Right. I usually don't bother. Their complaint, of course, implies that we would do something about overpopulation if only we would recognize it. Which is absurd. What might we do about overpopulation here in the USA? Legislate a one-child policy? Set up an onerous set of bureaucratic protocols forcing citizens to apply for permission to reproduce? Direct the police to shoot all female babies? Use stimulus money to build crematoria outside of Nashville?
It's certainly true that the planet is suffering from human population overshoot. We're way beyond "carrying capacity." Only the remaining supplies of fossil fuels allow us to continue this process, and not for long, anyway. In the meantime, human reproduction rates are also greatly increasing the supply of idiots relative to resources, and that is especially problematic in the USA, where idiots rule the culture and polity.
The cocoon of normality prevents us from appreciating how peculiar and special recent times have been in this country. We suppose, tautologically, that because things have always seemed the way they are, that they always have been the way they seem. The collective human imagination is a treacherous place.
I'm fascinated by the dominion of moron culture in the USA, in everything from the way we inhabit the landscape - the fiasco of suburbia - to the way we feed ourselves - an endless megatonnage of microwaved Velveeta and corn byproducts - along with the popular entertainment offerings of Reality TV, the Nascar ovals, and the gigantic evangelical church shows beloved in the Heartland. To evangelize a bit myself, if such a concept as "an offense in the sight of God" has any meaning, then the way we conduct ourselves in this land is surely the epitome of it - though this is hardly an advertisement for competing religions, who are well-supplied with morons, too.
Moron culture in the USA really got full traction after the Second World War. Our victory over the other industrial powers in that struggle was so total and stupendous that the laboring orders here were raised up to economic levels unknown by any peasantry in human history. People who had been virtual serfs trailing cotton sacks in the sunstroke belt a generation back were suddenly living better than Renaissance dukes, laved in air-conditioning, banqueting on "TV dinners," motoring on a whim to places that would have taken a three-day mule trek in their grandaddy's day. Soon, they were buying Buick dealerships and fried chicken franchises and opening banks and building leisure kingdoms of thrill rides and football. It's hard to overstate the fantastic wealth that a not-very-bright cohort of human beings was able to accumulate in post-war America.
And they were able to express themselves - as the great chronicler of these things, Tom Wolfe, has described so often and well - in exuberant "taste cultures" of material life, of which Las Vegas is probably the final summing-up, and every highway strip, of twenty-thousand strips from Maine to Oregon, is the democratic example. These days, I travel the road up the west shore of Lake George, in Warren County, New York, and see the sad, decomposing relics of that culture and that time in all the "playful" motels and leisure-time attractions, with their cracked plastic signs advertising the very things that they exterminated in the quest for adequate parking - the woodland vistas, the paddling Mohicans, the wolf, the moose, the catamount - and I take a certain serene comfort in the knowledge that it is all over now for this stuff and the class of morons that produced it.
A very close friend of mine calls them "the yeast people." They were the democratic masses who thrived in the great fermentation vat of the post World War Two economy. They are now meeting the fate that any yeast population faces when the fermentation process is complete. For the moment, they are only ceasing to thrive. They are suffering and worrying horribly from the threat that there might be no further fermentation. The brewers running the vat try to assure them that there's more sugar left in the mix, and more beer can be made from it, and more yeasts can be brought into this world to enjoy the life of the sweet, moist mash. In fact, one of the brewers did happen to dump about a trillion-and-a-half teaspoons of sugar into the vat during 2009, and that has produced an illusion of further fermentation. But we know all too well that this artificial stimulus has limits.
What will happen to the yeast people of the USA? You can be sure that the outcome will not yield to "policies" and "protocols." The economy that produced all that amazing wealth is contracting, and pretty rapidly, too, and the numbers among the yeast will naturally follow the downward arc of the story. Entropy is a harsh mistress. In the immediate offing: a contest for the table scraps of the 20th century. We've barely seen the beginning of this, just a little peevishness embodied by yeast shaman figures such as Sarah Palin and Glen Beck. As hardships mount and hardened emotions rise, we'll see "the usual suspects" come into play: starvation, disease, violence. We may still be driving around in Ford F-150s, but the Pale Rider is just over the horizon beating a path to our parking-lot-of-the-soul.
It's a sad and tragic process and, all lame metaphors aside, there are real human feelings at stake in our prospects for loss of every kind, but especially in the fate of people we love. The human race has known catastrophe before and come through it. There's some credible opinion that "this time it's different" but who really knows? We have our 2012 apocalypse movies. The people of the 14th century, savaged by the Black Death, had their woodcuts of dancing skeletons. Feudalism was wiped out in that earlier calamity but, whaddaya know, less than a century after that the Renaissance emerged in a wholly new culture of cities. Maybe we will emerge from our culture of free parking to a new society of living, by necessity, much more lightly on the planet and for a long time, perhaps long enough to allow the terrain to recover from all the free parking.
First!
A glimpse into McMansion living
http://www.suburbanempire.com
Caustic commentary... from Vermont!
Once again, Jim, the nail on the head. WHAM! Another observation: People no longer seem to give a damn about quality of product or service. It's rare these days to get exceptional service anywhere. Perhaps the yeasty froth instills lethargy and apathy as well. But then why would you want to do anything when the wealth (the wealth YOU didn't earn) is being spread around?
The bumper sticker I saw last week also hit the nail on the head: "Socialism is a great idea until you run out of other people's money"
The pot is getting warmer...
As author Richard Heinberg asked: Are we smarter than yeast? I'm afraid I would have to agree with Mr. Kunstler and say NO. It's been a great ride, albeit at the expense of the rest of the world.
www.academyofshem.com
Excellent column this week. Apologies for just doing Monday morning drive-by's; so many blogs and so little time. A little musical accompaniment for contemplation of the yeast people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw49mm-CmNo
And when the yeast people start buying things with the proceeds from those Buick Dealerships.... they buy things like McMansions.... and show them off on MTV!
http://www.suburbanempire.com
When it comes time to sell that McMansion, (minus equity) the upwardly mobile sputter in disbelief as they mark down real estate.... that turned out to be a bit more like "unreal estate", as far as perceived values went.
The best of the "Yeast People" is available for viewing, at any Wal-Mart... and on basic cable!
See..... The unsustainable lifestyles
Hear.... The endless whining
Taste... The cheeesy poofs
If you live in the US you get front row seats to the biggest freak show ever! Enjoy the view!
The overpopulation barkers usually have nothing more to offer than perhaps covering the Earth knee-deep in condoms and aborting those who get past anyway. And if it wasn't for the EEEEvil religionists standing in the way of enlightened family planning we'd all voluntarily hold our planet to some agreed-upon sustainable population.
Two things, not entirely unrelated, will take care of the current overpopulation. Disease and famine.
When energy costs prevent growing and distributing our vast quantities of food to the four corners...people will simply starve. The plus side is that this will be good for the earth.
And as living conditions deteriorate disease will take care of another pile of people. The added benefit of disease is that it will probably be more...democratic...in its effect than starvation. Rich folk with their pantries full of freeze dried jerky can get smallpox too.
The overpopulation barkers usually focus on preventing births as a primary factor of reducing populations. But few things match mass death to achieve that same goal.
The overpopulation barkers usually have nothing more to offer than perhaps covering the Earth knee-deep in condoms and aborting those who get past anyway. And if it wasn't for the EEEEvil religionists standing in the way of enlightened family planning we'd all voluntarily hold our planet to some agreed-upon sustainable population.
Two things, not entirely unrelated, will take care of the current overpopulation. Disease and famine.
When energy costs prevent growing and distributing our vast quantities of food to the four corners...people will simply starve. The plus side is that this will be good for the earth.
And as living conditions deteriorate disease will take care of another pile of people. The added benefit of disease is that it will probably be more...democratic...in its effect than starvation. Rich folk with their pantries full of freeze dried jerky can get smallpox too.
The overpopulation barkers usually focus on preventing births as a primary factor of reducing populations. But few things match mass death to achieve that same goal.
It's called "creative destruction," and it may be good in the long run, but there are going to be many victims in the short run.
Protect yourself and your capital. See http://www.thenothingstore.com
Crap. Sorry for the double.
When i try to explain Peak Oil to those not familiar to the concept, the overpopulation argument is always brought up as part of the peak oil counter-argument, as if one could roll off a spare two or three billion excess people in the third world and fix everything back to spiffiness. The argument, always tinged with a certain racism, is moot at any point now that several such countries are now nuclear-armed and have increasingly less to lose.
Meanwhile, H1N1 is perhaps the great dress rehearsal for the crux of the problem; our six-billion plus 46- chromosome incubators all diligently at work throughout the world, all breeding toward a new strain of ultra- efficient slate-wiping bacteria. The difference will be that at some point, the patent-holders for the new cure won't be able to Fedex the refrigerated dosages out fast enough. Overpopulation problem solved.
It does make for some interesting brunch arguments though...
Yes, James, let's talk about our loved ones. I don't spend much energy being gleeful about how the monster home dwellers will fuel their furnaces. I think about my young urbanite son whose life is dominated with building esoteric computer skills and buying obscure electronic music equipment. Recently he surprised me by saying he aspires to my lifestyle of living simply on hardly any income in a tiny house in the bush – as soon as he saves enough money to quit his job. How can I say that it's too late to build up that nest egg? But I was heartened to find out that he at least sees the value. He's enjoyed my cooking and doesn't call it 'hair shirt' living. I'm making a lot of noise about eating simply because it's not only a way to take a smaller bite out of planetary resources now, but it's good practice for a harsh future.
Lynn Shwadchuck
http://www.10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint, and a small grocery bill
That was hilarious!
You sir, are my favorite Elitist (next to myself).
Yeast is a brilliant metaphor because of its appeal to all: from the Duff-steeped denizens of Springfield to the dazed inheritors of Camelot (another magical kingdom, long ago and far away).
For yeast cells, there is no way 'out of the vat'. The choice is clear: Continue to eat and to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide gas, or die.
American yeast culture is in a similar predicament, but prospects for it though bleak, are not as irredeemable as those of the yeast cells who are ultimately doomed to settle into inebriated quiescence at the bottom of the secondary fermenter, at the final the end of transformative process of filtration. For yeast cells, the final irony is, that their own waste is ultimately valued more than they themselves! Who would've thunk it? What yeast cell could've thunk it? What North American yeast culture might yet think it, and stop short of a similar fate?
Nothing will replace oil, but there's a lot that North American yeast culture can do to ameliorate the effects of losing oil. I would respectfully submit that the substitution of 'mental energy' for other forms of energy might be an excellent place to start.
Now, back to my Corn Flakes . . . .
I give a damn but I am disappointed and disgusted at every turn. You are correct.
As for spreading the wealth, I can't believe that notion can possibly produce the desired result. I'm looking for unintended consequences down the line.
Entropy is the harshest of mistresses. She don't take no excuses.
On the other hand, ... (there is no other hand).
To illustrate the point that people can only imagine what they know, look at the posters who indignantly reject the very idea of "sharing the wealth" as un-American and against human nature.
When, actually, until class divided society, wealth was indeed shared among the tribe.
I was just talking with some friends about the after-human-Earth, when something would evolve that eats plastic, and how they would thrive and multiply until the plastic ran out.
One predicted that there would be some plastic eaters that would notice the plastic was running out, and try to warn the others, but the others would pooh pooh them and say that god loves them and would provide plastic forever.
I think he's right.
"Entropy is a harsh mistress."
Right on target as usual. This statement pretty much sums up the reality we all are facing at present. But the so called "yeast people" are going to be increasingly frustrated, devastatingly disappointed at their lives, very angry, and heavily armed. There will be a war against entropy. Question is, toward whom will it be directed. I.e. who will be designated as the "representative of entropy" toward whom anger and disappointment will be directed?
wardoc
"Entropy is a harsh mistress."
Right on target as usual. This statement pretty much sums up the reality we all are facing at present. But the so called "yeast people" are going to be increasingly frustrated, devastatingly disappointed at their lives, very angry, and heavily armed. There will be a war against entropy. Question is, toward whom will it be directed. I.e. who will be designated as the "representative of entropy" toward whom anger and disappointment will be directed?
wardoc
"Entropy is a harsh mistress."
Right on target as usual. This statement pretty much sums up the reality we all are facing at present. But the so called "yeast people" are going to be increasingly frustrated, devastatingly disappointed at their lives, very angry, and heavily armed. There will be a war against entropy. Question is, toward whom will it be directed. I.e. who will be designated as the "representative of entropy" toward whom anger and disappointment will be directed?
wardoc
This blog and its commentators have alike hit a new moral low with today's blog post.
How easy it is to visualize the suffering of those we despise and consider to be a vastly lower form of life than ourselves. It's awfully easy to visit our contempt on the people we imagine spend their lives breeding, drinking beer, watching crap entertainment, and careening up and down the interstates in 12mpg SUVs.
But is there a single person posting here, including JHK, who can really say that he or she is morally superior to the "yeast" people in their SUVs and 3000 sq ft plastic houses in the sprawlburbs? Is there anyone among us who doesn't stand to suffer life-threatening losses as our society unwinds, including not only amenity and basic decencies, but our health and lives? Is there anyone posting here who can state with any truth that he or she is prepared to carry on life on any terms independent of the gifts of modern culture, and who can really insulate himself from the destructive blowback of an imploding civilization with rapidly shrinking supplies of absolutely everything necessary to support life on any terms?
Those of you who prefer the operations of the four horsemen to birth control and abortion, please be the first to volunteer your own life in the cause of population reduction. Keep in mind that when the food shortages and pandemics hit, that you and yours will not be able to shelter yourselves from the disorder and shortages and sudden loss of every decency just because you fancy yourselves to be among the "elite". Your little 12-gauge shotgun might help you head off a home invader or two but it won't head off a rampaging horde of starving, desperate people..... that just might include you.
Let's hope that our people somehow cope, and learn to do better. Let's hope they learn really fast. Most of all, let's really, really hope that we can all learn a little kindness, and that goes double for the author of this blog and some of the people posting here, whose hatred for humanity seems so intense you wonder how they can even stand themselves.
The people of the 14th century, savaged by the Black Death, had their woodcuts of dancing skeletons. At the moment, there's a billboard in Albuquerque advertising liquor, which depicts a woodcut-type image of dancing skeletons wearing festive clothes, and the caption "Party like it's 1725." This is related to El Día de los Muertos which was recently celebrated with local parades & parties. It was a bit unnerving to encounter kids of kindergarten age with their faces made up to resemble skulls. Some cultures preserve the memory of centuries past, where ancestors lived very 'close to the bone.'
Excellent as usual JHK! And very funny!
We are fleeing to the world of "Idiocracy" (fantastic and realistic movie by the way) but we'll arrive sooner that 500 years.
The WWII American victory hided some real problems of US.
In fact the geography (two oceans) have stopped any invasion or full scale destruction (that was not the case in Europe or Asia).
To loose means sometimes to win (later). America from the Civil War never experienced a real war or defeat (military or otherwise)...
The hubris did the rest ("the end of history" , "american exceptionalism" and so on).
We are repeating the Roman Empire experience...
So nobody learned from history...
This time, you motivated me to sign on. I was beginning to wonder if I was a complete snob or if our country really has been getting dumber. Thanks for broaching the subject.
The old bromide, "Go West, young man", probably became bad advice about a century ago. What's left? Go to Mars, young man?
Jim,
the yeast metaphor is an interesting and provocative one but with some serious limitations. The yeast in a vat of beer, after all, are all working together in a non-hierarchical, natural and self-directed way to produce something useful, a characteristic I don't see widely paralleled in American culture.
There is no meaningful possibility that a population of yeast is going to produce technology sufficient to allow self-sustenance without the need for exogenous infusions of additional sugar — at least, not on any time scale short enough to be of comfort to an individual yeast organism.
By contrast, the principal challenges we seem to be facing are more political, social and economic than technical. Sure, cold fusion might be nice (then again, it might produce more aggravated concentrations of wealth and power than we're bedeviled by now), and odds of a breakthrough of that sort, while probably small and certainly difficult to predict, are certainly in the realm of the possible. Regardless, we might well get by nicely even with existing technology merely by living lives reordered along saner lines.
Thank you, Laura Louzader. Finally someone speaking the truth here.
I really love that you say the things that most people won't. Yeast People... love it.
I personally hope they wake up and figure out that under all that yeast is the core of a human being. There are so many of us who have figured it out and believe that we're moving toward a sustainable existence but sadly the majority have their heads neatly tucked in the... yeast (haha).
What will happen to the Yeast People? Zombies with guns me thinks. Not sure they will know how to survive any other way. For those of us all cleaned up... best to stay clear of the mess best we can.
The first thing we should do reform higher education to educate the yeast people and make them more appreciative of reality. First, we bulldoze the "land grant diploma mills" - I'd start with California State University at Long Beach, where Kwanzaa was invented. Then, we shut down the "Christian" colleges - Bob Jones is first! Then we reform the remaining colleges and universities to teach classical languages, the history of the Renaissance, and Western philosphy, once we make it clear what the Bill of Rights REALLY means. We tell the conservatives who complain about the dearth of American subjects and the women and minorities who charge cultural bias to shut the f*** up. Meanwhile, we close all the graduate schools that train rather than educate people in various professions not related to the humanities. We keep the med and law schools, but we get rid of business schools, journalism schools, and their ilk. Want to be a reporter? Go to work as a copy boy out of high school. The current American higher education system encourages Americans to, as Paul Fussell once wrote, make a pile if money and live a life untroubled by thought.
In Canada the fertility rate is 1.6, far below the often quoted 2.2 required to maintain the population. However, Canada's population will increase from 33 million to 43 million in 2050 according to a UN report. As the UN report states, this increase is due to immigration.
Most western countries have fertility rates that would result in declining populations. These are the same western countries that have highest energy consumption rates, and the most environmental impact.
JHK's post today is quite erroneous. Countries like the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, etc. would all have declining populations if not for immigration. JHK's comments on possible state interference in reproduction are really off the mark. The governments of "developed" countries can choose to have a growing, stable, or declining population, just by adjusting the immigration rate.
It is surprising that JHK hasn't grasped this reality.
The developed western countries still need to make the behavior changes necessary to live within the "carrying capacity" of the land. Expanding the population doesn't help.
Here in Minneapolis an asphalt parking lot was actually turned into a public park, albeit a very manicured one. People like to hang out in it though- no one hangs out in a parking lot. The nice thing about abandoned parking lots is that they're ideal for turning into community gardens. There's plenty of sun, it's just a matter of chopping up the asphalt and allowing a few years to improve the soil... Regarding all the comments about starvation and disease, I notice people never seem to include themselves as possible victims of the coming calamities. No one is an island, what befalls the human race will probably be our fate as well. Working for a sustainable future is a much batter way to spend one's energy than being smuggly self-righteous, don't you think? Morons indeed!
Laura, what does "moral superiority" have to do with anything?
JHK has pointed out some facts. It doesn't matter if he feels smug about having identified the problems resulting from the societal behavior: The facts remain.
It's not a matter of preference for the Four Horsemen; they're coming toward us even in the face of birth control and abortion. BC&A are inefficacious against reality.
XXX years from now, the lack of affordable liquid fuel will mean that mechanized farming won't be able to feed the 6.7 billion people we have today. Large scale organic farming and home gardens might at best feed three or four billion. Period. End of story.
And the present destruction of capital means that we can't avoid winding down from our wealthy life styles--IMO, anyway.
Hope is all well and good, as is compassion, etc. Trouble is, masses of people have not historically provided reasons for hope. For some, that 12-gauge shotgun will work. For others, not. And nobody knows which.
Your heart's in the right place, but facts and reality don't care.
Look: Kunstler is a young guy, what, 61? Forty years back he didn't have today's hindsight. Maybe twenty years back he started getting a jaundiced eye toward the way society was behaving. I started long before then, myself. Ten years back or thereabouts, maybe, he got into terminal nervous about where we're headed, and has done a bunch of good homework and, overall, rational prognostication. I got twitchy in the middle 1980s, myself, but I didn't do nearly as much research. What I've looked into during these last half-dozen years, however, has at least made me a kindred spirit.
Facts are neither moral nor immoral. They just sit there and stare at you with indifference.
Best to you,
'Rat
Oh honey.... we ARE the yeast people! All of us! Just because we can see the problems, does not mean any of us visiting (or presumably writing) this blog think we are above the fray!
But it is fun to make fun of others who haven't figured out that the light at the end of the tunnel is; in fact, a train.
http://www.suburbanempire.com
Laura, what does "moral superiority" have to do with anything?
JHK has pointed out some facts. It doesn't matter if he feels smug about having identified the problems resulting from the societal behavior: The facts remain.
It's not a matter of preference for the Four Horsemen; they're coming toward us even in the face of birth control and abortion. BC&A are inefficacious against reality.
XXX years from now, the lack of affordable liquid fuel will mean that mechanized farming won't be able to feed the 6.7 billion people we have today. Large scale organic farming and home gardens might at best feed three or four billion. Period. End of story.
And the present destruction of capital means that we can't avoid winding down from our wealthy life styles--IMO, anyway.
Hope is all well and good, as is compassion, etc. Trouble is, masses of people have not historically provided reasons for hope. For some, that 12-gauge shotgun will work. For others, not. And nobody knows which.
Your heart's in the right place, but facts and reality don't care.
Look: Kunstler is a young guy, what, 61? Forty years back he didn't have today's hindsight. Maybe twenty years back he started getting a jaundiced eye toward the way society was behaving. I started long before then, myself. Ten years back or thereabouts, maybe, he got into terminal nervous about where we're headed, and has done a bunch of good homework and, overall, rational prognostication. I got twitchy in the middle 1980s, myself, but I didn't do nearly as much research. What I've looked into during these last half-dozen years, however, has at least made me a kindred spirit.
Facts are neither moral nor immoral. They just sit there and stare at you with indifference.
Best to you,
'Rat
If we were truly an intelligent species we would have begun 30 years ago to humanely and democratically bring world population in line with renewable resources. A voluntary (and incentivized) sterilization program for any persons who do not wish to bear or father more children could be started. The amount of the incentive could be adjusted every few years depending on the success of the program. Perhaps a cash payment equal to 10% of the per capita annual income would be a place to start. I
The fall (collapse) happens always to lesser levels than anyone before could imagine.
When Romans leaved Great Britain (its ancient territory) the material culture collapsed to a pre Bronze Age level.
For example the inhabitants didn't use the pottery wheel (they forgot it long time ago). So they fall some 2000 years below Roman level.
And they (the Britons ) were an easy pray for Saxon invaders (a primitive but warlike society).
In our case the fall may go dawn to some sort of Pleistocene level (the higer the starting point the deeper the fall).
But without big prays around (no mammoths, not even buffaloes) to eat the situation would be much, much worse.
