Charles Eisenstein: It's Time for a Better Narrative

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
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I absolutely enjoyed every second of this podcast. Ours is a future that is people, one by one paying forward good deeds that will slowly but surely change things. Why? It is our common nature, our biological similarities that will transition us to a symmetry with all of natures balances. It is the human being who will adjust or perish, and as the most gifted of all creatures we will get back to whatever center is. Internally I truly believe this. We are brothers and sisters of a singular race, I see our future as a camera on rewind, going very slowly. Hard landing, perhaps, for the ill prepared.
Our past is filled with fits and starts towards nirvana. The hippie generation, the cool cats before them, and the environmental movement after our moon shot. Not long ago warm ups to what lay ahead. An example of what our future may look like is reclaiming the past. For an example: Landfills will be reclaimed for all our productive waste buried as uneconomical. Now, maybe a thriving industry, where metals are mined at a fraction of the cost as roving recycling plants move from pile to pile. Adding to the grid its generating heat. Who knows but it’s an example of a feel good scenario. 

Charles used "Capacity is Dormant", and man how I agree with this. "Level off", that represents balance, and yes I agree with that. "Cultural Conditioning", Chris used this, and man how true but we recognize this. So are unharmed by the attempt to condition. The whole Podcast was one gem after another.

The part about Gold in the basement, the logic of it all didn’t get lost. There is always someone bigger and badder than you is the message. Risk/Reward. Frankly he could have said, corn, wheat, flour, campbell’s soup. If conditions are ripe then everything is up for repatriation. Who knows really what our future brings but we’ll get it right or create some balance. It doesn’t mean utopia but the balance will be righted. I absolutely believe this, it will be communal, you won’t be able to do it alone. You will need the assistance of others , and they you.

I have to ask a question of anyone who reads this. Is it more gratifying to give or to receive? I thought so, we would be great neighbors. Peace…BOB

 

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Those who aren't busy being born Are busy dying.
Bob Dylan
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Thanks for all the food for thought Charles, Chris, jrf and thc, and others…
I can see what thc is saying about how a lot of these spiritual principles have been around for a very long time, mostly fogotten or shelved in the modern industrial world in the name of consumptive rewards. I think a lot of these teachings have quite a bit to say about over-consumptive habits… Since our entire economic system that depends on consumption at its very core is falling apart, is it any wonder? I think we were warned about this long ago but have chosen to ignore it. If some ancient teachers were still alive today they may be saying "I told you so", or maybe they would have the maturity to not point fingers.

Charles and Chris talked about how many people who finally accept the uncomfortable facts we face go through a series of stages in their period of acceptance that shakes up their foundations, before moving on to adapt to the new narrative. I never went through that transition since I’ve always known things weren’t right, having grown up in various resource consumption boom towns throughout Canada and developing a strong connection with nature. My epiphany / wake up moment instead came one day after I had been ruminating for a long time about what science is and how the scientific method works, and how it relates to spirituality. Then it just hit me one instant – science works not by discovering what the truth is, but rather what the truth isn’t. That is fundamentally how the scientific method is structured. From this I went on to develop a lot of my own spiritual principles / discoveries over the next year or two and of course came to the realization that a lot of these things have been explored by many people before me (the Eastern belief systems really intrigue me, and we may be requiring their services more in the future because Buddhism was developed as a way to alleviate suffering in times of great physical stress).

The structure of the scientific method allows for spirtuality because it is NOT reductionist by nature. An example is Newtonian physics. This was discovered by Newton a few centuries ago and it perfectly explained the observable world at that time – things were neatly divided into either waves or matter, and a whole slew of logical mathematics was developed to describe observeable phenomena based on this. It all seemed settled. Some confident adherents went so far as to proclaim that the entire workings of our bodies could and would be explained in Newtonian terms (some of them still do, and write controverial and antagonistic books about it…) Newtonian physics had discovered the Truth!

Well, if so, that’s a bit boring isn’t it? The Truth is X. Move on. Of course, as our ability to observe the universe grew, and later great minds further investigated things, this thing called relativity came along which showed that the world isn’t so straightforward as what Newton had postulated. It turns out that Newton’s equations are merely limits of much wider equations that collapse down to Newton’s simpler forms within the realm of size and velocity that we observe on a regular basis. And a little bit later on came quantum physics, looking at the very small, which showed that Newtonian equations are merely statistical averages of other bizarre things happening on a very minute scale.

