Collapse

[Wind]

It's biological. Chimpanzees in particular, but most mammals as well are like that. They want to be led by a strong man, literally.

Both biological and psychological, I'm sure.

[Dreamtimer]

Take a look at Bonobos. There are many animals that don't require the 'strong male'.

Elephants have a strong female. The males do not lead the herds.

Are you saying Fred, that Americans in general are all victims of said trauma based mind control?

[Fred Steeves]

Are you saying Fred, that Americans in general are all victims of said trauma based mind control?

Certainly not all.

[Dreamtimer]

Thanks, wanted to be sure.

[Amanda]

Chris et al - When you reacted to one of my posts, you mentioned an actual collapse. Your focus was financial. Got me thinking Laterally and Critically. The next collapse will not just be about the fiscal structure - what about all the electronic devices?

Imagine a collapse like no other. Almost everyone has some type of device connected to the grid. People may have a desktop computer or a mobile hand held device but the point I want to make is that should a collapse be imminent - imagine the reaction of everyone. Imagine the withdrawal from electronic devices.

The only positive aspect is this: People may actually start speaking to one another again. On a more serious note - the fact that people have their banking and health records and all matter of their day to day living activities and expenses connected to the 'grid' means that life would change dramatically.

To get the Cognitive Dissonance kick started, I like to utilise a very strong example. It always gets a good reaction when I mention it during face to face discussions on life. One day the government will make an announcement. The announcement will run something like this (remember it is a strong example for the purposes of an intellectual thinking exercise): Okay we have discovered that we are overpopulated and everyone is going to have to kill their first born.

What will you do? Just say; "No." The switch will be flicked for those who fail to participate. No access to banking records, no access to health records. What will you do?

Personally - When the collapse comes this time around, it will be a very different type of collapse. Those who have been lulled into a false sense of security will suffer the most. There are people who now have almost all their day to day living stored on the 'computer' and do not pay bills in person or attend to anything away from their electronic devices. How will they cope?

Loving this thread. Thank you.

Much Peace - Amanda

[Dreamtimer]

It's terrorism and blackmail. The only answer is no. Once people give in to that, they have to keep giving in. Like with extortion.

[Aragorn]

It's terrorism and blackmail. The only answer is no. Once people give in to that, they have to keep giving in. Like with extortion.

And that's exactly what has gotten us into the mess this world is today. People acquiesced.

And now we can't get out of the system anymore. You'd be considered a criminal for even trying.

[Chris]

Chris et al - When you reacted to one of my posts, you mentioned an actual collapse. Your focus was financial. Got me thinking Laterally and Critically. The next collapse will not just be about the fiscal structure - what about all the electronic devices?

Imagine a collapse like no other. Almost everyone has some type of device connected to the grid. People may have a desktop computer or a mobile hand held device but the point I want to make is that should a collapse be imminent - imagine the reaction of everyone. Imagine the withdrawal from electronic devices.

The only positive aspect is this: People may actually start speaking to one another again. On a more serious note - the fact that people have their banking and health records and all matter of their day to day living activities and expenses connected to the 'grid' means that life would change dramatically.

To get the Cognitive Dissonance kick started, I like to utilise a very strong example. It always gets a good reaction when I mention it during face to face discussions on life. One day the government will make an announcement. The announcement will run something like this (remember it is a strong example for the purposes of an intellectual thinking exercise): Okay we have discovered that we are overpopulated and everyone is going to have to kill their first born.

What will you do? Just say; "No." The switch will be flicked for those who fail to participate. No access to banking records, no access to health records. What will you do?

Personally - When the collapse comes this time around, it will be a very different type of collapse. Those who have been lulled into a false sense of security will suffer the most. There are people who now have almost all their day to day living stored on the 'computer' and do not pay bills in person or attend to anything away from their electronic devices. How will they cope?

Loving this thread. Thank you.

Much Peace - Amanda

It's not difficult to imagine how a collapsing modern society would cope with these new circumstances, we have plenty of current examples already. A shortlist of countries that have recently collapsed from a relatively high technological society to something a lot more basic can be quite instructive. Syria, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Venezuela are all pretty good examples.

