Fourteen years ago, I wrote a very long article that became the lion’s share of Chapter Two of Keith Farnish’s book Underminers. My article was about the Tools of Disconnection — the cultural mechanisms by which we became disconnected from each other and the more-than-human world, and hence willing and able to endure civilization and all the atrocities that it has perpetrated. The image from the article is reproduced above.
I think the article still holds up, though if I were to rewrite it today it would be a lot less strident and blame-y. We have conditioned each other, the only way we could have, and with the best of intentions, to live in a way that no wild creature would ever tolerate. In so doing, we have created, with civilization, a pressure cooker culture that, tragically, seems to bring out the worst in us.
The tools of our disconnection — our education system, the media, propaganda, marketing, political indoctrination, and just our well-intended conditioning of each other from childhood and throughout our lives (“If you want to succeed in this world, you have to do this“) — have, I would assert, led to behaviours that have made us physically unhealthy, chronically frightened, angry, distrustful, dissatisfied, and traumatized, so that we have been cowed into accepting a culture that has, in just a few millennia, horrifically overpopulated and desolated the planet.
The “management” of this utterly unsustainable culture, which is now rapidly falling apart, has required the evolution of a caste system, much like the horrific system that arises in groups of rats in similar conditions of ghastly overcrowding and scarcity. The top caste has been labeled (by Barbara Ehrenreich in the 1970s) the Professional Managerial Caste, or PMC.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article..
Things appear no better this week on WWIII’s European front. That unelected worm, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunakat a Monday May 13th meeting of the Policy Exchange think tank, actually stated:
[If Russia succeeds in Ukraine, UK] might be next, [adding that Moscow’s] recklessness has taken us closer to a dangerous nuclear escalation than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
All these Western puppets read from the same central banking cartel mono-script.
This City of London weasel actually accused Russia of cutting off the West’s gas/oil supply when it was Western puppets following orders of their moneychanging masters to destroy Russia with unending economic sanctions that is chiefly the cause of the West’s mess today.
Now facing the worst economic collapse ever, unable to heat their homes and factories during the winter, the West is undergoing the elites’ controlled demolition, gutting out all Western economies assured to bring the intended outcome, the plotted diabolical death of Western civilization itself.
Yet another of Rishi’s false projections blames Russia for weaponizing the immigration crises to achieve its goals.
These little mindless maggots in the West are always ordered to falsely blame globalist invented enemies Russia, China and Iran for all their own malevolent crimes against humanity. It’s a never-ending broken record of nonstop lies that never stop flowing from these mealy-mouthed demons.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to this litany of bogus allegations:
Sunak’s lies are so desperate that one could even feel sorry for him. Russia did not stop gas supplies even for a second.
Maria reminded Sunak that it is the wars led by the US-UK in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria that led directly to the thousands of displaced war refugees pouring into Europe and has nothing to do with Russia. Of course, we know that today’s unprecedented worst migration crisis on earth is the sole doing of the globalist masters creating every conflict and warzone that are responsible for this deliberately engineered global crisis. Be it the wide-open borders in both Europe and America, neither are Russia’s doing.
Regarding Rishi Sunak blaming Russia for “nuclear escalation,” again Maria reminded simpleton it was the West greenlighting Zelensky’s repeated shelling of Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant at Zaporozhye NPP that endangered the entire European continent, not Russia.
And that it again was the US/NATO members that banned Russian energy imports, not Moscow.
Maria confronted that Russia stopped its energy deliveries to Europe, correcting him that it was not Russia but US-UK criminal collaborative betrayal that destroyed supposed ally Germany’s energy lifeline with Russia, the sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The neocon faction of the permanent ruling class, which permeates both parties, is eternally dangerous and must be perpetually kept in check, if not purged entirely.
The year was 2006, in the middle of a decade that cemented my hate for the state, probably forever.
The terror induced by government’s War of Terror propaganda was at its apex.
Jingoistic “Freedom Fries” were on offer at various patriotic establishment because “French fries” were faggy and soft.
