost-of-being-warren-buffett/
And an interesting graph of the last 25 years of inflation.
https://rickriley.substack.com/p/its-mostly-the-hospital-prices-stupid
Kimberly S.# 101:
“China isn’t the green energy miracle it has paint-washed itself to look like. We Americans have ghost malls. China has entire GHOST CITIES built on broken dreams and shoddy investments.”
Indeed, China ghost cities are only one of the many inner contradictions in that country. I won’t give you a full list of them (I don’t want to bore you), but as an example I can point an only one party regime in politics (aka dictatorship) which is still officially a Communist one; and an economy very influenced by capitalism…
Of course, China western fans can relief these dirty “secrets” of China weaknesses, looking at current EU situation, and its likely decline future…(well, it’s a fool consolation methink).
—————————————————————–
More about Y2K:
I told you, some comments ago, there wasn’t any panic here during 1999, and only a TV channel offered a bad and cheap disaster movie about hi tech apocalypse arriving soon…I remember the following day, in the same TV channel, an engineer was interviewed: He said all the most important computer systems had been checked and eventually replaced (a month or two before the no-event). The journalist asked him if he had watched the disaster movie, he answered yes, but he thought a movie is only a movie, and not real world…Wise words.
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Pyrrhus # 129:
“historically sub Saharan Africa only had 10-15 million people)….”
Can I ask you which historic times were those with only 10-15 millions of Sub Saharan Africans? I’ve thought in Jesus times, or in Alexander the Great age in Europe and ME…but you could be more accurate, please.
———————————————
JMG # 142:
“scholars in temperate climates very often massively underestimate the potential of tropical climates as human habitat. I can remember when it was standard for historians to insist that tropical societies never had cities…before the archeologists proved that they were smoking their shorts”
I think that wrong idea thrived for a while in Academia, because historians and other scholars thought in tropical climates it was impossible to live from the soil, beyond “primitive” agriculture or hunting-gathering…A mistake, because for example, agriculture based in burning a small part of the forest, harvesting some years and going into another jungle part it’s indeed a good rotation system for usual poor soils in tropical jungles, for example.
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Beardtree # 145:
“The result – Cuba Colombia, Ecuador, Algeria, Jordan Jamaica Sri Lanka, Georgia.”
Ironically, a lot of Colombians and even more Ecuatorians have left their countries to become migrants in Spain, maybe attracted by European fake and not long lasting wealth…Maybe poorness is the main driver to migrate toward the West, but there could be another cause, based more in cultural and non-material hopes than in being poor (indeed, Colombia and Ecuador are poor countries under European standards, but richer than most African countries).
——————————————————
(To be continued).
Hi JMG,
Thank you for the summary! That will certainly tide me over until the full post! 😀
Best,
Sama
This may be more appropriate for MM, but with regard to provisional living, people routinely shun facing the dark and darker places in their psyches. If it weren’t for blessings (neither sought or unsought) from, for instance, both HaShem AND Minerva (it’s a strange and complicated story), I wouldn’t have as full an understanding as I do of just how not on the standard human wavelength my life has been. Mentors? Ya’ gotta be kidding! I had mentor Teflon most of my life. Sufficient humility to understand how to study and practice? Nope, came in with enough arrogance to imagine I didn’t need ordinary non-miraculous teachers or to practice or study. And no one guided me to a different conclusion, until the High Ones showed me. Despite my paradoxically liking teachers quite a lot. To say nothing about the big gaps in my “personal” life. Maybe I’m some kind of being on a final trip through the material, but I somehow doubt it. I think mostly this is a life which has shown me much of my own confusion. For which, thanks. And thank you, to JMG, for serving me and so many as a teacher in so many ways.
So, anyway, I have a lot of heart for those engaging in provisional living. It’s quite a come-down to see one’s own character deficits, intentional or otherwise, and how the consequences ripple through a lifetime, enough to attempt to live in the present. One result of decades of Buddhist insight practice was the diminishment of neuroses that I had built my life on. I quite miss them. The illusion of having a predictable path forward is a powerful incentive to continue with provisional living. So don’t expect most people to get far away from their provisional living habits of mind. And don’t expect those who understand the dark places to get much traction with engaging those who don’t, or that’s been my experience. YMMV, of course. But learning what crazy shale you’ve been presenting the world is a powerful message for humility. Clearing the ground. It’ll take quite a while for very much of the population to face this stuff, I suspect. Mass psychosis much?
Northwind Grandma wrote:
“I have read tons of Christian theology. Nick-picking between denominations is insane, particularly with justification and sanctification. Picky-picky-picky.
I really don’t know where Christians get off telling a person what they can, and cannot, talk about, &tc. It riles me up.
This congenital problem is theirs, not mine.”
I’m already riled… but I hear you Northwind!
There was a really funny scene in the show Six Feet Under where two dudes are driving a truck with a bunch of blow up dolls in the back that are waited down with a net, and they almost hit someone in traffic. After slamming on the breaks the blow up dolls get loose from the net and start going up into the sky. Then a woman who is listening to conservative Christian talk radio is driving by and sees the dolls going up into the sky and she thinks its the rapture. She gets out of the car and runs into traffic saying “praise the lord!” … with predictable results of what running into traffic can sometimes do to a person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV-_GDveft8
On another note, I know several Christian people in my neighborhood, around my block, who never seem to do the maintenance on their homes. They have the right to not take care of things of course. It’s their business, but I’ve noticed the pattern beyond them to others in the faith, and I think it might have to do with not being concerned with the here and now as much as the eternal reward they are heading to.
Greg Simay @ 131 “a society that allows individuals to develop their abilities. Think how much in trouble we’d be if everyone had exactly the same abilities; we’d have our own economic ecological desert.” I am convinced that the “ecological, economic desert” is exactly what the high tech bros have planned for the rest of us.
Beard Tree @ 145 You might take a look at the Faroe Islands. The Faroese have taken good advantage of industrial technology to build the infrastructure they needed, tunnels linking their larger islands, and trawlers, while that tech was easily available.
I wonder if enough displaced cubicle class workers might become the critical mass that finally gets something done about excessive housing prices. There are indications. The Republican running for Gov. in Iowa, a regenerative farmer not endorsed by Mr. Trump. is openly calling for Iowa farmland should be owned by Iowa farmers. He proposes complete transparency with regard to farm ownership and high surtaxes on foreign owned properties. He will probably lose; the folks who fund the Democrats are alarmed enough to be heavily promoting their candidate. There is hardly an online pro-Democratic Party who is not talking up this guy.
Watchflinger @ 159 I agree with you about education. I refuse to do business, not that I ever do much, where I can’t use cash. I add that we also need more apprenticeships.
Clay Dennis 124
< With the new tech royalty and Billionaire class the ultimate sign of status will be a Butler or Chauffeur that is an upper class wasp with a prep school and Ivy League education.
the character “Jeeves”
by P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)
(Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse)
“The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology”
US ISBN 978 0 307 26661 3
UK ISBN 978 1 84159 306 7
I bought this particular hardcover volume used cheap.
No better “personal valet,” “butler” than Wodehouse’s character “my man Jeeves.” I haven’t had so many belly-laughs as when reading this collection of stories (mostly short). Each story is part comedy and part mystery.
Someone here mentioned writer Wodehouse (JMG?) and, knowing nothing, I figured I would get educated.
One example is short story “Jeeves Takes Charge,” a keeper.
May there be many real-life Jeeves’ of this world, than not.
💨🫥🍽️💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
I haven’t had a chance to read all the comments yet (mea culpa) but from the article it strikes me that provisional living doesn’t have to be a bad thing– it’s a double-edged sword, to be sure, but if you’re telling yourself “everything in my life will be better when I am out of debt”– well, it seems to me you’ll be motivated to pay off your debts! You’ll be disappointed when you do, of course, but that’s life. Or does the definition of Provisional Living only apply when you’re waiting for Godot and not moving towards a flawed-but-positive goal?
A second observation on provisional living is that it is nigh impossible to avoid when you have a chronic/disabling illness, at least at first. “Once we find a treatment that works” — well, no, that never happens, but some people get stuck there, just like the lottery players you describe. If you get over that hump it becomes “Once I learn to cope with my symptoms” — which is possible, at least, though it is far from a panacea. I’m on “once I learn to be happy within my limitations, I will be happy” — which is tautological, but hey. It’s not wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Appologies, JMG, if those two points have been made ad nauseum already.
JMG,
I think there will be two ways in which a large portion of the population returns to agricultural work. In areas where the topography, history and climate have shaped things one way, such as New England, Appalachia and other places farm plots are already small, don’t need irrigation and are relatively close to town. In these places subsistence farming will slowly return. The first attempts by urban dwellers may fail leaving the more adaptable and tough young people to take over farms abandoned by failed first gen failures. This will be a tough process filled with much tragedy but will give an opportunity for the strongest, most resilient and quickest learners to thrive and accumulate property and livestock.
But in areas were different conditions have created much larger farms with different conditions ( irrigation needed, larger distances to town, fewer dwellings, difficult transportation challenges such Iowa Western Washington and California ,then there will be a need for larger farms but without the petroleum and synthetic fertilizers of today. Those this is less energy adaptable than small farms the makeup of our agricultural land will make cultivating this land necessary if we are to avoid famine for even a reduced population. These farms will be more like the Sugar Cane Plantations in Hawaii, where my wife’s family came when they left Japan. Large quantities of cheap labor working land owned by some type of landowner or estate.
Most of the work will be done by hand as petroleum will be scarce and it will require 100 years or so to restore the stock of draft animals, tack making, and draft animal husbandry and driving skills it will take to even work as the Amish do. During this period it will be human labor accompanied by bits of fossil fuel energy for pumps or transportation ( old Hawaiian sugar cane steam trains). This will absorb the mass of people that can not find work elsewhere in a much sparser non-agricultural economy. People will not like this option, but it may be their only economic choice. In addition, the land owner class may tend to be dominated by war lords and such who will use other than market forces to compel labor. Housing will be in the form of cheap encampments built by the workers themselves. The lifespan of those put to this work from the cities will be low. But the children of these camps, who go to the fields at an early age, will develop the physique, endurance, stamina and toughness that will make the next generation successful and perhaps drive land reform so we can return to more democratic forms of farming.
@ Justin Patrick # 164
Thank you for the link celebrating Ivan Illich. Another writer who profoundly pushed my thinking!
“Chris, the spread of passivity in the latter half of a civilization’s life cycle is partly encouraged by elite classes and partly a result of the simple fact that in a mature society, opportunities for success have usually been sequestered so that they’re only available to the privileged and well-connected, so unless you’re in that class, trying to change your lot is usually wasted effort. A falling tide eventually strands all boats…”
I was thinking more of not capsizing the boat. A falling tide is a slow event you can prepare for. Rocking a boat that is becoming unstable can capsize it. The exact point of the capsize is notoriously hard to predict especially if the water inside the hull starts sloshing around.
I just received my copy of JMG’s “The Great Arcanum.” In the forward, on p.xiv, he writes, “One of the bits of historical amnesia that’s necessary to maintain today’s mythology of progress is the systematic erasure of the dizzying pace of change in the nineteenth century world.” I’d like to pick out “historical amnesia” and “systematic erasure” and nominate them for a fifth Wednesday topic; this, in particular in light of the current practice of buying up vast quantities of physical books, feeding them to an AI program and then shredding them. I see huge opportunities for creating historical amnesia and systematic erasure potentially enabled by this practice, and I’d like to see a discussion of it.
Soko #161,
The “golden handcuffs” offered to the cubicle fauna are indeed real and very difficult to escape because of the benefits you mention. The key is always in the employee’s hand, however. It took me five years to work up the nerve to unlock my set of “handcuffs”, working IT at the Canadian federal government. And that was over 13 years ago when things weren’t nearly so desperate.
It was very much worth it because it’s afforded me an immense amount of freedom with my time living on a modest income.
I’m really interested in your ruminations on the relationships with the trees, John Michael. That is my choice for 5th Wednesday. I grew up timber industry adjacent in the Pacific Northwest, and have always had a conflicted relationship with industrial scale harvesting, and came of age in the seventies sustainable forestry time, only to watch the orgy of cutting that dominated the eighties with revulsion.
I remember the buildup to Y2K well. Got up early to start the UNIX based inventory computers on 01/01/2000 at the record store to find that they were operating as usual, probably because of their design, but also because of the preparation our software provider made for the date change. In any case, there was much disappointment in the ownership group that nothing happened, their feeling was the money spent preparing was “wasted.”
Apocalypse Not, again!
@Northwind Grandma (#128):
The boundaries between successive generations in the USA are generally somewhat controversial, and different authors set them differently. For me, the start of the Boomer generation coincides with a real demographic event, namely the surge in births — the “Baby Boom,” as it was then called — beginning nine months after the first wave of GIs came home from World War 2. Those nine months took the country precisely to 1946: so we have a hard date there!
I have never been able to understand why William Strauss and Neil Howe (Generations, 1991) put the beginning of the Boomer generation at 1943. Their arguments strike me as rhetorical rather than even remotely data-based. They themselves are “Boomers,” so there is probably a lot of personal identity tied up in their arguments. It is quite telling that they say at the outset (p. 11), “if born from 1943 through 1945, you are probably delighted that someone finally put you where you always knew you belonged.” This comes close to confessing that they relied on nothing more than their own “gut feeling.” Ugh! One man’s “gut-felt” truth is another man’s falsehood.
As for the next hard boundary date, i.e., between the the Boomers and the following generation, I would put it in 1965 and the years immediately following. In Berkeley, where I was living at the time, the events surrounding the Free Speech Movement, and its final victory over the University of California’s administration on January 3, 1965, felt like a world-changing tectonic shift. As events soon proved, it was just the beginning of nation-wide student turmoil.
And it wasn’t only I who felt that way. There was an enormous wave of political backlash to that event among the Boomers and previous generations, which swept Ronald Reagan into office as Governor of California in the state elections of 1966, and eventually also into the Presidency in the national elections of 1980.
(Again, Strauss and Howe put this boundary at 1960/61. Why? All of their boundaries within my lifetime strike me as set a few years too early.)
All, this may feel like quibbling, but quibbles are important to understand the course of history.
Once again, all votes have been tabulated.
Siliconguy, thanks for all of these.
Clarke, oh, granted. Provisional living is a very common state precisely because it’s a refuge from facing up to inner as well as outer reality, and both of those can be harrowing! Of course people in that state deserve kindness. On the flipside, they’re dooming themselves and those dependent on them to lives of pointless failure, so mentioning that there’s an alternative also seems kind to me.
Tyler, no, you’ve misunderstood provisional living; I’d encourage you to go back and reread my explanation. It’s not the recognition that your life would be better if something or other happened; it’s that recognition combined with a systematic refusal to do anything about it. If realizing that debt is holding you back motivates you to get out of debt, that’s not provisional living, or realizing that there might be a treatment out there for your chronic illness and looking for it, that’s waking up and becoming a functional adult. It’s provisional living when you insist that there’s a better world on the other side of that door over there, and then do anything and everything to avoid going through the door.
Clay, there’s a third option — those large plantations will very likely be worked by illegal immigrants, who may or may not be free to leave. That’s also a common historical pattern, of course.
Siliconguy, okay, that metaphor also works.
Joan (#133) wrote:
“You have to be to some extent oblivious to normal social life in order to live frugally without constantly worrying that people don’t respect you.”
That seems like a generational thing to me, only true of the Boomers and their successors. My wife and I are of the Silent Generation, and we “Silents” grew up in families where our parents belonged to the generation that had fought and died in World War 2. That was a era of ration-booklets and constant propaganda in all the media urging frugality to the max as the most important civilian contribution to our colletive war effort.
Here is a wonderful jingle that I often heard in my early years. It has stuck with me and guided my life ever since.
“Use it up, wear it out,
Make it do, or do without.”
(A web search will turn up images of many war-time printed advertisements featuring that jingle.)
One noticeable shift that happened during my lifetime was ordinary Americans began to think of themselves as Consumers with a capital C. This, obviously, is the very opposite of frugality. Thank you, but no! I refuse to think of myself as a Consumer (instead of a Citizen) or to be part of a Consumption-based world.
@Robert Mathiesen re: generational boundaries. The S&H ones make sense to me because we’re dealing with “first conscious memory” here. I, born in 1939, have a conscious memory of the tail end of WWII. The Boomers were too young for that. Likewise all those other boundaries. I made up a chart on that one ages ago, with this insight in mind, and it really works.
For people living provisionally who hope to win the lottery, it is a bit difficult to visualise your chances.
In South Africa the chance of winning the lotto (six numbers) is 1 in 20,358,520. This is roughly equivalent to tossing a coin so it lands heads 24 times in a row.
JMG,
I agree that historically illegal immigrants have done much of this work. But one of the main drivers of illegal immigration in to the US is that since our country is still the center of a global empire, and it has the reserve currency it is desirable to move here because even low paid farm work is paid well by the standards of the place people come from.
In the future when the US loses its status as an empire and the privilege of printing money everyone in the world will accept that much of the motivation will be gone and agricultural work in Mexico may be no less enumerative than agricultural work in the US even though they both might pay only subsistence levels. So then immigration patterns become more defined by quantity and quality of agricultural lands available to be worked and not the financial status of the country attracting labor. So it may well be that the only labor force available to the plantations is scooping up the blue haired protestors from the nearest failed urban area and pressing them in to service by whatever means are available. The transportation involved may be less expensive than the energy and money needed to move prospective farm workers from Chile to the US over various borders with corruption regimes taking a toll at each boarder
@Northwind Grandma,
I was explaining specifically how I would reply to someone coming from an ‘apocalypse tomorrow, must get ready! christian apocalypticist’ view of the world, with an an eye to persuading them to maybe be a little less apocalyptic in outlook. Conversations which I have had in real life with my fellow church members.
Yes, getting an outside perspective on one’s faith can be both useful and challenging, hence why I’m on this site.
I have often found JMG’s ideas educational and useful, and yes, I’d say some of them have helped me become a better Christian. Especially ‘what you contemplate you imitate’ and ‘the opposite of one bad idea is often another bad idea’, which I think have helped me avoid some traps along the way.
I don’t know enough about buddhism and its tenets to have a detailed opinion on that one, beyond that I understand they have some things in common, like valuing compassion highly, and some differences, like whether Jesus is the son of God, and different strands of buddhism seem to have huge differences in their understanding of God/gods/no gods and I don’t understand details of who believes what.
Ultimately your choices and your spiritual path is your choice, and the results are between you and God. I’m sorry that your local church was so unwelcoming for you.
How do you combine Buddhism and Christianity? I’m curious. What does that look like for you?
Hey JMG
Regarding provisional living, does Transactional Analysis have any insight into why it exists or how it works? I read “games people play” a while ago and I can’t help but consider provisional living to be a form of “game”, though I guess it would only count when the style of provisional living involves another person in some way.
I think one example of a provisional living “game” would be a parent who thinks that their life would finally be perfect when at least one of their kids becomes successful in a significant way. Or a wife who thinks that her life would finally be fulfilled when her husband becomes a millionaire.
And in regards to a 5th Wednesday topic, I rather like Kimberley’s suggestion of an analysis of Aztec history.
From USA Today: “Generation Z” is using “Polyester” as an insult, and “larping” to mean being inauthentic. For what that’s worth..
@Clay Dennis wrote:
“…it will require 100 years or so to restore the stock of draft animals, tack making, and draft animal husbandry and driving skills it will take to even work as the Amish do.”
It’s an interesting narrative you’ve laid out here. I have to give a bit of pushback on one thing I know something about. It will not require anything like 100 years to restore the animals and skills you mention. For starters, there is already a glut of (for the time being) unwanted draft horses. Look up “premarin foals”. Here in New England, many farms are breeding draft horses for sale. I feel strongly that as demand picks up, so will supply.