The "zombie movies" may give us a realistic flavor of such a post "peak oil" environment.
Or cannibal movies...
So, enjoy the show (being a part of it)?
The fall (collapse) happens always to lesser levels than anyone before could imagine.
When Romans leaved Great Britain (its ancient territory) the material culture collapsed to a pre Bronze Age level.
For example the inhabitants didn't use the pottery wheel (they forgot it long time ago). So they fall some 2000 years below Roman level.
And they (the Britons ) were an easy pray for Saxon invaders (a primitive but warlike society).
In our case the fall may go dawn to some sort of Pleistocene level (the higher the starting point the deeper the fall).
But without big prays around (no mammoths, not even buffaloes) to eat the situation would be much, much worse.
The "zombie movies" may give us a realistic flavor of such a post "peak oil" environment.
Or cannibal movies...
So, enjoy the show (being a part of it)?
Greetings,
I can say that I'm one of those people.
I live on a 30' sailboat in S. California. I've converted my appliances to run off of DC current and I'm in the process of removing myself from the electric grid. Oh yeah, my electric bill last month was $13. I can let the wind push my home anywhere I want to go including China if I felt like it. Also, I'm learning to extract drinkable water from the ocean by use of solar stills.
For work, I wander the electric junkyards of L.A. and look for discarded electronics that I transform into sought after vintage style tube equipment used in the film and recording industry. When those industries go away, I'll still have skills that are very much in demand because I can build and fix things.
I've managed to do all this in the last year because it became quite apparent to me that the ability to float off into the ocean when the famine/virus/riots begins is worth the trade-off of giving up my suburban lifestyle.
In the new world coming, only the crafty will survive.
The fall (collapse) happens always to lesser levels than anyone before could imagine.
When Romans leaved Great Britain (its ancient territory) the material culture collapsed to a pre Bronze Age level.
For example the inhabitants didn't use the pottery wheel (they forgot it long time ago). So they fall some 2000 years below Roman level.
And they (the Britons ) were an easy pray for Saxon invaders (a primitive but warlike society).
In our case the fall may go dawn to some sort of Pleistocene level (the higher the starting point the deeper the fall).
But without big prays around (no mammoths, not even buffaloes) to eat the situation would be much, much worse.
The "zombie movies" may give us a realistic flavor of such a post "peak oil" environment.
Or cannibal movies...
So, enjoy the show (being a part of it)?
Well said rat! I am forty, and my awareness of the realitys of our lifestyle came about when I was four..... my first memory in life is that of waiting in line for gas! It was a cloudy day in Buffalo, and there we were sitting in our Datsun all day waiting for gas.
My parents took action and moved to a ranch where I spent the rest of my childhood, living a simpler life growing food and hay. A direct result of USA production peak.
My blog reflects cynicism of suburbia, and worry of the rest of the people "not getting it" when it comes to energy realities.
Kunstler spent time in one of the first suburbs, and his postings reflect an idea that he looked around and saw people "not getting it" too.
Perhaps it is to simplistic to call our collective "morons"..... until you drive through a place like Highlands Ranch, Colorado......
.... and you are left with the impression that we ARE morons.
I have spent the last three years, with my nose in books about oil at home, and driving around (using oil) in the pursuit of knowledge of oil when on "vacation", I have been all over Texas, from Beaumont to Crane, Pennsylvania is next.
The story of oil is a big one, and it is the story of us.... to a larger extent then we give credit, it takes a lot of time to study too!
Perhaps it is unfair to label those who only have time to gain their oil knowledge from the news as stupid, but after all... they ARE getting their knowledge from the "news" ... so mabye not.
cont. (Sorry, but the message went before I was finished.) The incentives for sterilization program would have to be made available without regard to sex, income, ethnicity,etc. Perhaps some age restrictions would be in order. Who would object? Probably some leaders of religious sects and ethnic minorities but I will bet most individuals in those same groups would not object to being paid $4000. Where would the money come from? That is definitely a problem and that is why we should have started the program while we were still a rich, first-world country. Where would the money come from for poor countries? It would probably have to come from the richer countries. But remember, 10% of $500 (the annual income in much of the world) is a lot less than 10% of 40,000. The payments would be cheap in the long run. WHM
I'd like to put in a word for the nonhuman animals that are suffering and will continue to suffer as a result of this catastrophes Mr. K describes.
Animal shelters are overflowing with pets given up by people who have lost their homes, while other people simply abandon animals to the streets. Of course during times of stress, a pet is too often the convenient punching bag for cruel people.
Animals in failing industries will also suffer, as the owners of those industries decide that everything from veterinary care to food is just not worth it...for them.
Wildlife will suffer and die as their habitat is taken for whatever money can be wrung from it, and as the animals themselves are hunted down even more intensively for use by people.
As always, the weak and vulnerable are the first victims of the creeps who ran everything into the ground.
One thing that strikes me as funny is hearing commentators & others predict that continued bad times will provide the Republicans with victories in future elections. I read somewhere that the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over & over and expecting a different result each time. Even though both parties can be blamed, the Republicans had eight years, six of them in control of the Presidency, house & senate, and fucked everything to a fare-thee-well. Why would people expect a different result the next time? It'll probably happen though, since most people don't seem to know how to think rationally. I'm not saying the Democrats are the answer either, in fact I don't know who could get us out of this clusterfuck. My best guess is that we will have to just live out the ugly times that are coming and deal with it. Something I don't look forward to.
Arrrrrr....Mateie but ya might just be subject to scallywags anyway.......
.... There are gonna be Pirates to deal with once the Coast Guard is busy.......and no longer making those waters safe.
http://www.suburbanempire.com
Arrrrrr....Mateie but ya might just be subject to scallywags anyway.......
.... There are gonna be Pirates to deal with once the Coast Guard is busy.......and no longer making those waters safe.
http://www.suburbanempire.com
Calm down dear! There was no moral superiority on the Titanic after she crashed into the Great White Equalizer. I'm pretty sure that most commentators here appreciate that their personal chances of surviving a full-on collapse scenario are about one-zillionth of those of a Titanic passenger. Superiority or survival are neither implied nor expected. Have you never heard of gallows humour?
We're humans. We love humanity...our friends, our families, the authors, artists and others whose work we respect. We're appalled, mortified, f***king angry that so much knowledge, beauty and truth, realised both in our time and reaching back in history to pre-agrarian times, is once again going to be lost in the shredder of unavoidable collapse.
It's 20 years too late to do much, if anything, about it now. Even if everyone in the world "got responsible" about population tomorrow, we'd all have gone over the net energy cliff long before our sublime restraint bore fruit - or rather didn't bear anyone.
I'm a registered member of a green political party, belong to a local currency trading scheme, support our Transition initiative and so on. I work for caring, sharing, self-supportive communities.
BUT. That doesn't make JHK's portrayal of the global human predicament any less accurate. This isn't David and Goliath - a half decent chance with fair wind a bit of help from God. This is the ants nest and a cosmic pan of boiling water. As we Brits like to say: "Well, you have to have laugh, don't you?"
As for this blog, in the words of an American leader (who, incidentally, signed-off two of history's most effective one-day-only population-reduction events): "If you don't understand the heat, stay out of the kitchen."
I may have misquoted him there.
I've been reading your blog for about a year now and I'm not sure why, but your Monday morning doom and gloom always brightens my day!
I agree with Laura that this mornings' blog post is repellant. It has the sound of pure evil. There isn't a place in deepest darkest hell hot enough to reward such talk.
So Mr. Kunstler is so superior that he gets to equate my life and hundreds of millions of other human lives as "yeast"? So Mr Kunstler gets to eat well but this "peasantry", as he calls us, with our "TV dinners" aren't entitled like him? We're so low, in his opinion, we should be breaking our backs again as "virtual serfs"? What about him? I'd like to see him trailing cotton sacks in the sunstroke belt. See how he likes it. We'll see how Mr. Kunstler, in his "certain serene comfort", and his cheerleaders cope if our civilization and way of life collapse.
I know nothing about Mr Kunstler but he has the sound of someone who hasn't known real hunger and misery. We'll see if Mr Kunstler changes his tune if gets a taste of the "usual suspects", as he calls them, "starvation, disease, violence". A week without food ought to wipe the superior smirk right off his face. When you're knocking at death's door from starvation meals of Velveeta and corn byproducts are going to sound awfully good.
Thank you, Jim. You always help me focus, and this is one of the only reasons I look forward to Mondays...for a little perspective.
Please visit me at:
http://freedomguerrilla.com/
Thank you, Jim. You always help me focus, and this is one of the only reasons I look forward to Mondays...for a little perspective.
Please visit me at:
http://freedomguerrilla.com/
I think that only the more socialist countries like Norway, Denmark and Sweden will survive in the future. There they have made a commitment to the common good. Many commenters here disparage socialism, but if you actually take the time to learn about those places, life seem pretty nice.
Too bad we're so caught up in the attitude of 'Fuck the losers'. Maybe someday you will be the loser, then what? Having brown or white skin won't matter so much then. I almost can't believe it, but we are apparently letting racism kill us. I used to think that was over.
I think America will just go on a homicidal rampage. Look at how this country was founded - Theft, murder, etc. We will harvest what we have sown.
I used to like this country when I was younger. Lately, I'm disgusted. Too many crazy people.
Thank you, Jim. You always help me focus, and this is one of the only reasons I look forward to Mondays...for a little perspective.
Please visit me at:
http://freedomguerrilla.com/
I prefer "leaven" to "yeast". We were warned about leaven and most chose to ignore it.
The leaven of the Pharisees gave us man-made religion; taking God's words and giving them new meanings according to our limited understanding and/or preferences and in some cases we simp;y built upon what we inherited from our parents. A new religion for every person on the planet, leading of course to chaos.
The leaven of the Sadducees gave us no-god, no after-this-life, no accountability, accept maybe{rarely} to each other. Those who inbibe this leaven puff-up into gods {rulemakers} philosophizing, worshipping & pontificating upon the intellect. Most of them are too smart to follow the rules they make for others.
The leaven of the Essenes gave us isolationism. They knew and chose to withdraw from the society of nations, tribes, clans, families and in some cases, other individuals. They die alone and their truth dies with them.
The leaven of Herod gave us political intrigue, deal-making, cronyism, nepotism, divide and conquer, propoganda {party labels and "platforms"} and the "SCIENCE" of economics.
All these leavens have worked together to produce America. Other continents {loaves} have less amalgamation of leaven. This loaf has risen to it's highest level and now it must go into the oven, so that all that leaven can be burned out.
The people are not the leaven.
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/FFI/article.cfm?AID=134
JHK offers both predictions (as in today's essay) and prescriptions (often related to urban design). It can help to take the time to make sure you understand which of the two he's doing before posting vitriolic responses.
Just a thought. Desert Rat said it better than me.
It is extremely difficult to post when all the pens are in the car. I put my forehead against the wall and that always scares me, it reminding me of cracking my skull on the asphalt at 55 m.p.h. I never did that, but, how can you help but to be afraid of it?
You people are not commentators (Louzader). Eric Serereid is a commentator. The comments are flying in thick and fast. It was 34, then I refreshed, and it must have doubled. I am still going to just post, and not descend into name-calling yet.
Notice, any of you, I posted tautology last week(notice how Kuntler works the timing of his blog. He is one of those overnight sensations who worked at his craft 20 years, one of those truisms, also a paradox), along with solipsism and epistemology.
Your example of a tautology is textbook perfect, Jim, appealing at even the level of chemistry, where we define tautomers. Thank you for the honr. I did work hard here and kept my thinking unmuddled. It is like an office, my bachelor efficiency unit in downtown San Diego. City living is new to me. The dogs, I don't know how they do it. It is concrete all around. They live somewhere and come out with their owners on a leash. But, I saw some liquid dog poop in the sidewalk that I agree, no one with a baggie turned inside-out on her hand is going to neatly save in her cashmere car coat. Now use topology.
I used paradox. Use paragon.
Yeah, the rest of you dog-faced boys and pig-faced girls, does Kuntler read you? You don't seem so proud.
I got a couple more, but I'm composing on the typewriter, so don't jostle me. The ESP, in my new theorick, is not really, really weak, it is, to the contrary, strong. As it occurs (unplanned things occur, murders, profiting from weapons sales, take place), in a long string, much like a Jewish comedian on a roll, it runs out of believable coincidence, where it sheds light on what your thinking, casting auspices, delivering counterexamples. It runs out, like a wet dream after you aready woke up. It can't exceed the carrying capacity of likelihood. You'd know you were in a dream. I realized yesterday that imaginary numbers (cf complex, rational, natural, whole, trancendental, irrational) are imaginable, and thanks to two posts ago ("Thinking the Unthinkable"), I mean, mathematicians aren't dumb people. What did they mean, "imaginary numbers"? Where are the unimaginable numbers? Well, they are in topology. We're not going to overcome entropy (ever); Joel Osmont, wait. Popular televangelists.
Jimmy Swaggart is not going to plead with heaven to make some more oil, even if he closes his eyes. He might do well very soon with a blindfold, however. And a cigarette, get it? A last cigarette?
So (that always comes out 'soap', when I think it), the Jewish comedy experience. Checking, yes, Jerry Lewis is a Jew. Well, they sem so, ...'they semitic so, ..they seem it so. Hm, kismet. They seem too funny to be doing that with normal intelligence. I bring it up since, i. I saw Mr. Saturday Night, with Billy Crystal, and ii. Kunstler just seems like the first Jewish President. You know?
Any way, (Jewish-American), the blog post was deeply disturbing. What do you mean, sir, "a very close friend"? Closer than me? I'm sorry I never shook your hand, but I feel like stalking you now. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. And that post! It is really scary (scarified, scarabaeus). Whew! Kunstler is a harsh mistress.
http://sbillinghurst.wordpress.com
Nice post Jim,
I think the idiots to resources ratio could be a very useful indicator in working out the resilience of a given community. This likely applies to online communities as well.
D
A survey on MSNBC today found that 38% thought Sarah Palin was qualified to be president!!! God help us!!!
Where is Kuno when you need him?
http://www.plexus.org/forster/index.html
Laura,
Perhaps we should be thought of as "self aware yeast"
Laura,
Perhaps we should be thought of as "self aware yeast"
Handy Hints Int'l says:
To avoid posting multiple comments unnecessarily, if you see the following when you press 'submit':
Do not go back and refresh or re-post. Instead, open JHK's site in a new tab or browser window and scroll to the bottom of the comments. Chances are that your comment will have posted after all.
I try to remember to hit CTRL-A, CTRL-C right before clicking 'Submit'. It copies what's in the text entry area to the clipboard in case Moveable Type really did lose your words.
Small correction: It's Glenn Beck, not Glen Beck -- aka captain of the idiots. I can't watch him for more than a few minutes at a time before endangering my triple-IQ score.
Steve M.-
Good suggestion. I recently looked into the work of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom and got a reminder of why specialization is such a problem. While she and her colleagues nibble at the edges of some good ideas, change/enlightenment will come through people reading "Ishmael" rather than "Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources." I've contacted a local (Spokane) community college and a prestigious university in the east with the idea of re-tooling their curriculum. I haven't heard back from them.
Let me know (theinnclub [at] yahoo.com) if you are interested in building the type of institution that you describe. It will have to be a ground-up endeavor as the specialists at the top may talk the talk of providing a true liberal arts education but they are unwilling to walk the talk as it would put their own specialized livelihoods in jeopardy.
Matt Holbert
Spokane, WA
The truth of JHK's vision is one thing, the pleasure he and other commentators here take in anticipating the suffering and death of about 80% of the population of this planet is another... and it is ugly.
Let me say just this: that if indeed we experience a steep, rapid dieback of 5/6 of the planet's human population from starvation, disease, violence, and sheer shock, that there won't remain much hope for the remaining 1/6, and that the rest of us will quickly follow the dying hordes.
For this time, the collapse really will be different from those societal collapses (the Maya, the Roman Empire, Europe after the plague) that preceded. The people of those eras could at least think that they were victims of the gods, and that there was another place to which they could escape and rebuild.
We know better. We know that each and every one of us in some manner contributed to creating the non-negotiable conditions- rapidly shrinking resources including oil, arable land, and water combined with uncontrollable population growth- and we also know that there is no place to escape to and nothing better awaiting us. I'd like to imagine that a return to "simpler" ways would better our lives and enable us to build societies that are civilized and sustainable, and individual lives worth living, but cursory reading of social history says otherwise.
What it says is that a regression to pre-tech lifestyles will mean a return to the filth and brutality of the past. Class tyrannies will reassert themselves. Slavery and bondage will once again become the norm in this country as well as in 4th world hellholes. And if you think that the amusements of modern-day common folk are vulgar and tasteless, wait till you see what most people resort to for amusement in the post-tech future of mass poverty and powerlessness. Public executions will be major draws, and lynchings will be another way to vent rage and frustration. It will be EXTREMELY unsafe to be unpopular or "weird".
I sincerely hope that those on this forum who gloat over the return of the "peasantry" to the filth, deprivation, and misery of the past don't feel too cheated when they themselves end up among the 95% of the population that ends up living in shanties and doing farm work for a living.
Or do you all fancy that you yourselves are among the "elite" that will once again be able to employ staffs of 20 servants who work for a bowl of gruel a day and sleep on straw under the eaves?
I'll settle for being part of the 80% that pass on, thank you.
"What is un-Amreican is to "take" others' wealth."
Isn't this what the Europeans did to Africans (slavery) and Native Americans (taking their land and forced removal to reservations)?
Our country has a long, long history of taking other people's wealth. Which is why the Wall St. bankers are so good at it.
Each Monday I relish reading the new comments posted here. The world won't implode but if it does I'll be the first one to stop at your house and eat you for dinner. LOL, you all think you are superior. Welcome to the jungle fools.
It's not about forced sterilization; it is not to be redirected into yet another relgious diatribe (you are pitilessly arguing religion and hoping for apocalyptic confirmation), it is in the title itself, it is giving voice to the inevitable comparative image of the bacteria-in-a-petri-dish we must address or be driven mad by its refusal to go away. It is part and parcel of being human. "Image" was invented by Shakespeare. It means painting a picture with words. I do it in the thing of never (hardly) possessing guns, yet "seeing" this or that judge in the imaginary sights of some weapon. I wouldn't dream of catching my last $10,000 before it disappears anyhow by spending a "wise" $1,500 on a .30-30 or something, little scope on top, at so many yards. The cops waste far more money on ammo to train. They work out. They hire the people they need to flush me out, outdraw me, try and convict me.
This is vicarious imagination natural to one who don't know to begin with the five-year old mouth, saying, "One, two, fwee, foe-uh". Hearing that will change you. Mr. Kunstler doesn't have any kids. He's right anyway.
We're on the fucking internet. I don't need Verizon/Google. If brains were dynamite, they don't have enough between them to blow their nose. All we got to do is have a sidebar (where all the ads are?), with the smilies controlling the syntax, instead of acting as if the words create the reality. Nah, whirlwind harvesters, Freudian lock-step japes, Pavlovian pod-people, reality creates the words!. Ludi was okay.
The rest of you I'd like to meet in the geographical center of the continental USA (definitely excluding Alaska), and we will divide into two teams and rumble with shivs and chains. I'll leave it up to each of you to Google that. We got to go to the nearest town, like Lee Marvin in The Wild One. I hope there is at least a pop stand.
"Or do you all fancy that you yourselves are among the "elite" that will once again be able to employ staffs of 20 servants who work for a bowl of gruel a day and sleep on straw under the eaves?"
===================================
I would ask if you are among the "elite" who thinks they know what will happen next... and when?
The game is way, way too complicated for that.....trends DO suggest things which don't look very good.....but no one knows when those trends might produce such sour fruit as you and JHK suggest, and you simply can't rule out a game breaker that will change the equation for the foreseeable future.
Like I've said before, we're all just along for the ride, including all the soosayers, technical analysts, doomsday predictors, biblical prophecy buffs etc.
We're all living in the present, subject to the unknown and unknowable future, get use to it. Wheee!
Hats off to The King of Carp!
James - you're on a brilliant hot-streak, lately. I snarkled at every-other sentence. Thanks for making the End Of Industrial Civilization so wickedly delightful to read about.
Here at our house, we're still peeing, (etc), in drinkable fresh water, but not for much longer --- the composting toilet is nearly ready to fire up.
BRAVO!
"Down the highway, down the tracks, down the road to ecstasy.
I followed you beneath the stars, hounded by your memory, And all your ragin' glory.
Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull.
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol".
We can reduce the birth rate to less than replacement (negative growth) with any number of socially acceptable programs and changes to our laws.
Just some suggestions...
What if first time non-violent felons were given a sentencing option of no jail time (just probation) for agreeing on a vasectomy (or the female equivalent)?
What if any tax paying person were given tax credits of, say, $100,000 for agreeing to either of the same procedures? These tax credits would be in an account which would 'pay' their taxes until the full credit is used up. (No taxes for several years, to as long as a lifetime.)
What if the tax deduction for dependent children remains static after two? (No deduction for the third or more.)
We can reduce the birth rate to less than replacement (negative growth) with outside-the -box plans such as these.
Hate to flog a dead horse, but the retail shelves continue to be disturbingly empty.
Ikea is out of stock on dozens of items. I've never seen that before. This includes some things they ran out of months ago.
I was shocked to see a discount store RUN OUT of most shoes. That's right. The shoe department is running out of shoes. Empty spaces, no boxes. Have they not paid their suppliers or did the supplier just make many fewer shoes this year?
...and many, many emtpy storefronts. The local habitrail was always a second-tier mall, it usually packs them in during the fall. Most of the big tenants are gone. They aren't even bothering to decorate.
It's not that I care so much about shopping, but it's alarming to think that even things we need - like shoes - could run out in a heartbeat due to economics. What if we ran out because transporation costs were too high?
Just as a point of reference - I grew up on the Great Plains. My father was born on his grandfather's farm in 1912. He pulled a cotton sack, and until he was 8 or so, there weren't any cars, so they went places by horse-drawn buggies. He rode a horse to school. He fought in WWII. He benefitted from the economic explosion following the war. I guess my point is this - it was not a multi-generational phenomena. For a great many, it happened in one generation.
Laura's not wrong about our low moral tone here, today. It's mean.
Truth to tell, it won't likely seem so funny to to most of us when it's our children who are caught in the maelstroms churning ahead of us.
On the other hand, I'm ready to be counted among those who none-the-less look forward to the rest of life on the planet getting some relief from the plague of Homo sapiens that has shanghai-ed virtually every scrap of the planet - wet or dry - and converted it into some form of excrement, whether biological or industrial. It's time for this species to be taken down a notch. I'm not worried that it won't happen. It's inevitable, to be sure.
But, thanks for he reprimand, Laura. It won't hurt to have the glee here taken down a notch, too.