So was Newton wrong? No. But did his physics explain the Truth? No. Rather than saying, "Newton’s equations are the Truth", which allows for no further insight into the world, all the scientific method can really do is say, "Newton’s equations aren’t not the Truth". This is not just a semantic distinction, but it is actually an unavoidable limitation AND strength of the scientific method due to the sticky problem of subject / object duality (we are observers, not subjects, and can only interpret our observations within the framework of our previous understanding – the observer cannot be separated from the observed). This then opens the doors wide for other exploration well beyond the initial confines of Newton’s equations.

Our spiritual minds take all the accepted scientific non-truths and formulate our own versions (narratives) of what the "Truth" is, that are consistent with those accepted scientific non-truths. That’s how Stephen Harper has decided that exporting and consuming away Canada’s natural resources as quickly as possible, without any consideration of the consequences, is a wise path moving forward, because he has narrow-mindedly accepted only a small portion of the scientific data available which clearly shows that this is not a wise plan. His mind has contorted around the facts and found its own narrative which justifies his horrendous acts (likely founded in some chart in an economics textbook since he studied economics in school).

In this respect, science and spirituality are in no way incompatible. They go hand in hand and are really just different ways of approaching the same thing. This is why I am a firm believer in the marriage of technological / scientific advancement with spiritual "enlightenment" and our historical roots/wisdom.The problem now is that we are no longer putting technology in its righful place; we have embraced it as merely a tool to satisfy our economic requirement for consumption and growth. This of course will end soon and I hope we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water because we need science if we are to continue going forward.

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Folks, in World War ll our society banded together, and grew crops in their back yards, called victory gardens. People walked or road bikes, to and from. Gasoline or car driving was restricted except for to church or to work, and emergencies. They were given ration books, and neighbors who didn’t use all their rations gave them to the bigger families. People shared bread who hand flour, and others who had butter shared that for the bread. It was a national pride mandate, the narrative, because their brothers or husbands were fighting a war in some distant land.
Rosy the riveter was born, and women became our equals, a place we all knew they belonged.

Everyone gave to the war effort what they had too many of. Keeping only what was absolutely essential.

This has all been done before, transitioning peacefully, at the end of a horrible depression where the world didn’t cave, man didn’t cave. We became better for our efforts. This too shall pass, everything will find its balance, and there are way more rational people out there than is given credit. I could have also mentioned some of the bad things that occured along the way but that’s going to occur too. It is when we must all decide if what we have is worth taking a life. I suppose we have already decided the conditions where action would be taken already. We’ll know when we see it I expect. 

Those who have to much are not selfish people, they will give their excesses too. The poor are probably the best survivors of all the classes but they too will require assistance. It may be just seeds to grow, or a shovel, rake perhaps.

"The only thing to fear is fear itself". Perhaps a silly phrase from a similar time in history but if history tells us anything it is, keep it simple stupid. I will quote my father once more as I heard him speak these words a thousand times, "Bobby a Man is only responsible for food, clothing, and shelter, everything else is a luxury". He lived  during the Great Depression and heroically in WW ll, The WAR haunted him his entire life but he persevered, Mom persevered. The human code. A code that every country, its peoples, around the world has as an implant that will NEVER leave them. I don’t much care how we get from point A to point B, I just know we will… Regards BOB

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 I am absolutely delighted that Chris has highlighted Charles Eisenstein here and the importance of the stories we tell ourselves! No one has articulated this transition from old story to new story better than Mr. Eisenstein has. Brian Swimme comes close, but in a different way. I very much appreciate framework of old story/ new story because it puts all of the prediciments we face, as well as our preparations, in a much deeper context which is often missing from the dialogue of even the most aware. I am fascinated by Eisenstein’s work, because I can begin to glimpse, or maybe taste, the possibilities that exist on the other side of this collapse. And I am anxious to see if or how Eisenstein’s thinking will influence CM over time. 
So I’m sending a big THANK YOU for this podcast. And it didn’t go unnoticed that this one was free :) Go Chris! Go Adam! Go Jason! And by all means go Charles!!! 