Tack making is a thriving business, as is the manufacture (and indeed the continued evolution) of horse-drawn equipment of myriad kinds. Just pick up a copy of Small Farm Journal, or Draft Horse Journal. My harness came from a relatively local (Vermont) small business, and my forecart came from, of all people, the Amish 🙂
And while you’re perusing the journals, you might notice ads for weekend draft horse workshops, where one can pick up the requisite driving and husbandry skills. I attended one of these workshops, and within a year I was logging my woodlot with my beautiful Percheron mare (you can see her in my avatar pic). As an active member of the NH Draft Horse Association, if I needed any tips or guidance, someone would be at my house to help out. My farrier, a 4th generation draft horse guy, helped me a lot, too.
The skillset is there and can be taught, the technology is there and is being advanced. And the animals will be there if and when demand picks up. After all, your tractor can make a new little baby tractor every year, if you let it!
Michael G. # 151:
“So you have things like population officially at 1.4 billion that are likely closer to 800 million/1 billion.”
In that case, I can say ironically that old school Chinese Commie government won out its battle against its overpopulation black beast (1979-2015: ruthless birth control-only one children politics-), but watch what you wish…It seems a good example of pendular rebound (for avoiding overpopulation they forced to low China birthrate, but Chinese ended in the opposite extreme: the road toward depopulation).
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Watchflinger # 159:
“I’ve noticed a steep drop in cognitive ability and general education in younger people,”
I’ve seen the same here. When I’ve met young people and I’ve had a talk with them, even with university students, I’ve found they’re more ignorant and inmature than myself at the same age (and I’m not an especially mind gifted/educated man). Their general culture is lower, and they tend to believe a lot more in online news (often fake) than in MSM (well, I understand why they don’t trust them). They usually make less constructive criticism than my generation. I bet one of the main causes for this involution could be too much time with screens, even when they haven’t become in true screen addicts (according psychological definitions ot that addiction).
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Chris # 160:
“It’s interesting that the manosphere has raised its head here. For the record, I have nothing to do with that realm, and zero interest in it. However, you have raised an interesting point. We do actually live in a violent society. It’s not my cup of tea and I don’t watch television anyway, but look at how many shows there are which depict violent endings.”
I’m not interested in manosphere neither, but I also think not all the manospehere guys are the sexist Neanderthals who usually are depicted by woke feminist propaganda. So sometimes, some of they can think something interesting.
Violence happens in fiction, but it happens in real world, weakened, too (until today). Politics have become verbally violent, with a lot of rudeness and unpolite arguments, in most western countries. Most times, that partisan violence doesn’t go beyond shouting and insulting the “enemy”, but from time to time it escalates toward political murder (you Americans know it in last times, for example Charlie Kirk was murdered due to politics).
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Justin P. # 164:
Thank you for reminding us the centenary of the birth of I. Illich, a very interesting thinker.
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Northwind G. # 170:
“But then Christians (in the vicinity) say that I cannot also be Buddhist, or practice meditation, or read Buddhist teachings, or go to a Buddhist monastery, as well as listen to other-others who are non-Christian. How dare they dictate this? What is their problem?”
It’s a shameful attitude and behavior by some harcore traditional and conservative Christians (Catholics or Protestants, it doesn’t matter), how they fear and avoid books, places and even people who doesn’t fit in their narrow minded minds. I dislike them. I think their faith is weaker than they pretend, because if they had a true strong faith, they wouldn’t escape for having a talk with non-Christians nor “suffering” a non-Christian book. When you don’t face off today secularized world and another religions views, you’re isolating yourself and being slowly less and less important in society. Of course, not all the Christians are narrow minded, and open mind Christians, exists too, though in small towns you won’t find much of them (at least, that’s what happens here). On the other hand, my town has a small but live ecumenical activism which sometimes has a non-sectarianist meeting between people from different beliefs. I wish you find something similar to this in your social context.
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Clay D. # 180:
“it will require 100 years or so to restore the stock of draft animals, tack making, and draft animal husbandry and driving skills it will take to even work as the Amish do.”
Indeed, it’s a “dirty secret” that in the (very) long term, draft animals will return to the farms, but the transition times are going to be painful and hard. Partly due to the own fossil fuels depletion, partly thanks to the blindness by believers in god Progress against animal power, because they think automation and mechanization will never fade.
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JMG # 187:
“Clay, there’s a third option — those large plantations will very likely be worked by illegal immigrants, who may or may not be free to leave. That’s also a common historical pattern, of course.”
It’s a very likely option in the medium and long term future. I ask myself if you’re thinking in a new slavery like the Africans in America, or the Russian seerfs in the old zarist times…Or maybe were you thinking in Europe Middle Age feudalism?(in this case, serfs couldn’t go outside their feudal boss without his permission, but they had more or less rights, depending of their feudal status as peasants, methink).
A while back I ran across a farm boy exercise program put together by. a Canadian hockey coach (college or high school age players I believe) who had noticed that farm boys tended to have an endurance and physicality that even fit city boys didn’t have. He came up with a set of exercises and special weights that supposedly duplicated the type of exercise done on the farm. I am a farm boy myself and my body still retains the habits and am a teacher of middle school and high school students, including a hands on gardening class – digging, weeding, planting, compost pile making, tool use, cutting back brush and clearing it, pruning, wheel barrowing and you can immediately pick out the students, male and female who have had experience doing manual labor on the land.
Yes, the Episcopal church is a peculiar mix of the liberal, progressive with traditional and classically Christian Trinitarian liturgy/ritual/hymnody with Bible reading that is like what the church did 150 years ago. At least that has been my experience in attending several services locally over the years. A conservative Christian if he closed his ears during the sermon would be content. I am more in the conservative camp and IMO think the liberal progressive leadership (those not of that type left in a schism years ago and created another denomination.) should simply follow their true hearts and become Unitarian/Universalist and get it over with.
@Sgage,
I am not saying that small quantities of draft animals, tack and skills don’t exist today. In fact I knew Lynn ( Small Farmers Journal) back in the day and went to several of his demonstrations. But to achieve the scale that we had in 1905 of draft animals will take many years of successful breeding and training and the return of leather working at scale ( we have almost no tanneries left for instance) This is an enormous undertaking with only a handful of people with the skills needed and they will need to train many many others. The numbers we are talking about to substitute horses, mules or oxen for tractors and trucks is staggering. Let along the feeding, barns, etc. An entire ecosystem that has mostly disappeared outside the Amish, small wood lot loggers and enthusiasts. You my friend are doing gods work if you are keeping it alive.
@Robert Mathiesen: your schema of tgr generations got me wonderingbif the boundary for Gen X, the end of it, might be The Fall of the Berlin Wall instead of 1979, which is what is normally given. It does seem arbitrary, but the collapse of communism as such would have been a much bigger thing in that last group raised during the Cold War.
When I was reading up on Madeline L’Engle and some other universalists in the Episcopalian church in NYC, I did think they were pretty cool. They had a lot of interfaith stuff going on.
I will cast my 5th wed vote for an *archdruidical* post on “the underappreciated and/or misunderstood nature , both material and spiritual, of trees.”
@sgage (#195):
What good news! I had not heard of the NH Draft Horse Association before.
You are probably aware that there are places elsewhere in New England devoted to keeping those old farming skills alive, such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachuetts http://www.osv.org), to which we donate every year. They have kept ox-team work skills going, among other worthwhilethings.
Hi Kfish,
Oh! I’d wondered why Johnny Sanphillippo of Granola Shotgun writing simply stopped. Are you sure he’s passed away?
Cheers
Chris
Patricia Mathews (#189):
Interesting; your observation is probably a large part of their boundary setting. That possibility had never occurred to me, since my own clear visual memories of places where I lived and things that happened there go back to when I was 2 and 3 years old, not just 6. But I think you’ve hit Strauss and Howe’s periodization nail on the head.
I vote for ‘the misunderstood nature of trees, material and spiritual’.
Hi John Michael,
I’d heard similar stories regarding the lack of social mobility in the old Soviet Empire, where connections proved more reliable than merit. I see, so the real revolution is a form of quietly withdrawing support for a system which is stacked against a person. It’s not funny, but nowadays you can see the disappointment in people having taken on student debt, and not getting that ‘return on investment’ which it was meant to earn. Long ago I’ve worked at jobs where employers expectations were that I give my whole life over to them, which candidly I was reluctant to do, and in fact didn’t. The pay didn’t justify the demands. So not playing the game as a strategy presents larger issues? Oh well, too bad.
And on the other issue, and since we are discussing economics this week, if a person ignores the rhetoric and talk, I noticed that your biggest chief has a penchant for grand projects. This one might top the lot. I have some reservations that anything will come of it, mostly because the business case doesn’t appear to stack up, but the whole project is truly grand in an odd sort of way.
Cheers
Chris
To Treebeard# 198
I attend a “progressive” Episcopal Church whose priest and many of its parishioners have a strong commitment to the liturgical and sanctoral year; to a formal Eucharist; to Mary as the Theotokos; and to contemplative practice. We also have what I consider a deeply Christian (as in following the example of Jesus) emphasis on love, justice, and inclusion. Many of our most committed parishioners are gay. Although I suspect there are plenty of closet Arians in the pews if one looks deeply, most of us say the Nicene Creed without too much fuss, following Elizabeth I’s practice of not inquiring too closely about the specifics of belief. For Episcopalians, prayer has traditionally shaped belief and not the other way around.
I find Episcopal worship meaningful, whereas the UU service leaves me cold. (I speak from experience. having received an MDiv from a UU seminary.) Personally, I don’t see a contradiction between a liberal political stance, Jesus’ teachings, and a love of traditional liturgy. But clearly your mileage varies….
FWIW, our congregation is growing and thriving, having doubled in size over the past 10 years.
Hi there John. I am perplexed as two contemporary social observers, who’s perspectives I greatly admire, seem to be in direct opposition concerning a key subject – the notion of post industrial power sources. Your good self is one and Rebecca Solnit is the other. In her new book ‘The Beginning Comes After the End’ she cites some impressive stats regarding wind and solar power generation, which offer a convincing impression that the ‘transition’ under way is showing great promise.
This perspective appears to be diametrically opposed to your view that these alternative power sources are not much better that fossil fuel generation. I am not requesting a book review but it would be very interesting if you could offer some critique of her thinking as your next open post? Its a short read – not much more than an essay so if you have the time and inclination?
Regards. John Heighes.
“So it may well be that the only labor force available to the plantations is scooping up the blue haired protestors from the nearest failed urban area and pressing them in to service by whatever means are available. The transportation involved may be less expensive than the energy and money needed to move prospective farm workers from Chile to the US over various borders with corruption regimes taking a toll at each boarder”
The rural areas of the United States have a higher birthrate than the urban areas, so I think that the plantation workforce would end up being drawn from rural America rather than the blue haired protestors who would have left no children.
I was so busy I missed Wednesday, so I’m just now catching up. Sorry this is late, but…
JMG, I have a question for you. Up above you mentioned that you think we’ll bottom out at about the year 1800. I was wondering why?
My thought process on it went like this: fossil fuels gone, check; electricity almost entirely gone, check. Where does that leave us? I came up with around the year 1880. That’s my great-grandparents’ day, and their lives weren’t easy but they certainly weren’t living in caves either.
It occurs to me this might make a good topic for a post. But a sentence or two to get my mind moving in the right direction would be much appreciated.
All votes have again been tabulated.
Martin, thanks for this! I can therefore recommend an excellent form of divination to decide if you should play the lottery. Flip a coin; if it comes up heads 24 times in a row, then go spend your money on a lottery ticket. Otherwise, find something else to do with it. 😉
Clay, granted, but the bluehairs have no idea how to do farming, they’re in very poor physical condition, and they have a cascade of psychological illnesses that will make them much more trouble than they’re worth. The additional hassle needed to bring in a labor force that will actually do the job is likely to be worth it.
J.L.Mc12, excellent! Yes, each form of provisional living is a dysfunctional game. I don’t recall it being mentioned in the books I read, but we can call it “When I Win The Lottery” and apply all the same principles to it.
Patricia, I’m delighted to hear both of these!
BeardTree, that’s why I go to the Wednesday service. There’s no sermon; after the readings and a bio of the saint of the day, the rector comes down among the pews and we have a pleasant little discussion of things about the saint and/or the readings that moved us. Then the service continues. When I want nosebleed-level High Church services, what’s more, I’m an easy subway ride from an Anglo-Catholic parish that doesn’t seem to have noticed that the Middle Ages are over. It’s great stuff. I’m glad the hierarchy didn’t convert to the UUs; I’ve been to UU services, and they’ve consistently been the most awkward, uninspiring, and insipid services I’ve ever attended. They make watching paint dry seem like divine revelation.
Justin, it’s surprisingly congenial.
Chris, yeah, the Orange One does love his grandiose projects. He’s also very good at using them to distract his enemies, so they can spend their time fussing about things that don’t matter while he pursues other issues.
John, nope. I encourage people to read competing opinions, do their own research, and make up their own minds. Have fun!
Mother B, by 1880 fossil fuels had already revolutionized the global economy; coal-fired steam engines were a massive economic presence and reshaped most aspects of life. We won’t have that option now that so much of the coal is gone, and so much of what’s left is barely worth digging out of the ground.
Steel didn’t become cheap until the Bessemer Converter was invented about 1850.
The process requires a decent technological base that might not be attainable without coking coal and certain minerals. If the future can maintain that then 1920 technology is viable.
If not then pre-civil (US) war is the step down. Crucible steel, maybe the puddle furnaces, cast iron, wrought iron, etc. Water power based electricity is still manageable though. The development of the theory couldn’t happen until the voltaic pile had been invented to provide a steady current. Faraday had a generator operating by the 1830s. The commutator needed for a DC motor was invented in 1832, and a Russian had a practical motor two years later.
https://motorspecialty.com/news/a-brief-history-of-dc-motors/
A DC motor running backwards is a generator so things took off quickly after the physics was understood. For what it’s worth I found the electrostatic part of my physics classes the most difficult. It certainly had the hardest math even without considering polyphase AC.
Jane Austen with limited DC power seems quite sustainable for a long time. Copper is chemically stable in seawater so the pearl divers might be salvaging copper from submerged cities for some centuries.
Given a stream and a waterwheel the 140 amp alternator in my truck could put out 1.6 kW. That’s a pretty useful amount of power.
Hi JMG and fellow commentarians,
We are already seeing the undoing of the Just-In-Time systems that have been used in retail stores;
When I was a pre-teen, drugstores and department stores received large deliveries of merchandise perhaps once a week, or even once a month. Most of the stock went into stockrooms and was pulled to the front of the store as people bought stuff. I remember my Mother asking clerks if there was “any more in the back,” if something had run out on the store shelves, and many times, there was!
Over the 40+ years of my work in retail, the stock rooms disappeared and were replaced by frequent deliveries from warehouses. Some places got more than one delivery a day. It was explained to me that “When the register rings thru a bottle of Tylenol, the computer sends a message back to the manufacturer to make one more bottle of Tylenol, and it is delivered to us tomorrow.”
Just-in-time was only possible in an era when fuel was cheap, and transportation and manufacturing were made easy by global peace and infrastructure in good repair.
Today, we increasingly have rolling shortages of things that suddenly go on National Shortage (like Children’s Tylenol Liquid). Most likely because transport is no longer cheap, global conditions are becoming less peaceful, and raw materials less plentiful. Just-In-Time increasingly no longer works, even though the computers needed for it are much better.
So I have begun to advocate for the return of the back room at work. If I can order a month of the top 100 movers in our store, we will continue to have stock when it runs out at all the other stores near us that still depend on just-in-time manufacturing. The future is going to have monthly store deliveries, local suppliers, and large stock-rooms in the back!
I’ll cast my vote for the Magical Map of North America–
Within that, If you get to it, I’m interested in any comments you or others have about Carl Jung’s idea, that the European settlers to North America have been taken over by the (perhaps) Collective Unconscious of the Land; Jung called this “Indianizing” . Ie., if you move here, the land takes you over, and you and your children increasingly belong to THIS land, and not the place where your forebears came from.
Some observations:
I have occasionally worked with Africans-from-Africa and Americans-with-African-Ancestors; They usually didn’t get along. The Afram co-workers were rejected by the recent arrivals from Africa as ‘not being real Africans; They are exactly the same as other Americans and should stop fooling themselves. They have nothing to do with Africa.’
Same perceptions for me upon moving to the Pacific Northwest from the East coast US a number of years ago; At first, the land itself felt hostile. Even the squirrels cursed me out and threw pinecones at me. Crows cawed and would dive-bomb me; The trees felt angry. In the East, I was sometimes able to touch the temples of people with headaches and remove the headache. I tried this with an Indigenous co-worker who had a headache, and got smacked by a vision of about 4 or 5 old indigenous guys sitting in a Kekuli who jumped up in surprise and pushed me away. Clearly, there were other issues going on, it was not just a headache! I was far out of my element.
Things got better when I took a walk in the woods and talked things over with the Land, asking permission to live there, and asking what I could do, or not do, to help things be better for everyone. After that, I felt tolerated here. Maybe not exactly ‘approved,’ but the beginning of a relationship.
Elsewhere– I did a medical relief visit to Romania after the Communist regime fell there, and health care was chaotic. Even though some of my ancestors had come from Romania, the spirit of the land was palpably different. I didn’t stay long enough to develop a relationship with it…
Re: The Magical Map of North America–
What places would I visit to speak with the Spirits of the Land? Where should I avoid? It seems unlikely that you can answer that one. I have an idea to ask the Land and see what happens. My experience seems to say that the Collective Unconscious of the Pacific NorthWest is different, much different, from that of SouthEastern North America. Was that the experience of you and your wife when you first came East?
Looking forward to what you write, if the Magical Map becomes your topic.
@John Heighes #209
As part of you research steel manning both sides of future power sources take a look at this Substack
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/how-i-came-to-believe-that-civilization-fe3
Scroll down to Energy Technology, a good summary place to start
He believes and I think present good arguments that our fossil fuel based civilization cannot be transitioned over to renewables in a way that will maintain the current way of doing things even if adjusted somewhat. We have a predicament.
He has good many essays discussing our crisis from different angles.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/
His bio, also regards JMG as a favorite author of his. He dives deep into the nuts and bolts of things.
“I’m an industrial product engineer by training, working for a large engineering company in the field of electrification and automation of road transport for many years now. Before that, I worked more than a decade for an American corporation in various roles, ranging from maintenance engineering to project management and process expert positions, as well as spending 2 years on a post-graduate leadership program in the supply chain and logistics areas. I’ve seen how investment and sourcing decisions are made in these great conglomerates, how our much cherished consumer products are produced and how they get to the end customer. I saw how ‘sausage’ is made.”
Clay Dennis @180 &191 & JMG
I live part of the year in an overdrafted agricultural area in central California. I think ultimately as fuel becomes more expensive, the land becomes more degraded, the climate gets hotter and the water gets further drawn down and becomes a higher mineral content, much of that land will not even be farmable by slave labor, and will revert to rangeland. Some bits where the water table is higher may be farmable for longer, but I don’t see much long term potential for it. In the main town in the valley the water table is 600′ down and unfit for drinking or cooking and unpleasant for bathing. Getting any crops to market will also be an issue.
stephen
@Justin Patrick Moore (#200):
I haven’t thought much about the next generational dividing point in US history. Off hand, without much thought, the next biggest generational division I noticed at the tine was the one marked by the arrival of the first digital natives as freshmen at my university, sometime in the 1980s. The administration pushed all the faculty to have and use computers in their offices about then, too. Faculty in the stem fields were t given PCs, those in the humanities were given Macintosh Lisas, eventually to be replaced by more useful Macs. One notorious faculty hold-out was my eminent colleague, Prof. David Pingree, who made it known in his quiet way that he was prepared to die on that hill if the administration ever tried to force him online.