The neocons had their guy, literally minus a beating heart, Dick Cheney, strategically placed as the real president, playing his moronic nominal boss like a fiddle.
The PATRIOT Act was in full effect and American civil liberties had never been more broken — although they would be in subsequent years.
And one Newt Gingrich, the viscerally repulsive, bloated embodiment of the rot in the overfed GOP establishment, wanted to censor the internet… because ‘Merica.
It went without saying at the time that, if you oppose state control of the web, you support terrorism.
In order to defend America, once must undermine all of the fundamental founding principles that made it great in the first place.
“Back in 2006, Gingrich argued censoring the Internet would be the right thing to do when it comes to Islamic radicals who use the web to organize jihad against the U.S.
‘We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually literally lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we’re unfortunate,’ Mr. Gingrich said during a speech in New Hampshire, according to a story I wrote at the time for The New York Sun. ‘We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of the threat.’…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The world has become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, and the opportunities for misinformation have become almost limitless.
Disinformation is all about power, and because of the harmful and far-reaching influence that disinformation exerts, it cannot achieve much without power.
As a tool for shaping public perceptions, disinformation can be used by authoritarian regimes and democracies alike. The dissemination of false information is not a new practice in human history. However, over the last few decades, it has become professionalized and has taken on exorbitant proportions at both national and international levels.The Origins of Disinformation
Disinformation can be understood as misleading information, intentionally produced and deliberately disseminated, to mislead public opinion, harm a target group, or advance political or ideological objectives.
The term disinformation is a translation of the Russian дезинформация (dezinformatsiya). On Jan. 11, 1923, the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to create a Department of Disinformation. Its mission was “to mislead real or potential adversaries about the true intentions” of the USSR. From then on, disinformation became a tactic of Soviet political warfare known as “active measures,” a crucial element of Soviet intelligence strategy involving falsification, subversion, and media manipulation.
During the Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, this tactic was used by numerous intelligence agencies. The expression “disinformation of the masses” came into increasing use in the 1960s and became widespread in the 1980s. Former Soviet bloc intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, the first disinformation professional to defect to the West, observed in this regard that ”The interpretation [of the term] is slightly distorted because public opinion is only one of the potential targets. Many disinformation games are designed only to manipulate the decision-making elite, and receive no publicity.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
To be crucified is to suffer and die slowly and agonizingly. It was a common form of execution in the ancient world. It is generally associated with Rome’s killing of Jesus and carries profound symbolic spiritual meaning for Christians.
In its figurative sense, it refers to many types of suffering and death inflicted on the weak by the strong, such as the ongoing genocidal slaughter of Palestinians by the Israel government.
Twenty or so years ago when the wearing of crosses by all types of people was the cultural rage, a woman I know said she was thinking of getting one.
When I asked her why, since she was Jewish, she said it was because she thought they were beautiful. She seemed oblivious to the fact that to Christians they were gruesome but revelatory spiritual symbols, the equivalent of the electric chair or a noose, but linked to the Easter Resurrection and the non-violent triumph over death that is at the core of Christianity.
Her focus on beauty forcibly struck me that secular culture had triumphed in its establishment of an anti-creed creed wherein the pursuit of a sense of well-being and aesthetic tranquility had trumped traditional belief, while it used all faiths in its pursuit of a self-centered nihilism through a faux-spirituality linked to a precious aesthetic of beauty.
Philip Rieff noticed this in the mid-1960s when he wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic:
To raise the question of nihilism, as sociologists since Auguste Comte have done, demonstrates a major change in tone: the note of apprehension has gone out of the asking. We believe that we know something our predecessors did not: that we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as unremembering, honest, and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden….
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russia is a big bite. In fact, it’s such a big bite that all of its enemies and invaders choked on it, while many have suffocated as a result, incapable of ever regaining their superpower status.
The political West has been the most stubborn in its attempts to subjugate the Eurasian giant.
However, it has never done so in such a united manner as is the case nowadays.
