Returning to the 'Real'

News & Current Events Public News & Current Events
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1

A paradox of life in these times is the inverse relationship between technological wizardry and the satisfactions of being a live organism in a real place (i.e., on the planet Earth).  It probably boils down to a proposition that the American public is not ready to entertain: that the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic. Eventually it will be a hard lesson to learn.

Poor Substitutes

Ours has been an age of producing ersatz substitutes for just about everything. We call the housing subdivisions slapped up by the production builders “communities” when they are just cartoon simulacrums of a community. The houses within them are called “homes” in order to confer emotional allegiance that they have not earned by being things worthy of our affection in places worth caring about.

The manufactured products we call “food” are visibly poisoning the public in epidemics of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. And the manner in which this “food” is dispensed to solitary “consumers” — from drive-in-windows, microwave ovens, and convenience store racks — has drained all nurturing social ceremony from the act of eating as surely as it has drained out all the nutrition.

Having scores of “friends” on Facebook is not about personal association but is rather a marketing racket for a company set up to be an advertising enterprise.

Computer graphic wizardry has only damaged our ability to tell meaningful stories in the dramatic arts media and reduced it to sadistic spectacle. Personal computers, now including phones and tablets, prey on our genetic weakness for novelty and rob us of our waking hours when we might be doing more satisfying things than email.

Where public affairs are concerned, Federal Reserve interventions, pervasive accounting fraud, and computer-derived market manipulations are not an adequate substitute for a real economy of volitional transactions based on purposeful activity. And so on. The list of bad bargains is very long.

The Cost of Technology

Lately, we run most of the critical systems in our culture on the basis of the proposition that if we can just measure everything we can control everything. This delusion has only produced an earth more out-of-balance and a humanity too distracted by its own dazzle to notice that we have a problem.

At the heart of our perilous romance with technology is the peculiar near-religious sentiment about progress. Victims of future shock vie for better seats on the Starship Enterprise hurtling into the event horizon of human extinction. Our techno-narcissism drives us to seek ever more “cool” applications (apps!) and embroider them into a matrix of deadly hyper-complexity. And, despite the veneer of glamor attached to novelty, these things end up making life worse and leaving us less than human. Techno-narcissists of the Ray Kurzweil stripe would probably reply that to become less human is exactly the point, since we are destined, soon they say, to leave all that flabby-fleshed rubbish behind and transmute into immortal computer vapor bots in the thrall of never-ending cosmic orgasm. But this is merely proof that some very smart people never grow up.

What’s perhaps more troubling is that the memory of a pre-hyper-complex techno culture fades a bit more each day and we may be losing the ability to recover the cognitive skill necessary to function without technological crutches — at least not in time to prevent us from losing a lot of ground in the project of remaining civilized. Prior to the onset of computer thralldom, these cognitive skills enabled us to interact socially without prosthetic extensions of Facebook and LinkedIn. They enabled us to understand where we stood in relation to others, to locate the boundary between the sacred and profane, and to achieve real artistry in our art — as opposed to the mere attention-seeking stunt-mongering that passes for art in our time. Obviously, a lot has been lost in a culture where the Kardashians battle with Duck Dynasty, Pawn Stars, and Grand Theft Auto VI for supremacy of the captive national attention-span. It remains to be seen whether a generation addicted to smart phones will be a lost generation in an era of epochal economic phase-change moving in a direction that very few of expect: a long emergency of resource and capital scarcity with all its attendant hardships.

Future Shock

The recognition that technological progress has a dark downside is not new. It has been articulated by figures ranging from Thoreau, Goethe, Max Weber, Henry Adams, Lewis Mumford, Albert Einstein, Morris Berman, Jane Jacobs, Ronald Wright and many others. Before them, the phantom of Ned Ludd haunted the knitting mills of Britain, and older mythologies are replete with stories about the hazards of dabbling in black magic. The last hundred years of history have produced an eerie balance of techno-magically induced thrills and horror, with things like powered flight, radio, motion pictures, microsurgery, Photoshop, and Kevlar on the happy side of the beam and trench warfare, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, 9/11, and Fukushima on the other. One might wonder how the human race stayed sane through all this. I’m not sure it did.