My kids? If I do have any - they NEVER call or write.
DBT
Hate to flog a dead horse, but the retail shelves continue to be disturbingly empty.
Ikea is out of stock on dozens of items. I've never seen that before. This includes some things they ran out of months ago.
I was shocked to see a discount store RUN OUT of most shoes. That's right. The shoe department is running out of shoes. Empty spaces, no boxes. Have they not paid their suppliers or did the supplier just make many fewer shoes this year?
...and many, many emtpy storefronts. The local habitrail was always a second-tier mall, it usually packs them in during the fall. Most of the big tenants are gone. They aren't even bothering to decorate.
It's not that I care so much about shopping, but it's alarming to think that even things we need - like shoes - could run out in a heartbeat due to economics. What if we ran out because transporation costs were too high?
I can't image what world you are living in?? Stores around here are full of merchandise, maybe a few less shoppers, but running out of things?....nonsense.
On a positive note, the Dow is up 100 points to 10,400.
Oh, and our leaders are pressuring the Chinese to up the value of their currency.
That way, you see, Chinese goods will be more expensive for the Wal-Mart yeast people. And the dollar will inflate -- this at a time when the unemployment rate will undoubtedly hit 11 percent.
That's when the anger will come. And the yeast people surely won't revel a return to serfdom.
It will be interesting -- although tragic -- to see how this all plays out.
there are real human feelings at stake in our prospects for loss of every kind, but especially in the fate of people we love.
yeah, like me
The lack of inventory in the stores is no surprise and no calamity. Early this year, retailers said they were carrying much lower inventories because of the economic climate.
We have about 8X as much retail space in this country as we ever needed. In 1960, there was 4 sq ft of retail space for every man, woman, and child, and as of 2005, there was 38 sq ft. Horrendous retail redundancy, mostly as a result of the race to the bottom among municipalities desperate for "economic development", who subsidize the dozens of redundant malls and big box stores that are located 3 miles apart, if even. When you see a new Target or Walmart or Lowes or Home Depot, you may know that it received a minimum of $4M in local subsidies, which goes a long way in explaining how our local economies were destroyed. Why should a small retailer struggle to eke out a living on a tiny store when she is taxed to subsidize the competition that is so enabled to undercut her?
A new Target store, along with 200,000 sq ft of absurdly redundant retail space, just went up in Uptown Chicago, along with "affordable" apartments that cost an average of $447,000 a unit to build. FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS PER UNIT, for "affordable" low-income apartments, on the north lake front of chicago, where hundreds of condos are on the market for $200K or less, and more and more, $100K or less. Additionally, there are thousands of abandoned, boarded up apartment buildings all over this city, most of which are serviceable, often beautiful, and could be made comfortable and habitable for about $25,000 a unit, that would make good housing. There they sit, while we spend over $400K a unit to build low income housing for the benefit of some politically connected developer. (Asoka, you live in uptown Chicago, I'm sure you know about this.)
Only a government would manage things this way. The above illustration is only one of thousands I could show to illustrate why the government can offer no help in restructuring our communities for life with steeply reduced energy supplies,and that official policies designed to reduce population will most likely not only be failures but will produce unintended effects that might be worse than the original problem.
jIM, next time you are asked about over pop, just ask them if they have had a vasectomy/tubal ligation.
"So Mr. Kunstler is so superior that he gets to equate my life and hundreds of millions of other human lives as "yeast"? "
Ummmm.... if you take it PERSONALLY, then you are indeed one of the morons.
The analogy is supposed to be taken globally, as in if one views a vat of yeast from a great height, one cannot make out the individual yest cells. Same as if one views the Earth from orbit, you cannot make out individual people.
And like the yeast, we will run out of 'sugar', the oil that fuels our snivilization. And there is apparently no real alternative being made for this either.
I sadly fear that once the oil runs out, we will once again start hunting the whales for thier oil, and very quickly exterminate them. That will take only a few very short years, and will only power a few last stretch limos a very few last miles.
As for preparing for the future? I am planning my move to a more southern clime, a country that is already third world, but will probably come out ahead when the US collapses. Unless the PTB here decide to take everyone else down with them. We still have the warheads you know, we could nuke every major city on earth in about an hour.
Those we missed would die from the fallout.
But who knows, perhaps the radiation would help some 'plastic eaters' evolve....
And the circus would start all over again on to infinity....
dj
Eventually something like this will take care of population:
British scientists testing Ukrainian 'super flu' that has killed 189 people
http://www.dailymai l.co.uk/news/ worldnews/ article-1227984/ British-scientis ts-testing- Ukrainian- super-flu- killed-189- people.html
British scientists are examining the strain of swine flu behind a deadly Ukrainian outbreak to see if the virus has mutated. A total of 189 people have died and more than one million have been infected in the country.
Some doctors have likened the symptoms to those seen in many of the victims of the Spanish flu which caused millions of deaths world-wide after the World War One.
An unnamed doctor in western Ukraine told of the alarming effects of the virus.
He said: 'We have carried out post mortems on two victims and found their lungs are as black as charcoal.
'They look like they have been burned. It's terrifying.'
Neighbouring Poland has called on the EU to take action, fearing the mystery virus may spread westwards.
"A new Target store, along with 200,000 sq ft of absurdly redundant retail space, just went up in Uptown Chicago, along with "affordable" apartments that cost an average of $447,000 a unit to build. FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY-SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS PER UNIT, for "affordable" low-income apartments, on the north lake front of chicago, where hundreds of condos are on the market for $200K or less, and more and more, $100K or less."
But Laura, you do know that these were probably started several YEARS ago, and have only now come on the market.
See, this represents human short-sightedness. Like all the Republicans that blame the economic disaster this country is going thru on Obama, when it was 8 YEARS of G Bush that caused it all.
Oh, but no, Obama is in charge, it must be his fault.
With out any vision of history, we are bound to repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, ....
Get it?
I suggest we all begin to study Foucault. The public and professional discourse is preventing us from finding a solution. It is dominated by erroneous language and concepts. This includes JHK. There is nothing that can stop the process while we all buy into this discourse. We are caught in endless interpretations that spread their tentacles into every crevice. He said, she said, they said, it is said,etc. This leads to endless discourse and no solutions.
We are fast istalling the technology of complete surveillanc, all in the name of safety. But really in the name of power. Power and knowledge are part of a huge grid into which everything falls.
It is possible to think of all this from the point of view of the meshig of knowledge and power. And the interplay.
Meanwhile back at the ranch we continue citi8ng facts, instances and opinions and discussing them in the same masking language. All, I said all, are part of this discourse of masking. Authorities, politicians, tycoons, masses, journalists, doctors, lawyers, yes every single person who has not studied Foucault and begunto apply his work. There are very very few of those.
Consider: We have all become objects. We are no longer subjects, no longer part of the humanistic tradition of western civilization. People are objects pure and simple and JHK also discusses them as objects who live in the burbs, drive SUV's, are breeding yeast people, etc. Just things. It has been coming on since the 18th century, little by little with the combination of power and knowledge in an ever tightly knit grid.
People can be labeled as bio-power, which is what we are to the administrative State. If masses of us die of disease and starvation, why then, there are that many more immigrants waiting at the borders. A kind of Darwinian purge of the weak.
Everyone's problem here is that their discourse is the dominant paradigm. No way out. To begin to study history in terms of power, knowledge and control of the masses is a sobering and deadly experience as you see the future coming at you and unstoppable. Our surveillance tech is getting ever more encompassing. Now we have facial identity software the Chinese are trying out for us. If it works with that population, it will work easily with ours.
You must begin to think in a totally different paradigm, out of the dominating discourse, intellectual, authoritarian and colloquial.
Hey! Since when is calling a spade a spade a sin? YEAST People. Its interesting, especially in respect to the yeast growth cycle, that eventually something else comes along and feeds on the yeast. Usually a mold.
So, yeast people, if ye be yeast, perhaps what you should really be worried about (if you survive beyond thunderdome), is the MOLD people.
By the way Jim, I saw your new paintings on the site, keep up the good work. I especially like the winter scene. Your technique and execution has improved.
Its hardly the same US as 40 years ago.
the population of cali is almost double in 30 years...and 1 in 4 is foriegn born.
look at the spectacular Kill Off mao did in china 70 million...yet china under mao got a seat in the UN and Taiwan was kicked out!
JHK:
"You haven't said anything about overpopulation!"
WHY SHOULD YOU? HOW COULD YOU FIX IT? IGNORANCE IS BLISS...TELL EM THE TRUTH..THE US POPULATION HAS NEARLY DOUBLED SINCE THE DEMS OPENED THE FLOODGATES IN 1965.
Another fine column from Mr Kunstler-this one an outright paen to Aristocracy. For to tell the Truth about the people is to argue for Elitism. Now if we could only follow though with the natural conclusions to this: an end to the onerous one man one vote voodoo. Bring back limited Democracy for the deserving few. An IQ test to week out the double digits would be a fine way to start. To vote at the Federal Level, one would need to have a track record of service-either military or volunteering. And of course, a good record of employment-no would be revolutionaries need apply. This sounds similar to what Rahm Emmanuelle wants-but this would be for real Americans-not for the benefit of the New World Order or to form an army of minorities to use against Americans.
there was a piece about watts in LATimes...low cost housing at a million a unit?
and there or WSJ about folks that got nice severance packages BUT COULDNT STOP SPENDING ONCE THEY WERE JOBLESS.
poor things...50 k for a wedding, 3 luxury cars, just couldnt FACE REALITY...for us who know the US is at the beginning of a long emergency, i mean depression its humorous to read!
in an eerie way.
Another fine column from Mr Kunstler-this one an outright paen to Aristocracy. For to tell the Truth about the people is to argue for Elitism. Now if we could only follow though with the natural conclusions to this: an end to the onerous one man one vote voodoo. Bring back limited Democracy for the deserving few. An IQ test to week out the double digits would be a fine way to start. To vote at the Federal Level, one would need to have a track record of service-either military or volunteering. And of course, a good record of employment-no would be revolutionaries need apply. This sounds similar to what Rahm Emmanuelle wants-but this would be for real Americans-not for the benefit of the New World Order or to form an army of minorities to use against Americans.
Well I can see you don't check the dumsters or the thrift stores. Many times shoes are free. If not they can be from 25 cents to afew dollars fornew ones. I buy all mine at them but really haul most out of a dumpster. My local DAV has nowlocked their dumpster. I am thinking of pouring syrup on everything left on the donate station. But I think I will catsup the lock and chain first to send them a message. So many people were supplementing their income out of their trash. And we had to sneak it. Recyclers told them they were doing their job and they said they didn't have time to recycle. So they prefer to give their stuff tothe land fill.
Do not support your local salvation army, DAV or other recycled store if they lock their dumpsters. They could just put the stuff in boxes for 145 cents to sell it. They mark up too high and everything is donated.
'in the long run YR DEAD'
The stimulus program is so that pockets of areas are doing OK so that the people there will think things are getting better. Then when it starts to wear out another more flush pocket will emerge somewhere.This is to fool us into thinking things are getting better just because a local mall near us is doing OK.
Wal-Mart in Springfield MO on Campbell near 60 has really increased the spaces of their aisles.
Laura said: "Asoka, you live in uptown Chicago, I'm sure you know about this."
Laura, I wrote a longer response to your original post, but apparently it was censored for being cornucopian in nature (the ultimate CFN sin).
INDIA may be worlds first nation with 2 billion people...
and its the most gender imbalanced nation in terms of those under 10 years of age.
korea has lowest birth rate..lower than france and italy..farmers try to get viets or chinese ' mail order' brides..and koreans are some of the most racist..their bloodline is as 'pure' as japanese.
As the Dow goes up the dollar goes down. Reciprocal.
Laurie loo
the only way you can make earth less populated is by
1..killing yrself
2..killing others
3..both
Simple explanation. The new units are going to provide lots of jobs. To renovate a unit not nearly so many jobs.
You people keep thinking all this is going to be solved if people just think logically as your post indicates they should.
In fact they are thinking logically. It's just that their premises are different from yours.
Dee, the project I spoke of was started as the housing market started to tank, and is financed by a TIF district.
The retail is redundant no matter what as the entire area is packed with retail. There's a Target 3 miles away and this store will decimate its traffic.
Most area residents were vehemently opposed to the addition of more low-income housing in an area stuffed with it, and the problems it always generates. Most were even more passionately opposed to the siphoning off of taxpayers money and diverting it to a private developer via a TIF.
The whole thing, like most projects of this nature, was born of a desire to benefit a powerful political crony, and to get "economic development" by throwing taxpayer's money at another boondoggle, like we didn't already have hundreds of big box stores in the city alone, never mind the burbs.
I did a little research on the cost of housing projects built in the 50s, like the notorious Pruitt Igoe, and discovered that the cost per unit of building these places was equal to the cost of luxury housing in that era- $30,000 a unit for apartments with minimal amenity. I lived in St. Louis and remember watching Pruitt come down, to the cheers of the city, only to watch our witless leaders keep building more of the same, at atrocious cost, with similar results.
And when you look at the results of sweeping government policies concerning land use, development, and resource management over the past 90 years, what you see is entire populations being steered from traditional cities and towns in the Northeast and Midwest- towns and cities located on major waterways, with fertile hinterlands, in moist climates, and close to each other- to distant suburbs accessible only by auto, and finally en masse to newly build cities in the high desert, thanks to the agency of HUD, FHA, the highway department, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other agencies whose missions should never have existed. We should never have built the fantastic Colorado River plumbing system with its dozen or so megadams, just to empty out St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Rochester, and other "organic" cities, to build megacities that will surely swiftly fail- really are already failing- when we can no longer maintain this stuff. Ditto for all the suburbs, whose development was made possible by HUD and FHA, as well as the interstate highway system.
If there's anything we should learn to be wary of, it's Big Plans designed and implemented on high and inflicted on a population of 300 million, by force and billable to the taxpayers. We'll be paying for the next 200 years for policies created 80 years ago. Let's be careful what we inflict on our descendents.
Laura said: "Asoka, you live in uptown Chicago, I'm sure you know about this."
Laura, I wrote a longer response to your original post, but apparently I am being censored for being cornucopian (the ultimate CFN sin).
now its ' el norte' and if you write a book about it YA GET A PULITZER
ENRIQUES JOURNEY
the elites have named an enemy and it is us.
The catasrophe ofwhichyou speak will indeed create a new life form. No got that wrong. The cockroaches will prevail and flourish and they are an old life form. Also opossums. And various species I haven't thought about.
Jc...you are dreamimg.
an invasion of this magnitude...50 MILLION ILLEGALS
'In fact the geography (two oceans) have stopped any invasion or full scale destruction (that was not the case in Europe or Asia).'
LOOK SOUTH OLD MAN [ OR YOUNG WOMAN]
A few weeks ago there was a property auction in Chicago. 100 properties. 50 sold. A 9 bedroom 4 bath went for 15,000. That's not a typo. A 5 bedroom 2 1/2 bath went for 7,000. That's not a typo either. A trendy located condo with a view of the lake on the loop with heated garage went for 115,000.
So just who is going to pay over 400,000? Where is that person masked man?
Another fine column from Mr Kunstler-this one an outright paen to Aristocracy. For to tell the Truth about the people is to argue for Elitism. Now if we could only follow though with the natural conclusions to this: an end to the onerous one man one vote voodoo. Bring back limited Democracy for the deserving few. An IQ test to week out the double digits would be a fine way to start. To vote at the Federal Level, one would need to have a track record of service-either military or volunteering. And of course, a good record of employment-no would be revolutionaries need apply. This sounds similar to what Rahm Emmanuelle wants-but this would be for real Americans-not for the benefit of the New World Order or to form an army of minorities to use against Americans.
Laura,
Well put. We're all in this together. And you know - that pot of water we're in is getting mighty hot...
But some of my best friends are yeast.
Bicycle Tourist:
"The old bromide, "Go West, young man", probably became bad advice about a century ago. What's left? Go to Mars, young man?"
I think the most appropriate saying right now might be "Stay put, young man...and hunker down!"
I can't wait! I gotta go now. But next I'm comin over to use that. Leave it open seat up. I'll leave a silver dime on the tank-if tank there be.
Bicycle Tourist:
"The old bromide, "Go West, young man", probably became bad advice about a century ago. What's left? Go to Mars, young man?"
I think the most appropriate saying right now might be "Stay put, young man...and hunker down!"
"I usually don't bother. Their complaint, of course, implies that we would do something about overpopulation if only we would recognize it. Which is absurd. What might we do about overpopulation here in the USA? Legislate a one-child policy? Set up an onerous set of bureaucratic protocols forcing citizens to apply for permission to reproduce? Direct the police to shoot all female babies? Use stimulus money to build crematoria outside of Nashville?"
This is absurd hyperbole intended to obfuscate and pathologize reasonable and humane solutions to the developing problem of overpopulation on the North American continent. As one commenter observed above, population growth in Western countries is wholly the result of open boarders immigration policy. But why are we bound by duty and dogma to do absolutely nothing about it? Because the majority populations of Western countries are European-derived people, and the lion's share of immigrants are non-White Third World peoples; if the borders were closed, it would be White people that were the primary beneficiaries, and not non-White peoples. And the ethnic interests of White people is a priori illegitimate, it is alleged, of that is pure bullshit. What, Kunstler isn't aware of the above described? Of course he is, he just won't 'go there', for reasons that only he can be aware of; the alternative is that he is in fact one of the "morons" he pours scorn upon.
fefe/zzzzz said: "Try for being a long winded, miss-guided twit."
twit?
JHK twits every week, with taunts about the NASCAR/Walmart/tatoo-laden yeast.
I agree with Laura, the time for reciprocity of hyperbole and rhetoric is past--there are alot of people who really want to know what is happening in simple language. The Elitist's here including Jim are more than capable of being the Joe Friday, "just the facts ma'am" type of writer that these people want and need to hear and read.
Most of the bullshit that most of the "morons" out in whoville are being subjected to has been produced by the government, filtered by their paid "analysts" and disseminated through mainstream media sources. The government only recognizes analysts that tells it what it needs to hear, which is we can extrapolate debt infinitely into the future. A good example of this was several years ago CERA was telling governments and Corporations that drilling alot of small oilfields would more than makeup for the decline in the big ones. Of course anybody knows that daily production and distribution rates of any commodity are maintained by the large deposits. Sure enough, as CERA and the government was telling everybody we would be at 110 million barrels per day by now the world was betting against it.
Sweden is the model Country for the coming European Super State: one word about the incredible level of Musim Crime and you go straight to jail. Some parts of Sweden have a level of rape equal to New York City-almost all of it Muslims against White Women. It's even worse than here-at least here you can write about the level of Black Rape-even though you wont be believed.
You know, as far as immigration is concerned, one seems to forget just what jobs are left for any immigrant or even US citizen to do here, as most lower & middle class jobs have all been 'outsourced' to China, 'cept some service jobs. Just about the only middle class jobs left are in the "defense" industry, or for mil-indus' related jobs. Go to Walmar and tell me how many Made In America products you can find there. Go ahead...
"yeah Bush had a hand but you conveniently forget the 40 years of uninterrupted control that the Dimotwatts had in both houses just prior to Bush. Dat shit still be fuckin' wif us.: fOOfOO
Bullshit. The Repubs controlled congress during the Clinton Admin, which is why his healthcare reform failed. You also don't recall the power balance during the REgan & Bush 1 years was close enough that the Repugs could and did call the tune. mayby they didn't have an explicit repub majority, but they had enough of the so-called Blue-dog traitor demos to get thier way.
With Bush in oriface, it only took them 8 years to totally fuck things up.
The Demos havn't had "uninterrupted control" since Raygun took office.
Laura, your 4:35 PM post parallels what Jim has been saying for a long time.
I have no clue if "5/6" of the world population will shoot craps. Maybe, maybe not. Odds are that the remaining 1/6 will be some tough SOBs. They'll not only be smart, they'll have all manner of the needed manual skills. It's the townies and office-workers who are in deep doo-doo.
My problem is that while I believe I have the smarts, accumulated knowledge and a bunch of skills of all sorts, I'm 75 and the physical part of the long-term is problematic. Can't complain, though, nor will I whine. I've had a ball, so far, and I don't plan to quit early.
"...we came for first set and we stayed 'til last call; didn't we have us a ball?" is my theme song. :-) I disrecall who wrote it.
Have fun,
'Rat
Kunstler's offerings are yet another strand in the rope of what Dr. Kevin MacDonald referred to as the Culture of Critique. A rope - actually a tradition of pseudo-scholarship intended to portray the life affirming, traditional cultural forms of European-derived peoples as inherently pathological in that they are based upon repressed sexuality which engenders neurotic rage the acting out of which, in a 'worst case scenario' would be fascistic - intended to strangle the organic life White people.
Kunstler, who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, as an indispensable entity for the continued existence of the Jewish people, would deny Whites a homeland of their own; though Jews are vastly statistically less likely to be victimized by Palestinians in Israel than are Whites to be victimized by non-Whites in America. That is rank hypocrisy.
All the ridicule and contempt Kunstler ejaculates regarding the symptoms of vulgarization and hyper-individualization of our people go without mentioning the disease, and its cause. And he certainly offers no cure, and dreads that cure more than anything in this world. The cure is the reaffirmation of our peoplehood, and separation from all those that wish us ill. How dare he, when it is our people that Kunstler and his own people depend upon for everything that makes life worth living in this world, do what he does! The man truly knows no shame.
Laura, your 4:35 PM post parallels what Jim has been saying for a long time.
I have no clue if "5/6" of the world population will shoot craps. Maybe, maybe not. Odds are that the remaining 1/6 will be some tough SOBs. They'll not only be smart, they'll have all manner of the needed manual skills. It's the townies and office-workers who are in deep doo-doo.
My problem is that while I believe I have the smarts, accumulated knowledge and a bunch of skills of all sorts, I'm 75 and the physical part of the long-term is problematic. Can't complain, though, nor will I whine. I've had a ball, so far, and I don't plan to quit early.
"...we came for first set and we stayed 'til last call; didn't we have us a ball?" is my theme song. :-) I disrecall who wrote it.
Have fun,
'Rat
Laura, your 4:35 PM post parallels what Jim has been saying for a long time.
I have no clue if "5/6" of the world population will shoot craps. Maybe, maybe not. Odds are that the remaining 1/6 will be some tough SOBs. They'll not only be smart, they'll have all manner of the needed manual skills. It's the townies and office-workers who are in deep doo-doo.
My problem is that while I believe I have the smarts, accumulated knowledge and a bunch of skills of all sorts, I'm 75 and the physical part of the long-term is problematic. Can't complain, though, nor will I whine. I've had a ball, so far, and I don't plan to quit early.
"...we came for first set and we stayed 'til last call; didn't we have us a ball?" is my theme song. :-) I disrecall who wrote it.
