reading tainter ( as opposed to jared diamond )

"specific evolutionary 'progress' is inversely related to general evolutionary 'potential.'" "...success at adaptation breeds conservatism; dominant polities are less able to accommodate change. successful complex societies become locked into their adaptations..." "since change is rarely in the best interests of the ruling group, and there is a lack of cohesion and common interest between groups, no mechanism exists for gradual adjustment to changing circumstances. pressures lead to collapse rather than to structural change." "...all societies, complex or otherwise, run the risk of adapting so well to existing circumstances that change becomes impossible." joseph a. tainter, from "the collapse of complex societies."______________________________________________________________ so...the "developed economies" are nearing the end of a three hundred year ( or so ) run of a bonanza of cheap, high quality energy, laid down during the carboniferous era and the social and infrastructures are deeply embedded in adaptations to that extraordinary windfall...( don't believe me? how do you feel when the power fails? what in your home functions without electricity?i have a lot of books personally, but when the power goes out for any extended length of time my neighborhood empties as people flee to relatives, or bars, or resturants, or starbucks...anywhaere they can find oases of the technology that has failed at home...television, wi-fi, whatever [and no, i haven't missed the irony that i am saying thison the internet...i am part of the consumerist culture as well...like it or not..i'm just looking for escape routes] or when gasoline prices spike...you're trapped bucko...get a grip )...i can think of at least five service stations within a mile of my house and i could drive from here to detroit on back roads and city streets, much less highways...what are all those streets and gas stations for? adaptations to cheap energy... all that sunk cost in infrastructure and all the profits left to wring out of petrochemicals mean that resource will be dominant until it becomes absolutely unsustainable...then what? ( and the first one of you to say "resource substitution" gets rapped on the knuckles...that is the valium of economists...hired guns of greed...trying to lull us into complacency )...the worldview emanating out of the media and the excuses and explanations those criminal whores in whoretown are propagating won't make the collapse any easier to deal with...they are tools of hegemonic culture and change is not "in the best interest of the ruling group"...even they won't come through this unscathed...less poor is still the new rich.

one for tom

carboniferous detritovores

"according to the united nations statistical yearbook by 1971 the per capita rate of energy consumption was about sixty times greater than in india...so it would not have been too inaccurate to suggest that , for a realistic comparison of american population pressure with that of india, the ratio between their respective population ties should have been multiplied by a factor of sixty. the number of actual people per square mile in the united states was about on eighth of what it was in india . but if each american were was about sixty times as colossal as each indian, then american population pressure was equivalent to there being twelve billion people living the indian pace of life on territory as large as the united states." overshoot: the ecological basis of revolutionary change. william r catton, jr.____________________________________________________________________________ catton's book was written in 1982 ( still relevant despite all the deniers out there...easy to find but it is a scholarly work...there are footnotes, end notes, and a bibliography...weekend readers should probably skip it...and let me add that it isn't because it is too "smart" for anyone...it's just dry as dust in some really arid stretches ) ) and the figures he is quoting are, for reasons opaque to me, eleven years old at the time of writing..that does not invalidate the comparison, however, it just calls for an update...the indian subcontinent has come a long way towards the "developed" world in the intervening forty-two years and, according to the 2012 united nations statistical yearbook energy consumption in the u s is now only 4.62070819 times as much as that of india which reduces the u s population pressure compared to india from around twelve billion citizens " living the indian pace of life" to around 1,279,600,000 americans humming along like there's no tomorrow and no future generations to consider ( i have a granddaughter now and future projections make grandpa worried about quality of life for the little sweetie )...and that's the point...the whole fucking ponzi scheme of industrial capitalism is unsustainable but , of course, those in the hegemonic culture who control the privatization of socially created wealth ( and we are all privatizing that wealth...but the elite controls who gets what and they are greedy fuckers ) can't recognize this and their political creatures who bullshit us continually with campaigning rhetoric can't admit it either because, like the barometer called "the market", it is all built on faith and doubt collapses the system..well.. i am a heretic and heterodoxy in a time of faith is a dangerous business...but that never stopped me before...the chinese use nearly as much energy as we do and as the indians continue to close in on both of us , based on the use of completely non-renewable resources, things will be going bust...energy costs will not go down...they will continue to rise ( resource substitution is the valium of economists )...and so will conflicts...over water, oil, rare earths, and who gets how much of what's left..people are shits and brotherly love doesn't buy a summer home in the hamptons...of course that cottage will be useless when you can't find a way to get there.

