So, do you wish to be popular or do you want to make people think?
Socrates springs to mind.
I have forgotten which saint (Augustine?) always presented the 'steelman' case in order to strengthen his reasoning for Christian morality, but John Stuart Mill in his book, On Liberty: “He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that.”
Chicken Little is always going to be more popular than Pollyanna.
For energy: there are vast untapped stockpiles of fissile materials. There's also the giant nuclear reactor in the sky, of which the Earth currently intercepts only 0.0000000453%.
Short term: nuclear reactors, baby.
Medium to long term: start mining Mercury to build a very large array of mirrors very close to the Sun.
Minerals: asteroid mining. Yes this is expensive. Then again, improved technology brings down cost to orbit dramatically. Asteroid mining will almost certainly never be as cheap as mining the Earth, but there is a vast amount of stuff up there (and we can use it to build stuff up there much more cheaply than launching it from down here, stuff like, for example, solar power arrays).
Food: permaculture, regenerative ag, etc can generate a lot of calories per acre; ChatGPT tells me (so, grain of salt on this) 2 to 10 million for a mature operation, whereas industrial ag is 3-20 million. Quite comparable in other words, but with a dramatically improved micronutrient profile, effectively zero use of industrial chemical inputs, and a compounding improvement in soil quality over time (instead of stripping the soil of micronutrients as industrial ag does). Only "downside" is that it's more labor intensive, so probably a larger fraction of the workforce required in agriculture. But this is specialized labor, and quite a rewarding form of it! Not such a bad life, with much to recommend it over the office ... and with AI we need fewer office workers...
Water: I'm Canadian eh I don't worry about this ;)
Another factor though that I can't help but point out is that all of these calculations are treating the global human population as one fungible entity that all "deserves" access to resources. This is all very nice and touchy feely, but perhaps Aeneans should prioritize those populations that can actually contribute, and not merely consume. Which is my way of saying that water or energy scarcity in Africa isn't my problem.
Overall, the solution to the dilemmas enumerated in this article are contained already in your first Aenean civilization piece: space. Aeneans will go to space not because it is hard, but because it is necessary ... and not only as an insurance policy against asteroid bombardment.
Indeed. I agree on all of the above (and you know that). But I wanted to steel man the opposing case because it's the only way to avoid being seen as a naive utopian etc.
I think that in the long-term you're right. Still, the metallurgy of fissile materials is pretty tricky and will take a lot of energy. I think that we're going to pass through a sort of cultural-Darwinian bottleneck. On the other side we'll be a little more cautious and hesitant. No mad dash for the stars, but something a bit more measured and slower to action. We'll have electric power, but probably use less of it.
That's absolutely true. I don't think we'll have an end-of-civilization level of destruction. We'll see economic shocks as we're forced to transition from a growth-economy to a stagnant-economy. What we're seeing since 2008 are the pre-shocks that occur as nations inflate their currency to simulate GDP growth. The radical downturn in the Chinese housing markets are because they've been simulating gdp growth for 20 years and the bill came due.
Economic slowing will necessitate structural economic changes one way or another. I could be wrong. I kind of hope that I'm wrong, but the work here by Tree of Woe is the same material that I've seen. If we do thread the needle to near-unlimited energy we'll have to do it with some sort of orbital-solar. I think that might be Elon's plan if Martian colonialism ends up off the table. There's grounds for that being successful too: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/in-a-first-caltechs-space-solar-power-demonstrator-wirelessly-transmits-power-in-space
If we get to the point of adapting that tech, we'll be on the path toward an Aeneac future. Though the risk is we won't learn from the mistakes we've made over the last 500 years. I feel like the people of the West are spiritually exhausted and I'm not sure what they'll do if they head into interplanetary space half-cocked.
Your tar sands CAN be economically and ecologically developed.
As well, there was an author who did an entire series on why we would invade Canada and how we would do it. I don't recall the name just now. Grain, yes, cheap energy - see what Elizabeth Nickson says about the tar sands, as well as hydro.
LOTS of clean, fresh water.
This was so popular a topic it inspired at least one movie, a tv movie, "H2O," done by Paul Gross, the actor who did Due South.
The first thing he did on taking office?
Sell your fresh water to us.
An hour spent reading Elizabeth Nickson will do horrible things to your blood pressure, so be prepared.
I think that all of these approaches demand an ever increasing level of sophistication and complexity. More and more can go wrong.
If we are headed towards a more stressful and demanding world, should Canada’s response be: a) invest in its own young people and figure out how to protect Canada and its reap from desperate global hordes; or b) demoralize the young and fill the country with recalcitrant foreigners who will serve as a future fifth column? The answer is obviously a) so of Canada has chosen b).
