Can't Stop Won't Stop

This is in particular is interesting:

"The post-capitalist, post-materialist societies of the future, thus, represent the emergence of not just a new form of civilization entirely — but a new form of human being, and a new way of looking at, and being in, the world.

This new “self” will be premised on envisioning the inherent unity of the human species, the interdependence of humankind with nature, and a form of self-actualization based on safeguarding, exploring and nurturing that relationship, rather than exploiting it."

It strikes me that this "self" is not actually a new idea, though it is new to the West, John Donne perhaps excepted.

I wrote an interpretive piece last month about a trip I took back to my native Texas, visiting obscure historical sites, state parks, graveyards, tiny towns, and taking backroads to get a new lay of the land. It's in a style of writing that I write in a lot, which is a kind of symbolic, thematic relating of real events through a particular thematic lens, with each day representing a different philosophical concern and culminating in a meditation on, weirdly, exactly what the linked article is about, though I had not read it when I wrote it.

This is the link if anyone is interested in mocking my creative writing, doxxing me, etc.:

http://pdfsr.com/pdf/fields-of-refuge

Is there, like, a text-only version of this?

haha, i dont know. the pictures are a bit annoying

Beyond Extinction
Transition to post-capitalism is inevitable


by Nafeez Ahmed

Earth, from Europe to East Asia, as seen from International Space Station


In Margaret Atwood’s powerful essay on the reality of climate change — and its implications for the future of oil-dependent industrial civilization — she tells two vastly distinct stories of our future.

The first is a tale of dystopia — a future so bleak, it would make Hollywood moguls looking for the next science fiction blockbuster of action-packed (post)apocalypse salivate with anticipation. Here, Atwood tells a story of human failure: of short-sighted choices based on fatal addiction to business-as-usual, and an egoistic hubris rooted in centuries of globalisation.


The post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max: Fury Road (credit: Warner)
In this scenario, we largely ignore the overwhelming evidence of climate change, and the result is that industrial civilization enters a period of protracted collapse, fuelled by accelerating war, famine, and natural disasters.

The second is a vision of utopia — a collectivist dream-world in which everybody works together, harnessing the best of human ingenuity across society, economics, politics and technology, to peacefully restructure the fundamentals of human existence. Here, Atwood tells a story of human success: of far-sighted decisions based on confronting the follies of business-as-usual, and by embracing our unity as a species.


Image of a future techno-utopia by Staszek Marek
In this scenario, we act on the overwhelming evidence of climate change, and the result is that industrial civilization enters a period of carefully calibrated transition to a techno-utopian post-capitalist, post-materialist infrastructure, avoiding the worst of today’s scientific warnings.



Crossroads

Of course, both these scenarios are extremes, but there is a purpose to such extremes. Atwood uses the power of story to help us awaken to the starkness — and gravity — of the choice we now face: a choice, effectively, between hell and heaven on earth.

And Atwood is spot on when she notes that this is not just about climate change.

The meteoric accumulation of scientific data over the last few decades has increasingly brought home the fact that the climate crisis is a symptom of a deeper, civilizational problem. It is not just that we are completely and utterly dependent on fossil fuels, oil, coal and gas, to do literally anything and everything in our societies — from transport and food, to art and culture.

It is the wider context of that structural dependency: the extent to which cheap fossil fuels enabled the exponential economic growth trajectory that took-off since the Industrial Revolution; the symbiotic relationship between economic growth and the evolution of the banking system, which has been able to flood the world with credit on the back of seemingly endless supplies of cheap oil; the relentless expansion of Anglo-European capitalism through empire and slavery; the transformation and militarization of global capitalism under US dominance, accompanied by ownership and control of much of the world’s land, food, water, mineral and energy resources by a tiny minority of the world’s population; and the subjugation of planetary resources to the endless growth-imperative of that minority, as it seeks, entirely rationally within this structure, to maximize its profits.

The corresponding ecocide that has resulted — with species extinctions now at record levels, and the degradation and destruction of critical eco-systems escalating at unprecedented scales — is not factored into the narrow calculations of quarterly returns by these powerful interlocking corporate and banking conglomerates.

Climate change is merely one symptom of a wider Crisis of Civilization.


The Crisis of Civilization (2010) — my feature-length documentary film on the interconnected crises facing industrial civilisation, and the potential transition to something better


Collapse

Last month I reported exclusively on a new scientific model being developed with support from a UK government task-force at Anglia Ruskin University. The model showed that on a business-as-usual trajectory, industrial civilization as we know it would likely collapse within 25 years due to global food crises, induced by the impacts of climate change in the world’s major food basket regions.

The model showed, however, that this outcome is by no means inevitable — in fact, its creators pointed out that such a business-as-usual trajectory would be unrealistic, as already policy changes have been pursued in response to the 2008 food and oil shocks. Though inadequate, this means that as crises accelerate, they will simultaneously open up opportunities for change.

The question, of course, is whether by then it will be too late.

A widely-reported paper in Science Advances published in June concluded using extremely conservative assumptions that an “exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity” has occurred “over the last few centuries.” The scale of this loss indicates “that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.” Although it is still possible to avoid a loss of critical ecosystem services essential for human survival, through “intensified conservation efforts,” the window of opportunity to do so is “rapidly closing.”

