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"We Will Evolve Through Crisis, Not Proactive Change..."

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

I very rarely read back any of the essays I write. But maybe that’s not always a good thing. Especially when they deal with larger underlying issues beneath the problems we find ourselves in, why these problems exist in the first place, and what we can and will do to deal with them. Not all of these things can and perhaps should be re-written time and again. Commentary on daily events calls for new articles, but attempts to define the more in-depth human behavior behind these events should, if they are executed well, be more timeless.

 

Not that I would want to judge my own work, I’ll leave that to others, but I can still re-read something and think: that’s something I would like to read if someone else had written it. Since a friend yesterday sent me an email that referenced the essay below, I did go through it again and thought it’s worth republishing here. It’s from New Year’s Day 2013, or almost 2.5 years old, which should be a long enough time gap that many present day readers of The Automatic Earth haven’t read it yet, and long enough for those who have to ‘enjoy’ it all over again.

 

I am not very optimistic about the fate of mankind as it is, and that has a lot to do with what I cite here, that while our problems tend to evolve in exponential ways, our attempts at solving them move in linear fashion. That is true as much for the problems we ourselves create as it is for those that – seem to – ‘simply happen’. I think it would be very beneficial for us if we were to admit to our limits when it comes to solving large scale issues, because that might change the behavior we exhibit when creating these issues.

 

In that sense, the distinction made by Dennis Meadows below between ‘universal problems’ and ‘global problems’ may be very useful. The former concerns issues we all face, but can -try to – solve at a more local level, the latter deals with those issues that need planet-wide responses – and hardly ever get solved if at all. The human capacity for denial and deceit plays a formidable role in this.

 

I know that this is not a generally accepted paradigm, but that I put down to the same denial and deceit. We like to see ourselves as mighty smart demi-gods capable of solving any problem. But that is precisely, I think, the no. 1 factor in preventing us from solving them. And I don’t see that changing: we’re simply not smart enough to acknowledge our own limitations. Therefore, as Meadows says: “we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.” Here’s from January 1 2013:

*  *  *

Ilargi: I came upon this quote a few weeks ago in an interview that Der Spiegel had with Dennis Meadows, co-author of the Limits to Growth report published by the Club of Rome 40 years ago. Yes, the report that has been much maligned and later largely rehabilitated. But that’s not my topic here, and neither is Meadows himself. It’s the quote, and it pretty much hasn’t left me alone since I read it.

Here’s the short version:

[..] … we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.

And here it is in its context:

‘Limits to Growth’ Author Dennis Meadows ‘Humanity Is Still on the Way to Destroying Itself’

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Professor Meadows, 40 years ago you published “The Limits to Growth” together with your wife and colleagues, a book that made you the intellectual father of the environmental movement. The core message of the book remains valid today: Humanity is ruthlessly exploiting global resources and is on the way to destroying itself. Do you believe that the ultimate collapse of our economic system can still be avoided?

Meadows: The problem that faces our societies is that we have developed industries and policies that were appropriate at a certain moment, but now start to reduce human welfare, like for example the oil and car industry. Their political and financial power is so great and they can prevent change. It is my expectation that they will succeed. This means that we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change.

I don’t really think that Dennis Meadows understands how true that is. I may be wrong, but I think he’s talking about a specific case here . While what he makes me ponder is that perhaps this is all we have, and always, that it’s a universal truth. That we can never solve our real big problems through proactive change. That we can only get to a next step by letting the main problems we face grow into full-blown crises, and that our only answer is to let that happen.

And then we come out on the other side, or we don’t, but it’s not because we find the answer to the problem itself, we simply adapt to what there is at the other side of the full-blown crisis we were once again unable to halt in its tracks. Adapt like rats do, and crocodiles, cockroaches, no more and no less.

This offers a nearly completely ignored insight into the way we deal with problems. We don’t change course in order to prevent ourselves from hitting boundaries. We hit the wall face first, and only then do we pick up the pieces and take it from there.

Jacques Cousteau was once quite blunt about it:

The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers: a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species… Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.

Without getting into specific predictions the way Cousteau did: If that is as true as I suspect it is, the one thing it means is that we fool ourselves a whole lot. The entire picture we have created about ourselves, consciously, sub-consciously, un-consciously, you name it, is abjectly false. At least the one I think we have. Which is that we see ourselves as capable of engineering proactive changes in order to prevent crises from blowing up.

That erroneous self-image leads us to one thing only: the phantom prospect of a techno-fix becomes an excuse for not acting. In that regard, it may be good to remember that one of the basic tenets of the Limits to Growth report was that variables like world population, industrialization and resource depletion grow exponentially, while the (techno) answer to them grows only linearly.

First, I should perhaps define what sorts of problems I’m talking about. Sure, people build dams and dikes to keep water from flooding their lands. And we did almost eradicate smallpox. But there will always be another flood coming, or a storm, and there will always be another disease popping up (viruses and bacteria adapt faster than we do).

In a broader sense, we have gotten rid of some diseases, but gotten some new ones in return. And yes, average life expectancy has gone up, but it’s dependent entirely on the affordability and availability of lots of drugs, which in turn depend on oil being available.