For the fifth Wednesday I’d like to vote for what happens to society when millions of humanoid robots start rolling off the production lines.
Hi John Michael,
That was my thoughts as well. Oh well, we shall be entertained then. 🙂 Sad that the resources and energy weren’t put to a more productive use, but I’d not want that job and can comprehend the difficulties faced by sheer decline.
By the way, I note that there is much talk of physical labour this week, and it is my observation that people are unrealistic about this matter. Employing provisional living and then heading off to a farm in your 50’s to do hard physical work when you’ve spent most of your life avoiding that, would be a personal nightmare.
Being able to put in a hard day of labour, then getting up and doing it all over again, requires a person to have never stopped endurance activities since they were a kid, or at least young adult. It trains the body to pace oneself and be intimately familiar with movements so that they are done in an efficient manner, but also in a way that does not injure the joints, bones and/or musculature.
The test to apply in this circumstance is: can a person do a hard day of work, then get up the next and do it all over again. Then the next, and the one after that etc. Hmm. Other than that outcome, it’s all talk, which we all know, does not cook the rice!
Cheers
Chris
@ Robert Mathiesen # 203
You’ve mentioned Old Sturbridge Village several times, and I want to tell you that this brings back good childhood memories for me. 🙂
Both my parents were born and raised in the greater Boston area, and Old Sturbridge Village must be going a very long while now, because it was a family trip that we made almost every time we were back in Massachusetts visiting grandparents.
Always plenty to see and marvel at. I’m glad to hear that it is still going strong.
@ Robert Mathiesen
“You are probably aware that there are places elsewhere in New England devoted to keeping those old farming skills alive, such as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachuetts http://www.osv.org), to which we donate every year. They have kept ox-team work skills going, among other worthwhilethings.”
Yes! Old Sturbridge Village was one of the go-to places for class trips when I was in elementary school in the 60s in southern CT. My parents loved the place, and took the family there for a day trip now and then. I haven’t been there since then – I wonder how much it’s changed. I know! How about a Meta Sturbridge Village, where they reenact the way Sturbridge Village was in the 1960s! 🙂 Seriously, judging by their website, OSV is still a very cool place.
Another sort of living history museum that I’ve heard about but never been to is Strawberry Banke, down in Portsmouth NH. Have you ever been there?
I bumped into these two book titles:
Dictionary of Old Occupations
https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/glossary/Dictionary-of-Old-Occupations-Index.html
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Old-Occupations-Jane-Hewitt-ebook/dp/B004WG347O/ref=sr_1_2?
and
A Dictionary of Old Trades, Titles and Occupations
https://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Trades-Titles-Occupations-Reference/dp/1853067946/ref=sr_1_1?
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
BeardTree #198:
“the Episcopal church is a peculiar mix of the liberal, progressive with traditional and classically Christian Trinitarian liturgy/ritual/hymnody with Bible reading that is like what the church did 150 years ago.”
It sounds quite similar to the small Anglican Church community who has only a temple in my town (most of them British expats and some migrants from another countries). I was with them in an ecumenical act among some Catholics and another churches members, and I found Anglican style as a quite harmonious mix of traditional and “liberal” attitudes and rituals, too. Is Episcopalian Church the equivalent of Brits Anglican Church?(even in a rough sense).
——————————————————–
More about draft horses in the future:
It’s true there are some remnants of draft horses tradition in some western countries. for example, ironically, in France there’s been more interest among ecologist farmers for “work horses” and mules than here in spain until recent times, in spite we gave up draft horses/mules later than our North neighbors (Indeed, one of my grandpas was a mules/horse seller for a while during first ’60s). I can also tell you that, imitating the mild thriving of interest in animal power in the farms which has happened in France, some time ago it was opened the first (and only one for now) draft horse and mule school for farmers, in Catalonia. Main interest for draft horses and mules here seems to be their work in vineyards, because animals feet don’t damage vines roots like tractors do with their wheels…
However, I’m quite skeptic about a fast change toward draft horses in the long term future, because they need a lot of farmers skills and land to be feed properly, in addition of that, current blindness (based in god Progress) against animals and in favor of mechanization won’t fade soon.
———————————————————–
John # 209:
“Rebecca Solnit is the other. In her new book ‘The Beginning Comes After the End’ she cites some impressive stats regarding wind and solar power generation, which offer a convincing impression that the ‘transition’ under way is showing great promise.”
I wouldn’t discard R. Solnit writings as a whole as bullshale; according some of my lectures, she writes well, but…oh wait! She usually shares some American leftism commonplaces, like woke ideology (well, only to some extent) and mainstream ecologism. What did you want to hope from her when she writes about future? Business as usual…Transition and blah blah blah.
——————————————
JMG # 212:
“by 1880 fossil fuels had already revolutionized the global economy; coal-fired steam engines were a massive economic presence and reshaped most aspects of life. We won’t have that option now that so much of the coal is gone, and so much of what’s left is barely worth digging out of the ground.”
I agree. Indeed, a few decades before 1880, first commercial modern oilwell was drilled precisely in USA, so in 1880 oil was beginning to thrive as coal relay in industrialization. It was only matter of time that first successful gasoline car was made up, not much years after 1880…and we all know how has ended that story until present day.
———————————————————-
Emmanuel # 214:
“I have occasionally worked with Africans-from-Africa and Americans-with-African-Ancestors; They usually didn’t get along. The Afram co-workers were rejected by the recent arrivals from Africa as ‘not being real Africans; They are exactly the same as other Americans and should stop fooling themselves. They have nothing to do with Africa.’”
Well, I can tell you frankly your paragraph about this racism/xenophoby between Black guys from different origin in America has provoked me a wry and guilty amusement: of course, racism comes not only from white guys against non white people, but I didn’t know this bizarre variant of this non-White origin contempt. No white racists in it, so: Is it a good or a bad racism/xenophobia according the impoverished woke doctrine? On the other hand, I wonder which side will choose wokesters in this ugly story, African Blacks or American Blacks as good and bad people? Or maybe they’ll pretend this dirty racism/xenophobia doesn’t exist, who knows?
@Scotlyn (#220), sgage (#221):
Old Sturbridge Village has been going strong since the middle 1940s. IIRC, we found it in the early 1980s, not quite 20 years after we moved as newlyweds from California to Rhode Island, and fell in love with it at first glance. It has changed just a little since then: some new exhibits have been added, some old ones (the broom maker) retired, but the feeling is still the same.
To answer sgage’s question, we’ve been to Strawberry Bank once, but it was only a short visit in passing. IIRC, they had a gundalow (an interesting sort of boat) on exhibit there. My wife’s deep New England ancestry (from Robert Jordan of Richmond’s Island) passes through New Castle, NH, and we wanted to see it.
Way back in the 1600s, that small area had a fair number of non-English settlers, including at least one family from the Levant.
Flocking news from Wisconsin.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/a-dozen-wisconsin-police-agencies-announce-flock-suspensions/ar-AA2bBe2Y
“Officials said it was revealed [Flock] had been collecting five years of traffic data, which had been stripped of identifying information, from cities’ Flock cameras, and repackaging that as a traffic analytics product to sell to cities.
All said they supported the effectiveness of the technology in investigations, but cited losing faith in the company’s trustworthiness. “This is not what we agreed to, and it is not what the public was led to believe,” said Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling in a news release announcing the removal of Flock cameras operated by the agency. “The Sheriff’s Office will not participate in a system that appears to use public safety as a justification for mass surveillance and the collection and monetization of information about innocent people….”
[Racine County] officials were told the company believed if it stripped the data of any identifiable nature, it was then considered to be the company’s property and no longer the city’s. [Lt. Michael Luell, the sheriff’s public information officer] said the sheriff’s office has outside attorneys, along with the county’s attorneys, investigating the company’s move. “Our contract, from my reading of it is, it stated they agreed not to distribute or sell our data,” Luell told the Journal Sentinel. “But they had this legal theory.”
JMG,
I think a post sometime of the rise of hard SF and the removal of magic would be an awesome of awesomest posts. Similar to you, I believe, I grew up on late 19th century to 1970s SF and was shocked to find out later that my views of SF were arrogantly dismissed by the rational materialists at SF conventions. Have you noticed that this was concomitant with the rise of Mensa and The Amazing Randi? In the 1990s I tried reading Analog and other SF magazines to help promote the writers. It didn’t last long. The stories were boring, unfortunately.
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that fantasy turned out to be a far more popular genre and it might explain the rise of superhero fiction and graphic novels.
@ Emmanuel Goldstein
I moved to Seattle in early 2001 and I also felt a hostile reaction to my presence. At first I thought it was just the corporate presence of Microsoft, Amazon, etc. and the personality that Big Money attracts. But it was the Issaquah Highlands that seemed to most disturbing. I didn’t like it there at all, but was stuck there for many years.
Perhaps the corporate greed is a reflection of the area. It might be the reason why the author, Neal Stephenson wrote in The Cryptonomicon (paraphrased) that there was something about Seattle and world domination. And its not just the Europeans. The Haida and Tlingit had an elaborate slave network with raiding parties as far south as California.
With regards to Just in Time inventory, I couldn’t agree more. I worked in a grocery chain for awhile and the devotion to JIT inventory has lead to stock shortages of many items.
The internal combustion engine is the magic black box underlies our present reality. You put in fossil fuel and movement manifests. The inventor of the diesel engine based it on burning vegetable oil and then Texas and other troves of petroleum and natural gas happened. Going back to vegetable oil and alcohol derived from plant sources takes up too much land and would be practical only as an adjunct not as the main mover of everything. Yes, an 1800 level of technology with a limited amount of more modern technology blended in could create an ecologically healthy and pleasant society but adequate societal love and wisdom and organization to gracefully transition to that state is not available and it will be a rough and messy transition instead.
Hi All,
I vote for our host’s view of the Aztec gods, I already enjoyed the idea that by their understanding their theory may have held true – not enough sacrifice to prevent the end of their world – thus small pox and Spaniards ended it.
I will also repeat the current establishment Protestant (ELCA in my case) theory about Revelations – it’s prophesy in the understanding that prophets aren’t just talking about the future – they are talking and providing illuminating images about the past, present and future and what was true for 7 churches in what is now Turkey long ago is also true for us and will be true thousands of years in the future as well.
So no giant locusts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone builds some giant locust war robots because that would be evocative.
If the temple in Jerusalem is re-dedicated and a Trump Tower is built next to it, it will be fun to see all the establishment churches suddenly go literalist. Cheers, Drew C
Beard Tree
I follow the honest sorcerer every week: one of my very favorite sites.
JMG
Please put me down for the magic map of North America: actually as much of the world as you could. All my life I have been very affected by the energies of the different places I have lived and traveled.
@Robert Mathiesen #188: IIRC, the shift from Citizen to Consumer seems to have happened around 1984 – the Reagan years in full swing, and when Silent Generation values gave way (among adults) to Boomer values. I say “”among adults” because I’m omitting the hippie years of their adolescence.
And to others: if I were to go to a Christian service, it would be pure High Church Episcopalian, or as my father put it at dinner, after the service, “incense and nonsense, smells and bells,” as he walked down the aisle in his dog collar, swinging the censer. His background was Western Pennsylvania hillbilly (Pittsburgh being the capitol of Appalachia,) and his sense of humor matched that. And his rock-hard sense of justice.
And yes, I went to the UU church here with my daughter and her family until she got totally fed up with the minister harping on the trans stuff – or did it stop during the Covid years? Anyway, you hit the nail on the head., John. Not to mention what passed for communion the only time they served it.
Here in Gainesville – a blue city in a red state*, as someone put it, we have churches of every variety you can imagine, but to my fellow residents here in The VIllage, church for the most part is eithe4r Catholic or Baptist, and the church bus schedule reflects that.
*Actually, in the fall, it’s a “blue and orange” state – the colors of the UF football team. The local religion: God, Country , and the Gators.
Please tally up my vote for The Magical Map of North America, JMG.
OtterGirl
JMG,
Dmitri Orlov just threw in the towel. In the following video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY1emRmDJp0
He admits that he was wrong and that the US will not collapse like the USSR did. He explains that the reason that he was wrong is that he assumed the US and the USSR were the same kind of empires. He says that unlike the USSR the US is a colonial empire and derives much of its wealth from exploiting colonies So instead of collapsing like the USSR id it will slowly go down hill while keeping itself going by draining every last drop of value from its subjugated colonies and its allies ( interesting) so he theorizes that to keep itself going it will also cannibalize its subjugated allies like Europe, Korea, Canada and Australia. It will also resort to piracy and cannibalize the wealth of its own citizens with schemes like the AI bubble.
He says this process will never end in a definitive collapse but just slow decline with no defined endpoint ( sound familiar). He has labeled his new theory ” Disgraceful Degradation”. Sounds a lot like ” Catabolic Collapse”. So JMG, I think you can take a victory lap in this long running ( but friendly) battle of the prophets of doom. I know you don’t do video but I would suggest watching it. It is only Dmitry talking so you can just listen with the sound off if you wish. It might in written form on his site” Club Orlov “but a lot of that site is behind a paywall.
Once again, all votes have been tabulated. The top half dozen topics are still very close to each other, so if any of you want to change your votes, tell me what you voted for and what you want to vote for now, and I’ll make the changes.
Siliconguy, that’s quite true. I expect modest amounts of electricity to be available into the far future — water power should be a lasting option, and so will items like this:
This is among the reasons I expect radio to remain viable straight through the deindustrial dark ages.
Emmanuel, that’s very good to hear — the sooner stockrooms and warehouses come back, the better we’ll be able to face the turbulence of the decades immediately ahead. Jung was quite right — that deserves a post sometime soon. As for the Pacific Northwest, it’s not just you. The native peoples built their longhouses on shorelines and riverbanks, and went into the forests only short distances when necessary; the local legends are full of creepy creatures that live in the woods and devour people. There is something very dark and hungry in the land west of the Cascades, where the rain drifts down like mist and the forests are dense and silent.
Stephen, add in the effect of shifting climate belts and most of California is going to turn into desert with a very low population. Generally speaking, outside the Pacific Northwest (which will end up with a Californian climate), most of the US west of the Missouri is likely to become what it was 6000 years ago, a desert as barren and deadly as the eastern Sahara. It’s further east that Clay’s plantations will be established.
Chris, exactly. In the extreme case, if you take someone who’s never engaged in hard physical labor in their entire life — and most of our current cubicle class fall into that category — and put them to work doing heavy farm labor, the result will be simple physical collapse. Many of them will die and the rest will be incapable of work. There’s an increasing body of research on this.
Northwind, hmm! Thank you for these.
Siliconguy, the backlash is building. Good.
Jon, I do indeed. The crusade against magic and the paranormal in SF was spearheaded by the same people who promoted CSICOP; I saw it happen at science fiction conventions in the early 1980s. It certainly deserves discussion.
BeardTree, granted — but then we don’t have the societal love and wisdom and organization to manage the situation we’ve got, either!
Drew, I take a preterist view of Revelations — it’s about events that have already happened, coded in the standard symbolic language of contemporary Jewish apocalyptic. Read that way, it’s very impressive: nobody else around 70 AD was predicting the fall of the Roman Empire, after all.
Patricia M, the local parish was very Low Church when I started attending, but we have a new rector and he seems to be pushing things very gently in a more ritualistic direction. Fortunately the smells and bells are available at St Paul’s, K St. when I want them.
JMG #142: I’m under no illusions about the long decline, and I don’t expect current Internet to last long-term. However, I’m not completely pessimistic. Microchip manufacturing may cease, given its high degree of complexity and overhead costs, but I expect that the tinkerers will salvage & repair computers to keep them running as we head into a new Dark Age. The bloated, wasteful nature of our computing will be a challenge, but a surmountable one — even now you have hobbyists running Amigas and other old hardware. Likewise, the Internet will be much reduced, down to several regional Webs instead of a World Wide Web. But even without major data centers, there might be a decentralized network of servers, kind of like the existing p2p networks for filesharing and crypto; there might also be hubs in the clusters of civilization where steady electric power, technical knowledge, and hardware can converge. Overall, I expect the online center of gravity to shift back towards the nerds, and Eternal September to meet its demise.
Dennis #152: Wow, that sounds terrible. I remember having Transformers bedsheets in my youth, but I’m not old enough to have experienced the 80s, so luckily I dodged that bullet (or plasma beam, whichever). I’ve noticed that 80s franchises would get milked to death, as they kept pushing new toy lines, cynically exploiting families until they checked out. And yes, that concurrence does sound magical.
@Chuaquin #223 Yes ECUSA , Episcopal Church in the United States of America is the American branch and originated in England. The conservative hierarchy that departed in the schism formed ACNA the Anglican Church of North America
@Patricia Mathews (#231):
We moved to Rhode Island in the Fall of 1967, and my University mostly avoided the wave of student unrest that swept higher education in the later 1960s and earlier 1970s. The quip of that day was that students shut down other universities, like UC Berkeley or Columbia, but at Brown, they were just reformed the curriculum, and they did it in cooperation with the faculty.
As for my friends and colleagues in Rhode Island during the late ’60s and the ’70s, many of the younger ones seemed to me to think of themselves as Consumers more than as Citizens. So the change may have happened at different times in different parts of the US.
@JMG (#233), replying to Emmanuel about the Pacific Northwest.
I can echo what JMG said about the Pacific Northwest from my own fairly brief experience.
One of the more unforgettable nights of my life happened in the first half of the ’60s. A school friend (John) had gotten a summer job as a fire-watcher on a mountain top in (IIRC) northern Oregon, and he invited me to come up and stay for a few days. He gave me very precise directions about the dirt roads in the forest I would be driving through, and so I set out. His directions were correct, but he had omitted to mention there was a chained-off road on the way. However, the chain happened to be down when I drove by, and so his directions sent me down that road — and my car broke down in a logged-over patch of mountain land. It was getting late, so I spent the night in my car. That was one of the creepiest nights I have ever spent anywhere. The logged-off land seemed alive, resentful, and filled with fury at humans..
Now I seem always to have known that I have some sort of built-in or inherited defense against supernatural hostiles, so I knew that I would survive the hostile night safely, without too much discomfort, and I even managed to get a good amount of restful sleep.
In the morning I walked back down the road, found the chain was up again (which fact explained to me what had gone wrong), and continued to walk up the mountain road following the directions John had given me on foot. After a couple of uphill hours I arrived at his fire-watch tower, and had some food there, and we spent a few good days together on his mountain top. Some of his fellow rangers arranged for my car to be towed out and repaired, too, so all was well in the end.
But, I swear, that logged-off land was alive and aware that night, and rightly angry. It knew I was there and it wanted me gone. There was some sort of very large invisible presence, too, that visited my car several times that night. Though there was plenty of moonlight (and I have always had excellent night vision), I never did manage to catch even a glimpse its shape and movements. I really don’t think it was made of ordinary flesh and blood.
@Emmanuel Goldstein & Jon G:
Would either of you mind if I cited or used what you wrote about Seattle? I am drafting material for a piece on Seattle and the PNW, and this would be very helpful to me. If nothing else, it gives me something my gut has been telling me too.
Jon, thank you for the Cryptonomicon reference too. I need to give Stephenson another try. That was the only book I read by him, but it was quite awhile ago.
My own travels to Seattle: well, I liked the city quite a bit, but the people seemed a bit colder to me and more standoffish in general than what I was used to in the Midwest, but no biggie really. A friend who lived their for ten years noted the same thing. I wonder if that is also part of that block of lands energy.