I’ve heard way too much in my lifetime about Tamils, Khalistan, Palestine, Haiti and other Godforsaken places Canada has no conceivable interest.
Definitely demoralize them. That way you can... retire with an incompetent population that hates you to take care of you. But hey, they ate too much avocado toast.
I wanted to highlight: Metallurgy in microgravity is probably not going to happen. The best way to mine asteroids will be to bring them down into low orbit then drop them on Nevada or somewhere and mine the crater. Metallurgy requires mass/density/water to perform most separations... doing it in microgravity or vacuum is probably not in the cards for a very long time. Like, 100 to 200 years of dedicated 'microgravity industries' research or something.
If you want to mineral processing you'll need to put an enormous facility up in the asteroid belt. You'll need another enormous facility of struts and focusing arrays and radiators. We're talking that the smelting facility will (in terms of volume) be the size of long-island. Part of that is simply the required surface area to radiate the heat so you don't cook your personnel. Part of it is space for your centrifuges.
Doable: yes. Within the realm of possibility for human engineers in the next century? I consider very unlikely. Water isn't the only problem, any system that we have that uses water also uses gravity... so you need a centrifuge capable of spinning up literal hundreds of tons of rock.
There may be some methods with magnetic separation and magnetic collection that could work, but now you need gigantic electromagnets in space, a power supply for them.
The point is that we'll never have a "mining ship" that goes out and mines asteroids and brings back useful metals. We might get to the point where we can build a few "concentrator facilities" in the asteroid belt and then built a couple "smelting facilities" that are even larger. Then prospector drones will pick up asteroids and (over the course of a few years/decades) move them over to those truly enormous facilities for processing.
I was recently convinced that doing all this is possible (good on you, you know who you are), but I don't think it's in the cards for this civilization. We'll need a fundamentally different and hyper-long-term perspective to build facilities like this which probably won't begin seeing profits for a century or longer.
I presume you've read Asimov's Foundation? Hanging out with Doomers inspired me to read it. Hari Seldon's work, which required the acceptance of collapse and barbarism, wasn't to prevent disaster but lessen its impact from tens of thousands of years to mere thousands.
Perhaps there is inspiration there. Less bad is victory, though it might not seem like it at the time.
Read yes, agreed with not necessarily. In the event of an apocalypse destroying our civilization, wouldn’t preserving everything we’ve learned to assist the next civilization in rebuilding be of more use than trying to influence the new civilization’s politics toward a single hegemonic empire?
The fictitious Encyclopedia Project Hari Seldon made up as a ruse to establish Terminus probably would’ve unironically probably done more good than the secret society he actually built. Write that book and publish and distribute so many copies that every starving post-collapse has one and can make use of its knowledge. Compare to what the Foundation actually became during the Merchant Princes story arc, a mystery cult monopolizing their stored technological knowledge for their own geopolitical gain. Their faction had a monopoly on actually knowing how to build fission reactors and they weren’t spreading said know-how but hoarding it. Actively slowing the rebuilding.
>I want to create a great Encyclopedia, containing within it all the knowledge humanity will need to rebuild itself in case the worst happens - an Encyclopedia Galactica, if you will
Brilliant series. I do think that we're going to be better set to short-circuit a dark-age if we're smart about it. We've got maybe 50 to 100 years to get our shit together and build alternative, productive, and young communities. The seeds of the next civilization... I've written a few articles on what that might look like and how we might organize people for such an eventuality. Other readers should take a look, I think Tree of Woe has already read them.
If you accept that history and hence reality occurs in cycles then the twilight of this civilization is just another end of a chapter. The next chapter is beginning to emerge but is fragile and delicate. We can go all nihilist as our elites want or we can nurture, as perhaps never before, the blossoming of a new chapter.
I'm not concerned about water. Israel has proven a model that works well where they are able to use desalinated water *three times.* Three usages totally changes the math. First for urban population, then it gets process in wastewater facilities and used for agriculture, finally it goes into the water table, and river system. They net ADD water to the Jordan river with 80% of national water needs coming from desalination. They are literally making the desert bloom.
This is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the problems that I also foresee. Absolutely brilliant summary of systems collapse. Though it’s important also to note that our leaders seem intent on running the credit bubble into the ground rather than make any sacrifices to attenuate its catastrophic effects. I anticipate major global economic shocks and some form of noble/serf dichotomy appearing in the 21st century.
I’m going to highlight this article in at least a few of mine. Honestly, I might use it as a basis for writing my own article on systems collapse. I'll be sure to cite your article in it. Absolutely brilliant.
