Peak Everything

 Peak Everything with Richard Heinberg

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

(recently revised, cleaned up and made more entertaining)

For the Techno-Optimists and those who champion a cultural response of intensification of the most heinous aspects of our failing death culture, namely the efficient conversion of the living into the dead, of our living home into a veritable Death Star, replete with an overbearing Shock Troop/Goon Command/Gestapo and literally, quite literally a hyper violent, repressive Fascist political structure wrapped up in the patriotic flag of "Freedom, Hope and Change".

In every instance of failed societies, from the Maya to the Romans, towards the very end they all exhibited an intensification of the very dysfunctional cultural behavior that culminated in their fall, be it monumental architecture, claims of divine authority accompanied by grander legitimization ceremonies, wars of imperial conquest and gross insults on the environment. This is superbly explicated by Jared Diamond here.

We live on a finite sphere of a system, a planet that is not free from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics or Entropy, it is axiomatic that we cannot "grow", in terms of urban "development" and human population size indefinitely. Yet the techno-optimists and Neo-Classical economists in company with Milton "Free Market" Friedman want you to believe the impossible. Now the Universe is chiming in with a bitch slap to return to reality in the form of depleted oceans, fossilized aquifers, polluted everything, Deep Water Horizon's and Fukushima's and more looming on the horizon.

I think as time goes by it is becoming apparent that the only ones who truly cling to this antiquated, outmoded and patently false worldview are the status quo, the 1% (well when you count the Goon Commando's and the rest of the Military Industrial Corporate Congressional Complex the number is closer to 5 or 10%) who benefit from such a self-destructive system. But thats the trick. They think they benefit from this. But I dont think they do. Nor do I think if they truly understood that the implications of the perpetuation of this failed ideology meant the consignment of their children (no we are past talking about the consignment of their grandchildren, the crises are knocking at the door now) to impoverishment and possibly/likely death.

I believe every organism of sufficient capacity to alter their environment for the improvement of their material well being eventually encounters a point in time when they are required to re-examine and modify the innate tendencies inherent in a consciousness developed in austere conditions over millennia upon millennia that favored self-preservation and procreation. We now are confronted with an organism that has a dangerous mismatch of sophisticated technological ability and a still immature or primitive level of behavior and interaction with its broader environment.

The beings that are here to assist Humanity into this metamorphic process that is before us and that is requisite for our continued survival have also faced a similar turning point and consciously chose to change. Many organisms have not made it beyond this point. If you follow mainstream astronomical developments, your'e likely aware that we have discovered not one but four planets in distant solar systems that occupy the "habitable zone" of their respective star. The truth is, we don't need to look that far for intelligent life elsewhere, we have been in direct contact with it all throughout human history. But why, why are the mainstream scientific institutions making this a part of our world of ideas now? Could it be to seed the idea that the strategies historically employed by past failing societies, which involved a spilling over of its population into other regions of the globe, aka the Spanish Conquest of the 15th century onward and "Manifest Destiny" to the west of the Mississippi in North America is our pre-ordained destiny?

Its a form of collective denial, for to truly confront the origin and continuity of our collective insanity, which many believe to be a collective manifestation of our ego, would require a reappraisal of our behavior and imply a massive shift of consciousness being requisite for our continued survival and well being. But if youre in deep denial, and you have benefited from the inequality, the slavery the self-inflicted wars for geo-strategic access to resources abroad and control and pacification of society at home, of the massive insults on the environment, and you have undue, biased influence on mass consciousness, you literally own and control what is covered in all forms of mainstream media, well guess what, youre going to justify the insanity.

"This is natural behavior, Survival of the Fittest!" (Actually, Darwin attempted to modify his original hypothesis towards the end of his life to say that organisms that respond the most quickly to changes in their environment tend to pass on their genes and drive evolution (which strongly contradicts a conservative oriented ideology, again see Jared Diamond's work above for the result of failing societies remaining rigidly conservative during times of dynamic upheaval), but the British elite/status quo got behind the original formulation of the theory of evolution with fervor as it supported the massive inequality in Britain at the time, and that brings up another point: it wasnt exactly Charles Darwin who occupied a wealthy rung of the socio-economic ladder that first posited the idea of natural selection but Alfred Russel Wallace, a lower class commoner, one of the 18th century's 95% who wrote to Darwin expressing the original idea).

"No we dont have to change our behavior, for how will we (the status quo) be able to continue to have a vampiric relationship with the whole!?" "We have to go out there to the Final Frontier and Democratize the galaxy, Make the Milky Way (and beyond, to "boldly go where no man has gone before") safe for democracy!" "The sentient beings elsewhere are Terrorists, they threaten our Consumer Freedoms!"

"Anglo-Saxon Neo-Conservatives (and Zionist Jews) are the Masters of the Universe! Any threat to our divine supremacy is terrorism and must be either eliminated or taken to Guantanamo immediately and indefinitely"! 

"We must prove to the rest of society living in abject squalor (this author sleeps in a tent by the way, for those who have yet to read my introduction to the right) a justification for our massive mis-allocation of resources and energy into pretty much the hands of the few under the guise of "Counter-Terrorism" and "Democracy Promotion". "How will we do this?! Oh how did we sell the invasion of Iraq to them? Oh we will orchestrate a fake alien invasion! 9/11 writ large! Theyve come for our meager resources!! They hate us because of our consumer freedoms!"

"Yes we most go out and "democratize" the beings there at those planets and convert them to our religion of the worship of material crap and reductionistic science and death."(like that depicted in the psi-fi film Avatar).

No.

We wont be allowed to.

This insanity ends here.

Again the beings of great sentience and advanced psychic and technological ability survived and thrived because they chose to grow up and build an advanced society on a foundation of love, empathy, inclusiveness, equanimity and compassion.
 
Whether or not Humanity chooses to grow up and metamorphose into our higher potential is a question that remains to be answered.

P.S. The idea of travelling to these distant earth sized planets is a tall order being that they are a considerable distance away. The whole fake alien attack idea, if it is used by the international economic elite, will be used to justify a planet wide expansion of surveillance and control, just as with 9/11, in response to the supposed threat, meaning a level of global political consolidation akin to the UN on steroids, meaning draconian control and a considerable loss of freedoms.

Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely - John Dalberg Acton

In the face of resource depletion we will likely experience a repeat of Feudalism; those presently in control are fully aware of the situation and will do anything they have to to remain comfortable. If they dont have carbon based energy to meet their needs guess what? There's presently a glut of human muscle energy! Unemployed? Want some food? Yeah come on down to a peasant manor near you! (this is after the initial die off/zombie apocalypse phase when people begin to "get it" that the same economic elite dont really have any solutions to the problems of Peak Oil and overpopulation, and start panicking. This is also why the 3rd Infantry Brigade has been re-deployed within CONUS (continental U.S.), and why there is a bill authorizing the same forces the right to detain indefinitely and U.S. Citizen at home or abroad who is a suspected "terrorist". Pretty broad gray area here, by writing this am I a terrorist?

Thought Crime!

But what will likely play out first is the beginning of World War 3 with Iran, China and Russia. Either way it doesnt look good. My recommendations? Get off the grid, get close to where your food comes from, start learning practical skills, Permaculture, etc etc.

see also: 

Jared Diamonds Collapse: A National Geographic Special