Have fun,
'Rat
"Maybe we will emerge from our culture of free parking to a new society of living, by necessity, much more lightly on the planet and for a long time, perhaps long enough to allow the terrain to recover from all the free parking."
We'll certainly be free from fiat money once the dust settles.
Apologies to all. Website software? My computer? I don't know...
'Rat
As China is finding out the hard way, Laura, killing off babies (ie killing off your working age income producing creative class) is not the smart way to go. If you really want population reduction it has to be done at the other end: killing off the useless unproductive non-income producing uncreative burdens on society, namely the elderly. Killing off babies leaves you with a huge retired class needing to be supported by a shrinking working age class that cannot support such numerous elderly and themselves at the same time.
Social security is a case in point. When it was enacted, there were 19 workers per retired person. Now there are 3, soon to be 2. In other words, to support all the retired people, each worker will have to cough up 1/3 of their income so that everyone has 2/3 of an income. And if you continue to kill babies, you will simply continue killing off your tax-paying wage earner base. Not smart.
JHK says: "We suppose, tautologically, that because things have always seemed the way they are, that they always have been the way they seem."
Uh, yes, and most CFNers believe that, because throughout history life has been "nasty, brutish, and short," that life will again be that way ... once the oil runs out... as if a return to primitivism is inevitable... progress and human ingenuity be damned.
I think it's amazing that all these so-called "Christians" are whining about having single-payer healthcare when the New Testament says clearly that the real 1st century community of believers sold all their excess property and possessions and held all things in common. I would presume that meant a doctor in that community of believers treated people in the community of believers for free, since they had all resources in common. (But I'm willing to be that these same so-called "Christians" would not in a million years join a kibbutz - because "socialism" is "evil.")
I think it's amazing that all these so-called "Christians" are whining about having single-payer healthcare when the New Testament says clearly that the real 1st century community of believers sold all their excess property and possessions and held all things in common. I would presume that meant a doctor in that community of believers treated people in the community of believers for free, since they had all resources in common. (But I'm willing to bet that these same so-called "Christians" would not in a million years join a kibbutz - because "socialism" is "evil.")
Popular song now on the radio sums up the mentality that we'll be dealing with:
***
Well it's midnight, damn right, we're wound up too tight
I've got a fist full of whiskey, the bottle just bit me
That shit makes me bat shit crazy
We've got no fear, no doubt, all in balls out
We're going off tonight
To kick out every light
To get anything that we want
To drink everything in sight
We're going till the world stops turning
While we burn it to the ground tonight
We're screaming like demons, swinging from the ceiling
I got a fist full of fifties, the tequila just hit me
We got no class, no taste, no shirt, and shit faced
We got it lined up, shot down, firing back straight crown
We're going off tonight
To kick out every light
To get anything that we want
To drink everything in sight
We're going till the world stops turning
While we burn it to the ground tonight
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwJ8NvbgRfo
***
If you're not scared of these people you should be. This is why sales of ammo are through the roof. Even the libs are stocking up.
The 15% or so of the population that would remain would not necessarily be the 'smartest' and might well be pretty dumb when it comes to building a humane society that a person of culture and learning would want to live in.... or that a person with basic humanity would want to be a part of.
They would be the luckiest, and the physically toughest. They would also be the most vicious, and be adept at applying brute force where necessary and killing anyone who gets in their way. Needless to say, they would be genetically endowed with superior physical strength and disease resistance.
Keep in mind that in the dark ages that followed the fall of Rome, that there were not many engineers, scholars, doctors, craftsmen, or businessmen. And there were no philosophers.
There were only warlords, the antecedents of the feudal aristocracy, who prevailed by looting and murder, and the religious shamans who catered to them and justified them... and sheltered the few brainy people around, who lived in fear and at the beck and call of their rulers, who couldn't have lived without whatever craft and skill they supplied, recovered piece by piece over generations...but who considered themselves vastly superior to the craftsmen and tradesmen and few scholars and scientists whose work made it possible for the lords to live better than their peasant vassals. The average early feudal lord was an uncouth brute who never bathed, ate with his fingers, raped peasants at will, and took his land and the service of his "inferiors" by force. It's difficult to believe that anyone posting here can actually believe that a return to such a society would be an improvement, even though I will allow that it's a real possibility.
My guess is that the brains who make civilization possible will not survive any better than they did the collapse of Rome, and the burning and looting of Alexandria, when the Roman Church burned the famous library in a successful effort to stamp out the knowledge and ideas that had given the world the most glorious periods of civilization to that date, and viciously murdered prominent scholars and thinkers.
Our own post-apocalypse future will probably be no better, and I've been convinced for a long time, that should we fail to be able to sustain our civilization, that it would implode into a dark age that would be longer and darker than any of the past.
As for the supposed superiority of a rigidly stratified and authoritarian society, well, the proof is in the pudding. Poor countries ruled by rigidly authoritarian elites are imitating our wasteful lifestyles to the extent their means will allow, and often far beyond their means- it is not the "hoi poloi" who dreamed and built the monstrosity that is Dubai, that rich folk's tax and money-washing haven, and the most wasteful of resources of any city in the world. There can be no question that it is our educated elites who consume nonrenewable resources at the fastest rate, and whose priorities and desire for mega-profits drove the creation of America's unsustainable and inhumane suburban landscape.
Bravo sir-you have vision. But the minorities are going to have to go-but they wont. So we will have to leave them. But the Feds wont let us go...You see where this is going. It is inevitable.
I second the motion-aargh. Get him me hearties. Seriously dude, you make it sound easy-too easy. Jim Rawls of SurvivalBlog.com, the largest of all such blogs, disagrees with you. For more info, watch Costner's "Water World".
There are two reasons we're going down the tubes. First, we lost all of our middle class manufacturing jobs to China. The younger peop;e that I know are working (if they have jobs that is), one or two part time jobs that pay an average of $8.00 per hour. The factory jobs paying $15.00 an hour or more are mostly gone. Secondly, Washington has turned into a marketplace where legislation is bought and paid for on a daily basis by a process that has become corrupted by corporate money. If you have noticed, AIG & the rest haven't missed a bonus payment yet and as long as they can buy congress, they won't. Just these two facts alone are enough to sink the country, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. And I have to agree with JHK, Sarah Palin is definitely a yeast infection.
Laura L.
Yes, I do hear you. (I am "somewhat" of an empath; the opposite being sociopathic. Hopefully, very little of that nastiness is welded to my soul. Sure, "self-preservation" is clearly manifested, but yep, there are limits to the amount of suffering I'll endure 'til the train at the end of the tunnel runs me down like a rabid dog. Not to say I won't endure A LOT to wreak a heapin' helpin' of vengeance on those that got's some coming...)
Howsomever, I don't see these lines by JHK as being anything but grieving for that ol' "lost potential" thang. Wouldn't you agree (even a little)?:
" Entropy is a harsh mistress. In the immediate offing: a contest for the table scraps of the 20th century. We've barely seen the beginning of this, just a little peevishness embodied by yeast shaman figures such as Sarah Palin and Glen Beck. As hardships mount and hardened emotions rise, we'll see "the usual suspects" come into play: starvation, disease, violence. We may still be driving around in Ford F-150s, but the Pale Rider is just over the horizon beating a path to our parking-lot-of-the-soul.
It's a sad and tragic process and, all lame metaphors aside, there are real human feelings at stake in our prospects for loss of every kind, but especially in the fate of people we love.
He does a bit of gentile bashing every other week or so. This week was particularly bad-a crematoria outside Nashvillle? I don't think it's conscious on his part-consciously he thinks we're all just people. So I think Prof McDonald's thesis is often correct: Jews aren't conscious of their own bias and ethnocentrism. The Leaders of the ADL by contrast, must be.
Love your writing. Always lots of positive feedback about content, but people don't tell you enough: you're a terrific writer.
Pam
"The Demos havn't had "uninterrupted control" since Raygun took office."
Well okay, should have said "politicians". Ain't a plug nickel's worth of difference anyway.
ginsberian,
whitmanesque,
wolfoid and
twainish. geese i wish i had master enough to forward this delicate golden twaddle like tripe which is loaded with clean spirit
I find it interesting that yeast is now being explored (along with algae) as a potential alternative fuel source. Now, given the intrinsic fat built up by the typical American that could be extracted and converted via the appropriate rendering and distilling hardware, and you could quite easily solve the oil crisis and the overpopulation crisis in one fell swoop. Shades of soylent green (which I'm honestly surprised hasn't been mentioned yet).
Overpopulation by itself is not really the problem. In India, overpopulation has been pandemic, yet the carbon footprint of a typical Indian is virtually non-existent. The same could be said for the slum-dwellers of Mexico City or similar people who are probably far more aware of the real state of cultural collapse than most Americans could ever be. On the other hand, a billionaire with his own personal yacht or private jet has a carbon footprint that is millions (in some cases billions) of times larger, than a woman in a slum in Calcutta. Which of those people is actually causing the "collapse" of modern society?
Unfortunately, chances are pretty good that the woman in Calcutta will be the one to be removed - by disease, by famine, by regressive political regimes or local violence or just despair. The billionaire has his feudal estates, has the best of all possible medical support, has the ability to stockpile goods for the future and has the ability to hire personal police forces.
The investment bankers and fund managers who are now collecting their unjust rewards are not (in the main) buying pretty artwork or new cars with it - luxury sales continue to fall, depriving even sycophantic artists and craftsmen from earning a living - but you can bet that they are "battle-hardening" their domiciles, making sure that their staffs are well trained in arms (and are well paid to prevent them from possibly becoming assassins) and locking the barn door. They would be fools if they weren't, and the ones that are fools won't survive the coming purge.
I don't believe that the "fall" will be to the level of barbarity. I'm not even sure I believe in JHK's new frontier viewpoint. It will, however, be a time where the "empire" of the United States will likely break up into smaller administrative units, where for a while we'll be more city-states than a country (or several countries) and where the rule of law will be replaced by the rule of might, save in those places that 1) have sufficient local energy sources, 2) have sufficient natural resources - water, arable land, 3) are able to keep "the grid" together long enough to transition to a post-oil future, 4) have ports that allow for trade beyond their immediate boundaries, and 5) can conscript enough people to guard those resources. Some places will manage. I don't give out much hope for Denver, Scottsdale, Las Vegas, or a host of other cities that exist only as way points on Route 666.
reply to Clouseau2
With a three diget IQ, what are you doing on this "Blog"??
I take a "Happy Motoring" trip only once or twice a year. Otherwise, I walk, take the train, or ride a bus whenever I want to go anywhere. My "exotic ocean cruise" is the Staten Island Ferry. On one of those occasional trips, this past year, in fact I was on US 9 between Warrensburg and Glen Falls. At those same places, our esteemed author speaks of The Coming Apocalypse, I saw a rare sight--pedestrians! Only in very select places, such as Cooperstown, did I see anywhere near as many pedestrians as I do in my own eminently walkable home town. Such a strange irony that I would see "the problem" and "the solution" in the same place.
And Kurt Cagle, da gummint removed US 666 from the federal highway system years ago because of some superstition.
Miss Gayle, I've been smelling this "American Brand" of "The Final Solution" for quite some time now, like burnt bacon. I'm nearly 60; it's getting scary. Something like 3/4 of all health-care spending is for care of the chronically ill. Scared enough yet?
Jim, I look forward to your Monday column. A few comments:
Did you know that Velveeta was first made in Monroe, New York in 1923? It doesn't need refrigeration either. You might consider this "survival" food. I'm going to put a block of Velveeta in every bag of silver coins I buy.
Could you post this column earlier in the morning or after 6:00 pm Monday night? Unfortunately, I just got a new American job (a job without benefits) and I can't access it during normal business hours anymore. It is inconvenient to say the least (they expect me to show up everyday, Monday through Friday at 8:00 am) but it pays for the Velveeta.
It's a good thing those not-very-bright virtual serfs were smart enough to defeat the original Axis of Evil.
Thank you for allowing me to comment and promote my blog a little bit.
http//teddersrandomnotes.com/blog
I found this on Parapundit, espousing the low usage of trains in EU. The link does not seem to match.
The extent of mass transit usage in Europe is exaggerated anyway. Check out table 3 at this link which shows percentages of distances traveled in Europe by car, rail, tram & metro, and bus & coach. What you'll see is that cars account for over 80% of distance traveled in 11 western European countries and only gets below 80% in Denmark, Austria, and Ireland. If that's the best European countries can do with mass transit given their high gasoline prices, denser populations, and public subsidies then the idea that Americans could shift to mass transit is absurd.
http://www.halfsigma.com/2009/11/trains-higher-class-than-buses.html
If this is true, looks like EU is also trapped in the car paradigm paralysis.
Sorry. I was too quick to hit the send button.
http://teddersrandomnotes.com/blog
It will be interesting to see what happens to our great "information culture", based on a very fragile Internet, when things start to fall apart. Can you say low-power AM radio, and self-published newsletters, both with a decidedly local circulation and flavor?
One thing we resource junkies in the States need to come to grips with:
The other 5.7 billion people on the planet combined don't use as many resources as the billion or so middle class members.
Stop blaming resource depletion on over-population and place it squarely where it belongs...in your own lap.
One thing we resource junkies in the States need to come to grips with:
The other 5.7 billion people on the planet combined don't use as many resources as the billion or so middle class members.
Stop blaming resource depletion on over-population and place it squarely where it belongs...in your own lap.
This TIF boondogle provided a lot of jobs, all right, Abby. But those jobs were mostly to the developer and to the local aldergoon's flunkies and to city bureaucrats.
The construction jobs provided were temporary, the damage to the taxpayers, the neighborhood, and the local economy permanent. Those workers will stand that much more of a chance of being blown out of their own houses by the upward-ratcheting property taxes necessary to offset the diversion of tax monies in the TIF district away from essential city services such as essential water and sewer infrastructure, police protection, and fire protection, to the back pockets of the crony developer who likely made twice the profit on this development that he would building for a private buyer in the free market (or that portion of the housing market that remains truly free).
The name of the game in this city is to siphon off as much of the taxpayers' dough as possible to the back pockets of political cronies who donate to your war chest. Who cares if you destroy the local economy by making local merchants subsidize their own destruction at the hands of Target- why don't they just fold up their struggling little no-count stores and get a job for $9 an hour at Target or Panera Bread? Who cares if Panera or Border's Books or whatever other large retail recipient of the taxpayer's bounty then folds up and leaves after 4 years, leaving a 50,000 sq ft space that the taxpayers paid for and that will sit vacant for 5 years until it is occupied by a storage facility or some such?
So goes all government-sponsored economic development. We rescued GM and lent them $25 billion, then more later, so that they could invest $1 billion in their Brazil operation. How many jobs did that provide for Americans? We built about a dozen dams on the Colorado River, one of which, the 700' high Glen Canyon, nearly breached in 1983 and which in 2007 was deemed one of the two most dangerous hydro dams in the country, so that tens of millions of people could be lured to the southwest, where millions will eventually be stranded with insufficient water supplies and no way to get around. And there is no money to divert the water from Lake Powell and take down a dam that its keepers know damn well is going to fail sooner or later, with catastrophic consequences.
No money left to unwind 60 years of suburban and exurban highway building and housing development that has stranded 80% of our population in places with densities too low to support transit. No money left to build the nuclear power plants with advanced and more efficient technologies we will need to power a third of our systems, let alone electrify our transportation....as though we had, jointly or severally, the money to rebuild our railroads. We will be to occupied paying down the $14 trillion committed to "rescuing" the government-gooosed housing market to have the capital to commit to that.
Any Peak Oil survival plan that depends on government planning or resources is going to fail. Make your own plans and find a way to cope that doesn't depend on our tottering, top-heavy, money-guzzling gubbermint.
Let's try another tack. While, I agree with the brutally pessimistic outlook of most contributors, I do not agree that the outcomes MUST be as implied or predicted. The energy budget of the earth is that of a long term flow process AND we are nowhere close to being short of energy. What we are short of is a gestalt of intelligent intellectual human LIFE.
I do not need to re-emphasize the self serving chaos of the Wall street mentality or the political "in"correctness which refuses to accept that humans are in fact not created equal in group or individual. I do wish to emphasize that the mental and physical vacuum generated by our educational and moral edifice is rotting our core. That a smart, but slothily educated, 18 year old could ask me, "Mr. Mxxxx, what be 8 time 4?," is but one example of these lumpen yeast pod people. No sense of history, philosophy, science, math exists in these proles. Perhaps there will come a time when the talent those $8/hr people have will be called upon, but I doubt it. We have come to the point where police need a bachelor's degree to get a decent job, but a bachelor's degree in ANY field does not necessarily imply any ability to do anything.
And here I differ with JHK. Projects like the $600 billion SOLAR array planned for the Sahara with power distributed under the Mediterranean to Europe take up very little of the earth's land surface. Similarly, most (>50%) of the oil in depleted wells is STILL there. I could add other technology, but unfortunately Beavis and Butthead is NOT a joke, and so the likelihood citizens like this can act responsibly is close to NIL. Ravi Batra , another doomer, may have it nailed when he notes that societies go through cycles of emphasis on MILITARY, RELIGIOUS, MERCANTILE, and INTELLECTUAL. After the collapse,
military warlords may be the chosen path.
There is way too much pessimism and negativism here. Lighten up, y'all.
As much as I often enjoy Kunstler's scathing criticism, I don't enjoy his cheap and constant jabs at the American South. Last I checked the overurbanized North and some parts of the West is the section of the USA which is the most paved over, artificial, overpopulated, industrialized, dependent on oil for cars and home heating along with coal (often mined in the South) for their electricity. How many mountains in West Virginia have been leveled mining coal in order to keep NYC's lights on? Also, food grown and raised in the South and Midwest subsidizes the unsustainable population density of the North and parts of the West. In short, the North is clearly the most parasitic and ecologically unsustainable area of the entire USA. Per usual, it's the damn Yanks. Did you know that New York City daily EXPORTS a lot of its trash to some Southern states like Kentucky, Virginia, etc? Did you know that NYC pumps untold tons of sewage daily in to its nearby waterways? Did you know that NYC imports its freaking water from very far away, and all of its food too? Well, now you do...the same is true of many other overurbanized areas in the USA. The problem is not overpopulation, the problem is the overconcentration of human populations in urban/suburban areas. But in terms of population pressures, why doesn't Mr Kunstler address the millions of illegal immigrants currently residing in the USA? And how we still continue to import over a million legal immigrants a year despite unemployment being very high?
Overpopulation isn't that much of an American problem either except in some nations of the world (China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Central America, etc) -- much of the USA is thinly populated outside of various sprawling urban/suburban metro areas. There are thousands of small towns and vast swathes of the American countryside just waiting to be repopulated and reactivated by the right people, but too many Americans continue to huddle in and around America's largest cities like their lives depended on it...well, I should tell y'all that it doesn't. Of course the resources necessary for basic survival aren't in the sprawling cities or suburbs anymore, they've all been paved over by the hyperindustrial money-master control-freaks in the last century. But there is PLENTY of land, resources, water, and so on out in the American small towns and the countryside, places which are increasingly abandoned by the rootless cosmopolitan American populace.
The best thing we can do to restart the faltering American economy is a very organized 21st century 'back to the land' movement. Get a lot of people out of the overpopulated cities and suburbs and back out in to THE REAL WORLD which is composed of small/medium-sized towns and villages, the rural or semi-rural areas, and so on.
And oh yeah, peak oil is not on horizon in the USA despite all of the scaremongers who say it is. The USA, due to the fact that we have complete control of Iraq's vast oil reserves, now has enough oil to keep us afloat for many decades to come. You can thank G. W. Bush for his foresight. That being said, we do need to get off oil ASAP in favor of cleaner/greener forms of transportation and technology. I agree with Jim that we ought to begin to revive America's rail transport systems immediately. We are a vast nation, and very large nations need lots of TRAINS for the efficient transportation of goods and people.
So, JHK is telling us that he believes in free will. He is inferring that morons do not need to be morons, that they choose to be such. My learning has taught me that anyone who believes as JHK believes, is a moron, or just another elitist asshole who holds himself to be a superior being. He also has identified himself with the extreme rightwing psychopaths, by his denigration of those on the lowest economic and I.Q. scale. The Wall Street criminals have destroyed our economy, and they are not Southern Baptists or Midwest Lutherans. Sometimes, Jimmy Boy says it’s all good, if you don’t cross the line regarding his tribe
When I worked in the Netherlands in the 1990s, most of the Dutch families owned one car, max. Only the very rich had more than one.
So the Dad would drive the one car to work every day, and it would usually stay parked in the company lot all day. (BTW, most white-collar workers who got company-supplied cars also had a company-supplied credit card for the fuel.)
Meanwhile, the wife would chauffeur the kids to school, and do her shopping, on the bike.
Oh well, at least he maintained his standing among his fellow workers.
You are an idiot.
Jim asks rhetorically:
"What might we do about overpopulation here in the USA?"
Then he shows an uncharacteristic lack of imagination, assuming the answer is: Nothing.
How about this:
- ELIMINATE the tax deduction for more than two children
- Actually ENFORCE our nation's immigration laws
- DON'T cut off federal funding to organizations like Planned Parenthood just because part of their mission includes abortion-options counseling.
- Treat childless and one-child couples as environmental HEROES, and treat Octo-mom and mothers of quintuplets and environmental VILLIANS.
- Call the POPE as what he is: an environmental criminal, for discouraging people from using contraception.
- Discuss unsustainable population growth as a CRUCIAL PUBLIC ISSUES, don't treat it as some elephant in the room that we are all trying to ignore ... hmmm ... in fact this seems strangely like Kunstler's pet topic, Peak Oil!
How uncreative of Kunstler to think we're pissing in the wind about population growth ... but can't do enough to wean the US off of petroleam.
Gee -- what might we do about Peak Oil here in the United States?
Nothing, of course. (I'm adopting Kunstler's defeatist attitude.)
Thank you Laura, you beat me to it. I mulled over this nasty post for the afternoon and signed in wondering if I would see any shred of decency in 'comments' and replies?
Yeast people? Who the hell do you people think you are? Will you be manning the ovens? Or is it enough to simply feel superior to folks who are pretty much trying to get by just like anyone else. We are all products of our world to some extent, and I think it would be wise to remember that people are doing the best that they can.
God help us all if you represent the 'thinking people'. We would all be better off dead than watching the world unfold to your specifications, or twisted version of who is worthy and what is the best way to live
This is my last post and reading of this blog. JHK, you are a nasty small minded man who has lost his humanity.
Have fun.
