Posted by Guessedworker on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 23:49 | #

Cladrastis,

Welcome to the blog.  I look forward to becoming a lot more familiar with your thinking.

You write:

the ship is going down and with it, all the old notions of debt and money.

Who is the “we” that you would save?  What are the life-boats?

Posted by cladrastis on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:16 | #

The self-chosen (not to be confused with the Enemy) and the minimal structures (social personalities/tools/materials) necessary to maintain the momentum of techno-industrial civilization (preferably at some sort of sustainable level).  We could debate/discuss what exactly constitutes the latter; that is, in part, the purpose of this entry.

Posted by Bill on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 06:47 | #

From link in post above.

Chapter VII - The Prerequisites Of Life

Translated 14.9.2006
The Sum Of Life

“The government of a few wise ones is necessary to guard the people from the people, the man from himself.

Power

The reader may surmise that I will leave open the question that how those few wise ones will get to power, how the program of life’s preservation will begin - because I do not know the answer. Will the salvation come at the final moment after large, truly massive catastrophes, are there shards of life anymore left to be saved; or will it happen suddenly, without notice, through some collective whiz, like the utterly unpredictable collapse of socialistic systems? Or perhaps it will not come to pass at all? That is by far the most plausible scenario. In all its horror, the extinction is not special to the biologist in any way, it is an ever-present option.”

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:15 | #

I recall watching the movie “Titanic” when it first came out and when the thought occurred to me this was an allegory for the coming crash, I burst into laughter at the point when the iceberg hit.  It was the funniest moment in cinematic history.  And, no, I honestly didn’t care what others in the theater thought.

Posted by Bill on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:46 | #

For the latter half of my life I have envisaged when the world has become akin to a worked out abandoned coal mine, the remnants of mankind will take off for the stars. Rather like the Americans exiting Vietnam, desperate faces clinging to helicopter skids.

Now I begin to doubt even that.

Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:16 | #

OK, next question, Cladrastis,

Is a general collapse possible without energy starvation?  For example, leaving aside the transport issue for the moment, if the US collapses will Sweden also do so, given its plan to become independent of oil:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0208-05.htm

Or France, with its current 80% reliance on nuclear:

http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3678

Or Russia (and, presumably, its former satellites) with its vast natural gas reserves:

http://en.rian.ru/world/20100424/158729140.html

If not ... if these nations remain able to support their present populations and economic structures, doesn’t the question shift from one of a Tragedy of the Commons to who can achieve independence from oil, and how can they do it? And whilst that question certainly carries implications for the present values and macro-policies of the political class, it may not do so for the mass of Europeans.  On the contrary, it may present opportunities for a new politics of peoplehood.

Posted by Bill on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:52 | #

A Few years ago we had a fuel tanker driver’s strike.  Within hours food shelves were emptying.

Hundreds of millions are one week away from death by starvation.  He who controls the food supply….

Same with money, we are one pay-check away from being broke.  He who controls the money….

Implemented, could it be that easy?

Posted by Bill on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:01 | #

Imagine.

You go to your regular superstore and it is boarded up displaying a hurriedly chalked message.  No food!

You go to your hole in the wall to top up your wallet and find sorry no cash scrawled on A4 and taped across the visor.  You dash home and log on to your bank account only to find a blank screen staring at you.

In a panic you get in the car and roar off, not knowing exactly what you are going to do, you approach the town limits and you get a kick in the guts realising that everybody is doing the same as you.

Imagine you get up in the morning and turn on the tap and nothing comes out.

You switch on the light to boil a kettle only to find there’s no electricity supply.

In 2000 I was in such a similar situation.  I found myself dashing from one petrol filling station to another, to another, only to find most stations were eerily abandoned to the dark windy night,  I pulled over to examine my regular station only to find hurriedly scribbled No Petrol notices flapping on each pump.

Approaching a dual carriageway with filling stations both sides, an endless column of stationary red tail lights blinked way into the distance.

When I eventually joined such a queue people were talking in small groups alongside their silent cars, angry horns blared disturbing the darkness, there was a surge by some drivers to remonstrate with a queue jumper.  It was getting scary.

After what seemed like an age, I progressed to the pumps and found that the fuel was being rationed per car.  I was more than relieved when freed from it all. 

We are living in a highly complex world.

Posted by alex zeka on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 12:08 | #

This post is so vague, I reckon I can post on it about anything. So -

A large swathes of modern western people are going to be full-square against the strictures of WN. Gays, miscegenists, libertines; if you add in the families and friends of the same, that is possibly a majority of western society. I don’t think most of them are propagandised into it, on the simple basis that no amount of propaganda is going to make you want to stick yourself into somewhere you don’t want to.

So what is the solution? Guns and marching down the streets is one. You’ve got to use power once you have it.

Virtual reality is another. Google “project natal”. Some of the tabloids think its a nonce magnet, which if true seems to me like a perfectly acceptable solution to child abuse. Equally, something similar exist for gays, for miscegenists, etc. Isn’t that an attractive solution? - Nonces fiddling virtual kids, gays sodomising virtual men, miscegenists getting virtual foreign lovers? All, it should be pointed out, without the usual consequences of these activities.

Come on, WNs. Forget about politics, invest all your spare cash in virtual reality development. I believe the company behind project natal is floated on the LSE. You’ll be creating the conditions for a white revival, and you’ll make a buck on it.

Fascism in reality, hedonism in the virtuality! as Van Hoff would’ve said, if he’d had this idea.