It's called by many names, but it is a polycrisis. It's going to fucking blow. Only those who are well positioned and lucky will survive. We cannot solve these issues with the amount of useless biomass that currently exists. Cull 2/3 of humanity? Maybe you're on to something. But this will only happen via fierce and terrible natural selection
People have no idea how much work it takes to raise food in a non industrial world. It takes seven years to build soil how you like it, and food infrastructure and habits isn't something you can just magically whip into existence.
I suspect several of these scarcity issues, (metals rare earths, and even energy) will be mitigated by strip mining old landfills. I've often imagines landfills as a massive source of wealth in a post apocalyptic setting. But they could be a source of wealth in an Aenean Golden Age as well. "There's Terbium in them thar landfills."
Now would be a good time to study Aldo Leopold and William Deming. Need to look at our situation 'organically' and not as a series of levers to be pulled to produce effects. Some parts of our 'ecology' can be 'slow and low' while some parts of our ecology can be 'fast and hot'. One size does not fit all. But don't ask the majority to make sacrifices for an elite that makes none, that shows no sense of duty to the whole or of honoring the many.
It seems like you've been reading John Michael Greer and adopted a lot of his ideas about what mankind's problems are... and then the election last week filled you with so much optimism that you're suddenly convinced there are solutions to all of them!
My views haven't changed that much since the Trump win - I'm happy he won, but I don't think he can change the overall course of our civilization - decline and fall, and then a dark age with actual barbarian invasions, and then (after several hundred years of dark age have produced a breed of men that are TOUGH again, and a set of religions those men actually believe in) an opportunity to rebuild.
Just like it was after the Bronze Age Collapse (i.e. the era of the actual Aeneas, if he existed at all) or after the fall of Rome.
I've read a fair amount of JMG, yes, and other similar writers. I have never been convinced by them; anyone who has argued with me on Telegram (Ahnaf, for instance) can tell you my doubts about the "eco-doom" analysis are longstanding. But I figured I should steel-man them as I think through the Aenean idea.
My pessimism is much more that we will lack the leadership, solidarity, and social trust to solve our problems, and much less that our problems can't be solved.
Frankly, I think the problems the Faustians are running into aren't lack of resources. They're that humans can't handle the kind of power technology can put into their hands.
Pater (tree of woe) is a Noble Soul, a Romantic Optimist who dreams of the stars, so cut him some slack 😉
Real DOOM-ers like myself are Vile, Evil, Neo-Malthusian, fundamentalist, extremist, antihuman, Religious zealots who know that the DOOM cometh… & like yourself, Good sir, we are the ‘antagonists’ in the Human story 😘
Oh, I'm not quite a neo-Malthusian. While I'm worried about failures of political leadership causing mass famine in the not-too-distant future, I don't think mankind has exceeded the Earth's "carrying capacity" or some such. (Premodern civilizations in places as diverse as Japan, China, and Mexico had all found ways to support seven or eight people on an acre of land without artificial fertilizers - it can be done.)
I'd actually say in a lot of important ways I'm closer to Tree of Woe than to Greer. I think given the right "leadership, solidarity, and social trust" we could replace our fossil energy with renewables faster than it runs out, and even get a permanent manned outpost on Mars (I'm not nearly so confident in a self-sustaining colony, though.) The trouble is that "leadership, solidarity, and social trust" are what's always lacking at the tail end of civilization's run... and putting people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and (pacepalms) Bobby Kennedy Jr. in charge of the government is not going to reverse the processes that have given us record-low rates of family formation, the near-disappearance of American heavy industry, the fact that most Americans are irreligious, and the absence in all but a few of the youth of any education worthy of the name... the problems are very deep.
I certainly plan to do my part to help resist the disaster, but it's important to remember that civilization-restorers often have to play a very long game. From Aeneas to Scipio, Cicero, and Caesar was about a thousand years... likewise if we find a way to maintain enclaves of recognizably American civilization amid the collapse and the barbarian invasions (which, it's worth noting, are a less bad future than the global Brave-New-World dystopia that our opponents are trying to build!) it will still take about a millennium for the new civilization to flower... and then after it has flowered, it will decline and fall just like its parent civilization. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Yes but I think there is perhaps an aesthetic element of the environmental movement that we could repurpose. It may actually capture the imagination of many of these idealistic young people. They probably realize at some unconscious level that their movement basically isn't tenable if you allow blacks to multiply without limit.
1. Quigley’s “The Evolution of Civilization.” While some civilizations have fallen die to major climactic shifts, decline and fall seems to be baked into the cake.
