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The Archdruid Report: Not The End Of The World: May 1, 9:47am 2 reviews evolution, society, change, worldviews
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-end-of-world.html; Not The End Of The World in The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
It's not the end of the world, or even the end of industrial civilization, but if history is anything to go by, we could be in for a couple of very rough decades. A crisis phase in the downward arc of catabolic collapse is not a pleasant thing to live through, and we can expect it to have social, economic, political, and (unless we're extraordinarily lucky) military dimensions that will transform most people\u2019s lives for the worse, temporarily or forever. That need not stop us from facing the emerging crisis with as much grace and humanity as we can muster, while doing our part to lay the foundations for the ecotechnic societies of the future - unless, that is, we allow premature proclamations of triumph or catastrophe to distract us from the work that must be done. Not The End Of The World. A most enlightened vision of societal change. This post is perhaps John Michael Greer's most influential one. He is undoubtedly right that "Human societies are complex homeostatic systems that respond to changes in their environments by trying to maintain their equilibrium." Failing to understand this organic way of societies leads to simplistic interpretations of present events that contracts reality into its dualistic visions of doom and gloom versus technophilia. Those are unhelpful perception crutches at best and devastating at worst. We are not close to the end of the world as the title of Greer's post states but we are at a societal stage of evolution that is going to displace modernity for something new often referred to as postmodernity. But the word has been twisted to say so many things that its meaning has often been lost on its users. Postmodernity is the stage of societal evolution that follows modernity and the transition is, for sure, going to be traumatic for most. Each stage of societal evolution has its own economic, social, cultural and other characteristics but what differentiates each of them is the worldview (understanding of reality) that is shared by the citizens within their societies. We observe 4 stages of evolution: - animism: citizens of tribes share an animistic worldview. - religion: citizens of kingdoms and empires share one or another form of religious belief and or one or another philosophic derivation of animism. - modernity: citizens of nation-states share a common vision of rationality (derived from the logic of capital) and believe that science has technological answers to everything. - postmodernity: citizens of the world will share a common vision of reality wherein humans are seen as interconnected minuscule particles of a whole that is unattainable. The transition between modernity and postmodernity is a process of change that will take many decades to stabilize and, for sure, there will be ups and downs along the road. Before to tackle the causes of climate change we'll suffer its consequences. Before to tackle peak oil and other resources we'll be confronted with shortages in energy and materials that will oblige us to revise our ways of living. Before to tackle poverty we'll be confronted with individual and societal violence that will oblige us to care for the weakest ones among us. Our future is in ecotechnic societies interconnected through solidarity.

Begley: Blame the Bugs | Newsweek Voices - Sharon Begley | Newsweek.com: Apr 10, 6:58pm 1 review science, society, life
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130623; You Can Blame the Bugs in Newsweek by Sharon Begley
For years scientists have scratched their heads over why collectivism declines with distance from the equator, and why living in colder regions should promote individualism (you'd think polar people would want to huddle together more). The answer seems to be that equatorial regions breed more pathogens. How might pathogen-fighting customs and attitudes arise, or fail to? Maybe people make conscious efforts to act in ways that inhibit the spread of pathogens, such as by shunning strangers and demanding conformity. Or maybe there are genes for behaviors that, at the level of a whole society, manifest themselves as collectivism or individualism, and genes for individualism get wiped out in disease-plagued regions. But when East Asians move to the West or Westerners go East, says Nisbett, they begin to see, think and behave like people in their adopted society. That would be hard to do if they were in the grip of collectivist or individualistic genes. You Can Blame the Bugs "The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently - and Why" Individual atoms left to themselves are nothingness. Their being is given by their being part of an assembling. In H2O each atom has a specific place in the assembling. When H, for example, is extracted from H2O it does need to be contained by an outside force to remain H. Without this containment the H atom would readily assemble with other atoms present in its near environment. The same goes for individual humans. They readily assemble with other individual human atoms present in their environment. Left to themselves they rapidly die. What all this means is that atoms (individual) and the assembling they are a part of (collective) are inseparable. Indeed the combination of the individual and collective form results in the existence of a constitutive unity. When H combines with O into H2O we have the atomic and collective forms combining in their constitutive unity that we know as water. The same goes for human atoms and their societal collective forms that are giving the constitutive unity that we have the habit to call humanity. The atomic and collective forms are inseparable they are the polarities of any unity. The one depends on the other and vice-versa. But the weight of each polarity within any given unity is variable. That means that sometimes one of the polarities is stronger than the other and so it exerts a stronger influence on the being of the unity. The relative weight of the polarities results from a complex web of interacting factors: - factors that are internal to the constitutive unity. - factors that are external to the constitutive unity, for example, bugs are forming individual demands for more or less collective relations. "... people make conscious efforts to act in ways that inhibit the spread of pathogens, such as by shunning strangers and demanding conformity."