There is much corroborating evidence for these findings. Another study in May found that if global warming continues at current rates, one in six species on the planet will be at risk of extinction:

“Extinction risks from climate change are expected not only to increase but to accelerate for every degree rise in global temperatures. The signal of climate change–induced extinctions will become increasingly apparent if we do not act now to limit future climate change.”
The risk of civilizational collapse — and outright extinction — is perhaps the clearest signal that there is something deeply wrong with the global system in its current form. So wrong, that it is right now on a path to self-annihilation.

War, famine, and social break-down are happening today in the context of escalating, interconnected climate, food and energy crises. The conflicts in the Middle East that are now pre-occupying Western governments were sparked by a cocktail of climate-induced drought, entrenched inequalities, depletion of cheap oil, and political repression.

The spiralling terrorist violence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and beyond — purportedly in the name of religion — is being aggravated by concrete material realities: water scarcity, energy scarcity, and food scarcity.

Which of course should really beg the question: which war are we fighting, and in whose interests?


Residents inspect a site damaged by a US strike in Idlib province, Syria, September 23rd, 2014. (Credit: Reuters)
The world is locked into a clash of civilizations, each side pointing the finger of blame at the other: the Western world’s ‘war on terror’ to crush Muslim barbarians, and the Muslim world’s ‘jihad’ to repel Western empire. Ironically, neither side could exist without the other.

As economic hardships accelerate while the global system continues to unravel, this reactionary violence against the Other is becoming evermore normalized. Communities, searching for somewhere to pin their anxieties, root themselves in simplistic, artificial categories of identity — political identity, religious identity, ethnic identity, national identity.

These identities serve as anchors amidst a maelstrom of intensifying global uncertainty, as well as convenient vindicators of blame against those who stand Outside one’s chosen identity.

But while both sides are consumed with mutual hatred, they are missing the point: the real issue is not a clash of civilizations, but a Crisis of Civilization in its current form.



Extinction

According to another groundbreaking paper in Science, published earlier this year to little media fanfare, while we are busy fighting each other to death, overconsuming planetary resources and annihilating the very ecosystems we need to sustain long-term human survival, we are in fact contributing to the permanent destabilization of the Earth System (ES).

The new study develops a framework to understand ‘Planetary Boundaries’ (PB) within which can be discerned a “safe operating space” permitting modern societies to evolve.

The study is authored by an interdisciplinary team of scientists from Sweden, Australia, Denmark, Canada, South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany, Kenya, India, the US and the UK. Noting that the 11,700 year long epoch known as the ‘Holocene’ is the only state of the Earth System that definitely supports “contemporary human societies,” the scientists conclude:

“There is increasing evidence that human activities are affecting ES functioning to a degree that threatens the resilience of the ES — its ability to persist in a Holocene-like state in the face of increasing human pressures and shocks. The PB framework is based on critical processes that regulate ES functioning… [and] identifies levels of anthropogenic perturbations below which the risk of destabilization of the ES is likely to remain low — a ‘safe operating space’ for global societal development… Transgression of the PBs thus creates substantial risk of destabilizing the Holocene state of the ES in which modern societies have evolved.”


Renewal

While much attention has been paid to the new science of impending doom, there has been less focus on the new science of civilizational transition.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from these warning signs is what they tell us about the need not simply for ‘change’, but for fundamental systemic transformation.

The science of impending doom does not prove the inevitability of human extinction, but it does prove the inevitability of something else: the extinction of industrial civilization in its current form.

The endless growth model of contemporary global capitalism is not just unsustainable — it is on track to destabilize the Earth System in a way that could make the planet uninhabitable for society as we know it.

It is not humanity, then, that is doomed — it is industrial capitalism.

The choice before us, then, is whether or not we are willing to give-up fossil-fueled endless material growth.

As much as governments and corporations would like us to remain deluded in the conviction that this choice lies not in our hands, but theirs, the truth is that both are becoming increasingly obsolete as global crises accelerate.


The oil empire is crumbling. The US shale industry is collapsing under ballooning debt and diminishing profitability. Canadian oil and gas firms are “bleeding money” as they experience the biggest drop in profit in a decade. The UK’s oil industry is “close to collapse” according to Robin Allen, head of the Association of UK Independent Oil and Gas Exploration Companies.

The governments that remain beholden to the fossil fuel lobby will die along with these firms.

As they crumble, in their place new post-capitalist, post-materialist ideas, structures, and practices are fast emerging.

One powerful compendium of information on the rise of the new paradigm is a new book by Dr. Samuel Alexander, an environment lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Research Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, and a co-director of the Simplicity Institute.

“The main issue, however, is not whether we will have enough oil, but whether we can afford to produce and burn the oil we have,” Alexander writes in Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015).

“Just as expensive oil suffocates industrial economies that are dependent on cheap energy inputs to function, cheap oil merely propagates and further entrenches the existing order of global capitalism that is in the process of growing itself to death.”
The death of the age of oil is, therefore, symptomatic of the end of the capitalism itself.

“We cannot merely tinker with the systems and cultures of global capitalism and hope that things will magically improve,” adds Alexander in Prosperous Descent (2015).

“Those systems and cultures are not the symptoms but the causes of our overlapping social, economic, and ecological crises, so ultimately those systems and cultures must be replaced with fundamentally different forms of human interaction and organisation, driven and animated by different values, hopes, and myths.
Uncivilising ourselves from our destructive civilisation and building something new is the great, undefined, creative challenge we face incoming decades — which is a challenge both of opposition and renewal.”
Alexander shows that conventional growth economics in the developed world has become “socially counter-productive, ecologically unsustainable, and uneconomic.” Not only that, but mounting evidence in the form of price volatility, stagnating energy supplies, and the failure to address the instabilities of the global financial system suggest that the world is facing an imminent end to growth, symptomatic of the breaching of planetary boundaries.

