what else is the us national debt, held by the rest of the world?
our middle classes are becoming dispossessed, their middle classes is nascent and growing fast.
spreading the wealth, they call it...
i call it heading for the 'universal constant', aka a portugese peasant lifestyle for all.
and yes, there will be many people who'd wish this away, (and as many fervently wishing the trend to continue), were it possible, but time and globalisation stand still for no man! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
well, it might not be popular, but how else to describe the billions we're forking over to russia for energy we could be creating ourselves? what else is the us national debt, held by the rest of the world?
A third way is needed. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
i should have added digitised portugese peasant lifestyle, or po-mo PPLS perhaps.
you know, the one where the farmer doesn't have to be bent over the hoe from dawn till dusk, dying toothless at 50.
he/she does a modest 2-3 hours of medium work (no gym fees) a a day, eats out of a (solar powered rototilled) garden, irrigated by solar powered irrigation, has millions of napsterised movies and documentaries and skills training video-hours available for very modest fees, microloans and small artisan (borderline zero-taxed) businesses, and so that it sticks, high quality education for all. (big difference, along with the entertainment factor.
most people associate the peasant lifestyle with poverty, backbreaking grind, and endless monotony.
version 2.0 won't be like that.
people will lose so many of the 'diseases of civilisation', and there will be a lot less neurosis.
but yes there is the sharpest of hairpins ahead, and if keep on at this breakneck speed we will flip and roll.
if we want to stay on the road at all, we will need to slow down a lot. the hairpin is a metaphor for all those will do anything to block that change they fear so much.
we will continue to lose 'engagements', but long-term survival depends on people coming out of comfort zones, whether pro-actively in order to try and head this off at the pass, or post-actively because that effort didn't succeed.
let's bear in mind if we can that 4/5ths of the world would consider the PPLS a giant step_forward_, and unless you have seen, touched, tasted and smelled (above all, smelled) the 3rd world in all its fecund glory, your appreciation of that factoid may be a tad um, theoretical!
what people tend not to get about this, (unless perhaps they are buddhists), is that we'll feel so much better spiritually when this happens, we won't miss our gorging consumerism nearly as much as we think.
pretty useless to ask peeps to accept that on sheer faith, i know, your point is nothing if not valid, and well taken. i wish i could find a way to do just that though.
so thanks for your reply, starvid. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