Our current behavior suggests a rather new incapacity to survey the horizon of reality and come to some consistent conclusions about what we ought to do next and how we ought to act, and it is beginning to look like we won’t act but rather just let history break over us like a great punishing wave, drowning the spellbound observers on the shore and washing away the monuments we erected to our own specialness. This cataclysm, where peak resources meet climate change, will bring on a time-out from the worship of “cutting edge” progress — since the cutting edge will have severed many heads in its transit around the earth — and it could bring on something we might characterize as a dark age where we’re too busy toting up the losses to do anything else but struggle to stay alive. But, we should desire deeply to want more than that. We should want to play a part in the healing of the planet and the redemption of our species and some people in some places will be more successful in this endeavor than others in other places. It will require the re-enchantment of everyday life.

Wittgenstein remarked, “It is astonishing that anything exists” (or as Keith Richards put it, “It’s great to be here; it’s great to be anywhere”) which implies that we begin by reestablishing some reverence for the simple privilege of our conscious lives. This is what religion might be about, perhaps what it started out being, before it became a vehicle for guilt trips, punishment traps, revenge fantasies, and the concentration of wealth and power. Religion carries the obvious appeal of set programming. You just open the package and play it. One downside is that it tends to become despotic in periods of historic tribulation, as secular government withers. The culture of United States is already prone to a high level of religious hysteria. If we’re fortunate, this strain of fundamentalism will burn itself out sooner rather than later in the phase-change to a post-industrial society.

Where To Next?

The questions will otherwise arise: what will people who can think for themselves do? What kind of narrative about the world might they construct outside of superstition? How will it prompt them to act? And might their actions make the world a better place for human beings and our other fellow passengers on the planet?

In Part II: The Future of Living, we surface the answers to many of these questions. The trends clearly underway in world affairs point to human communities that will be smaller, more localized, less complex, and less alienated from our primary ties to the natural world. These conditions will probably entail reduced access to the kind of advanced technology we’re immersed in for the moment, so we look at the career skills, solutions and living models that are likely to be needed most for entering this new -- more reality-based -- future with as much grace and prosperity as possible.

Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://peakprosperity.com/returning-to-the-real/

2

Thank you for putting a light on the cons of technology. As a teacher I was recently asked to respond to two articles on the use of technology in the classroom, both articles stress the inevitability of a tech-filled classroom. Here are links to the two articles:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar13/vol70/num06/Our-Brains-Extended.aspx

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar13/vol70/num06/Students-First,-Not-Stuff.aspx

My response:

 Many thoughts arise after reading these articles. In the second article, I like the concepts of effective thinking, action, relationships, and accomplishments, but it seems to contradict the outside needs of industry for disciplinary/specialty assessment. Most trends in education are heavily influenced by market needs, in particular the specialization required for the techno-structure of mature planned capitalism. This trend for more technology to be put into the hands of students is no exception. To look at technology strictly through the lens of education denies the context of the larger picture and how the market economy and education interact, in essence, it is the equivalent of looking at it inside a disciplinary silo without any windows. Increased complexity of a “system” also creates more inherent system fragility, therefore the need for “windows” in an increasingly more specialized system is paramount.

Whether discussing technology in regard to the classroom, or in our own lives, the questions that arise for me are those of balance. How much of gadget reliance do we want in our lives? Technology, contrary to what the first article states, is not an extension of our brains, and is also nothing new.  I would encourage anyone who wants a more comprehensive and balanced view of how technology evolved and its role in our lives, that you begin with the writings of Mumford, Spengler, Heidegger, and Ellul (all wrote extensively on technology) and then work forward to more current authors. The example the article gives…”losing one’s phone is the equivalent of losing half your brain” is not as straight-forward as it seems. One might alternatively ask in light of the huge increase of internet addiction groups, is it an actual physical withdrawal from an addiction? When the response to stimulus (phone/computer/etc) is that we can’t live with out it, it prompts deeper questions about dependency. All individuals are not created equal in his/her relationship with technology, and so its impact can be drastically different.