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Society depends on more for less: Feb 5, 11:19am 1 review economics, environment, society
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/7218002.stm; Society depends on more for less in BBC News Online by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is non-executive chairman of Anglo American, and is a member of the UN Global Compact and chairman of the Global Compact Foundation
So what of the market? It is an unsurpassed mechanism for allocating resources to deliver better things. Through competition, technologies are optimised or discarded, opening the field for creativity and choice. I believe in the power and value of markets. But like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society. Society depends on more for less "Consumer opinion and choice is important, but it will not do the trick on its own" It seems a recalibration of the relation between market and State is well underway. But what Mark Moody-Stuart envisions is more or less a continuation of our present unsustainable way of life through a reduction in the market's footprint compensated by an increased role of the State in economics. This is a good beginning but it is still so far from the kind of solution that is needed for addressing successfully the inter-connectedness between a cascading number of crisis happening simultaneously. See my earlier comments The news is confirming on a daily basis my assessment about a cascading number of crisis happening simultaneously: Worldwide Peak Oil May Already Be Here - Now What? resource collapse Ice Melt Accelerates Around the World side-effects of modernity Fragile Dollar Hegemony: Iran's Oil Bourse could Topple the Dollar globalization of the logic of capital + resource collapse Revised version of an economic rebalancing between private and public 1. public-private investment in energy R&D targeting national energetic autonomy that would re-balancing national balance of payment and eliminate the emission of CO2 responsible for climate change. 2. public investment in, long haul and urban, public transportation complementing a decentralized system of rural local roads 3. subsidized higher education in exchange of a societal service giving the man-power to a permanent education system for the advancement of culture, the arts, and science. 4. finance for the national well-being. Finance is what powers the formation of capital and should thus be guided and regulated to serve the national well-being in order to avoid bubbles of greed

Monbiot.com & Population Bombs: Jan 29, 4:28pm 1 review society, population, globalization
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/01/29/population-bombs/; Population Bombs in Monbiot.com and published in the Guardian 29th January 2008, by George Monbiot
A steady growth rate of 3% means a doubling of economic activity every 23 years. By 2100, in other words, global consumption will increase by roughly 1600%. As the equations produced by Professor Roderick Smith of Imperial College have shown, this means that in the 21st Century we will have used 16 times as many economic resources as human beings have consumed since we came down from the trees. So economic growth this century could be 32 times as big an environmental issue as population growth. And, if governments, banks and businesses have their way, it never stops. Population Bombs It seems to me that we are confronted with four determinant factors: A. the logic of capital is considered the ultimate truth of modernity and capital holders will never stop to put it in application. B. the expansion of modernity has succeeded to impose the "truth of the logic of capital" to the entire world. C. as a consequence of the success of 1 and 2 the world population is growing. (the initial stages of industrialization are known to be accompanied by strong population growth while late modernity is accompanied by falling levels of population) D. a growing population is increasing the total demand for goods and services. Population growth can't thus be considered to be the bomb. It is what starts the movement of population growth that should be considered the bomb. (bomb means danger of disrupting the sustainability of those increased levels of human population). Some fools are talking about "voluntarily reducing present levels of population" in order to assure the sustainability of the population that would survive in the West. Yes those thinking about population reduction want it for their own sake... Stabilizing Population by Reducing Fertility 22 pages PDF Confronting The 21st Century's Hidden Crisis: Reducing Human Numbers by 80% Reducing population to improve life Reducing human population The expansion of modernity to the 4 corners of the world is accompanied by a huge increase in world population but we know that societies reaching late modernity assist at falling rates of natality. In conclusion the world population will stabilize with late-modernity setting in all over the world. In the meantime humanity will face a problem of un-sustainability for something as a century (21st century).