In this context, there is a need for what some scholars call “degrowth” — defined as “an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human wellbeing and enhances ecological conditions.”

Degrowth doesn’t mean the end of prosperity, but the end of a particularly parasitical form of economics that is widening inequalities even as it ravages the environment. If we don’t choose this path voluntarily, as a species, Alexander warns, it is likely to be imposed on us in a much more unsavoury fashion by the unsustainability of business-as-usual.

But inasmuch as Alexander rejects a resigned, fatalistic capitulation to inevitable dystopia, he also warns against blind faith in salvation via techno-utopian ingenuity.

Instead, he coins the idea of “voluntary simplicity” — a way of life in which “people choose to restrain or reduce their material consumption, while at the same time seeking a higher quality of life.”



Revolution

Dr. Alexander shows that voluntary simplicity is the only pathway that avoids civilizational collapse. It does so because it entails the fundamental systemic transformation of civilization — the transition to a way of being which does not eschew technology, but uses the best of human technology to re-wire civilization from the ground up.

At the core of this radical re-wiring is a transformation of the human relationship with nature: moving away from top-down modes of political and economic organization, to participatory models of grassroots self-governance, localized sustainable agriculture, and equity in access to economic production.

This transformation in turn will require and entail a new “aesthetics of existence.” Drawing on the ethical writings of Michael Foucault, Alexander notes that “the self” as we know it today is woven largely from the structures of power in which we find ourselves. As inhabitants of consumer societies, we have internalized mass consumerism, its egoistic values and its reductionist worldview, “often in subtle, even insidious, ways.”

Yet Foucault also showed that “the self” is not just shaped by society, but also acts on and changes itself through “self-fashioning.” What type of person, then, should one create?

“Given that overconsumption is driving many of the world’s most pressing problems, it may be that ethical activity today requires that we critically reflect on our own subjectivities in order to refuse who we are — so far as we are uncritical consumers. This Great Refusal would open up space to create new, post-consumerist forms of subjectivity, which is surely part of the revolution in consciousness needed in order to produce a society based on a ‘simpler way.’”
The post-capitalist, post-materialist societies of the future, thus, represent the emergence of not just a new form of civilization entirely — but a new form of human being, and a new way of looking at, and being in, the world.

This new “self” will be premised on envisioning the inherent unity of the human species, the interdependence of humankind with nature, and a form of self-actualization based on safeguarding, exploring and nurturing that relationship, rather than exploiting it.


Our task today is to accelerate the process of transition to postcapitalism by creating and implementing it here and now, in the bowels of a dying system. We may well fail in doing so — but the point is precisely to broaden the horizons of the present so that we become cognizant of possibilities that lead beyond it, to plant seeds that might blossom in years and decades to come as governments fall and economies rupture.

We need to work together to craft new visions, values and worldviews; to develop new ideals, ethics and structures; to innovate new politics, economics and cultures of resistance and renewal.

Most of all, we need to evolve new stories of what it means to be human. As Atwood shows, we need stories that speak to the human condition, which beckon to a utopian future beyond the constraints of the dystopian present, which can help us reflect on the challenges of today with a view to collectively dream-weave a more meaningful tomorrow.

Whatever choices we make, one thing is certain. Well before the end of this century, our fossil fuel-centric industries will be little more than outmoded relics of an old, defunct civilization.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye.

He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’, for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners.

Nafeez has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Anglia Ruskin University.

Nafeez is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

This story is being released for free in the public interest, and was enabled by crowdfunding. I’d like to thank my amazing community of patrons for their support, which gave me the opportunity to work on this story. If you appreciated it, please support independent, investigative journalism for the global commons via Patreon.com, where you can donate as much or as little as you like.

lol, that works

Skipping over all the dubious claims in this article, the real question is how do we accomplish such a thing?

It's all well and good for people to say "Yeah, I can live simpler" until they realize that means they can't buy Starbucks twice a day. I try to reduce waste, but, quite frankly, I'm pretty shitty at it despite a conscious effort.

So, how do we actually accomplish such a thing?

Syphilis or Schizophrenia. Whichever, I hope good help is being sought. Peace my brother from another mother.

@abgemacht
I cannot tell if your question is earnest curiosity or hectoring.

Short answer: get rid of your television, don't watch t.v. on the computer and start switching from a consumer to a producer.

I am not an expert at dip, but I actually am pretty good at the nexus of consuming less. If you are looking at keywords to research they include permaculture, earlyretirementextreme, green wizardry.

There are whole communities online that share knowledge about how to consume less. You acquire skills instead of buying products and services on the open market. If anyone is interested, I'll elaborate on some of the things I do and plan on doing. If not, that's it for my two cents on the direction we will go as energy becomes more and more expensive.

In general I think we can all do with less much more easily than we think we can, for myself at least I can say that this is true. Beyond that, we must always be working to find things that we buy, and figure out ways to stop buying them. This is one of my main reasons for being so interested in growing food myself; I'm close to being able to forage and raise about half my staple carbohydrates - I think if I had another two years I could do it. It's not easy but it is rewarding. That's only one dimension though, you can work on whatever you can come up with. It's also about what we use our physical energy on - what projects are we devoting our free time and even our working time to? What purpose do they serve? Do they waste energy (literally joules) or do they put it to a good use?