There are pros and cons to technology, and often those pros and cons depend on a person’s status within techno-structure of the system. Those who plan, i.e. beauracrats, administrators, managers, politicians, technicians, are the first to promote the benefits of technology because the techno-structure requires them to buy-in to this narrative to maintain the power and survival of the “organization.” The necessity to adhere to this narrative was extensively examined by economist J.K. Galbraith in the 1960s in his defining of the manager’s role in the new industrial state.  It must be noted that these planners are the first and predominant beneficiaries of technology. Those who are farther down the organizational ladder are more intuitively sensitive to technological change because they are more often the victims of the costs. Again, society gravitates to pros first because the industrial/technological market economy requires it, and the social narratives formed around technology are usually disseminated from the top down within this techno-structure. 

Furthermore, the costs of technology are most often not discovered until much later (externalities – health, loss of employment, monopoly, cultural deterioration, environmental -pollution, species extinction, climate change, etc.). The irony of the cyclical nature of technology is that the solutions to the externalities created are almost always end-of-pipe engineered fixes that require more technology and specialization, which in turn, create a set of new problems that need fixing at a later date. It becomes self-perpetuating.

Silicon Valley is one of the most powerful market forces in the world right now, matched only by the energy industry, governments, and their accompanying military. Open-source is not as open as you might think and the delivery systems are very much confined within the algorithmic programming of the software engineer.  Jaron Lanier, one of the architects of Web 2.0 and Artificial Intelligence (AI) discusses the pitfalls of “system lock-in” and the homogenization of the web due to the open-source platforms in his book “You are Not a Gadget,” a must read for any open-source advocate.

So my long-winded response and overarching question to these articles is… what are the costs/losses/externalities to implementing new technology in the classroom and more importantly, in our lives?  For example, how many teachers will lose their jobs because of MOOC classes? (as stated in the article, they are free)  If apps take over the organizational aspects of students lives, how will they fend for themselves in a protracted situation where they don’t have a gadget available to them?  Will they be emotionally and practically lost? If the costs of a new innovation are discovered later, and found to outweigh the benefits, will we be able to reverse course or will we be locked-in to the use of that technology? There is always the tendency to argue that the market is a self-correcting mechanism that will weed out and correct itself in relation to negative or costly changes.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t reflect the reality of system lock-in and/or the models of planned mature capitalism. “Planned,” not free, markets are the rule in a world of trans-national corporations. If we truly want to understand education and the use of technology, we must understand it unfortunately comes down to power (size does matter) and money.

Please don’t misconstrue that I have a bias either way in regard to technology.  Sometimes I find myself with a bias for, sometimes against. It's a love-hate relationship. 

I wonder if any of this got through??

3

Your article makes some really valuable points and has some important insights about our use of technology that we need to consider. Your ending doesn't fit though:

This is what religion might be about, perhaps what it started out being, before it became a vehicle for guilt trips, punishment traps, revenge fantasies, and the concentration of wealth and power. Religion carries the obvious appeal of set programming. You just open the package and play it. One downside is that it tends to become despotic in periods of historic tribulation, as secular government withers. The culture of United States is already prone to a high level of religious hysteria. If we’re fortunate, this strain of fundamentalism will burn itself out sooner rather than later in the phase-change to a post-industrial society.
Your broad, sweeping generalization of all religion reflects a pretty narrow view that isn't my experience at all. I don't deny that there are slices of some groups that are labeled "religion" that embody some of everything you described. However, the same might be said of governments, educational institutions, or any other organized group of like-minded individuals. 

My experience is that religious groups with a real faith based focused on the Creator's love, goodness and justice are the first to sacrifice to help the hurting, the first to feed the hungry, the first to cleanup after a tornado, or the first to find shelter for an abused spouse. They are all about restoring, encouraging, helping, building up, and making whole. 

