Saved comments from February 2015

[neonvincent]

My comment to "Apocalypse Now and Forever”

"As a political psychoanalyst I find the Super-bowl halftime show the best concise index of how psychotic American culture is becoming from year to year, and the 2015 version signaled a complete break from reality, a nightmare of twerking robots in a hall of mirrors, as if America had utterly surrendered its tattered soul to some rogue motherboard pulsing deep within Dr. Evil’s subterranean palace of sin."

People were so eager to make bets on the Super Bowl that they were making prop bets on Katy Perry's set list, outfit, and hair color. They didn't do all that well, as they forgot there were other entertainers performing as well. The best performance by the prognosticators was a middle aged sportscaster who called the opening and closing song. He quit while he was ahead, a talent others should cultivate.

As for Dr. Evil, I suppose he could use Perry as one of his Fembots. She'd be in good company, as Britney Spears has played one in the past. However, the last time I saw him, he was airing his grievances about both Sony and North Korea bringing discredit to evil organizations. I don't know what he'd say about the situation in Ukraine. Nothing good, I'm sure.


Two links to re-examine re the 2013 Super Bowl blackout:

http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/02/hipcrime-vocab-on-super-bowl.html
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/2013/02/videos-about-super-bowl-blackout.html

Match the comment in the first to the second post as well as the comment I left at The Hipcrime Vocab for an entry. Tie it into the theme of Americans demanding their entertainment. Post for Throwback Thursday or Flashback Friday.


My comment on As Night Closes In.

"[I]nevitably, industrial societies ended up believing that knowledge all by itself was capable of increasing the complexity of the human ecosystem. Since there’s no upper limit to knowledge, in turn, that belief system drove what Catton called the cornucopian myth, the delusion that there would always be enough resources if only the stock of knowledge increased quickly enough."

I've seen this from you in another form last April, when you wrote the following in The Four Industrial Revolutions:

"Well before the analysis got this far, of course, anyone who’s likely to mutter the credo “Technology will always be with us” will have jumped up and yelled, “Oh for heaven’s sake, you know perfectly well what I mean when I use that word! You know, technology!”—or words to that effect."

Technology serves as a good stand-in for knowledge and the belief in both works as the same kind of thoughtstopper, both of them reassuring the utterer and the hearer that our intellectual and engineering prowess will allow us to continue increasing carrying capacity for humans as we have been for the past 500 years. It also enchants people into thinking that both will also allow our civilization to escape the fate of the Western Roman Empire, decline and fall related to exhausting both the resource base and the belief system that supports our civilization.

As for the rest of Catton's lesson, I pass it on to my students as "The economy depends on society, which depends on the natural environment. That means that without a healthy natural environment, there is no society. Without society, there is no economy." Consequently, the emphasis on the economy above all else is worse than missing the point.

Finally, I wish to direct the attention of you and your readers to an infographic from the BBC, Apocalypse When? It lists all the kinds of catastrophes that could befall us and the likely time scales during which they'd arrive. Some definitely would be the direct result of resource depletion and pollution, such as loss of honeybees, loss of topsoil, overpopulation, and climate change. Others would be more indirect, like nuclear war and bioterrorism. For some reason, Peak Oil wasn't among them. Gee, I wonder why?


My comment to All Twerked Out.

"Waiting in the wings is a whole category of human endeavor quaintly known as virtue, lately absent in the collective consciousness. What a shock it would be if Americans began to witness acts of fortitude and valor among us."

Americans saw an act of fortitude met with virtue last week when they heard about James Robertson, a Detroit resident who walked 21 miles of his commute each day. The result was that he received $300,000 in donations and a new car. As is our media's wont, this was turned into a feel-good story as ABC News named Robertson their Person of the Week. While this was a success of charity, it displayed the failure of metro Detroit to provide adequate public transportation. The response also sent a message that Americans think that car dependence is a virtue, not a vice.

As for the Grammys, my wife and I didn't watch them. Instead, we decided to watch some valor and fortitude in a fictional struggle for survival in "The Walking Dead." Brains, anyone?