Sustainable Futures By Ashok Agrwaal: Jan 13, 11:00am 1 review society, postmodernity, modernity
http://www.countercurrents.org/agrwaal120108.htm; Sustainable Futures via TOD, in Counter Currents by Ashok Agrwaal
In fact, the European notion of expansion, growth, etc, along a linear path was wholly misconceived. This does not negate everything that they thought and did during this period. But it is not possible to make a selection from out of the millions of ideas that emerged from their mindset. The rejection has to be wholesale. The rejection is of linearity, which continues to rule the roost as a paradigm of thought and action despite the development of ideas negating it during the 20 th century, from within the European mind itself. This linear, non-contextual reality that we are in the grips of must be replaced with a non-linear, context sensitive world view; which is what the non-western people of the world have lived with for thousands of years and, which is now getting destroyed by "development", "growth" and "progress". Sustainable Futures Non-linearity is the essence of the animist worldview that has been shared by the whole of humanity along tens of thousands of years: - Observation of the vastness of the whole of our universe (whole, one,...) - Observation of the inter-relatedness of humanity with all the other life forms within the whole - Observation of overlapping natural cycles within the whole (change) - Observation of the need to balance the human polarities (societies and individuals) The advent of agriculture destabilized the tribal arrangement with the "shaman as man of knowledge" in charge of interpreting reality for his tribesmen. Where it arose agriculture gave rise to military and political power. Force being not sufficient to assure the control over the population the new powers forced their subjects to adhere to a belief system. The sharing of a belief system is what ultimately glues the citizens in the togetherness of their nation being it taking the form of kingdoms, empires, or republics. The advent of force using belief as a societal glue received two radically different applications: - From the Middle-East to Europe animism was brutally extirpated from people's minds and replaced with dualism that gave its foundation to the edifice of the religions of the word. - Further East animism was maintained as the foundational story only being adapted to the local circumstances by various add-ons. Linear development is a strategy derived from the dualistic worldview of the religions of the word: - Reality is conceived of as being what happens between beginning and end. It starts with the creation by God and it ends with the non-worldly after-life in heaven or hell. - This straight line between the creation and the ending of the world follows an arrow of "development, growth and progress. With the advent of modernity this dualistic worldview was automatically integrated into the ideology of rationality that was derived from centuries of practicing the logic of capital by the Western European elite. This is what today gives dualism its hegemoniac operational principle. The central most important question today for humanity is whether Chinese, Indians and the other people entering modernity will succeed keeping their animistic foundations alive. It's surely noteworthy to observe that they represent some 80-85% of the world population and the logic of capital is now entering their lives. What's most frightening is that nowhere have we seen the logic of capital sparing non-dualistic foundational stories. At this critical juncture of humanity's history the answer given to the question asked by Ashok Agrwaal could very well decide of humanity's fate. "How much of our past - the collective past rather than the European one - do we wish to carry forward into future?".