And if I can be not PC for a moment, this all leads to another double problem. 1) A gigantic population explosion with a lot of members that 2) are, if not weaklings, certainly on average much weaker physically than their ancestors. Which is perhaps sort of fine as long as those drugs are there, but not when they’re not.

It’s quite simple, isn’t it? Increasing wealth makes us destroy ancient multi-generational family structures (re: the nuclear family, re: old-age homes), societal community structures (who knows their neighbors, and engages in meaningful activity with them?), and the very planet that has provided the means for increasing our wealth (and our population!).

And in our drive towards what we think are more riches, we are incapable of seeing these consequences. Let alone doing something about them. We have become so dependent, as modern western men and women, on the blessings of our energy surplus and technology that 9 out of 10 of us wouldn’t survive if we had to do without them.

Nice efforts, in other words, but no radical solutions. And yes, we did fly to the moon, too, but not flying to the moon wasn’t a problem to start with.

Maybe the universal truth I suspect there is in Meadows’ quote applies “specifically” to a “specific” kind of problem: The ones we create ourselves.

We can’t reasonably expect to control nature, and we shouldn’t feel stupid if we can’t (not exactly a general view to begin with, I know). And while one approach to storms and epidemics is undoubtedly better than another, both will come to back to haunt us no matter what we do. So as far as natural threats go, it’s a given that when the big one hits we can only evolve through crisis. We can mitigate. At best.

However: we can create problems ourselves too. And not just that. We can create problems that we can’t solve. Where the problem evolves at an exponential rate, and our understanding of it only grows linearly. That’s what that quote is about for me, and that’s what I think is sorely missing from our picture of ourselves.

In order to solve problems we ourselves create, we need to understand these problems. And since we are the ones who create them, we need to first understand ourselves to understand our problems.

Moreover, we will never be able to either understand or solve our crises if we don’t acknowledge how we – tend to – deal with them. That is, we don’t avoid or circumvent them, we walk right into them and, if we’re lucky, come out at the other end.

Point in case: we’re not solving any of our current problems, and what’s more: as societies, we’re not even seriously trying, we’re merely paying lip service. To a large extent this is because our interests are too different. To a lesser extent (or is it?) this is because we – inadvertently – allow the more psychopathic among us to play an outsize role in our societies.

Of course there are lots of people who do great things individually or in small groups, for themselves and their immediate surroundings, but far too many of us draw the conclusion from this that such great things can be extended to any larger scale we can think of. And that is a problem in itself: it’s hard for us to realize that many things don’t scale up well. A case in point, though hardly anyone seems to realize it, is that solving problems itself doesn’t scale up well.

Now, it is hard enough for individuals to know themselves, but it’s something altogether different, more complex and far more challenging for the individuals in a society, to sufficiently know that society in order to correctly identify its problems, find solutions, and successfully implement them. In general, the larger the scale of the group, the society, the harder this is.

Meadows makes a perhaps somewhat confusing distinction between universal and global problems, but it does work:

You see, there are two kinds of big problems. One I call universal problems, the other I call global problems. They both affect everybody. The difference is: Universal problems can be solved by small groups of people because they don’t have to wait for others. You can clean up the air in Hanover without having to wait for Beijing or Mexico City to do the same.

Global problems, however, cannot be solved in a single place. There’s no way Hanover can solve climate change or stop the spread of nuclear weapons. For that to happen, people in China, the US and Russia must also do something. But on the global problems, we will make no progress.

So how do we deal with problems that are global? It’s deceptively simple: We don’t.

All we need to do is look at the three big problems – if not already outright crises – we have right now. And see how are we doing. I’ll leave aside No More War and No More Hunger for now, though they could serve as good examples of why we fail.

There is a more or less general recognition that we face three global problems/crises. Finance, energy and climate change. Climate change should really be seen as part of the larger overall pollution problem. As such, it is closely linked to the energy problem in that both problems are direct consequences of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you use energy, you produce waste; use more energy and you produce more waste. And there is a point where you can use too much, and not be able to survive in the waste you yourself have produced.

Erwin Schrödinger described it this way, as quoted by Herman Daly:

Erwin Schrodinger [..] has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment — that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatim as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products.

The energy crisis flows seamlessly into the climate/pollution crisis. If properly defined, that is. But it hardly ever is. Our answer to our energy problems is to first of all find more and after that maybe mitigate the worst by finding a source that’s less polluting.

So we change a lightbulb and get a hybrid car. That’s perhaps an answer to the universal problem, and only perhaps, but it in no way answers the global one. With a growing population and a growing average per capita consumption, both energy demand and pollution keep rising inexorably. And the best we can do is pay lip service. Sure, we sign up for less CO2 and less waste of energy, but we draw the line at losing global competitiveness.

The bottom line is that we may have good intentions, but we utterly fail when it comes to solutions. And if we fail with regards to energy, we fail when it comes to the climate and our broader living environment, also known as the earth.

We can only solve our climate/pollution problem if we use a whole lot less energy resources. Not just individually, but as a world population. Since that population is growing, those of us that use most energy will need to shrink our consumption more every passing day. And every day we don’t do that leads to more poisoned rivers, empty seas and oceans, barren and infertile soil. But we refuse to even properly define the problem, let alone – even try to – solve it.