@Emmanuel Goldstein or anyone who knows: What volume of his work or essays can I find his ideas about Europeans going through the process of having their consciousness changed by the land consciousness?
Thanks again to everyone for the conversation and stimulation to be found here, all thanks to our generous host.
@JMG
My vote for the topic of this month’s 5th week’s post is also for the fertility of German culture. I am currently reading Peter Watson’s book The German Genius: Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century, and would very much like to see your analysis of the subject of this excellent book!
Regarding physical labor and growing food: even if one can’t garden all day, growing food is still a very useful skill to have and use. Not everything has to be either/or all the time.
I’ve never been to an episcopal church, but I understand it is an offshoot of the Anglican church, which I attend regularly. They sound fairly similar.
Siliconguy #213
That’s a very good point, I didn’t think about coking coal. I take it crucible steel is far inferior to the Bessemer process. The biggie for steel is the modern plow; things changed in ag with that. I think most people don’t think to consider plows when they ruminate on technological steps down. I have no idea if you can make the same plow in cast iron. I think cast iron has a sort of brittleness to it, it breaks. How much food you can grow for the cities takes a big hit without that nice strong efficient modern plow.
The truck alternator making 1600 watts is indeed pretty useful. I still have an old fashioned stereo, it pulls 100 watts- if I understand correctly most of that actually goes to run the speakers. I really worry about the loss of recorded and broadcast music in the future. A lot of people are going to be off grid in the future; there are lots of battery radios, but no such thing as a battery-operated turntable that I’m aware of. Even better would be a system that required no electricity at all. But I don’t think there’s any way to amplify music without power. Those old Victrolas wound up with a spring and had a big horn on them for a ‘speaker’, but they were very tinny sounding. Better than nothing I suppose. I think it would be so sad if people could only have music from live performances, because that means having way less music in their lives overall. And music just makes everything better, from rock music to jazz folks up for hard work to classical music to relax in the evening.
Emmanuel Goldstein #214, Jon G #227
It’s funny, I had the exact opposite experience with The Pacific Northwest. The very first time I ever was there, I came over the mountains from the east, crossed over the pass, and this amazing feeling burst over me like an explosion. It said, “HOME”. I had literally come home, to a place I had never been before. I grew up in New England, and the first time I ever saw video of the Pacific Northwest on tv, I instantly got this feeling that said, I need to go there, I must go there. That feeling never went away, for almost twenty years. It was like a homing instinct or something. Then when I finally got there the feeling was so powerful I nearly cried.
Like I said it took me twenty years but I moved there, to western Washington, and I was there for thirty years. I loved it so much, I love that place. But they ruined it. There is an old song by the Pretenders called My City Was Gone:
I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And Muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls
Said, ay, oh, way to go, Ohio
Well, that’s the government of Washington. Every city, every county, the state. They want development, development, development. Not one cow pasture will remain, not one single tree left standing. Business parks and huge five story tall apartment complexes everywhere. Every single field where I took my kids to play is gone. Every single lovely tree has been cut down and replaced with parking lots and sidewalks. They are turning the entire western side of the state into Seattle, from the Canadian border to the Columbia river. And on the other side of the river, the governments of Oregon are doing the exact same thing to the Willamette valley.
I had to leave last year. Housing went so insane I couldn’t afford to live there anymore. I’ve been back a couple of times, and it just breaks my heart. Go away six months, come back and more high rises in Seattle- the skyline is unrecognizable. More farms paved over with industrial parks and apartment complexes. I’m like the Indian in that old pollution commercial, gazing out across the destruction with a tear running down my cheek. I can’t bear to be there any more. But my soul still yearns for it.
Even worse, with climate change the Pacific Northwest is going to be the only area west of the Mississippi river that’s inhabitable, and they won’t have a single acre of farmland left to grow their food. I guess they think they can just import food from elsewhere forever. What a tragedy.
Add me to the votes for the magical map of North America.
Annette Simard
@ Chris. Re: Johnny Sanphilippo, I couldn’t find any obituaries online, but he just … suddenly stopped doing anything on the Internet, which seems unlike him. Someone’s still hosting the blog, though.
Emmanuel Goldstein #214:
Your post brings to mind many things for me, a former resident of Seattle. I hear you on the vibe. My senses are likely not as tuned in as yours are, but even as a child I’d gaze beyond the Cascades with a longing to go east. On our last trip there, a couple years ago, as we left Issaquah eastbound over the mountains, my husband felt an oppressive force land on him for the duration of the drive up to Snoqualmie Summit. It lifted completely after that. I’ve heard similar stories from others. Make of that what you will.
As to the African American/African thing, back in the 1990s visiting family stayed in a short-term apartment rental complex in Burien (south of Seattle, near the airport) for a couple weeks. During that time, they interacted a bit with members of the flight crews of an African airline that used the rental complex as a base for crew members on layover. There was no love lost between the actual Africans and the African Americans.
OtterGirl
@Kfish #61,
When were you last a student? I admit that your strategy of “just don’t inflate your lifestyle” worked very well for me… but that was a long time ago. Nowadays? Everything is a lot more expensive, and when I go looking at the jobs I had out of school, they hardly pay more than they did then. Inflation-adjusted, they pay a lot less. It’s head- above-water money, maybe, if you don’t have a big student debt (and how with rent and tuition as they are now do you avoid the debt unless you won the geographic lottery of having family in a college town?)– but it’s not “live like a student and get a down payment on a house”.
Heck, that house is worth more than double what it was when I graduated, and interest rates are higher to boot! I know Canada is particularly flocked, but the whole OECD is having an affordability crisis. “Just live simple” might be this generation’s “just get a summer job and it’ll pay your way through school” — which was mathematically impossible 20 years ago. Their inability to realize that is part of what made “boomer” into an insult.
” …when the decline bottoms out, much of the world will have technologies not too different than it had in 1800″. I had to smile when I read those words as just a few days ago I saw a short video of an Amish-style forklift that brilliantly combines a well-trained pair of horses with hydraulics. For those who don’t mind short videos, they can see it in action for themselves: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d0sElzLyfiQ
I know that there is a lot of controversy over the proper wording of the popular biblical beatitude “the meek shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), but sometimes when I think of de-industrialization in the future I imagine the Amish as being the “gurus” of the age and at such a time it sure would give a whole new meaning to that beatitude.
@Mother Balance,
We have our problems in Oregon but please don’t put us in the same kettle as Washington when it comes to unchecked sprawling development and destruction of farmland. Our local developers would like to develop wherever they please like in Washington but they are checked by the landmark laws put in to place here in the 1970’s which defined urban growth boundaries around all existing cities and towns and only allow urban sprawl within those area. From time to time they are allowed to enlarge those areas, but it is a very politically difficult process fought tooth and nail by non-profit groups like the one started by Governor Tom McCall, Thousand friends of Oregon.
Inside those boundaries the sprawl, strip malls, apartments and such are just as unwise and unsightly as in Washington , but they stop at the edge of town.
As for another song about this, ” Last Resort” by the Eagles,
Some Rich Men came and raped the land
Nobody caught ’em, Put up a bunch of ugly boxes
And Jesus, people bought ’em
And they called it paradise, the place to be
They watched the hazy sun, Sinking in the Sea
Before electrical tools came into being there was a whole world of human powered tools using gears and foot action like the old sewing machines.
A fascinating museum showing 1800’s pre-electrical devices.
https://www.blueoxmill.com/antique-woodworking-tools.htm
And other trades, including two trained Belgian Blue oxen
Falling water in mills did an amazing range of mechanical processes. Windmills also.
@Justin Patrick Moore,
Feel free to use my comments. I’ll also add that the first time I passed the Issaquah Highlands was on the way to North Bend, to see the Twin Peaks set location and Twede’s Cafe. I often wondered if David Lynch chose the area because of same feelings I was picking up.
@Mother Balance,
I’m glad you found the Seattle area home. Such a shame that prices have indeed forced many people to leave. I did the opposite of you and now live in New England. I can’t imagine ever leaving the Appalachian Mountains. There is something so wonderful here but I can’t put my finger on it. I feel the same way all the way across the mountain range, down to Pennsylvania and West Virginia. If mountain ranges have souls, then the Appalachian Mountains, being one of the oldest ranges in the world, has a very old soul.
People’s encounters with the NW shared here brought to mind my experience of the SW Wisconsin landscape in my youth. It was a sea of small farms, small towns with a mixture of grazing land, hay fields, corn and oats , areas of woodlands, hills, valleys, creeks, marshes and small rivers. It was a cultivated landscape reminiscent of a rural English landscape. Hunting was part of the culture – deer, pheasant, partridge. I remember the gathering of morel mushrooms and wild asparagus. A land that to me welcomed the touch and presence of humanity and seemed in balance. A happy domesticated landscape. There was possible danger from the sky – ice storms, blizzards, extreme cold, floods , thunder and lightning storms, tornados. The magical changes of season each with its own feel and type of present vegetation, and animals, insects and birds. I felt deeply rooted as my farming ancestors had come to the area in 1854 after over two centuries in rural New England which shares species and similar seasons with that portion of Wisconsin. It’s different there now, a lost balance of humanity and the land.
@Justin Patrick Moore
With regards to religion of place, JMG has mentioned several times the book, God is Red, by Vine Deloria.
I vote for the magical map of the US as your 5th Wednesday topic.
John in comments #234, in reply to Drew: I also believe that the Book of Revelation is about things that were happening at the time or had happened. It is largely written in code, so the writers would not get into trouble from the authorities at the time. The number 7, for example, meant the totality or perfection. Hence the 7 churches meant the whole church.
If I could be bothered doing the necessary study I could go on but fortunately for all I am too lazy.
pymycory 192
> How do you combine Buddhism and Christianity? I’m curious. What does that look like for you?
Nope. I studied both for years, and they are too different.
Another two that can never possibly mesh is Christianity and Hinduism. One God vs many gods.
Christianity doesn’t mesh, period; it is a Christian thing. Exclusivity is the way Christianity evolved and, I think, most Christians want it that way, or else they would change it.
——
JMG, it was an Episcopal Church that I joined for those two years, attended nearly every Sunday morning worship service (which for me,— a night person,— was a huge challenge and commitment); they gave me a time limit to accept Jesus the way they viewed “believers” were supposed to behave (or something), and then gave me the cold-shoulder. I, too, was surprised. Maybe I read the room wrong,— very wrong.
One thing that could be involved with Episcopalians in general is that the Episcopal Church does a lot of promotion, but they outright lie about the whole shebang. They strike me as hollow. The crowd I got to know turned out to be maximally judgy. They judged with their eyes, coffers, and roofs, and not with their hearts. If the crowd I got to know truly saw the spirit within me (which I neither hid nor exaggerated; it just ‘was’), they would have seen an orphan or foundling. I think I did not have the right physical form; I didn‘t have a body that screamed:
—>“orphan here!”<—
Regarding Maundy Thursday, I waited for foot-washing, and there was none. I mentioned foot-washing to a few higher-ups, and I got blank stares (huh? what? We never heard of it.” I felt daft and let down. I also waited to get baptized on an Easter. Maybe I didn’t know the right tunes (which they never thought to hold an evening session to teach).
Something went terribly hay-wire. Christianity feels like an in-group/out-group thing. Ever since I was little, I have had an “outside looking in” syndrome.
The experience was instructive. At least I got to know “somewhat-of-a-Christianity.” I would not recommend the Episcopal branch of Protestantism.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
JMG
I hope not to derail the comments too much, but seeing some of the comments about the Apocalypse of John (aka the Book of Revelation) makes me want to give an interesting take that is somewhat relevant. In my view the Apocalypse (as all apocalypses are in a way) is a hypostition meant to encourage provisional living. The general idea is that the evil powers of the world will one day get their comeuppance by means of powers outside of your control, thus you the reader/hearer of the apocalypse do not have to do anything about the secular powers oppressing you.
Irenaeus actually used this exact logic against the gnostics in Against Heresies 5:26 when he (as an infallible bishop inspired by the Holy Spirit, which was passed down from the Apostles and Jesus himself, see AH 3:3) interpreted the Apocalypse of John as meaning that the collapse of the Roman Empire was to be the prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus and the end of the world and the eternal earthly kingdom of Christ. Thus Christens should stop resisting Roman (and church) authorities that are oppressing otherwise they are heretics.
> tanneries
One of my ancestors’ neighborhood towns was Tannersville in the Catskill mountains. I wanted to learn some things about tanning skins, and one problem was that THERE WAS A GREAT STINK.
But apparently, there are new processes which either don’t result in a smell problem, or vastly reduce unpleasant smells.
Sounds worth investigating as a possible trade/vocation.
I remember 3rd and 4th cousins whose families had stayed in the Catskills (while my branch had departed after World War I around 1918), at a family reunion in the 1980s talking about what Tannersville used to smell like in the 19th-century: TERRIBLE, VOMITSVILLE. Nobody wanted to live there, particularly downwind.
💨🫥😤💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Thank you @Jon G … Yeah, I still need to read God Is Red. I think you are right about Lynch picking up on the energies of the land. I will have more to say about him, and Twin Peaks, as well as grunge music. It seems significant to me that the genre was spawned in PNW. Grungy place…
@Robert Mathiesen: the arrival of digital natives is a goid transition between Gen X and the Millenials, for sure.
Once again, all votes have been counted. We still don’t have a secure front runner, btw.
Xcalibur/djs, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?
Robert, a very typical experience. I grew up camping with my family and also with the Boy Scouts in the forests of the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. The land tolerated us, barely, because we were careful and practiced no-trace camping (very fashionable then in the 1970s). Even so, the rules were strict: you did not leave the trail, ever, or take any chances at all. Every year people who neglected those rules vanished. Most have never been found.
Pygmycory, granted! As for the Episcopalian Church, yes, it’s Anglican — they dropped the “Anglican” name after the American Revolution, when prejudice against all things British was pretty fierce.
Mother B (if I may), I know. Harsh though the land is, the Puget Sound area is always going to be home to me — my great-great-grandparents are buried there, and so is my only child — but I don’t expect ever to go there again. The Seattle I knew and loved was replaced long ago by Los Angeles North, complete with photochemical smog: “The bluest skies you ever seen are in Seattle,” Perry Como used to sing. When I was a child he was right, but not any more. Sara and I fled in 2004, partly because of the cost of living and partly because Seattle had become one of the physically filthiest cities I’ve ever seen. We talked, later, about the immense feeling of relief we both felt as we left.
Ron, that sort of brilliant improvisation is the wave of the future!
BeardTree, the more of that gets rediscovered in the next century, the better.
JillN, there’s quite a literature out there about that interpretation of the Book of Revelation, the preterist interpretation as it’s called.
Northwind, how odd. The churches here make it very clear that your beliefs are your own business. At a church men’s breakfast this morning, one of the guys quoted Robin Williams as saying that the great thing about being an Episcopalian is that no matter what you believe, you’ll find somebody in the church who agrees with you! If there was any expectation put on me to affirm some kind of doctrinal orthodoxy I’d be out the door the next minute, but nobody’s even asked. I note, however, that it’s apparently different where you are.
Anon, please repost this in this month’s open post! We can have a lively discussion at that time.
I have spent a fair bit of time in northern California and Southern BC and Gulf Islands, not much in OR, and less in WA. It was pretty much always in summer or autumn and oriented to the coast. I loved it, but did have the feeling of being in an alien presence when I ventured into the forest. It is very easy to understand the tradition of the Sasquatch. Most of the native people seemed oriented to the coast as well. David Raines Wallace’s book ” the Klamath Knot” captures the feeling of that land very well. I have sometimes felt there that the boundary between worlds is thin and the Sasquatch may sometimes cross it into ours.
Stephen
Clay Dennis #251
I’m glad to hear it. I knew the coast was protected but I didn’t know about the farmland. The urban growth areas do creep over time- Washington supposedly has them too, but they keep enlarging them. I was basing my comment on what you can see as you drive along I5. It makes sense that if they enlarge the urban growth area, it would be along the highway corridor. Still it makes my heart ache though. I’ve made that trip fairly regularly for some 35 years now, and it used to be such a pleasant drive through all that farmland of open fields with tree belts. Now there’s so many places built over.
I actually prefer the Oregon coast to the Washington coast. The rugged beauty of it takes my breath away. My favorite seaside place in the whole world is Thor’s Well. It used to be Deception Pass in Washington, but the development is creeping out there too.
JMG,
It just occured to me the theme of this post is similar to your post comparing new thought vs. stoicism, and how the two can be used to balance each other.
What can be a good way to balance collapse so one does not become a doomer, but also not a believer in progress?
Hi John Michael,
Thanks for the link to the study, and the outcome suggests that what you mentioned, would be how things could roll. If I may add, that horrendous character Pol Pot, forced people out of cities into basically rural peasantry, and sure food was rationed to the point of starvation so that it could be exported to pay for weapons and other stuff, but not everyone died did they.
What was interesting about the study is that it mentioned the statistical effect that underlying conditions would have on doing hard physical labour. Not good… And I do advise people to stretch and look after themselves, but do they listen?
If I recall more local history in relation to the Great Depression, people generally stuck to the cities, which is what they would have known. Although just before WWII, I believe in your country the rural population had increased by around a million, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the cities. We had itinerant farm workers hit the road, ‘The Swagmen’, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
One thing which doesn’t bother me about the future, is facing hordes of hungry people. If they were fit enough to make it here and put up a fight, I’d hand ’em a feed and put them to work. Less risky for everyone…
Cheers
Chris
Hi Kfish,
Yeah, that’s why I asked. I believe that he moved to Mexico and just went off and did something else with his time. Some folks have that ability hard wired into their personality. But if you hear differently… 🙂 I liked that blog too.
Cheers
Chris
It was really good seeing some realistic depictions of farming life in the discussion this week. As someone who loved countryside on my rare visits, I was fully aware that I would not last a single season there had I to work for my living. And while farming is to be the main human activity again in not too distant future, that does not mean that most humans alive today are fit for it. The way I understood the collapsing early strategy is as a way to avoid the need for farming by acquiring other valuable skills.
That said, while starting hard labour early is possibly a necessary precondition for doing it as a lifetime occupation, it is probably not a sufficient one. Hale and hearty farmers in their 90s do exist, but this might be do to survivorship bias. Through sheer natural selection, people without inborn predispositions for hard work either drop out early to less harmful occupations, or have their health ruined. I knew people who were farming since they were born who were crippled by the time they got older – back-breaking labour can be literally back-breaking.
Another point that often puzzles me is that some people believe that it is possible to sell all their possessions, buy a couple of acres of land in a different part of the world, and voilà, they will be set in a new way of life. Farming communities have foundations in complex webs of relationships that arise through many generations. Joining one eventually in your own country, even if you have no kin there? Might be doable if you keep at it. Doing it in a completely different culture on the other side of the world? Very difficult, and if you can pull it off, you’d probably be better off employing your considerable talents elsewhere. As someone who has spent most of my working life abroad, I am acutely aware of how difficult it is to establish oneself permanently in a foreign land. In turbulent times, this will be even tougher, and infinitely more dangerous. Hmmm, immigration in times of collapse might be a good topic for a future post 😉
Just a brief note re. the Pacific Northwest. I had a similar experience the one and only time I visited the Seattle area, back in 2009. There was indeed something vaguely oppressive and uncomfortable about the city that made want to spend as little time there as possible. Later we went out to the woods on the Olympic Peninsula, and I didn’t feel any discomfort there, for what it’s worth. Then again, it was only a day trip, and maybe it made a difference that I was a “native” European who didn’t intend to stay. This was also long before I got into occultism in any way.
