Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option

[GliderGuider]

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]Why Going 'Back To Normal' Is No Longer An Option for the American Economy

Another {theorist who’s trying to look beyond the phase change} is Thomas Homer-Dixon, a Canadian economist who wrote The Upside of Down. Homer-Dixon marshals evidence that all great empires rise and fall by controlling the dominant energy supply of their age. The Romans used roads and aqueducts to harness solar energy (in the form of food) from around the Mediterranean basin, and used that surplus to fund the most complex society of its time. The Dutch empire rose on its superior ability to master wind technologies — the windmill and the ship — to extend its land holdings, run early manufacturing industries, and extend its trading reach around the globe. The British empire rose on coal-powered steam engines, which gave it more productive industries, railroads, electrical generators, and faster ships. The US eclipsed the Brits due to its vast wealth in oil — a far more concentrated and fungible fuel — and inventions from cars and planes to plastics and fertilizers that allowed it to make the most of its advantages. And the Chinese are now making huge investments in renewable energy and safer, more efficient second-generation nuclear power, which they can use to fuel their ascent to global primacy.

The bottom line in Homer-Dixon’s theory is this: Everything that Americans understand as “wealth” under the current paradigm comes from oil. It’s the foundation of our entire economy, and the ground our superpower status stands on. Our cities are built on the assumption of cheap, plentiful oil. Our consuming patterns are made possible by a fleet of oil-burning trucks, ships, and planes that bring us goods made in oil-driven factories. Our warmaking machine, which is largely tasked with protecting our oil interests around the world, is the single largest consumer of energy on the planet. Even our food is created with vast oil-based inputs of fertilizer and pesticides; and we enjoy a year-round variety of foods (bananas! chocolate! coffee!) that is unprecedented in human history because oil makes cheap transport and refrigeration possible.

And the pain and fear caused when we're forced to face this fundamental fact explains quite a bit about why ideas like climate change and peak oil are so viscerally terrifying to so many Americans. (In many right-wing circles, denial about the American oil addiction is now a core piece of their political identity. It’s considered anti-American to even suggest that getting off oil is necessary or possible.) We are so deeply invested in oil, in so many ways, that it’s almost impossible for us to envision a world beyond it. We stand to lose so much that it’s hard to fathom it all.

And this, says Homer-Dixon, is why no empire has ever survived an energy-related phase shift with its full power intact: the reigning hegemons are always too deeply invested in the current system to recognize the change, let alone respond to it in time. And so they are always superceded by some upstart that’s motivated to put more resources and risk into aggressively developing the next source. The decline of oil as the energy reality of the world has deep implications for every aspect of American life in the coming century. It’s a phase shift at the deepest level.

[Warpy]

1. You have to consider that the "normal" of the past 30+ years

of shoveling wealth to the few while the majority is forced to take on crippling debt just to stay even with where they once were is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.

Anyone who wants to go back to it is certifiably insane.

We know what to do to fix this. It worked in the 1930s and it can work again, but increasing the revenue stream while chipping away at such vast wealth at the top is essential. Whether or not we can do this without a violent revolution is the only question. If we are to survive, it will be done.

[Demeter]

2. Amen

[txlibdem]

4. I can't wait for the warm weather of Spring

There will be interesting times ahead.

[Ghost Dog]

3. It's ironic that Homer-Dixon hails from the confines of economics when this is pure geography,

and a very human geography at that.

If the denial in the USA is because the alternative viscerally terrifies so many, it is due to ignorance reinforced by propaganda, I'd suggest. The opportunities available during the paradigm shift, as China and the rest of the world hopefully better understand, ought to outweigh the losses if approached intelligently.

The current Western economic (and political) system doesn't look very intelligent, though.

The fossil-fuel phase of development needs to be seen as a bridge the other side of which will be reached by developing societies anyway regardless of which National Culture ends up in the lead. So go with the flow.

It's good to see plenty of theorizing going on, all the same.

...These are just a handful of the many serious theorists out there describing the deep structural changes we’re undergoing. Not all of them, to be sure, are this cheery (and I’ve made my own contributions to the dystopian canon in the past). There are so many now, in fact, that their very numbers might be taken as evidence that we’re going through something uniquely new and deep. Our government is broken. Our economy is broken. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Our major institutions — education, religion, culture — are inadequate to the tasks at hand.

These are all signs of an old world passing away, clearing the way for a new one to arise in its place. And the sooner we let go of our assumption that going back is desirable, or even possible, the sooner we’ll be able to fully embrace the new things that lie ahead.


Sara Robinson is Alternet's senior editor in charge of the Visions page. A trained social futurist, she's particularly interested change resistance movements. She does foresight and strategic planning consulting for a wide range of progressive groups.

[GliderGuider]

5. This seems a good place to introduce my concept of the "cultural psychopomp".

Lately I've been chewing on the idea that some people who write about the potential collapse/transition/reorganization of modern civilization are acting - whether consciously or not - as "cultural psychopomps".

Traditionally, a psychopomp (also known as a "death midwife&quot is someone who helps a dying individual cross over to the afterlife:

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]A psychopomp is a guide, whose primary function is to escort souls to the afterlife, but they can also serve as guides through the various transitions of life. The term originates from the Greek words pompos (conductor or guide) and psyche (breath, life, soul, or mind). Such guidance generally guarantees a successful transition for the soul, but there are other times when additional aid is needed. This has long been a role of the shaman and others with the ability to travel to the spirit realms and offer help to those in need.

Stories of psychopomps are widespread throughout the mythological tales, religious texts, sacred narratives, and real-life stories of people around the world.
It occurred to me that some of the writers I follow in the Doomosphere™, particularly those with a broad multi-disciplinary understanding of the situation as well as an understanding of its spiritual dimension, may be serving in the capacity of psychopomps to a culture threy see as standing on the brink of metaphorical death. This line of thought was triggered by a paragraph from Peter Kingsley's new book A Story Waiting to Pierce You:

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]"The simple truth is that every single civilization, including this western world, was brought into being from a sacred place to serve a sacred purpose. And when that purpose is forgotten, when its original alignment gets lost, when the fundamental balance and harmony of its existence becomes disrupted beyond a certain point, then nature has her way. This is the mystery of birth and death not only for humans, but for cultures too. And for thousands of years it has been understood that, just as civilizations have to come to an end, there can even be times of global extinctions. But always there are people who know how to gather the essence of life and hold it safely, protect it and nurture it until the next seeding."
I would include in this group people like Joanna Macy, Carolyn Baker, Charles Eisenstein, David Korten, and the late Thomas Berry. They all have a deep understanding of the fact that humanity seems to be standing on the brink of a phase shift, and have devoted themselves to helping us find the way across.

I haven't seen the term "cultural psychopomp" used anywhere else yet, but it feels to me like an idea whose time has come.

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"][center]And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?[/center]