"You just open the package and play it" implies the tired atheist rhetoric that asserts only non-religious people have a brain. While there are certainly several bad (some very public) examples of "religious" activity, most of the believers I run with are some of the most analytical, thoughtful, pragmatic, and wise people you will find. It must be an atheistic "article of faith" to believe that only non-believers are intelligent and think though their irreligious understanding of the world.

Real faith-based groups will be the first place to turn if the prophesies promoted on this site ever come to pass. These people will be grounded in transcendent realities and ready to adapt and trust their Maker to lead them through all of the trials.

 

4

yes it got thru gil, you took some time on that thank you

i have to say this somewhere…

 

the reality most likely is syria----- broke international law by using chemical weapons

the reality: usa will break international law by attacking  syria without un blessings

don't like it? change international law.but don't attack until then (or call down upon us ill biddings.)

if we attack syria, then all sorts of countries are justified to attack us because we set a presedence, like 1939 germany to attack at will.

think our guns so big that won't happen

think again

this is fools play and deadly fools play at that.

we are here folks at a music stopper/ chair grabbing event.

 

my guess, the us will attack.

the "axis of evil" will counter attack.

best top off that garden of yours, and water storage.

if this isn't a time to be ready aforehand…

good god keep yakin…and HOPE

 

who will help me bake my bread

not i said the dog

not i said the cat

not i said the…

then i will do it myself.

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

5

[quote=dugsmith]My experience is that religious groups with a real faith based focused on the Creator's love, goodness and justice are the first to sacrifice to help the hurting, the first to feed the hungry, the first to cleanup after a tornado, or the first to find shelter for an abused spouse. They are all about restoring, encouraging, helping, building up, and making whole. . . .
Real faith-based groups will be the first place to turn if the prophesies promoted on this site ever come to pass. These people will be grounded in transcendent realities and ready to adapt and trust their Maker to lead them through all of the trials.
[/quote]
I couldn't agree more. My home was severely damaged by a tornado this spring, but members of my church put tarps over gaping holes in the roof in the dark in a matter of hours, thereby preventing further damage from the rain. The next day they came back and cleared the debris and downed trees and pruned other broken trees, not only at my home but at all of the neigbhbors as well.
Stan

6

We had a massive volunteer effort here in Alberta after the devastating floods in May.And what I saw was a broad range of folks donating their time and best effort to help out. The local Hutterite communty helped, but so did all kinds of other folks. Families and friends helped each other. And government assistance has also been a big part of the response. But large amounts of money were raised through community efforts.
I'm not a member of any religious group, but I felt that I should help simply because I could. And because help was greatly needed. So for me and many others who volunteered our reason was as simple as that.  
 

7

Despite his many positive contributions, Kunstler's prejudices and hatred are tiring. I'm 100% with dugsmith. And I would not want to be stuck on a lifeboat with Kunstler! He's one of those people with great ideas and vision, but who is so prickly hardly anyone can stand to be around him. It's a shame.

8

in his pensees said it best,"God made man in his image, man has returned the favor ever sice."

9

My understanding of what he was trying to say was that we have made "progress," and in particular, our faith in technology to be our savior, and that it is this faith that has become the strain of fundamentalism that is pervasive in our society, and that he was making more of an analogy to certain strains of fundamentalism in our current religions. Science and technology have become a pervasive fundamentalist religion for many,  even with the contradictory trappings of logic and empiricism (there in lies the faith).
It is too bad that our news tends to focus on the negatives when it comes to culture and religion. (and positives when it comes to markets) There are so many non-fundamentalist religious organizations doing great and necessary work everyday, but we don't hear about it.

It is also unfortunate that Kunstler makes the remark of plug and play in regard to rituals. Rituals are a necessary component of worship, but his point is worth considering, as some just go through the motions.  I've been guilty of this as well at times, but regardless the communal act of ritual, whether engaged or not, does make a difference in worship. We should always question where we put our faith, so maybe that is what he is suggesting.