The hidden holocaust -- our civilizational crisis, part 3: The end of the world …: Jan 7, 12:28pm 2 reviews society, change, modernity
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2803.shtml; The hidden holocaust -- our civilizational crisis via The Oil Drum, in Online Journal by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development
This global system is hugely destructive of human life. Devoid of the capability to recognize and enact ethical values, it is driven purely by the imperatives of profit, efficiency, growth, and monopoly. Consequently, it is not only destructive of human life; it is destructive of all life, nature, and even itself. It is now generating multiple crises across the world that over the next 20 years threaten to converge in an unprecedented and unimaginable way, unless we take drastic action now. part 1: The holocaust in history part 2: Exporting democracy part 3: The end of the world as we know it? part 4: A whole new vision of life itself An excellent presentation about modernity and its side-effects. For Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed the " origins of modern civilization can be found partly in the pivotal voyages for European colonial expansion and trade from the 15th century to the 19th centuries." Two comments impose themselves at this level: - first modernity is not a civilization it is one particular stage of societal and economic development along the evolutionary road of humanity. Modernity did not supplant the Indian and the Chinese civilizations; those civilizations are internalizing modernity. - secondly the origins of modernity do not lay in the "voyages for European colonial expansion and trade from the 15th century to the 19th centuries". Those voyages came as a consequence of the groundwork laid earlier at the origins of modernity. The groundwork laid at the origins of modernity was made possible with the convergence of two factors: 1. a population increase, in Western Europe at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries, led to higher consumer demand than what the feudal manors could produce and to secure their survival many were left with the only alternative to flee their manor and try to survive at their margins. This rapidly evolved into communities that grew in the early European cities. Those communities survived through agriculture and trade. 2. the crusades undertaken at the initiative of Pope Urban II, who enrolled the Squires and Lords under the guise of sin forgiving certificates (indulgences), were the occasion for the European aristocracy to discover the ingeniousness of Arab crafts, the richness generated by their commercial endeavors, and the high level of knowledge bestowed on their people in their universities. This encounter, of primitive Europeans with far more advanced Arabs, resulted in the plunder by the Europeans of the accumulated Arab richness (their gold, silver and crafts as well as their imported silks and other from the far East). Over the next decades those plundered goods find their way to the European regional market fairs that resulted from what is described in point 1. Long distance trade could not possibly have been made possible without the borrowing of financial and exchange techniques from the Arabs, most important among them the bill of exchange and the tools to enact a double entry accountancy system. The discipline and strictness imposed by the use of those instruments of commercial exchanges upon merchants, bankers and the others involved in long distance trade gradually fostered a more rational vision of the world that was dictated to them by the logic of their invested capital. The logic of capital is the blood of modernity. It is what dictated its whole history.

Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pak…: Jan 4, 9:20am 1 review capitalism, society, worldviews
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JA04Df04.html; Rupee madness and modern maharajahs in Asia Times by Sudha Ramachandran
India was once associated with Gandhian austerity. The unmaterialistic "other-worldliness" of Indians was often seen as a trait unique to this country. With liberalization, not only do Indians have the means to lead opulent lifestyles, but also the stigma associated with "Western materialism" and excessive lifestyles during the freedom struggle and the decades of socialism have now been removed. The pursuit of wealth is not considered dirty any longer. Being rich and showing it off as did the the kings and emperors in the past is fashionable again. Rupee madness and modern maharajahs Faced as we are with the side-effects inflicted by modernity upon the principle of life on earth what should we think about this late conversion of India and China to the soul of modernity? First let us observe the obvious. The worldview of modernity, greed individualism and material possessions, imposes itself anywhere the logic of capital is being unleashed. But while Western Europe and its geographic extensions had access to cheap resources the new comers are faced with rarity and high prices. And to make matters worse the side-effects of modernity unleashed by the West and its geographic extensions reaches such levels today that the idea of the South following the Western example appears like an insanity. But can we blame 90% of the world population wanting to have access to the same sweat modernity seen enjoyed by the West in movies after movies and in their TV window on the world? Whatever one might think about the gravity of the side-effects of Western modernity upon the principle of life we will not stop 90% of the world population to try catching what is seen as modern goodies. The genie of greed and individualism has been unleashed and to recapture it in the bottle where it belongs will only happen after its necessity is imposed on humanity in the wake of a string of catastrophes. In other words the cycle of materialism has to go full circle. Only then can a new cycle emerge that will favor; the societal over the individual; the spiritual over the material.

