Well, it has been quite some time, and of course Chaos would apologize to any remaining readers (assuming there are some to begin with), but really, it all seems a bit much these days. It pains Chaos to be right about the US health care system, but what purpose does it serve, after all, to know that if one remains in this country, any medical issues will involve much more funds than one can afford? To know this and remain, it seems, is a willful act of negligence, if not blindness.
At any rate, Chaos now has a few new axioms to live by, having studied multiple issues of massive importance for the last few years, and here they are:
1. Any problem which requires the vast majority of the public to "wake up," "come together," and act in any sort of unified fashion will fail. E.g., peak oil, peak water, peak resources, global heating, driving slower, etc.
2. Any problem which involves disabling or diminishing the influence of large corporate entities will fail. E.g., health care, agricultural reform, regulation of large financial firms, etc.
3. Any problem which requires more than a modicum of understanding by the public (and most especially, the US public) will fail. E. g., all the above examples mentioned, plus drug policy, gun control, and legalization of homosexual rights.
4. Population control will not be mentioned, outside of China, and some doomer blogs.
5. Discussion of the effects of and the eventual exhaustion of exponential growth in use of finite resources is strictly taboo, in all circumstances.
6. Humans will not change unless forced to by changes in circumstances. Changes in actions will always precede changes in attitudes. E.g., we didn't stop overconsuming and borrowing money for same because we figured out it was a good idea, we just ran out of money.
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2 comments:
That about sums it up.
Jay Hanson (dieoff.org fame) is running a discussion on environmental cues and leadership. He makes some good points about how decisions are made, based not on facts and logic, but on presentation.
Which describes well how our media system, shapes our lives.
The media decides what we talk about and don't talk about. It defines the limits to knowledge we are allowed to have about issues. It guides us to make decisions that seem logical, in the framework of the presentation.
But stray a little outside the presentation and you're provocateur, a looney, a tinfoil hat conspiratist...
Peak Oil? Bah, those godlike environmentalist whackos, are stopping our titans of industry from fulfilling their godly duty of getting God's oil out of the ground! Oil can't run out! Jesus would never let that happen!
And so it goes...
Chaos welcomes the sage comments of a fellow traveler and Texan (although how one could be proud of the benighted people of this state is quite incomprehensible). Those who are long time followers of Peak Oil know exactly the disorienting feeling of observing the masses continuing their wasteful and unhappy lives, oblivious to their own profligacy and willfully ignorant of the most basic questions of resource and habitat depletion, overpopulation, and the defacing of the planet and its other beings. After waiting for four years or more to see, well, not much, Chaos has become just a trifle cynical. Or realistic. Take your pick.
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