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Get Ready… Change Is Upon Us

November 12, 2016

Get Ready… Change Is Upon Us

The ‘economic peace’ we’ve enjoyed for decades is over

“After four years of warfare that tore the world apart like never before, a peace was finally reached. But it was a peace which one man in particular vociferously condemned — and that man was John Maynard Keynes.

In just two months, Keynes wrote the book that would make him a household name around the world — The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

In the book, Keynes was highly critical of the deal struck at Versailles, which he felt sure would lead to further conflict in Europe — describing the agreement as a “Carthaginian peace” — and with the passing of a surprisingly short period of time, he would be proven correct.”

~ Grant Williams in The Economic Consequences of Peace

After WWI, a particularly noxious set of treaties and economic reparations agreements were put in place that all but guaranteed a future WWII. Mr. Keynes sniffed that out and, sadly, was proven correct.

The lesson from this is that, at certain times, it’s really not that hard to predict “what” is going to happen next after disastrously short-sighted and self-interested policies are enacted. Predicting the “when”, with precision, is much trickier. But obvious misguided economic policies are destined to have a limited period of apparent (but false) prosperity, after which they end with a nasty Bang!.

We have entered just such a time. This isn’t a Trump vs. Clinton thing; I’d make this claim regardless of who won this week’s presidential election — as our plight is much bigger than a single Administration. And my observation is that neither political party had much interest beyond some temporary election year lip-service to the economic plight of the middle class.

And by “middle class” I mean anybody not in the top 5% economic bracket. For those doing the math at home, that leaves the remaining 95% of us stuck in the meat grinder.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A World Hangs in the Balance

September 25, 2016

A WORLD HANGS IN THE BALANCE

The overwhelming number of well-funded groups “fighting for change” in this world are misdirected. Intentionally so.

These groups are designed to go off track, eliminate freedom, and produce answers that bring about more top-down control.

I can’t emphasize that strongly enough:

—The use of dupes and pawns, organized into groups, which cause more chaos and try to demoralize and box in THE INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL.

But the independent individual must survive, because he is where civilization begins.

The independent individual must understand this: his rational powers, and his imagination and creative impulse, are the foundation of anything that could be called civilization.

He can sacrifice these abilities on some altar of expediency or fear, but if he does, his light goes out.

Virtually ALL well-funded groups in the world who opt for change and betterment, under the banner of “greatest good for everyone,” are controlled.

They are paid for and run as fronts for global takeover. Their workers on the ground are clueless.

The elites we call the Globalists are basically promoting the following message: “If consent is withdrawn from our brilliant structure, life will go down the drain. We must have more groups who support our structure.”

Who basically withdraws consent? THE INDIVIDUAL.

Those individuals who sacrifice their own rational power and imagination are, in effect, consenting to the Globalist takeover.

That takeover is not civilization in any meaningful sense of the word.

It is tyranny.

Tyranny takes everything from the independent individual, and gives it to the permanently dependent individual.

And then, as the vortex spins deeper, more people become dependent, and the tyrants allow them just enough to survive on the margins.

Every sane person wants a better world, but most sane people don’t yet recognize how that impulse can be twisted against them. Do you believe power-elites would promote their vision under the banner of “a police state” or “dictatorship, poverty, and loss of hope for all”?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Changing Everything

April 8, 2016

Changing Everything

wind_2768875b

Among climate change activists, solutions usually center on a transition to renewable energy. There may be differences over whether this would be best accomplished by a carbon tax, bigger subsidies for wind and solar power, divestment from fossil fuel companies, massive demonstrations, legislative fiat or some other strategy, but the goal is generally the same: replace dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. Such a transition is often given a significance that goes well beyond its immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions: it would somehow make our exploitative relationship to Nature more environmentally sound, our relationship to each other more socially equitable. In part this is because the fossil fuel corporations – symbolized by the villainous Koch brothers – will be a relic of the past, replaced by ‘green’ corporations and entrepreneurs that display none of their predecessors’ ruthlessness and greed.

Maybe, but I have my doubts. Here in Vermont, for example, a renewable energy conference last year was titled, “Creating Prosperity and Opportunity Confronting Climate Change”. The event attracted venture capitalists, asset management companies, lawyers that represent renewable energy developers, and even a “brandthropologist” offering advice on “how to evolve Brand Vermont” in light of the climate crisis. The keynote speaker was Jigar Shah, author of Creating Climate Wealth, who pumped up the assembled crowd by telling them that switching to renewables “represents the largest wealth creation opportunity of our generation.” He added that government has a role in making that opportunity real: “policies that incentivize resource efficiency can mean scalable profits for businesses.”[1] If Shah is correct, the profit motive – in less polite company it might be called ‘greed’ – will still be around in a renewable energy future.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Stability begets instability: The challenges of the post-2008 world

February 15, 2016

Stability begets instability: The challenges of the post-2008 world

Most people value stability in their lives. And, this makes perfect sense. Stability usually means an adequate, secure income; an established group of friends and family members with whom we are close; an identity in our communities based on our jobs, community involvement, and personal networks; physical safety in our daily lives, that is, no war or extreme violence where we live; and relative psychological calm that reflects that stability.