You guys covered a lot of ground. Well done. 

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Interesting podcast. I plan on listening to Charles at a permaculture gathering, here in New Zealand in April. So this has given me a taster. However, I have a few comments of this podcast which might give the impression I’m too critical but there were only three things I picked up on that I thought were questionable.
Chris Martenson: "on some level almost everybody I talk to has got the awareness that something is wrong, maybe desperately wrong"
Not me. Many people agree with me that things are looking bad and something is wrong but it seems like an almost superficial agreement, since there is no deep change envisaged in their own lives. It’s frustrating and not like the picture Chris paints. If some significant change in their own lives isn’t envisaged, I can’t really see that there is awareness at any level, only a desire not to engage deeply in a discussion about what is happening, by agreeing, superficially, that there is something wrong.

Charles Eisenstein: talking about the "story of self" breaking down, "there is something of you in me where maybe you can even say that we are the same being looking at the world with two sets of eyes … you read about a child in Haiti eating dirt because he is so hungry. It hurts. Why should that hurt?"
It hurts because we have empathy, which is a gene survival trait. Charles seems to think it’s some deep spiritual meaning; it may be spiritual, in some sense, to realise that we depend, to a degree on the totality of biodiversity and the environment but I think he takes it too far. Bill Hamilton did a lot of work on altruism and it really is easily explained by a survive and propogate strategy (though unconsciously). Of course there is new work in epigenetics that is pretty interesting but I don’t think there is cause for thinking there is some underlying real connectedness in the way that I think Charles is portraying it.
Charles Eisenstein: "with the young people, a lot of what is going on is they could be paying for entertainment but they are getting together and making films, putting it on YouTube or they are doing re-skilling kinds of workshops, teaching each other a new skills. They are doing things – reclaiming things from the money economy" Chris also offered a similar picture.
Again, I don’t see this kind of behaviour myself, not as a real change. There has always been that type of do-it-yourself community but I don’t see a revival of it in young people; it’s still a pale reflection of community 30+ years ago and doesn’t seem to be improving, to me.

Tony

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@funglestrumpet & jrf29
I’ve lived in a few of those tight knit communities and usually there is one extended family that could care less what the community thinks of them. They steal anything not nailed down or guarded.

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I think you illustrate the connection pretty well. If our survival depends on having those traits, then this information gets passed in our genes, or whatever, and that’s a connection. We just don’t usually consider it a communication channel, but if it "walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."
Samuel

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Although not entirely surprised, it was encouraging to see that Business Insider CEO & Chief Editor Henry Blodget recently penned a blog post entitled "We Can’t Keep Growing Like This." (link)
In the article, Blodget references Jeremey Grantham giving a talk to a bunch of "super-quants" who, despite their mathematical prowess, still struggled with a good answer to the question - "Starting with only a cubic meter of physical possessions, how much physical wealth would they [Ancient Egyptians] have 3,000 years later at 4.5% compounded growth"? 

He shows the truly astronomical answer, and then goes on to demonstrate how even small fractional growth rates (ie. 0.1%) are, in the long run, unsustainable.  Grantham asks -  if the super-quants struggle with questions of exponential growth - how are we mere mortal supposed to fare any better? 

There seem to be more and more people honing in on perhaps the key issue of our time - the sustainability of compounded material growth.  Business Insider is obviously a pretty popular source for business, finance, and political info, so to hear the head dude over there asking these questions is at least somewhat encouraging. 

That nothing grows forever seems intuitiely true.  That being said, people say the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, and so I don’t know what the hell to really believe.  But, if I had to place my bets, I’d say we’re at the end of the line when it comes to material growth.  Perhaps we will evolve and learn to place a higher value on psycholgocal and other forms of non-material wealth in the future, but for now, our current conception of wealth and growth seems unsustainabile.   