10

…people who represent from a deep spiritual base. There are also fanaticals, like Born Again Christians who I find to speak outside of both sides of their mouths. One side is love and the other, those who don't agree with them are Prince of Darkness type. I give no credence to any organized religion, I do give credence to the individual person however, that shows their humanity, someone who knows what it is to be human. Kunstler loves, is loved, so I'm cool with that and happy for him. I happen to think Love is a great gift and wish this on everyone.
He doesn't have the future pegged though, but he does have a visual and I like it frankly.

To be clear, I DO believe in something larger than myself, and something is responsable for this truly great world we live in and so I pray to this.

Peace

11

From the last paragraph:

Wittgenstein remarked, “It is astonishing that anything exists” (or as Keith Richards put it, “It’s great to be here; it’s great to be anywhere”) which implies that we begin by reestablishing some reverence for the simple privilege of our conscious lives. This is what religion might be about, perhaps what it started out being, before it became a vehicle for guilt trips, punishment traps, revenge fantasies, and the concentration of wealth and power. Religion carries the obvious appeal of set programming. You just open the package and play it. One downside is that it tends to become despotic in periods of historic tribulation, as secular government withers. The culture of United States is already prone to a high level of religious hysteria. If we’re fortunate, this strain of fundamentalism will burn itself out sooner rather than later in the phase-change to a post-industrial society.
Bolded parts my emphasis.

I am not seeing this as an attack on religion in general, but a rather an (un-necessisarily inflammatory) statement that, like many generalizations, offends many in the process of trying to make a point. Kunstler's style is, from my perspective, very much in keeping with the sensationalistic nature modern journalism/blogging. If there is no controversy, will it garner much attention?!?

From the outside looking in, there is a definite strain of fundamentalism in the US that has risen to the surface and made its voice heard loud and clear. This voice is so loud (and obnoxious to me) that it drowns out all the other good religions that others have mentioned - and all the people working hard to help others without fanfare or glory. And like John points out, it does not necessarily have to come from a faith based organization. Many people pitch in when the going gets rough simply because they are good people.

From Gillybilly in post # 8

We should always question where we put our faith, so maybe that is what he is suggesting.
Herein lay the gist of it for me. For some people questioning their faith, be it religious or political is sacrilege. They just cannot, or will not go there. Perhaps this can be tied in with the current situation in Syria. There are some people who just cannot believe that the US government would do/sanction such an act as poisoning civilians in a foreign country. This in the face of the fact that they have done similar things in the past as well as the overwhelming evidence of many blatant actions by the US government against its own people, making a joke of the constitution that is for all intents and purposes the equivalent of a bible for many people.

For some people, there is simply no shaking of faith in the leadership, no matter the level of deceipt or betrayal, no matter the evidence, no matter the stakes. To question would be to willingly give up a source of comfort and stabillity, to step outside of a box that is all they have ever known.

Progess only comes via questioning the status quo. This does not mean one has to abandon their faith in whatever it is that they hold dear. But it does require one to examine that faith to see if it is still as relevant now as it was in the past. If it is no longer relevant, or is doing harm, then perhaps it is time to re-think that faith.

To never question is to never change, and change is what we all seem to be advocating for here on this site. Kunstler's message mirrors Chris's message, it is just done in a different, albiet more provacative manner. But some of his message was as calm and clear as if Treebeard wrote it:

...we begin by reestablishing some reverence for the simple privilege of our conscious lives. This is what religion might be about, perhaps what it started out being...
If I can embrace any one religion with all of my being, then it will be the religion of living a simple, conscious life with reverence for all life on earth, and nothing but goodwill towards others in my heart. That is one "faith" I wish would catch on like a fast-burning brush fire.

Jan

12

What will happen to all those "friends".  Will suicides spike?   Will this help get rid of the lessers for us?

13

I applaud Mr Kunstler's clarion call to more authentic living.
Only those who have baked their own fresh whole grain bread, eaten their own fresh porduce, tasted the sweetness of sleep after phyically hard labor, or spent time in the presence of wise elders or loving extended families can truly understand eveyrthing we've lost.

