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Dealing With Disagreement
Dealing With Disagreement
If you’re reading this, chances are very good you’re concerend about where the world is headed.
The over-leverged economy. Asset price bubbles across the stock, bond and real estate markets just waiting to pop. Declining world net energy per capita. Escalating geopolitical tensions. Unprecedented die-offs among foundational species in our ecosystems. These are probably just a few of the concerning trends that have your attention.
But if you’re like many of our readers, you’re perplexed that the people around you aren’t as fixated on these issues. In fact, most people prefer to avoid thinking about them. They just want to live their lives, without adding to their worries.
This vast difference in outlook can be incredibly frustrating. Both for you as well as for the other person just trying to get through the day. And it often results in dysfunction that can be toxic to the relationships you care about.
Many of our readers report feeling isolated by their concerns. No one in their immediate circle of family or friends wants to engage on these topics, and oftentimes respond critically when conversation is attempted (Hey, try looking at the bright side for a change. Why do you have to be such a gloom & doomer, anyways?).
That dynamic often leads to bitterness, confusion and anger, which often spills into other areas of those relationships. Suddenly other small forms of rejection can feel like part of a co-ordinated affront. (You don’t want to hear why I think the market may crash and you’re chosing to go to your sister’s tonight rather than to the movies with me?)
The danger is this can morph into a larger “You don’t understand me!” or “You don’t care about me!” mindset that, once taken root, colors future interactions with suspicion and cynicism.
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Feeling Isolated?
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Feeling Isolated?
Does anyone else in your life share your concerns for the future?
Is there someone you talk with regularly about the unsustainability of our current economic and ecological trajectories?
Do you have friends and/or family members who support your efforts to develop a more resilient lifestyle?
If you answered “no” to these questions, you’re not an outlier. In fact, the #1 most commonly-reported complaint we hear from Peak Prosperity readers is that they feel alone and isolated when it comes to the warnings delivered in The Crash Course.
The end of economic growth. Declining net energy. Accelerating resource depletion. These are MASSIVE existential threats to our way of life — to our species’ survival, even. Most PPers can’t comprehend why *everyone* isn’t obessively talking about these dangers.
But very few people are. Truthfully, most don’t want to; for a wide variety of reasons.
So that leaves us, the conscientious critical thinkers, alone by ourselves to worry and plan.
Does this sound like you? If so, read on…
Wired For Connection
Humans are biologically wired for social connection.
Until just recently, historically-speaking, humans typically existed in small tribal groups of 30-60 people, where the degree of unity and cohesiveness of the group directly determined its odds of survival. Facing constant adversity from the weather, predators, other tribes, etc — every member of the group had a role and a duty to perform.
We’ve delved into this topic deeply in the past, particularly in our podcast with Peabody Award-winning author Sebastian Junger.
In his book Tribe, Junger observes how far modern life is from the conditions our distant ancestors evolved from. We are so dis-connected from each other now that the lack of community is manifesting in alarming ways in today’s society.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Science Of Community
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The Science Of Community
The Peak Prosperity tribe is gathering.
Members from all over the country (including a few from Europe and Asia) are arriving in northern California today for our annual weekend seminar.
Chris and I are really looking forward to this. We’re introducing a host of upgrades this year: a better location, a better venue, new content and exercises, and guest appearances by many of the experts who appear on PeakProsperity.com (including Charles Hugh Smith, Richard Heinberg, Axel Merk, Wolf Richter, David Pare, Mark Rees, the New Harbor team, the folks from Farmland LP, as well as several others).
But as anyone who has attended one of our past seminars (or city Summits) knows, it’s the PP members themselves who are the heart of the experience. Having so many like-minded folks in one place at the same time is a refreshing and energizing rarity.
The community that has developed here at Peak Prosperity is truly special. It attracts members who are smart, curious, open-minded, open-hearted — and share a drive to create a better future for themselves, their loved ones, and the world around them.
Of all the elements of the movement Chris and I have worked hard to build over the years, connecting such amazing individuals together into this community is our proudest achievement. Given our mission of “Creating a World Worth Inheriting”, we know that the path to success depends on the collective action of many than on the efforts of just we two.
Which is why we take community-building so seriously.
As we write about often, Social Capital is very important for each of us to build in order to live a resilient life. And whether you’re building it on an individual level in your local neighborhood, or on a global scale as PeakProsperity.com does, there are several science-based factors that are key to success.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
We Need A Social Revolution
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We Need A Social Revolution
In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare.
In this view, the engines of revolution are the state—government in all its layers and manifestations—and the corporate economy.
In a political revolution, a new political party or faction gains converts to its narrative, and this new force replaces the existing political order, either via peaceful means or violent revolution.
Technological revolutions arise from many sources but end up being managed by the state and private sector, which each influence and control the other in varying degrees.
Conventional history focuses on top-down political revolutions of the violent “regime change” variety: the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolution (1917), the Chinese Revolution (1949), and so on.
Technology has its own revolutionary hierarchy; the advances of the Industrial Revolutions I, II, III and now IV, have typically originated with inventors and proto-industrialists who relied on private capital and banking to fund large-scale buildouts of new industries: rail, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, the Internet, etc.
The state may direct and fund technological revolutions as politically motivated projects, for example the Manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons and the Space race to the Moon in the 1960s.
These revolutions share a similar structure: a small cadre leads a large-scale project based on a strict hierarchy in which the revolution is pushed down the social pyramid by the few at the top to the many below. Even when political and industrial advances are accepted voluntarily by the masses, the leadership and structure of the controlling mechanisms are hierarchical: political power, elected or not, is concentrated in the hands of a few at the top.
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