My comment on The Butlerian Carnival

"Collapse now and avoid the rush--it's fun!" That should be your message now. Speaking of people who are having fun by collapsing now, I can think of two subcultures that fit that description, hipsters and steampunks. You, your readers and I already had a good conversation about the devotees of steampunk and their reaction to a disappointing present by escaping into an elegant past. The hipsters aren't as extreme, but they are coping with a disappointing present by adopting worthwhile and supposedly forgotten pieces of the past. In addition to the vintage technology you mentioned, the hipsters who've moved into Midtown Detroit have revived Marche du Nain Rouge, a ceremony of the original French colonists to placate the city's resident malign spirit, the Red Dwarf. Given what's happened to Detroit since the French tradition was abandoned, it couldn't hurt, and based on what you write about in your other blog, it might just help. Besides, the hipsters find it fun.

Greer: Pinku-Sensei, hmm! Is le Nain Rouge any relation to l'Homme Rouge des Tuileries? Might explain a thing or two...

Me: According to the webmaster of EsoterX, the answer appears to be yes. Both Le Nain Rouge and The Little Red Man of Destiny are descended from the Nain Rouge of Normandy, a subtype of Lutin, or French domestic spirit or fairy. Both of them share the characteristics of being harbingers of doom. However, Detroit's Red Dwarf isn't actually a French immigrant to the New World. As "the demon of the straights," he appears to have been known to the Native Americans/First Nations people before the French ever settled in the area. Perhaps he was a similar kind of local being who was interpreted by the French as something familiar to them and then took on the characteristics of what they assumed him to be. I'll stop there, as discussions of theota, theoregions, and the theosphere really belong at your other blog.

(If turned into a blog post, also cite and quote Napoleon and his Red Man of Destiny and Napoleon's Book Of Prophecy.

@Patricia Matthews: "1) "The Collapseniks have been forecasting the crisis for 10-15 years" because we have been IN the Crisis Era since 2001! I know, I fought that notion myself, but the signs are all there.More details can be found in Strauss & Howe's book FOURTH TURNING, because I'm wasting sunlight today as it is. (Laundry to do, weather coming in Tuesday, etc)."

They're also found in Strauss and Howe's previous book on the topic, "Generations: The History of America's Future." One of the changes I noted in their predictions of the onset of the crisis was that it kept getting earlier. The original prediction was it would hit around or slightly after 2010, while in "The Fourth Turning" the authors thought it could start as early as 2005. 9-11 rushed things according to either timetable, but it definitely started the current crisis era. If Strauss and Howe are right, then the current crisis should resolve itself by the early 2020s. What most people who follow their cyclical theory of history hope for is something like the American High of the 1950s or Era of Good Feelings of the early 1800s. Instead, they're going to get a period more like Reconstruction for the South--a period of austerity and rebuilding--if they're lucky. Strauss and Howe's readers forget that the authors' cycles can go down as well as up, even though reversal of progress, destruction of America, loss of modernity, and even human extinction are explicitly listed in the conclusion as possibilities resulting from the current crisis.

For what it's worth, both our host and James Howard Kunstler seem to be familiar with Strauss and Howe. Kunstler appears to have read "The Fourth Turning" a few years back and sprinkled references to it in his Monday blog posts then. It might be worth searching for them.

"2) "The demon of the *straights*?!?! He/she/it torments heterosexuals or mundanes? Or do you mean "straits" as in narrow bodies of water? Inquiring minds and spelling geeks are dying of curiosity.

Mea culpa, I'm afraid my Freudian Slip was showing. It's actually "The Demon of the Strait," as Detroit means "The Strait" in French. That written, Le Nain Rouge is much more likely to torment "mundanes," i.e., the common man and woman, than "The Little Red Man of Destiny." That particular spirit communicated with royalty, including Napoleon, who paid particular attention to its pronouncements, and apparently disappeared with Napoleon. No monarchy, no spirit.

Greer: Pinku-sensei, thanks for the data!


My comment on Welcome to World War Three:

"Partly what you’re seeing over there is an internal fight to control what’s left of the treasure. That battle has already had the strange consequence of disabling the oil production capacity in places like Iraq and Libya, where there is still a lot of oil, but not enough political stability to allow the complicated business of extraction and transport to take place."

Unlike 2011, when the Arab Spring caused oil prices to shoot up over $100/barrel for the first time since the Great Recession began, the current instability hasn't done much. In fact, the story seems to be gas rises as oil stalls. I just checked Oil-Price.net and oil has been bumping up against ceilings below $55 for WTI and $60 for Brent. So far, the markets seem unconcerned, although you may be right that they should be.

As for Americans, they're far more interested in Fifty Shades of Grey than in any of the serious issues you've pointed. Once again, Americans have made their screwed-up priorities quite clear and chosen entertainment. They've long ago given up on reality and have decided to settle for a good fantasy.