The NIH has ceased any pretense of overseeing risky virus research and now coordinates with Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance on public relations.
A new set of documents raise further questions about statements made by the National Institutes of Health regarding papers showing they funded risky virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create dangerous chimeric viruses.
EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak notified NIH funders that EcoHealth Health Alliance planned to conduct risky virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), in a June 2016 letter, many months before a pause on such research was lifted in 2017. When the NIH released some of this information in 2021, they assured Congress and the public that these chimeric virus studies could not have led to the COVID virus, but they did so in a public statement that cited research the NIH itself had funded at the WIV.
The documents also show that, after once making a pretense of overseeing EcoHealth Alliance’s grants, the NIH is now happy to coordinate messaging with Peter Daszak’s nonprofit.
“Please pass this information on to the people at NIAID who need to coordinate communications,” Daszak wrote to NIH official Erik Stemmy, attaching a draft of a May 2023 press release. “And I’m available this evening, all day Friday and any time over the weekend to discuss.”
The 611 pages of new documents were provided to The DisInformation Chronicle by the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, which has sued the NIH to gain access to public records. Neither NIH spokeswoman Renate Myles nor EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak returned numerous requests for comment.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Millions of dollars were spent to weaponize the public against all of us
Story at a Glance:
•There has been a coordinated campaign to attack and defame anyone who has spoken out against the COVID-19 response. This has primarily been restricted to social media (e.g., getting people deplatformed) but it has also been weaponized in real life (e.g., getting medical licenses revoked).
•This coordinated campaign was the result of a “non-profit” known as The Public Good Project (PGP), which was actually directly linked to the pharmaceutical industry. The PGP used the industry funding it received to defend industry interests.
•Vaccine safety advocates were able to get into the group where these campaigns were coordinated. There, they discovered numerous public figures working hand in hand with healthcare workers to descend like a hive of bees on anyone “promoting misinformation.” Likewise, we learned that the most belligerent doctors we keep encountering on Twitter belonged to these groups.
•Some of the influencers advancing PGP’s message through “Shots Heard” (and its sister United Nations initiative “Team Halo”) were hucksters who faked their own credentials. My overall impression from looking at everything was that this group operated in a very similar manner to many of the sleazy internet marketing operations I’ve seen in the past. Fortunately, the public appears to be seeing through what they did.
Almost any viewpoint can be “proven” using the “correct” evidence and logic. Purely as a challenge, I’ve successfully done this in the past with beliefs I consider to be abhorrent and completely disagree with…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
One of the first posts in this newsletter’s Shrinking Trust Horizon series was about how “deep fake” technology will make fake images, videos, and audio recordings almost indistinguishable from the real thing. This will kill millions of modeling and acting jobs, while weaponizing audio and video in all kinds of disturbing ways.
A Maryland high school teacher has been arrested for allegedly using AI to deepfake a bogus recording of his principal making racist comments.
Dazhon Darien, 31, is accused of creating the hoax audio of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert.
Mr Eiswert was placed on leave and had police outside his home amid death threats he received over the fake clip.
Mr Darien was held at an airport after a security check over a gun in his bag found an arrest warrant against him.
He faces charges of stalking, theft, disruption of school operations and retaliation against a witness.
Baltimore County Schools Superintendent Myriam Rogers said the school, as well as the Baltimore County Police Department, launched an investigation on 17 January when they were made aware of the voice recording.
Detectives requested a forensic analysis of the audio, which found it was not authentic.
In the recording, Mr Eiswert’s deepfaked voice is heard making disparaging comments about black students’ test scores, black teachers and Jews.
Police believe Mr Darien, the Baltimore-area school’s athletic director, made the recording to retaliate against Mr Eiswert because he was pursuing an investigation into potential mishandling of district funds.