Anyway, so our energy problem needs to be much better defined than it presently is. It’s not that we’re running out, but that we use too much of it and kill the medium we live in, and thereby ourselves, in the process. But how much are we willing to give up? And even if we are, won’t someone else simply use up anyway what we decided not to? Global problems blow real time.

The more we look at this, the more we find we look just like the reindeer on Matthew Island, the bacteria in the petri dish, and the yeast in the wine vat. We burn through all surplus energy as fast as we can find ways to burn it. The main difference, the one that makes us tragic, is that we can see ourselves do it, not that we can stop ourselves from doing it.

Nope, we’ll burn through it all if we can (but we can’t ’cause we’ll suffocate in our own waste first). And if we’re lucky (though that’s a point of contention) we’ll be left alive to be picking up the pieces when we’re done.

Our third big global problem is finance slash money slash economy. It not only has the shortest timeframe, it also invokes the highest level of denial and delusion, and the combination may not be entirely coincidental. The only thing our “leaders” do is try and keep the baby going at our expense, and we let them. We’ve created a zombie and all we’re trying to do is keep it walking so everyone including ourselves will believe it’s still alive. That way the zombie can eat us from within.

We’re like a deer in a pair of headlights, standing still as can be and putting our faith in whoever it is we put in the driver’s seat. And too, what is it, stubborn, thick headed?, to consider the option that maybe the driver likes deer meat.

Our debt levels, in the US, Europe and Japan, just about all of them and from whatever angle you look, are higher than they’ve been at any point in human history, and all we’ve done now for five years plus running is trust a band of bankers and shady officials to fix it all for us, just because we’re scared stiff and we think we’re too stupid to know what’s going on anyway. You know, they should know because they have the degrees and/or the money to show for it. That those can also be used for something 180 degrees removed from the greater good doesn’t seem to register.

We are incapable of solving our home made problems and crises for a whole series of reasons. We’re not just bad at it, we can’t do it at all. We’re incapable of solving the big problems, the global ones.

We evolve the way Stephen Jay Gould described evolution: through punctuated equilibrium. That is, we pass through bottlenecks, forced upon us by the circumstances of nature, only in the case of the present global issues we are nature itself. And there’s nothing we can do about it. If we don’t manage to understand this dynamic, and very soon, those bottlenecks will become awfully narrow passages, with room for ever fewer of us to pass through.

As individuals we need to drastically reduce our dependence on the runaway big systems, banking, the grid, transport etc., that we ourselves built like so many sorcerers apprentices, because as societies we can’t fix the runaway problems with those systems, and they are certain to drag us down with them if we let them.

 

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Tue, 05/05/2015 - 18:55 | 6063637 boogerbently
boogerbently's picture

Throw money at it.

Race discrimination. School failures. Financial collapse. Ecology......problems????

Throw money at it.

More cowbell.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:05 | 6063670 CH1
CH1's picture

Some of us aren't "fooling ourselves a lot," and it's spreading.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:11 | 6063687 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

That's "Throw somebody else's money at it".

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 21:08 | 6064102 ebworthen
ebworthen's picture

Nah...it needs to be torn down...and Medusa's head cut off.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:21 | 6063710 NoDebt
NoDebt's picture

The problem with being one of the few who sees the next wall we're about to slam into is that there aren't enough of us.  When society hits that next wall, it takes everyone with it to a greater or lesser extent.  It loses critical mass and even basic things fail.

Preppers would be an example.  Let's say they're right (and they probably are).  They prepare, they plan, they stock up, they train and when the time comes, they execute on their plan and let's say they survive.  That's good, but there's no denying the part of their life they spend living off their preparations is still going to suck a whole lot more than the part of their life they spent preparing for it.  Life sucks when you can't just run down the corner grocery store and pick up a few extra provisions.  Or head to gas station to fill up on diesel.  Or run to the local ER to have your inflamed appendix taken out.

Avoiding the wall might be difficult (perhaps impossible), but I'd settle for not aiming directly at it and mashing the gas pedal, such as we are right now.  Unfortunately, this is what prevents it:

"this is because we – inadvertently – allow the more psychopathic among us to play an outsize role in our societies."

I would argue you could take out 'inadvertently', by the way.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:26 | 6063737 Oldwood
Oldwood's picture

But you are not considering those who would truly enjoy shooting and blowing shit up!

Don't be shy...

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 22:25 | 6064327 NoDebt
NoDebt's picture

Anarchy is only fun in the beginning.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 21:12 | 6064104 kchrisc
kchrisc's picture

As per your wonderful comment:

1) Preparing is not about surviving so much as giving one more options than they might have had otherwise. Like having a gun or two , or three. When TEOTWAWKI comes, that person with a gun(s) will have many more options than those not possessing a gun(s). Early on that same person may be targeted almost immediately by tyranny or others, and be wiped out. However, they will have had more options and better chances to survive than someone that did not have a gun(s). Ditto all other preparations.

2) "The problem with being one of the few who sees the next wall we're about to slam into is that there aren't enough of us." There are enough of us, just not a lot of us if one considers that our primary focus should be eduction. We need to educate the sheeple as to what that wall was, and who was responsible for it. We need to keep them from turning to their propaganda laced minds and targeting fags, "illegals," abortion doctors, Muslims, etc. Not that they have to like those people, but those people are not the ones responsible for the plundered country that we are now left with.