Paulo
Earth to elitists.... Mankind got along perfectly well and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years, or millions or however far back you want to go until you get lost in the mists of time. No formal education needed; no belief in science, evolution, name your favorite indicia of smarts or intelligence. Don't get me wrong; I am all in favor of those things and happen to think they are very good qualities. But the people who survive will be those who find a cohesive idea around which they can unify; whether it be that wacky old Jehovah or some other fraudster, and can manage to get and maintain food and shelter. Maybe the Mexican drug cartels will form the basis for the groups that survive. Just like the warlords back in the Dark Ages.
Earth to elitists.... Mankind got along perfectly well and thrived for hundreds of thousands of years, or millions or however far back you want to go until you get lost in the mists of time. No formal education needed; no belief in science, evolution, name your favorite indicia of smarts or intelligence. Don't get me wrong; I am all in favor of those things and happen to think they are very good qualities. But the people who survive will be those who find a cohesive idea around which they can unify; whether it be that wacky old Jehovah or some other fraudster, and can manage to get and maintain food and shelter. Maybe the Mexican drug cartels will form the basis for the groups that survive. Just like the warlords back in the Dark Ages.
My name is Trotsky Catbox
My home’s the Pacific Gyre
Where spinning bottles are the norm
And fishes catch on Fyre
I keep a strain of fragrant yeast
(That I’ve had since the Civil War)
In a Jar beneath my nautical bed
But above the Ocean floor
I cannot wait for Mondays
Electrons set me free
On the Kunstler ‘Comments’ section
Mayhem and Anarchy
I try to stay on topic
But that’s against the rules
So I just spew whatever I feel
On the HMS Ship of Fools
(Clusterfuck Comments…………
Spelling, Reason, Civility, Clothing: optional)
Oh, and one more thing…
My diet consists of Jelly Beans
And Condolleeza Rice
If somehow that don’t please you
I’ll punch you in the eyes!!!
Sincerely,
(feeling very clever and pleased
with himself)
---TC
Put ‘em up!
You are an idiot.
I'm 75 too and the change in a lifetime has been fantastic.
Lessons from the hyperinflating empire : Who can afford beer, pretzels, an Ecoli burger and tickets to a game these days? The dice are loaded and you can hope for a natural but it seems all we're getting is craps and you can take your monopoly money in a wheelbarrow to the banker's bakery.
Lessons from the hyperinflating empire : Who can afford beer, pretzels, an Ecoli burger and tickets to a game these days? The dice are loaded and you can hope for a natural but it seems all we're getting is craps and you can take your monopoly money in a wheelbarrow to the banker's bakery.
Laura (and all those who go along with her):
Yeah, there's something sickly fun about looking all around you and waiting for things to fall. I've been waiting and watching since 1977, when I got my first real experience at Sub-Urban living and found it sucked eggs...real hard. Where most Sub-Urban yobs watch the movies and cheer on New York being pummeled to oblivion, I think of Sub-Urbs and Sub-Urban colleges (Michigan State, for starters) being firebombed to death.
But don't be fooled. We know damn well that we're equally yeast...probably more so, seeing as we spend too much time reading the internet (heck, I'm writing this after reading ALL THE POSTS BEFORE THIS). We'll probably be shot first, so that the illusion lasts a bit longer for the rest of the yeast.
"mankind thrived perfectly well"
??????????????????????????????
Yeah, with fleas, and lice, and for about thirty years on average, with high infant mortality rates.... beheading, non debatable torture, toasted witches.....
and poop smell.... a whole lot of poop smell....
no toilet paper....
lots of hunger (feast or famine as opposed to boom or bust)
dust from horsecrap choking the air.... serfdom.... massive class distinction (Titanic style)
Survived....YES, but thriving happened with oil
WAKE UP
Water world? What? Let me break it down for you.
There are 250 families in this water community. Each boat has its own plumbing system to include running water. Most are outfitted for long oceanic voyages which means my neighbors can produce their own electricity and have "homes" stuffed full of survival gear. My next door neighbor just installed a battery operated system that can produce 80 gallons of fresh water a day right out of the ocean.
Pirates?? Come on, boats with engines get about 1 mile per gallon or less. It wont be long before anything with an engine (including the coast guard) is frozen. Oh yeah, I've got sails.
My neighbors are not ignorant to what is happening in the US of A and, trust me, we're making plans for the worst. I would much rather be in this community of survivalists than in some suburb - those people are in for hell.
Finally, I take no pleasure in any of this but I can read the writing on the wall and those people that think they'll just farm their back yard or run out into the forests to pick berries are in for a big surprise.
It's un-american to take other's wealth?
Is that a joke?
We are living on land that was taken 200+/- years ago from people that shared the wealth, but didn't have guns.
The South was built with labor stolen from Africa.
The USA is RIGHT NOW engaged in stealing oil from Iraq and is openly drooling over Iran's oil.
The rich of the USA have increased their share of the wealth of this country over the last 30 years.
The working people have less, the overlords have more. Is that not stolen wealth?
I want to say that I am not looking forward to the reversal of our fortunes. I do not think that storing food and ammunition will last long.
I love electricity and hot and cold running water. I do not want to give it up.
I have no contempt for the yeast.
http://wagelaborer.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-about-stupid-lazy-moral-and-crazy.html
I believe that we could create a just and decent society, but not with 1% of the population siphoning off 60% of the wealth. Especially because they use that wealth to destroy the ecosystem.
And, yes, pay people to be sterilized. Typical of JS that he thinks that the measure of a man is his employment status or skin color.
Pay everyone. If you gave a woman $5,000 to be sterilized and men $4,000, regardless of income or number of children, the birthrate would drop.
I know 2 women who have reproduced multiple times. One had asked for sterilization after her 5th child, but the doctor refused, so she's on her 9th.
That is ridiculous. She only has one with her. The rest are with DCFS.
Same with the other one. She only has one. The other 8 are with her parents, except for the ones already in the prison system.
And then the city did a big thing where they built a fence around the yard for the grandparents who so selflessly take care of their grandchildren!!
Yeah, because their daughter is an irresponsible idiot who pops a kid out every couple of years and leaves it with them! What's so inspiring about that?
You're right; I was just mostly having fun, though John Rawls does say that. You are in a strong position-even compared to most survivalists. I think I'm envious! I'm planning to go to the Northern Wilderness and try to learn some new skills. You already have your skills.
Let's Look at two extremes of ethnocentrism: Whites from Northern Europe the least, and Jews the most. Which of these types is more common thoughtout the World? Extreme ethnocentrism is the norm of most of the world's people. Whites, expecially of Northern European descent, are very unusual. But we don't know ourselves in relation to others. Because of relentless propaganda, we think we are the ethnocentric ones! And Jews are so used to this state of affairs that they have begun to take it for granted. Last year and ADL politician lamented about losing in California "after all they did for those people". Mexicans aren't like Whites-they're like Jews. They'll use us until they don't need us anymore and then throw us away. So once this is realized, one knows that that America is finished. We have brought in people who will not adapt to us but will only take from us.
It's time for Whites to learn from the Jews and start looking out for our own Tribe as they look out for their's. Hate us? Sure you do because we know the Truth about who is ripping us off and it doesn't jive with your little world view. They financed you people for your revolutions-now they don't need you anymore because they control capitalism. That's all Communism ever was-a ruse, an expedient, a tactic to bring down the West. And now you're mad at them too!
Wrong: the mark of a man is his character-which is not unrelated to his IQ, which in turn is not unrelated to his skin color, which is not unrelated-if only by coincidence-to the genes which select for intelligence.
You believe in collective guilt. Very well. Then kill yourself. Or go become a slave to some Blacks. Don't have the balls? Very well-move to a country with no history of colonialism, like Sweden. They are committing suicide too-apparently Marxists have different arguments for different situations-the goal always being the death of the West. Swede feel guilty too just because they are White. That's exactly what is required. Anyway back to you: do something to make up for the sin of being White. And leave the rest of us the fuck alone. Even if I believed in collective guilt, my ancestors never had slaves. They were slaves as were millions of Whites througout the ages. Life has been tough all around. You're a softy-becoming a White Slave will probably be good for you.
What do you think of Andrew Neather's admission that Labor has tried to genocide Whites in Britain? Trying to make a group a minority in their own Country conforms to the U.N definiton of Genocide. Not that they will care-they're all for White Genocide too.
Wrong: the mark of a man is his character-which is not unrelated to his IQ, which in turn is not unrelated to his skin color, which is not unrelated-if only by coincidence-to the genes which select for intelligence.
You believe in collective guilt. Very well. Then kill yourself. Or go become a slave to some Blacks. Don't have the balls? Very well-move to a country with no history of colonialism, like Sweden. They are committing suicide too-apparently Marxists have different arguments for different situations-the goal always being the death of the West. Swede feel guilty too just because they are White. That's exactly what is required. Anyway back to you: do something to make up for the sin of being White. And leave the rest of us the fuck alone. Even if I believed in collective guilt, my ancestors never had slaves. They were slaves as were millions of Whites througout the ages. Life has been tough all around. You're a softy-becoming a White Slave will probably be good for you.
What do you think of Andrew Neather's admission that Labor has tried to genocide Whites in Britain? Trying to make a group a minority in their own Country conforms to the U.N definiton of Genocide. Not that they will care-they're all for White Genocide too.
As Uncle Joe Stalin liked to say, "You can't make an Omelette without Breaking a Few Eggs".
Unlike some here, I don't see JHKs writings as being "elitist". I catch a tinge of sadness in the material, and I think he knows he is as much a Yeast Person as anyone else in this doomed culture. He is making observations on a collapsing society, and most of it is pretty objective, even if he does go over the top a bit on the metaphors. That's OK, I'm guilty of that one occassionally myself. LOL.
Its far too late for solutions pre-birth like contraception or abortion to make a difference in the overshoot problem, the Chinese tried and failed on that policy even in a culture where they could mandate such things. So it is inevitable that a "correction" in this market will occur somehow. It is most likely that in the end the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will run herd over humanity, as they have always done. Famine, Pestilence, War and Death are coming again, as they have so many times before, just this time its on a Global Scale.
Is this something to be happy about or glory in? Of course it is not, but I do not see that JHK does glory in this, he just calls it as he sees it. It is what it is, and it will come to pass, sadly probably sooner rather than later.
Perhaps the only thing I would take issue with overall in JHKs ritings is that he does not really place the blame where it belongs, and it is not in the hands of the Yeast People, but in the Brewers. Its quite clear that the responsibility for this fiasco is in the hands of those who took control during the enlightenment, and who have held that control ever since. There were brief periods when that control was challenged, most recently back in the 60s, but the power was never there to wrest back control from those who built the Ponzi early on.
Now we face a time where many will die as a result of the mismanagement by the management, that cannot be undone. However, what we CAN do now is make sure that those who were responsible will PAY for Crimes Against Humanity. We CAN exchange English Common Law for the Law of the Inquisition. We CAN resurrect the Auto da Fe. We CAN use every last Barrel left in Saudi Arabia to Boil in Oil every last Bankster on Earth. We most certainly CAN give these assholes a first class send off to the Great Beyond. We CAN make sure they experience Hell on Earth before they all meet their Maker and Burn in Everlasting Torment in the Fire and Brimstone of HELL. Its in our POWER to do that, before most of us also take that last trip in the Kayak out to Sea. Everybody dies eventually of course, but how you go out is the most important thing here. Go out with Honor, fighting for hat is right and just, and make the scumbags responsible for it all PAY on the way out. That is Eternal Justice at work.
RE
Maybe it's just the optimist in me but I see opportunities in the new order that will emerge from the ashes of hyper-consumption. We will have less to eat, but the food we eat will be healthier and taste like food ought to taste. We'll be a lot less mobile and we'll have less money to put up new dwellings, but the vast expanses of asphalt will be reclaimed by nature and the few dwellings we do build will be sturdier and more beautiful. We'll learn to appreciate the ebb and flow of the natural world. Of course, I'm writing this just after taking four Prozacs and two Tylenol with warm cocoa so I might be full of shit.
Maybe it's just the optimist in me but I see opportunities in the new order that will emerge from the ashes of hyper-consumption. We will have less to eat, but the food we eat will be healthier and taste like food ought to taste. We'll be a lot less mobile and we'll have less money to put up new dwellings, but the vast expanses of asphalt will be reclaimed by nature and the few dwellings we do build will be sturdier and more beautiful. We'll learn to appreciate the ebb and flow of the natural world. Of course, I'm writing this just after taking four Prozacs and two Tylenol with warm cocoa so I might be full of shit.
Reality is of a piece, and I can't in all conscience just use logic to incorporate selected items in order to deduce any prefabricated antisemitic conclusion.
But, you know how the antisemitic conclusions reign over any others in the self-pitying, throw-caution-to-the-wind, end-of-the-world scenario-building crescendo. I don't have to tell you. My sleep was ended. I'm terrified by yesterday's post. I hope that it was Kunstler reading through the comments and rising to the occasion, reclaiming his blog. Because, we had a great week in between.
We have crossed the Rubicon. Now, with Kunstler's great intelligence, we are at that one bottleneck. There's a strategic location in the dialog where you put up or shut up. If you put up, you get banned. But, I can't sleep.
I'll go down in flames; fuck it. This post, "Fate of the Yeast People", has people like me taking a licking. Yes, I've been unemployed these past five months (but, I like my shirt, and my shirt likes me. I suck on the shirt-tail, and everything's all right), jack, he already said it's contracting. Where's the sound of the sword clearing the scabbard? Isn't someone about to put me out of my misery?
You should see the look on the face of my chld having fun. He's innocent. The smile is just plastered there. It doesn't animate open and closed. when he waves his plastic sword around, he says, "I'm going to shing you." I never told him about 'shing'. He got it by himself. That's scary. It comes from a misreading in, "Changes", by David Bowie. Yes, a sword clearing leather does say, 'shing'; George Washington says shing. Like Jaego said, "Check the owl on the back of the dollar bill." We have our tokens.
Quote---It's at the end of this:
Mm
Still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes
But stil the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the strange
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
Turn and face the stranger
(Ch-ch-Changes)
Where's your shame
You've left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can't trace time
Unquote
I just thought it was "Where's the 'shing', you've left us up to our necks in it (I also thought it was "the warm and permanent sand", but that was another logical leap)".
So, therefore, yes, you are observing the mutterings of people coming unhinged, of them losing their moorings. Their sanity is gone.
Guilty!
So, Kunstler has said this kind of stuff before, hasn't he? Well, no. Here, he gives a forum to the black-hearted plotting against us Americans as just yeast-people, and this puts a whole new face on the anti-semitism. Let me get this straight. As long as you were the only ones put to death by inustrialized massacre this was deplorable, but as soon as the gloves come off, now we see you for your true colors: revenge. You all are laughing at what's going to happen to us. Oh, we have to look into this Israel situation. I don't think I'm comfortable all dying off with a whole Yiddish population still going strong in America.
You know what? There is a whole cadre of folks making money off the internet itself. I don't believe I cotton to that. Oh, oh! And, guess what? I hearsay that if you want to know who killed the Jews in the Holocaust, it was mainly other Jews!. So now the chips are down, huh? Okay, fine. It is all becoming clear to me. You want to shame me for homicidal mania, but I think it's survival.
I am not going to speculate or say that you will be served or make up little lexicographical schmeres. I'm going to study how to fracture that hyoid bone or how to stick a ricin-laced tiny metal ball in your leg with an umbrella when we pass on the sidewalk. But, Moishe Dyan, ...(Aw, I gotta look that up? No. Change it to Dyan Cannon), I mean, he was good with the eyepatch thing. A lot of things about old Israel were good, as long as it lasted.
Hey reverse engineer: Your fore-ordained conclusions are driven by the fact of you posting in the man's own blog. You are giving the devil his due. He comes out of your analysis as if he's never been shot. How much does he pay you for you to give him such a wide pass? Don't you see what the pipes overhead you are wrenching on carry?
Is there anything I can get a handle on? I don't put the horse before the cart. I put out the data and then draw conclusions, ergo, they aren't designed for the attention span of a cocaine slammer. They are more glacier-related. It is a cocaine night. I'm out of cocaine now, all I have left is that "ai" spelling. I also have, "What if we are able to seek special Jew-only killing things based on the 1953 Nobel Prize? We'll call Jewish genes Jenes. It's not taken, and it hearkens back to those stars they had to wear in the ghetto. I am going to put JHK together with Abraham Maslow, I think. All I have is JHK referencing Lake George:
These days, I travel the road up the west shore of Lake George, in Warren County, New York, and see the sad, decomposing relics of that culture and that time in all the "playful" motels and leisure-time attractions.
Unquote. I put a period at the end of the clause.
Quoting now from a thing. It's not the Sheriff's department, but it is not going to be using the word, "strip malls"; they want you to visit. The closest whiff of that is, "pizza"; then they have B & B, if you saw, Groundhog Day, you hate those. I had to click on one of the individual towns, picked at random. It's the Adirondacks, so, I get the picture: Appalacia, is the corresponding natural montaine boundary for the Yeast People (Hillbillies). Quote:
friendly hospitality blending renovated historic buildings with modern amenities. Overnight visitors choose from campsites or quaint B & B’s and luxurious inns. After a round of golf, horseback riding or skiing, enjoy surprisingly diverse dining options, from pizza and ice cream to gourmet meals with an award winning wine.
Unquote. It might be a pizza "parlor", but don't expect any sparkling conversation in this kind of parlor. If you don't grab your pizza and head right out the door they call the Man. The clerks are behind a big tall counter. You can't even lean your elbow on there to talk to them. "I'm not the one", and, "Miss me with the traffic", is about all they'll say if you don't "make sense" to their question, "Can I help you?"
Let's see if it is Maslow. It's been a long time.
This already isn't going to work. Maslow is apparently not a Holocaust survivor. I want to know what it was like in there. Here's Maslow:
Was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. the eldest of seven children. His parents were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. He was slow and tidy, and remembered his childhood as lonely and rather unhappy, because, as he said, "I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood.
ow created a visual aid to explain his theories; he called it the Hierarchy of Needs. It is a pyramid that depicts the levels of humanistic needs, psychological and physical. When a human being executes the steps of the pyramid then that individual will have reached self actualization.
Now we have to find the writer who it was. Computer, search "Holocaust writer".
Google supplies "famous holocaust writers"; I take it. It is Victor Frankl, Austria, 1905. Roman Polanski is a Holocaust survivor. Didn't know that.
Frankl is the genius. Kunstler couldn't shine his shoes. I'd guess it is the phrase, "The best of us did not survive", that always puzzled me. Let's see if there's anything we can compare to strip malls. I mean, I can quote whatever I want; we are looking for the warped wood, wherever that occurs. I can't quote a whole book here.
Quote
On Discovering the Meaning of Life
"The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected." p.157
"What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." p.171
"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering." p.176
Unquote. That's the title of the book, anyway, Man's Search for Meaning. Jesus, can't I at least get him standing in line for "soup", or eating his shoes? I left my story of the Donner Party in the condo, I'm pretty sure. I'll just read more Balzac. He has them on the run. I'm cold. I'm going back to bed. Perchance to dream of becoming rich.
asia replied to comment from jean contes | November 16, 2009 4:42 PM | Reply
"Jc...you are dreamimg.
an invasion of this magnitude...50 MILLION ILLEGALS
'In fact the geography (two oceans) have stopped any invasion or full scale destruction (that was not the case in Europe or Asia).'
LOOK SOUTH OLD MAN [ OR YOUNG WOMAN]"
I'm a (not so young) man...
And I was talking about full blown wars.
The geography explains (partially) the mentality of people and countries (see Montesquieu's "Spirit of law").
America (US) had no real military worth ennemy or threat for almost two ceturies and all that developed a feeling of invincibility and messianism.
The result is hubris , the "American exceptionalism" and so on.
Not far away from the 2 century AC Roman Empire's mentality.
That explains also the emigration pressure from the South...Like in the Roman Empire...
We invested in IT, we are developing again and again technological utopia artifacts (in line with the dreams about "Singularity" of Kurtzwiller) and finally we loosed the reality touch.
We are a tribe with a "cargo cult": an illusion of science that will, by magic, find a solution.
So again the hubris: the end of history (US its highest expression).
I think the history (or even prehistory) mill will wake up again. The cloudy dark ages are at the horizon...
As Monbiot said: "Those who cry "overpopulation" are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor."
You are right to ignore population. Population is important, but not the real problem, which is overconsumption, and consumption is not directly proportional to human population except within compartmentalized cultures. The real issue is resource availability in the future, and humans COULD use muscle and blood to create usefulness, or they can simply sit and consume petrocheeze and be yeastpeople.
Probably too late to do anything but watch at this point. One can maybe watch a little longer if they grow their own food and live off-grid. It depends on how much work you want to put into your entertainment as your species perishes, I suppose.
Dan
In some, or many places, life was indeed brutish, nasty and short (like modern Somalia?); in other places life was good, even without indoor plumbing. Newton, Shakespeare, etc., wrote before oil; many and maybe most of the world's masterpieces in science, art and literature were created long before oil.
I am old enough to have had to start a wood fire in the kitchen stove to heat the room on a cold winter morning on our ranch in Nebraska. And our toilet was the outhouse a chilly 50' away. This morning I took a nice warm shower and just turned on the furnace. We may not like the unfolding, but our lives and those of our children and grandchildren are gonna change, drastically.
How does that old 50's tune go?
"Got along without you
Before I met you;
Gonna get along without you now."
As I pointed out before the people are not the leaven. The leaven are the lawless {1John 3:4}ideas that have caused each of us {leaders & followers} to become what we are; leavened. Repentance {removal of all leaven} is a revolution in thinking.
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.org/weblog/WebPosting.cfm?LogID=315
We look at things differently.
I see no relation between the content of a person's character and their IQ. You do. This cannot be resolved by flailing at each other in this forum.
I do feel sorry for you. Life must be unpleasant for you, hating the vast majority of your fellow human beings as you do.
I only dislike the 1/10 of 1% who are responsible for the rapacious destruction of human society and the ecosystem. (And Somalian society was deliberately destroyed by the same forces for the same reason, by the way.)
I assume that everyone else just wants to live a decent life and get along with their fellow beings. This makes for a happy life, with pleasant relations with those I encounter.
As for someone's "admission" that Labor is trying to genocide whites, what can I say?
If someone made that assertion, they are deluded, and it's not an admission, it's an opinion. You can take it for gospel, I dismiss it as insane.
A peek into life in a McMansion
http://www.suburbanempire.com
Caustic commentary..... Biting opinion...
.....Suburban critical..... Empire Chronicle.
Speeding trains?
This is not the blog topic I was expecting. Jim was supposed to be crooning about Buffet's big railroad purchase last week and how, just maybe, the biggies in finance are perhaps finally starting to "get it" even if it may be too late. Most commentators would have been flattered into at least a morsel of self recognition. OK, he's is not Roubini but he deserves an honorable mention at the very least.
