Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXIV
Price Inflation, Protests, and ‘Clean/Green’ Energy
This Contemplation is a brief compilation of three comments I made in the last couple of days on some Facebook posts I happened across. Hoping to have Part 2 of Our Banking System: Government vs. Private Control ‘essay’ up in a couple of days…
The Ukraine War and Our Cost-of-living Crisis
Relevant link: https://ageoftransformation.org/usfossilfueleconomycollapse/
My comment: The cost-of-living crisis has been building/present for years/decades, and primarily the result of currency devaluation/debasement by our ruling caste and huge growth in debt/credit that has fuelled both the significant drawing down of finite resources, mal-investment, and ballooning prices in ‘favoured’ assets (e.g., housing). Yes, a symptomatic sign of diminishing returns on investments in complexity and very much a contributor to collapse. However, as they always do, the élite leverage events/situations to their advantage and the West (and their propagandists in the mass corporate/legacy media) have latched onto the war (that they encourage at every turn and very much created) to blame for inflation in order to keep eyes off of their machinations (especially economic sanctions) that have contributed to it — blaming some specified evil ‘other’. The world is very much NOT like what our elite and media tell us.
How the Canadian Government Deals With Protesters — Especially Indigenous Ones
Relevant link: https://pbicanada.org/2023/03/29/breaking-rcmp-c-irg-raid-on-wetsuweten-happening-now/#AbolishCIRG
My comment: Canada’s government (like all of them across the planet) is great at declaring they are protectors of their citizens and the environment. In reality, they represent the interests of their country’s elite whose primary motivation is control/expansion of the wealth-generating/-extracting systems that provide their revenue streams and thus positions of power and privilege. Governments do not and never really have been about the hoi polloi or environment — except to control and exploit them. Grand narratives to the contrary are about creating moral validity for their positions atop a complex society’s power and wealth structures.
‘Clean/Green’ Energy
My comment: Looks entirely ‘carbon free’ and ‘clean/green’.
Author’s reply: Nobody said it was. But probably a good investment for the short term.
My reply: Sure, if we discount all the damage done to create them.
Author’s reply: Because just using oil or coal for power generation does not cause damage either right?
My reply: First, I never said that fossil fuel use doesn’t cause damage — it certainly does; very significant damage if one considers all the destructive technologies it ‘powers’. Second, non-renewable, renewable energy-harvesting technologies (NRREHTs) are additive to our energy use; they are not replacing fossil fuel use as it continues to grow. Third, part of that fossil fuel use growth is because of the proliferation of NRREHTs; these technologies require huge amounts of fossil fuel inputs. Finally, the industrial processes necessary for NRREHTs and the energy-storage components they need are significantly damaging to ecological systems. You don’t correct the planetary damage we’ve done (to say little about the overarching predicament of ecological overshoot) through our exploitation of fossil fuels by using a lot more to create other complex technologies (that require fossil fuels in perpetuity) to try and continue to power unsustainable complexities. All that does is exacerbate our overshoot predicament.
Our world is an exceedingly complex one, and perceptions of it and the way in which we interpret the various phenomena that arise are seldom if ever simple and straightforward. As a social, story-telling ape our species is unique in this regard (relative to others we co-exist with here). It is also true that we are a rationalising animal, not a rational one as we like to believe. We tend to believe what we believe to reduce our anxiety but also to appease/fit in with our social circle and in deference to ‘authority’ (the ‘dominant’ story-telling apes).
I am no different in this regard for the most part. I offer these comments to make clear my thinking and personal biases. You can agree with them and their interpretation of the world, or not.
My ‘hope’ is that in your thinking about the world and our predicaments you reflect upon how we form ideas/opinions and how the less-than-honest, domineering apes amongst us might be leveraging psychological phenomena to maintain their positions of power and influence — particularly by way of narrative management and coercive policies.
Are our economic hardships/fragility truly the result of some evil ‘other’? Do our political systems truly represent the ‘average’ person/family, putting the welfare of the masses at the forefront of decisions/actions? Can we truly sustain our complexities without harming the planet and its inhabitants?
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 — 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). Encouraging others to read my work is also much appreciated.