The sheeple should know their enemy, and it is our responsibility to educate them as to who is their enemy is, and to inflame them with the evidence of their enemy's crimes.

Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.

 

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered." -- Maybe Jefferson

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:32 | 6064574 markettime
markettime's picture

Damn, we have another crises! Quickly everyone do nothing! 

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 20:00 | 6063868 drendebe10
drendebe10's picture

"Government isn't the solution our problem.  Government is the problem."  Ronald Reagan, President of the U.S. who cleaned up the chaos and mess left by the second worst President.

Gubmint:  ctrl-alt-del

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 21:08 | 6064101 2handband
2handband's picture

Oh... you mean the guy that elevated military spending into the stupid and ridiculous. The guy who legalized derivatives. The guy who launched the wholesale outsourcing of blue-collar jobs you can live on. Yeah, Reagan was a real fuckin hero

 

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 18:56 | 6063642 TeamDepends
TeamDepends's picture

I very rarely read back any of the essays I write. But when I do, I am completely hammered on Dos Equis. Stay thirsty my friends.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:05 | 6063648 Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance's picture

For the most part we only change because we must, and then under the worst possible circumstances. In my opinion this is a deeply conditioned behavior, though most will claim it is simply human nature. After thousands of years of conditioning what exactly is 'human nature' any more.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:05 | 6063674 RafterManFMJ
RafterManFMJ's picture

On one hand, fire mountain is smoking and bubbling over the village; on the other hand, I'm still getting laid and the fish are still biting.

There's ways tomorrow to evacuate - amirite?

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:08 | 6063681 Skateboarder
Skateboarder's picture

Human nature is as nonexistent as natural law.

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 18:31 | 6067180 Radical Marijuana
Radical Marijuana's picture

The only connections between natural laws and human laws are the abilities to back up lies with violence. Of course, that is severely discounted and disregarded by those who were the most socially successful by doing that!

"The human capacity for denial and deceit plays a formidable role in this."

While true, that is a gross understatement. In my view, it is almost universal for most people to attempt to deliberately divorce the ways that FRAUDS ARE ENFORCED.  Without that, then those frauds, by themselves, would be merely absurdities that one could laugh at. However, when those frauds are systematically enforced, for prolonged periods of time, for generation after generation, the cumulative results are the kinds of Bizarro Mirror World or Wonderland Matrix that we are now living inside of, where everything appears to be backward and absurd, because almost everything is based on the history of being able to back up legalized lies with legalized violence.

In my view, there have been proven to be natural laws which human beings can relatively understand by the existence of technologies which work on the basis of having relatively understood those natural laws. However, in my view, the vast majority of people have been so totally brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, because that has been built into the dominant natural languages and philosophy of science, that the vast majority of people automatically think and communicate through almost totally inverted and perverted perspectives. Indeed, I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the degree to which social pyramid systems are based on their history of backing up lies with violence, which have resulted in almost everyone thinking in ways which are as backward and absurd as they could possibly be.

The most basic natural laws that human beings have approached understanding are all centered upon the conservation of energy. (Of course, that understanding is not completed, and never could be.) However, along the way to that better understanding of natural laws, (in which the principle of the conservation of energy was crucial to enable anything to become intelligible at all, and which has been over and over again verified by experiments, and well as, from time to time, corrected by interpretation of experimental results), the philosophy of science, as a social enterprise, over and over again compromised with the biggest bullies' bullshit world view.

The single most significant way that compromise happened was that an arbitrary minus sign was inserted into the entropy equations of thermodynamics and information theory. That resulted in everything understood through basic energy laws being understood in totally backward ways. That most of all manifests when it comes to the relationships better human laws and natural laws:

Governments are necessarily the biggest organized gangs of criminals, which are controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, which currently happen to be the banksters.

The extremely paradoxes and ironies are that all of the attributes of "God," and various moralities promoted by old-fashioned religions and ideologies, can be perceived as having been based on human experiences which gave insight into the principle of the conservation of energy. However, the ways that those were developed ended up being almost perfectly and totally inverted and perverted, which took the form that what was inherently negative ended up being presented as positive.

Paradigm shifts do not initially change what exists, but only the ways that we perceive what exists, which may then later change the ways that we behave, which may relatively change what exists. Human realities were always necessarily systems of organized lies operating robberies, as soon as we perceived human beings as being separated from their environment. As soon as we relatively subtract human beings as parts which are separated from the whole environment, then they live as robbers in that environment, or as entropic pumps of energy flows. The biggest bullies' bullshit social stories are based upon promoting relative subtractions as absolute subtractions.

What the biggest bullies' bullshit does is subtract the subtraction. In terms of the concept of entropy, what that means is that, according to the mathematical physics itself, all forms of power and information have relative negative values. However, by inserting an arbitrary minus sign into the entropy equations, that enabled people to talk about power and information as if those had relative positive values.

In terms of human relationships, that meant that private property, which is based on backing up claims with coercions, is presented as being relatively positive, although there is no such thing as private property without some systems of public violence to back that up. The most abstract form of that manifests as money being measurement backed by murder. All of that tracks back to human beings and civilizations operating as entropic pumps of energy flows, which are deliberately misrepresented in the maximum possible backward ways, because the general understanding of concept of entropy was inverted, in order that that would remain consistent with the biggest bullies' bullshit world view.