Baudrillard talks about a simulacrum in which we disconnect from reality by thinking of objects in terms of their exchange (pecuniary) value rather than their actual usefulness - this is an example of how it is really a mindset and a different kind of relationship to nature (reality) is what is important more so than the specific recommendations, because those fall into place as a result of the shift in mindset.

@kahudd

That makes two of us. Is "get rid of your television" really the advice you're going to go with to how to solve global warming?

@Thucy

I think a lot of that is good in principle, but my question remains: how do you propose communicating that to the masses and getting them to go along. You and I growing vegetables in our backyard isn't going to do anything when there are 10 million Americans driving SUVs through a McDonald's drive-through every day. What can be done to change that mentality?

You have to communicate however you can, and just let that come naturally to you. As this transition progresses, more and more people will come to this on their own. I know that's not a super satisfactory answer, we want to be able to say "well all I need is $50 million to do a PR campaign with this strategy and people will be on board" but a grassroots civilizational change won't and doesn't happen like that. It happens organically, or, more darkly, doesn't at all. I'm not saying don't try to encourage others, I'm just saying there's not a lot of, like, policy-type hierarchical strategies that can be pursued to literally change people mindsets about this - the change in mindsets will come as a result of the changed landscape, and it is happening already. Whether quickly enough, time will tell.

Or you can always just read Thoreau. That's a fast track to wisdom lol

@abgemacht
There might be other good ideas in public policy to deal with these problems, but they probably wont win at the ballot box until after a few more crises.

On the individual level, I find radically curtailing television to be a necessary prerequisite to consuming less.
1) it frees up time to learn these skills 2) you get out of groupthink caused by the representations of "normal" so you can start experimenting with other ways of life
3) it makes you see less commercials, so you stop wanting as much.

When I lived on my own -- five years -- I did not own a television. (by the way that saved me over $2,400 in expenses for cable) When I got married, I moved into a house with t.v. But now that we are down to only netflicks it has been easier for my wife and I to lose weight -- no food commercials.

Anyway what I do about it personally is, well I write, but also I just insert a different perspective into everyday conversation. It can be done without openly preaching, as it turns out, and it's fairly effective. Think of it as like, guerilla consciousness-raising. All you have to do is speak in layman's terms and draw layman's conclusions but with this mindset on, and, voila. As a layman yourself, it's easy to do. Trying to think of an example, there's just so many. The irrationalities and hypocrisies and insanities of the dominant system are so many that you can do it at almost any time. At work for instance I often take the opportunity to mock an ad that comes on TV. It's low hanging fruit. They openly insult our intelligence these days. Also, look into culture jamming and adbusting, it's something I've done a little bit of.

People are consuming more entertainment than they ever have before and that shows no signs of slowing down. Granted, it isn't all on traditional television, but I see no fundamental difference between watching NBC or Netflix. Is there a distinction that I'm missing?

Technology, I think, can help with a lot of this. Cheaper solar panels will allow more homes to go "off grid". Electric cars will have a big impact as well. Ubiquitous broadband will allow inefficient home PCs to be replaced by more efficient data centers. Obviously, this won't solve the problem, but I think it will mitigate it significantly.

And here's the win-win:

If shit hits the fan, you can at least cushion the blow a bit. But, if it doesn't, you finances will be in great shape. My house is 6 months from being paid off. I'm 32 -- this is no a record, but I am a public school teacher, and received no inheritance.

Learn to skills other than shopping and spending money.

If I can do it, we all can do it.

It's not as though green technologies are bad, but more important than replacing our consumptive practices with less destructive consumptive practices is *eliminating* the consumptive practices entirely wherever possible. So, build electric cars charged off solar power, sure, but more important - build less cars period. Because building anything is contributing to our precarious position in the present.

So, I'm not disagreeing with what you two are saying. What I'm asking is, how do you get enough people to follow along that it makes a difference?

@abgemacht
I would watch no plot-based television, ever, if I had my way, but a marriage is about compromise.

I would recommend to anyone to ditch tv, via any medium, completely. That is, for maximum ability to change your life.

But for most people, blunting the damage is all they are ever going to do. My wife watches more than this, but all I do with her is watch at most one show an evening with dinner. So in my household, I think I see a maximum of 5 hours of tv a week. Mostly Doctor Who, sometimes Friends.

As to alternative energies -- I will invest in solar electricity, but only after 1) paying off the house and ending all debt in my life, forever 2) pimping out my food garden 3) super insulating my house 4) getting hens and infrastructure for them

But keep in mind that Jimmy Carter had solar panels on the White House and Reagan tore them down. Politically, the hierarchy of popularity will go a)"drill, baby, drill" b) new gadgets so we can continue to be as wasteful and helpless and we want c) -- this one is such a last resort that it in unthinkable in the public sphere -- consuming less

Clarify -- I will put solar panels on my house. I wont be investing in solar stocks. My only stock positions are index funds.

I'm just not optimistic people will do this stuff.

The people who end up running our systems are of the system, and usually more focused on personal prestige than anything else. The stuff Thucy and I are saying will make resilient -- and if you can hold down job and this civilization averts some crises for a while -- they will make you rich.

But -- and this is the kicker -- they will never be prestigious. They wont in themselves get you laid. But, more, since they go against our cultural mythology, it will always seem like dirty work, the kind of stuff an important person shouldn't be doing.