2. Start with the Irish Climate Science Foundation. Climate has always been changing; it’s not suddenly anthropogenic. Or Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Sceptical Environmentalist.”
3. Look up abiotic theory of oil. Maybe Rockerfeller’s exploiting the conference that defined what constituted organic chemistry (carbon) was exploited to create the myth of non-renewal hydrocarbons from ancient forests, etc.
6. Check out some of the articles of @matt ehret re: American system of political economy/Hamiltonian economics (McKinley, too). When we apply sound money/productive credit and directed R&D to unleash human potential, good things happen (Sergei Glazyev knows & Lyndon LaRouche knew)
And it is too late to transition to fission or fusion, sadly.
But as Spenglerians we, should not be surprised that between the Faustian and the Aenean periods, there must be death and rebirth in a baptism of barbarism.
Because in either case (Fission or Fusion) the time to make the capital outlay to build the tools to make the tools to make the tools to build the nuclear economy to replace the fossil fuel economy was 1945. Only Russia, the United States, and France ever really tried, and all had given up by the 90s (thanks Chernobyl and Three Mile Island).
Now, the ROI in energy is rising faster than we can build reactors and IQ is declining worldwide so it's not getting any easier. We can try again after the great die off of the surplus population reduces our energy needs to manageable levels.
True, unless they already did it. There is some serious tech out there. I saw a craft while flying in Bosnia that performed the impossible. Its propulsion and energy sources had to be related. It wasn’t thrust, it wasn’t fuel, and drag did not exist. I can only theorize why it is publicly released so slowly.
But, I don’t think you have to go too deep. Billions have been invested in current technology. Look at road asphalt. Nothing better, really? But how much infrastructure has already been dedicated to the enterprise?
So, they will continue to get the return on their investment, then will phase it out. Hydro carbons are the same. Still getting profit beyond ROI.
Energy is free. They have known it for a very long time. Aether, solar, zero point, cold fusion…Plants literally make so much biomass out of solar and water, you can’t keep up with it. We don’t need power lines to transmit electricity anymore than we need cables for WiFi.
Don’t worry so much. The only serious threat is cataclysm. But it seems a significant part of ancient tech survived even that and is still with us. Actually, I’m not sure cataclysm is even a threat. I have a suspicion that man has been out in the stars for a very long time.
99% of these problem are related to the useless biomass metastatizing Europe and USA: the source cancer exixst because USA, Ukraine and Russia gift Africa and MENA af millions of tons of grain.
Overpopulation IS the Pareto's Cause of all these problems: people are only to shy to add "of Useless Biomass".
The irony that the people blowing up the credit are the same ones who have worked to prevent the productive from participating in the economy, those who could have been the economic multiplier that absorbed the inflation.
Uh oh I'm getting ratioed, 28 likes and 38 comments on my own essay
As someone who doomerpoasted on your first installment in this series, I gave this one a well-deserved like ;)
Sowwie Pater! 🤭
So, do you wish to be popular or do you want to make people think?
Socrates springs to mind.
I have forgotten which saint (Augustine?) always presented the 'steelman' case in order to strengthen his reasoning for Christian morality, but John Stuart Mill in his book, On Liberty: “He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that.”
Chicken Little is always going to be more popular than Pollyanna.
And frankly, it's well deserved.
For energy: there are vast untapped stockpiles of fissile materials. There's also the giant nuclear reactor in the sky, of which the Earth currently intercepts only 0.0000000453%.
Short term: nuclear reactors, baby.
Medium to long term: start mining Mercury to build a very large array of mirrors very close to the Sun.
Minerals: asteroid mining. Yes this is expensive. Then again, improved technology brings down cost to orbit dramatically. Asteroid mining will almost certainly never be as cheap as mining the Earth, but there is a vast amount of stuff up there (and we can use it to build stuff up there much more cheaply than launching it from down here, stuff like, for example, solar power arrays).
Food: permaculture, regenerative ag, etc can generate a lot of calories per acre; ChatGPT tells me (so, grain of salt on this) 2 to 10 million for a mature operation, whereas industrial ag is 3-20 million. Quite comparable in other words, but with a dramatically improved micronutrient profile, effectively zero use of industrial chemical inputs, and a compounding improvement in soil quality over time (instead of stripping the soil of micronutrients as industrial ag does). Only "downside" is that it's more labor intensive, so probably a larger fraction of the workforce required in agriculture. But this is specialized labor, and quite a rewarding form of it! Not such a bad life, with much to recommend it over the office ... and with AI we need fewer office workers...
