The
net is dead, long live the net. Doesn't quite pack the punch of the
king is dead, but for most people the changed form is more relevant.
We get seduced into thinking that all knowledge can be at the tips of
our fingers, then find that we have an association of uncoordinated
facts that requires us to think about what we are being told. The
net is so good at giving us what we expect these days, that we wonder
how we managed to have a functional society before the computer was
invented.
I
share the addiction – it is like an alcoholic anonymous meeting. I
stand up and say it has been four days since I have logged in and get
a small round of applause and encouragement. That I never intended
to be isolated off the net for this period only adds to the
frustration level of being disconnected. I know that the space of
time here is really null, I have spent months off-line in order to
get other work done without distraction. It's just that I didn't
plan to take the time off, this time.
The
phone line has a female drone saying that the line is not currently
in service. This may mean a CME strike took it out, or it could mean
that nobody paid the bill. There is little information flow except
not working. No amount of individual trouble shooting can fix the
problem, as the phone is the means of connection to the outside
world. Just practice for the party – I know that the net is as far
away as a wireless connection … unless that CME was really the big
one, which I doubt.
This
does create a perfect allegory for something that we all need to pay
attention to – the changes from expectation as the society whines
its way onward. The things we take for granted may have a duration
shorter than our current lifetime. The hot shower first thing in the
morning, or the cup of Brazilian coffee, or bananas and cream, all
take a behind the scenes production assembly to deliver the product
to you at your door? As the resources available diminish, which
parts of the established order are going to need replacement to get
on with the next life – a localized world built by the people there
to construct the world.
I
get to chuckle sometimes when I hear my friend, the desk jockey,
complain that all the adventure has been taken out of his modern
world. Everything to be discovered has already been discovered, he
moans. He doesn't realize that humans have lived a short life for
many centuries prior to the 'advances' of the past two and an eighth
– 2013 is already becoming a show-stopping experience. By missing
the day to day rumble of the televised tumble, I get the 'news' third
hand in the analysis sheets on a variety of website. Thus the
psychoanalysis of Russian children came up before I knew of the
marathon bombing and the cock'n'bull story that the lame-stream media
presents has more holes than good Swiss cheese.
Let's
say that we can scry into the past for peeks at the development of
the future. We are confined to living in the immediate now, because
here, reading this, is the only place that you are at this minute in
this lifetime. It is a fixed point of reference that you can note
for future use, or promptly forget by the end of the next sentence.
The past is all behind us and the future has yet to be – but the
things we know are the things we know, and they are based on the
perception of reality that we have developed individually from the
collective learning experience. Whether any of this is true or not
depends on things we don't know for sure.
Our
first look at tomorrow concerns the reality of the peak oil concept.
The curves have been presented and the arguments charged by the
information concerning the size of the earth, the finite rate of
growth of natural production and the constant advance of backward
areas that are catching up in the global economy. The game has been
discussed in many other places in elaborate detail and we all have
our opinions and our vehicles. The weigh we think has absolutely
nothing to do with the lifestyle of putting gas in the rig and going
to where-ever we need to go.
Developing
nations have seen Americans driving personal cars for the past 55
years – when televised America was presented through the shows like
Ozzie and Harriet, Leave it to Beaver and My Mother the Car. Since
the Brady Bunch morphed into the Simpsons, personal family vehicles
have conveyed an image of wealth and desirability for a privileged
lifestyle that is another assumption underpinning the image that the
world carries of Americans.
In
nature, everything heads toward the average. A statistical anomaly
produced early in a basis set may dominate the landscape, but
eventually over time, all statistics tend to regulate around two or
three standard deviations from the mean. The game has changed to a
world where the BRIC has risen. The world war two advantage of
having an intact infrastructure meant that America could set the bar
for the modern age. Our university system attracted thinkers from
all over the world and the images broadcast fit the system that was.
Now, 70 years into the future, every country in the world has modern
conveniences available to the elite populations.
The
BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have changed the
nature of how the world economic system is being played. They have
each modernized based on a world view set in capitalist terms by the
contracts of expansion into their sovereign territory. The
extraction of resources from the third world to America was a wealth
pipeline that increased our standards of living artificially, because
we could afford to buy things at discount so that resources we
distributed by 'trickle down'.
That
only worked while the advantages were here – and one look at
today's whirled tells me that we have the illusion of being special
when we are all quite ordinary. That we Americans allowed export of
our factories and mining operations and businesses overseas to places
where the costs of production were cheaper, was based on the idea
that corporations were not people and that people behind them were
responsible for individual actions. The current too big to fail
bankster show shows that nobody is enforcing the games – in the end
winner takes all – can we get to the next new deal?
The
end game depends on your current perspective. You can visit many
websites concerning what is coming from people that appeal to you
from a like perspective. The doom and gloomers have their Alex
Joneses, we have our James Kunstler – everybody has tales from the
net, but to experience real life means getting away from reel life.
The movie Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts and
Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) was all about how it could have
happened, but it was crazy – we all have our own weigh of looking
at things and the common beliefs that we share are manufactured
beliefs based on the sum of the things we know.
So
concerning peak oil – it seems to me that instead of taking a
serious approach to alternative energy, we sold out to big
corporations to provide for us and the limit of those provisions has
been exceeded. They will milk out every cent that we have, then go
elsewhere where the economic conditions allow the populace access to
the toys of the game, without the need to spread ones things across a
vast disco-ordinated land. The people will need to circle the wagons
and will head to the cities, but the food will always be grown on the
land, as long as the land can be supported. The infra-structure is
threatened by the consolidation of resources, but when the end-point
is reached, the common logistics will have to be worked out for each
unique situation.
If
you have the means to keep gas in the vehicle, you will have access
to get to places where you need to be to get things done. The
ability to live outside the resource base will be restrictive – the
distance that an item travels will be associated with the costs of
getting things there. In an economy where oil has greases the skids
for almost 100 years, nobody has ever seen anything really different
from the perception of today's reality. The movie and television
futures are fantastic recreations, but the history of past times has
people working together on smaller scale and building community
together against tough times.
We
live isolated by our video screens. The movies have taken tales of
the past, that some of us had read in books, and presented them on
the big screen as models of how to do the things we do. The TV tells
us how things work, but the mythos of reality is that we assume
things are the same for everyone everywhere here and find it hard to
grasp that some people do not have phones, or cars, or even homes.
The logistics of point and click, of fast food, and of hot cars has
seduced us into a debt encased slumber that is more like 24 Hours
than Happy Days.
The
shift of life is coming, because the reality of the goals are that
what we have is not built on value. The way of evaluating worth is
to change everything into monetary terms and the only thing that
really makes money is money. That the banksters can create debt and
use it as a weapon to foreclose on this culture is coming slowly –
the large tsunami is coming in an entirely different form that we
don't expect. Be aware and ready for anything – take care of
keeping the one you operating at full efficiency, as your energy is
diverted to doing the things you have to do to maintain this illusion
just a little bit longer.
When
oil and gas are not available, except at the highest prices, then the
ability to keep this infrastructure going stops cold. Modern history
has been rewritten by the victors, who justify their spoils –
ancient history is recreated in the form of religions, that each tell
the same stories in different words and terms, but each tells the
same story. Need a flood story? Hello, Noah. My guess is that
beliefs will be convergent – that reality will form from the
results, rather than from the plans.
Namaste'
doc 052213
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