My comment on What Progress Means

Happy Year of the Wood Sheep!

"The popular notion of progress presupposes that there’s an inherent dynamic to history, that things change, or tend to change, or at the very least ought to change, from worse to better over time. That presupposition then gets flipped around into the even more dubious claim that just because something’s new, it must be better than whatever it replaced."

That observation doesn't just apply to technology. It also applies to biological evolution and cultural practices as well. When I observed Darwin Day last week, I posted two cartoons showing how dinosaurs evolving into birds may have been a winner in terms of surviving the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, but it was a loser in terms of being the dominant group of land animals, at least in terms of size and position in the food web. The result was that the genes benefitted, but the individual suffered. Progress? Not if you started off as one of the raptor dinosaurs and ended up as a chicken.

Ambiguity over what constitutes progress also applies to food practices. The American political movement that seems to be most supportive of traditional ways to grow and prepare food consists mostly of people in what passes for the Left in the U.S., who style themselves as progressives, along with some libertarians, who are "the other kind of liberal," while people on the right oppose them and are championing industrial agriculture and processed food, the new ways of doing things. No wonder you call them pseudoconservatives. That phenomenon makes no sense if liberals are in favor of the new and conservatives are in favor of the old. It does make sense if liberals, or at least, the Left, which is not exactly the same thing, is in favor of what benefits the average person, while the pseudoconservatives of the American Right are in favor of protecting and supporting the already rich and powerful. At least some on what passes for the U.S. Left appear to recognize that the old ways are better for the average American.

On a different subject, one of your readers asked you about K-waves last week and you replied that you should read up on the topic in preparation for writing an entry about economic cycles in the future. I have a recommendation for you, the writings of Michael Alexander, in particular his 2002 book "The Kondratiev Cycle: A generational interpretation." Not only does Mike write about K-waves, but all the other economic cycles running from the standard 4-year business cycle to up to the 40-year stock cycle. Full disclosure, I was his proofreader. On the one hand, I'm not completely objective about his book. On the other, I read the book in great detail several times, so I can vouch for the subjects my friend covered and its comprehensiveness.

Greer: Pinku-sensei, and gong hay fat choy to you as well. Thanks for the recommendation, and the cartoons!

Nastarana: Pinku-Sensei, I am an organic gardener, for about 20 years now, and avid farmer market shopper. I also participate on internet food and gardening fora. I can tell you that the follks who care about food sovereignty and local resilience are coming to the painful realization that the far left and the Democratic Party are no friends of our movement.

Under a Democratic admin, USDA remains, for all practical purposes, a wholly owned subsidiary of Monsanto Corp. The label GMO initiative lost in Oregon by 800 or so votes, where it was conspicuously not endorsed by that state's popular senator, who handily won reelection in a Republican wave election year. The shocking abuses documented in the film Farmageddon seem to occur as often in Blue states as in Red, and one could go on.

@JMG, I've written my entry for your latest Challenge, Paean to the power of poop, a Squirrel Case entry. Consider me officially entered!

@Nastarana, you don't have to tell me that our politicians both Republican and Democratic are Monsanto Men (and women, as Hillary Clinton will undoubtedly prove to be if she takes office in 2017). That's a bipartisan failing as I'll point out to my students this week when I show them Food, Inc. On the other hand, calling the Democratic Party "the far left" makes me raise my eyebrows. Some of the rank and file may be "far left" (and I know they tend to support local food) but not the leadership. They're pretty centrist and pro-corporate, regardless of how their opponents paint them. If you want real far left in U.S. politics, how about the Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party, and the various socialist parties? Are they hostile to your cause? Or is it just the Libertarians who support you? Maybe you should look for a "Green Tea" coalition of the Greens and Libertarians to counteract the pro-industrial farming major parties.


My comment on How Goes the War?

"That train left the station in Athens a few weeks ago bound for Frankfurt."

And when it failed to blow up last Friday, instead being scheduled to return in four months, the U.S. stock markets reacted with such relief they set new record highs. All this in a bull market that was so overvalued two years ago that one of my friends got out of stocks by July 2013. He learned the hard way that the best way to profit from stocks is to sell too soon. The worst part is that the bull may run another year. Yeah, until he has another Wyle E. Coyote moment like in 2008 and realizes he's 1000 feet up in the air with no parachute.