My own assessment of the situation is that technology doesn't go away, at least not initially and not completely. Various machines and devices that are in good working order will continue to be used and shoot up in value to a considerable extent. The issue then becomes whether those machines can be maintained for any length of time. It does requires some sort of functioning industrial economy, at least on a more basic level, to keep these things running. With the right skills, they can be maintained and run for decades, if they are of the older, more durable type. Older automobiles, planes, phones, bicycles, etc... can be kept running for decades, even a century in some cases, if they were made before planned obsolescence became fashionable. I have a friend who makes regular trips to the Ukraine, a neighbouring country, to buy Russian-made white goods, such as fridges. They come with a 20-year warranty and are expected to last for at least a century. That is actually the potential that all industrial products have, if they were made with durability in mind, they would last several generations. Imagine if in a hundred years your family buys only one fridge, instead of, say 10, the savings in material, energy and labour costs are immense. I am sure that in terms of technology, that is what we are going back to, much more durable products that last several lifetimes and can easily be mended by hand with simple tools.

Dmitry Orlov goes further than that and talks about Shrinking the Technosphere and implementing nature-like technologies instead. His series on the topic is worth reading, if you haven't already.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...re-part-i.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...e-part-ii.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...-part-iii.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...e-part-iv.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...re-part-v.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...e-part-vi.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...-part-vii.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/1...part-viii.html

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2016/0...ypothesis.html

[Amanda]

Chris - I recall a conversation with a Computer Technician some years ago. An eventual collapse of society was mentioned and at one point in the conversation the Computer Technician stated to me:

"If the government turned off the computer grid I could get an intranet up and running. When I got our town connected we then connect to the next town and so on and so forth."

Locally I have been reliably informed of a Scientist/Engineer who made a working car that ran on water. Sadly the government shut him down. So when you speak of technology that should last considerably longer than it currently does - I hear you. I know that in any given society there would be plenty of talented and gifted People who would/could help rebuild.

And while we all tend to rely on electronic devices in this day and age I have come to learn that the Ancients had their own methods of long distance communication. Whether any type of collapse or even a total collapse comes tomorrow or in the future - surely it will be an opportunity for the People to manage their own affairs.

We certainly live in an interesting era.

Much Respect - Amanda

[Aragorn]

Chris - I recall a conversation with a Computer Technician some years ago. An eventual collapse of society was mentioned and at one point in the conversation the Computer Technician stated to me:

"If the government turned off the computer grid I could get an intranet up and running. When I got our town connected we then connect to the next town and so on and so forth."

Several local communities in the USA are already doing that right now as we speak, in response to the repeal of the Net Neutrality law in the US by the Federal Communications Commission, which once again allows ISPs and other companies to throttle traffic in function of corporate interests.

Locally I have been reliably informed of a Scientist/Engineer who made a working car that ran on water. [...]

Yes, there was a British engineer who had managed to convert his normal petrol/gasoline-powered Ford Escort to running on water. However, the process did involve recombining the water molecules from the common H₂O structure — which naturally forms as H-O-H — into H-H-O, which makes it into a combustible fuel.

As I understand it, he was shut down because of not having complied with the bureaucracy regarding the storage and transport of highly inflammable substances. Considering that this is a matter of paperwork, a good barrister should be able to have him comply with the law. Or at least, in theory, because we all know how protective the fossil fuel industry is of its dominance.

[Chris]

Chris - I recall a conversation with a Computer Technician some years ago. An eventual collapse of society was mentioned and at one point in the conversation the Computer Technician stated to me:

"If the government turned off the computer grid I could get an intranet up and running. When I got our town connected we then connect to the next town and so on and so forth."

Well, yes, but where would they get the reliable and constant electricity from to run the damn thing? The internet is the least of it, the electric grid is the key here and the question is whether it could be maintained for any length of time during a collapse. Maybe in some locales, that rely on locally produced coal, but I don't think that nationwide or even statewide grids could be kept running for very long.