The topic chosen, overpopulation, is so much more important that it's easy to see how the obvious rant did not even deserve to share the same page. Even the Nobel Laureate "green revolution" soldier, Norman Borlaug, once said that all of his efforts to help feed and save billions of lives merely postponed the real crisis ahead. This is the "untouchable" crux that nearly all other global crisis topics are descended from. Jim is right. This is the "speeding train" that we should give our greatest recognition to. But will we?
Which speeding train?
This is not the blog topic I was expecting. Jim was supposed to be crooning about Buffet's big railroad purchase last week and how, just maybe, the biggies in finance are finally starting to "get it" even if it may be too late. Most commentators would have been flattered into at least a morsel of self recognition. OK, he's not Roubini but he deserves honorable mention anyway.
The topic chosen, overpopulation, is so much more important that it's easy to see how the expected rant did not even deserve to share the same page. Even the Nobel Laureate "green revolution" soldier, Norman Borlaug, once said that all of his efforts to help feed and save billions of lives merely postponed the real crisis ahead. This is the "untouchable" crux that nearly all other present and future global crisis topics are descended from.
Jim is right. This is the "speeding train" that we should place in utmost importance. But will we?
Opinion is one thing-fact is another. It's not just my opinion that the races differ in IQ, it is a fact that has been proven repeatedly by research. And Whites don't have the highest-so I'm not just bragging. Ashkenazis and East Asians have the highest. Does that not make me not a "White Supremacist"?
Andrew Neather isn't just "somebody". He was an advisor to Blair and other high Labor Officials. In short, he was an Insider. He confirmed what is obvious to everybody: Labor is Anti-British and Anti-White. They are trying to swamp Britain with South Asians to destroy the culture and secure power forevver. The British National Party is the great hope of all true Englishmen now. And yes the implications are staggering. If these are the kinds of people who victory in World War Two put in power, then was the West on the wrong side to begin with?
I feel sorry for you wasting your life supporting the failed, vicious, evil philosophy known as Marxism or Communism.
Green is the new Red. So is Pink.
Socialism is great until you run out of other peoples money to steal, then if your a Republican, you just borrow or print it, and pass the debt onto the kids.
"What you'll see is that cars account for over 80% of distance traveled in 11 western European countries and only gets below 80% in Denmark, Austria, and Ireland. If that's the best European countries can do with mass transit given their high gasoline prices, denser populations, and public subsidies then the idea that Americans could shift to mass transit is absurd." STEVE
Commutes tend to be much shorter in Europe, and the cars much smaller & more fuel efficient as well.
In other words, people aren't driving 50+ miles each way in a Surburban that gets less than 10mpg.
They are driving only 10-15 miles in a car that gets 40mpgs.
So fuel usage is much less.
DJ
Opinion is one thing-fact is another. It's not just my opinion that the races differ in IQ, it is a fact that has been proven repeatedly by research. And Whites don't have the highest-so I'm not just bragging. Ashkenazis and East Asians have the highest. Does that not make me not a "White Supremacist"?
Andrew Neather isn't just "somebody". He was an advisor to Blair and other high Labor Officials. In short, he was an Insider. He confirmed what is obvious to everybody: Labor is Anti-British and Anti-White. They are trying to swamp Britain with South Asians to destroy the culture and secure power forevver. The British National Party is the great hope of all true Englishmen now. And yes the implications are staggering. If these are the kinds of people who victory in World War Two put in power, then was the West on the wrong side to begin with?
I feel sorry for you wasting your life supporting the failed, vicious, evil philosophy known as Marxism or Communism.
Green is the new Red. So is Pink.
I know full well what Mr Kunstler is saying. I don't give a shit what kind of facts underlie Kunstler's arguments. You don't understand me so I'm going to repeat myself. He is not entitled to refer to me and hundreds of millions of others like me as "yeast". Human life is not "yeast". I don't give a shit that it's just an analogy and he's just trying to make a point. The analogy is repulsive. He is not entitled to find "certain, serene, comfort" in the end of all this as misery is the likely outcome. (Yes, yes I saw him say that it's all sad and tragic) If he wants to make arguments that our ways are not sustainable and more importantly, come up with solutions to avert disaster then I'm all ears but to talk about us as "morons" and "labouring orders" as if he's so superior? Who the fuck does this guy think he is?
Opinion is one thing-fact is another. It's not just my opinion that the races differ in IQ, it is a fact that has been proven repeatedly by research. And Whites don't have the highest-so I'm not just bragging. Ashkenazis and East Asians have the highest. Does that not make me not a "White Supremacist"?
Andrew Neather isn't just "somebody". He was an advisor to Blair and other high Labor Officials. In short, he was an Insider. He confirmed what is obvious to everybody: Labor is Anti-British and Anti-White. They are trying to swamp Britain with South Asians to destroy the culture and secure power forevver. The British National Party is the great hope of all true Englishmen now. And yes the implications are staggering. If these are the kinds of people who victory in World War Two put in power, then was the West on the wrong side to begin with?
I feel sorry for you wasting your life supporting the failed, vicious, evil philosophy known as Marxism or Communism.
Green is the new Red. So is Pink.
What I wrote before was only semi-anitisemitism. I might just as well have called it oral sex.
Kunstler himself does a job. He uses these words you spit on. "Population overshoot", indeed. He might just as well have called it Operation Petticoat.
I have had an epiphany. I slept well. My appetite has returned with the light. I am so hungry I could eat a bear. I saw a dour fat woman with two cups of store-bought coffee (Probably couldn't be satisfied with just one). She was making a beeline for the house internet. What an internet addict. Yeah, you better apply on Craiglist. If anybody sees you in person you'll never get a job! I have my instant. Ready, set, stir; fourteen times.
I say look up George Will. Whatever he says goes double for me. he uses a big word every day.
Will George Will George Will George Will George Will
George!
Let George do it. I want to do it with that Cokie Roberts. She maketh me to burn all down here (outlines a big square below the waist).
And (choke) that Martha Palin, ...Sandra Palin ...Mister Palin's wife. The fotter pollut's runnin' mate, ...I can't hang. My God. It was on Oprah Winfrey. The POW's running mate. I don't care if Kenny Chesney and The Cable Guy both run stark naked at her except for a gunny sack in a three-legged race. I can't stomach that bitch. I won't have it. I'm deserting my homeland. I'm going over the wall. Viva Mexico, hombres.
Well, no, you people are not correct, and, to get back to the point, Kunstler, there is less than a poppy seed of chance that it makes any difference how he chooses to write it. What he is writing on are the big guns, bigger than nuclear energy. They include as a percentage, all the nuclear energy.
You might as well argue with the things, just as JHK says, thermodynamics, gravity. They don't budge. He's just an observer. Yes, it's lethal. Yes, its on the back burner.
I might have doubted him. I read for two years this column. Then I went to work in Las Vegas, as it happened, May 29, 2007. I showed my bosses the column in March, 2008 (they had been saying the typical things employers do about how great this job is; how you should buy a house). They handed it back that very day (it was all printed out, placed in a folder). By December, 2008, they were saying how smart I was, instead of saying anything about the contents of those blogs (they always say how smart you are when they are going to fire you). No, it isn't how smart I am, and no startegy will save you, Alex.
I might have thought it was hooey, except that I gave up looking for the scientific, technological gurus who wish to refute its conclusions. Kunstler, you broke their backs. Imagine! Scientists the like of those who built the atom bomb. Where are they, refuting this conclusion in Clusterfuck Nation? No, they paid homage to Kunstler by inviting him onto the CBS Evening News. Our goose is cooked.
He is not even a scientist. He has acting, journalism, other things, in his blood. I want to say courage. It isn't just deploring the strip-mall America and ugly houses. He's got something to say. The taste is not so sweet. If a real bona fide scientist met with him for a debate on these issues, trying to sell a new program of alternate energy, Kunstler, little Mort Kunstler here, would dump his dick in the dirt.
JIM K:
I was reading this article from WSJ to a semi-employed friend in siliconvallee...He said ' public workers in Sf are on strike...janitors cant live on 100k a year'
I was speachless...janitors making 100k.
'Life on Severance: Comfort, Then Crisis - WSJ.comNov 10, 2009'
and FEFE..maybe you should run for public office..telling others what to sya or do!
Great book.
Have owned a copy for almost 20 years now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_After_Man:_An_Anthropology_of_the_Future
'the real crisis ahead' INDEED
but for africa/ india/china/ middle east its already here..at least as judged by the news!
didnt more die in darfur then the holocaust
The cocoon of normality prevents us from appreciating how peculiar and special recent times have been in this country. We suppose, tautologically, that because things have always seemed the way they are, that they always have been the way they seem. The collective human imagination is a treacherous place.
man oh man what a powerfully true phrase.
The world is indeed a seriously troubled place.
"We" got way ahead of ourselves, caught up in the
material. I didn't have children which gave me the ability to focus on the bigger picture, and started reading JHK Home From Nowhere. He has always put into words what I feel and see about our culture.
It has spiraled out of control. By the time we hear in on the TV, it isn't NEWs. It's old, has happened already. done. "They just cushion it so the masses won't freak out."
It will be a major REadjustment back to more simple times. I remember them tho, and have always been troubled by consumerism, the mchouses,
and having to depend on cars to get anywhere, which is nowhere.
Kids really do need to be able to get everywhere on bikes, walking, etc.
All of this needed cars to get anywhere is simple inane. Not healthy. preaching to the choir here.
The cocoon of normality prevents us from appreciating how peculiar and special recent times have been in this country. We suppose, tautologically, that because things have always seemed the way they are, that they always have been the way they seem. The collective human imagination is a treacherous place.
man oh man what a powerfully true phrase.
The world is indeed a seriously troubled place.
"We" got way ahead of ourselves, caught up in the
material. I didn't have children which gave me the ability to focus on the bigger picture, and started reading JHK Home From Nowhere. He has always put into words what I feel and see about our culture.
It has spiraled out of control. By the time we hear in on the TV, it isn't NEWs. It's old, has happened already. done. "They just cushion it so the masses won't freak out."
It will be a major REadjustment back to more simple times. I remember them tho, and have always been troubled by consumerism, the mchouses,
and having to depend on cars to get anywhere, which is nowhere.
Kids really do need to be able to get everywhere on bikes, walking, etc.
All of this needed cars to get anywhere is simple inane. Not healthy. preaching to the choir here.
The cocoon of normality prevents us from appreciating how peculiar and special recent times have been in this country. We suppose, tautologically, that because things have always seemed the way they are, that they always have been the way they seem. The collective human imagination is a treacherous place.
man oh man what a powerfully true phrase.
The world is indeed a seriously troubled place.
"We" got way ahead of ourselves, caught up in the
material. I didn't have children which gave me the ability to focus on the bigger picture, and started reading JHK Home From Nowhere. He has always put into words what I feel and see about our culture.
It has spiraled out of control. By the time we hear in on the TV, it isn't NEWs. It's old, has happened already. done. "They just cushion it so the masses won't freak out."
It will be a major REadjustment back to more simple times. I remember them tho, and have always been troubled by consumerism, the mchouses,
and having to depend on cars to get anywhere, which is nowhere.
Kids really do need to be able to get everywhere on bikes, walking, etc.
All of this needed cars to get anywhere is simple inane. Not healthy. preaching to the choir here.
Hey, Asia (Asia's the looker-upper around here).
Asia, I was writing again. You know what that means.
Sep 9, 2009 ... Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies, or fighting unwinnable or futile battles. ...
(Wikipedia)
Yes, everything's on the internet.
I have been getting back around to the point, and I don't have any way of retracting what I already wrote.
I thought I was at the point before.
I wasn't. I have been walking in Kunstler's footsteps. I am doing things he usually does. Here is what he says he does:
Every time I do a Q and A after a college lecture, somebody says (with a fanfare of indignation) - so as to reveal their own brilliance in contrast to my foolishness - "You haven't said anything about overpopulation!"
Right. I usually don't bother.
See, he gives a college lecture. You can't go wrong, okay? So, what is it you try to do and it can go wrong? Well, I am an ant. I am down here. But, as a scienitist, I perform experiments. I don't make anything used in anything.
My latest experiment was to drive a psychiatrist out of his mind with psi and cause the shooting of 40 soldiers on a stateside army base.
Please note that I have no qualms about saying I am an ex-convict. I am a former mental patient. I was against official US policy all during the Vietnam War and still am. I'll tell you how to manufacture methamphetamine and this will actually work. I don't need to bother saying I am a witch. You'll just say I'm a dork; "There are no witches." Fine, then. I am against Obama. Why? Guess why.
I went out the five steps to the restaurant. I picked up a menu. The waiter wanted to know where I wanted to sit. I wanted to know where, outside, the sun wouldn't shine on me. He said there was a shade. The time now is 11:54. When this posts it'll be 3:15 (Asia, verify). Waiter said Jessie would be right with me and explain today's specials. I was seated in the blazing sun. I asked Jessie while squinting what her name was, Sarah Palin? Kunstler, can you verify that a veranda will admit slanted, blazing sunlight at the appointed hour in a city with four-story buildings across the street? while you are at it, would you mind if, instead of yeasters we just let people who require the delivery of heating oil first? Oh, die. I'm geting mean. In grabbing up all the bottles of what pass for precursors, I spilled an ounce of essences on me. I can't think from the floral hell I am in.
Yeah, my laundry is dry. You comment. Obama lies. Everybody lies. But, when you run experiments, it doesn't lie.
You must have gone out in public two weeks ago. The lies are astounding out there.
"What does the word, 'specials' mean to you."
"It means items especially featured today."
"It doesn't mean, say, you are going to sell a breakfast that usually goes for $7.50 today for $5?"
"No."
"Well, I have $12 in here (pocket)."
"Well, biscuits and gravy is only 8.50."
"I liked those waffles I saw."
"Anything to drink?"
"No, I have to go get some more money. You can't leave enough for your tip if you did the math yourself. I give up. I'm getting my own coffee cup, and I'm sitting over there."
I had gotten the LA Times. This guy (Asia): Wall Street Journal. Let me save you a lie, you were reading it online.
The LA Times is playing up the heinous death-camp elitism seemingly running rampant out there. I never wished for another mass murder again so soon after a good one before. They have caused a Mexican Hat Dance of a methamphetamine drug war, and talk about the Mexican police as if there's some difference! What else do they say- - -
"O.C. Wants More Lanes, but L.A. won't Go Down that Road."
I have to laugh at how you can't bear to say the word "immigration", Jim. For someone who hates incessant suburban expansion as much as you do, you don't dare suggest that we might just want to slow the legal and illegal inflow of immigrants in order to allow our ever shrinking formerly wide open spaces a little breather from suburban expansion. Because to do so would not only reveal you to be a sane and honest protector of the environment. And expose you to knee-jerk accusations of racism and xenophobia, which would be the price for telling the truth. I'm not gonna hold my breath for that one.
"Right on. Think of what has not yet happened. A large percentage of homes have 2 or more autos. By families moving to one vehicle, carbon footprints, resources used, etc. etc would halve. Newer homes being built are much smaller than a few short years ago. And on and on and on.
We have a history of wasting an enormous amount of stuff. Think peoples attitudes aren't changing? Well they are because they must. If you didn't get that we have to change our ways intellectually, you get it (eventually) financially.
We are already, on a personal level, making necessary changes to adapt to the current economy. Nothing new there, that is the history of mankind. Just because our fearless leaders are fucking feckless, gutless and clueless doesn't mean all of us are sitting on our hands waiting for them to act. We're doing it on our own. Fuck these half-wits. They come and they go. If you want to rely on their stupidity and ineptness you will reap exactly what they sow, a shit-storm."
wow! FooFoo finally pulled its head out of its rear orifice and said something that made some sense, instead of just insulting everyone.
Maybe, just maybe, there is some small amount of hope for the human farce after all....
Or not.
P.S.: Next time you get one of thse -
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, jhkunstler@mac.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
INSTEAD Of hitting the BACK button, just type KUNSTLER.COM in the address bar to get back here w/out double posting.
Or not....
Fefe,
Unfortunately the Moron Jaego actually receives support around here by an idiot with a taste for obscure 20th century literature and a coterie of other troglodytes who think Obama is the anti-Christ. Never mind that genetically his musings are complete horse crap, as I demonstrated here a couple of months ago, he keeps ranting on like a broken copy of the Horst Wessel song. But as shit attracts flies, some of his dipshit brown shirt buddies are now starting to mouth similar garbage on this site. Must be some sort of propaganda attack from an American Nazi website Why JHK doesn't 86 them is a mystery to me.
dale said: "a coterie of other troglodytes who think Obama is the anti-Christ."
When they are not saying Obama is the Messiah or Obama is a celebrity. Anything but the facts:
Obama helped people on the south side of Chicago get their heat turned back on when he was a community organizer. Obama was a university law professor who taught constitutional law. Then Obama became a State Representative. Then he became a United States Senator. Then he became President of the United States and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Obama has earned everything he has received and is doing a great job as president, in spite of the mess he inherited from fiscally irresponsible Republicans.
Conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans cannot be trusted with financial responsibility... but then they seem intent on fighting with each other, so Obama should be president as long as he wants to remain president. And I don't think he will quit his executive position... like quitter Palin did.
SEB/Steve,
I clicked the Reply button on your above comment but my reply is not related to it. Rather, it is related to the last comment (#429) you wrote on the prior week's essay. You were replying to my comment (#428). My comment, in turn, was a reply to Asia. Since this all took place in the middle of the night (EST) and shortly before Kunstler's new essay (about the Yeast People) appeared, it is likely you were the only one who read it. Everyone else woke up Monday AM and went straight to the new essay and never saw those last two comments (428 & 429). OK, that sets the stage.
I am sorely disappointed in you for the things you said about me. I had you pegged as possibly the most brilliant commenter at CFN ... somewhat deranged (even by your own admission) but schizo nevertheless. Then I come along replying to a simple statement made by Asia about the carbon footprint in Dubai being the worst on the planet and I take that opportunity to write a spoof (that I am in Dubai as a freelancer doing an arms deal) to bust Asoka's balls and YOU (whose intelligence I had such high regard for) actually swallow this cockamammie (sp?) story hook, line and sinker. I AM in Dubai but it is a vacation and my wife is with me. And we're both old enough that no pool boy is going to be panting to get in my wife's pants so you can forget that wet dream. Who the hell travels to the middle east and announces on the internet that they are there to do an arms deal? How could you not know this was a joke? When I typed "hahaha" wasn't that a hint?
Now, lets discuss the mean-spirited remark I made that really set you off: about feeling sorry for you and a whole list of other people who regularly post here. It's TRUE ... I DO feel sorry that Jaego, Abbey, Zzz, Asoka have lived childless lives (I take them at their word that this is the case). They may not know it or they may disagree but children are the ONLY potentially lasting legacy one can ever leave and these poor bastards don't see it. Asoka is the most pathetic ... getting the big V at 19 years old and bragging that he's saving mother earth ... 6 billion people later ... nice try ... what a fucking idiot. And Abbey. Who can really tell what fucked her up. Now she spends her life saving cats and dogs and reading Holq .. whatever-the-fuck-his name-is ... trying to fill the void that should have been filled nurturing grand children. Well, she, like you, came right out and said something about her own mental illness and even talked about missing that condition, which is a laugh because she is obviously paranoid, so maybe that explains it. This brings me to you and Scott ... two guys with serious women problems. Unlike the others, you both have kids. Both of your stories about being fucked over financially and every other way by your wives is painful to read and so I truthfully say "I feel sorry for you." I'll caveat that by adding that if both your wives told their side of the story we might all be feeling sorry for them.
And the whole legal thing ... I have never understood why some people simply can't keep their nose clean and stop having confrontations with the law. Abbey loves instructing people how to handle getting a ticket from the cops ... don't roll down the window ... place your license up against the glass so he can read it, then turn it over and press the other side to the glass. Why not teach these people not to speed (or what ever the hell their infraction was in the first place). What the fuck is wrong with people? Like Mike Tyson.
qshtik said: "Asoka is the most pathetic ... getting the big V at 19 years old and bragging that he's saving mother earth ... 6 billion people later ... nice try ... what a fucking idiot."
I note your opinion, but I do not share it. I have lived my life according to my conscience. Whether or not "6 billion people later" my decisions made any difference, is really not of any importance.
I have no regrets about any of my decisions. I sleep well... and, if God does exist, I have no qualms about meeting my maker because, even as an atheist pacifist, I have lived my life by New Testament principles:
Live simply. Respect others, even those of different races and classes. Do no harm to others (don't buy guns that allow you to kill others, don't give military "service" to Caesar, don't support abortion or the death penalty, etc.)
fefe/OEO/zzzzz said: "Calls for impeachment will come well in advance."
Do you know what impeachment is? It is an accusation, that's all.
Clinton was impeached. He finished out his presidency.
An impeachment needs to be based upon something real, not on infantile partisan wishing.
"Or not.
Not. Not as long as fucktards such as yourself continue to suck air." fOOfOO
I just knew it was too good to be true.
So hey mutherfucker, come and suck my asshole, and dont for get to use plenty of tongue, get it in there nice & deep. mutherfucker.
Or not....
Yes, the Old Tymes were lovely, weren't they?
You don't even have to go back to 17th and 18th century Europe to realize how painful and brutish life can be- 19th Century United States of England will do just fine.
Houses filled with coal smoke... 12-hour work days in mine shafts so short and cramped the men and women who worked in them had to crawl on their hands and knees... child labor clear down to the age of 4... average lifespan of 56 years... officially sanctioned domestic violence...slavery..malaria, yellow fever, diptheria, smallpox, scarlet fever...horse dung all over dimly lit streets.. houses that burned down almost on a match..
Yeah, wonderful times, something to idealize and aspire to.
What is so dreadful about modern times is not the incredible advancement and efficacy and comfort, but the fact that we took it so for granted and exalted waste as "economic growth", even though we knew fairly early on that the fossil resources that fueled it all were finite. "We always knew we'd run out of it someday," my 76-year-old mother said musingly, as we discussed Peak Oil. If that's so, I asked, why did the leadership of the era do its best to induce sprawl development and manic consumption?
hahahahahahahahahahah
DONT MENTION ;
RACE
IMMIGRATION
ILLEGALS..round here
and go to ' ALIEN NATION' [ brimelow]
to learn mexicos population explosion...1900 to 2010
hahahahahahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahahha
sorry seb but i cant fathiom yr depth,,and depravity
advice to jimmy k:
for another 100$ a month you could get a REAL webmaster
this ' operation aborted' must be drivin folks who dont know to ignore it CRAZY
JEST DID IT AGAIN;
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, jhkunstler@mac.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
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Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat) Server at kunstler.com Port 80
FOLKS IF YOU GET THIS IGNORE IT
or open the page twice, at the same time
did you get banned again under yr last ' handle'?
would you start a facebook page?
theres one [ probably college students] who
HATE THE GEOGRAPHY OF NOWHERE
start a kunstler klub at FB
...that way those who join...maybe i can see their faces..and they mine
Are reading skills higher among East Asians and Jews?