Water: I'm Canadian eh I don't worry about this ;)
Another factor though that I can't help but point out is that all of these calculations are treating the global human population as one fungible entity that all "deserves" access to resources. This is all very nice and touchy feely, but perhaps Aeneans should prioritize those populations that can actually contribute, and not merely consume. Which is my way of saying that water or energy scarcity in Africa isn't my problem.
Overall, the solution to the dilemmas enumerated in this article are contained already in your first Aenean civilization piece: space. Aeneans will go to space not because it is hard, but because it is necessary ... and not only as an insurance policy against asteroid bombardment.
Indeed. I agree on all of the above (and you know that). But I wanted to steel man the opposing case because it's the only way to avoid being seen as a naive utopian etc.
So I'm setting the stage for Part 3? 😏
Yes! Unless you beat me to the punch with your ability to write 10,000 words an hour
*shakes fist*
It's all yours 😂 Right now I'm having too much fun with a fiction project that's soaking up my logorrheic energy…
How do you share somebody's comment.
SHARE THIS.
Stop giving away brand new Snap On socket sets to teenagers with beater cars, who've shown no interest in learning mechanics.
I think that in the long-term you're right. Still, the metallurgy of fissile materials is pretty tricky and will take a lot of energy. I think that we're going to pass through a sort of cultural-Darwinian bottleneck. On the other side we'll be a little more cautious and hesitant. No mad dash for the stars, but something a bit more measured and slower to action. We'll have electric power, but probably use less of it.
Every single prediction of this sort has, so far, failed.
That's absolutely true. I don't think we'll have an end-of-civilization level of destruction. We'll see economic shocks as we're forced to transition from a growth-economy to a stagnant-economy. What we're seeing since 2008 are the pre-shocks that occur as nations inflate their currency to simulate GDP growth. The radical downturn in the Chinese housing markets are because they've been simulating gdp growth for 20 years and the bill came due.
Economic slowing will necessitate structural economic changes one way or another. I could be wrong. I kind of hope that I'm wrong, but the work here by Tree of Woe is the same material that I've seen. If we do thread the needle to near-unlimited energy we'll have to do it with some sort of orbital-solar. I think that might be Elon's plan if Martian colonialism ends up off the table. There's grounds for that being successful too: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/in-a-first-caltechs-space-solar-power-demonstrator-wirelessly-transmits-power-in-space
If we get to the point of adapting that tech, we'll be on the path toward an Aeneac future. Though the risk is we won't learn from the mistakes we've made over the last 500 years. I feel like the people of the West are spiritually exhausted and I'm not sure what they'll do if they head into interplanetary space half-cocked.
On Canada and Canadian politics as a microcosm of our issues:
https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Fascists-Radical-Conservationists-Destroying-Heritage-ebook/dp/B007EDCU0O
Elizabeth is worth ten times her weight in gold on these issues.
https://elizabethnickson.substack.com
Your tar sands CAN be economically and ecologically developed.
As well, there was an author who did an entire series on why we would invade Canada and how we would do it. I don't recall the name just now. Grain, yes, cheap energy - see what Elizabeth Nickson says about the tar sands, as well as hydro.
LOTS of clean, fresh water.
This was so popular a topic it inspired at least one movie, a tv movie, "H2O," done by Paul Gross, the actor who did Due South.
The first thing he did on taking office?
Sell your fresh water to us.
An hour spent reading Elizabeth Nickson will do horrible things to your blood pressure, so be prepared.
Thanks.
Verily. The plain fact is that there are many criminals who doesn’t deserve our pity or trust or vote or assets.
I think that all of these approaches demand an ever increasing level of sophistication and complexity. More and more can go wrong.
If we are headed towards a more stressful and demanding world, should Canada’s response be: a) invest in its own young people and figure out how to protect Canada and its reap from desperate global hordes; or b) demoralize the young and fill the country with recalcitrant foreigners who will serve as a future fifth column? The answer is obviously a) so of Canada has chosen b).
I’ve heard way too much in my lifetime about Tamils, Khalistan, Palestine, Haiti and other Godforsaken places Canada has no conceivable interest.
Definitely demoralize them. That way you can... retire with an incompetent population that hates you to take care of you. But hey, they ate too much avocado toast.
I wanted to highlight: Metallurgy in microgravity is probably not going to happen. The best way to mine asteroids will be to bring them down into low orbit then drop them on Nevada or somewhere and mine the crater. Metallurgy requires mass/density/water to perform most separations... doing it in microgravity or vacuum is probably not in the cards for a very long time. Like, 100 to 200 years of dedicated 'microgravity industries' research or something.
Centrifuge.
Plenty of water in space.
