Tag: economics

Energy: Preparations and Possibilities Revisited

John Michael Greer68 Comments

Last month we started the process of looking back twenty years at my earliest and least accurate set of predictions about the deindustrial future, with an eye to learning from the mistakes and successes of my work in that earlier era, and drawing some conclusions for where we can go from here. This week I’ll…

Energy: Predicaments and Prospects Revisited

John Michael Greer250 Comments

A few weeks ago, as regular readers will remember, I glanced back twenty years to my earliest and least accurate overview of the future of industrial civilization. My intention was to use that backward look as a way to talk about where we were, where we are, and where we’re headed as our society moves…

Briefing for the Descent, Revisited

John Michael Greer414 Comments

It’s long been a source of wry amusement to me that some of my critics like to insist that I never admit it when I’m wrong. What makes that amusing to me is partly that it’s not true—I’ve discussed my mistakes tolerably often in these online essays—and partly that it’s very clear that what actually…

A Game of Musical Chairs

John Michael Greer333 Comments

Some turning points in history are impossible to miss. They involve battle-cries and the clash of weapons, gatherings making decisions that can never be undone, and equally obvious events. Then there are the turning points that slip past unnoticed by most of the people whose lives they will overturn. I’ve come to think that one…

The End of the Bureaucratic Era

John Michael Greer383 Comments

For several years now I’ve had readers ask me from time to time about my opinion of the current media and investment frenzy surrounding so-called Artificial Intelligence (AI). The first thing I’ve had to explain in each of those cases is that the label is a misnomer; generative large language models, to give these bloated…

On the Education of Desire

John Michael Greer335 Comments

As I mentioned a little over a month ago, the competition over which theme would get the fifth Wednesday post in December was almost unparalleled in the enthusiasm it generated and the number of votes the top three themes generated. All three of the themes are worth a post, and I decided well before cognitive…

Evil Makes You Stupid: A Case Study

John Michael Greer330 Comments

Yes, as most of my readers are probably aware by now, I’ve relocated. It’s been a little less than two years now since my wife Sara died; it’s been a rough road since then but I’ve dealt with it about as well as I’m ever likely to, and over the holidays just past it became…

The Rowling Effect

John Michael Greer293 Comments

Yes, I know I was supposed to go on this week to discuss downward mobility as a way to freedom, the next of the themes that took the three top spots in this month’s fifth Wednesday competition. It’s a topical subject, not least on account of the wrenching changes now under way in the political…

The Fall and Rise of Peak Oil

John Michael Greer279 Comments

It’s now been close to fifteen years since the Peak Oil movement collapsed and lost whatever temporary grip it had on public awareness. We could doubtless have an interesting conversation along the lines of “did it fall or was it pushed,” and there may be a point to that conversation a little further down the…

Parsifal: The Solution Assessed

John Michael Greer226 Comments

As we saw two weeks ago, Richard Wagner’s last opera Parsifal makes use of most of the same symbols as The Ring of the Nibelung, and thus provides a mordant commentary to the theme of that vast and sprawling work. The magic treasure, the magic spear, the antagonist who wins power by a terrible renunciation…