kulturkampf

"an authentic culture roots into the collective experience of a community's past and from this sources draws meaning for the present and tools for the future."---john greer_________________________________________________________________________it's probably a bit more complex than that...i have been reading greer's book " the ecotechinic future" which is another book about the need to move away from a consumerist society based on the use of petrochemicals in just about everything and "relocalize" most facets of life as the fossil fuel based society winds down...he at least has the sense ( unlike some of his contemporaries )to maintain that it will be a gradual evolution that will take some time and he claims to have no real idea of what a future society will look like beyond some vague outlines...this, in a world crammed full of pundits ( listening friedman? ) who know what to do and could save us all if only we'd do what they say, is refreshing...he also misses the point ( i think ) that culture isn't completely dead despite the very best efforts of a capital driven consumerist utopia to kill it...regionalism has been a much maligned concept in the post-eisenhower age of interstate freeways and ungodly commutes...television and the exurbs with standardized existences was supposed to make us homogenous...but they still do things differently in northern alabama than they do in northwest indiana...some ( but obviously not all ) of that has to do with the environmental differences...we also have only a partially shared history...the community past in huntsville is divergent form the community past in lake station...we share human origins and universals ( sorry coach ) but not experience or local conditions...so the point is that every book about the need for a "transition" that i have read ( and that spate of reading is quickly drawing to a close...once you decide what is what it is time to stop reading and do something...if you don't you just become part of some intellectual salon taking about what needs to be done ) is about rebuilding culture...adjusting the community to local conditions...turning what's available into a viable way of life...growing some roots and re-establishing community connections...nothing particularly earth shattering in that...it's what humans did for centuries before the industrial revolution and its drive to develop the ultimate consumerism short circuited it... luddite, neo-luddite, pessimist, cynic...all adjectives i have heard recently...the cost of at least attempting to take a pragmatic and realistic viewpoint about the limits capital refuses to countenance because their alchemists in economist guise say they don't exist...the dog philosophers and i are old friends and the social constructs that capital creates to convince itself and the rest of us that those limits are non-existent are as abstract and phony as any that crates of thebes railed against...as much as it would like to capital can't kill culture...the distortions consumerism have placed on it would seem to have their limits.

fredrick jackson turner....

...closed the american western frontier in 1890...like many at the time ( and not a few today...because of the rail splitter's federal legacy and a nativist yahoo mindset among the retired fucks that live in the unstable and utterly unsustainable sun belt ) he thought manifest destiny to be written in stone instead of a transitory experiment in cultural displacement...now the gradual death of cheap energy and the insane overdraft of the ogallala aquifier seem poised to reopen the west to migration and settlement over the next few centuries...phoenix and las vegas are doomed as the hoover dam silts up and lake meade becomes a mud puddle...meanwhile the ogallala aquifier spreads across eight states from southern north dakota to texas and new mexico...it recharges at about an inch a year so that leaves the system that irrigates about a fifth of the cropland west of the mississippi river with an annual overdraft of only 2.7nfeet ( and that is down due to conservation measures )...recent events should show that rainfall west of big muddy is an iffy proposition at best...the old nineteenth century saw that " rain follows the plow " is rank bullshit and has been proved so time and again by things like the dust bowl ( those nice circular fields that have been adapted to rolling sprinklers fed by centrifugal pumps were created by cutting down thousands of trees planted by he ccc during the great depression to act a windbreaks to prevent the erosion that created the dust bowl...they are gone now and as the area turns to dust once again guess what is going to re-occur? )...so as the experiment that released immigrants " from european mindsets" and allowed americanism to flourish retreats the frontier will reopen to cultures that have proved able to live within the limits imposed by the ecosphere...a repopulation of northwestern mexico is in the offing despite john mccain and his yahoo constituents...the border fence will become a joke as the federal government contracts...not because of anything that cretin grover nordquist does but because the overshoot we are going to have to deal with will defy any government...guadalupe-hidalgo isn't worth the paper it's written on but not for the reasons anyone who still believes in the "american century" will ever be able to grasp.