If you want to mineral processing you'll need to put an enormous facility up in the asteroid belt. You'll need another enormous facility of struts and focusing arrays and radiators. We're talking that the smelting facility will (in terms of volume) be the size of long-island. Part of that is simply the required surface area to radiate the heat so you don't cook your personnel. Part of it is space for your centrifuges.
Doable: yes. Within the realm of possibility for human engineers in the next century? I consider very unlikely. Water isn't the only problem, any system that we have that uses water also uses gravity... so you need a centrifuge capable of spinning up literal hundreds of tons of rock.
There may be some methods with magnetic separation and magnetic collection that could work, but now you need gigantic electromagnets in space, a power supply for them.
The point is that we'll never have a "mining ship" that goes out and mines asteroids and brings back useful metals. We might get to the point where we can build a few "concentrator facilities" in the asteroid belt and then built a couple "smelting facilities" that are even larger. Then prospector drones will pick up asteroids and (over the course of a few years/decades) move them over to those truly enormous facilities for processing.
I was recently convinced that doing all this is possible (good on you, you know who you are), but I don't think it's in the cards for this civilization. We'll need a fundamentally different and hyper-long-term perspective to build facilities like this which probably won't begin seeing profits for a century or longer.
I presume you've read Asimov's Foundation? Hanging out with Doomers inspired me to read it. Hari Seldon's work, which required the acceptance of collapse and barbarism, wasn't to prevent disaster but lessen its impact from tens of thousands of years to mere thousands.
Perhaps there is inspiration there. Less bad is victory, though it might not seem like it at the time.
Yes, of course! I read the entire series from the first "Robot" book all the way to the last "Foundation" book.
I've got to go back and read the Robot books, to my endless shame.
Thanks again for an informative essay on this topic.
"Caves of Steel" is excellent.
Read yes, agreed with not necessarily. In the event of an apocalypse destroying our civilization, wouldn’t preserving everything we’ve learned to assist the next civilization in rebuilding be of more use than trying to influence the new civilization’s politics toward a single hegemonic empire?
The fictitious Encyclopedia Project Hari Seldon made up as a ruse to establish Terminus probably would’ve unironically probably done more good than the secret society he actually built. Write that book and publish and distribute so many copies that every starving post-collapse has one and can make use of its knowledge. Compare to what the Foundation actually became during the Merchant Princes story arc, a mystery cult monopolizing their stored technological knowledge for their own geopolitical gain. Their faction had a monopoly on actually knowing how to build fission reactors and they weren’t spreading said know-how but hoarding it. Actively slowing the rebuilding.
>I want to create a great Encyclopedia, containing within it all the knowledge humanity will need to rebuild itself in case the worst happens - an Encyclopedia Galactica, if you will
https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/13m2ls5/closedsource_is_a_crime_against_humanity_probably/
Or a Canticle for Liebovitz maybe
Brilliant series. I do think that we're going to be better set to short-circuit a dark-age if we're smart about it. We've got maybe 50 to 100 years to get our shit together and build alternative, productive, and young communities. The seeds of the next civilization... I've written a few articles on what that might look like and how we might organize people for such an eventuality. Other readers should take a look, I think Tree of Woe has already read them.
https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/origins-of-the-next-great-civilization
And
https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/post-faustian-ethnos-identity-and
Glad to see us DOOM-ers are inspiring you, Good Sir, with your reading habits! 😉
If you accept that history and hence reality occurs in cycles then the twilight of this civilization is just another end of a chapter. The next chapter is beginning to emerge but is fragile and delicate. We can go all nihilist as our elites want or we can nurture, as perhaps never before, the blossoming of a new chapter.
Through those cycles humanity remains. The nihilists have been proven wrong again and again.
Let’s act as if the world will keep spinning until it doesn’t.
I'm not concerned about water. Israel has proven a model that works well where they are able to use desalinated water *three times.* Three usages totally changes the math. First for urban population, then it gets process in wastewater facilities and used for agriculture, finally it goes into the water table, and river system. They net ADD water to the Jordan river with 80% of national water needs coming from desalination. They are literally making the desert bloom.
This is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of the problems that I also foresee. Absolutely brilliant summary of systems collapse. Though it’s important also to note that our leaders seem intent on running the credit bubble into the ground rather than make any sacrifices to attenuate its catastrophic effects. I anticipate major global economic shocks and some form of noble/serf dichotomy appearing in the 21st century.
I’m going to highlight this article in at least a few of mine. Honestly, I might use it as a basis for writing my own article on systems collapse. I'll be sure to cite your article in it. Absolutely brilliant.
I'm glad it was helpful! It's certainly a pretty grim picture... Cheers!