It is quite the hyper-complicated set of entangled paradoxes which have been generated by the most socially successful warfare being based on backing up deceits with destruction, while the most social successful finance was based on enforcing frauds. Those paradoxes never violated the natural laws, although they may superficially appear to have done so. Those were that the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals have been able to dominate the social stories with respect to almost everything about they and everyone else does.

There is now almost nothing but core groups of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups. Both stay within the same bullshit frame of reference. Neither is remotely close to their social stories being able to become more scientific. The magnitude of the series of intellectual revolutions that they would have to go through in order to correct their errors has been astronomically amplified by progress in physical science.

Physical science has profoundly changed its paradigms regarding how it understands the concepts of time and space. However, the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, which includes the world views of the controlled opposition groups, promoting the publicly significant old-fashioned religions and ideologies, continue to cruise on autopilot, as they presume that their common sense understanding of time and space is correct, which then relates to that they presume that their understanding of entropy is correct.

Therefore, we are rushing faster and faster towards the contradictions manifesting as globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. DESPITE the progress in physical science, that has enabled things like electronics and atomic energy to actually be developed, political science has made almost no progress, because political science is still almost totally dominated by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, which as backwards as it can possibly be, and therefore, generates more and more absurdities. Of course, the controlled opposition groups that stay within the same frame of reference also promote bullshit "solutions" which are as utterly backward and absurd as those could possibly be.

The flip side of saying:

"human nature is as nonexistent as natural law,"

is that

"human nature is as existent as natural law ..."

 The great paradoxes at the present time are that human beings and civilizations DO live as entropic pumps of energy flows, in which the principle of the conservation of energy is central to everything else, HOWEVER, those human beings have deliberately misunderstood the concept of entropy in the most backward way possible, which then results in them misunderstanding everything else in the most backward ways possible, all of which drives runaway absurdities.

The biggest bullies' bullshit world view is based upon subtracting the subtractions, or negating the negations, due to everything that human beings "know" being based upon relatively SUBTRACTING parts from the Whole. After one subtracts some living being from its Whole Environment, then the conservation of energy necessarily manifests as that living being having to take energy from its environment in order to continue living. The basic English word for that kind of taking is ROBBERY.

Thus, the fundamental ways that human beings necessarily live is that they can grow brains that can build models of their world, with models of themselves within their models of their world. HOWEVER, the biggest bullies' bullshit have done as much as it could to suppress that elementary philosophy and spirituality. Therefore, the genuine ways forward require a creative synthesis of ancient mysticism with post-modernizing science. There are NO fundamental dichotomies, and so, all of the fundamental dichotomies which are promoted by the biggest bullies' bullshit world view have an ulterior agenda, which is based upon the ruling classes waging war against the consciousness of those that they rule over.

Backing up lies with violence is deliberately designed to keep people ignorant and afraid, so that they can be controlled and exploited. However, the problems are much, much deeper than that, since the basic human ability to tell stories is necessarily based upon subtractions of parts from the whole, which parts are then given names, and assigned properties, and then assembled into narratives. Those basic facts about human nature necessarily result in human realities always being systems of organized lies operating robberies. Human civilizations have been the developments of doing that, at close to an exponential rate, for thousands of years. Indeed, the basic thrust of what has happened is that natural selection became internalized as human intelligence, which intelligence then developed cultural systems of artificial selection, in which context the greatest selection pressures were from other human beings.

Therefore, the history of civilization was the history of warfare, which was necessarily developed as the principles and methods of organized crime, on larger and larger scale. Militarism became the ideology of the murder systems, which were selected to become most socially successful by being the most deceitful and treacherous. Upon that basis was built the currently established political economy, based upon enforced frauds, through which integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, operated.

The great paradoxes that spiral around with that deeper analysis of human beings and civilizations operating consistently with general energy systems, and the principle of the conservation of energy, are that those became the triumphs of the applications of the principles and methods of organized crime, which were based upon their death controls backing up their debt controls. Furthermore, what is consistent with that more genuinely scientific understanding of human realities is that those are entropic pumps of energy flows, which necessarily operate according to the principles and methods of organized crime, which includes that those best at doing that are also best at lying about that.

That "We Will Evolve Through Crisis, Not Proactive Change" is consistent with the ways that natural selection pressures have ALWAYS driven the development of artificial selection systems. While it is theoretically possible that we could develop better artificial selection systems, based upon greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness, that would actually have to be focused through the central issues which are the human death control systems. The artificial selection systems are ONLY able to channel the natural selection systems. The artificial selection systems can NOT stop the natural selection systems. The central features of natural selection processes are that, after life exists, there are chronic political problems which come as a package deal with that life, and thus, there are death controls which direct the evolutionary ecologies of those life forms. The same necessarily applies to human beings. Therefore, human civilizations have been shaped by the history of the human murder systems, as warfare, with its ideology of militarism, which became extremely paradoxical due to military successfulness being based on being deceitful and treacherous. Then, those kinds of social successes made the current political economy become based upon enforcing frauds. There are no genuine solutions to the chronic human political problems other than to develop better death control systems. Ideally, those should be based upon radical different ways to perceive those death controls, which were aspects of an overall series of profound paradigm shifts, whereby those intellectual scientific revolutions change political science, which then applies to changing the combined money/murder systems ...