Since some “lottery win” stories are being shared, I have one which has always struck me. Many years back it was reported in the Canadian media that one guy in Nova Scotia had won a big lottery. He was an average, ordinary guy who had lived his whole life in a small town and had never had any prospects for what most people call “success”. A year after winning the lottery all his money was gone. Typical story, right? Ah, but the beauty is in the details.
He didn’t blow his money by being duped by some sketchy investment scheme. Or by living like a king without the permanent income of a king. No. What he did was go to his favourite watering hole several times a week and declare that all the drinks were on the house! When asked why he did that, he declared that the money was never his. All his friends and nearly all of the people in his small town played the lottery regularly for years on end with no benefit. So, he figured that he should give some of their money back in the only way he could think of.
Now, most people would laugh at the simple “country bumpkin” for wasting the one opportunity he would likely ever have to escape the life of stagnation that had been his lot. But as I read the report I actually admired the guy. He loved his community. And he wanted to give them a break from the meagre existence that they had always lived. People may fault him for lack of imagination and ambition; I see a man whose heart in the right place. No provisional living for this guy, as he was already living “the good life” in No-Future-Prospects-Nothing-Ever-Happens-Here-ville, Nova Scotia! Cheers!
My vote is for the Magical Map of North America. I enjoy these stories of the uninviting PNW – it sounds wild, I’ve never felt anything like it, and would like to visit someday.
Thanks for mentioning the preterist interpretation of Revelation, which I also share. For me, one of the stumbling blocks to becoming a Christian was the notion that it “requires” accepting what I consider to be eyerolling pop End-Times scenarios.
About the feel of the land: I lived in the desert southwest for something like 50 years, but on a family trip to Durango, once we got into the mountain pastures, I felt like I was coming home at last. Pity – the altitude was too much for me at that time – and when I moved down here, I found the intense greenery soothing to the soul, and being at sea level restful for my body. For what that’s worth.
In re folk saints, Darek Latta (the artist) has already created and shared a lovely icon of Wendell Berry.
https://substack.com/@dareklatta/note/c-327333724
How about a discussion on near-death experience?
More about draft horses and mules:
I’m going to tell you a “dirty secret” about full farms mechanization here. According current godlike Progress narrative, changing from using animals to work with tractors has had only advantages, and anything down. Reality, at least in a country like Spain, with a heck of mouintains, is more complex than this happy narrative.
Mules were usually prefered instead of horses in most of the territory (dry climate country: most part of it), not only because they ate poorer food than them, but because they were safer and more agile in slopes and mountains lands. Wheeled tractors are evidently much faster and powerful than usual old couple of mules in a flat land, but in a too much rugged land is another thing.
It’s true that caterpillar tractors are better suited for sloppy lands than wheeled ones (they bit more to the soil), but are slower. They aren’t economically suited for be used in small mountain lands, nor small farmers. So during past century (imitating the famous fable “The fox and the grapes”), agriculture modernizers have said those small mountain lands aren’t worth a bean, so farmers had to leave it waste; so eventually forests have conquered that old lands. Magical word has been “land consolidation”, better in flat lands, to take advantage of wheel tractors speed and power in bigger farms (with less farmers with more land for every one of them).
Ironically, mules are suitable for those abandoned sloppy mountains lands, which in a time of fossil fuels scarcity, and more decentralized agriculture, it shouldn’t be despised as a food source…
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Clay D.# 233:
I’m glad D. Orlov has admitted he was wrong about USA “collapse”, in a similar way as USSR did. Indeed, I’m glad he has said he’s wrong in something. And I’m not kidding ironically, I’m being frank now. So saying, I find his reasons to recognize he was wrong with that mistaken idea (counterfactical with current slow decline of the USA nowadays) is interesting, but I wouldn’t take it as a revealed truth, I prefer to think in it as a work hypothesis to be debated.
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JMG # 234:
“The native peoples built their longhouses on shorelines and riverbanks, and went into the forests only short distances when necessary; the local legends are full of creepy creatures that live in the woods and devour people.”
I didn’t know that cultural and historical fact about those natives. It contradicts usual idea within ecologists about hatred and fear against the woods as a long time lasting idea only in European mindset, which comes from the Middle Age: for medieval people, forests were dangerous place, full of wolves, witches and bandits…
So some natives in some areas of nowadays America feared woods like medieval Europeans, due to slightly different imaginary horrors (imaginary?), breaking the commonplace about all natives being always “in love” with their kindly forests…
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Beardtree # 236 and Pygmycory # 243:
Thanks for your clarification. By the way, it’s interesting Anglican Church and its American branches IMHO have a “dual soul” or tendency: the modernist-popular one (to say it somehow) and the traditional-“elitist” one. So I’m not surprised after knowing the American schism. however, British Anglicans have managed to keep joined in spite of their different views, maybe due to the symbolical role played by UK king and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Beardtree # 252:
“And other trades, including two trained Belgian Blue oxen”
Speaking about oxen, before mechanization times here, oxen were used for farming only in the “wet area”, so in the North of Spain. My grandparent said they were stronger than mules and most draft horses (so the plow went into the soil deeper), but they had a problem: they were slower than mules and horses…They ate more food and drank more water than draft horses, and even more than humble mules, so do the math (they weren’t popular in dry areas which are most part of my country). By the way, Belgian Blue ox race seems to be stronger than another oxen races (good muscles).
—————————————-
JMG # 262:
“As for the Episcopalian Church, yes, it’s Anglican — they dropped the “Anglican” name after the American Revolution, when prejudice against all things British was pretty fierce.”
A clever name change, because likely hatred against everything seen as British in those times needed to be avoided by the “new” Episcopalians (a good name, because “Episcopus”=bishop). In addition of this, British Anglicans have at least as a symbol under the UK king…and USA is a Republic (oops). So I bet they also needed to seem different form their mother Church.
Hi JMG,
A fascinating discussion here as usual. There are are some fantastic comments here from you, Siliconguy, and Emmanuel.
I’m curious about your experience with the Episcopal Church that apparently does not require you to affirm doctrinal orthodoxy. I stopped going many years ago, but when I did, part of the service was a recital of the Nicene Creed. Have they dropped that from services? When I was young I just found it boring and dreary, now it completely ruins the whole experience of attending services for me. I’m really interested to hear your thoughts on this because on the other hand I really love the sacrament of communion and miss it, but having to recite the Nicene Creed is just a big problem for me.
Emmanuel Goldstein 214
> Over the 40+ years of my work in retail, the stock rooms disappeared and were replaced by frequent deliveries from warehouses. Some places got more than one delivery a day.
Once upon a time, before Jethro’s death, our small business was to build smallish items out of wood, then shipping the items to customers one by one.
I had to learn about shipping in the USA. So…
… I read this book:
sdn: The Upside Down World of UPS*: A Memoir on My Trials and Triumphs
by David Roy
ISBN 1960756427
“got more than one delivery a day”
One or more deliveries per day took/takes a toll on delivery(wo)men. Collectively, even as much as one package per day to a business/home is not sustainable. It cannot continue. Workers are being made physically and mentally ill because of the “one a day” and “multiple packages“ way of doing business.
It is the fast pace that has been killing delivery people. When the pace is already at 110% of what could marginally be thought of as healthy for workers, bosses have to gall to say things are not fast enough, and try to speed the pace even more: 120%, 130%, 200%, &tc. Bosses are on an endless treadmill of “more speed, more speed, more speed,” “faster, faster, faster,” trying to extract “ever more” and out of delivery(wo)men. Workers have been “breaking” for decades; bosses are NOT listening and don’t give two flying flocks. Bosses see no need to brake,— that is, they see no need to permanently slow things down, where “less is better.” Worker unions are under the same yoke; they don’t help at all. After I read this book, I had second thoughts about adding to the shipping-overload.
With Jethro’s death, I was silently relieved that I don’t have to add to the shipping-overload that exists in the USA. I can’t abide by the obvious immorality of the “faster” ethos.
This book was a real eye-opener. I recommend it. I bought the book cheap, used.
——
Another book is “Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS*”
by Greg Niemann
ISBN 0787994022
I haven’t read it yet.
*Unided Parkel Serbice
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Emmanuel Goldstein 214
> if the Magical Map becomes your topic
I read the rest of your comment, and WOW.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
JMG #262: I was kinda hoping you’d offer a detailed refutation, instead you just agree to disagree. Entirely too reasonable, lol. I’m not 100% certain of my future projections of the Internet — maybe it’ll be scattered computers linked by shortwave radio, rather than the regional jury-rigged internets I envision. I can’t be certain, I’m just hoping that the nerds can prepare and bunker down for the long decline, and initial signs of archiving and tinkering make me optimistic.
As for the Pacific Northwest, it’s a lovely region, despoiled in parts by the excesses of our culture. It would be a fine place for a post-US state, after a purging of the cities of course. In fact, the White Nationalists have designs there, although those will have to wait for a collapse in US power. On my trip through the PNW, I really appreciated the redwoods and sequoias, those most grand and venerable of trees. I didn’t notice the hostile, hungering presence — maybe because I stuck to the main roads by the coastline? Granted, that was before I learned about real magic, but even back then I picked up on “vibes”, like how the trees in the Catskills and Adirondacks felt wilder and more “badass” somehow.
Okay, it seems from statements made here that Episcopal congregations while on paper are traditionally Christian in ritual can act in a way like Unitarian Universalist congregations.
A couple of statements on U.U. practices I found
“Membership is based on a shared covenant and commitment to the community’s values rather than uniformity of belief”.
“Congregations include people with widely diverse spiritual views, including atheists, agnostics, humanists, Pagans, Jews, and liberal Christians. “
But those overtly Christian Episcopal services have more zip. That old time religion still got some fire I guess.
Why is the Pacific Northwest so hostile to humans?
Thanks for this. I’d almost forgotten all the Y2K hype. I was living in a big city at the time. I didn’t think much would happen but I took the precaution of getting some peanut butter and can goods. I also made sure I knew how to walk home from the new years (new millennium!) party I was attending just in case the subway stopped working. The lights at the party flickered at midnight. For a long moment my friends and I wondered if we had underestimated the danger and became concerned something was actually going to happen. Nothing did. We all laughed and went back to celebrating.
There are many good suggestions for the 5th Wednesday! I will throw in with the animal souls topic.
With thanks, Heloise
This talk of the hostile landscape of the PNW reminds me of time spent in the remaining old growth areas of Ontario’s Boreal Forest, the only biome to send Les “Survivorman” Stroud home with his tail between his legs. On camping trips up there I got a real sense of being a barely tolerated guest– one who’d better leave promptly, or else. The Indigenous people of that area never stayed in one place for long, and perhaps that wasn’t just a seasonal migration thing– they may well have felt that same urge to move on we did.
The Canadian Shield in general is not great land for humans, the clay belts excepted. Those fertile ancient lake beds seem happy enough to have farmers present to my very limited senses; go figure.
Is it similar in the Willamette or Frasier Valley vs the forests of the PNW? I’ve never visited the West Coast.
Hey folks, one more question abut the PNW… does the Vancouver area hold the same hostility? I have never been there, but thinking of other art forms that have come from there, I think of the gritty industrial of Skinny Puppy. They used to like to hang out in the woods and parks, and have an album called “Too Dark Park”… but in the music they and other groups from Vancouver have, I detect a certain raw terroir. It could have only come from that place at that specific time in the 80s, just as grunge could have only happened in Seattle area in the 90s (allowing for artistic influence from elsewhere of course). But I find the sounds very place specific, even as it reached out around the world. Thanks for any insights people care to share.
All votes have again been tabulated.
Circle, that’s why I keep on reminding people that it’s not collapse that we’re facing, it’s decline. Neither collapse nor progress, but history as usual!
Chris, the Khmer Rouge only ruled for four years, and in that time 25% of Cambodia’s population died. Pol Pot’s plan was to kill every Cambodian who was more than ten years old at the time of the Communist takeover, so that a new generation untainted by capitalism could achieve the Communist utopia. It’s quite likely that if the Vietnamese hadn’t invaded in 1979 and crushed the Khmer Rouge regime, the death toll would have been much, much higher.
Soko, thank you for this very robust dose of common sense!
Ron, thanks for this. That guy was one smart cookie.
Bofur, you’re welcome.
Scotlyn, thank you for this.
Samurai_47, I’ve now attended services at three Episcopal churches, one low church, one high church and one stratospheric Anglo-Catholic, and not once has the Nicene Creed been repeated. I know it’s in the Book of Common Prayer, but not in every version of the service, and here in DC it’s apparently not common. Just as well — I couldn’t honestly affirm it.
Xcalibur/djs, it’s all but impossible to refute something that hasn’t happened yet, no matter how unlikely it is. That’s what gives apocalyptic fantasies their staying power — absurd as they may be, you can’t actually prove that they won’t happen. Thus I simply present my views and leave it at that.
BeardTree, yeah, that’s about right. The ceremony does still have quite a bit of zip; Dion Fortune used to say that the Christian communion service was the most widely performed ritual of white magic in the western world.
Anonymous, you’ll have to go ask a sasquatch or something. The trees never explained.
Heloise, the Odd Fellows lodge in which I was active back then held an end of the world party; everyone brought canned food, and once January 1, 2000 came without incident, we donated it all to the local food bank.
TylerA, I’ve never visited the Canadian Shield so can’t say. Anyone else?
Justin, I don’t know about Van itself, but not too far north of there you’re in the Willapa Hills, and those can be extremely dark.
I cast my vote for the Magical Map of North America.
I suspect it is too large to do in any detail, just thinking about the entities I’ve met here where I am, but a broad overview would be lovely.
And, on the subject of African Americans versus African Africans, the latter are not one single race but several with their own interracial hatreds (don’t get my mother-in-law started on Those People a Few Villages Away, who look the exact same to Americans but completely different to her), and the former are white, as far as appearance goes, to the latter. It gets quite entertaining . . . but I think we have all decided to keep the mixed up grandkids in America, for their own safety, as America tolerates ethnic mixing far beyond the norm as insiders, rather than considering the kids as outsiders.
I took a look at the liturgies and rituals of the Episcopal church on their website. It states that the Nicene Creed is recited on Sundays during the communion liturgy and also on other Major Feasts again I suppose in a communion liturgy. This is also true of Roman Catholic services
https://extranet.generalconvention.org/staff/files/download/24013
However the Nicene creed can be omitted on let’s say a midweek communion service not on a major feast day. So JMG I guess you dodged that bullet so far. Even so a person who isn’t a baptized Christian is welcome to come forward at communion and cross their arms over their chest and receive a blessing from the priest.
JMG,
Though I once felt some of the hostility in the forests of the coast range and the western flank of the cascades that stopped for me in the late 1980’s. I spent several years working to save the last of the ancient forests ( substantial areas of climax Douglas fir Ecosystems) that were left at the time. I worked with the direct action groups of the time. My specialty was sneaking food in to those perched in trees past the cordons of forest service cops who often closed off area’s of forest to deprive tree sitters of food and water to get them to come down. Those of us doing this could often feel the forest’s gratitude. I think it carries forward with me to this day.
I think that one of the sources of this hostility many people feel is that these were some of the last lands in the USA to be overrun by europeans. Unlike the deciduous forests of the NE or SE the old growth forests of the PNW were not good living area for native Americans. They stuck to the coasts, river valleys and areas where the forest transitioned to grasslands, aided by periodic burning. Thus the Dark woods of the Cascades, the Coast Range and the Olympics remained land mostly untrod my man until industrial man arrived. No wonder the hostility.
Speaking of church service zip. My strongest visionary experience took place during an Episcopal communion service on Transfiguration Sunday decades ago. I was confirmed as a young adult convert in that denomination. Though I have since gone in a different direction in my Christian faith. I said to myself at the Gospel reading describing the Transfiguration of Jesus, “I wonder what that light was like?” A congregational prayer before communion in that service was “Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread” I recited it with a sense of spiritual energy, instead of mere rote repetition. Later.as the priest pulled apart the raised large round loaf of bread an invisible, utterly pure and holy liquid light poured from the space between the two halves I lowered my eyes and knew I had met the Lord. and the communion service is a place where that meeting happens. Another reason I am stuck being a Christian.
I can see how the under appreciated material and spiritual aspects of trees could overlap the magical map of the USA and landscape vibes as a topic from comments made about the NW.
I’ll cast a vote for a Magical Map of North America.
I’m really curious to see how out host’s map might aligns (or not, as the case may be) with H. H. C. Dunwoody’s map of North American weather “districts,” which he drew up after considerable applied folkloric research into traditional weather proverbs. He published his map in his book, Weather Proverbs (1883), which I have now put up online at https://archive.org/details/dunwoody-1883-weather-prov/page/n7/mode/2up
(Dunwoody’s insight that regional folklore, too, could be useful in planning military campaigns — and not just in modern-style disinformation campaigns — has also long intrigued me. His book was published, almost a century and a half ago, by the US War Department as volume 9 in its series, “Signal Service Notes.”)
Dunwoody’s map, and JMG’s, too, may also merit comparison with maps of the American dialects of English, as well as with Joel Garreau’s and Colin Woodard’s various theories of the several regional sub-nations into which the USA can be divided historically, politically and economically. But their maps are less intriguing for students of magic, IMHO, than Dunwoody’s folkloric and climatological map.
I’ll vote for, as Scotlyn said, “the underappreciated and/or misunderstood nature , both material and spiritual, of trees.”
As far as the PNW goes, I grew up there, and miss it. I certainly enjoyed hiking in the Cascades but that was all on well established hiking trails. I’m sad that I’m not going to see trees that size ever again, and honestly found the lack of ginormous trees one of the worst aspects of the move to Nova Scotia, even though at the time I wholeheartedly believed in Our Future In Space (in my defense I was a minor). Here in Nova Scotia our forests mostly resemble outsized lichen; monocultures of conifers growing in soils that have suffered centuries of denudement and in recent decades, spraying with glyphosate to encourage the conifer monocrop the pulp industry needs. There are places you can go where there is a close resemblance of the the Wabanaki-Acadian forest, mostly large broadleaf species with more conifers on the margins, that once covered nearly the whole province, and although I’ve never stayed long, I certainly find it pleasant.
Personally I’ve never noticed any hostility in the Pacific Northwest forests. I was stationed in Bremerton and poked around the Olympic Peninsula and lived near Stevenson and was I that forest quite a lot.
I have not been up in the North Cascades National Park area. On the east side I’ve been everywhere north of the Snake River, so not the Blue Mountains. No hostility, no sasquatches. Black bears yes. A couple of moose, a rattlesnake or two.
Now I was raised a rural kid and spent a fair bit of time in the woods in Wisconsin. Maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe the Unseen avoid me. Except for a lost cow trying (unsuccessfully) to use the tent as a scratching pole at 2 AM I really don’t have much to report.
That said there were stories of disappearances in northern Wisconsin. There was even a conspiracy theory that it was due to having lots of iron ore and being aligned with both true north and magnetic north at the same time. That alignment is no longer true by the way. The zone of disappearances should have moved somewhere else.
JMG,
What do you think of the idea that the west coast of North and South America was Lemurian at one time while the east coast was Atlantean? I say that because of your Lemurian Hypothesis where humans first contacted and communicated with beings in planes beneath us. This dark magic could have ended up in groups escaping to the PNW.
On the other hand, while Atlantis supposedly used dark magic in its later years, it is possible that there were groups escaping the magic and settling in colonies from Canada down to Brazil (as well as Europe and Africa.)
I don’t pick up anything dark in the Appalachians. What feelings did you pick up in Cumberland, MD? I think you mentioned that you were quite happy there at the time.
The internet ate my further explanation of crucible steel, so try try again.
