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Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXVIX–Problem Solving: Complexity, History, Sustainability
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXVIX–Problem Solving: Complexity, History, Sustainability Tulum, Mexico (1986). Photo by author. This Contemplation shares my thoughts on and a summary of an article by archaeologist Joseph Tainter that discusses societal problem solving’s complexity, history, and prospects for sustaining a society. It follows nicely from the four-part series I just completed regarding […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXVII–Collapse = Prolonged Period of Diminishing Returns + Significant Stress Surge(s), Part 3
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXVII– Collapse = Prolonged Period of Diminishing Returns + Significant Stress Surge(s), Part 3 Tulum, Mexico (1986). Photo by author. This Contemplation follows from Part 1 (Website; Medium; Substack) and 2 (Website; Medium; Substack) that was prompted by the devastation brought to the southeastern United States by way of Hurricane Helene. […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXIX–Archaeology of Overshoot and Collapse
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXIX–Archaeology of Overshoot and Collapse It’s been a few months since I last posted a Contemplation. There are a variety of reasons for this. I’ve been ‘distracted’ by the preparations in my gardens for the upcoming growing season. The unseasonably warm weather here north of Toronto allowed me to get outside […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXIV–Energy-Averaging Systems and Complexity: A Recipe For Collapse
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXIV November 28, 2021 Athens, Greece (1984) Photo by author Energy-Averaging Systems and Complexity: A Recipe For Collapse Supply chain disruptions and the product shortages that result have become a growing concern over the past couple of years and the reasons for these are as varied as the people providing the ‘analysis’. Production […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XV–Finite Energy, ‘Renewables’, and the Ruling Elite
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XV May 21, 2021 Rome, Italy (1984) Photo by author Finite Energy, ‘Renewables’, and the Ruling Elite Energy. It’s at the core of everything we do. Everything. Yet we take it for granted and rarely think about it and what the finiteness of our various energy sources means for us. As Gail Tverberg […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XI–Fiat Currency, Infinite Growth, Finite Resources: A Recipe For Collapse
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XI Knossos, Crete (1993) Photo by author Fiat Currency, Infinite Growth, Finite Resources: A Recipe For Collapse Yet another in an increasing collection of comments I have posted to the online media site The Tyee. This time it is a commentary on an article that reviews a book arguing in favour of […]
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh VI–Infinite Growth, Finite Planet; What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh VI October 9, 2020 Teotihuacan, Mexico (1988) Photo by author Infinite Growth, Finite Planet; What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Tyee commentary…(https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/10/09/Australian-Invasion-Big-Coal-Plans-Alberta/) _____ It’s truly unfortunate that our society pursues such self-evidently egregious exploits on our environment. You can’t continue to pollute your backyard without eventually destroying the complex ecological systems that […]
Joseph Tainter on the Dynamics of the Collapse of Civilization
Joseph Tainter on the Dynamics of the Collapse of Civilization
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXIV
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XXXIV Athens, Greece (1984) Photo by author ***** Supply chain disruptions and the product shortages that result have become a growing concern over the past couple of years and the reasons for these are as varied as the people providing the ‘analysis’. Production delays. Covid-19 pandemic. Pent-up consumer demand. Central bank […]
How Do You Know When Society Is About to Fall Apart?
How Do You Know When Society Is About to Fall Apart? Meet the scholars who study civilizational collapse. When I first spoke with Joseph Tainter in early May, he and I and nearly everyone else had reason to be worried. A few days earlier, the official tally of Covid-19 infections in the United States had […]
Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world
Connected and vulnerable: Climate change, trade wars and the networked world The increasing connectedness of the global economic system has long been touted as the path to greater prosperity and peaceful relations among nations and their peoples. There’s just one hitch: Complex systems have more points of failure and also hidden risks that only surface […]
Old Age and Societal Decline
Old Age and Societal Decline People grow old and die. Civilizations eventually fail. For centuries amateur philosophers have used the former as a metaphor for the latter, leading to a few useful insights and just as many misleading generalizations. The comparison becomes more immediately interesting as our own civilization stumbles blindly toward collapse. While not […]
What Problems Are We Solving by Increasing Complexity?
What Problems Are We Solving by Increasing Complexity? The incremental increase in systemic complexity is rarely if ever recognized as a problem that additional complexity can’t solve. The Collapse of Complex Societies fame has observed that societies increase complexity to solve pressing problems that cannot be resolved with existing solutions. What is complexity in this context? […]
Joseph Tainter: The Collapse Of Complex Societies
Joseph Tainter: The Collapse Of Complex Societies What history predicts about our future prospects By popular demand, we welcome Joseph Tainter, USU professor and author of The Collapse Of Complex Societies (free book download here). Dr. Tainter sees many of the same unsustainable risks the PeakProsperity.com audience focuses on — an overleveraged economy, declining net energy per […]
The Archdruid Report: Dark Age America: Involuntary Simplicity
The Archdruid Report: Dark Age America: Involuntary Simplicity. The political transformations that have occupied the last four posts in this sequence can also be traced in detail in the economic sphere. A strong case could be made, in fact, that the economic dimension is the more important of the two, and the political struggles that […]