And this is where the tv groupthink is so powerful. We're all to be lead to believe we are too damn important to not do this work -- no one on tv does (especially not the Doctor). Also, don't we just deserve than Starbucks, that new car for Christmas, to eat out or have pizza every night?

As a recent college graduate working part-time as a flower delivery driver while I'm looking for a career in which I can utilize my English degree I'm focused on two things: becoming debt free, and building up savings.

My parents' church (LDS--"Mormons") has been preaching that no one should live in debt, the merits of self-sufficiency, and emergency preparedness for years, and even though I'm not a religious person myself, some of that has sunk in enough and is simply logical-enough that I live it without even thinking about the whole spiritual part of it.

But it's difficult to make a drastic shift in your personal habits while you're still inundated in the consumer world. There are things you simply can't escape unless you physically remove yourself--and that takes more dedication and money than most have, and even then it's not complete separation.

Living debt free is definitely the way to go, if at all possible.

To borrow from the recent movie Tomorrowland, though, I think part of the issue is that we've grown to accept an apocalyptic likelihood as not all that bad. Or that's it's inevitable, and we'll just have to try to reset anyways. People won't believe things they don't want to, even with evidence shoved in their faces. And doomsayers who are consistently proven wrong certainly don't help bring credence to more legitimate fears and concerns.

To truly change to the idyllic world described as the second possibility, I do not believe you must change society to reach it. Rather I find it perfectly plausible that a capitalistic approach can be done, and will have much better results that trying to force people to consume less. Rather we must move toward different sources of energy to reduce and hopefully eliminate our carbon footprint, and, as a last resort look to the stars.

Fortunately things like electric cars and solar panels are finally becoming financially viable and will soon enough overtake the market. We are making giant advances in genetic engineering that may allow us to grow resilient crops and treat diseases, along with possible developing AIs smart enough to help us with these problems. Investing in these technologies is a simple way for companies to get ahead of the curve. As such I choose to believe in the technological advance of humanity to provide a solution, and for people like Elon Musk to bring us there. Perhaps this change away from capitalism may happen, but it will not be because of the collapse of capitalism.

(Sorry if that wording doesn't quite makes sense)

@Vashta
I think you are indeed answering the original article, but I find getting skills and saving a bunch of money to be a pretty good move within capitalism, presuming the system does find a way to survive.

I am reminded of something I saw on the Big Bang Theory (at my parent's house -- least everyone jump all over me). Sheldon had a bunch of money hoarded and someone asked "why." He said "the things I want to buy haven't been invented yet."

I'll say it -- I'm a doomer. But if I'm wrong, By saving now, I will have the money to buy all these gee-whiz things.

"trying to force people to consume less."

This is the point though: that doesn't work. They have to make that choice on their own. The change to the next paradigm will not, cannot be top-down hierarchical. That itself is what got us into this mess and will not get us out. Precisely why, you look at Abge's line of questioning which is, how can we make everyone do it? Well, by everyone doing it. So you just do it. It's nature itself which is ultimately going to stop us consuming so much. It's in any person's best interest as well as in the species and the civilization's best interest to get ahead of that curve, but it will happen. The question is do you embrace it in your life as a positive change (turns out simplifying your life and consuming less makes you happier), or do you do nothing and wait for a negative change or a shock? It's a choice we all face. We can encourage each other but we can't force each other

well said, Thucy.

Thucy, this idea of using less simply will not be viable on a large scale. Not through force, not through encouragement, not through the forces of nature. Transcendentalism (I believe that is what you are espousing, or some variant of it) is directly opposed to the desire of the masses. Using less is telling every single human being to accept their insignificance in the world and to be content with it. While it is certainly possible for some to do this, most people have a natural want for significance and greatness. Yes, those desires can often make them feel empty, never reaching the top of the mountain, but we can still use them to drive ourselfs toward a better future. All you must do is convince enough people that certain technologies are worth investing in, and the best way to do that is through their wallets, by making it cheap. Telling people, "Less Less Less" won't work, but showing them how they can do more with less can. You can not force a system to change, but you can use the system to create your desired end result.

@kahudd: good input here.

We make our own soaps, detergents and toothpastes; cheaper, natural ingredients, no added artificials.

Manchester city centre also has a grow-your-own vegetables scheme with communal plots.

Walking Dead is making me contemplate fencing lessons for when I find a katana in the apocalypse and become Michonne.

@vashta

I think you're wrong. And if you're right, our race will go extinct.

Not if Vash takes up fencing lessons amd finds a katana !

Thank you. You're welcome.

And besides, what does consumption and possession have to do with cosmic significance? It's like Jesus said: "a person true life is not made up of things he owns." and "Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?"

Stop. You had me at "It's like Jesus said".

@Thucy: It's like said before. People feel they "deserve" more because they are so amazing. Saying you don't "deserve" more is a very humble thing to do, but is unlikely to be truly accepted and integrated on a wide scale. After all, current first world society is very self focus.

@Thucy,

I for one don't hate you at all.

Anyway, I read the article. Like abge, I thought it made a lot of very dubious claims, and of course it didn't really back up anything, but maybe that's necessary for that kind of writing. Rhetoric can get bogged down if it tries to be a science paper. I just found some of the rhetoric unconvincing due to scrupling at the claims. Its ultimate suggestions are, at worst, harmless, which is good. They're probably better than that, though -- it would be fantastic if people became less consumerist.