The problem is not so much quality as quantity. Halfway dow the Wikipedia article is a picture of a batch of crucibles. Imagine how many of those it will take to build a steel bridge nearest you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucible_steel
The super weapon every government was talking about in 1906 was the HMS Dreadnought. 18,000 tons, mostly steel.
YouTube has an industry blurb about how they do it today. 250 tons of to-spec steel in 40 minutes. The BOF, Basic Oxygen Furnace, (successor to the Bessemer converter) does 900 ton batches.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9l7JqonyoKA&t=190s&pp=2AG-AZACAcoFDFN0ZWVsIG1ha2luZw%3D%3D&ra=m
Most people have no idea of the scale of modern industry. Most have only recently learned of the complexity of the supply lines needed to keep the economy running.
So yes, Regency technology with small scale electricity could be where things settle down, and Elinor Dashwood will be cutting back on the household’s sugar purchases again. Keep in mind she could still afford two servants and was therefore still in the upper class.
JMG,
I think people are handling the essay so well because we are all “apocalypsed out” by this point. The more dangerous thing is that people also assume that a U.S. dollar collapse will never happen because we’ve heard predictions of that a million times, and it’s like you said, it will happen. It’s only a matter of time, and I have a feeling a debt default is going to happen much sooner than people realize while Trump’s still in office.
I only say this because the Changer seems to have quite the sense of humor (PEPE and Shadily for instance) and prefers grandiose displays (see Trump dodging the bullet), and I couldn’t imagine anything more funny and grandiose than Trump defaulting on the U.S. dollar, perhaps in response to not being allowed to run a third term, and then AOC of all people (or some other woman) becoming president (fulfilling the Simpson’s episode completely, Trump becoming president, bankrupting the country, and the first straight female president getting elected).
@Tyler
I agree that the shield can be a tough place to live, in terms of agriculture. If you don’t have a valley farm for instance, to build up soil on, you’d be better off just not bothering. Crops that thrive in acidic soil, like garlic, squash work well. Apple trees of hardy strains can thrive if you care for them. The deer eat everything that isn’t fenced in. Farming in a cleared out space in the middle of a forest is difficult, the forest is always trying to take it over again.
The bugs are an issue and the summers are short. You need a big barn for the animals for the winter. Digging in the earth is hard because there are rocks everywhere, but then if you love rocks you can make stone walls that look like snakes and great stone circles.
Hunters, trappers, loggers survived. Anyone living in the forested areas should know somebody who can use a chainsaw. My grandfather had a trap line, and was an avid hunter, and also traded with the logging camps (all gone now). He used to say that he would have moved to the US if he wanted to farm and would have become a rancher.
The lakes are incredible and there are thousands on thousands of them. If you are born there you might fall in love with everything. I recommend diving in and swimming underwater in whatever Lake to get a particular feel for what energies from the underworld are leaking in 🙂 Some people think swimming in them lengthens your life. Learning the canoe through and through is an art form and a beautiful way to move through the lakes. Engaging heavily in Powersports with skidoos, four wheelers, speed boats kind of changes your relationship with the whole place.
I have never felt the land ‘hated me’ though some parts are maybe haunted. But then I never really saw real exploitation until the billionaires started moving into the big lakes and literally scrape the land off the shield itself to build their ski chalet sized ‘cottages’ – so let’s see what happens.
I noticed on my last camping trip with my son in Algonquin Park that the energy of the camping site we picked changed as soon as we set up a piece of punky wood for target practice with a throwing hatchet. The feeling went from divine peace to get the heck our of here. I’ll pay more attention next time. But that is pristine Wilderness and generally the land around the towns are different.
If you live long enough in Ontario forests you may realize that you are the scariest thing there is, especially if you are there with a firearm. If you know your county, and trails, and have your bearings, then walking through the forest in the middle of the night is safe on a path. I’ve never had issues with wild animals, even very late at night. Getting lost or injured is really the issue I guess. My grandmother, coming back late at night from a hunting trip with out flashlight functioning, got a stick from a branch in her ear and lost most of her hearing on that side.
It’s hard to settle the land on the shield. It is Harsh in the way that you have to cut trees, pull stumps, pick rocks, for a couple feet of soil, while getting your butt bit off by mosquitoes, horse flies, black flies, and deer flies. Imagine doing all that with horses instead of tractors. You have to adapt.
I vote for the magic map of America!
I guess I’ll add my voice to the chorus of those who found the PNW hostile to humans. I was born and grew up there, still find its natural beauty stunning, and enjoyed a lot of my time living in its major cities. But after I became a parent, I noticed that the area just wasn’t *right* for raising a family. Some of that was the culture, but culture develops downstream of environmental factors. Once I noticed how few people you meet in Oregon today that have pioneer ancestry – the majority of the pioneer descendants, as far as I could tell, either left or did not succeed in reproducing themselves – I couldn’t unsee it. The land itself is a dark, relentless presence that saps the strength of the humans atop it little by little, until they either lose the will to live or go mad. Realizing that the most vibrant residents in the area were those who had been there the shortest was the last straw for me – our family moved out of the region two years ago, and EVERYTHING is better now.
I even came up with a biological explanation: Vitamin D levels. So much sunlight is blocked by the region’s cloud cover that the body can struggle to synthesize it, which precipitates a slow but inexorable decline measured in decades. The native peoples ate mind-boggling amounts of salmon, which naturally contain Vit D from their time in the ocean eating plankton. Keeping close to the rivers was keeping close to the salmon was keeping close to the source of life. There were no sources of Vitamin D in the deep dark woods…
For the fifth Wednesday, I vote for Lindsay Clancy and the insanity surrounding the trial.
JMG and esteemed other commentators, in the discussions I’ve seen about interacting with the land, and with some folks mentioning feeling acceptance & welcoming in some areas and hostility & rejection in others, consider this: there’s a LOT of stuff out there. Are we feeling/sensing/receiving signals from trees? From geological formations? From plants? From other fauna? Or, and I’m surprised to have not seen this mentioned (though I may have missed it), particularly in the case of the PNW, prior human residents?
I grew up in Central Cal, and have lived almost my entire life in Central & Southern Cal, and spent several years in the Desert SW (ABQ.) I’ve found these landscapes to be supportive, but ONLY when I acknowledged the presence of prior past & present spirits of all sorts: plant, animal, and very specifically Human.
Now I know there are some folks who get into the whole “this land is stolen from [tribe xyz]” thing, and I feel that’s by and large NOT a good practice, as it sets up some dynamics of “oh, boo hoo hoo, those poor widdow Native Folks.” But acknowledging the presence of former human inhabitants seems like a good thing if done with humility and composure, seeing them as a crucial part of the landscape, a part which we are most similar to and therefore may possibly be most sensitive to. YMMV.
Scotlyn 220
In 1964, the three of us (ma 38, bro 14, me 12) lived a year in a rental house in Needham, Norfolk, Massachusetts (along with earwigs and silverfish), during which my mother earned a Masters Degree at Boston University in administrative nursing.
As a day trip, now and then, we would drive down in our VW bug to see the Plimouth & Patuxet reproduction village and museums. I loved the place. If I remember, the first wave of colonists were UNskilled, resulting abnormally-high numbers of dead.
After the second wave of colonists,” who were SKILLED,— the death numbers went down; skills made the difference. These were skilled workers, such as spinning; weaving; soap-making; candle-making; butter-making; peasant dress; dressmakers: strange shoes, hats, shoe-making; and bonnets; gardeners; herbs; barn-raising; tree-felling; chopping wood; retrieving potable water; cooking; distilling; cod-salting; and more.
Skills made the difference between living and dying. The same goes for now. If one has a skill, one has a future. If not, you die.
It is important to get a manual, practical trade NOW,— preferably one YOU choose, due to interest. Back in the 1600s, one apprenticed catch as a catch can,— happenstance — what apprenticeshipps happened to be available. Make a committment to research vocations, trades, and apprenticeships THIS year, not next year.
Several of my New England lines’ early ancestors from England entered Massachusetts and Connecticut about 1635, but I have no tie to the ship Mayflower, nor to anyone famous. Nevertheless, one thing is for sure, I had a sh_tload of Puritan ancestors.
Had the three of us lived in the eastern Massachusetts longer, after I gained the skill of taking bus trips by myself, I would have visited the village alone.
The museums there did me a world of good.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Re Bofur#272,
I have been a Christian all my life (don’t really know how) and I have never had to affirm belief in End Times stuff. You do realize that to believe every word in the Bible is literally true would take an amount of mental gymnastics that would drive your brain mad, don’t you? Some things don’t make sense now but do later and some things probably never do, for me anyhow.
I happen to like the Nicene Creed but don’t say the parts of the service I really do not believe. Sometimes I come to see that I was wrong and sometimes not. Not much is set in concrete.
Siliconguy @ 294 .. Well, it is a thing that people/persons have been known to have been subducted into the Olympics from time to time … Mr. “HighPile Shagster” of course … has his/her/them lips sealed .. just sayin*
*Mr. & Mrs. Sasquatch, and kin
Re: farm labor; There was this farmer whose farmstand I used to buy from in central Massachusetts. During the first Trump Administration, she complained to me about being unable to get Mexican farm labor. She explained that very few Americans grow up on farms these days and the few who do are generally not looking to work as farmhands on somebody else’s farm. So when she was limited to hiring Americans, all she could get were students on summer break. These kids typically had never even kept a houseplant alive. They had to be taught everything. Then in September, just as harvest season was ramping up, they went back to school. Mexicans doing farm labor in this country were often from farm families that had been forced off the land by NAFTA. They showed up already knowing what they were doing and they could stay right through to Thanksgiving. (This is why I laughed when those Texas Republicans flew a planeload of newly arrived border crossers to Martha’s Vineyard, hoping to bring the migrant crisis right into Democrats’ faces. Massachusetts farmers had to have been clamoring to hire those people.)
@Robert Matheiesen (#188) “That seems like a generational thing to me, only true of the Boomers and their successors.”
My mom was a Depression kid. Grew up in rural poverty, started working as a domestic servant at 14, worked in a defense plant during WWII, taught me and my siblings many frugal habits, but only for use within the family. Among her peers she was desperately anxious about keeping up appearances and very much ashamed of where she came from. My sister has always been the same way. (She is at retirement age now but she can’t retire because she needs to keep up appearances.) I care a lot less. I had a speech impediment in elementary school, so I lost a few years of socialization. Accepting from an early age that most people wouldn’t like me, I have always made friends within weird, niche subcultures tolerant of eccentricity and ignored the normies. I was able to retire over a decade ago because I don’t care whether people think I’m broke.
@Emmanuel Goldstein
The food co-op where I am currently a member still has a back room, largely because the co-op carries so many smaller brands that have a less automated production process. With some brands we get a big box of mixed products about once a month and gradually use them up.
re “Indianizing”: I have heard of something like this from two sources. One was in the writings of Vine Deloria (possibly his book _God is Red_ but it’s been some decades so I could be wrong). The other was in the works of R. J. Stewart, who printed in one of his books an 18th-century document describing a British seer who had been forcibly brought to the Virginia Colony around roughly 1710 and utterly lost his ability to connect with the spirits of the land until he had been in Virginia seven years. And, yes, I think this would be a great fifth Wednesday topic.
All votes have again been tabulated.
BoysMom, one of the reasons that most talk about race is nonsense is the raw genetic diversity of Africa. A race in biological terms is a group of organisms, all of whom are more closely related to each other than any of them are to anyone outside the group. There are individual ethnic groups of which this is true, but of the broad divisions — “white,” “black,” etc. — it’s not true at all. Odds are that two guys living next to each other in an apartment building in Lagos have less genetic common ground with each other than I have with an aboriginal Australian. Equally, many “white” Russians have more genetically in common with the Japanese than they do with the English, and so on.
Oh, and none of us are entirely human, either. Europeans, and people of European descent, are all part Neanderthal; East Asians, Native Americans, and people descended from them, are all part Denisovan; Africans and people descended from them have a whole bunch of extinct hominins in their ancestry. So we’re all, every single one of us, monstrous hybrids straight out of H.P. Lovecraft, and we might as well get used to it. Me, I’ve started using my Neanderthal ancestry as an explanation of why I don’t use a cell phone — think of it as affirming my inner cave man. 😉
BeardTree, okay, that will explain it. More reason to keep going on Wednesdays — since I wasn’t there to see who created the world, for example, I feel uncomfortable making a fuss about my opinion on the subject…
Clay, that’s true, of course. The land is also very, very recent. The Cascades and Coast Range didn’t exist until around 5 million years ago — there were scattered volcanoes where the Cascades now are, but west of that was a shallow sea with islands that were chunks of very ancient rock caught up via continental drift. (A sandstone I got to know fairly well in Bellingham, the Chuckanut sandstone, is part of a long-extinct land mass whose other half is now in New Zealand.) I sometimes wonder if the sheer raw newness of the land is one of the things that makes it so intolerant of our species’ follies.
BeardTree, makes sense. I simply wonder why that’s become so rare these days; to judge by older accounts, it used to be much more common.
Robert, thanks for this. I wonder if it’s worth looking up the rest of Signal Service Notes to see what other interesting things may be in there!
Jon, in a cultural sense, it’s possible; the civilization occultists call Lemuria existed, I argue, on the sunken land mass called Sundaland by today’s geologists, a huge subcontinent where the island chains off Southeast Asia are now, and they certainly had seagoing craft. (Human beings were already crossing long stretches of open ocean 60,000 years ago, and Sundaland went under around 14,000 years ago.) As for Atlantis, Plato’s description is that it was a large island roughly “in front of” the Straits of Gibraltar, and close to the continent on the far side of the Atlantic; there were in fact large islands off the coasts of the Americas, in roughly the same latitude as (thus “in front of”) Gibraltar, that drowned right about 9600 BC, the date Plato gives for Atlantis. As for the Appalachians, yeah, if Sara’s health hadn’t failed we’d have stayed there for the rest of our lives. It’s very pleasant.
Siliconguy, thanks for this — a very useful reminder. One correction, though — just two servants put Ms. Dashwood in the middle class, and fairly well down in it. I don’t think most people realize how pervasive the domestic servant economy was before the First World War; every family above the poorer half of the working class had at least a charwoman who came by to help with cleaning chores once a day, and once you got above the working class it was universal to have at least a cook, a maid, a nanny to take care of the children, and so on. That’s what people had back then in place of electric appliances, you know!
Dennis, it would not surprise me at all if the US were to default on its debt after the midterms, especially if we get a stock market crash driven by the collapse of the AI bubble.
Shinjuki, thanks for this. Yeah, as I mentioned, Sara and I felt a sense of relief on escaping from the west coast.
Bryan, that’s valid, but as a Druid I put acknowledging all past and current life forms (including those things modern people don’t consider “alive”) high on my list of practices, and it didn’t change things.
Joan, do you recall which of Stewart’s books that was in? I don’t think I’ve read it, and I want to amend that.
Bryan Allen @301 .. I grok what you’re saying. I, not long ago scored a used dvd for my local library – Mel Gibson’s* ‘Apocalipto’ .. that film quite graphically disabused the notion that it was solely those nasty Spaniard Conquistas who’d done in the Mesoamericans. To some extent, they did to themselves .. I mean, severed slaves head’s don’t flip-n-twirl their way down those blood-soaked pyramidal steps all by themselves now, am I right? For one, perched as it were, upon that sacrificial alter, could consider that to be a ‘My to … HEY!!’ event, no?
*a great keeper of a film, to which has been added to my humble archive of notable collection ..
You said it:
https://nypost.com/2026/09/06/us-news/hiker-26-missing-after-never-returning-from-off-trail-excursion-at-olympic-national-park/
JMG, I guess I move in different circles than you. Over the years Christian associated visionary and other phenomena happen to people I know. For instance recently a mother, stepfather, and the teenage son that I know through the school I work at told me about all seeing to their astonishment a display of angel wings behind the young pastor as he was preaching in a typical evangelical nondenominational church. And no it wasn’t a conjuring of an image done by modern technology to wow the audience. And it happens to ordinary people who haven’t been through the contemplative, spiritual disciplines, monastic processing that the older liturgical churches say is required before the Spirit deigns to do something interesting. And from what I have read over the years cool stuff is happening all over the world. Like conversion of Muslims due to visionary and dream encounters with Jesus, actually fairly common.
Hi John Michael,
I wasn’t aware of that aspect of the nuts’ plan, although have visited the killing fields in the 90’s, and wondered what the heck I was doing there. A very distressing day. The Vietnamese did the population of Cambodia a solid by putting an end to the mischief. It’s a reminder that extreme ideology can cause great harm. I don’t believe he was ever brought to account for the horror either, and ended up I believe holed-up in some remote area near to the Thai border, which in itself is not conclusive, but suggestive.
Still, the larger point is that historically, 90% of the population were involved in agriculture, and that is perhaps what sustainability actually looks like. I hold some strong doubts that people using that ‘sustainable’ word in say, activism onanism, actually appreciate the end point of their ideological arguments…
In these enlightened days my understanding is that in Australia, a bit over 1% of the population are involved directly in that activity. Seems like a risky strategy to me. And units of labour are not equal, and this can be proven by putting economists to a week of hard physical work. 😉
Cheers
Chris
@JMG (#306):
I just took a very quick look through the first 20 volumes of the Signal Service Notes, thanks to the Hathi Trust, and there doesn’t seem to be anything else that might be of any obvious esoteric interest. There were two further volumes (#22 and 23; #21 was never published) not at the Hathi Trust, which I couldn’t find the titles of. Henry Harrison Chase Dunwoody himself seems to have been more of an inventor and engineer than a folklorist.
BTW most online PDFs don’t bother to unfold folded maps or plates, so I added my own scan of Dunwoody’s map to the online copy that I linked to at archive.org.
A thought, back in the day if as you say, you tried to connect with the Christian god and there was nobody on the other end of the line, well, you didn’t have the plethora of spiritual alternatives you now have due to the social dominance of Christianity so you sucked it up and did the best you knew how or perhaps you did secretly find an alternative. Maybe the current hit and miss with the Christian god is how it’s always been. I get irritated with my god at times because it’s easy for me to connect but that ease doesn’t seem to be always available for others. I’ve learned to just share my experience when appropriate but don’t get pushy and condemning like I did as a younger dummy. Older dummy now.
I vote for the magical map of America.
Another thought on provisional living. I wonder to what extent this is one of the manifestations of–or reactions to–encountering the watcher at the threshold that will lead us to a new kind of life. The shapeshifting conditions upon which we promise to cross the threshold may be the watcher playing around until we shout, “Unmask!”
JMG #286: That makes sense. It’s true, the future is not yet written, and predictions can be notoriously difficult. That said, there are ranges of possibilities that are more or less likely to occur, allowing us to make educated guesses. I’m more optimistic about Dark Ages internet, while you’re more pessimistic; it could go either way or in-between. I guess the problem with fantasies is that you can cling to even the remotest possibility, ignoring the overwhelming odds against it.
This reminds me of skimming through a book from the 1950s (or around then), in which the educated experts of the day did their best to predict the future. It was a mixed bag of surprisingly accurate, way off, and in-between. For example, they correctly predicted the use of lasers and microwaves in appliances, as well as the rise of the airline industry. On the other hand, none of them foresaw the Fall of the Soviet Union, assuming the Soviet model would still be functioning in the 2000’s, so they got blind-sided there. As for computers, while they did predict their growth and advancement, they underestimated their exponential development.
As for the Canadian Shield, it’s worth pointing out that it consists of some of the most ancient rocks on earth, going back to before the Cambrian!