He and I will have to disagree about his view of people of faith, but mindless believers in any system–be it a religion or secular humanusm–can be a problem. We need to be mindful - living in the now, not some utopian future or some idealized past.

But where have we lost touch?

In the late 70s/early 80s I was a decon in a Presbyterian church, and a part of my responsibilities was to vistit and check in on the church's shut-ins. One elderly woman lived in a rental, and her adult son lived there. He was addicted to some sort of early videogame. That was my first glimpse at computer-assisted addiction: he'd become so involved with his game that he ignored his responsibilities and relationships.

Today, almost every home I visit struggles with some sort of media addcition. Facebook, Twitter, cable TV, computer games, even email or news sites or blogging can take precedence over real life, real people, real responsibilities. Workers play on their computers at work. Homemakers neglect cleaning and children have even more reasons to avoid chores, homework, and playing outside or with others.

I urge you all to be mindful of your use of technology. Don't be dragged along by high tech so that your life is suborned by the whims of entertainment at the behest of advertisers. Who's in charge - you, or the computer? You or the television? If you crave interaction with others, instead of social media try meeting with real people face-to-face, at least one in a while.

My television stays off unless I choose to use it, once my work for the day is done (or rationed on breaks.) My computer time is done with a timer, so I do not lose track of how long I have been online. I mindfully choose to spend time with others, whether it's with a neighbor or a friend of family. I urge you to do the same. The first step in recapturing authentic living is to rediscover simple pleasures and each other. When you do that, you won't be as concerned about all we are about to lose due to peak oil. We will gain back so much more.

 

14

Jan,Loved your words! This comment is because I can only thumbs up your response once!
 
-eric & cindy (in the northwest)

15

Wendy:  Your observations are right on.  Raising five children in the eighty’s and ninety’s our house became a technical war zone.  Five televisions.  Four computers. Video games. Internet games. Email. Facebook. It was a constant fight with one screen or another to get anyone’s attention.  Every year we vacationed at a friend’s house in the mountains.  He was a sports nut so the whole common area was dominated by a huge flat screen tv. The rustic nature of the site was lost to the constant cable television programming.
Two years ago my wife and I had the opportunity to purchase our own cabin.  A decision we came to very quickly was to have no television service.  There is one television to watch videos and DVDs.   It might get one or two Portland, Maine, over the air, stations if someone  stood on the roof with an antenna. We don’t know.  We have never tried.

We have a stereo system to play music and we do bring my laptop and my wife’s i-pad.  Even so the difference is stunning. No running news or sports commentary.  No commercials. We spend a great deal of time just enjoying the silence, reading, working on projects, cooking and gardening.  When we want to listen to something, it is music of our choice, or New Hampshire/Maine Public radio over the net. The lack of constant noise has created a place of mental tranquility. Often I just sit on the screened porch to watch and listen to the woods.  There is a calmness we never seem to have at home.  By the end of a busy week my brain and soul are longing for the woods and the quiet. If James Kunstler’s view of the future  is correct I will not miss the barrage of noise.

16

I'll use mine then for you as you are correct. Jan did good and I don't use them 'Thumbs' things very much.Yogi

17

i've never had a cell phone, and i have dial up internet that runs on solar, so i'm selective and not online for more than an hour , if that per day(i can fry 2 eggs and bacon in the same time it takes to get online)so much of the hour is spent waitin not reading. if i had high speed, i would be done in 5-10 minutes.per day.
. i get one tv channel via the air…sometimes…and have a tv tucked away in a apare room in case i would like to watch a movie. this is september and i sit ourside and enjoy the milky way after dark and think of the psalmist who wrote…what is man that you should think of him., sometime have a campfire and listen to the birds settling in the cattails for the night. then the chorus of frogs starts up.

i would not call it meditation, but at night, i do sit outside and enjoy bein peaceful. or should i say i enjoy just being, which is peaceful.

i have studied and lived theology of several organized religions. and prefer my own thoughts and beliefs which have their roots in several of the major religions

i don't wish for a quiet life, i live one now. i constantly mention things and comment to g-d through out my waking hours.

i think i already live the life james alludes to for the future

i never could race around.

i've recently come on line to this site, but that is unusal and probablywon't last too much longer. from time to time i may check in.

i am living the change i want to see.

