MAINTAINING AND CREATING AFTER COLLAPSE, By Steve Thomas

[Joanne98]

Reprinted from ANTHROPIK NETWORK

That we are approaching the collapse is largely beyond debate. It is unnecessary to give a detailed examination here of the factors by which the collapse may come about. My purpose, instead, is twofold:

1. To explore the form the collapse may take; that is, to speculate on what we will actually experience as global industrial civilization crumbles, and more importantly

2. To explore how we may hope to create and perpetuate egalitarianism in a state of civilizational collapse.

What to Expect

How will we know the collapse is upon us? The warning signs may be here already. We have already written of hurricanes Katrina and Rita as possibly the “opening shots�? in the collapse of the oil infrastructure. We will probably learn this winter whether we are correct.

However, it is very unlikely that there is going to be a point at which we can say “Yes, civilization is collapsing.�? That is, it is very unlikely that there will be a sudden, thief-in-the-night disintegration of all of this society’s political and economic infrastructure. What we are likely to see, in the near term, is escalation of the current spate of war and oppression, until the point at which they become untenable.

That is: we will continue to fight everywhere in the globe for oil, until we have less oil to fuel our armies than we are bringing in from the Middle East, the Caspian, South America, etc. We will continue to undergo increased political repression in the form of surveillance, law enforcement, and curtailing of dissent, until there is no more oil left to power the police cars, the check points, the GPS systems, the computers, etc. And the American economy will continue to crumble, forcing more and more people into poverty, debt, and unemployment. It will look like a recession, then like a depression, before it looks like collapse.

The pace of the collapse will probably be gradual overall, with a few puntucating events. We have already seen one such punctuation (Hurricane Katrina). However quickly or slowly events progress, there will come a point at which the knowledge that the current system for the provision of basic resources—food, water, shelter, heat—is defunct. There will be a point at which most grocery stores are empty. At which most of the lights and heaters do not turn on and most of the water faucets stop running. At this point the collapse will begin in earnest, as the majority of America’s 300 million people realize that they are going to have to find a different way to live.

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[bemildred]

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