Religion might keep anxiety at bay | Science Blog: Jan 2, 5:00pm 1 review religion, society, worldviews
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/religion-might-keep-anxiety-bay-15123.html; Religion might keep anxiety at bay in Science Blog about a study by Temple University's Joanna Maselko
According to Temple University's Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., women who had stopped being religiously active were more than three times more likely to have suffered generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported always having been active. ... The study expands on previous research in the field by analyzing the relationship between mental health - anxiety, depression and alcohol dependence or abuse - and spirituality using current and past levels, said Maselko, who conducted the research when she was at Harvard University. Religion might keep anxiety at bay I retain from this article that religious belief (I guess this is valid for the belief in whatever worldview) keeps anxiety at bay. I suspect that those ideologically driven by rationalism will cry fool. But let's quieten down for a minute. This article, and the study it refers to, do not pretend that religious belief trumps rationality. It simply evokes the idea that our existential demons could be soothened through belief thus reducing the risk of falling prey to them. Let us look at this from another angle. - Belief answers our existential questions, what I call our existential demons, it simply erases the questions from our consciousness. Not believing leaves us at the mercy of those questions. The point here is not about the validity of the answers. The point is about being satisfied by a set of answers or remaining continually in search of acceptable answers. It seems evident that having found acceptable answers should have a quietening effect while a non satisfactorily search should have the opposite effect. This also indicates that the believer in rationalism, while not receiving all the answers, can find solace in his belief that science will eventually find the answers, later on, to the questions it presently can't explain. - Belief is shared with like minded people. Those sharing the same beliefs become our friends and we trust in them. This trust acts like a glue that cements the foundation of the societal grouping of those sharing a common foundational story. This has been the case with religions, popular philosophies, nations and civilizations. Modernity has broken the common belief in past worldviews without supplying a new one thus throwing us all, by late modernity, in the cauldron of a major existential malaise that people try to circumvent by returning to past worldviews. But this can't work over the long run, for, past worldviews do not adhere to the facts of the present.

Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler : Forecast for 2008: Dec 31, 2007 11:47am 1 review society, change
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/12/forecast-fo...; So what will 2008 hold? in Energy Intelligence by Jeff Vail and in Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler
We are evolutionarily adapted to recognize and respond to surprise, short-duration crises, but we aren't evolved to be very good at even recognizing the slow, gradual ones that are visible at a distance. ... The most significant story of the year: the economy won't crash. What the hell, I'll go out on a limb--we won't even have a "recession" as officially defined. On an earnest note, there is a lot more resiliency in the American and Global economies than is often accounted for, and there are many "low hanging fruit" measures to stave off the energy and credit wolves for another year. And if those real measures are too politically difficult, there is plenty of appetite for the fiction that the economy is resilient and recovering, as well as people in power who will benefit from the appearance of normalcy through the '08 elections. So what will 2008 hold? by Jeff Vail Forecast for 2008 by Jim Kunstle I like the way Jeff Vail puts it. "We are evolutionarily adapted to recognize and respond to surprise, short-duration crises, but we aren't evolved to be very good at even recognizing the slow, gradual ones that are visible at a distance." I'm most often giving comments that reflect on change at the level of the long history. Vail's remark remembers me that only very few have their brains tuned to the slow evolutionary process of change that I'm talking about. Change happens at different speeds inside the 3 heavy trends marking late modernity: - some changes due to the rapid expansion of modernity are visible to all and are responsible for narrow nationalistic political waves: + immigration (protection of white skins from brown skins), + economic protectionism (protection of the empty service economies of the West from the factories of the South and more particularly the Chinese) - other changes due to the rapid expansion of modernity are not visible to all but those are the ones having the most disruptive potential: + currency swings can realign the economic wealth and power of nations within a very short time-span. + financial meltdowns can stall economic growth and melt earlier accumulated wealth within the boundaries of nations. Politicians and demagogues speak much about the visible category of changes but refrain from speaking about the invisible category. The invisible category will nevertheless have the biggest destabilizing impact upon people's daily lives. It is what Jim Kunstler speaks so eloquently about. - changes due to unsustainable demand for resources are already putting strains on our economies and our daily lives and are bound to disrupt them far more in the months and years to come but it seems as if we remained largely impervious to that reality. - changes due to the side-effects of modernity seem to catch-up with our collective unconsciousness and are awakening the demons of our immemorial fears.