It's called by many names, but it is a polycrisis. It's going to fucking blow. Only those who are well positioned and lucky will survive. We cannot solve these issues with the amount of useless biomass that currently exists. Cull 2/3 of humanity? Maybe you're on to something. But this will only happen via fierce and terrible natural selection
Polycrisis is a very good term for it.
There's a video series on youtube that maybe you would like. This is video one in his three part look at it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uCH9cx3hrbM&pp=ygUhUG9seWNyaXNpcyBvbmUgZGVjYWRlIHRvIG1pZG5pZ2h0
People have no idea how much work it takes to raise food in a non industrial world. It takes seven years to build soil how you like it, and food infrastructure and habits isn't something you can just magically whip into existence.
The lower life forms generally survive catastrophe. Think cockroaches. How does that change the outlook?
I suspect several of these scarcity issues, (metals rare earths, and even energy) will be mitigated by strip mining old landfills. I've often imagines landfills as a massive source of wealth in a post apocalyptic setting. But they could be a source of wealth in an Aenean Golden Age as well. "There's Terbium in them thar landfills."
Now would be a good time to study Aldo Leopold and William Deming. Need to look at our situation 'organically' and not as a series of levers to be pulled to produce effects. Some parts of our 'ecology' can be 'slow and low' while some parts of our ecology can be 'fast and hot'. One size does not fit all. But don't ask the majority to make sacrifices for an elite that makes none, that shows no sense of duty to the whole or of honoring the many.
It seems like you've been reading John Michael Greer and adopted a lot of his ideas about what mankind's problems are... and then the election last week filled you with so much optimism that you're suddenly convinced there are solutions to all of them!
My views haven't changed that much since the Trump win - I'm happy he won, but I don't think he can change the overall course of our civilization - decline and fall, and then a dark age with actual barbarian invasions, and then (after several hundred years of dark age have produced a breed of men that are TOUGH again, and a set of religions those men actually believe in) an opportunity to rebuild.
Just like it was after the Bronze Age Collapse (i.e. the era of the actual Aeneas, if he existed at all) or after the fall of Rome.
I've written all about my mixed feelings on the election here: https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/move-over-grover-cleveland
I've read a fair amount of JMG, yes, and other similar writers. I have never been convinced by them; anyone who has argued with me on Telegram (Ahnaf, for instance) can tell you my doubts about the "eco-doom" analysis are longstanding. But I figured I should steel-man them as I think through the Aenean idea.
My pessimism is much more that we will lack the leadership, solidarity, and social trust to solve our problems, and much less that our problems can't be solved.
Frankly, I think the problems the Faustians are running into aren't lack of resources. They're that humans can't handle the kind of power technology can put into their hands.
"... lack the leadership, solidarity, and social trust to solve our problems, ..." Bingo.
Now you have identified the problem, you have identified the solution : leadership, solidarity, and social trust.
"Look East young man, look east."
Pater (tree of woe) is a Noble Soul, a Romantic Optimist who dreams of the stars, so cut him some slack 😉
Real DOOM-ers like myself are Vile, Evil, Neo-Malthusian, fundamentalist, extremist, antihuman, Religious zealots who know that the DOOM cometh… & like yourself, Good sir, we are the ‘antagonists’ in the Human story 😘
Et tu, Brutu?!
Oh, I'm not quite a neo-Malthusian. While I'm worried about failures of political leadership causing mass famine in the not-too-distant future, I don't think mankind has exceeded the Earth's "carrying capacity" or some such. (Premodern civilizations in places as diverse as Japan, China, and Mexico had all found ways to support seven or eight people on an acre of land without artificial fertilizers - it can be done.)
I'd actually say in a lot of important ways I'm closer to Tree of Woe than to Greer. I think given the right "leadership, solidarity, and social trust" we could replace our fossil energy with renewables faster than it runs out, and even get a permanent manned outpost on Mars (I'm not nearly so confident in a self-sustaining colony, though.) The trouble is that "leadership, solidarity, and social trust" are what's always lacking at the tail end of civilization's run... and putting people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and (pacepalms) Bobby Kennedy Jr. in charge of the government is not going to reverse the processes that have given us record-low rates of family formation, the near-disappearance of American heavy industry, the fact that most Americans are irreligious, and the absence in all but a few of the youth of any education worthy of the name... the problems are very deep.