18

Technology as a tool is neutral. It's the intent of the user that is key. It is the context in which it is used that determines whether its effect is primarily positive or negative. Who is using it is more meaningful to me than its mere existence. Unfortunately, the intellect of homo sapians evolved faster than our moral sense. The amount of harm we could do with our tools/weapons was somewhat limited until fossil fuels came along and made so much more possible. We were delighted to rush forward using this seemingly limitless energy to create extensions of ourselves and to shape nature to our will. In the process, we lost something intangible but necessary - a humble awareness of our place in Nature.
I don't necessarily share JHK's vision of the future though it is an interesting one. I agree that our technology is based primarily on our use of fossil fuels and that as peak oil progresses, we will have to go back to using pre-industrial revolution energy sources. How far back we go no one knows. There are so many factors involved in shaping the future. We don't even really know if we will survive as a species because of all the harm we have caused.

I don't blame technology but our misuse of it that has resulted in more and more disconnection. It can be used to enhance contact or to create blocks to it. It can be used to create art or to detach ourselves from our creativity. To separate or bring together. To harm or heal. The level of consciousness of the user determines the shape it takes. So far, we have been pretty unconscious in our use of this power. And we became distracted by our own creations. We are at a point in history where the consequences of our choices are coming home to roost. We have divorced ourselves as much and as long as we could from those consequences, but that has become increasingly diffucult as the planet reacts inevitably to the overshoot fossil fuels also made possible. We have come to a turning point where we either destroy ourselves or become wiser and more mature - call it homo spiritus perhaps. We must realize our connection to everything around us and within us and evolve beyond self-interest, or we may disappear from the planet. Either way WE are the ones who created our own destiny. We cannot blame the tool for the actions of the maker.

If there are any survivors, I hope they would have learned from our example what not to do. I haven't a clue what that would look like beyond projections of current ideas such as gifting economies, permaculture, and intentional communities all of which seem to work better on a smaller scale. For now, there is Fukushima, a perfect example of technology in the hands of those incapable of foresight and based on a business model that puts profit over the health of people and the planet. Much depends on how this debacle is handled and whether or not the worse case scenario happens. If it happens, we're probably toast along with much of the life on the planet. That's if climate change doesn't do us in. Or we blow ourselves up in a giant mushroom cloud.

Clearly, we aren't ready to handle the power of our inventions in a responsible way. Maybe peak oil is a blessing, a gift from the planet until such a time comes when we are more mature and no longer a rapacious species greedily thinking only of its own survival. I think we can do better, and be better, but we have to make radically different choices. We either do so voluntarily or circumstances will force it on us. And haven't we all resisted change until it can't be avoided? Whatever happens, chances are the future will look nothing like what we've known during this brief period of energy abundance. If we survive, it will be because we have changed in a way that allows for greater awareness of our connection to the whole.