But humans value other things such as variety and novelty. In short, we can get bored. And, in order to address our boredom, we must actually seek out instability in our lives. We proceed to upset the very stability which we believe makes us comfortable and safe by engaging in activities that subject us to physical, financial and emotional risk such as sports, gambling or new relationships.

There is, of course, the disruption of our routine that comes from external events, from things that we do not necessarily choose: the loss of a job, a divorce, the death of a loved one, or injury due to accident. External events can also be positive: an unsolicited job offer, an unexpected romance, or the miraculous recovery of a loved one.

As it is with individuals, so it is with nations and complex social systems such as corporations and markets which reflect these same seemingly contradictory desires for stability, but also variety and novelty. It seems the social mood cannot go long without experiencing some interesting disruption: a war, an economic boom or a bust, a change of political parties, a change in fashion, a disruptive technology.

As moderns we are taught that constant change is good and a sign of progress. It should not seem strange that all this change can undermine our personal stability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2015: the Year that Changed Everything?

January 1, 2016

2015: the Year that Changed Everything?

Recent wildfires in California, photo from the Independent

There has been no lack of disasters taking place in 2015. Some can be classified as “natural” others as human caused. In all cases, anyway, they are an indication of the stress felt by the ecosystem and by the economic system at the same time. We are, finally, reaching our limits as we knew we had to, from the time when we were warned, in 1972, by the study titled “The Limits to Growth.”

But not everything was bad in 2015 and, in this post for the end of the year, let’s concentrate on the good things that happened. If we do that, we see that 2015 has been a very special year. Not that any of the big problems we face has been solved; but there is something new going on; something unexpected, but that may give a boost to a new direction that the world may take; a direction that may lead us to a better world. We may be learning something, after all.

So, let me list some of the good things that happened in 2015

– The Papal Encyclical on climate, the “Laudato si'”. This has really been something big. For one thing, it was clear from the way it affected the debate. Mostly, climate scientists, and scientists in general, are no-nonsense people, often atheists or agnostics, rarely churchgoers. So, the arrival of the Pope in the debate took them by surprise: “The Pope? What? Does he agree with us? Really? He said that God orders to us to safeguard the creation….. Eh….?” You can’t imagine how happy these solemn scientists were; like children receiving a Christmas gift in August! But the main effect of the Pope’s encyclical has been on the anti-science camp. They were, clearly, in difficulty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to change the world in 3 easy steps

December 23, 2015

How to change the world in 3 easy steps

I often get asked by people about what they can do to change things, to change the world, when each of us is just one person, in the face of so much that we cannot even hope to control or influence.

What can we do? Why bother, given our powerlessness?

As we look back on the key events of 2015, and the processes that led to them, it would be all too easy to succumb to despair.

Despite fighting the ‘war on terror’ for 14 years since 9/11, we’ve only succeeded in seeing terrorism accelerate, metastasising into the so-called ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria. We have invested well over $5 trillion on the ‘war on terror’ since 9/11, but according to US State Department data, in this period terror attacks have skyrocketed by 6,500 percent, while the number of casualties from terror attacks has increased by 4,500 percent.

Decades of international climate negotiations have culminated in a ‘binding’ climate accord that still guarantees carbon emissions that would tip us into a planet on average 4 degrees Celsius hotter by mid-century, creating largely inhospitable conditions for much of the global population, and potentially triggering runaway amplifying feedbacks that would accelerate climate change further.

And while governments and international institutions continue to explore neoliberal capitalist solutions to kick-start economic growth, they are failing. The IMF itself concedes that the world has still not recovered from the 2008 banking collapse; and that pumping cheap money into the global economy has inflated debt to higher than pre-crash levels. Another financial crisis is inevitable.

