Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXV
Today’s Contemplation is my comment on The Honest Sorcerer’s latest article that looks at the financial nature of our modern world.
Rackets: Keeping the Curtains on Reality Drawn
Excellent summation of our predicament and how reality is being ‘hidden’ by the story-telling nature of our species — especially the stories being disseminated by those benefitting most from our current practices and trajectory.
I’ve come to believe almost everything today is a racket of one form or another. And by racket, I defer to what U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler stated about this phenomenon with respect to war: “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”
And this is where humanity appears to stand at the moment in our history on this planet: rackets are everywhere.
We are surrounded by rackets meant to keep the wealth-extraction/-generation schemes going and remaining in place in one form or another for at least another quarter or election cycle. And the stories associated with them are not only meant to keep the masses ignorant of the fraudulent nature of our practices and institutions, but to get the masses to support and cheerlead them on while ostracising and shouting down the voices that dare challenge or expose them.
And as our descent down the Seneca Cliff speeds up (due, of course, to the limits you discuss), the rackets are expanding in number and size in order to not only siphon more and more wealth from the masses towards the few at the top of our wealth and power structures, but to compensate for the expanding nature of our decline as the surplus energy needed to pursue growth quickly fades.
A perfect positive feedback loop expediting our descent and ensuring the inevitable ‘collapse’ is all the more spectacular and all-consuming in nature.
But, hey, let’s hear another feel-good story about our human ingenuity and technological prowess ‘solving’ all this and humanity living happily-ever-after, holding hands with each other and Nature…that tale is a lot more fun to listen to and believe in. Even if it is only a fairy tale told to make us feel safe and comfortable as the approaching storm grows in size and intensity.
If you’ve made it to the end of this contemplation and have got something out of my writing, please consider ordering the trilogy of my ‘fictional’ novel series, Olduvai (PDF files; only $9.99 Canadian), via my website or the link below — the ‘profits’ of which help me to keep my internet presence alive and first book available in print (and is available via various online retailers).
Attempting a new payment system as I am contemplating shutting down my site in the future (given the ever-increasing costs to keep it running).
If you are interested in purchasing any of the 3 books individually or the trilogy, please try the link below indicating which book(s) you are purchasing.
Costs (Canadian dollars):
Book 1: $2.99
Book 2: $3.89
Book 3: $3.89
Trilogy: $9.99
Feel free to throw in a ‘tip’ on top of the base cost if you wish; perhaps by paying in U.S. dollars instead of Canadian. Every few cents/dollars helps…
https://paypal.me/olduvaitrilogy?country.x=CA&locale.x=en_US
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You can also find a variety of resources, particularly my summary notes for a handful of texts, especially Catton’s Overshoot and Tainter’s Collapse: see here.
Recently released:
It Bears Repeating: Best Of…Volume 1
A compilation of writers focused on the nexus of limits to growth, energy, and ecological overshoot.
With a Foreword and Afterword by Michael Dowd, authors include: Max Wilbert; Tim Watkins; Mike Stasse; Dr. Bill Rees; Dr. Tim Morgan; Rob Mielcarski; Dr. Simon Michaux; Erik Michaels; Just Collapse’s Tristan Sykes & Dr. Kate Booth; Kevin Hester; Alice Friedemann; David Casey; and, Steve Bull.
The document is not a guided narrative towards a singular or overarching message; except, perhaps, that we are in a predicament of our own making with a far more chaotic future ahead of us than most imagine–and most certainly than what mainstream media/politics would have us believe.
Click here to access the document as a PDF file, free to download.