Joyce

19

[quote=jdye51]Technology as a tool is neutral. It's the intent of the user that is key.( the quote option isn't coming upso i don't know how to make the blue box.)
yeah and so is money and so is nuclear intelligence and so are hammers and so are autos and C4…all can kill can't they?you perhaps? it's not people is it? oh no,well, it is people and not theC4 isn't it?  c'mmon stop quacking that the future is tomorrow. the future is now, in that what youdo now, determinds your future.
methods of killing in the past have all killed…just in closer range.so is tech any different? only that  it kills from farther away. and largeramounts in a shorter time frame…
how many of you out there are living the life? now? are ready? are secure?are happy ? are peaceful?
talk is cheap . andit  wastes precious little timefor the talker  to prepare.
no one can predict when
ok. let's get past that
.intelligent minds can spot fragile and vulnerable situations.ok we are there.
and realize that somethings are coming soon(one week to one month) that are potentially changing our cush life style.
the us gov't is painstakingly take time to attack syria, to commit a world changing event…if you can't figure out that now is the time to squirrel up— what are you waiting for? the emergncy broadcast warning noise?a gemeral to say ok sir or honey, time to take stock move along.?
how about less opinion and more sharing of what you lived today?
todayi bought and loaded onto my truck 2390 lbs of stone pavers for a retaining wall that i built part of today. so i lifted the 1 ton of stone into my truck  one by one at 10lbs each…and then ferried them home. then unloaded the 1 tons of stone off the truck (by hand) and place one ton of stone in the wall
that is over7000lbs or over 3 tons of weight i moved today in 7 hours, because gas was cheap and so was the stone.this is reality
i am 60 years old. 60 yr old women in germany circa 1939-45 who couldn't do this were killed.i'm not diana dyad, i'm trying tosurvive todays enviroment/situation. it may be a one percent chance that i have to do this under review, but should the low percentage play occur, like the  high rise hotelfire that i was in, it's nice to know there is a turbo of reserve i can draw on.
c'mon, we have an american president trotting around the globe selling war today we have this article telling us…informing us…to be real not virtual??? have we've sunken this low?
i've always sort of known the difference between the two.virtual and real. trust me, real is way more real! heh heh  you get the point.
do you need to hear this…? then please hear it.
i don't want to hear commentary. i want to hear tomorrow what you got off your fanny and did to make yourself more like it to make it to friday.
and i was told this was a sight of like minded people to myelf.so far humph
if you feel uncomfortable reading this, then that just means you best get crackin and assure yourself some safety.
i have believed that several predicaments were at hand and so i've have put every cent and effort into trying to make a better life for myself and others… i stopped talkin and started doing.
now i'll stop talking and hope you start doing.

20

Both of you expressed some great thoughts which I completely agree with. I often wonder what all these people who are so addicted to technology are going to do if/when the ability to use it is seriously curtailed, if not lost altogether. There are so many people with not just poor social skills, but poor life skills on top of that, which makes me think that their ability to cope in a less technological world would not be good. Wendy has hit the nail on the head in saying we need to connect more in person. This needs to start happening a great deal more sooner as opposed to later, while there is still time to acclimatize and re-develop the lost art of interpersonal interactions.
As an example of how things seem to be going "out there", and I am sure you can all relate, I just returned from my daily post-work walk. My favourite route goes through one of the more popular off-leash areas for dogs. Lo and behold, I see a guy throwing a tennis ball for his dog with one of those throwing thingies. As soon as he let loose, dog now safely gone in hot pursuit, he tucks the throwing thing under his arm, whips up the smart phone, escaping back into the virtual world, completely oblivious to where the dog or ball ended up, or the stunningly beautiful scenery of this path along the ocean that overlooks the Juan de Fuca strait, and the Olympic mountains in Washington across the way. This is an all too common scene, and I find myself momentarily pitying the people who choose to be this way. In that Joyce nailed it too - it is a choice, so my pity only goes so far.

I can so relate to ferralhen about enjoying "just being" and the peace that comes with simple things like hearing the chorus of the frogs as twilight decends. I'd like to share an experience regarding that - I first heard the frogs singing for the first time in my life at the age of 44, a few years after getting my cochlear implant. I was "wwoofing" on an organic farm up Island. They had a pond out back, and when I came in one evening I heard this sound I could not identify. I asked the farm owner what it was, and he said it was the frogs in the pond. I remember writing in my journal "I heard a new sound today-it was a frog party in the pond". And my heart sang for the sheer joy of experiencing that new sound. I still experience altogether new sounds here and there. I hope that never changes. I hope I never cease to marvel at it. And more than anything, I hope that collectively speaking we do what it takes so that my little nieces and nephews will be able to delight at the sound of the frog parties too.

Jan