Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XLVII
April 13, 2022 (original posting date)
Faith in Government: A Misplaced Belief
Today’s contemplation has been prompted by an article by ecologist and educator Richard Heinberg (see link below).
Home » Posts tagged 'sociopolitical system'
Tag Archives: sociopolitical system
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XLVII–Faith in Government: A Misplaced Belief
Infinite growth. Finite planet. What could possibly go wrong?
As our awareness of the various existential predicaments we face[1] grows, most people cling to the default view that our sociopolitical elite/leaders will address the issues because they, after all, have been ‘awarded’ the responsibility of governing and helping to ‘solve’ the problems that arise with living in a complex world[2].
I have, for the most part[3], lost the notion that our ‘leaders’ are ‘servants’ of the population motivated to improve/sustain society as the common notion projects. That is the belief the elite want us to hold so we support the status quo power structures[4] from which they and their families benefit.
At one time I did hold on to this belief but my view has shifted to a somewhat contrarian perspective that the ruling class/elite/powers-that-be are driven primarily by the incentive to control/expand the wealth-generating/-extracting systems that provide their revenue streams and thus power, using their positions of privilege to leverage circumstances to meet this driving motivation.
In an interesting article by educator and ecologist Richard Heinberg, the argument is made that our ruling elite were provided sound scientific evidence decades ago that humanity’s continued pursuit of the infinite growth chalice was anything but sustainable and, in fact, was heading us towards ecological overshoot and collapse[5].
What did our ruling class do in response? For the most part, they engaged their narrative control managers to craft stories which were propagated far and wide that, in fact, perpetual growth was not just entirely beneficial for humanity and achieving a host of great things for all, but completely possible due to our technological prowess and ingenuity.
Now, decades later, it seems to be more and more obvious that we’ve been led down the wrong path. That we have painted ourselves into a corner from which we cannot seem to escape and the moment of reckoning is fast approaching. And as Heinberg points out, the elite have failed to acknowledge this but instead doubled-down on their propaganda and control of information to distract from and deny this problematic perspective[6].
There are still a lot of people (most?) that do not comprehend the situation. The reasons for this are many and complex. From significant propaganda courtesy of the ruling elite and their courtiers that we are exposed to daily via the media institutions they control, to psychological mechanisms that cause us to deny uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking beliefs, think in herds, and defer to authority. We humans, in the words of author Robert Heinlein, are rationalising animals not rational ones; we don’t want to believe we are engaging in self-destructive behaviour so we justify our actions/beliefs and tell ourselves self-deluding tales to reduce our cognitive dissonance[7].
I have after some years of going through the grieving process arrived at the acceptance stage of our plight. ‘Collapse’ is inevitable. How it will proceed is still up in the air. There will be similarities to past complex societal decline but there will be significant differences. Perhaps the most significant difference to the past is that today’s people have lost the skills of self-sufficiency many people have required in the past regardless of how complex their society was. It was only a very minor segment of the population that depended almost entirely on the agrarian skills of their compatriots and the local supply chains that existed to survive. Today’s world is vastly different; to say little of the dependence upon energy-intensive technologies that make it so.
In the final accounting of all of this I have come to the same basic conclusion that Richard Heinberg does: don’t depend upon your government/ruling class for salvation from the coming collapse of current complexities. Such ‘faith’ is significantly misplaced and will be deeply disappointing if not disastrous for those that maintain it. It is personal, familial, and community resilience and preparedness that will be ease the decline; pursue this rather than believing you have significant agency via the ballot box and who might hold the reins of sociopolitical power.
As Heinberg writes: “But, dear reader, don’t hold your breath waiting for elites to get it right. I’ve used this essay to channel my own exasperation at cowards in high places, some of whom have enriched themselves to obscene degrees even as so many others languished. Rail against them a little or some, based on your level of outrage, but I’d advise directing the bulk of your energy to moving on. Anything that further divides us makes it harder for humanity to do whatever is still possible. A better path would be building personal and community resilience ahead of what’s coming. Ease the suffering. Save what can be saved.”
In this vein, I leave you to head back into our family’s growing food production gardens to continue preparing the soil and greenhouses for the coming warm weather. Much of the ground is still frozen in our area north of Toronto but there’s always work to be done and some of the raised beds have finally defrosted…
[1] Primarily, if not totally, the consequence of ecological overshoot
[2] Refer to archaeologist Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies where it is asserted that “Complex societies are problem-solving organizations, in which more parts, different kinds of parts, more social differentiation, more inequality, and more kinds of centralization and control emerge as circumstances require.” (p. 37)
[3] I suppose I maintain a modicum of ‘hope’ that our ruling class may, in fact, be driven by higher morals than the evidence suggests but I think this may be the residual result of unending enculturation over decades prior to my losing ‘faith/trust’.
[4] I highly recommend reading Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State for an interesting perspective on how State’s come into being and maintain the sociopolitical structures that benefit those in ‘control’.
[5] Important to read both Meadows et al.’s The Limits to Growth and William Catton Jr.’s Overshoot.
[6] Here I would add that the elite have in fact done what they almost always do in such circumstances: leveraged crisis to their advantage to meet their driving interest by marketing ‘solutions’ from which they profit, such as energy ‘alternatives’, and expanded control of the dominant narratives.
[7] See Erik Michael’s Problems, Predicaments, and Technology website for lots of articles and evidence of this.
