the day after tomarow

the car has to go. the gun has to go. the dollar doesn't completely have to go, though it certainly doesn't have to stay either. but it does need to stop being the primary consideration of infrastructure.

you can have all the capitalism you want in everything else, but infrastructure needs to be insulated from the priorities of money. infrastructure needs to be based on respect for environment, and usefulness to people, not the game of profit.

also you know, the money thing should not be insulation from regulation to protect people and environment. you know, other then that, it would be ok. i'm not convinced it would be the best.

i think people who call making things be about money that have no reason to be, freedom, are lying to themselves.

i don't mean there's an ideological solution to this. i just mean that its mistaken, regardless of any ideology.

there are no ultimate hierarchical solutions. hierarchy has some limited utility in some limited contexts, but that's it.

history has proven that money, guns, kings, large parlaments directing large and powerful nations, none of these have proven to be really good ideas.

an informal democratic process at the local level, or whatever process at the very local level people want. that can work.

then the levels you have beyond that are to protect people from their local governments. but not to dictate directly to them.

this kind of remote control creates all the problems.

now at a bioregional level, that's where you provide transportation infrastructure and water rights and all that, to link the local communities,

but again this is only to regulate the services that level provides and to protect the environment doing so.

then you have a national or even planetary level, but the only function you allow that, is to keep people's right to move from one place to another, to whatever place feels most right to each person, but every place has the custom and consensus of that place.

well you know that's what you have some day, because will very nearly die off the way we have now.

having too many people won't stop that. too many people are part of why that is. too many people and doing things in more harmful ways then they need to be.

i know so many people think they get something out of it or that it will always be as it is or both. but its not difficult to see that some things don't work that way.

so right now we're heading backwards toward a kind of merchant oligarchy. with merchant oligarchs hiding behind false religion the same way monarchs did in the middle ages.

but there are too many people to not destroy the way nature makes possible for people to live by doing things that way.

so what will happen when the collapse comes, that may be as little as fifteen years, i don't know, i don't trust any kind of timetable, i've seen predictions come and go, but having more people isn't make the earth bigger to have room for more of us, that much is absolute, you know its going to be horrible.

wars aren't going to be the biggest part of it.

everybody talks about wars because at least they are entertaining while you're dying and killing each other, but that's not going to be the biggest part.

its not going to be that entertaining. not that much diversion from your suffering, as we are all sick and starving. that's the main thing that we're going to see. and maybe the human species will survive and maybe it won't.

but i don't have a fixation with suffering or killing and dying.

its what comes after that i'm interested in.

when the starving and mutating of new diseases has stopped. when there are only a few who have survived, by cooperation and staying hidden. you know however few or many.

all the great impressive things, except for maybe a few that were the most stable, physically, all that will be in ruins.

but ruins, while risky and dangerous, are sources of raw and processed material, and also especially knowledge of otherwise mostly forgotten ways.

so that is what will be interesting to see. those first few small steps to replicate infrastructure on a very modest, very light on the land, personal scale variety of ways.

you know, technology itself isn't evil. it this blindness about money obscuring reality that is causing so much harm. the car and the gun and all that, they come from this blindness.

i'm not saying the ego will go away. but indigenous cultures have found ways to overcome or at least harness that problem in the past, and that's what i see reemerging among the survivors as they dig their hungry weary way out of the rubble.

there just won't be enough to mine coal or pump oil, so forget everything we think we know based on that. people will burn wood to cook on and to keep warm.

but people will innovate and invent. because that's what we do. that's what we are.

so i think we may see things like bicycle railways and batteries and solar and waterwheels too making electricity. but it will all be done different in different places.

transportation and communication will come back. in at least some places. linking them.

but it won't be oil or coal for a long time. if ever again.

my hope is before people are again many enough and organized enough, the will have gained sense enough to not go oil and coal again.

and you know, the easy oil and coal, they're all gone anyway.

what remains now will just be too difficult for too long to again become practical.

not that they're practical now. they're just what were used to and of course the merchant oligarchs, right now they keep a lot of people from thinking of anything else.

but i don't think i could call the direction they're heading us, all this pain of disease and starvation, with the occasional war thrown in, this is not my idea of what i would call practical, now matter how many people are disillusioned that it might be.

and i'm not even saying any of that bleakness has to come, or at least any more then what we've already destined for our selves. it's too late to escape all of it entirely, but not to late to avoid most of it.

i'm just saying, what anyone can see, that we're mostly heading in that direction now. and i don't see as likely political changes at the top that will change that direction.

and i don't mean aggressiveness, i don't mean guns, because that's just more of the same. what i mean is we can stop lying to ourselves for cars or money or some kind of fanatical religion. it doesn't matter which excuse each person uses. we just need to stop making them.