devil media

"now a very long debate took place about the newspapers. all the printers in the city crowd their papers into the hands of the members. the bulk of the papers consist mainly of advertisements. useful information ought not to be excluded" but this is overdone. the real mean to me appears to be the taking of one or two papers by each member. but one part of the house struggled for taking them all, the other for taking none, no vote could be carried for either, and, of course, the printers will continue their old practice of sending and expecting payment." william maclay journal of the first session of the first congress. june 3rd, 1789. so i look at my facebook page or yahoo or my new york times and i think how little things have changed in the media world...all pr spin and engineered desires still...old bill was as astute as he was unpopular...heralding from that "radical pennsylvania" with its unicameral legislature and tradition of defying tradition he was targeted from the beginning by "his littleness" and "that damned ass hamilton" but he knew when he was being manipulated and he wasn't shy about saying so...the media hasn't changed much in the intervening 224 years and when i see some buffoon with an "i don't believe the liberal media" bumper sticker i am inclined to think that the corporate entities that media companies are have that poor sod right where they want him...there are liberal journalists and media personalities just as there are conservative ones...and they have a bully pulpit because they earn hard cash for the companies that employ them...if they didn't sell they'd be out on their asses tout de suite whatever particular stripe of political frenzy they were pandering to...surely this is why the new york times give that flesh eating creep tom friedman column space...the drivel he spouts isn't fit for the crapper wall but someone buys the damned paper just to read it...you are at liberty to think what you will about the media and its alleged bias...near as i can tell they follow the first principle and imperative of capital..."more"...and don't give a rat's ass about politics as a rule...ask old bill...he was sensitive to the presence of vermin...media...political...he had a finely honed sense for these things and could find his voice at a moments notice...it's why he's is utterly invisible in high school history books and in the pantheon of "the founding fathers"...he held the truth in more esteem than his peers...the hamiltonian system of political deceit grinds on.

macro-parasitism

so mom is ninety-two and has alzheimer's...and since she cannot process what has happened thirty seconds ago she has something of a tendency to let things like property taxes slide...as a result i had to procure a cashier's check in a substantial amount, go to the county government center and find my way through the skinner box of hallways and metal detectors until i found the tax sale division of the lake county assessor's office where i duly forked over the lucre to redeem my mother's house...so...taxes are a necessary evil( fuck the party of lincoln and their leisure service nominally called the democrats ) and i don't expect much in the way of sympathy...only a clean tax record...however this story doesn't end here..some low-life fuckball from the land of lincoln ( abe was an evil bastard...patron saint of the robber baron and killer of native peoples...odd that cost plus overruns should have found their start during his tenure in office...he would buy anything and chalk it up to "saving the union" ) bought a certificate of tax sale and in addition to the assessor i now have to pay him off as well...and at a profit...heart and soul of capitalism...it's also profiting from other people's misfortune ( my mother's disorder is not voluntary believe me )...so...fuck the lake county tax assessor...fuck lawyers and legislators that contrive this legal chicanery [no offense coach...you either amy lou )...fuck the rat bastard parasites that utilize that chicanery to profit..and fuck capitalism that endorses it as a righteous fucking system that we all should aspire to...there is evil in the world and we are in the heart of the dark empire...where's tucholsky when you need him?