I also read your essay, which took me quite awhile. Overall, I thought it was quite well written -- you're obviously a good writer. The back roads and country markers of Texas are my own haunts as well, and I enjoyed reading your thoughts as you explored them (in another region of the state). I also learned a great deal, which was cool.

It's the nature of criticism to focus on the negative; so don't take the fact that the following consists mostly of areas for improvement as harsh criticism. Rather note how little of it there is, given the length of the piece.

Your style tends to the wordy, and in such a long piece, this is a moderately serious problem (it could, for example, keep many people from ever making it far into the piece). A lot of very detailed descriptions are given. Now, some of those are really important for setting the pace and the mood. But others are rather tedious cataloging of far too much detail in your trip and actions. It is crucial to keep the former, but it is almost as crucial to lose the latter. Which is which? Well, therein is the art of great writing, isn't it? All I can tell you is that you have not yet achieved the right mix. Much more must go.

I can at least give a handful of examples. Before I do, though, I'll go ahead and mention another issue that's related. One of the principle tools you employ in this essay is irony. And you employ it, often, well. But you employ it VERY often. It is too ubiquitous. If often feels as though you feel that you can say nothing unless you draw some ironic point. This disrupts the flow, and adds a lot to the wordiness problem.

On to some examples:

"In June, 1815, monarchy won a major victory on a field in Belgium south of a village called Waterloo, the conclusion of yet another global power struggle among European superpowers. It was, however, a great loss for a certain Charles Lallemand (“the German”), a French general and committed Bonapartist – which is just more monarchy masquerading as egalitarian republicanism."

Drop the very elliptical, over-wordy description of Waterloo and Napoloeon here. We get it, Europe is coming down with warring superpowers. Believe me, that is not a point that you under-labor in this paper. Even if you really want to draw the connection here, a simple, "In June, 1815, one sprawling European superpower won a major victory over another in a field called Waterloo." You make your point and you save us three lines of mediocre prose. (And isn't it more accurate? As you point out, Napoleon was basically a monarch anyway, so monarchy didn't really win much of a victory at Waterloo).

"As it stands, though, “Auia” is extinct. It is difficult to find any mention of it even on the fiber optic cables."

On the fiber optic cables? Not only is this less accurate than "on the internet," it is pointlessly more wordy. The more expansive rhetoric is accomplishing absolutely nothing. Perhaps you are wanting to connect every mention of modern technology back to its impact on the land. If so, don't use "internet," but still work at this. It doesn't succeed right now.

Another example:

"As I approached the small town, surrounded by croplands and stands of trees here and there on the coastal plains, I noticed another signpost indicating a historical marker. I stopped, as by now I always did. There was no wider shoulder, no nothing for this marker really. It just stood there between the road and a ditch separating it from the barbed wire of a cow pasture. Yet it was difficult to find, because the marker itself lay in the ditch. Some time ago, it seemed, it had been struck by a car, knocked off its post, and fell with a clank and a thud into the rill. Nobody seemed to care. Tank-­‐sized pickup trucks barreled past. Ironically, the marker was commemorating the discovery of oil in the field I was standing in, back at thebeginning of the twentieth century, but the oil is long gone, except for the parts that now blow in the wind over this field. Extractive economies…"

This whole paragraph is filled with unneeded details that only make things drag. My gut would say kill the whole thing, but in any event -- there's way too much time spent trying to squeeze a drop of meaning from the fact that they didn't widen the highway for a historical marker, and that most pickups are passing it by without looking. The ironic mileage you get from this is almost nil, but the reader has to wade through it nevertheless. You have far more impactful passages, but instead we spend time reading this one. Axing things is every writer's greatest struggle, but you have to axe stuff like this. We really don't care how hard the marker was to find, or even why.

Moving on: throughout the essay, your sense of your lonely call to the sensitive life hangs on you like a heavy weight. Lose it. It's off-putting, rather annoying, and also inaccurate. It tends to diminish your credibility some, as well, because it suggests you're a little bit deaf to the culture you criticize, and may be more interested anyway in painting yourself as special. Here are some sample passages:

"Not that it matters. No one reads it in any case. One who does, in the midst of all the families and teenagers milling around, looks out of place indeed, especially being alone as I was, and dressed in hiking clothes. All this activity and bustling make a solitary contemplater look like something trending toward insanity. The feeling was mutual. I saw the cars rolling by literally just to be seen, the shops selling a variety of goods and services, all profligate and none essential, and was reminded of a lesson from my science classes – all biological function, and indeed, all action in the universe, is derived from the original Big Bang energy changing forms."

And another:

"It was a lonely country cemetery, about half a mile down the road from the nearest farmhouse. I felt severely out of place, a young man traveling alone down an ill-­‐used country highway who stops off to look at strangers’ graves – who does that? Presumably I was supposed to be using my vacation to get drunk at a bar back in Houston or New Orleans, but if anyone had asked me, I would have stuck to form and quoted Ecclesiastes: [...]"

Who stops at random cemeteries? Lots and lots of people, that's who. I stop at random country cemeteries. I know many others who do, none of whom learned it from me, and several of whom are young men, usually alone when they do it. Moreover, on the occasions that I've encountered anybody there, nobody treated me like a freak for being there. So my reaction on reading this, frankly, was -- I'm sorry if you feel "severely out of place" there, but maybe that's just because you don't do it enough. Perhaps start doing it more before you decide what verses to quote at those who do it more.