Mr Darien had authorised a payment of nearly $2,000 (£1,600) to his roommate, falsely claiming the roommate was an assistant coach for the Pikesville girls’ soccer team, reports the Baltimore Sun newspaper.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“It is the function of mass agitation to exploit all the grievances, hopes, aspirations, prejudices, fears, and ideals of all the special groups that make up our society, social, religious, economic, racial, political. Stir them up. Set one against the other. Divide and conquer. That’s the way to soften up a democracy.”― J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit
“Nothing is real,” observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics.
Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.
This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.
Everything becomes entertainment fodder.
As long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.
Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.
“We the people” are watching a lot of TV.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
-Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” my Midwestern Irish-Catholic grandmammy used to opine as she indiscriminately lined up and sadistically hosed her captive grand-progenies down in the backyard, me included, after discovering a lone louse on a single head.
“That’s how we did it in the old country,” she would add.
Given how much historically unprecedented power is vested in the nuclear-armed government, derived in theory from the people, one would expect it to be beholden to a higher moral, ethical, and legal standard than the general population.
In a just society, at least, that would be the case.
But, of course, the United States government pursues justice no more than it adheres to Constitutional restraints. And so the most powerful actors in government can lie to anyone they like with impunity, but a powerless citizen making false statements to the FBI is a federal crime.
White House, State Department, et al. “press briefings,” — as they are euphemistically called because it has a more wholesome progressive ring than “Propaganda Power Hour” — are ritualistic exercises in sadomasochistic humiliation of a captured and put-upon domestic (and domesticated) American population.
At least once upon a time, the government propagandists who occupied the role of “X Department Spokesman” were skilled liars who maintained some pretense of respect for the media and minimal competency. This, by extension, conveyed some modicum of respect for the people whose interests the media allegedly serves. It was always an exercise in bullshit dissemination, but the window dressing of respectability and legitimacy was maintained.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Yet more propaganda and censorship, domestic and foreign
The Wrap-up Smear.
Although this Substack is about international news, I want to start with a five-year old old video of Nancy Pelosi describing a tactic used by democrats and the deep state to target and defame conservatives and people they deem unacceptable, like me. Have a listen. [go to article to view]
“You smear somebody with falsehoods and all the rest and then you merchandise it and then you write it and they’ll say, see, it’s reported in the press that this, this, this and this, so they have that validation that the press reported the smear and then it’s called a wrap-up smear. Now I am going to merchandise the press’ report on the smear that we made. It’s a tactic, and its self evident.”
Representative Nancy Pelosi
This gambit is used a lot. This is what the deep staters used on the original signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. During the Covidcrisis and beyond, it has been utilized by the deep state to divide the sovereignty movement. Of particular interest and relevance is the number of “hit” pieces by conservative influencers to get the leaders of the movement. It you are playing into this gossip game, you are part of the problem. The deep state is using you by getting you to amplify messages that will divide people and organizations that the government doesn’t approve of.
This is a form of black propaganda being used against us by our own government.
As the Supreme court decides the fate of free speech in America today, never forget what we are up against.
Funnily enough, NATO actually has a 2020 report titled “Information Laundering in Germany”, which includes a graphic that describes the “wrap-up smear”.
Our Ruling Class: Always Pushing In the Wrong Direction
A very brief contemplation that is a comment I posted on the Honest Sorcerer’s latest piece of writing.
It’s pretty self-evident (at least to everyone outside of the hypnotic manipulation of US propaganda) that the American ruling caste cares little (if at all) for any other group of people or nation — not even their own domestic population (or some in their own ranks). Of course, it’s also not hard to argue that this is true of any society’s ruling caste. Their primary motivation is the control/expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus positions of power and prestige. Everything else is secondary/tertiary and even these are leveraged to help the primary goal.
While the endgame of all the machinations of our elite seems fairly obvious (complete and devastating global collapse of industrial civilisation — perhaps even worse — given how deeply into ecological overshoot our species is), it’s frustrating (to say the least) for those of us who view the world through the complexities that go beyond geo/politics and economics (i.e., include ecology, biology, physics, psychology, etc.) and understand the need for global leadership that differs significantly from that being shown by the sociopaths that do wield ‘power’ in our world.