These seemingly disparate crises are not happening separately and accidentally. They are interrelated symptoms of our global civilisational paradigm, premised on fossil fuel-driven unlimited growth on a finite planet, through geopolitical alliances with autocratic, terror-toting — but oil-rich — regimes in the Muslim world.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mapping the Emerging Post-Capitalist Paradigm and Its Main Thinkers

December 10, 2015

MAPPING THE EMERGING POST-CAPITALIST PARADIGM AND ITS MAIN THINKERS

“We do not live in an era of change, but in a change of eras” is the way Jan Rotmans from the University Rotterdam describes the structural changes impacting our societies. This is also the phrase Michel Bauwens chose to open his latest book yet to be published in English which title is likely to be close to “Towards a post-capitalist society with the Peer-to-Peer”.

For thinkers like Jan Rotmans and Michel Bauwens this change of eras is akin to the Industrial Revolution in the second half of the 19th century, and characterized by transitions in various fields. In a nutshell, our societies face 3 major tipping points:

A change in social order from a central, hierarchically-controlled society to a horizontal, decentralized, and bottom-up working unit.
A changing economic structure: where in the past large, bureaucratic organizations were necessary to produce cheap products, in the new digital economy it is possible to develop products and services locally on a small scale.
A change in power relations: where once political influence and economies of scale determined access to resources, access to knowledge and information is now also accessible outside of political and social institutions.

Following this analysis, it is to gain further insights that we at blaqswans.org wanted to paint a big picture of the emerging post-capitalist paradigm, underpinned by peer-to-peer and collaborative dimensions. We started mapping various domains to go beyond the anecdotal evidence that such or such initiative is venturing into car-sharing or house swapping.

(click on the images for higher resolution)

We confirmed a few things as we drew this map:

There is much more to this transition that the greenwashing offered by Uber and Airbnb, which are actually not peer-to-peer. This is precisely why we deliberately reused the shape of a honeycomb popularised by the “Collaborative Economy Honeycomb” infographic. It lists startup companies claiming to be part of that ‘sharing economy’, when many really are unbridled capitalism trying to further optimise the existing ‘selling economy’ – nothing wrong with selling but let’s not call it ‘sharing’ with the ethical claims usually attached to it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Will Never Be The Same. Neither Will The World.

November 2, 2015

Europe Will Never Be The Same. Neither Will The World.

RLOppenheimer New flag for EU 2015

To reiterate: People are genetically biased against change, because change means potential danger. People are also genetically biased against acknowledging this bias, because they wish to see themselves as being able to cope with both change and danger. Put together, this means that when changes come, people are largely unprepared or underprepared.

Take this beyond the bias of the individual, and apply it to that of the group (s)he belongs to, the vantage point of a society, and you find the bias multiplies and becomes self-confirming. That is, the members of the group reinforce each other’s bias. When change comes in small and gradual steps, as it mostly does, this can be said to work relatively well. When it comes in large and sudden steps, trouble ensues.

This little bit of psychology 101 may seem redundant, but it is indispensable if we wish it to recognize the implications of Europe -and the entire world with it, in its slipstream- having already entered a period of change so profound it is impossible to predict what the impact will be. We can do a lot better at this than we do today, where so far the drivers of change, and indeed the changes themselves, are ignored and/or denied.

This ignorance and denial threatens to lead to a needless increase in nationalism, fascism, violence, misery, death and warfare. If we were to acknowledge that the change is inevitable, and prepare ourselves accordingly, much of this could be avoided.

There are two main engines of change that have started to transform the Europe we think we know. First, a mass migration spearheaded by the flight of refugees from regions in the world which Europeans have actively helped descend into lethal chaos. Second, an economic downturn the likes of which hasn’t been seen in 80 years or so (think Kondratieff cycle).

Negative ideas about refugees are already shaping everyday opinion and politics in many places, and this will be greatly exacerbated by the enormous economic depression that for now remains largely hidden behind desperate sleight-of-hands enacted by central bankers, politicians and media.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Patience of the Sea

October 29, 2015

The Patience of the Sea

I’ve commented here more than once that these essays draw their inspiration from quite a variety of sources. This week’s post is no exception to that rule. What kickstarted the train of thought that brought it into being was a walk along the seashore last weekend at Ocean City, Maryland, watching the waves roll in and thinking about the imminent death of a good friend.

East coast ocean resorts aren’t exactly a common destination for vacations in October, but then I wasn’t there for a vacation. I think most of my readers are aware that I’m a Freemason; it so happens that three organizations that supervise certain of the higher degrees of Masonry in Maryland took advantage of cheap off-season hotel rates to hold their annual meetings in Ocean City last weekend. Those readers who like to think of Masonry as a vast conspiracy of devil-worshipping space lizards, or whatever the Masonophobic paranoia du jour happens to be these days, would have been heartily disappointed by the weekend’s proceedings: a few dozen guys in off-the-rack business suits or cheap tuxedos, most of them small businessmen, skilled tradesmen, or retirees, donning the ornate regalia of an earlier time and discussing such exotic and conspiratorial topics as liability insurance for local lodges.