JMG #306: A fine summary of Lemuria and Atlantis. Keep in mind though, you’re focusing on the centers of those respective civilizations, and it’s likely that they planted colonies further afield. This is especially true of Atlantis, which ranged from the East Coast of the Americas, to Ireland, the Mediterranean basin, the West coast of Africa, and the Azores (which were larger then, and would’ve served as a naval base). Speaking of which, I’m definitely looking forward to your revision of the Atlantis book. As for Lemurian colonies, I believe the Lemurians were very dark-skinned, ebony even, so their descendants include Dravidians, certain Sub-Saharan Africans, and native Indonesians (correct me if this is inaccurate).
Well, since we are in decline and not collapse, I would hope that non-farm people would start gardening, part time growing of high value, high vitamin foods. Vegetables and a few fruit trees, trap a teeny bit and fish some. I think bodies can adjust to that while we keep larger farms of staple crops like grains and beans. How to buy those staple crops will get harder while the next generation of kids will be raised with more walking and digging of garden beds and potatoes and corn added, things ramp up with the new generation helping out as they are growing, then when they are grown, they can take the next step to adding in more physical farming work as they will have been raised doing it. Could be that not all their parents will live to be grandparents due to the strain of transition.
FOr those who have yards, if they can and will start providing at least their own vegetables, and I have heard that in WW2 we quickly ramped up to do that, people in suburbia who had never gardened picked up a shovel and went out to the lawn with their government brochure… and lots of local talk and sharing of ideas as EVERYONE was doing it.
Off topic from the main post, but following on the PNW comments…
sick abed today, I was randomly scrolling through reddit, when this one showed up (not a subreddit I’ve ever come across before). Since reddit now makes it more challenging to view content without an account, full text is included: https://www.reddit.com/r/Experiencers/comments/1w66hyi/what_happened/
“A friend of mine and myself had just gotten to the ocean in the Pacific Northwest and when I went to put my things down we were both suddenly in a very dark place. His arms were around me from behind and some force hit him in the back and knocked us to the ground so hard that the earth shook and then picked us up and knocked us down 2 more times. The hits to the ground were like a sonic boom. We thought the world had ended. The next thing we know we were back in the daylight facing each other saying what just happened? We hurried to get up the cliff and away from the beach. The wind was so strong that is was more difficult than I ever recall getting up the cliff. When we finally got to the top there was no wind, no birds chirping and no ocean wave noise. It was dead silent. Not only that but at least 4 hours had gone by. We got back home and that night my friends chest was tight and he was sweating off and on. The next morning he was still having those symptoms and I insisted he go to the hospital. He walked into the ER and was immediately put in ICU. 2 days later he had open heart surgery? We both experienced the exact same thing that day on the beach and cannot figure out what happened. There is a huge ocean vortex in the area we were at and I’m wondering if that had anything to do with it or if anyone else has experienced anything like that? It wasn’t aliens but it was definitely a universal experience. It was as if 2 giant Gods were showing their strength by throwing us around. It’s so weird and that’s all we can think about is what happened to us. The fact that we saw, felt, and heard the exact same things is mind boggling. If anyone can explain this it would help so much in making sense of this”
Certainly freaky!
All votes have again been tabulated.
Justin, yep. It happens All. The. Time.
BeardTree, granted. Back when I came to this conclusion I was mostly hanging out with people who’d left Christianity for Druidry, as I noted in the original post — but there were a lot of them.
Chris, oh, granted. One consequence of the Long Descent is that people will have a few generations to cycle back to the norm.
Robert, so noted and thank you!
BeardTree, er, when was this “back in the day”? All along, there have been robust alternatives to Christianity in the Western world — yes, even when people who embraced them had to worry about being burnt alive. Name me a century and I’ll gladly tell you what the options were.
Kyle, that’s an interesting idea and, I think, valid.
Excalibur/djs, of course it’s possible to make more or less plausible guesses — but nobody agrees on what makes them more or less plausible! You’re basically correct about Atlanteans and Lemurians, though the aboriginal Australians are also very much a Lemurian-descended population.
Temporary, that sounds about right.
So now I’m really wondering why I feel such a sense of joyous unity with the PNW when so many others get the exact opposite. I want to clarify that I only get this sense in the countryside and forests, not in the cities. Seattle itself is a gray cancer upon the land, and the rest of the built up areas not much better. But get away from all that, and my heart feels uplifted while my soul feels… centered and grounded is the best I can do at describing it. I’m mystified by the difference between my experience and that of other folks.
@ Northwind Grandma #302
“Several of my New England lines’ early ancestors from England entered Massachusetts and Connecticut about 1635, but I have no tie to the ship Mayflower, nor to anyone famous. Nevertheless, one thing is for sure, I had a sh_tload of Puritan ancestors.”
Me too. 🙂
Well, 1640 was the year my earliest American ancestor reached American shores at what became Rehoboth (which now straddles Massachusetts and Rhode Island) in 1643. And I see that my ancestor, William Sabin, is mentioned here as one of the founders… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehoboth,_Massachusetts.
So, not terribly famous, but definitely in the records… 🙂
You are so right about apprenticeships as the way to learn skills – and also to pass them on. Have I said I feel in need of an apprentice? Not that my skillset is overly large, but perhaps it is not necessary for everyone to invent the wheel for themselves? Maybe, in my 66 years of living I have learned how to do a few things that are worth knowing how to do?
@Temporal Reality #217,
Not to be critical here, but I went to the Reddit thread and after being pressed the person with the story in question would not say which beach, but eventually after being questioned by other commenters replied that it was the ” Sonoma Coast”. The only Sonoma Coast that I know is just above San Francisco so not reasonable to be described as the PNW, which officially extends north from the Oregon/California border, unless you want to think on an geographic/climate basis in which you might start it at Mendocino California, but never Sonoma. The only people that think this part of California is the Pacific North West are natives of San Diego and LA, who think everything north of Santa Barbera as the Wilderness. I think the magical properties of this area are completely different than the PNW.
I’d like to clarify you better my views about two topics I’ve commented some comments ago:
– I think manosphere in Spanish language is quite smaller than in Anglosphere, but I’ve known some ideas of its members tendencies to some extent. So I say some of their views are interesting (in spite of usual feminist propaganda against manosphere as a bunch of misogynists, ahem), but I don’t have to like everything that comes from it. My main problem with manosphere is how there’s a tendence to repeat to some extent feminist biases and mistakes like a reverse opposite image, especially I’m thinking in “mens rights”, an idea I don’t like very much. I think usual mainstream feminism (dishonest) speech and behavior disguising female privileges as “women rights” doesn’t justify asking for rights only for (straight) men. I think Law, rights and duties must be the same for everybody in a democracy (it doesn’t matter what do you have between your legs, methink). We’re all citizens…
-I respect very much Anglican Church and its American “offspring”, like I respect some Catholics, Orthodox and another some Churches. However, in spite of my good opinion about Anglican people in general terms, I don’t want to join Anglicans, because I think they’re too “British”, and I’m not a Brit Anglophile (without acrimony).
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Chris # 266:
“If I may add, that horrendous character Pol Pot, forced people out of cities into basically rural peasantry, and sure food was rationed to the point of starvation so that it could be exported to pay for weapons and other stuff, but not everyone died did they.”
Yes, Pol Pot deserves a place in past century worst genocidal leaders. It’s strange and interesting alike he was an apparent Communist, but he decided the opposite idea to the rest of Commie leaders (like Lenin and Mao). Most Communists leaders loved industrialization, and ordered to sacrifice everything and everybody to achieve a lot of big plants to make steel, tanks, and so on (this attitude and behavior explains part of the human suffering that happened in those dictatorships). Marx said industries were always needed to achieve Communism and plants workers were the ideal revolutionaries…Even the very rural and traditional Albania tried to become an industrial power (ahem), but it failed.
Pol Pot did the contrary, he seemed to hate big towns and idealized rural people and life. So his genocide was mainly aimed against big towns people, who according his bias, were against his bizarre idea of revolution. He was a law into himself, so the rest of Marxist branches agreed in despising him.
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Ron M. # 270:
“All his friends and nearly all of the people in his small town played the lottery regularly for years on end with no benefit. So, he figured that he should give some of their money back in the only way he could think of.”
Am I the only one commenter here thinking about this story as a “potlach”? (to some extent, in an informal sense) Maybe he wanted more to be “fair” with his friends and other people, than show his prestige, but I see this behavior as a modern potlach, methink.
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JMG # 286:
“It’s quite likely that if the Vietnamese hadn’t invaded in 1979 and crushed the Khmer Rouge regime, the death toll would have been much, much higher.”
Indeed, it seems a big and wry historical irony that event happened in time to avoid Pol Pot killed even more people in Cambodia, because a lot of the Vietnamese Army came from old Vietnamese North military (Viet Cong); well, not exactly a group of angels, but a very doctrinarian Communists, though with a different Marxist view as Pol Pot.
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Boysmom # 287:
“on the subject of African Americans versus African Africans, the latter are not one single race but several with their own interracial hatreds (don’t get my mother-in-law started on Those People a Few Villages Away, who look the exact same to Americans but completely different to her), and the former are white, as far as appearance goes, to the latter.”
Well, xenophobia against foreign people happens between Black Africans due to different tribal and national origins, like between European white people from different countries. And maybe Afro-Americans seem white for some Sub Sahara people, due to their social customs…oh, and I think a small mixing with white Americans in Af-American people can lead Black Africans to think they aren’t true Blacks (I understand their view, but I don’t share it). For example, Obama and Halle Berry have some “white” DNA…
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About Nicene Creed within Anglican Church and similar Churches:
When I’ve attended interfaith services in my town Anglican temple, I’ve never heard the Nicene Creed there, but I know Anglicans have it too, like for example Catholics. Ecumenical services are usually shared common prayers with Catholicism, but never that Creed. People going to these interfaith meetings are also another Protestant Churches members and some Orthodox people.
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JMG # 306:
“one of the reasons that most talk about race is nonsense is the raw genetic diversity of Africa. A race in biological terms is a group of organisms, all of whom are more closely related to each other than any of them are to anyone outside the group.”
I agree, to some extent. IMHO, it’s society and culture which make “race”, and not the opposite thing. Of course genetic diversity in Africa is huge, maybe bigger than in Europe. We Indoeuropeans tend to see them as simillar, only because they’re darker skinned than us, but for example bantu farmers sometimes despise “Bushmen” because they see them more “primitives” than Bantus, as hunters-gatherers. Another hatreds between African Blacks seem a fake racial thing, I’m thinking in awful tutsi genocide in Rwanda by some Hutu zealots (Tutsi=people who owned cows; Hutu=peasants without cows). That case is more a social division, maybe from an old feudal society?).
I don’t like racist determinism (and supremacism, neither), but the opposite extreme, denial of all human differences, I think is also another stupid thing. I’m thinking about woke term “racialised person”(cough).
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Polecat # 307:
“Mel Gibson’s* ‘Apocalipto’ .. that film quite graphically disabused the notion that it was solely those nasty Spaniard Conquistas who’d done in the Mesoamericans.”
I’m not a fan of Mr. Gibson as a filmmaker and I don’t share all his ideas, but I remember that movie with a “Schadenfreude” feeling, when I noticed it roused some people ire, here and in South/Central America. You can guess who were those angry people: local woke people here, and usual victimist South American and Mexican nationalists. The noble savage myth (ironically made up by an European: Rousseau), is very useful yet to justify western wokesters and Iberoamerican nationalists agendas (natives always good people, white men always bad people), so nasty natives atrocities in that movie were anathema for them…Because always deny natives dark side (all cultures have had some awful aspects).
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Xcalibur # 315:
“On the other hand, none of them foresaw the Fall of the Soviet Union, assuming the Soviet model would still be functioning in the 2000’s, so they got blind-sided there.”
It was a train derailing nobody saw it, even the “Kremlinologists” failed in their forecasts (if you’re old enough, you can remember those “experts” in the opaque Soviet Union politics, like me: I was a child during the ’80s).
I can tell you that, at least here,(and maybe in another western countries too), some economists thought during the ’60s, (due to the apparent success in new economical politics made by Khruschev and his political heir in USSR), that Soviet Union could get over the “free world” in a few years…Not all of them were Marxists. Spain was a far right dictatorship during those times, so those “predictions” scared Franco and his supporters. A new “Communist fear” was added to usual angry and frightened anti-Communist commonplaces against the East Block. Ironically, I can say:
1-Those economists never thought USSR government could fake its economical “success” (being another kind of dictatorship, a very likely suspicion). They were naive enough to believe their enemy propaganda.
2-Even in a true economical growing case (to some extent), economical cycles everywhere secure economical growth doesn’t go on forever (and USSR eventually collapsed in last ’80s-early ’90s, after a decline since more or less last ’70s).
I’ll cast my vote for the Magical Map of North America.
“just two servants put Ms. Dashwood in the middle class, and fairly well down in it.”
That’s another sign of decline then as the middle class today can in no way afford two servants. But you are right, even Miss Marple living off the income of a small legacy had a maid.
As for Washington’s geology, it’s a mess. Nick Zentner has a series of videos on the topic, he’s a professor at Central Washington University. Mount Stuart by Leavenworth used to be in Baja. It’s on a journey to BC.
Then there is Siletzia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siletzia
JMG,
Here is a kind of upside down example of the Y2K fallacy. Sometime in the early 2000’s the EPA outlawed leaded fuel for motorcar use ( and supposedly every other use). There were calls of doom and gloom in the general aviation industry ( small private planes with piston engines) because these planes all run on engines designed in the 1950’s and built unchanged until now, and these ancient engines need lead to boost the octane and avoid damaging knocking ( predetonation) .
My wife ran a municipal airport as part as her job as public works director in a small city at the time and the hew and cry over this was huge. Honda set out to build and certify a modern engine for new planes and replacements, the europeans pursued aviation diesels.( a real y2k solution) Then just as Honda was ready for the very expensive certification testing the FAA and EPA said, Naw we will just allow leaded avgas forever. Honda pulled out because without a mandated sunset on the fuel they could not count on enough sales to make the certification worthwhile.
Now 20 something years later we still used leaded fuel in small planes but the chickens are coming home to roost. Many legit studies are showing high levels of lead In the plants and soil in residential areas surrounding airports which is forcing the issue once again. So the FAA ( and EPA) have decided to move forward on a another temporary solution, switch to a new blend of avgas with not lead but 30% aromatics. These aromatics are primarily Xylene, Toluene and Mesitylene. These were all phased out for use in any kind of painting 20 years ago because of the toxicity. So when we could have had a real Y2K solution 20 years ago they choose to put a band-aid on it and are now replacing that moldy peeling band-aid with a new new with pictures of cute kitties on it to seem better.
Clay, you’re so right in that assessment of what constitutes PNW to southern Californians. I hadn’t seen that comment and to me PNW means Oregon on up. Well, that sure takes some of the zing out that account relative to what we’re discussing here. Ah well. Feel free to ignore!
JMG, okay, I’ll bite. Given that corporations run industrialism, and they evolved out of feudal society, what term would you prefer for the organizational structure itself, which predominates today? Managerial elite is the bees knees, but refers to the form of the elite. I’m trying to find a good term for the organizational structure itself. Late stage industrialism suffers from the same objection as neo feudalism, it seems to me. Degenerated feudalism seemed as good a working term as any, but I can see it might be easily misread. Regards
Clay Dennis #321
“just above San Francisco so not reasonable to be described as the PNW, which officially extends north from the Oregon/California border, unless you want to think on an geographic/climate basis in which you might start it at Mendocino California, but never Sonoma.”
Defining regions by straight lines on maps has always seemed weird to me. It’s so artificial- a straight east-west line at 42 degrees north. If I’m there on the ground, how do I know where it is? To me, using real things like rivers and mountains makes the most sense, but that opens a whole different can of worms, like when rivers shift their course.
I think of the PNW on the geographic/climate basis you mentioned. Of course that gives it a really weird shape. And everybody will have different opinions about it. To me, it’s a long thin triangle with a bend in it where the coast bends. And the “home” feeling I get fades out toward the southern end of it. But it starts all the way down by Point Reyes National Seashore (a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, for those who aren’t familiar). Down there it’s a very thin sliver right at the coast; the tip of the triangle. The sliver slowly widens out until you get to Mendocino county, and from there the boundary just follows the crest of the mountains all the way up. The north side of the triangle is the Fraser river in British Columbia; something changes there, the feeling is still nice, but for me that “home” feeling stops at the river. To me, BC has more in common with Yukon and Alaska, but ‘officially’ it’s part of PNW.
I guess the ‘feeling’ we’ve been discussing falls under magical things, and we’re takling about places. So my vote is for the magical map of North America, since we’re already talking about it.
Possibly OT: but a thought came to me. If Trump is still channeling The Changer, then, even if he’s a New Yorker and not a Southwesterner, his behavior, morals (none) and personality are a perfect match for Coyote!
@ Justin Patrick Moore (and anyone else interested in this topic!)
This just popped up in my feed and it seems apropos to our discussion on whether or not religion belongs to the land.
https://americanesoteric.substack.com/p/the-soul-in-north-america-native
It just occurred to me that the claims of contact with aliens just might be inhabitants of this land communicating with us rather than extraterrestrials. Of course, many cultures have had similar experiences, but for some reason it seems more frequent here than with other countries.
You also have to somehow explain the rapid explosive growth of Christianity among sub-Saharan Africans and the indigenous population of Latin America in the past few decades if the Christian God isn’t present anymore. Those same sub-Saharan Africans are immigrating into Europe and the indigenous population of Latin America are immigrating into the United States and in both cases bringing their vibrant Christianity with them.
Hello Mr. Greer,
I vote for the magical geography of North America. I know you will likely restrict it to the US, but if you can throw in at least a brief mention of Mexico, that would be awesome.
Thank you,
Ennobled little day
Mr. Greer @ 306 .. then there’s those ‘Black Irish’ .. who’ve, centuries back .. probably aquired a fair dose of the ‘hairy ones’ double helix thingies. ‘;] Amazing what, in this case, a failed armada did promoting gene progression/expression.
re: Nicene creed in the anglican church. I’ve recited it in church so often I can nearly do it by heart. Also sing it. It’s a standard part of most services.
Every time I hear about “the Y2K event”, I am reminded of two things. The first is that I was traveling in an unstable part of the world, and the local security forces quietly foiled a Y2K terror plot. The second is the joke about “Y2KY Jelly” lubricant. It allows four digits to fit in the space of two. Which, in turn, remind me of “WWJD-40” spray penetrating oil and rust preventative, for truly accursed machinery problems.
In the spirit of this post, and the blog in general, I bought a used book at a charity book sale today: Small Time Operator: How to start your ow business, keep your books, pay your taxes, and stay out of trouble.” Bernard Kamoroff, CPA. 57th printing, Jan. 2002. Bell Springs Publishing. It seems prudent to start studying the field, in case I want to exercise my hobby machine tools for income. I suppose a lot of CPA-ish details have changed in 24 years, but this should give me the fundamentals.
xcaliber #315: re: making predictions. This is a quote from the International Slide-Rule Museum web site:
Over the course of their history Keuffel & Esser became the largest manufacturer of slide rules in the US. In 1967, Keuffel & Esser, commissioned a study of the future. The report predicted that, by the year 2067, Americans would live in domed cities (possibly influenced by Issac Asimov’s robot novel Caves of Steel) and watch three-dimensional television. Unfortunately for the company, the report failed to predict that slide rules would be obsolete in less than ten years, replaced by the pocket calculator. By 1976, Keuffel & Esser mothballed its slide rule manufacturing equipment and sent it to the Smithsonian Institution.
More recently, I used a slide rule to do some simple projections regarding exponential growth of a certain viral disease (which must go un-named in this blog). My predictions weren’t much better than K&E’s, in the long run. That is good, because I whimsically extended exponential fatality rates to the bitter end, just to see how long it would take before the model diverged from reality. (Not long.)