Locally I have been reliably informed of a Scientist/Engineer who made a working car that ran on water. Sadly the government shut him down. So when you speak of technology that should last considerably longer than it currently does - I hear you. I know that in any given society there would be plenty of talented and gifted People who would/could help rebuild.

I am rather sceptical of this. Supposed free energy devices are legion, yet I have not seen a single one that can be scaled up and mass-produced to work on an industrial scale. I do think that waiting for some sort of magical technology to save us is going to lead to disappointment. It is what JHK calls techno-narcissism.

And while we all tend to rely on electronic devices in this day and age I have come to learn that the Ancients had their own methods of long distance communication. Whether any type of collapse or even a total collapse comes tomorrow or in the future - surely it will be an opportunity for the People to manage their own affairs.

We certainly live in an interesting era.

Much Respect - Amanda

That is a very good point. If there is a planetary civilisational collapse at some point, and with the state of our biosphere that looks increasingly likely, a lot of our current distractions will go away and we will have to learn to live closer to nature and grow much of our own food, no ifs and buts. Places like Phoenix and Dubai, will shrivel away and die. Canada and Russia will probably benefit, although in the latter case, not necessarily as a continuation of the current European colonial project that rules over North Asia. I think that part will be taken over by China and Japan as their populations flee north. Who knows what will happen in Europe and the USA, but I suspect they will be overwhelmed with climate refugees and will have to flee North themselves.

As for the long distance communications of the ancients, these are telepathy and astral projection. We will have to learn to use these methods again and they are very effective indeed.

[Chris]

Another essay from JHK on how collapse is progressing in the US and what it's symptoms are. Although Kunstler publishes two essays a week on his blog, I only post the ones here that are relevant to the topic of ongoing collapse and aren't just discussions about current US politics. Also, a fair warning, Kunstler uses a racial slur in the essay below to illustrate a point about Political Correctness. I don't agree with the use of this coined expression, but I have included it to maintain the comprehensibility of the essay. Mods, if you feel this should be bleeped out, feel free to do so.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/social-justice/

Social Justice


It may be as simple as this: voters look at the two parties and decide that they don’t want the nation to turn into a gigantic seminar on race and gender studies. The Democratic Party doesn’t have a platform, it has a curriculum. The party wants to instruct everybody how to think and act. You will be tested regularly on the correctness of your thought. And if you fail or object, say goodbye to your livelihood.

That’s the main reason that the Golden Golem of Greatness plays so well in the forsaken flyover precincts of this troubled land. They are weary of being scolded for their “privilege” by the privileged undergraduates of the most elite campuses. And from there, of course, the astounding hypocrisy informs and infects Democratic politics up to the highest level — e.g. the mendacious sex hysteria engineered by Diane Feinstein and a corps of DC swamp lawyers in the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing.

This year’s main gambit by the Democrats has been the niggerization of white people. Oh, did I say the wrong word? It happens to describe exactly what has gone on: the effort to make white people the object of contempt and loathing. You don’t have to look further than The New York Times and its hiring of Sarah Jeong as an editorial writer — after she was discovered to be the author of Twitter tweets that declared, “Cancel white people,” and “Oh man, It’s sick how much joy I get from being cruel to old white men,” and “dumbass fucking white people….” I’m wondering: is there any ambiguity there? By the way, a search of The Times website for “by Sarah Jeong” comes up absolutely empty, suggesting that they’ve published nothing written by her since she got hired. There’s a show of confidence in their integrity!

Unless the financial markets blow up conveniently by the end of business Monday morning, Mr. Trump will continue to bellow out his triumphs of economic management. Personally, I’m not persuaded this vaunted miracle boom is anything but the result of piling onto the national debt, one way or another — tax cuts, fiscal profligacy, “defense” spending. And nobody should trust the numbers coming out of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, since they don’t count the many people who have simply dropped out of job-seeking.