Regarding the article above, I agreed with almost all of its analysis of the problems, but not with its final conclusions. The already existing debt slavery systems, that are generating numbers which become debt insanities, will provoke death insanities. Therefore, coping with those death insanities will be our primary problem, especially since the only "solutions" that the ruling classes have actually been preparing for are to start more genocidal wars, and impose democidal martial law, attempting to keep the established social pyramid systems going, with them still being the pyramidion people, operating through their systems of backing up lies with violence.

To whatever degree the existing systems of governments collapse into chaos, the first priorities will then become attempting to rebuild some new systems of governments upon those ruins. The basic issues throughout both the development of natural selection and artificial selection systems have been the death control systems, and that must necessarily stay the way thing are, as long as life exists, since life comes as a package deal with permanent political problems which are inherent to the nature of life, which can never have any "final solutions," as long as any life survives.

Only that which actually exists can actually evolve, and the only things that actually exist are the dynamic equilibria of different systems of organized lies operating robberies. It is theoretically possible that human artificial selection systems could develop that were more genuinely scientific about themselves. However, at the present time, the established systems are based on their history of having been able to become socially successful through deceits and frauds. Those paradoxes are extremely intense, and automatically getting worse, faster ... The progress in physical science, developing better understanding of natural laws, has NOT been allowed to happen in the area of social science, because that would require addressing the issues that the oldest and best developed forms of social science and engineering was warfare, and economics was actually a subset of warfare.

The genuine resolutions to our problems will necessarily take better death control systems, (IF "we" survive enough so that "we" still exist, rather than go extinct.) Paradoxically, what we should be doing is embracing militarism, as the supreme ideology, which first and foremost must go through the series of intellectual scientific revolutions, so that we develop a better political science, which can operate better militarism, which in turn operates better murder systems.

The development of militarism, of course, made the development of weapons a priority. Therefore, advances in physical science were primarily applied to become better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence. The problems we now face are the paradoxical ones of final failure from too much success at developing globalized systems of electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. Within that context, human nature is still consistent with natural laws. However, the intense paradoxes due to human history having primarily been the history of backing up deceits with destruction makes political progress with respect to those situations extremely problematic.

That is especially problematic due to the ways that the core organized crime groups are surrounded by nothing which is publicly significant than controlled opposition groups. Therefore, the existing death control systems are almost totally based the biggest bullies' bullshit about those, while their controlled opposition promotes the same bullshit "solutions" based upon false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, which necessarily are backwards, and actually make the opposite happen in the real world.

The overall predicament that we are within is that the existing death control systems are being operated as deceitfully as possible, while the publicly significant opposition tends to promote the views that there should be no death control systems, or at least none that human beings are aware of operating. In theory, we should develop genuinely more scientific death control systems, however, given that the most socially successful systems in the past were those which were most deceitful, and they surrounded themselves with controlled opposition groups that stayed with the same deceitful frame of reference, we have extremely paradoxical political problems.

Developing better artificial selection systems appears like it must continue to be primarily driven by natural selection pressures that go beyond human control, because almost everything under human control is now controlled by systems based upon being able to enforce frauds. How extremely paradoxical those political problems are is something I have tried to outline above. However, I continue to expect the vast majority of people to continue to deliberately ignore all that, since the established systems are based on organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups, both of which were socially successful in the past by being operated by the best available professional liars and hypocrites.

Ideally, the development of weapons of mass destruction should drive people to develop better systems of artificial selection, in order to operate better death control systems, rather than continue to allow circumstances to deteriorate towards death insanities resulting from the use of those kinds of weapons of mass destruction. However, ideally, that would require enough people understanding the ways that the laws of nature enabled those kinds of weapons of mass destruction to become possible to build and to work. Therefore, ideally, the human species is being forced to continue through with driving its own evolution. However, all of the established systems, as well as their controlled opposition, resist that, because they do not like the more radical truths about themselves to be recognized and addressed.

Ideally, we should become more aware that social pyramid systems were actually social toroidal vortex systems. It is theoretically possible to develop social systems which are more genuinely scientific, however, those would have to go through the paradoxical ways that we now are living inside of "scientific dictatorship," which as unscientific  about itself as it can possible be, while another oxymoron about "military intelligence." The paradoxical problems that plague the "military intelligence" that serves the "scientific dictatorship," are their history of social successfulness being based on backing up deceits with destruction, and enforcing frauds.

Given those problems, we continue to be stuck in the same ruts, going around in those vicious spirals, as those ruts get deeper and deeper. Therefore, as the article above probably correctly predicted, we will change not by getting up out of those ruts, but rather change by wearing the bottom of those ruts out, and so, drop down to worse default positions, which will be collapses into crazy chaos, with severe social storms blowing through, manifesting as a series of psychotic breakdowns.

But nevertheless, it continues to be the case that nothing is theoretically more important to a technological civilization than the philosophy of science, and therefore, as long as enough of a technological civilization continues to exist, then the genuinely better resolutions of its chronic political problems ought to be based on series of intellectual scientific revolutions, which are applied to political science in general, and the death control systems in particular.