I didn't say that IQ doesn't vary between races.
I said that character has nothing to do with IQ.
And in my blog, I said that IQ should have nothing to do with having a decent life.
That with our productive capacity, our human resources, and some cooperation, we could all have a modest, decent life, regardless of IQ.
Go ahead, revert to your American upbringing and recoil in horror at the idea of sharing and cooperation with our fellow creatures.
SCARY!! Socialism! Run for the hills and live off roots and rodents, shoot at people, and live in isolation, rather than band together and try to make life better for all.
No thanks.
I realize that JHK was kidding in a way, but the lumpish proletariat in the middle of the country got too much and weren't happy being serfs anymore, we need to get rid of them?? Crematoriums, and killing all of the females?
This sounds like nazi talk to me.
No es bueno, no me gusta.
I can't be the only one here who would like to draft Chris Korda in '12.... Am I wrong?
Atta
www.churchofeuthanasia.org/
4 simple Pillars jim, and it will all be again in balance!
No where did I mention speeding. You labeled it speeding and then began your rant. You have a habit of taking this tactic to provoke argument.
You can get stopped for all sorts of reasons. In the example I mentioned it was a broken back brake light the driver did not kow was out.
My way is to just schmooze the officer and go on but his was different as he was trying to make a point. So that was his way.
N9ow I won't tell you what do do when they come after you with a warrant and want to search your home. Do you know the rules for that, Q? I bet not.
It was nice here when you weren't.
Bruno Bettleheim writes about his time in the concentration camp. He wrote that it was the most brutal of people who survived. That intellectuals succumbed first. Others have written how the Jehovah's Witnesses did OK as they gave a good day's work for them and didn't complain.
Yes it will be the physical brutes who will survive.
Hello Stone Age.
We can get a lot poorer here in the US and still keep a totalitarian government in control. Third world countries do it all the time.
Now everyone knows they can push Obama around. From one extreme to the other we go.
James is correct again. The country is filled with idiots. That will never change.
Our way of life, and what we knew it to be is disappearing. Many went from New York state to Arizona and Florida leaving behind a colder, although beautiful part of the country for warmer havens, or they thought.
The North decays. But, those that stayed, migrated to large homes built out of pastures, which no longer produced food and food stuffs.
The economy as it collapses, will also collapse in the Sunbelt states. In the North, we can keep warm by bundling up, which is easier than to stay cool in Arizona with A/C.
The North had self contained communities, with shopping districts often around the residential streets. That created less of a footprint. There will likely be a day, way out in the future, where such places will return to life again.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
James is correct again. The country is filled with idiots. That will never change.
Our way of life, and what we knew it to be is disappearing. Many went from New York state to Arizona and Florida leaving behind a colder, although beautiful part of the country for warmer havens, or they thought.
The North decays. But, those that stayed, migrated to large homes built out of pastures, which no longer produced food and food stuffs.
The economy as it collapses, will also collapse in the Sunbelt states. In the North, we can keep warm by bundling up, which is easier than to stay cool in Arizona with A/C.
The North had self contained communities, with shopping districts often around the residential streets. That created less of a footprint. There will likely be a day, way out in the future, where such places will return to life again.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
You missed Bruno Bettleheim. His account is worth reading. Different perspective from Frankl's.
Well then use Marx's term: lumpen to label uneducated unskilled people who are neither the proletariat but the farm laborer not the owner.
If you are not reading 20th and 21st century intellectuals then you are way behind in your understanding. I am not in favor of racism. Jaego is but Jaego generalizes to an incredible degree with his statistics.
I am only interested in the individual not what class or race she comes from. Or he.
We are all part of the problem but most of us don't know what the problem really is. It is the combination of power and knowledge and it is a faceless grid of intention and cruelty. It is relentless.
See Foucault on power.
I DO feel sorry that Jaego, Abbey, Zzz, Asoka have lived childless lives (I take them at their word that this is the case). They may not know it or they may disagree but children are the ONLY potentially lasting legacy one can ever leave and these poor bastards don't see it.
Here you go again. Just because someone doesn't give birth to children does not mean they lead childless lives. I have probably had more echildren in my life than everyone here combined.
My god Q what makes you such a prick all the time. And a dumb one at that.
Laura,
It is not so easy to generalize 19th century and now.
19th Century: Houses filled with coal smoke...
21st Century: Tightly insulated houses with radon and indoor air pollution
SOURCE: EPA ( http://www.epa.gov/radon/ )
============
19th Century: 12-hour work days in mine shafts so short and cramped the men and women who worked in them had to crawl on their hands and knees... child labor clear down to the age of 4...
21st Century: OSHA worker safety laws and laws against child labor, thanks to Big Government.
============
19th Century: average lifespan of 56 years...
21st Century: average lifespan: Japan 82.6, United States 78.2, Swaziland 39.6, World average is 67.2 (SOURCE: UN)
=============
19th Century: officially sanctioned domestic violence...
21st Century: official criminalization of domestic violence thanks to Big Government
=============
19th Century: slavery
21st Century: slavery ( http://www.iabolish.org/slavery_today/country_reports/index.html )
============
19th Century: malaria, yellow fever, diptheria, smallpox, scarlet fever...
21st Century: SARS, AIDS, swine flu, malaria, yellow fever, diptheria, small pox, anthrax, bioterrorism
SOURCE: CDC ( http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/agentlist-category.asp )
==========
19th Century: horse dung all over dimly lit streets..
21st Century: no horse dung on dimly lit streets, more lighted streets
===========
19th Century: houses that burned down almost on a match..
21st Century: laws that require smoke detectors, thanks to Big Government (state and local laws)
My comments are being "held for approval by the blog owner" and then they don't appear.
So, I assume the blog owner does not approve of my contributions.
I'll try again next week and if this continues, I'm gone.
"In the example I mentioned it was a broken back brake light the driver did not know was out."
My first response in this situation is always, "Can you fix it?"
You won me back. I didn't want to get down on old Qshtick, anyway. your comment warms the cockles of my heart. Can you forgive me?
Now, onto the whole thing of the war of the words. What happens is that even people who are exactly alike will disagree, like a cat hissing at the cat in the mirror. I admit it, you had me fooled. I am gullible, though I don't swallow.
What it was, was the nerve endings which, again, are too raw. This is mainly from personal issues (unemployment and consequent domestic spat), so, with the small examination time devoted to skepticism, I went off on a tear. And, these are difficult in literature. You must shoehorn them in. It's called the dozens. I hadn't just seen Mr. Saturday Night. I had also seen Heist, and the horse, Man-o-War is featured in both films, as a euphemism for well-hung.
You have a style, too. You imply that all someone has to do is avoid conflict with the police to be happy, and any police contact means that they weren't smart enough to avoid it. Not true. I have slammed a police car with a rock, right on the light bar, whle yelling "Pigs!" I have seen cops slapped to the ground. I have outrun cops. I hate cops. Fuck the police. And, when I get next to a cop again, I plan on using this:
COP Anything in the car I should know about?
ME Your mama's panties from last night.
So, as you tremble in fear of them, step aside, Q, because we got work to do. The wife jokes; dynamite. This is the internet, too. Maybe, just maybe, I could break up a home just from what I say. I'm doing literature here.
In addition, after I posted my weak first attempts, unsubtantiated by intelligence (your wife's name, the kind of car she drives, etc.), I went to bed, and I saw how Balzac did it.
Quote
THE KING'S SWEETHEART
"My father has sold me to you, but if you take me, you will make a bad bargain, seeing that I would rather offer myself to the passers-by than to you. I promise you a disloyalty that shall only finish with death-yours or mine."
Unquote
Well, this is classic literature, and it struck me as coincidental that I should discover it minutes after giving it a whirl myself. I had previously only known of the man from The Music Man. He's mentioned in the lyrics.
Truth is, I am jealous of you for being in Dubai. I was already in Las Vegas. My employer has a project in Dubai, but I don't have the slightest idea how to get on over there. I know I can stand the heat now.
Another champion of Free Speech makes an appearance! Yay Liberalism!
Ok Champ, here's the sitch: we've torn our Society apart for the last fourty years or more because of Race. If Blacks don't do as well in school or at the workplace, it's been assumed that it isn't their fault-it's our's for discriminating against them-even in incredibly subtle ways. They now have teachers (one of the biggest Liberal Careers) engaging in Maoist self criticism as to how they are sabotaging Black Kids. And a few years after all this started-and with no public discussion at all-they started including Hispanics in the deal. Hispanics also do very poorly in school. Affirmative Action was supposed to help the historically disadvantaged Blacks-why on Earth was it given to Immigrants? Why have IMMIGRANTS been put over Whites?
And what if, what if, all of this is bullshit? What if it isn't our fault-fundamentally? What if Blacks and Hispanics just aren't as smart as Whites? That in fact, is what Psychologists have found. And that is what I claim.
Got it champ? See why it's important now? No? That's ok, you will when you get older and get passed over in favor of Coloreds. Don't feel bad-alot of people are like you. They only realize things when it effects them personally.
Imagination is an element in having a first rate mind. Most people have little or none-which is why Democracy is a failure and why America was set up to be a Republic not a Democracy. Nothing could be crueler than to leave the People to their own inadequate devices. But, But, NO. The Founding Fathers loathed Democracy. Loathed it. The High School Civics Teachers lied to you. They get paid to tell lies.
He said it once a few months ago at the end of one of his columns-very hestitant and shy-like a high school virgin about to go out on a date with a known Cad or Man about Town. I think He knows but is afraid of the blow back from his Liberal Tribesmen.
Obama's forty-five years old. At eighteen, the year was 1982. From 1968, there was a transformation in American colleges. That year, inside of "Ten Days in May", MLK and RFK were each shot in the head. The green grass that grew up had fourteen years. Think that might,/i> be enough time to completely revamp the curriculum? Well, it was, and Mr. Obama is just the frontrunner of a whole production. He's manufactured. If he's manufactured right, he won't get his head blown off. But, you know, with our country out of its mind, drafting and killing its own along with four million peasants who were no threat to us, Martin Luther King dying was the least he could have done. People were standing in line for the privilege. But, as you can see, this is what you deserve when you stood by and watched everything you loved raped and burned. This. Not even realistic change-mojo heebie-jeebie jigaboos. He learned his part by watching Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live, not Butt-Wheat, the MLK impression. I never watched Murphy. The show wasn't any good any more by then. I like Angela Davis and her Communist prof, Herbert Marcuse, and, I went to their school. But, I know for a fact they crank out activists from that diploma mill, and these cheese-eaters do not have the chops.
A valid objection-your first. But incorrect as it turns out. Study the seminal (feminist call seminars ovariums) work of Laurence Kohlberg. He investigated moral development. He found a strong correlation between intelligence and morality-but not a one to one. No rather that Intelligence was necessary for higher moral development but not sufficient. Doesn't guarante it in other words. The mad scientist/Dick Cheney types are an all to real occurence. You also need good role models and family life etc. And even then, you still might get a psychopath. The X factor is very strong in this realm.
This correlation does make some sense if you look at the cognitive development work of Piaget. If you show a child a block with red on one side and blue on the other half, they will think that you are seeing what they are seeing. Show the child the block again, let them examine the whole thing seeing one half blue and one half red. Put it between you and him and ask again: again he will say that you are seeing what he sees. At that stage, they just can't take the other person's point of view cognitively. And if they can't take the other's point of view cognitively, they wont be able to do it emotionally either. And certainly not morally which involves both cognition and empathy. This is very basic, but it shows the principle involved. We have to be both be able to see the other's point of view and be willing to do it. Someone like Cheney can but doesn't want to. When the Mexicans started singing our National Anthem in Spanish and also mistranlated it to change the meaning-did they know they were doing something wrong? One of their big DJs was embarrased at their incredible crudity and chastised them. I saw a clip of him-a very White looking Mexican.
Apparently East Asians excel at Math and spatial relations but not so much in the Verbal. So the Ashkenazis, who are very verbal, probably excel them there; probably why their IQ is the highest-they don't fall down on Math as much as the East Asians do on the Verbal. Nothing to do with immigrants-all this was done with Asians born here or with their native language over there. Psychometrics is FAR MORE SOPHISTICATED than the Mass Media wants people to know. Your people the Communists had the Police come and humiliate Professor Rushton at the University of Ontario. They concluded, "He's crazy but harmless". What a hideous mess the Reds are making of Canada-as they will here now that the Hate Crime Laws have passed.
Professor Rushton is one of the World's foremost Psychometricians. Check him out in the literature-he's published alot about many different subjects. Not a hack, crank, or one trick pony by any means.
Oh, damn. How embarrassing. Tryin' to get fancy. I shouldn't even italicize. Leave it for the reader. I also want to rename Vegas Helicopolis, so the boosters can pronounce it as a derivative of Healy, and if you live there you can say it like a suburb of hell. One weather guy with a sense of humor put the "cooling trend" in perspective (when it drops out of the triple digits); he'd say, "It will be ten degrees not as hot for the remainder of the week."
Dee Jones, I was raised to believe that brain damage was a matter of choice. You can choose to drink whiskey (and fight over water), or drugs, one man's vat of slime is another man's livelihood is a third man's poison. But, I can't get used to Listerine that looks like vodka, and I am drinking more of it.
I messed it up again, and this one is instructive. My son had me buy a useless IMO toy, with a balloon's air powering helicopter blades. How are you going to hold the end of a balloon open long enough to get it over a spout without losing too much air? He just liked to throw it on the floor and step on it (Hmm, so what am I doing now? Think.). The damn---well, characterization: Marilyn Monroe "Dirty" Sanchez---okay. I saw the package and I made up the word, hoping that there was something redeeming. The news has words, too,; not just news. I got 'Helicopolis', not Heliopolis. The two ways to pronounce Helicopolis make it work better. See what I did there? I had you thinking I liked you, then I took you another way.
God could make this post on the first try.
I thought we were past this kind of thing Dale. I thought we were friends. I defeated you twice in debate-you have no answer to my question of why you refuse to capitalize the W in Whites. All you can do is start the Ad Hominem attacks.
You need to start using me as your hate object in your metta exercise. Try to love the Beast- but first you must love the Beast within yourself. It there-everyone knows you are a Buddhist Fascist. Everyone but you that is. As Anton LaVey said, "There is a Beast in man, it must be exercised not exorcised."
No Metta exercise? Then I demand Tonglen. No excuses, just do it. I'll know if you do or not so don't try to snow me.
Funny you should speak of Dubai.
I think of Dubai as the place where nature will take its richest revenge on our arrogant elites,a diamond-encrusted Venus Fly Trap for dumb, arrogant super-rich ruling-class people that will fall further and harder than any other settlement in the world, even Las Vegas, when fuel depletion starts to bite hard, and become the world's major deathtrap. Only the workers who are building the place and are paid $200 a month and made to live in tents on the desert without sufficient water, will survive.
The arrogance and hubris that built this unsustainable playground for the mega-rich is hard to imagine. Everything that's wrong and insane about our settlement and consumption patterns is magnified about a thousand times here. This is the most wasteful and unsustainable city on planet Earth.
Most of the managerial middle class from Europe, U.S. and elsewhere are fleeing and leaving their unpaid-for luxury cars abandoned in the parking garages because they found out that accomodation of Western lifestyles does not extend to the suspension of Muslim strictures concerning debt, and they are fleeing debtor's prison. A friend of mine, a Pakistani-born man of the world who owns a paid-for condo there, once thought he would retire there but he's not so keen on that now, and is opting for a much simpler retirement lifestyle in a place more intrinsically friendly to carbon-based lifeforms now that it's clear we're on the other side of the depletion curve.
We will surely have an "elite" on the other side of Hubbert's Curve, but it won't be made of the same people who comprise it now, for elites tend to cling to the past that elevated them to their favored status. The conditions that elevated our current elites will not exist any longer, and these people will be the ones who fall furthest and hardest in the shift that is taking place.
Abbs, I'm running around over here in Dubai like a camel with his head cut off so I don't have the time to write a really thoughtful reply ... however, lets return to a comment you made somewhere above about the local authorities in hicksville where you live cutting down your garden twice. I don't think you ever explained why they did that. You made it sound as though it was a totally random vicious act. Frankly, I find that hard to believe. Did you plant a garden on land that was not yours? What's the story? I can tell that your style is to be a gadfly (particularly as regards the law/police) which no doubt pisses them off. I, obviously, live a completely different lifestyle. I do NOTHING to deliberetly piss people off and so everything runs smooth for me. I think this gadfly shtick of yours is your true joy in life.
P.S. "Having children in your life" is infinitely different and, IMO, INFERIOR to having children that have come from your own body. Of course, it is too late for you and Asoka and I am wasting my breath. There is so much more I would like to discuss but no time right now.
P.P.S. A note to SEB: my understanding is that the heat here in D is even hotter than in Vegas (I've been in V when it was continuously 115) but at the moment it is approaching winter and not bad at all ... maybe 90 during the day and 75-80 at night. Quite pleasant.
Have a nice day.
Define Racism and my case is made. If everyone is else is racist and we aren't, then we will die. We are the least racist people on Earth-no other group would allow themselves to be disposessed as we are doing. Mexico hunts down her border crashers for example. All great Cultures at their height were monoracial. All great cultures become multiracial as they die. The Elites always favor aliens while their own people starve. Repent of a lifetime of wrong thinking and acting. To favor your own is the essence of love and wisdom. That doesn't have to mean cruelty to the other. It means you send them packing to be sure though.
"Define Racism and my case is made...It means you send them packing to be sure though."
How do you comprehend a word that has only existed for about fifty years? I propose you should consider why it has only existed for that long.
And how do you "send them packing" when it's their country? The Palestinians can do nothing but leave or die to satisfy the Israelis, who are the immigrants.
http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=58330
I don't want to be an object lesson or a case in point to people. I've been waking up in terror each morning at about this tme. The internet's freed up. The subject was roses. I just want to keep it to myself. But, I'm typing for all the world to see. Well, mainly Scott, since he can relate to this fresh hell. Qshtick, I wanted you to tell me how to go about working in Dubai. I guess a little hint isn't enough.
So, I am becoming that example now. I should have a little more pride. Laura, first I have something on clipboard where, for me and Abbeysbooks, it's okay to be crazy:
In The Informed Heart, Bettelheim was critical of modern society. He compared his experiences from the concentration camps—his attempts to preserve a sense of autonomy, integrity, and personal freedom—with life in modern, mass society. He viewed mass society, like that of United States or Western Europe, as dehumanizing and depersonalizing, forcing people to behave in a certain way. He noted that people have to struggle to maintain their sanity, much like inmates in the camps.
Whatever happens to me, I'm going to blame the United States. I'm not doing it to others. I don't exist on the basis that I can't tell what's going to happen. If I hadn't gone to the nuthouse, my draft lottery number (20) would have ensured my induction. Another guy ran over a little girl, 9, in the neighborhood, and he also almost killed four or five of us as teenagers with a crazy stunt, driving uphill to catch air. And this guy, Marty Herzog, boy, he was sure adamant about his rights. You don't have the right to run over a kid while you are looking at your face in the rear-view mirror. He should have been shot down like a dog. Of course, nowadays there's texting.
We've lost our moral compass, a frequent Kunstler theme. Let's see what you said, Laura, I was going to quote:
Trap for dumb, arrogant super-rich ruling-class people that will fall further and harder than any other settlement in the world, even Las Vegas, when fuel depletion starts to bite hard
unquote
Yeah, I believe in thinking the unthinkable, and I look at it as a debt we owe to the planet. The source is the website, "Die-off.org", or "Olduvai theory". There is controversy, Kunstler has touched upon it, about which places will suffer worst, I suppose because climatologists say that about GW. But, if I were God (and, I have a messiah complex), I'd submit a bill. I looked up the world's largest cities and for everyone in all of them to die, we wouldn't even make a dent in what we owe, maybe a billion and a half (we need five). That is the thing about Yeasters: the cities are slated to become "boiling morgues", somebody said. Talk about being abandoned by your government. I don't know any other way to live.
I can watch shows in this hotel, but I can watch a program on the History Channel, The Development of Man. There is news from Olduvai Gorge, and it's not good. I mean, what we don't know won't hurt us, but---Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal diverged from a common ancestor 400,000 years ago. Neanderthal needed 5,000 kcal per day, and hunted meat. Homo Sapiens was taller, exploited the environment more eficiently, pumped-out babies, etc. Had a bone spear. It was lighter. Everywhere they went, they wiped out the large animals. Not Africa, but, everywhere else. They pushed Neanderthals to the brink in Gibralter, then the Neanderthals vanished, 28,000 years ago.
I know, like Disney, National Geographic has an agenda to push. So beware of what they are leading you to conclude. All the latest research shows that a genetic bottleneck to Homo Sapiens occurred. Our species at one time was down to 600 breeding individuals. This was in South Africa. We flourished from there, went throughout the world, and we don't have Neanderthal genes in us.
As scientists study stuff like this, I am sure that The Long Emergency or whatever you want to call it, doesn't cross their minds long enough to send a text message about it.
Even despite our minds, a will to homeostasis indicates that in each of our secret tender vicious mental sanctuaries, we are plotting for our very own destruction. I can't resist it. We have (600, 6000 (1000%), 600,000 (100,000%), 600,000,000 (100,000,000%), 6,000,000,000 (1,000,000,000%). A billion percent increase, 300,000 years. A million percent increase every 300 years. 500,000% increase in 150 years. 100,000% increase every 30 years. We are doubling every thirty years now, so we are growing 1,000 times slower. Overall, though, we have doubled x number of times. I'll set it up:
600 times 2^x = 6 billion.
2^x = 10 million.
ln 2^x = ln (10 million).
x ln 2 = ln (10 million).
x (number of doublings of zombies) = ln (10 million)/ln 2.
What's the answer? The answer is that the scientists picked 600 to go with 6 billion so you'd do this calculation. See what I did there? That's "natural logarithm", so you don't have to raise anything to ridiculous powers.
What else?
Dear Scott,
I have to keep my strength up since my wife is going to let me have her body. Yesterday she got back to her roots and made me pick up groceries. Jealous, she calls last night and laughingly tells me she's collecting welfare that I have to pay back. She's already taken the house. She'll get child support come court time. And, this econmomy's hit me pretty hard. She's an immigrant. I don't know how you call them immigrants, Jaego. We are not the same people any more, no matter how we look compared to each other. These are basuco freaks the result of processing nine hundred tons of cocaine in their home country each year.
"Don't forget my anniversary present!"
I don't know if I trust Anton LaVey.
Actually, JHK was writing Geography as I was leaving my first family, by force, by force. I'm not your father's deadbeat. My father had the money to undermine my fatherhood. My daughter graduated college, giving me a parting shot. I was on drugs in the 'Nineties.