That said, a very modest sort of history was made at this year’s session of the Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters of Maryland—as the name suggests, that’s the outfit that supervises the local bodies that confer the degrees of Royal Master and Select Master on qualified Master Masons in this state. More precisely, it’s one of two such bodies in Maryland. Back in the eighteenth century, Masonry in the United States split into two segregated branches, one for white and Native American Masons, the other for African-American Masons. Late in the twentieth century, as most other segregated institutions in American life dropped the color bar, the two branches of Masonry began a rapprochement as well.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Our Aversion To Change Leads Us Into Danger

October 9, 2015

How Our Aversion To Change Leads Us Into Danger

The deeply embedded, genetically determined aversion -or resistance- to change that we are all born with is an important survival tactic. Since change equals potential danger, our aversion to it keeps us out of danger.

We are ‘programmed’ to prefer familiar surroundings, to first look at what we recognize, and to ignore what we do not until we feel comfortable enough about what we do know.

Ironically, though, the aversion to change can also lead us into danger. Because it prevents us from preparing for change, and therefore preparing for danger.

Yes, people can adapt, they have that ability too, but we don’t fully adapt to change until and unless we’re forced to. And while it may not be too late then, it certainly tends to make adaptation much more difficult.

We prefer to focus on those things that stay the same, or seem to stay the same, ignoring those that don’t, even if they change in -comparatively- radical ways, until we no longer can. But by then we have most often missed a significant part of the time and the opportunity to adapt to them. Our resistance to change causes us to miss those changes that happen despite our efforts at keeping things the same.

The deeper problem, as every thinking human can recognize, is that things always change, life changes, the world does. Nothing ever stays the same. Change itself is the only constant. Life equals change. Without change, there would be no life.

And arguably -since time is perhaps not a constant-, changes come even faster today than they have historically, in the perception of our ancestors, both in human designed systems and in natural systems. And the faster the changes come, the more vulnerable our inborn aversion to change makes us. Which in turn reinforces that aversion all the more.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An Unprecedented Future

October 6, 2015

An Unprecedented Future

I can see The Age of Consequences from my home.

We live on a former ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico, that is now a subdivision with more than two thousand houses. Due to its proximity to a center of colonial Spanish, Mexican, and American administrations, as well as the Santa Fe Trail, the land where live has hosted a variety of livestock for nearly 400 years. In the 1950s, the owner of the 13,000-acre ranch invested in new wells, dirt tanks, roads and a ranch house complex, complete with a swimming pool, in an effort to create a prosperous cattle operation on the property. This effort continued for two decades, right up to the day the ranch was sold to a real estate company, who had a different definition of prosperity in mind.

Of all the artifacts left over from the ranch’s heyday, the one that I’ve watched closely over the years are the old dirt roads.

When we moved to the subdivision in 2003, the former ranch roads were still in decent shape, especially in the greenbelts where houses were excluded. Mostly two-tracks, the roads were easy to follow. As my wife and I walked our dogs and chatted side-by-side, we could pick out features of the ranch as we strolled, including dirt tanks for cattle and evidence of tree-cutting from days long gone. There was a timelessness at play in these parts of the old ranch, a feeling that despite the crop of houses, the land in between hadn’t changed much over the decades – a feeling that history would endure somehow.

I don’t feel that way anymore.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hope, Power, and Delusion

September 30, 2015

Hope, Power, and Delusion

Jeremy Corbyn has won the race for leadership of the Labour party. But Greek and Spanish activists advise against placing too much faith in political parties.

Jeremy Corbyn has won the race for leadership of the Labour party, and the anti-austerity movement of the UK rejoices: “Finally we will see change”.

Theodoros Karyotis speaking at Debt Resistance UK:- Power Hope and Delusion. 10SEPT 2015

Simona Levi speaking at Debt Resistance UK:- Power Hope and Delusion. 10SEPT 2015. (Video credits: let-me-look tv)

I sit in front of my twitter feed perplexed.

I think back to an event I attended a few days ago in London, entitled “Power, Hope and Delusion”. It was a conversation with activists from Spain and Greece on the role left-wing parties are playing in the fight against the current neoliberal agenda and on their relationship with the grassroots anti-austerity movements across Europe.

The speakers were Theodoros Karyotis from Greece and Simona Levi from Barcelona, both active in the social movements in their countries and often blogging about them in English. Their main message was clear: do not be deluded that the change you want to see will come from the rise of the anti-austerity political parties.