Hi John Michael,
Just learned something interesting. Seems like our country err, divested, 10% of our US treasury reserves last year. Who knew? ‘Very big structural forces’ pushing bond markets to the brink and interest rates higher.
One of the weird things about the bond market, is that as the supply goes up, the yields increase – and that my friend is the cost of debt, right there shown to all in its ugly glory of price discovery.
If I may add, peering into my palantír (please excuse the amusing pun) in a decades time, you may be writing an essay titled: The Arty-Fish-Al fallacy revisited!
We may be getting close to some serious trouble.
Cheers
Chris
On the subject of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. : Although it’s part of the Anglican Communion (at least it was the last time I checked), it actually didn’t get its authority directly from the Church of England. Many Anglicans were Loyalists, and fled to Canada or back to England after the War, leaving the United States with no bishops. Without bishops, it was impossible to do confirmations and ordinations, along with a number of administrative tasks. So after the hostilities had died down a bit, a group of priests were selected to go to England to be ordained as bishops for America. The Church of England hierarchy were willing to do this, so long as the ordinands took the usual oath of loyalty to the Crown, which for some strange reason they were unwilling to do. 😉 So these Americans sat down and thought it over, and then remembered that Scotland had something called the Scottish Episcopal Church, whose bishops were in apostolic succession and in full communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Scottish bishops were more than happy to perform the ordinations, probably as much to poke the English as anything else. I’ve always thought that might be one reason why the American church calls itself “Episcopalian” instead of “Anglican”.
As for the differences from one parish to another: one characteristic of Anglicanism is what they call “churchmanship”, meaning what style one uses for the services and the sermons. There’s High Church (lots of ceremonial with emphasis on administration of the sacraments) and Low Church (simpler services with emphasis on preaching), and as JMG mentioned, on the High Church side, there are nosebleed-high spiky Anglo-Catholics who are more Catholic than are the Catholics these days. There is also Broad Church which emphasizes modern values and social justice, along with a wide scope of practice and theology. Most parishes are a little of all three, usually with one predominating.
In addition, during the Guilded Age, the Episcopal Church was practically the established church of the upper middle class, and there is a certain kind of snootiness and insularity in those parishes who carry that attitude forward. And then there are the ones who are so modern and liberal that the might as well be Unitarians with a Book of Common Prayer. And whatever the churchmanship, one often finds a typical attitude of liberal Protestant churches, in which “everyone is welcome”, but nobody will talk to you.
Where I live, Episcopalian churches are the third most numerous, after Roman Catholic and Congregationalist, and if one is willing to accept the basic Anglican mindset, one can find a comfortable congregation within easy driving distance.
Clay Dennis
I guess I have always thought of the PNW as starting with a narrow strip of the Mendocino coast and widening as it goes north out to the Cascades north of Grants Pass up through western OR,WA, BC and SE AL.,perhaps up to Glacier Bay.
Re: Justin Patrick Moore #308:
https://nypost.com/2026/09/06/us-news/hiker-26-missing-after-never-returning-from-off-trail-excursion-at-olympic-national-park/
I know this young man and his parents; we go to the same church. Our congregation is seriously rattled by Neil’s disappearance. And I was wondering about the inhospitability of the Olympic Forest while we were praying for his safe return on Sunday.
Excalibur #315, Chuaquin
Acording with the historian Andrei Fursov, the break down of Soviet Unión, was an inside job arranged by the Soviet nomenklatura guided by the purpose of transform their real power in property wich could be inheritedbby their descendants.
The catastrophe of Chernobill would be a sabotaje framed in this strategy.
@Michelle: I was sad to read this story, he is so young. I will add my own prayer to those of the congregation for him. I can’t imagine what it is like for the parents, his family and friends. I am so sorry.
@Jon G: Thank you for the American Esoteric link. I will definitely check it out and keep an eye on what else the person writes over there.
I vote for the Magical Map of North America for the next fifth Wednesday topic.
“Although it’s part of the Anglican Communion (at least it was the last time I checked)”
The Anglican Communion has had a schism in the last few years, with 85% the Anglican Communion rebuking Canterbury and going over to form their own “Global Anglican Communion”. The remaining 15% who stuck with Canterbury include the Episcopal Church in the Untied States of America.
Once again, all votes have been tabulated.
Siliconguy, I recall a poem by comic poet Ogden Nash, writing just after the Second World War, bemoaning the fact that he could no longer get the cook and two maids to run his house that he’d been used to having before the war. The end of the domestic service economy was quite the remarkable shift. As for Washington geology, oh, I know — when I was a teenager it was one of my autistic “special subjects.” (I got there the honest way — I was a serious dinosaur fiend in early childhood, and later on cheered on the triumph of continental drift theory, after all those years of official denials.) I had an old book of roadside geology I took with me whenever we traveled, and bored the bejesus out of everybody with excited comments about this or that rock formation. Fun times!
Clay, thanks for this. A very typical story.
Celadon, no, industrialism evolved out of mercantilism which evolved out of the guild system — which was a rival to the feudal system from way back, evolving as a rival power nexus as soon as urban centers began to rival the castle-centered rural economy of feudal Europe. All over Europe and in the US as well, you can pinpoint the transfer of power from the feudal system to the mercantilist/protocapitalist system, because there were horrific wars involved — the English Civil War kicked off the process, and our Civil War (which ended the dominion of our plantation-owning feudal class over the federal government) more or less marked its completion. Industrialism itself evolved from entrepreneurial capitalism to investment capitalism and then to bureaucratic capitalism — the difference lies in the location of economic and political power: is it in the hands of direct owner-operators of businesses, has it been transferred via publicly traded corporations to big investors, or has power devolved on corporate officials with a revolving-door policy connecting them to the government and nonprofit bureaucracies they also control? What’s happening now is that bureaucratic capitalism is breaking down and giving way to investment capitalism — cue the techbro billionaires, our current robber barons. These are all sub-modes of the industrial economy, so I would use the term “late industrialism” or, if you want to be more specific, “late capitalist industrialism” as a general label.
Patricia M, a case could be made!
Jon, thanks for this!
Anon, is it the same god? In many African diaspora religions, the names of Christian saints are quite commonly used for beings who are obviously West African deities; I suspect the same thing is going on in this case. I’m well aware of the phenomenon you’re discussing, btw; when I lived in Rhode Island my apartment was about six blocks from the local Mountain of Fire and Miracles church, a Nigerian denomination that sends a lot of missionaries to convert us benighted American heathens. It’s interesting stuff; within an ostensibly Christian framework, there’s a lot of teachings and practice about ancestral spirits, inherited curses, and deliverance from demons who don’t seem all that much like those in white Christian lore.
Polecat, very likely, as the “black Irish” are descended from the people who were there before the Celts showed up. You get a lot of that same dark hair and dark eye combination among the Welsh, for the same reason.
Lathechuck, yes, I remember those jokes. As for Small Time Operator, that’s an absolute classic — rely on it.
Chris, yep. Everyone’s quietly shedding their dollar holdings, as they know as well as I do that the US will soon have no choice but to default on its debts. Serious trouble? Yep.
Elias, thanks for this. The parish I attend was not one of the elite parishes — in most parts of the US, there were big Episcopal churches for the white middle class and smaller Episcopal churches for people of color and the poor, and Ascension was one of the latter. (This is nearly parallel to the Baptist habit, still in place in much of the South, of having a big First Baptist Church for white folks and a smaller, more cheaply made, but much livelier Second Baptist Church for everyone else.) We’ve got a highly multiracial congregation, a modestly sized if attractive building, and a Broad Church orientation (though the new rector seems to be trying to gently nudge it a bit higher). You’re right about Anglo-Catholics being more Catholic than the Pope, too, though admittedly that’s not hard these days; the last time I went to the local Anglo-Catholic parish, there were prayers at a little shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and a communion service that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in 1400 or so, barring the language.
Michelle (if I may), I hope things turn out for the best…but the Olympic peninsula is a very, very risky place to leave the trail. I’ve hiked there extensively, and wouldn’t go off trail for anything.
Anselmo, I’m sorry to hear that. Now I’m wondering how you say Dolchstoß (“stab in the back”) in Russian…
One thing worth noting is that in the Episcopalian church you don’t have to actually do anything as part of the service if you don’t want to or don’t feel you honestly can. You can just sit there. The last time I went to one, I sang the hymns but was silent during the creed.
(I was told something similar by a Catholic once; he was against the practice of the priest giving blessings to non-believers in lieu of communion. He said he’d prefer they just stay seated, and that it was nobody else’s business if someone doesn’t get in line.)
“Anon, is it the same god? In many African diaspora religions, the names of Christian saints are quite commonly used for beings who are obviously West African deities; I suspect the same thing is going on in this case. I’m well aware of the phenomenon you’re discussing, btw; when I lived in Rhode Island my apartment was about six blocks from the local Mountain of Fire and Miracles church, a Nigerian denomination that sends a lot of missionaries to convert us benighted American heathens. It’s interesting stuff; within an ostensibly Christian framework, there’s a lot of teachings and practice about ancestral spirits, inherited curses, and deliverance from demons who don’t seem all that much like those in white Christian lore.”
I have often speculated that an Africanized Christianity might constitute the “Second Religiousness” predicted by Spengler. It has a potency very much lost in the faith’s traditional heartlands. Also like medieval Christianity, which Spengler predicted that the Second Religiousness would imitate, African Christianity has some polytheistic residue that gives it a richness, and vibrancy (much like pre-Reformation Christendom).
Chauquin,
Per my inlaws, African Americans have white facial structure: noses, eyebrows, jaws, etc. Skin color is secondary . . . and of course their family is part white (maybe Portuguese or Arabic, or German . . .) before their kids all married Americans so everyone is very interestingly mixed up. (My family is just as xenophilliac, so no one cares except in the geneological sense.)
@Ian
We’re talking about two different biomes! Algonquin Park is on the shield, but it is part of the Great Lakes Transition Forest, not the true boreal. You have to actually go into Northern Ontario to get what I’m talking about– think Prince Rupert’s Land, not cottage country. Moose country, not deer. Closest to/easiest to reach from the Big Smoke would probably be the old growth pine stand in Lady Evelyn Provincial Park. Beautiful– but you don’t want to stay long.
My family has been on the shield, in the transition forest biome, for generations, and I agree with most of what you said about it. This biome usually has a vibe between indifferent and welcoming depending where you go– though as you say, sometimes you get warned off! Again, though, it’s not the same forest even if it’s geographically contiguous.
Servants…Agatha Christie once said, “I never thought I’d be rich enough to afford an automobile or poor enough not to have servants.”
And the foreword to any older edition of The Joy of Cooking states it’s for the woman whose cook has left her to fend for herself.
Perhaps servants will make a comeback? For the typical office jockey it would be a lot more attractive than working oneself to death (literally) as a farm worker.
Since people have discussed the issue of servants (in lieu of technology), I would point out that a phrase on the topic from one of Amy Tan’s novels, this one set in pre-war China, is very hard to forget. I paraphrase from memory: “we never had running water, we had running servants…”
“Since the American Alpine Club started tracking in 1951, Washington has had more reported accidents than any other state or region. Washington has 2,134 climber accidents recorded to date, followed by California, with 1,798 accidents. Washington also ties with California for most climber fatalities to date (378 per state).”
https://www.climbing.com/skills/washington-climbing-accidents/
I found that while looking up the deaths around the Enchantment Mountains near Leavenworth.
You can google Enchantment Mountain Fatalities for details on those. They are not forgiving of errors.
Further north is no better.
https://www.kuow.org/2025-05-14/sole-survivor-of-deadly-north-cascades-climbing-accident-shares-details
Hi John Michael,
Yeah, it’s not good, and the old timers did quip that: actions speak louder than words.
If I may add, upon further consideration of this new information, the dust up in the middle east is beginning to look more like a punitive act against a whole bunch of players, down under included. Still, your economic toys are going away, and that was going to happen sooner or later, and now we are fast approaching an inflexion point of sorts. I wonder what startling horrors will be revealed in the news today?
Cheers
Chris
I vote for the magical map of North America as the Fifth Wednesday topic.
One of the definitions of “riot” – Dazzling Display: A vivid, wild mix of bright things, such as a “riot of colors” in a garden
One of my favorite verses in the New Testament. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”
Yes, we have a “riot” of Christianities all over the world. Emerson said “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”
Hey JMG
May I ask what topic is winning the 5th Wednesday post vote?
Scotlyn 302
> 1640 was the year my earliest American ancestor reached American shores at what became Rehoboth (which now straddles Massachusetts and Rhode Island) in 1643. And I see that my ancestor, William Sabin, is mentioned here as one of the founders
Nah‼️ Holy gargantuan pile of cr_p‼️
I am of the Rehoboth Carpenters. My mother’s father’s mother (one Susan Carpenter, I believe born about 1865) (based in Quebec; New York State, Lake Champlain region) was born a Carpenter of those Carpenters. (I only know because I turned into an amateur genealogist & family historian,— up the wazoo.)
Now if it is one thing I get excited about, it is bumping into a 14th cousin, such as here and now. It is too late in the day (bedtime) so I shan’t go into detail at this time; I would have to refer to my computer genealogy database to ascertain the exact line.
I likely won’t be able to focus on this for a few weeks due to I am drowning “the re-arranging of finances” after Jethro‘s death. But I am very excited. WOOO‼️
Sidebar: Today I spent the whole day dealing with Apple trying to get Jethro’s and my two Apple accounts less-of-a-mess. J’s death: I am living a nightmare; I hope things get better.
God bless…
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA
Siliconguy @ 324: whoa, Siletzia! Knew nothing about that; have travelled thru the region many times, but my geological knowledge of the area is mostly “Oooh look, Cascade Range Volcanoes.” Siletzia’s story is quite a realm to wrap one’s mind around. I put this on the speakers: https://613tube.com/watch/?v=6dH5y0BUXZ4 , (Sheherazade, by Renaissance) and pondered/contemplated/puzzled-over the incredible set of tales spun out in that Wikipedia entry. Mind you, I’m a big fan of John McPhee and his books like “In Suspect Terrain” and “Basin and Range”, but wow! What a region! “If the Rocks Could Speak…” Oh wait…
@Northwind Grandma
I think now that people are talking about the narrow minded Christians. My 2 cents is that it is unfortunately part and parcel in regards to the actual religion if you take it seriously. For example those verses(1 Corinthians 10:21,Galatians 1:8). Are anti-syncretic by its very nature.
Whatever is taught is Sunday school is seriously flanderized. Hence many people either become atheist or worship other Gods once they discover who this God actually is. And how he claims Authority over all existing Gods and other spirits.
There is no reconciling this metaphysics with other metaphysical systems.
I think is one of the key verses. EQ
Anonymous @346
The Anglican schism, if memory serves, was in the 90s, and was over gay marriage and the ordination of women ministers. Rowan Williams was the very liberal archbishop of Canterbury at the time. He supported both as did the churches in Britain, North America and Australasia. The more conservative churches in Africa and Asia didn’t and parted ways with the former.
Also when I was growing up in the New York, southern New England area. in the 40s and 5os being in the Episcopalian church and a country club were the marks of membership in the upper middle class. I knew both Baptists and Jews of my parents generation who became Episcopalians.
Siliconguy
Interesting on the climbing accident statistics. WA has 8’000’000 people, CA 40,000,000
@ Northwind Grandma # 359
Well, hello cuz! 🙂
Seriously, the bureaucratic hoops that a person has to jump through sometimes take us through some very low places.
My blessings, if you will have them, as you traverse your personal “valley of the shadow of death”…
@ info # 361
“My 2 cents is that it is unfortunately part and parcel in regards to the actual religion if you take it seriously. For example those verses(1 Corinthians 10:21,Galatians 1:8). Are anti-syncretic by its very nature.”
Thank you, yes, I think you have the way of it. Especially since the God who “claims Authority over all existing Gods and other spirits” is the very same one who proclaims Himself as the “Jealous God.”
When jealousy comes into it, syncretism, and other types of reconciliation, must go out. (In my very humble opinion, of course!).
(Maybe too late: I’m sorry)
Anonymous # 331:
Yes, Christianism is going to be extinct soon (I’m ironic), maybe Sub-Saharian people hasn’t noticed it…
A hurried answer to this apparent contradiction could be pointing the Christian God is a “mental placebo”, but well, it seems a very good placebo if goes on working for people around the world, except in Europe, where Christianism have declined so much (though I can tell you young people in Spain is becoming slightly into Catholicism and another Christian branches during last years). Another idea is that God isn’t the same, but who knows?
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Elias H # 339:
I didn’t know that historical origin of Episcopalian first new bishops after USA independence, it’s a very bizarre story, methink.
“on the High Church side, there are nosebleed-high spiky Anglo-Catholics who are more Catholic than are the Catholics these days.”
During my interfaith meetings, I’ve seen this dual tendency (High-Low Church). It’s an historical irony that Anglo-Catholics seem today more old school Catholics than nowadays Catholics (Vatican II Council has widened their differences, because Catholic Church has been modernized, to some extent…). It’s also interesting some Anglican (High Church) prayers are undistinguishable from Catholic ones, so often ecumenical Anglican and Catholic people like to pray them together (I’ve seen this practice personally).
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Anselmo # 342:
“Acording with the historian Andrei Fursov, the break down of Soviet Unión, was an inside job arranged by the Soviet nomenklatura guided by the purpose of transform their real power in property wich could be inheritedbby their descendants.
The catastrophe of Chernobill would be a sabotaje framed in this strategy.”
Claim # 1: An alternative explanation- Have you ever heard about “Hanlon’s razor”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
On the short form, Gorbachev tried to reform USSr to improve its decline…and failed.
Claim # 2:
Hanlon again can work as alternative “hypothesis”. During a time, sabotage to deny that Chernobyl disaster was a sum of big mistakes has been very popular within former USSR people, if I’m right. Of course, it’s a good smokescreen for selective blindness, methink.
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Boysmom # 350:
Of course, Afro-Americans have been under some mixing level with European origin people in the USA, like I’ve written some comments ago. You can see the same tendency in Caribbean countries and Brazil. I’ve also met some spanish guys here who are mixed, coming from interracial marriages.
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Servant in old times:
Until the second industrial revolution here (’60s), there was a lot of servants in Spain working for middle-high and high class. Often they were young single women from small towns and the countryside who didn’t want to work too hard in the farms (though working as a servant wasn’t exactly a sinecure) and see “world”. Sometimes they returned to their origins areas to marry there, but some of them met big towns men and married with them…some anothers become single women for the rest of their life, as servants. Some female servants were hardly treated by rich families, but some anothers were lucky and became near another part of the homes where they worked…
I’ll cast my vote for the subject of the fifth Wednesday for the spiritual connection between humans and trees, although some of the other subjects are also worthy contenders.
Siliconguy 320
> even Miss Marple living off the income of a small legacy had a maid.
I am a fan of murder mysteries, Miss Marple being one of my favorites, in any format.
Lately, I have been re-re-re-re-watching various Marple series’ on TV (currently Amz Prime Video); I have been perplexed how Miss Marple apparently owns her own cottage, and, yes, she has a maid. Although I am not sure she owns the cottage; I assume so. No mention, ever, of a landlord or rental payments.
In some episodes, the executives has Miss Marple living in a really big “cottage,” what looks to have eight-to-ten bedrooms,— I would call it a good sized house. Except for her maid, Miss Marple is the only occupant unless she has a guest. I didn’t know the character Miss Marple had “a legacy,”— I bet it was a great-aunt who left her some cash and a house.
💨🫥💨Northwind Grandma
Wisconsin, USA