Seems to me that the point is not whether it is POSSIBLE to "recover" from such a collapse, but whether there is a large chunk of humanity to which it doesn't really matter. Most people, the huge majority, are interested primarily in football and beer and conversation. Add in a nice ritualistic religion that provides rote answers to all existential questions, and most people are happy.
Suffering? Hello, everybody experiences dukkha. Modern medicine? People still die. War? Sure. Thanks to us not being in the Dark Ages, now we have supercomputers. Big deal!
In what way has the Enlightenment actually made things better for most people? The most secure and self-satisfied people I know are hard line Catholics and Presbyterians and Evangelicals who know all the answers and watch TV all weekend.
In what way has the Enlightenment actually made things better for most people?
We have hot showers, running water, electricity and usually don't die from lung infections. Does that count?
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
HOWEVER, everybody still dies. Instead of dying at 35 from a lung infection, we die at 95 after 10 years of "living" in vegetable mode in a nursing home. Which is somehow better, I suppose...
My grandmother became 93 and lived at home all the time until her death, with complete mental clarity all the time.
Still, my fathers grandmother became 99(!) and that was without much modern medicine as she was born sometime in the mid 19th century. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