Throw in the divisions that even exist within those circles that understand our overshoot predicament and how best to address this (I think of those who beat the drum about sustaining our complexities via some magical ‘clean’ energy transition — which is being leveraged by the elite to pillage national treasuries and peoples even further), and that endgame I mention above seems baked in at this juncture.
Attempting to make one’s local community as self-sufficient as possible in these crazy times seems the only sane course of action. Getting people on board with such a pursuit when society’s ‘leaders’ are pushing with all their might in the exact opposite direction[1] is, however, a task in and of itself — particularly when those who question mainstream narratives are increasingly being censored, vilified, deplatformed, ostracised, and even criminalised.
[1] Example of this insanity by my province’s government here.
Do you remember how the unconstitutional, pastel-authoritarian and totally batshit insane “Disinformation Governance Board” – with its Mary Poppins-cosplaying, Monty Python level of unintentional self-satirizing department head – was rolled out two years ago like a half-joke, half-beta-test of a version of the 1984 Ministry of Truth?
Well, kids, I wouldn’t really call this 4D chess or anything, but of course this was just bait. This parody and its rapid withdrawal reassures us that nothing of the sort could conceivably take place, while also seeding a visible, red-herring template for how we should expect heavy-handed, overt propaganda efforts to look in this day and age.
Meanwhile, there are currently massive efforts in the background and below the surface, all across the playing field, towards implementing big data and AI technology for not only the purposes of classical, increasingly obsolete propaganda or simple surveillance. No, this time, we’re exploring entirely novel methods of behavioural modification and narrative control intended to GET OUT AHEAD of the crystallization of discourses and even the formation of identities and worldviews.
They want to control the formation and reproduction of “social imaginaries”.
So the idea is to use massive data collection and AI pattern recognition to preemptively disrupt the formation of behaviourally significant narratives, discourses or patterns of information.
With these tools of “early diagnosis” of information that potentially could disrupt the power structure and its objectives, it then becomes possible to nip it in the bud incredibly early on, way before such information has even coalesced into something like coherent narratives or meaningful models for explanation or further (precarious) conclusions.
Magical Thinking to Help Avoid Anxiety-Provoking Thoughts
Today’s contemplation shares a comment I made to a Facebook Group a number of days ago in response to an article by Dr. Ugo Bardi — whose writing, especially around limits to growth and his proposal about the Seneca cliff decline we are likely to face as we bump into the biophysical limits imposed by a finite planet, I have enjoyed and greatly learned from. While we agree on much, we have a definite disagreement regarding the role and potential of non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies (what most refer to simply as ‘renewable’ energy — a powerful marketing twist of language given the actual technologies required are in a very limited way ‘renewable’ (i.e., recyclable/rebuildable) and are not energy sources but technologies to harvest ‘renewable’ energy).
Dr. Bardi posted the article I responded to in reaction to another article that was penned by The Honest Sorcerer that I had shared on one of the several Facebook Groups Dr. Bardi hosts. My original comment is in bold below with some links/charts to articles/research that support my perspective and some concluding remarks.
Whether the article is ‘peer-reviewed’ or not (and there are certainly issues with the ‘gold standard’ of peer review), the fact remains that non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies appear to be an extension of our fossil fuel-based energies relying upon them significantly in both the upstream and downstream industrial processes necessary for their production, maintenance, and after-life reclamation and/or disposal.
Ideally, peer review is an objective and forceful gate-keeper that serves to eliminate poor ‘science’ prior to it being widely distributed but the process is certainly less than perfect and has it criticisms, even from within academia (in fact, the mainstay of gate-keeping — that is, repeating the experiment — is rarely, if ever carried out; mostly because there is not one to replicate):
While there exist some small-scale examples of ‘renewables’ producing needed industrial products and ‘fuelling’ heavy equipment (and lots of marketing propaganda by vested interests around these; mostly, I would argue, to attract capital), the scale and cost are prohibitive, especially for a world already drowning in debt — to say little about the finite resources required to ‘convert’ the processes necessary. The bottom line is that in the present, and forgoing some miraculous as-yet-to-be-discovered technology, fossil fuel-based industrial processes are required for energy-harvesting technologies:
These processes also add significant pollutants to a world already experiencing overloading of its various compensatory sinks, to say little of the reality that fossil fuel use has seen little if any contraction in demand despite decades of exponential increase in so-called renewables.