The human, I'm sure Anton would agree, has the luxury of playing out in its mind the ramifications of falling prey. The government hasn't put the masses to death in quite some time.
I can't go back to sleep. I picked up the library copy of Nowhere, and it was on this page (261):
The need for an alternative everyday environment is particlarly acute out West, where population growth is projected to continue at high rates. The Sacramento area, for instance, is expected to gain 700,000 people in the next twenty years---a figure equal to the present population of San Francisco. Since there isn't enough old abandoned urban fabric to redevelop, the future presents West Coasters with a stark choice: more sprawl or something better.
unquote
Let me just replenish the 1992 Kunstler by talking to "him" directly; I do that (Sure, Steve. I hear you saying that. Whatever makes you feel comfortable). No, here: You think I'm crazy. No. Notice in the ESP that I could theoretically be lying. I could have posted after reading this paragraph. But, the record will show that I am completely writing above in theme. It isn't warped around this. I got mine from TV.
Kunstler, I bet you'd like to know exactly how many of the 700,000 settled in Sacto as of 18/20 years. We can do that from here.
He is talking to West Coasters, and, after exactly 29 more words, he's going to say SAN DIEGO. He also says, SEB. I put those letters in bold. They're in line in the book, like bedbug bites.
Let me see if I'm a golem, to translate in this simple cave man's own language.
ruekh(רוח) plural rukhes(רוחות), gender m, disembodied spirit, ghost; devil
tsu aldi rukhes damn it all
a ruekh(רוח) in dayn tatns tatn arayn damn you
oyfhengen oyf zikh dem ruekh(רוח) overadorn oneself
rukhniyes(רוחניות) gender f, pure spirit adjectival form with -dik, spiritual
takes prefix b, spiritual
lebn fun rukhniyes(רוחניות) without visible means of support
In Jewish folklore, a golem(גולם; English pronunciation: /ˈɡoʊləm/ GOH-ləm) is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. In modern Hebrew the word golem literally means "cocoon," but can also mean "fool," "silly," or even "stupid." The name appears to derive from the word gelem (גלם), which means "raw material."[citation needed] Alternatively, some sources indicate that it is a corruption of the Hebrew go′al 'enu (גואלנו) our redeemer or our avenger. The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century chief rabbi of Prague.
This is useless. It isn't even stupid. It's insane. You see what I did there? using ESP means that in your immediate vicinity is a spirit. You can't even say 'this is stupid'. You'll be saying you are stupid. I call that spirit the Vic Cindy, for "vicinity".
I thought we were past this kind of thing Dale. I thought we were friends.
========================================
Sure you do..(eyes rolling)...I don't make friends with Nazi's.
As far as Tonglen goes, you are a topic. But, on this blog I am in my wrathful manifestation.
Laura, I lived in Dubai, and I can assure you that it is every bit the environmental atrocity you say. One of my colleagues I knew during my several-year stay is married to an oceanographer whose remit was to file environment impact assessments to prospective developers. These were always comprehensively ignored.
But, living there, you hardly need such insider information: it is plain to anyone who has eyes to see that it is an atrocity (your words). And, as you have so rightly pointed out, not everyone who is there, specifically the phenomenally hard-working and uncomplaining Indians who have built it, are complicit. Pakistanis, Bengalis, Sri Lankans, Phillipinos and Phillipinas, thorougly decent people, trying to make do.
I should point out, though, that construction workers don't usually live in tents: their housing is more typically made of breeze-block or, less commonly, timber prefab. But they are indeed housed well away from the urban centres, in stiflingly hot conditions, with minimal amenities, away from their families for years, and trapped by onerous contracts and the confiscation of their passports.
If you haven't yet read it, I recommend you read "Sand, fear, and money in Dubai", written by the estimable Mike Davis. My kind of guy. Works as a trucker, and writes like a dream. The article is available in the 'net, and forms part of an anthology or related articles on the kind of urban fabric that neo-liberalism has spawned. The book is "Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neo-Liberalism".
Martin (and also Laura Louz...),
I am sitting in an Apt/Hotel in Sharjah next door to Dubai as we speak. I've been here for two weeks as the guest of an Indian family I know. They have lived/worked here for nearly 30 years. They have to renew their work visas every 3 years.
It is amazing how two people (you and me) can look through the eyes in our heads at the same scene and see two entirely different things (I don't know if Laura has been to Dubai or if her remarks come from reading ... otherwise I would say "how three people can look ... etc"). When was it you lived here Martin?
There are about 1.7M people in Dubai, 1M in Sharjah and 5M in the combined Emirates that make up the UAE. The vast majority of all these people are ex-pats and all of them are here of their own free will (I haven't heard that anyone here is enslaved) because it provides them and their families a better life than they would otherwise have. No one is dying of thirst. The prefab structures that the construction workers live in are air conditioned. Outside my window, not 50 ft away another bldg is going up. I look down at the prefabs that house the workers and the office for the construction managers. No one has keeled over in the sandy rubble surrounding the site. The accomodations are not places you or I would want to live in but they are almost certainly better than what they left behind in India, Pakistan, etc ... else why would they be here. Their food and accomodations are provided as part of their pay pkg. The money they get on payday is essentially the extra that they can send back to their families. I know this because my friend, Shailesh, is a Financial Controller for two firms. He has explained how things work here in Dubai/Sharjah. The area has been hit hard by the worldwide financial crisis (due to a lack of bank credit) and numerous semi-finished buildings are standing idle. They use the term "project delay" to put a nicer face on things. But they are in much better shape than the US or parts of Europe because when they "downsize" they simply terminate the individual in accordance with the original employment contract and send them back almost immediately to their home country. The employer pays for the one-way ticket. There are no armies of unemployed living in shacks and tents beneath bridges. In effect they export their unemployed back to where they came from so in a sense there is no unemployment problem in Dubai. Do you think that sounds cruel? I don't. If you don't want the job and can't deal with the terms of the employment contract then stay home.
I rode from one end to the other of their new Metro train system today. It is phenominal.
People wait for modern buses in air-conditioned waiting rooms along the sides of the streets.
There is no sense of my going on and on ... what one's eyes see boggles the mind. It is all built on top of a dry-as-bone desert and virtually every drop of water comes from desalinated Arabian Sea water (I spoke to an engineer involved in this process the other night during a wedding engagement party). It rains, briefly, 4 or 5 days a year.
I will admit that one wonders how all this can sustain itself, especially since Dubai is not an oil state. It has only some natural gas and virtually no oil. Abu Dahbi is the state with the oil. Dubai's thing is "business." They import and export with no taxes. Before coming here I read the history of Dubai from mid-1700s to the present. It is a unique history. I've forgotten the exact title/author but will let you know after I get home in a few days. It is dry reading but I recommend it anyway. Jaego would probably be facinated because of the lengths the local nationals go to to maintain ethnic purity but even THEY are slowly losing the battle. Its only natural that they are losing that battle since they are overwhelmed by this huge ex-pat pop.
I find this whole Dubai phenomenon to be a quite fascinating experiment in the world's history and your harsh remarks - Martin and Laura - may yet prove to be offbase.
SEB, I profoundly doubt that population growth in the western states will continue as projection. Remember, those projections are extrapolations based on the trend of the past 40 years, and they don not allow for DISCONTINUITY.
The cities of the southwest are going to fail spectacularly, in fact already ARE failing. There just isn't enough water and no way to get more out there even with current adequate fuel supplies. Trust me when I tell you that they will NOT get water from the Great Lakes, for the nine states and Canadian provinces that comprise the Great Lakes watershed have put into place one of the tightest water protection pacts in the U.S. We figure if we want sun, we can move to Arizona-if westerners want water, they can come back to Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, and other Great Lakes cities, as well as midwestern and eastern cities on rivers, to get it.
That is why I have faith in the "invisible hand", which will work to make the arid west too expensive to maintain in the years ahead. People will just HAVE to come back east and resettle the depopulated towns and cities with their reliable water supplies and fertile, verdant hinterlands. We won't be any longer able to pay for the Colorado River plumbing system, a gift of the American taxpayers, that made the mass emigration to the west possible to begin with.
Perhaps part of the ' cure' is to know:
SOMETHINGS HAPPENING MR JONES
Funny you should mention KMD...just got some emails from him....I was noticing the incredible religious bias of the dreaded LATimes in its obituary column.
Doesnt the LAT know some poeple are on to their disgusting biases?
some days only jews get OBITS...one day recently there was only one very long obit..the fellow had ' done a movie on the holocaust'
and:
why are we bound by duty and dogma to do absolutely nothing about it?
ITS THE POWER ELITES...READ JOHN BIRCH BOOKS LIKE ' POLAND BETRAYED'
AND WHAT THE UN/CFR ARE REALLY ABOUT
Ted kennedy claimed the 1965 imm act id bring in 5000...then one of those immigrants killed his brother!
here we are 110 million later...3000/yr killed by illegals
o and teddy also had a bill that failed...
to let any and every caldean move here as a 'religious refugee'
JIM:
So for the first time in US history a state will lower the minimum wage. any comment?
and hunger here is at an all time high...since its been recorded by the govt.
I have read Mike Davis, and this guy is one of the most wonderful writers. I read excerpts from his book on Dubai, and I get much first-hand from people in my circle who have lived there or who own property (usually a small condo) there.
One friend owns a condo he paid $200K, that swelled to $400K in bubble value, is now back at its old price or below. He imagined retiring there but is now thinking better of that because the place is very expensive to live in. And you DON'T run bills you can't pay- this is still a Muslim country and you will go to jail for that.
It's difficult to imagine anything more wasteful of energy that a ski mountain in the middle of a desert that gets to 100 degrees regularly, or Hydroworld, the underwater hotel. How much fuel does it take to operate this Disneyland-cum-LasVegas science fiction fantasy, with features like that?
I was told that construction workers imported from poor districts of Pakistan were being paid $200 a month and living in tents and other makeshift, shanty-style housing outside the city.
If fuels deplete according to some of the more optimistic projections, that city could become pretty unworkable within 30 years.
But it will make for some fascinating ruins, though possibly not much more than Las Vegas.
have you seen the email that circulates that shows pix of Dubai 30? years ago and now?
the contrasts.....the island shaped like a palm tree?
when someone sent me that...i cant get the photos to appear in this blog.
like i say for a footprint it is the most carbon heavy...does any food grow there?
i hear cheney and maybe rummie own mansions there and have? retired there or will.
have you seen the email that circulates that shows pix of Dubai 30? years ago and now?
the contrasts.....the island shaped like a palm tree?
when someone sent me that...i cant get the photos to appear in this blog.
like i say for a footprint it is the most carbon heavy...does any food grow there?
i hear cheney and maybe rummie own mansions there and have? retired there or will.
Rupperts new movies out..a friend saw last nite and says
'MR says society will collapse in 1 to 2 years'? i dunno..........
Michael Ruppert The Collapse Trailer : The Whole Economy is a ...1 post - 1 author - Last post: 3 days ago
The investigative journalist Michael Rupert's new movie called Collapse is a great watch for you all conspiracy nuts out there LOL Grin ...
forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=144422.0 - Cached
YouTube - Economic Collapse Mike Ruppert Collapse Movie TrailerNov 5, 2009 ... Economic Collapse Mike Ruppert Movie [Collapse] Trailer In Theatres Friday November 6th! ... Mike Rupert breaks down the government drug trade. 176 views ... Collapse - New Official Trailer
The "new normal" is an ever-increasing crescendo of mindless contradictory "news" blather designed to drown out any attempt to understand and illuminate the remarkable contradictions of our so-called democratic political system.
This is not a good thing. Its next to impossible to get a fact-based perspective of any news event.
I guess it will get crazier before the next elections. I know every generation always thinks that their particular point in history is special.
But somehow, I think we may live long enough to see some proof of PO etc...
Laura: As for water wars, Calif is gearing up.
The Governator (& wife Skelator), and SoCal interests are once again reviving the Peripheral canal, or the Delta bypass, or whatever they want to call it now, but its basically a water grab to send Norcal water to the desert of Socal (desert in so many ways). But hey, with climate change, there will be less water in Norcal land, so that means either we keep our water here, or if Socal gets thier way, we will have less water so the movie moguls can keep thier pools filled.
I say let Socal turn back into a desert.
you are brash arent you?
'one word about the incredible level of Musim Crime and you go straight to jail.'
can you cite proof?
i know a mellow swede who says rotterdam is NUTS with crime.. ..since hes lived or visited he should know...
HAS ANYONE SEEN THE FILM ' COLLAPSE'?
The "new normal" is an ever-increasing crescendo of mindless contradictory "news" blather designed to drown out any attempt to understand and illuminate the remarkable contradictions of our so-called democratic political system.
This is exactly what Foucault spent his entire academic life researching and writing and talking about. He has it nailed.
Power and knowledge are in an meshed grid which controls our bodies in minute ways we don't even notice. We have been turned into objects to provide bio-power in this fashion. there is a great discussion going on over at huff po by Andrew Weill on depression. Of course the same thing is true on that subject.
And everything else. There are precious few private areas that are not invisibly controlled in this way. And of course the dominating discourse controls this site as well including JHK's Monday posts.
What has allowed JHK to see is his painting. His eyes have learned to see aesthetically, which is also to see the shoddy and the ugly. since his painting is genre, (and it is improving)he has taken a good long slow look at a lot of things.
His preference is natural landscape at the moment I think, but he has done some very good ones on McDonald's etc. Still life in urban landscape that records our time.
So in seeing more and better he is able to describe in detail what he is seeing. He notices. Just like someone hears or listens well. JHK is listening to landscapes and composing commentaries in his head. And this is why he is communicating to masses of people about our dire straits. No pun intended.
Dee, my sympathies in your struggle to hold on to your native water supply. Our mayor is trying to find a way to sell off our precious water works, something I would like to head off if possible.
Anyone who lives in an area with a good water supply should get busy NOW to protect it from encroachment, lest you find your water delivery system privatized, and shipped to places like Las Vegas and Phoenix.
The only way people in this country will ever adopt sustainable lifestyles in places fit for human habitation is if the taxpayers at large stop enabling our governments federal and local from using our taxes to sustain the unsustainable. The money being siphoned out of the verdant, moist cities and towns of the eastern half of the country, and the Pacific northwest (which includes Northern CA) in order to water golf courses in the desert and enable cities with 5 million people to function in such a place to begin with, along with the billions being spent on our ridiculously overbuilt interstate highway system and our Oil Protection Service (i.e. the United States military), could instead be used to build the railroads, nuclear power plants utilizing more advanced nuclear technologies, and electrical grid we will need to stay minimally functional over the next few decades.
The best way to shift the spending from unsustainable megaprojects back to sustainable cities and industries is to Make The User Pay- let the inhabitants of these places pay out of their own pockets the cost of building and maintaining the dozens of megadams out west, and let motorists pay tolls on the interstates necessary to maintain this crap. If the road doesn't pay for itself, close it up. If people in the desert don't want to live a lifestyle appropriate for such a place or pay the water rates that would pay for a new dam, or to maintain old ones to reasonable safety standards, well, then let them pay to take the thing down.
Asoka, are you reading? Please help out here and throw in with me to get a referendum up to keep Daley from selling our water works here in Chicago!It will take a lot of work to get it on a referendum- like about 122,000 signatures of registered voters within 90 days of declaring. But we would have the Chicago police, who also hate Daley, on our side.
Laura, if construction workers are indeed living in tents, I stand corrected. Since I was just another cappuccino-sipping white-collar worker bee housed in an oversized apartment who seldom ventured out of the city precinct, I can hardly gainsay your information.
As to madcap energy waste, consider, if you don't know, the project that has now been put on hold because of the downturn to refrigerate a stretch of beach frequented by tourists. Envisaged was to put ducts under the sands carrying chilled liquid.
I thank Qshtik for his lengthy and thoughtful reply, but I suspect you understand better that Dubai is the worst possible place to be if you are mindful of the fate of the Earth. Such Pharaonic projects and hubristic greed, under the pitiless sun of a heating planet, just made me grieve. My boss and I used to joke about Shelley's poem Ozymandias. Looking back, I don't think it's such a joke. The downturn has revealed Dubai's terrible vulnerability.
The civilizations die because the barbarians are employed by the empire and taught new tricks with new weapons.
How about looking at it this way? We are educating (sending to school and university) more and more non whites. They are going to be the new intellectuals. They are going to continue the hold of power and knowledge on our very selves. They will not ask questions that put that paradigm in question or lead to its demise.
Nossir. They are too glad to be at the table.
Qshtik, perhaps we do look at the world through very different eyes. I'll treat your question about employment contracts as though it weren't rhetorical, and say simply that all employment contracts, which are usually onerously one-sided, are always effectively signed under duress, because you can't have the job unless you sign one. So much for the idea, popular in certain circles, that employment is a business relationship. I think "abduction into a totalitarian organisation" fits better, and Dubai is nothing if not totalitarian.
I'm amazed that you can blithely mention that Dubai's water is desalinated water drawn from the Gulf as though this fact is not a horror story in itself. It should give you pause. Dubai is an artificial counter-entropic experiment that exists solely to service globalisation, an already failed experiment.
In the not-too-distant future, the city will empty out and revert to an uninhabitable wasteland. Look closer at those ubiquitous pictures of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Notice the troubled eyes. Do you not see what I see? I think he looks completely mad, and maybe he is.
Laura said: "Asoka, are you reading?"
Yes, and I have written replies to you, but if I write more than a paragraph I get a message saying my post is being held for "approval" and my post never gets posted. Apparently I am being censored.
Asoka, come over to my site then, at http://thenorthcoast.blogspot.com, and write what you please.
"Apparently I am being censored."
or is it "denormalized"?
"Those who remain politically involved have internalized politics as ideological warfare... For the common people, ideological adherence can only be demonstrated by zeal. And in their zeal, which is really unarticulated frustration at their powerlessness, the people start to cannibalize one another..."
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2009/11/-shoot-the-fat-guys.html
asoka,
If you're being censored, it's probably one of Jim's minions, like Duncan Crary, as Jim would neither have the time nor the inclination to censor commentors! (Unless it's Fe Fe, of course, or Johnny Rico)
Hey, nice post this week Jim! I've always liked yeast, especially in bread baking and beer brewing---just saying!
asoka,
If you're being censored, it's probably one of Jim's minions, like Duncan Crary, as Jim would neither have the time nor the inclination to censor commentors! (Unless it's Fe Fe, of course, or Rohnny Jico)
Hey, nice post this week Jim! I've always liked yeast, especially in bread baking and beer brewing---just saying!
You are often (like now) too vague, I don't know who you mean by "it's their country". I'll try though: a Country is not a geography-the "Native Americans" were not the first Americans-the English were. A fictional example: if you exchanged the Countries of the Haitains and the Norwegians sending all the Norwegians to Haiti and all the Haitians to Norway. Haiti would be the new Norway. And they would turn that eco-devasted land into a paradise in two generations. Norway would become the new Haiti-they would all freeze or starve to death within two years.
When I said "send them packing"-I meant mostly the new immigrants-particularly the Central Americans and Mexicans, by far the most dangerous groups among the new. As for the Blacks and Indians-yeah ok, White Man's Burden stuff. We need to make a place for the Blacks apart from us. Is this harsh? You bet-nation building is and staving off destruction maybe even more so. But no harsher than Moses was-or Ezra centuries later. People blame the fall of the West on Christian softness and they're right. Because the New Testment teachings say nothing about fertility, ethnic purity, borders, property, rights, self defence...They cannot stand alone, yet that is what Christians seem to want to do-as you well know. They just use the Old Testament selectively to bolster their sweetness and lite religion.
As the Sufis say, "Jesus taught the way to the other World, Mohammad taught the way in both Worlds." That may not be true-we don't know what Chirst thought about alot of things. He did say, I came not to abolish the Law, but to fufill it. So maybe all the Old Testament is still valid. I'd love to know what Jesus thought about everything. John says his words and deeds would have filled countless volumes. So-why didn't anyone think to fill some? Don't you want more? We have far more of the Teachings of Mohammad and Buddha than we do for Christ. A great pity.
I think Higher Morality is great-as long as it's not unilateral. And looking around the world, I only see Whites trying to help other people. And even there, there are often big string attached. So I'm all for charity-once we have secured our survival. And obviously so very powerful groups are using our Christain Charity against us. We need some eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth right about now.
Ah Sizemore I didn't recognize you! Why didn't we talk about this before? Did your name change give you Dutch Courage? Read my post again-the reason why it's important is there. Keep reading it until you get it. You have the attention span of a gnat.
Shall the Swarthy Men feast then in the White Tower? I say no-we'll throw it down first. Close the Sluices and let them drink oil-or blood.
Now you speak like a true daughter of Zeus, an Athena, an Oriana. And what name could be more beautiful than Oriana...Aur-Could it mean Light?
"You are often (like now) too vague, I don't know who you mean by "it's their country"."
I must avoid placing a stumbling block before the blind. If people don't want to know...
There isn't time to give you a decent answer until after the weekend. Check back.
If we mimic the self-chosen our acts will prove dectructive of peace. Leaven of Herod, remember?
Martin, Laura and SEB,
Let me tell you what I learned today: My friend, Shailesh took me to one of the two companies of which he is the Financial Controller. I was introduced to all the office people from the Director on down. Engineers, Procurement, Estimation, etc. Even to the receptionist who is the only arab (local national) ... a women wearing the whole black getup with only her face showing. The company name is NITCO. Their two main products are (1) prefab "accomodation" (i.e. housing) units and office units that can be brought to construction sites and used to house workers or as offices for the people running the construction project. They are currently filling a large order for units to be used in Oman in the Oil fields. During the first gulf war they supplied America, Britain, the United Nations, etc. with prefab housing units in Iraq and Kuwait. I was given a grand tour of the whole process of building these units. Fascinating. (2) Large fiberglass tanks for holding water or chemicals that are installed on buildings. Again, got a grand tour with the engineer in charge of this product line. I asked a million questions. OK, maybe only a thousand questions ... all for yours, Laura's and SEB's benefit. By law - strictly, enforced ALL accomodations must be air conditioned. No one may work outside between 12 noon and 3 PM during 3 summer months of July - Sept. Workers must be given regular periodic breaks (each hour, I believe) and they are provided with water, juices, glucose, salt tablets. They are inspected regularly and rigorously. Infractions result in fines (the word for fine spelled phonetically is "Moo kahl fa" ... accent on the second syllable). The average pay in the fiberglass prod area is 1600 AED (dirhams) per month. One AED = $0.274. In addition to pay they are provided all their meals cooked for them and set up buffet style as well as their accomodations.
I enjoyed my conversation with the Director of this company because he was very intelligent and spoke better English than the others so it was not as much of a struggle for me to read lips and interpret. My hea