Why we have to start living more like the Na'vi now

[joeylovesgaia]

The System with all its evils does not need anyone "outside" to bring it down. It is about to collapse under its own weight:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/0...alisation.html

If you, like me, have been raised to be totally dependent on the Machine, then you, like me are in trouble. Anyone still dependent on it when the Collapse comes is going to be up sh*t creek without a paddle.

Fortunately there are wilderness skills courses to take and self-sufficient intentional communities already built, or being built. So much we have to relearn in order to live without this gilded cage...

[Moco Loco]

Hey hey, I'm not totally dependent on the "Machine". What do you mean by that anyway, computers?

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

Hey hey, I'm not totally dependent on the "Machine". What do you mean by that anyway, computers?

It's an anarchist fantasy/belief, closely linked to so called 'conspiracy theories' - that everyone and everything is personally out to get the author.

Isard is right. This is just Harold Camping from another perspective.

[txim_asawl]

"The Machine" sounds like a simile I use, too, for the world where we are currently set into as units meant to function instead of living to keep it alive - that can be applied to the capitalist system in general, or, - in detail - the world of numbers and figures when working in an office (alienated from our work, since we don't actually produce something palpable, like e.g. a carpenter or baker would) makes us follow schedules and deadlines like a small cogswheel in a giant apparatus, now most often squeaking, screeching and grinding gears, instead of running smoothly.

Wiggling bare toes,

~*Txim Asawl*~.

[Advent]

Originally Posted by joeylovesgaia

The System with all its evils does not need anyone "outside" to bring it down. It is about to collapse under its own weight

Old news for me, but still helpful.

[Marvellous Chester]

If you, like me, have been raised to be totally dependent on the Machine, then you, like me are in trouble. Anyone still dependent on it when the Collapse comes is going to be up sh*t creek without a paddle.

Hahaha I'll have to remember this one XD On a more serious note though, wilderness courses are awesome and so much fun even if the system doesn't collpase soon (which I hope it will ) I'd recommend taking them regardless of what happens and getting a decent book or 2 on edible plants would be handy as well. Embrace Na'viness

[Theorist]

hopefully if oil does cause collapse we'll start implementing renewable energy. I think humanity is too damn tenacious for anything short of an all out nuclear war to destroy us

(I'm not against a collapse, nor for one per se, either is fine. But if I've learned anything in my life it's that humanity does not want to die, and will do anything to maintain it's day-to-day life, even if day-to-day life is what is supressing us, people will still claw there way back to it.)

[Isard]

Wow, a speech written on a free blog site with power-point slides. I liked the part where there wasn't even a citation. I'll file that away with the guy claiming CoD is a plot by the Jews to breed a race of super soldiers.


To be honest, stuff like this reminds me why groups like the Tea Party can exist. We're getting stupid.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Isard

To be honest, stuff like this reminds me why groups like the Tea Party can exist. We're getting stupid.

Conditions are getting worse, and when people are presented with "solution" they don't usually have the resources or understanding to evaluate said "solution", so they just go with it out of desperation. People are just ignorant, because they can't know any better, and in some cases, they don't want to know, and that's when you enter the stupidity zone.

It's kind of like the Brave New World, where the alpha experiment failed, because nobody was ignorant enough to take the short end of the stick. In essence, you can't fool people who know better, unless they have deluded themselves into thinking they know stuff, and are thus more ignorant than ever.

[auroraglacialis]

Ah yes, Orlov. He wrote a couple of books about topics like peak oil and the collapse of superpowers. He was living in the USSR when it still existed and observed the signs of collapse and then the collapse of it. I heard a couple of interviews with him, he gives talks in conferences that deal with stuff like ecovillages and transition towns and other relocalization and "back to the land" stuff. I think he has many very good points when he compares close-to-collapse USSR with present day USA. I think what he warns about is that if the US economy will collapse for any reason (which he is convinced it will because of financial crisis and peak oil) there is big trouble for the people, because all the supermarkets operate with "just in time" delivery, people do not have any reserves or backup skills but may work in insurance companies and banks which would have to fire a lot of people. The 2008 crisis was kind of a taste of what he thinks is coming.
Interestingly he usually depicts the USSR crash as sort of a soft landing because most families there still had a house with a garden somwhere, there was already a barter economy in place (because the economy sucked and there was corruption everywhere) and people kept stuff stored or knew how to produce some things because the economy sucked and many things were not available at any time.

So if the US economy will collapse anytime soon or later is an open question but IF it does, I think his analysis is pretty fitting - the one with the river and the paddle. Because if you imagine that millions of people loose their jobs, the state has no money to pay for them, the banks try to get their houses and cars that are mortgaged back and the US-$ looses value,... that is pretty tough if your life depends basically on having a job, earning these dollars and buying your food and space to live on with these dollars...

[Isard]

It doesn't take a genius to connect the collapse of the Union with the USA's destabilization. They're both very similar, you have a few asshats worm their way to the top and take everything for themselves. In Russia it was the government controlling business, in the US business controlling government. I've always said libertarians (at least anarchy-capitalists) and communists are fighting for the same thing, they just have different methods of ****ing everything up.

[auroraglacialis]

Exactly (oh wow, I agree with Isard). I think it was either Orlov or Heinberg who said that these two states are basically the same in so many ways, that the only difference was that the USSR was marginally less efficient in exploiting human and natural resources globally and thus collapsed a few years earlier.

I wonder about Europe. Just yesterday, Germany put its signature on another 1 trillion Euro bailout program. In the US the signs of collapse are more obvious, but it is going in slow motion it seems, Europe feels like it is kicking to keep afloat - I wonder what happens if they reach the end of the ladder. I think sh*t creek here is more a sh*t river. While people still to a large part have jobs that actually produce something tangible outside of the financial industry, they also do not have many backup plans. There is in most parts some kind of government aid for jobless people, laws to prevent evictions - but also the food comes from the supermarket. And Europe is hopelessly overpopulated - if energy resources get scarce because of some deep financial crash, it will be quite tough here because life in that density depends a lot on energy from the outside :s . And survival skills wont help you a lot in western/central Europe either - there is no way you can apply them in any serious way... maybe if you go to Sweden

Well, I guess those people I knew at uni who thought about going to China to work as geologists there did at least the "right decision" in terms of keeping on top of the economy a little longer.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

Exactly (oh wow, I agree with Isard). I think it was either Orlov or Heinberg who said that these two states are basically the same in so many ways, that the only difference was that the USSR was marginally less efficient in exploiting human and natural resources globally and thus collapsed a few years earlier.

I said the collapse had similarities, not the state.

[Human No More]

Unlikely. Energy isn't linked to finance, it's linked to its own supply and lack of action by governments.

As I said, anyone who believes in all this is no different from Harold Camping.

[auroraglacialis]

Energy isn't linked to finance? WHAT!?