Here are a handful of ‘academic’ articles on how the industrial processes necessary for ‘renewables’ impact negatively the environment. They are neither ‘clean’ nor ‘green’ but are almost always referred to them as such (again, a marketing ploy):
Here are a couple of charts to demonstrate that fossil fuel use has not decreased as ‘renewable energy technologies have increased in use (and significantly increased the past two decades). As this article highlights, the increase in ‘renewables’ has not detracted from our fossil fuel use (our dependence upon fossil fuels has continued to increase), it has simply offset the decline in nuclear-powered energy:
Highlighting the negative aspects of these technologies and the observation that they do not seem to be actually ‘solving’ in any way our fundamental predicament of ecological overshoot, or reducing our dependency upon fossil fuels, or reducing our destruction of the planet, is not ‘a mission received from God’; it is about challenging a narrative that seems quite problematic but is being marketed by many as the ‘solution’ to something that is increasingly looking to be a predicament that cannot be solved — and as William Catton Jr. pointed out in his 1980 text, we seem destined to experience the collapse that always tends to accompany overshoot because: “..habits of thought persist…people continue to advocate further technological breakthroughs as the supposedly sure cure for carrying capacity deficits. The very idea that technology caused overshoot, and that it made us too colossal to endure, remains alien to too many minds for ‘de-collosalization’ to be a really feasible alternative to literal die-off. There is a persistent drive to apply remedies that aggravate the problem.”
*****
My ‘motivation’ for sharing the above is to provide the opportunity for the reader to decide thru their own reading and ‘research’ which story appears more believable. As The Honest Sorcerer recently wrote in this article (and others have similarly argued[1]), it takes some ‘magical thinking’ to believe that non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies are any type of ‘solution’ for the predicament of ecological overshoot and for attempting to ‘sustain’ our globalised, complex society.
The widespread adoption of magical thinking to avoid anxiety-provoking cognitions is in no way surprising. It is perhaps, as Ajit Varki argues, that “Some aspects of human cognition and behavior appear unusual or exaggerated relative to those of other intelligent, warm-blooded, long-lived social species — including certain mammals (cetaceans, elephants and great apes) and birds (corvids and passerines). One such collection of related features is our facile ability for reality denial in the face of clear facts, a high capacity for self-deception and false beliefs, overarching optimism bias and irrational risk-taking behavior…”[2].
The allure of non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies is that they can create a story in which a transition to a ‘green/clean/sustainable’ future with most (all?) of our current complexities is not only possible but assured; in fact, for some, it is the only future we should be pursuing if we are to avoid civilizational ‘collapse’.
Such a future may be possible, I suppose, if ALL the right conditions are met — the most significant that I can think of off the top of my head are being far fewer people, far less imperial endeavours by our ruling elite, and the acceptance of far, far lower living standards by those in so-called ‘advanced’ economies.
Revealing the impediments that exist in such a narrative is not a God-inspired mission as Dr. Bardi accuses. But it can create both anxiety and significant uncertainty for those who have hooked their wagon up to the ‘renewable’ horses and are hoping to get to the big sustainable city on the horizon. So it’s not surprising that many (most?) rail against the argument that our current complexities can in no way be sustained via non-renewable, energy-harvesting technologies and our future path is likely going to be far more chaotic and problematic than most imagine — at least for those that ponder such a predicament, since most actually tend not to think about it.
A book I highly recommend to help in one’s understanding of our penchant for clinging to stories that appear ‘certain’ but very often are not is Dan Gardner’s Future Babble (my personal summary notes can be found here).