The nation is still slowly choking to death on the fatal combination of its suburban sprawl living arrangement, the tyranny of multinational corporations, the profitless Ponzi scheme of shale oil fracking, and the immersive dishonesty that has turned even medicine and education into deadly moneygrubbing rackets. That armature of grift has to collapse, and the collapse has already begun on the margins and is steadily working its way to the core, where even the hedge fund cowboys and masters-of-the-universe will end up gasping like stranded whales on the shoals of insolvency.

In the meantime, and even so, it is imperative to keep the Democratic Party from the levers of power. If elected, they will convert a necessary and inescapable Fourth Turning into a game show replay of the French Revolution, with overtones of the Spanish Inquisition. We have not nearly seen the end of how insane a society can become under duress. And the duress of living in a collapsing industrial economy is something that the world has hardly seen before. Why do you think so many people are opiating themselves into an early grave?
This country certainly deserves leadership that can inspire it to carry on, to find a way to live even within the austere terms presented by the collapse of old arrangements. It won’t be the end of the world, and finding new, workable arrangements for daily life will open new doors as the old ones close. None of the political figures onstage these days inspires much confidence in that proposition, or even appears to see what’s on the horizon. So the Democrats seek solace in their race and gender antics and the Republicans gaze longingly back at the year 1957, and the fate of the nation goes where it will.

[Dreamtimer]

As we have not yet collapsed, Americans are voting today.

Trump gets massive credit for mobilizing people.

Aragorn recently expressed his dissatisfaction with voting, which is required in his country.

Here, people are very excited. Usually about 30% of the US population actually votes. Which means that Trump got elected by a very small portion of US citizens.

Midterms have even lower turnouts. In normal times.

But we're not in normal times. We're in the Trump era. And people are coming out in droves to vote and have been very excited about voting. Certain voting demographics are up by numbers like 700%.

Health care, economy, immigration and Trump are among the things people are 'voting on'.

[Chris]

As we have not yet collapsed, Americans are voting today.

Trump gets massive credit for mobilizing people.

Aragorn recently expressed his dissatisfaction with voting, which is required in his country.

Here, people are very excited. Usually about 30% of the US population actually votes. Which means that Trump got elected by a very small portion of US citizens.

Midterms have even lower turnouts. In normal times.

But we're not in normal times. We're in the Trump era. And people are coming out in droves to vote and have been very excited about voting. Certain voting demographics are up by numbers like 700%.

Health care, economy, immigration and Trump are among the things people are 'voting on'.

Usually I couldn't give a toss about US midterms, but this one is important, not just for Americans, but the whole planet. An America sliding further towards fascism would be a disaster for all of us. Some people complain about how much attention US politics gets on this forum and sometimes I'm among them, but this one really is crucial for the rest of the world as well.

It's not like I'm a fan of the democrats, I pretty much echo Kunstler's dissatisfaction with them, which i quoted in my previous post. My own issue with them is actually their lack of true progressivism, they seem to be fixated on irrelevant, marginal issues that don't make much of a difference to people's lives and continue the same corporatist agenda that the Republicans propagate. I would have a lot more sympathy for them if they campaigned for single-payer universal healthcare, free college, proper maternity leave (12 months at least), mandatory paid holidays, universal dental care, that sort of thing.

Note that these things are self-understood in much poorer countries than the US, it is an absolute scandal that Americans have to go without such basic social services. You may not believe this, but my Polish colleague, a guy, just informed me that he will be out of office for 6 months to take his paid paternity leave. Yep, Polish fathers get 6 months paid paternity leave, whereas mothers can take up to 2 YEARS. That is normal in Europe. Unless democrats start campaigning for stuff like that, I can't take them seriously or put my trust in them.

[Dreamtimer]

An American study came out showing that women do take a hit in terms of pay once they take maternity leave. Interestingly, men take an even worse hit if they take paternity leave. (can't recall study at moment, will try to find it).

I've heard corporate types quoted as describing salary as part of a market. As in, "Show me where the market is for paying you that much". Apparently market value of people goes down when they reproduce.

As an interesting correlation, there's a good bit of scandal involving the church of scientology strongly encouraging abortion, especially in the Sea Org.

Gotta keep working all the time!