Your remark about getting drunk at a bar in New Orleans, likewise, drips with contempt for the same culture that you're simultaneously displaying questionable knowledge of. This whole essay of necessity involves a stinging critique of your own culture, but try not to put in gratuitous stereotypes while you're at it.

Similarly, yes, many people read those display signs at statues and historic sites, including quite a few of the suburbanites you seem (in some passages here) to despise. True, if one is at a busy mall, then most of the people there are going to be shopping, not looking at the art; that is the nature of the place. But while you criticize the cars for being there only to be seen, there is only one person in the scene who we are sure was thinking about what other people's impression of him was. For what it's worth, I'd be astounded if any of them thought twice about seeing a kid in hiking gear reading the description of the sculpture. They did pay to put it there, after all, and kids are very often curious.

These are only a couple representative passages in which your apparent sense of lonely destiny seems to take center stage. That may be entirely unfair as a characterization, of course, but it's what the passages suggest as currently constituted.

Moving on.

I'm reasonably well trained in physics, and one or two of your remarks on entropy got away from me a bit. The past is not exactly a stream of increasing entropy, for example. (Though it is distinguished from the present in having lower entropy). But perhaps you were just being poetic? Similarly, if one wanted to be pedantic, entropy is not a "force," even by generous analogy. The second law might be analogized that way.

I'll pause here to mention a couple small typos:

"When they got to the beach, we lit a fire...." Were quotation marks supposed to start before the "we"?

"For Saint Louis" -> "Fort Saint Louis"

"More complicated that children" -> "More complicated than children."

I'll close with a few more subjective quibbles. While I understand that your point is to highlight the tension between religious belief and heinous crime, as a matter of historical theology, I'd be surprised if any 19th century American Christians turned to Job, specifically, when justifying genocide.Admittedly, I'm not an expert on this subject, but I don't think it's the book that was most appealed to.

Your discussion of Stephen F. Austin was interesting. You conclude by saying that he probably wasn't a spiritual man. Perhaps you were saying that because of his actions in life, which might well be a justifiable argument. However, it *sounds* in the essay that you are saying it because of his last words. The implication is a poor one. Even the most spiritual of people, if he had fought long for a cause he deeply believed in, would be excited to read of its victory in the newspapers. There is nothing about reading newspapers that excludes one from being spiritual.

Moving beyond the confines of your essay -- you close by saying you hope we look back to see people like Austin as another, lower type of being. What happened to "Judge not" meaning that you should not elevate yourself over others? Sin will always be with mankind, and we will fight it the better if we spend more time searching for it in ourselves than telling ourselves we are better than our fathers.

Much of your irony was a little too explicit. You set it up nicely and created it, but then you had to make it explicit. It's a little like telling a joke and then explaining it, which ruins the joke (and ruins irony). The same went for non-ironic rhetoric, at times. Perhaps the most egregious example is the "Charming" that closes the paragraph about oil reserves on page 32. The word serves no purpose but to severely weaken the rhetorical flow that had preserved it, ending it all with cheap snark.

One paragraph stood out at a counterexample -- you restrained your impulse to overexplain in the paragraph that ended "All this has been and still is a distraction from the only frontier we are unwilling to confront, the only thing savage we have yet to civilize." Leaving the identity (slightly) implicit greatly strengthens the paragraph. It's so strong, in fact, that I would probably go ahead and kill the next two paragraphs as well, even though they're not devoid of interesting stuff. They're fairly humdrum points that you make again and again. End the section instead on a rhetorical high note. Then look for other places where you can tone down your explicitness and do the same thing in other sections. You ruin too much by preaching too obviously.

Your last page or two, which is a much more general rant of sorts, doesn't feel very connected to what went before, and I don't think it's really a worthy end to the document. It deserves better.

Anyway, thanks for sharing, and good luck with it.

Incidentally, have you seen "The Trip to Bountiful"? It's fairly urgent that you see it, if not. It's a great movie that touches on some very similar themes, although only a subset.

Having said so much negative, I should mention at least one specific positive -- I thought you were very good at putting the reader there with you, and successfully inviting him along on your imaginings. I could not only see the places you were standing, but could imagine along with you the Indians who trod there centuries ago. This is not easy, so you are to be commended. (And of course, it requires some of that detail that you put in -- as I say, it's a real art leaving in the right amount. I think you can do a few more iterations with this one).

Incidentally, I wrote all that while under the impression that you had asked for feedback. I just looked back and saw that you did not, at least explicitly. Sorry for presuming to offer advice if that's not what you were looking for.

No, you're fine semck. I didn't explicitly ask for feedback because I figured no one would bother reading it lol. Thank you so much for taking the time, not just to read, but to respond. It's more than welcome.

To respond a bit to what you have said, not necessarily to dismiss your criticism, but just to explain a bit:

About wordiness - you're definitely right. In fact pretty much all of your criticisms are ones I intuited already on my own. I'm sure I could comb through and shorten a few things. The Waterloo thing is a good example.

The reason, though that it tends to get so wordy, is that a lot of what I really want to do by writing something like this is, in a sense, *re-describe* familiar things with a new perspective, using words that aren't usually used. Something like Waterloo comes up, and I feel like I should do that too. But you're right, I don't spend enough time talking about Waterloo to justify the introduction of it in that way, in that specific case. I'm sure there are others so thanks for pointing it out.