 

 
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Mr. Eisenstein is right.  Our political and economic elites have been operating under a consensus trance controlled by the psychology of previous investments since the 1960s.  Their ignorance about energy laws and the irreversible decline in global net energy are leaving us unprepared to make a "controlled crash landing" over the next several decades. It has been known since the early 1970s, thanks to scientists like Dennis Meadows and Jay W. Forrester, that the dynamics of our industrial civilization coupled with our belief in the necessity of economic growth,  would lead to collapse by 2050 due to over-population, resource exhaustion and pollution.  Dr. Meadows recently commented that the actual couse of events is ahead of  the scenarios generated by their models.  In other words, if we cannot figure out how to live without economic growth over the next 20 years, we are likely to be killed by war or by starvation.  We are in more trouble than we can possibly imagine.  Only extreme resource conservation and dismantiling the wasteful market system can buy us enough time to escape from the civilization suicide-machine we have constructed. 

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[quote=sofistek]Interesting podcast. I plan on listening to Charles at a permaculture gathering, here in New Zealand in April. So this has given me a taster. However, I have a few comments of this podcast which might give the impression I’m too critical but there were only three things I picked up on that I thought were questionable.
Chris Martenson: "on some level almost everybody I talk to has got the awareness that something is wrong, maybe desperately wrong"
Not me. Many people agree with me that things are looking bad and something is wrong but it seems like an almost superficial agreement, since there is no deep change envisaged in their own lives. It’s frustrating and not like the picture Chris paints. If some significant change in their own lives isn’t envisaged, I can’t really see that there is awareness at any level, only a desire not to engage deeply in a discussion about what is happening, by agreeing, superficially, that there is something wrong.
<SNIP>
Charles Eisenstein: "with the young people, a lot of what is going on is they could be paying for entertainment but they are getting together and making films, putting it on YouTube or they are doing re-skilling kinds of workshops, teaching each other a new skills. They are doing things – reclaiming things from the money economy" Chris also offered a similar picture.
Again, I don’t see this kind of behaviour myself, not as a real change. There has always been that type of do-it-yourself community but I don’t see a revival of it in young people; it’s still a pale reflection of community 30+ years ago and doesn’t seem to be improving, to me.
Tony
[/quote]
I agree with you Tony… but I think things in NZ and AUS are still a lot different from the US.  Our housing bubble is just bursting now (I think), and out economy (at least on this side of the ditch!) is still cruising, even though there are dark signs of rising unemployment and rising interest rates making their presence felt.
Never forget this is mainly an American site…
For anyone interested, we heard Nicole Foss speak the other day, I wrote it up on my blog http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/a-century-of-challenge/
Mike

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[Moderator’s note: Religion.]

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Just finished "Ascent of Humanity" and it is both blowing my mind and connecting many dots.  
Charles Eisenstein is as radical a thinker as I’ve come across (that also make a pursuasive argument) and I enjoyed this book emmensely.  Among other things, Charles questions the entire Darwinian basis of our understanding of why we are here and what our purpose is (without getting caught up in religious dogma).  He connects an obviuosly well researched understanding of cutting edge biology and quantum theory with insights from anthropology and psychology - leading to observations that begin to address a fundamental disconnect that many of us feel in our daily lives.  His thesis is that humans have separated themselves from nature to such a profound extent that we are all suffering enormously, and that the coming crisis will cause all of us to reflect on this separation and to eventually find ways to reconnect.

For anyone who has read "Ismael" by Daniel Quinn, this takes some of Quinn’s observations and expands them in both depth and breadth.  Highly recommended reading.

Eisenstein also has several other books that are similarly radical in their lateral thinking: Yoga of Eating on dieting, and Sacred Economics on alternative money systems (have’t read this one yet).