 

I thought this thread MIGHT BE about that movie - the day after tommorow (2004) which wasnt too shabby..

www.amazon.com/dp/B0002MB7R6

 

On the other hand,if I "go",it will all end and be over,for me...So I won't have to worry about it anymore on personal selfish level.That's one solution.To remove yourself from the situation.

 

Don't talk like that, Fair....you are not seriously thinking like that, are you?

 

No don't worry Moon.It was just a thought experiment.I'm all for living right now.Got lots 'a beans in me.

 

themnax,
dug into your post, some questions for you...

You were talking about rebuilding after some major collapse.

1.) Currency: money itself isn't evil and it will never go away. So far as we're speaking of money as some unit of value. So, gold has value as a material that never rust and its luster has earned its appeal globally. Will gold be worth anything in the rebuilt world? You can't eat it, right?

2.) Living wherever you feel is right: Never ever going to happen so long as the very concept of government is around. So, new rebuilt world, the borders disappear around all have our respective people farms...

Well, now who is in charge of this resource or that? Unless we all just share? Who controls this exchange? Are there "Sharing Bosses" "Common Good Monitors" How do I know they're not getting more than me? or allowing more for the people they like?

Now if there are so few people left that most of the problems you pointed out aren't really applicable due to abundant, all-you-could-ever-need&more everything and we all live as tribes taking what is needed... well then we'd still have to find a way to circumvent our instinctual Lizard-Brain Urge to possess, to ensure our own survival by hindering that of another (most successfully by killing them and their offspring) and all the greed that stems from this.

 

The gold question is an interesting one. I think a gold standard would be better then the fiat money game we're now in, as gold is an actual commodity whilst fiat money is just paper and only money because a government says it is.
Probably the days of the dollar as a world reserve currency are numbered. The Chinese for example are buying gold hand over fist.
You can't eat gold but it can be used as a medium of exchange, or to back a paper currency, unlike the situation we have now where banks, and especially central banks can magic money out of thin air.

Crypto currencies such as Bitcoin may also have a role to play, as that allows freedom from central banks and govt. control of money.

Or neo-feudalism. But it's not merchants so much as financiers and bankers who sit atop the pyramid.

 

they tried this a century ago and most of the 13 colony states were clear cut. only small treks of land kept. what we call our State forests. Which were once 5-10times the size they are today.. btw this happened in Europe too, its why they had to dig for coal..

 

Nice thread. I like to think humans will learn from their mistakes and create beauty out of the ashes of the dying world, but I wonder if the pure fear and adrenaline consuming most who will have to learn to survive on a second by second basis will fuel more of the same. More wars for resources, more exploitation for the gain of a select few.

I sometimes wonder if the social hierarchy which fuels a lot of bad in the world is simply a natural state for humans. I mean, I guess at this point it obviously is a natural state. Most social animals are hierarchal to a certain extent. I hope we're capable of evolving past it.

 

Despite the threat of pushing a wrong button or screwing up something else essential in the chain of life (like an ecosystem, killing all the bees or some other important insects, ruining the atmosphere or ozon layer, fucking things up because of overpopulation and their impact on the environment etc. etc. etc.) we are still mainly on a progressive path the way I see it.
We've learned a lot as humans as a whole, now we have to utilize all our knowledge for something else than just making a good profit and living for your own family and shrug our shoulders to the rest in the world (not my fault! i am busy making a living for my family..). If I look at several societies it seems obvious there has been a lot of effort made already to make the world a better place for our fellow humans.

 

The Future is that what we have so far written and our lack of concern in change to what inevitably will be Nature's revenge - which is Cold and Calculating in order to Save .. the Planet, Not all the inhabitants - when and not if , the time comes, we will reap what we has sown - and I guess, deserve

 

We are still part of nature, Billy.

 

So are viruses but our bodies still produce unfavorable conditions when we are invaded by the little fuckers

 

Yes, but I don't see the earth doing the same to us (at least not with the same motive/intention/same amount of intentional purpose)

 

Most primates form male dominance hierarchies, so probably you could say it is a 'natural' state. But we also have minds as well as instincts, so it's conceivable that we could learn to order our societies differently.
One major obstacle to change though is the fact that those at the top of the pile are pretty determined to hang onto what they've got.

But I'm also convinced that the human race has all that's needed to vastly improve things. Science and technology have created ecological problems for instance, but the same science and technology is probably the only way we can even know what we've done, or have any hope of tackling the problems. Vested interests etc all stand in the way of that process.