I certainly plan to do my part to help resist the disaster, but it's important to remember that civilization-restorers often have to play a very long game. From Aeneas to Scipio, Cicero, and Caesar was about a thousand years... likewise if we find a way to maintain enclaves of recognizably American civilization amid the collapse and the barbarian invasions (which, it's worth noting, are a less bad future than the global Brave-New-World dystopia that our opponents are trying to build!) it will still take about a millennium for the new civilization to flower... and then after it has flowered, it will decline and fall just like its parent civilization. Sic transit gloria mundi.
I agree with the above, indeed.
(I was using some of the terms in jest, but thank you for the long, well thought out response, regardless! 😉 )
What are all those resources needed for, to keep 8.2 billion people alive?
Let's be honest, how many of those 8.2 billion people are a net positive?
Naturally there are many of the 8.2 billion we should want to keep, and even to multiply; but
the vast majority are surplus to requirements. The aesthetic of vast cities of people scurrying
to a meaningless work under smoky skies should not be something we should aim for.
Rather, imagine bronzed elites flying from their mountain aeries to work in airy cities of spires
and impossible waterfalls.
Yes, all of the Green Crisis analysis depends on an inherent presumption of egalitarian value and distribution.
Yes but I think there is perhaps an aesthetic element of the environmental movement that we could repurpose. It may actually capture the imagination of many of these idealistic young people. They probably realize at some unconscious level that their movement basically isn't tenable if you allow blacks to multiply without limit.
Liked, but disagree with much.
1. Quigley’s “The Evolution of Civilization.” While some civilizations have fallen die to major climactic shifts, decline and fall seems to be baked into the cake.
2. Start with the Irish Climate Science Foundation. Climate has always been changing; it’s not suddenly anthropogenic. Or Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Sceptical Environmentalist.”
3. Look up abiotic theory of oil. Maybe Rockerfeller’s exploiting the conference that defined what constituted organic chemistry (carbon) was exploited to create the myth of non-renewal hydrocarbons from ancient forests, etc.
4. Don’t count out zeropoint type energy sources.
5. Rare Earths—excellent observation (hint: look up Defense Metals junior miner). What about the asteroid belt? https://www.manufacturing.net/technology/blog/21113380/asteroid-mining-could-solve-rare-metal-shortage
6. Check out some of the articles of @matt ehret re: American system of political economy/Hamiltonian economics (McKinley, too). When we apply sound money/productive credit and directed R&D to unleash human potential, good things happen (Sergei Glazyev knows & Lyndon LaRouche knew)
I think we agree on most of these things. I’m just attempting to steel-man the other side’s positions.
Where's the replicator at?
And it is too late to transition to fission or fusion, sadly.
But as Spenglerians we, should not be surprised that between the Faustian and the Aenean periods, there must be death and rebirth in a baptism of barbarism.
Contemplate this too, on the Tree of Woe.
Could you expound on why you think it is too late?
Because in either case (Fission or Fusion) the time to make the capital outlay to build the tools to make the tools to make the tools to build the nuclear economy to replace the fossil fuel economy was 1945. Only Russia, the United States, and France ever really tried, and all had given up by the 90s (thanks Chernobyl and Three Mile Island).
Now, the ROI in energy is rising faster than we can build reactors and IQ is declining worldwide so it's not getting any easier. We can try again after the great die off of the surplus population reduces our energy needs to manageable levels.
True, unless they already did it. There is some serious tech out there. I saw a craft while flying in Bosnia that performed the impossible. Its propulsion and energy sources had to be related. It wasn’t thrust, it wasn’t fuel, and drag did not exist. I can only theorize why it is publicly released so slowly.
But, I don’t think you have to go too deep. Billions have been invested in current technology. Look at road asphalt. Nothing better, really? But how much infrastructure has already been dedicated to the enterprise?
So, they will continue to get the return on their investment, then will phase it out. Hydro carbons are the same. Still getting profit beyond ROI.
Energy is free. They have known it for a very long time. Aether, solar, zero point, cold fusion…Plants literally make so much biomass out of solar and water, you can’t keep up with it. We don’t need power lines to transmit electricity anymore than we need cables for WiFi.
Don’t worry so much. The only serious threat is cataclysm. But it seems a significant part of ancient tech survived even that and is still with us. Actually, I’m not sure cataclysm is even a threat. I have a suspicion that man has been out in the stars for a very long time.
99% of these problem are related to the useless biomass metastatizing Europe and USA: the source cancer exixst because USA, Ukraine and Russia gift Africa and MENA af millions of tons of grain.
Overpopulation IS the Pareto's Cause of all these problems: people are only to shy to add "of Useless Biomass".
Are you suggesting choices will have to be made? I hate choices.
The irony that the people blowing up the credit are the same ones who have worked to prevent the productive from participating in the economy, those who could have been the economic multiplier that absorbed the inflation.