As to the fiber optic cables, you're essentially right about why I chose that phrase, I want to describe it in a physical way, just as you would hear about something on a telegraph on the copper cables. I also don't think it's particularly inaccurate. I have to disagree with you here, I'm keeping that one lol.

About the oilfield marker in West Columbia, you have a point there as well, it's a minor stop on the overall journey. But let me sort of explain this one as well, not saying your criticism is baseless, but:

Basically when I write this way (and I have done it several times before), what I am interested in doing is taking my real experiences, whatever they are, whether mundane, or what have you, in the *real life* order they occur in *real space* and draw meaning from them, look for a common theme, and connect them together into a narrative that doesn't require fictionalizing. This is the basic reason that this somewhat dull bit is in there. I really did stop at the sign, it really is basically ignored, and - most importantly of all, I thought - it really is lying in the ditch knocked from its signpost. To me, all of these aren't necessarily huge on their own, but they 1) allow me to jump off into the connection with an oilfield and extractive economies and 2) tie into the overall theme (which you discuss next) that these concerns, and these perspectives, are heterodox and relatively ignored. History is forgotten, the long-term future is forgotten, we clamor on as the monkeys we are in the present, somewhat blinded by this forgetting.

Which leads me to the next bit about the "loner" passages. Remember that this piece is not, like, meant to be a persuasive paper, it's interpretive. So when I paint myself as "feeling insane" for reading the historical engraving while everyone else eats ice cream and takes selfies, I'm not literally suggesting no one else has ever or will ever read the thing, I'm just remarking on the (once again) factual experience I had which was that I was alone, the only one who was alone, and the only one doing what I was doing. It's meant to drive home a basic point which is that: history and ecology permeate every space and are all around us, even though we usually forget that. I'm not placing myself above so much as saying this one time I was more cognizant of that - at other times, in fact most of the time, I am one of (and in that particular town square where I grew up *was* one of) the people eating ice cream and gossiping or whatever. But it's a major theme though that I don't want to lose - this is my *native* area, and kind of a major point I was making is that often we think of our own backyard as devoid of the grandeur of the rest of the universe, or the magnitude, at least this was the case for myself. We sit in Texas and read the history of Rome, we sit on a meadow and read about the Antarctic, we shade ourselves from the sun and read about Vega. But we need not - the things near at hand will do, they are just as important, in fact they may have the most to teach us of all. You make a good point that it may often come across as trite or self-absorbed or something, but I didn't report anything falsely, this really was my impression, and I felt it was relevant for inclusion for this reason.

Like, okay, I understand that people stop off at cemeteries. I'm not new to that either. On road trips with my dad we would always do that. But it's not *normal.* It's really counter-cultural, and you know I'm right. It's not that nobody does it, it's that it's not normally done, it's the usual thing to do.

About Austin, it's not just the last words, it's the actions of his life *combined* with his last words, which are perfectly indicative of that. He spent his whole life essentially building up a worldly empire like the rich man in Luke 12, and then even when he was on the verge of death, he seems to have thought of nothing else - not pondering his own existence, where he was headed, or any of those religious or spiritual things, but still talking about Texas, his earthly riches. It, to me, betrays a man who would then have no qualms extinguishing a native tribe - that's the kind of man who would do that - a businessman through and through, no soul to speak of. To me these things are linked. Again, yes, you can read newspapers and be spiritual, but this isn't a debate here, it's an artistic expression lol.

About the comparing of Austin to archaeobacteria - this is not meant in a judgmental way. It's not that they're "lower" in a non-egalitarian way. It's that they're lower in a *biological* way, well, actually they're *not*. If you re-read that part I'm not saying I or anyone else alive today is any fundamentally different, I'm saying we *could* be, but we have to *evolve* first. Essentially one of the core conclusions of this meditation is that we are not going to fundamentally change any of the bad things I saw in the history I relate or the dire present and future I saw out on the land, unless we change our own nature fundamentally, which I term evolution. In a sense I do literally mean biological evolution or at least something analogous. That's what the point was intended to convey.

Point taken about the irony being too blunt. The probably explanation for that is that I don't plan or craft the irony, it just sort of flows out naturally, so I don't try very hard to structure the delivery of it. I suppose I should try harder, you seem to think it's one of my strengths. The flip-side of that though is that I don't like writers who are too obscure and whose best points are lost in nuance in an attempt to be artful. You know? It's great to have an inside joke or something for someone who reads your book five times (this happens a lot with Thoreau for instance), but I'd rather err on the side of assuming people are only going to read this thing once - if at all lol - and so I'd like them all to "get it" the first time through. I guess it's a "lowest common denominator" thing. It's a tough line to walk, but it's good advice so thanks for the tip.

In what way do you think the closing isn't connected to what went before? I felt like it came naturally, especially given that those were basically my thoughts as I sat on the quiet mission grounds under the setting sun thinking about the trip. Again, my style here is about realism, so I just wanted to report what I felt. So if you could elaborate that point so I can improve it, let me know!

And no I haven't seen The Trip to Bountiful, googling now.

Thanks again for all the comments and criticisms, it's highly valuable to me. I'm waiting for some of my close friends to finish the thing and give me feedback before I revise for the final draft, but this is very helpful, thanks for the encouragement.

Writing like this is something I deeply enjoy - when I have an experience like this knowing I intend to write about it, with my notebook in hand, it just becomes a really magical experience. Hopefully a bit of that feeling is conveyed in the story.