As I write this article, I wonder, if in the current hype for Corbyn’s win, the UK anti-austerity movement is prepared to listen to the advice of our European allies, or if we prefer to remain blinded by the hope finally given to us by a ‘long awaited’ leader.

I fear this hope. A hope based on the idea that change only happens from above, through existing political institutions, as that is where power lies. A hope based on fear and desperation for someone to protect us from above from the evil forces we are facing today.

– See more at: http://commonstransition.org/hope-power-and-delusion/#sthash.hCeqkNAv.dpuf

The War Against Change

August 13, 2015

The War Against Change

Last week’s post explored the way that the Democratic party over the last four decades has abandoned any claim to offer voters a better future, and has settled for offering them a future that’s not quite as bad as the one the Republicans have in mind. That momentous shift can be described in many ways, but the most useful of them, to my mind, is one that I didn’t bring up last week: the Democrats have become America’s conservative party.

Yes, I know. That’s not something you’re supposed to say in today’s America, where “conservative” and “liberal” have become meaningless vocal sounds linked with the greedy demands of each party’s assortment of pressure groups and the plaintive cries of its own flotilla of captive constituencies. Still, back in the day when those words still meant something, “conservative” meant exactly what the word sounds like: a political stance that focuses on conserving some existing state of affairs, which liberals and radicals want to replace with some different state of affairs. Conservative politicians and parties—again, back when the word meant something—used to defend existing political arrangements against attempts to change them.

That’s exactly what the Democratic Party has been doing for decades now. What it’s trying to preserve, of course, is the welfare-state system of the New Deal of the 1930s and the Great Society programs of the 1960s—or, more precisely, the fragments of that system that still survive. That’s the status quo that the Democrats are attempting to hold in place. The consequences of that conservative mission are unfolding around us in any number of ways, but the one that comes to mind just now is the current status of presidential candidate Bernard Sanders as a lightning rod for an all too familiar delusion of the wing of the Democratic party that still considers itself to be on the left.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Change They Don’t Believe In

April 21, 2015

Change They Don’t Believe In

The unfortunate consequence of not allowing the process of “creative destruction” to occur in banking and Big Business is that the historic forces behind it will seek expression elsewhere in the realm of politics and governance. The desperate antics of central banks to cover up financial failure can’t help but provoke political upheaval, including war.

It’s a worldwide phenomenon and one result will be the crackup of economic relations — thought by many to be permanent — that we call “globalism.” The USA has suffered mightily from globalism, by which a bonanza of cheap “consumer” products made by Asian factory slaves has masked the degeneration of local economic vitality, family life, behavioral norms, and social cohesion. That crackup is already underway in the currency wars aptly named by Jim Rickards, and you can bet that soon enough it will lead to the death of the 12,000-mile supply lines from China to WalMart — eventually to the death of WalMart itself (and everything like it). Another result will be the interruption of oil export supply lines.

The USA as currently engineered (no local economies, universal suburban sprawl, big box commerce, despotic agribiz) won’t survive these disruptions and one might also wonder whether our political institutions will survive. The crop of 2016 White House aspirants shows no comprehension for the play of these forces and the field is ripe for epic disruption. The prospect of another Clinton – Bush election contest is a perfect setup for the collapse of the two parties sponsoring them, ushering in a period of wild political turmoil. Just because you don’t see it this very moment, doesn’t mean it isn’t lurking on the margins.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems

April 3, 2015

It’s Time to Get Serious About Systemic Solutions to Systemic Problems

It’s getting harder and harder to be an optimist. A deep economic crisis has given way to a profoundly unequal recovery. Climate catastrophe is steadily unfolding across the globe. And the work of building a racially inclusive society appears to be stalled — indeed, in many areas, to be losing ground. All of this in an age of unprecedented technological progress, which has manifestly failed to keep its promises. If there is one saving grace, it is that the pain caused by these interconnected failures make it possible — for the first time in modern history — to pose the question of system change in a serious fashion, even in the United States, the faltering heart of global capitalism.

To pose the system question means first and foremost to point out that long, failing trends are anchored far more deeply in political-economic structures than conventional political debate suggests. It is to ask how the system is built, for whom, and how it operates to recurrently produce the decaying outcomes we are experiencing. There is, in fact, no shortage of people today to tell us that something is wrong, that things are built to work for the wealthy, for the white and for those far from the frontlines of climate and social calamity. Such diagnoses are increasingly commonplace and harder and harder to contest.

It is no major leap from such anguished complaints to recognition that the system itself –American corporate capitalism — is generating the outcomes we witness; that we do, indeed, face a systemic challenge, one manifestly not responsive to traditional political approaches and strategies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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