SPONSOR

Vaulted Invest in Gold

Visit this blog’s sponsor. Vaulted is an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold: Kunstler.com/vaulted


 

Support JHK on Patreon

 

If you’re interested in supporting this blog, check out the Patreon page or Substack.
 
Get This blog by email:

Attention Movie Producers!
JHK’s screenplay in hard-copy edition

Click to order!

A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster…
Three Teenagers who bring him down…
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!


Now Live on Amazon

“Simply the best novel of the 1960s”


Now in Paperback !
Only Seven Bucks!
JHK’s Three-Act Play
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…


Long Emergency Cafe Press ad 2

Get your Official JHK swag on Cafe Press


The fourth and final book of the World Made By Hand series.

Harrow_cover_final

Battenkill Books (autographed by the Author) |  Northshire Books Amazon


emb of Riches Thumbnail

JHK’s lost classic now reprinted as an e-book
Kindle edition only


 

Returning to the ‘Real’ — The virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic

Just published on Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity site:
Read it there. Good layout. Nice links….

by James Howard Kunstler

     A paradox of life in these times is the inverse relationship between technological wizardry and the satisfactions of being a live organism in a real place (i.e., on the planet Earth).  It probably boils down to a proposition that the American public is not ready to entertain: that the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic. Eventually it will be a hard lesson to learn.

Poor Substitutes

     Ours has been an age of producing ersatz substitutes for just about everything. We call the housing subdivisions slapped up by the production builders “communities” when they are just cartoon simulacrums of a community. The houses within them are called “homes” in order to confer emotional allegiance that they have not earned by being things worthy of our affection in places worth caring about. The manufactured products we call “food” are visibly poisoning the public in epidemics of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. And the manner in which this “food” is dispensed to solitary “consumers” — from drive-in-windows, microwave ovens, and convenience store racks — has drained all nurturing social ceremony from the act of eating as surely as it has drained out all the nutrition. Having scores of “friends” on Facebook is not about personal association but is rather a marketing racket for a company set up to be an advertising enterprise. Computer graphic wizardry has only damaged our ability to tell meaningful stories in the dramatic arts media and reduced it to sadistic spectacle. Personal computers, now including phones and tablets, prey on our genetic weakness for novelty and rob us of our waking hours when we might be doing more satisfying things than email. Where public affairs are concerned, Federal Reserve interventions, pervasive accounting fraud, and computer-derived market manipulations are not an adequate substitute for a real economy of volitional transactions based on purposeful activity. And so on. The list of bad bargains is very long.

Read more….

About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

7 Responses to “Returning to the ‘Real’ — The virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic”

  1. peakaustria September 5, 2013 at 2:24 am #

    Great essay! did a backlink to this essay here on this german peak oil blog/discussion: http://www.peak-oil.com/2013/09/peak-oil-der-stand-der-dinge/#comment-33222 BR tom

  2. eddie007 January 29, 2018 at 11:49 pm #

    hey cortana windows 10 the most stable and efficient windows series, Windows 10 is the most stable and updated window with all the needed features. Cortana has been introduced as the windows 10 feature, this works as an assistant to the user.

  3. matthummel September 14, 2018 at 12:26 am #

    USPS Tracking online! Get latest shipments status and estimated delivery date: – Fast tracking – Real-time updates – Simply

  4. geektech12 December 13, 2019 at 12:26 am #

    Informative post with well-organized content. Keep up the good work.
    For any kind of help regarding hardware and software, visit the official website of Geek Squad Tech Support

  5. annashetty October 1, 2020 at 12:17 am #

    The information was helpful to me, I found it very hard. run 3

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
  6. MARK214 October 27, 2021 at 11:42 am #

    The article is very informative. Thanks for sharing.
    electriciansinfresno.com/

  7. credeb_advisors December 1, 2021 at 2:52 am #

    Very detailed and meticulous article. Keep up the good work!
    For GST Registration in Gurgaon Connect with Credeb!