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[quote=Mark_BC] In this respect, science and spirituality are in no way incompatible. They go hand in hand and are really just different ways of approaching the same thing. This is why I am a firm believer in the marriage of technological / scientific advancement with spiritual "enlightenment" and our historical roots/wisdom. 
The problem now is that we are no longer putting technology in its righful place; we have embraced it as merely a tool to satisfy our economic requirement for consumption and growth. [/quote]  You are right about science: it never claims to be "the truth" since science (whether we mean the scientific technique, or the body of recorded observations accumulated by applying that technique) always assumes that there is an enormous amount about which we know nothing (otherwise, why keep working in the labs?).  And science does not discover truth: only observations.  Our understanding of truth has nothing to do with science per se: it is a theoretical construct relying on the art of logic, which predates the scientific method by millenia.  Science is simply a technique for making sure that our facts are correct.
At any rate, this theoretical construct is based on the available facts (proven by the scientific method), and nothing says it cannot change if the available facts change.    But there are many facts entirely beyond the reach of science, and none which can be known absolutely (beyond the single fact which Rene Descartes observed can logically be known with certainty: we exist).
Consequently, a thing can be proven correct a thousand times, like the lead ball and feather seemingly proving that heavier objects always fall faster than lighter ones, but these "facts" are never completely safe from being disproved in the future. 
Those who view current scientific knowledge as an all-encompassing and absolute truth don’t know what science has always been about.  To think about science this way is to treat it almost like religious dogma, and that betrays the open and inquisitive spirit of science.
Also, the bit about technology is one of the most thought-provoking things I have read in a while.
jonesb.mta,
Hm.  Towns (and I suppose cities, to a lesser extent) develop personalities just like people: some are good, and some are not so good.
 

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Robert, I’m sure you’re right, we will get through whatever happens.  We always do.  I agree with your sense of optimism about the future, because I think there is a lot to be optimistic about.

Just the same, in 1941 the United States was a far more culturally homogenous place.  We have spent the past 40 years actively hacking away at the idea that a country even should be culturally homogenous. 

A lot of useless, alcoholism-inducing social strictures have been abolished since 1940.  We have co-ed dormitories now, and guess what?  The world didn’t end!  In fact there is infinitely more equality and understanding between the sexes now, as you pointed out.  American culture itself has changed, and that’s a very good thing.

But alongside changes in American culture is a separate phenomenon: the fragmentation of the culture, and our belief that this fragmentation is somehow good.  "Celebration of diversity" works best in times of plenty, when tight cultural bonds are not required.  Today there is not a single activity or ritual that everybody is expected to share or participate in.  "Merry Christmas" has turned into "Happy Holidays."

I don’t mean to advocate the Christian religion by that statement.  Nor do I mean to suggest that it’s OK to be intolerant of others and their lifestyles: that was a wonderful lesson of the past 40 years.  I only mean to observe that throughout history, all cohesive societies had a set of fixed traditions or beliefs in which the vast majority of the population participated, and which bound the people together as a single nation and served as evidence of their unity.  Certainly that was the case in 1940. 

Today I’m not so sure.  As long as the money keeps flowing, everything will always appear fine.  But this can mask unseen deterioration in the social bonds that hold a nation together.  Certain places will be fine.  At the risk of sounding facile, I’m not too worried about Maine, Nebraska, or Vermont falling apart at the seams anytime soon.  But Southern Florida?  New Jersey?  California?  Mississippi?  New York City?  How well will these places "pull together?"   I am honestly prepared to be surprized, because I have learned to never underestimate the power of humans to do amazing things.  But then I think about the Holocaust that happened in Germany, a modern industrial country where I myself have ancestors, and I wonder . . . .

Secondly, I’m glad (or maybe worried) that you picked WWII as an analogy.  It is not lost on national leaders that war unites a nation.  It’s the oldest trick in the book when you have strife at home: find an excuse to declare war.  Not only does war (a) unite your nation against the common foe, and (b) ship the hotheaded youth far away, but it also provides the perfect cover to dramatically expand the authority of government through "emergency" measures and war powers.  I have no doubt that this trick will be used with regularity in the future, as it has been since time immemorial.

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…and acknowledge that what you see as truths are my visuals too.
In listening to the podcast I was struck with something Charles referenced, and explained as "Capacity is Dormant". He referenced how a community of people when struck with a tragedy came to know one another’s, neighbors helped each others in a common interest and goal. This was not evident to Charles until flooding occurred in his neighborhood. While this isn’t evident today as it may have been 30 years ago doesn’t mean we have lost this nature within ourselves. It just means that until we are attacked as a community will we react, in other words our good nature, common to all of us, will remain dormant. 