 

You may be right, and I agree up to a point. I see a problem however, which is that the ruling elite may only try to make things better for themselves in the short term.

That seems to be happening to some extent now. Here in the UK a raft of new regulations around fracking have been proposed, where fracking companies would be compensated by the govt. for any loss of profit arising from popular demonstrations against the practice. They'll also be allowed to mine shale gas from right under your house, and you won't have any legal redress.

Who will benefit from fracking? Mainly the corporations that do it and their cronies. Not ordinary people, not wildlife and not the earth itself. It's already made a mess of big swathes of Texas and other places.
It would seem much better to me to have some proper plan to move away from fossil fuels. Something it's obvious they will have to do eventually.

 

a very good thought. and common interests shared by all angles of the political space can do the same for the short sightedness of corporate oligarchy.

 

themnax,
dug into your post, some questions for you...

You were talking about rebuilding after some major collapse.

1.) Currency: money itself isn't evil and it will never go away. So far as we're speaking of money as some unit of value. So, gold has value as a material that never rust and its luster has earned its appeal globally. Will gold be worth anything in the rebuilt world? You can't eat it, right?
====================
these are all good and interesting questions. gold has to be mined and refined. even paper has to be printed. easily mined gold, like many other substances, well what is easily gotten has been. now the kind of collapse i'm talking about, well of course its variable, but at its most extreme we're looking at just a hair short of humanity's complete extinction.
now you're not going to be doing a whole lot of really difficult or deep mining, when all the people there are live a very few in each of widely scattered villages that might at first not even know of each others existence. now a few generations after that, as population begins to re-expand, what are the priorities going to be? essentially shelter, food, and eventually re-establishing wider relationships. the idea of money isn't THAT intrinsic. at that point its completely optional, and i think each place will have its own priorities and do things their own different ways.
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2.) Living wherever you feel is right: Never ever going to happen so long as the very concept of government is around. So, new rebuilt world, the borders disappear around all have our respective people farms...
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pretty much, because people starving and diseased have other things on their minds then ideologies and forms of governance, so for a long time, how we think of governments now, will go away and stay gone. not permanently. but people will be looking for ways to avoid repeating the problems that got them into such a mess. because even the next few generations, those memories of the decade or so, between the collapse and rebuilding will still be very fresh and painful
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Well, now who is in charge of this resource or that? Unless we all just share? Who controls this exchange? Are there "Sharing Bosses" "Common Good Monitors" How do I know they're not getting more than me? or allowing more for the people they like?
==========================
again this is a matter of, because society has become so atomized because of survivors being so few, each place will find its ways of doing its own things. here though is where indigenous traditions, those that survive, will prove a priceless guide.
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Now if there are so few people left that most of the problems you pointed out aren't really applicable due to abundant, all-you-could-ever-need&more everything and we all live as tribes taking what is needed... well then we'd still have to find a way to circumvent our instinctual Lizard-Brain Urge to possess, to ensure our own survival by hindering that of another (most successfully by killing them and their offspring) and all the greed that stems from this.
==========================
i think a great deal of inaccuracy for vested reasons is believed about those so called lizard brains. to put it simply this claim is an absolute myth. everything attributed to it, is learned behavior. even people who think they are doing the world a favor, to go out of their way, to sabotage anything and everything to convince themselves and each other of that very point, have learned this behavior of doing so.

i'll go along with this though, that there is no ideology that can cure the disfunctionality of a culture. nor belief. nor economic system. if you want to think of those as separate from ideologies, which they usually aren't.

 

also you say money isn't evil? well, so? whoever said that it was? i didn't. greed motivates a lot of harm. that much is a simple fact. but yes, its true this can't be entirely blamed on money nor the concept of money itself.

the big however is this: not being evil doesn't make it a magic wand, nor a default condition of the universe.

so i really fail to see any point nor pertinence to the statement "money isn't evil".

 

Maybe it's the people who wield money who could be characterized as evil, or infected by evil, rather than money itself?

Note my question mark, because I'm not fully sure, but I do incline to the view that money is a convenient thing, and could be OK if human nature could just move up a tiny bit of a level.

It's really an evolution that's needed. An evolution of consciousness.
Ignorance, not money is what I would categorize as the root of our troubles.

But money too may be set to evolve with the genesis of crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin.

I firmly hold to the idea that we can hope to realize our dreams in the future. Perhaps not fully on an individual level, but on a collective level, I think it's wholly possible even now, in these rather dark times, that it could be so.