Today’s Contemplation: CLX–Solace Will Not Be Found Within Our Sociopolitical Systems — Biogeophysical Limitations Cannot Be Overcome By Way Of Policy
Today’s Contemplation: CLX
Solace Will Not Be Found Within Our Sociopolitical Systems — Biogeophysical Limitations Cannot Be Overcome By Way Of Policy
The following Contemplation is composed of some thoughts I had as I read through and reflected upon an article that was posted on the website Zerohedge. It argues that the policies being pursued by our political systems to address climate change are likely to result in greater human suffering and what is needed is better policy by governments.
While there are some pertinent points made (such as highlighting the abuses imposed upon some local populations where resources for non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies are being extracted from), my very first thought when I finished the article was “Why, that’s so cute that you still believe we live in a ‘democracy’ that ‘serves’ the citizens it purports to and is responsive to and cares about those citizens.”
This, however, is the default believe system for a very significant portion of a nation’s population and particularly those of the West that claim to live in ‘representative democracies’. It is one of the overarching narratives that people are exposed to from a very young age and it’s hard for any to see behind the curtain that has been erected by our socialisation/enculturation and the massive propaganda that is a part of that. The denial/bargaining/rationalising others engage in when this particular core belief is challenged is breathtaking to behold at times. Very, very few wish to view critically the notion that our political systems are ‘representative’ or ‘responsive’. They accept it as a given and do not wish their illusions to be destroyed lest cognitive dissonance overwhelm them.
I have written numerous times about this and won’t dwell on these points except to share links to a handful of those Contemplations:
Collapse Cometh X (Who Do ‘Representative’ Governments Truly Represent)
Collapse Cometh CXII (Our Banking System: Government vs. Private Control, Part 1)
Collapse Cometh CXIX (Local Community Resiliency and Political Systems)
Collapse Cometh CXXX (Only Local Leadership Can Help Communities Now)
Collapse Cometh CXXXVII (Local Self-Resilience Is Imperative to Pursue In Light Of Ecological Overshoot)
In addition, just as problematic (perhaps more so) in the rhetoric of the authors is their blindness to the limitations of what is being proposed and the bargaining and magical thinking that this entails. Yes, the policies being pursued by our governments are going to increase human suffering; but ultimately not in the way that the authors believe — they are going to exacerbate our ecological overshoot predicament and cause Nature’s reversion to the mean all the more chaotic and widespread.
While the sociopaths in our world leverage each and every worry/risk (e.g., climate change/global warming, war, economy, the ‘other’, etc.) to meet their primary goal of control/expansion of the wealth-generation/-extraction systems that provide their revenue streams and thus power/influence/prestige, such analyses as presented here are as guilty of leveraging magical thinking to argue for something as profoundly misguided: the continuation of perpetual growth/progress on a finite planet through improved political policies. For example, they suggest implementing ‘responsible mining’ and ‘domestic production of complex technologies’ to avoid human suffering.
Such an approach appears blind to the energy/resource limits on a planet with biogeophysical constraints, and what can/cannot be accomplished with respect to ongoing growth and ‘progress’. Exponential growth of any species beyond the natural carrying capacity of its environment always leads to ecological overshoot and eventually collapse of the population. And there is ample evidence that humans are well into overshoot and have been for some time eating our seed corn (and creating self-congratulatory narratives) to avoid this truth.
Homo sapiens are no different from any other species in this regard. Except that we have a ruling caste that is leveraging the various symptom predicaments of overshoot (via ‘solutions’ to predicaments that have none, or to justify/rationalise invasion and occupation of resource-rich lands) in order to keep padding their offshore bank accounts and control their respective populations; and all the while they are helping to expedite the collapse of our complex societies and ecological systems in the process — mostly by drawing down finite resources to keep the mythos of perpetual growth/progress alive just a bit longer.
Yes, the vast majority of ‘solutions’ being marketed to address ‘climate change’ are mostly (if not totally) rackets being perpetrated upon society (e.g., ‘green/clean’ energy production, carbon capture and storage, Net Zero, electrification of everything) and the threats of our overarching predicament of overshoot (i.e., biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, atmospheric overloading, chemical pollutants, etc.) are getting lost in the kerfuffle — mostly through denial and bargaining.
And, yes, as diminishing returns on our investments continues to pick up speed with our exponential drawing down of resources, it is likely that the threat of ‘climate change’ or ‘war’ will be used to rationalise the need for massive ‘austerity’ (except of course for the ‘privileged’ minority) as our ruling caste attempts to protect and insulate themselves.
In fact, there’s a good argument that this approach has actually been occurring for a century+ and reality has simply been ‘papered over’ through massive currency devaluation and debt (hundreds of trillions of interest-bearing debt to date), and the increase of resource theft from regions outside the centre and not already overexploited (especially of hydrocarbons, the lifeblood of our societal complexities — there’s a reason the Middle East has been a quagmire for decades and the dominant nation coming out of World War 2 created the Petrodollar System).
But as William Yeats reminded us in The Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold”. The fall/decline of complex societies is a recurrent theme in human pre/history regardless of the policies of the ruling caste and the best technologies of the time. Diminishing returns on investments in complexity along with the predicament of ecological overshoot is resulting in this cyclical phenomenon shifting from regional collapse to being global in nature.
How this proceeds exactly this time around is anyone’s guess, but the process cannot be avoided…and without recognising the actual predicament of overshoot and its inevitable consequences our approaches to what is unfolding will continue to be misguided and simply make Nature’s correction all the more devastating.
And our political systems and ruling caste members are likely the very last place we should be looking for guidance on all of this given their primary motivation/goal requires doing the exact opposite of what our species needs to be pursuing: rapid and significant degrowth.