As he argues:
It is more often than not the confident, self-assured voice providing a simple story (regardless of ‘evidence’ to the contrary) that is the most persuasive and influences beliefs more — one told by the ‘hedgehogs’ as Gardner calls them. Contradictory evidence is rationalised away and certainty assured.
Given our predisposition to avoiding uncertainty and wishing control (to avoid fear and anxiety), we search for certainty, employ magical thinking, and see patterns where none exist; and someone who sounds like they are sure of their story (and especially if they are an ‘authority’ figure or ‘expert’) is preferred to the ‘foxes’ who will acknowledge complexity and uncertainty about their narrative with warnings and unsureness. Research demonstrates, however, that it is the enthusiasm and confidence more than the expert status that persuades people. It instills a sense of trust. Unfortunately, such overconfidence can lead people astray and into accepting false beliefs.
Further, Gardner argues that human cultures have always created stories about themselves and their world. This allows knowledge to be passed from generation to generation, strengthens social bonds, and allows possible outcomes to be practised. These narratives also function to explain and make sense of phenomena but if such stories are left unresolved, we are unsettled and search for resolution. And if the narrative doesn’t fit into our prior beliefs, we tend to ignore it or deny its implications. If we happen upon a ‘trusted’ expert’s story that resonates with our beliefs and values, we cling to it regardless of their prediction record (usually by forgetting failures but celebrating successes).
Misremembering and hindsight bias not only contribute to the illusion that the past was not uncertain but lead us to be less sceptical of prognostications about the future. We don’t recall that we worried about an uncertain future previously and that most predictions never materilaised. We seek certainty about the future and find it in trustful ‘experts’ and their forecasts.
In the end, we all believe what we want to believe; ‘facts’ be damned…
We could ‘debate’ the ‘facts’ forever and in reality be no closer whatsoever to the ‘truth’ as to whether ‘renewables’ could support a complex society, for only the playing out of the timeline can determine which perspective is ‘correct’. From a scientific method standpoint, we would carry out a number of experiments where significant variables would be controlled (hopefully) and eventually reach consensus on an interpretation of evidence.
Obviously, we cannot do such reality-testing for many (most?) of the narratives we create in our attempts to understand the world and sketch a rough picture of the future, so we continue to debate with the psychological mechanisms that impact our perceptions and beliefs influencing us constantly. While it is one thing to recognise that we are affected by these psychological phenomena, it is quite something different to be able to shield ourselves from them no matter how much we try.
In addition, we often have little to no idea about the eventual consequences of a remedy for a perceived problem, especially if it is a relatively newly recognised one — let alone a predicament that has no ‘solutions’. One of the things I have argued about complex systems is that with their non-linear feedback loops and emergent phenomena, they are impossible to predict (let alone control). Even with the most sophisticated models and the most powerful computer systems, the tiniest of errors in baseline assumptions can result in predictive trajectories being completely off-base from what may eventually occur.
I raise the above point because one of the arguments against pursuing non-renewable energy-harvesting technologies is that their production would bolster our overshoot by further withdrawing finite resources and overloading compensatory sinks. It would put us in even worse peril then we already seem to be in. Is this assured? Obviously not since the future is unwritten and unknowable but the danger remains. To argue there is no danger requires some significant denial, bargaining, and magical thinking.
Regardless of the real dangers and the accumulating evidence that our technologies have in fact created our overshoot and pursuing more of them will result in significant ecological damage, I have a feeling that attempting to create more of them is exactly what we will do. For it is the ruling elite who tend to be the ones who steer our economic policies and decisions, and they stand to profit handsomely from the production of such technologies due to their ownership of the industrial processes and financial institutions required for their production and distribution.
The notion of a managed ‘collapse’ which some advocate for is anathema to those that sit atop the power and wealth structures that exist in our globalised complex society. Better to advocate for and cheerlead confidently a path that can be packaged in a shiny techno-box of hope and certainty for the masses while ensuring revenue streams are maintained or even expanded.
