Yuku free message boards

Coyote wrote:

---

Tainter's analysis was a little more sophisticated than we are fucked. He has a phd after all, I read it as; we are fucked, we have always been fucked, and we always will be fucked.

I was surprised Ran highlighted this essay, it was pretty weak, Tainter blasts progressivist historians and then proceeds to use a progressivist POV for the balance of the essay. He describes the fall of Rome as a bad thing; a progressive failure with only a dismissive nod to the rise of conservative localists. i.e. those pesky Visigoths. Tainter barely acknowledges the millennium of sustainable conservative local culture within a regional distributionist framework established by the Church that followed the fall of Rome. All of which was working more or less fine until the progressives re-emerged in the Renaissance and told us that we are not doing it right.

IMO, that essay was not worth the read.

Well, it depends on what is "good" and "bad", which are mostly arbitrary concepts. Instead of thinking in terms of good or bad, it is better to go into a more nihilist approach. What goes up, must come down. And we're going down. Yes, we're fucked. Is that a good or a bad thing? Who cares. But the global civilization that we continue building won't stand a chance in the next thirty to a hundred years. And if the general rule is increased complexity, well... we're in the period of the fastest increasing complexity and growth in the history of mankind. So forget a soft landing. Whatever comes out of this mess at the end of the fall is anyone's guess, but I really doubt it's utopia.

Who knows... I expect America, especially the Mid-west, to become a racist and theocratic confederacy, with coastlines mostly abandoned or in a state of chaos, and that's my best guess.

As for the rest of the world, I'll bet on most of South America, parts of Canada, most of Russia, and perhaps New Zealand and other Pacific islands to survive without major damage, seeing as to how they still possess the world's most natural resources and freshwater, have relatively low levels of population density, and not so complex systems.
As for China, India, the Middle East, North Africa, and most of Europe... may the gods pity the poor souls who happen to reside in those premises. They will be the hardest hit.

I'm split with Australia. Increasing aridity brings in major doubt that they'll survive the landing.

Central America, especially Mexico, will likely be complete chaos as well.

Central Asia, and perhaps Tibet, will fare relatively well.

Only guesses... Who knows.

What I do think is certain is that the societies that come after the crash will definitely go back to spirituality and religion, and follow the Spenglerian cycle until the next crash, or until we manage to evolve our consciousness to escape the vicious cycle of creation and destruction. But considering human stupidity and our incorrigible tie to the natural cycle, I'll put my money on the first option.

leander37 wrote:

---

and what, pray tell, is "the landing..."?

it seems that it is quite difficult to abandon a progressivist POV, no matter how hard we all try!

It's part of human instinct, or "hope", as we call it, that what comes after will be "better" than what we enjoy today, even when most of the world will suffer in apocalyptic proportions in the future. I'll say, I try my best to get away from the connundrum of "hope" and all the false illusions that it offers. I'm beginning more and more to understand why the Buddhists call this reality "samsara", or the world of sufferings, and why the only hope left to both the individual and the collective as a whole is to try and transcend the vicious cycles and reach nirvana in whichever which way one can imagine it. My best hopes are in the after-life.

But then again, who the hell knows? So I stick with simplicity and try not to take anything seriously. The gods are always laughing at us... so we have a choice: either we can wail at our collective misery, or we can laugh with them at the immense practical joke that is being had at our expense.

2handband wrote:

---

You misunderstand me, Sib. I say we're "fucked" as in "will probably render ourselves extinct inside of two centuries". Lovelock is an optimist.

I've no idea... but I do agree in a way. I just consider different possibilities. Who knows, we might very well extinct ourselves, or come very close to that, in the next two centuries. Or we might not, and survive another thousand years. I seriously don't know which is "better".

wolfbird wrote:

---

"Who knows what nirvana is..."

A person gets to know what it is by experiencing it. I don't think the distinctions between individual and collective are relevant. It is what it is.

I don't think there are the differences in branches of buddhism that you suggest, Sib.shoguntotalwar. Ultimately, they all draw their authority from the original teachings.

There are many perspectives that derive their roots from the original teachings... experience is the most important part, but nothing definite can be said about nirvana, for it is one of those things that only get more and more confusing as one tries defining it through words. Words will only seek to confuse.

As for whether we're blessed or cursed, it's my opinion that we're both, depending on how you perceive it.

As for something other than a physical reality, I've seen things that confirm that there's more than the eye can see. I was a strict materialist before... but things happened to me, things that were impossible from a strictly materialistic point of view, that have made me understand that we really are in the dark about many things of the spirit, and that our ancestors were a thousand times wiser in these spheres than we are today.