In addition the podcast also referenced national "narrative". It is my firm belief that if the politicians, and the President, in a unified bipartisan manner, disclosed to the American people the dire consequence of Peak Oil that this would rally Americans in a common purpose. If we then went on to build out our natural gas abundance, that jobs, and a sense of urgency would get this done. It may not resolve entirely the problem (it won’t) of Peak Oil but would help by keeping our funds here working throughout our system, all because we managed the BTU, and used natural gas to replace oil, where it could, that this would then replace many barrels of imported oil. 

Certainly this would ease our national security issues related to the importation of oil. The free flow of oil costs many  billions to maintain on a yearly basis. it costs many billions of dollars just in borrowing and paying interest to our national treasure just having to import oil. So every barrel not imported makes us safer, benefits our treasury, and keeps funds here to be used within our system to create jobs, and benefits our capitalist system rather than a socialist system (which we appear to resemble more and more). Know this, Oil costs $100 dollars a barrel. To the American people it’s more like $400 dollars a barrel if you factor our expenditures to protect the free flow of Oil (I have no data to show this now but I feel I’m not to far off from the truth). Hell, if we didn’t need the Oil from the Middle East then we could close all bases, bring home all our kids, and just be mediators. Afghanistan and Iraq caused our treasury trillions of dollars! How badly could we use those funds now!? Chris wrote recently (I’m not quoting exactly) that our yoy import cost was $588 billion (?) dollars of which 60% was oil. That’s in the neighborhood of $350 billion dollars last year alone. Lets eliminate 20% if we use the BTU of natural gas properly, and say we have built out the infrastructure in natural gas today. That would represent nearly $70 billion dollars of savings and not exporting dollars. Or represents a 20% savings in Oil barrel imports. That’s a HUGE step forward. The spin off would be good jobs in the natural gas industry, taxes, savings in unemployment compensation, food stamps, welfare, etc…not including the spin off in other supportive industries. Huge, just HUGE. Natural Gas prices would rise but would still cost less than Oil. Natural Gas rising makes the fringe energy companies more competitive, like solar, and wind. More jobs, more BTU, and more spin off everywhere. This new narrative could be a galvanizing force. Instead of a, they have we have, bullshit story we hear every day by the talking heads, and our politicians. I’ll stop here but this could play out all day here. The thing that’s so disturbing is I am not connected at all with the elites, but I have represented a positive plan here, as many have here. So why the hell haven’t our leadership?

Wars are generally resource driven, so the more we conserve, and the more BTU we save or utilize, lessons the strain on our economy, and thus national security. We negotiate now rather than fight because our national narrative is clear, beneficial, and goal oriented. Now we just hope for leadership, and in my opinion, is all that is lacking

I am positive by nature jrf, I believe in the ‘can do spirit’ within all of us. I am also a realist, and prepare for as many outcomes as may unfold so that I can be pro active, and not bothered by hunger pains distracting me from what really needs to be done now. Good Luck to you jrf, I wish you well…Bob

 

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PS: I wanted to add that all we get from our leadership is as described by our nutty Professor Chris is, "Cultural Conditioning". Enough already with that old and tired mantra, time we work again, I would like very much for the New Narrative to be "Honesty is the best policy", "you can’t bullshit a bullshitter", "Competition is good, so lets compete", "Winning is everything" while used as a driving force, not a military force. I look for an "ease of transition", not an all at once, have to do it now ,Marshall Plan transition where  our freedoms and rights are trampled on. That’s a power grab and we must resist. Regards BOB

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Thank you for the long and thoughtful reply.

My instinct isn’t to disagree with you.  I think you are absolutely right: there is an enormous well of charity, good nature, and community spirit.   I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of people are good at heart, and don’t want to harm others or get any unfair advantage for themselves. 

The only note of caution that I would suggest is that a short emergency (month long, or even a few years long) could be much different then a multi-decade long slide.  As long as everybody is "in it together," things will be OK.  But I think that may not be the case (see my second post below).

I also agree that if the leaders were honest with the people, that would go a very long way toward restoring our national spirit and common purpose.

My first reaction is two-fold: (a) You are probably right: a major program of gas extraction is important.  (b) As Chris observes, in just 150 years we have burned through nearly 1/2 of our entire bequeathment of oil, built up over millions of years, and nearly exhausted many other resources as well.  Now we’re going to work hard to see how quickly we can possibly extract all of our natural gas.  We’re leaving future generations shivering in the dark.