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 20:14 | 6067531 Element
Element's picture

And thus the illusion spake.

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 23:27 | 6067791 Radical Marijuana
Radical Marijuana's picture

Yes, indeed, its all

dust in the wind.

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 07:42 | 6064695 Element
Element's picture

The simple fact is Cog that all attempts to remove conditioning is replaced, instantly, and in that very act, with a new conditioning. There is no such thing as an unconditioning of the thinking mind, it's just another illusion. If it was really an unconditioned mind, it would not be able to even think at all, because it's necessary to learn a conditioning to begin to think and to verbalize thoughts. Can you forget your vocabulary via choice? Words are also concepts. So no, you can not remove your conditioning, all that happens is you select the words and the ideas it uses, and that self-selection, by its very nature, is conditioning. All that people are concerned about is the ideas regarding which conditioning they prefer to exhibit, instead.

But what they want, they firstly can not get via a choice, and nor do they even know what it is they want, for if they knew what it was they were after already, then it would necessarily already be part of their conditioning, and thus not something new at all.

Now, if you go over that and decide that's consistent with being descriptively and logically right and valid, I wish to warn you, to never take anything I say, now, or ever, 'seriously'. Because I assure you that I don't. I never have, and I simply can't. It's impossible to take an imagination-machine seriously, and that's all the 'conditioned' mind is. What does it matter what it says? Or is said to it? Or what level of acceptability of a relative 'morality' it asserts, in text, with words, to another illusion?

I don't mean a damned thing I say, and I mean that!

 

[Btw, I've been writing something to contribute to twoicefloes, gestating. I can write it, no problem there, have the content down, maybe 40k words, but the structuring is fighting back. So will get in touch at some point if its viable to submit.]

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:00 | 6063652 A Lunatic
A Lunatic's picture

Somebody should definitely do something.......

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 02:43 | 6064703 dark_matter
dark_matter's picture

Greatest comment of all time

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 18:14 | 6067267 Urban Redneck
Urban Redneck's picture

Why?  We already know what they're going to do before they do it.

or

Why doesn't everyone read the book?

The Limits to Growth (free old edition linked, but there's always the Amazon/Amex combo) was a shitty read with some defects and biases, but it is a good introduction to SD modeling and its power (for good or evil).  When a bunch of well meaning kumbayah singing geeks get together it should be a joke, but when the All-American jock steals their football and runs with it... HEGEMON WINS! and THE NWO IS SAVED!

 

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:06 | 6063675 Cityzerosix
Cityzerosix's picture

7 Billion; approaching the highest end of the exponential graph. But there is no guilt or possibility of understanding yourself as just quantity.It is very important, however, that an interperatation of oneself in relationship to the direct sustaining biological products of the planet is re-established.Before we outrun the Planet something desires to be learnt.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 21:27 | 6064157 CPL
CPL's picture

Right now in terms of the Kübler-Ross model they are in denial and heading into anger.  Then there will be bargaining that will claim those that can't let go of their baggage and won't help anyone else let go of theirs.  The depression will take more of them as they drink themselves to death or OD on pills or do dumb things to themselves.  Only a handful ever drop the crap to work it out to make it to acceptance without regrets and a peace of mind.

...and the only thing to be studied at this point is the Kübler-Ross model for 7 billion people because there are no chosen.  Just 7 billion individual studies in psychology to figure out the best of breed.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 21:51 | 6064237 Cityzerosix
Cityzerosix's picture

The Planet hurls through Space and Time.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 22:27 | 6064336 CPL
CPL's picture

And even the sun is just a spec of bright dust in a vast blackness of an all engulfing void that would treat it as material to serve towards the entropy that consumes all things. 

The people running around...meh...most of them are barely cognizant of where they actually are at this point and would rather stick to wishful thinking instead of accepting their situation and smarten up.  Most of them are far too preoccupied with their own petty self importance and what they can get out of it to worry about.  Let them baffle themselves with bullshit.  The fact is the sole purpose of some is to serve as the example others of what never to do.  My only suggestion is to take notes on the exceptions and don't bother with the ones that can't figure it out.  No one is put in the universe to fix the constant of "stupid".

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 22:31 | 6064348 Cityzerosix
Cityzerosix's picture

A general rise in levels of consciousness would help, without doubt, but the materialist dogma has an increasing crushing effect and things look grim but there is hope, always hope.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 23:34 | 6064462 CPL
CPL's picture

Hope isn't something being offered because there is no need to be cruel.  Best to just observe, take notes as they finish themselves off and you learn how to NEVER run a world, a country or an economy.  That's the lesson here at the gate.  Use what works, chuck out what doesn't.

Incidentally this isn't grim.  This is fluffy kittens and puppy dog tails.  You grossly under estimate what type of fear, terror, pain and panic can be done by their own hands.  You only need to review the history in the archives of the past to find those examples of cruelty and delusional behaviour that drove them to this situation.  It's really no loss to the universe one way or another and there's always more that come eventually to take their place.