But let me emphasize that I absolutely agree with you: natural gas is going to be a vital bridge fuel, and it’s a crime that we’re twiddling our thumbs instead of finding ways to use natural gas to supplement oil for critical uses.

[quote=robert essian] I am positive by nature jrf, I believe in the ‘can do spirit’ within all of us. I am also a realist, and prepare for as many outcomes as may unfold so that I can be pro active, and not bothered by hunger pains distracting me from what really needs to be done now. Good Luck to you jrf, I wish you well…Bob [/quote] In difficult times the true commodity is people like you who, in their minds, can see a path forward.  If there is one, only the optimists will find it.  Of course being optimistic doesn’t mean unrealistic.  But it doesn’t help anybody if during a crisis you’re hiding in your basement, holding your head in your hands and sobbing, "It’s all over!"  It’s a real pleasure chatting with you Bob.  All the best to you, too.

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Bob, in response to your comment about preserving capitalism:
First, I’m no fan of socialism. It’s an interesting idea: whenever you discover that you need money, you steal some money out of your left pocket and put it into your right pocket, while paying an army of bureauocrats (the real beneficiaries) a hefty salary for doing so.  Nevertheless, our capitalist system cannot survive in the very long term, I don’t think, without some sort of modification.
Peter Schiff makes a good point about the wealthy today (he was responding to the idea that cutting taxes on the working class has a higher "multiplier"  effect because they spend a higher percentage of their pay): when you give stimulus money to the working class, they promptly spend it on products imported from China; basically we stimulate the Chinese economy.  But when wealthy people are allowed to keep their money, what do they do with it?  They don’t bury it in the ground.  They invest it in companies and in banks, which provides the capital to lend to thousands of new businesses every year.
Very true.  Of course this only works in a growing economy, where most money borrowed at interest can be put to profitable use and then paid back (self-liquidating debt).  But in a no-growth economy this isn’t possible.
Speaking of growth, the main thing that distinguished 18th and 19th century America from the stagnant Old World was that we had endless land and other resources just waiting to be exploited.  If you had the talent and motivation, you could find your own little corner of unexploited land and build a farm, a mine.  If manufacturing was your taste, there was a constantly increasing demand for new manufactories to process the raw materials.  And of course there was a steady growth in other fields (doctors, lawyers, architects, plumbers) to supply the needs of this growing complex.  Oil put this whole dynamic on steroids.  All it took was intelligence and drive, because the opportunity was certainly there.
People tolerate economic inequality because they know that there is always a chance for them to succeed.  Or maybe their children will succeed.  But in a negative-growth economy, social mobility is impossible.  Like feudal Europe, those who own some productive asset (like farmland) will be wealthy for generations, while those who are born poor are up the creek without a paddle.  In a negative-growth economy, the only way for somebody to advance to the upper class is if two people fall out of it.  This may happen from time to time, but not often enough to provide an generation of people with individual opportunity.

Under these circumstances, people will begin to wonder why the great-great-great-great grandchildren of the lazy wastrel, who by dumb luck owned land bordering a river, should be entitled by property law to draw an endless stream of income from their water wheel and also sell access to their water to the starving peasants who do not own property bordering the river – for generation after generation –  while the great-great-great grandchildren of the man who owned an apartment should be condemned to poverty with no way of getting out.

That’s what the New World was: fresh resources for those intelligent, motivated European peasants who probably could make better use of them than the lazy, landed aristocracy in the Old Country.
The decline of net energy makes all resources smaller.  American-style capitalism (born in an era of great opportunity for all) will have problems when people realize that brains and motivation are no longer enough.  When people realize that, in a negative-growth economy, those who inherit productive assets (or the Goldman Sachs executive who bought them with stolen money) will always be comfortable, and those without will only rarely have the opportunity to "break in" to that lifestyle.

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[quote=jrf29]Robert, I’m sure you’re right, we will get through whatever happens.  We always do.[/quote]If, by "we", you mean humans, then obviously, our species has come through a lot, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. However, that doesn’t mean our species always will. Nor does it mean that all members of the human species "will get through" or that those who do will not suffer on the way through the bottleneck.