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 00:03 | 6064542 Cityzerosix
Cityzerosix's picture

It is easy enough to be critical of others. "The man hath penance done and penance more will do"

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 09:49 | 6065366 CPL
CPL's picture

Only if you pick a side of other people's problems and believe it.  Better to avoid the given dogma and make your own options or review what there is if something isn't working.  Or find what is working to use it.  But really at the end of the day, you actually have to give a damn what a bunch of self entitled blow hards believe.  Easier letting the system do the work properly as it was built to or some idiots force something and a loop happens.  Then it breaks for a really long time.

I mean look at them.  It's right out of the movie idiocracy, it really is.  No one's job to fix that, they can pick up their own damn boots.  They certainly love messing with themselves, around and around they go.  Some of them figure it out and break their own cycle.  Other ones, entropy squeezes them like an orange (good to the last drop).  Occasional one or two get out of line and you've got to break a jaw or two to correct attitudes.  Or stop to push a couple along that are an inch short.  Otherwise the system literally runs itself and it's much easier going with the flow of it.

If examining the broad overview, a general observation that can be taken is a general lack of self esteem, self respect and lack of an attitude to succeed where it counts.  But given what the bunch of them are taught by social programming (religion, tv, propaganda, whatever) and the hardened pavlovian response mechanism over a millennia to acquiring stuff.  Dunno, it's up to them to figure it out.  Besides, it's not like they'll listen any ways.  Bunch of them are deaf as posts and dumb as box of hammers.  Remember these are adults, not kids.  They should know better.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:10 | 6063684 will ling
will ling's picture

the only thing sheep know how to do on their own is fart.

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 19:24 | 6063730 Oldwood
Oldwood's picture

Change, real change ONLY happens in crisis. Evolution has been a response to the environment, to changes over millions of years. Humans have demonstrated no change of any meaningful extent in our recorded history. If we are to change, it's going to take a doozy of a crisis, because we've had some pretty big ones that didn't seem to make any impact...at all.

I keep thinking of the Eloi and the Morlocks.

Now that's change!

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 20:01 | 6063872 SmallerGovNow2
SmallerGovNow2's picture

Awesome except the CO2 bullshit. Photosynthesis my friends. Debunks the manmade global warming shit every time 

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 21:44 | 6064214 SmallerGovNow2
SmallerGovNow2's picture

Whoever down voted, please debate this....

6Co2 + 6h2o = c6h12o6 + 6o2 

You can't so you attack the message you worthless nebbish... 

Photosynthesis is a bitch ain't it? 

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 07:17 | 6064886 zeroheckler
zeroheckler's picture

Dissembling the chemical factories doing the job, some of them known as trees, is the bitch. "In the last five months of 2007, more than 3,200 sq. kilometers, an area equivalent to the state of Rhode Island, was deforested" - alone in the Amazon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 20:11 | 6063915 wardawg12
wardawg12's picture

A bit off-topic, but has anyone noticed the sun rising and setting a lot further north than it used to do? I have to track the sun with my solar panels which may be why I'm sensitive about it. So googling earth axle shifting, I found this website https://axischange.wordpress.com which if it has any validity would give us all something more to put under our tin foil hats. Could go a ways to explaining why the elites bullshit us about global warming(so they can tax us to build their bunkers), trash our economy (to keep social programs running to keep the sheeple calm), why all the fema camps with stockpiled coffins etc... You get the drift. They certainly wouldn't want to panic the populous about something that nobody can do anything about. Anyway thought I'd bring it to your attention. I just know what I've observed about the rising and setting of the sun.

Thu, 05/07/2015 - 09:07 | 6067312 Urban Redneck
Urban Redneck's picture

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/declination.shtml

The actual rotational axis of the earth (balance) changes slightly as the big magnet (that the needle on your compass points to) whooshes around inside the giant water balloon of planet Earth.  However, the changes in the axial balance are only a tiny fraction of the movements of the big magnet (until it isn't... but you need a specialist in the field to tell you roughly how many generations of offspring should spawned before someone really has to worry about it).

Tue, 05/05/2015 - 20:28 | 6063973 blindman
blindman's picture

Gaelic Storm - The Boathouse - Full Album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztZr9mdwx60

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 01:18 | 6064650 Global Observer
Global Observer's picture

Crisis is good. Crisis means the existing system of relations is out of touch with reality. A catastrophic collapse means the relations will have to be reevaluated and new ones, that work, quickly forged. A collapse in today's connected world means the lessons have a chance of being learnt almost simultaneously everywhere.

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 02:40 | 6064704 basho
basho's picture

the chosen of god.

lmao

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 04:10 | 6064762 Batman11
Batman11's picture
"We Will Evolve Through Crisis, Not Proactive Change..."

True to an extent because nothing major ever gets done until there is a crisis.

But sometimes the crisis can be too big, as those long ago Easter Islanders found out when the first cry of "Who cut down all the fucking trees?" went out.

Abandoned cities litter the globe; the once great Angkor Wat disappeared back into the jungle after some unexpected climate change.

The power of positive thinking is a straw to clutch onto, but sometimes that is all it is.

 

Wed, 05/06/2015 - 06:23 | 6064829 Batman11
Batman11's picture

Will human ingenuity solve the problems of drought in California?

Unlikely

Will the weather just change and more rain fall?

Possibly

Will LA be the 21st Century Angkor Wat?

Maybe ....

In the 22nd Century it might be a tourist destination, a lasting monument to the power of nature.

 

 

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