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 13:48 | #

The lifeboat is local currency backed by military rations.  If you put one day’s rations for an able bodied, active duty man into storage (shelf life>1 year), you receive a certificate for that ration with its expiration date (end of shelf life).  The certificates circulate.  Demurrage is a natural consequence of people redeeming their certificates as the end of shelf-life approaches (mostly for use during local militia training exercises), and paying the storage guards.  That will get us to the island: “The Four Stages of Electronic Barter”.

Local currency—genuinely backed local currency such as that backed by military rations or by the more sophisticated “four stages of electronic barter”—will come into direct conflict with local law enforcement as they are ordered to demand legal tender in payment for taxation of transactions conducted in the local currency.  At present, my best proposal to head off conflicts with local law enforcement is to start the military-rations backed local currency with local war vets running the show.

Posted by cladrastis on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:19 | #

A collapse occurs when the problem-solving capacity of a society is limited by some constraint (if the structures cannot radiate to deal with new problems, then the society collapses proximately because of those particular problems).  The collapse could be purely sociological in origin (eg. the failure of the banking system to function as a means of creating wealth or stabilizing political unrest - hence the drunken captain).  It could happen because we have filled up all the world’s sinks, and it has become too costly to dump more of our waste into them (the ship taking on water).  Maybe the people (or the rats) who displace us will be incapable of solving problems at the same level of sophistication as our own folk.  Or, perhaps, the collapse will arise because we failed to find a substitute for a scarce, but crucial resource on which our society depends (the ship running out of steam).

Our “global” civilization depends on huge inputs of energy to support all the social roles necessary for its functioning (problem-solving).  It also depends on huge sinks to absorb the pollution we create as a by-product.  Currently there are vast stores of resources available for us to utilize, but we are drawing them down faster than they can be naturally replenished (and some cannot be replenished on any human time-scale).  The earth is like a bath tub with the faucet turned on.  We are sucking water out of that tub faster than water is entering into it, and when all the water that was initially present in the tub has been extracted, we will have access only to what is currently flowing through the tap (much less than the filled bathtub plus the flow).  When that happens, there will not be enough energy to support civilization at its current level of intricacy.

As Tainter has written, there are diminishing returns for increased complexity (easy problems are solved first, and more difficult ones solved later and at increasing cost).  I wrote a short piece in the comments section of a post (a few months back) about pruning the World Tree (or the Tree of Life).  Do you understand now?

Posted by Thorn on Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:36 | #

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8MYsii4DZY&feature=related

Posted by Lurker on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:17 | #

Bill, the fuel strike was 2000.

Interestingly there was bloke round here who stopped using his regular car and switched to his old Austin 7 for the duration of the strike. Which makes one question the extravagant claims made for the fuel economy of modern vehicles. There is also the logistical angle - four star & unleaded were both around then, the Austin could use either.

Posted by Ed in Salt Lake on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 05:52 | #

Guessedworker said…

“Is a general collapse possible…?”

A towering and mighty collapse is not only possible GW, but is fast approaching like a rifle-shot from the Future. There are still so few today who recognize and see the importance of Marx’s “Capital” today and its significance for our age. Istvan Meszaros is one of these few, even though his faith in the redemption of the global crisis of Capital vis-a-vis Socialism is replete with false hopes. The title of one of his books presents the dilemma quite appropriately, even though his “faith in the masses” and “justice for the people” is quite apparent throughout.

An enormous social crisis is coming our way! This crisis will give birth to a new Age of Barbarism and the possibilty of a volcanic upheaval and renewal. Will not then the Earth bring forth a new Race of the Sun? Let us be the progenitors for this task that lies ahead.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/socialismorbarbarism.php#contribs

“A dominating race can grow up only out of terrible and violent beginnings”- Nietzsche

Posted by Grimoire on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 06:49 | #

I have witnessed first hand societies devolving into catastrophe….Western Slavonia, Bihac , Srebrenica 94-95 ,  Lebanon 95-96.
Plans to commandeer ‘life-boat’ facilities are unhelpful and unrealistic. Should cataclysm happen, such efforts would be seen as treason by all sides. Effectively, with such action one would be cast not as combatant, nor criminal, but as traitor. Justice is on-the-spot execution, without moratorium, or limitation as to jurisdiction or passage of time.

When hostilities commence, the only honorable and meaningful course of action is to stand and fight and die, if necessary, in defense of your people and home.
In terms of political traction - gains can be made only by those who have the wherewithal to stand , defend, or seize that which they claim as their own. Those who abandon the field, only delay the outcome and accede to defeat. If assertive action is the guarantee of complete annihilation of ones political goals - tertiary actions such as organizing field medical aid, fire brigades, communication and intelligence centres that would provide a base of support and organization that can move ones political objectives from the extreme periphery to the bounds of the possible.

There would be much to gain from studying the methods and actions of some of the successful and pragmatic contemporary insurgency groups. Of whom the most dynamic and successful in peace and conflict is Hizbullah.

Posted by Gorboduc on Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:29 | #

Cladrastis,

I’m sure the Enemy can imagine far more brutal things than you, or we, can.

He’s (they’ve?) been at it for ages.

And equalling or surpassing his devices won’t save you.

Why do you capitalise this person, thus: He?

Is this some Pullmnanesque Northern Lights fantasy?

I think what we need is some dates, facts, figures, names. Places to go and get guns, and training: medical training, fieldcraft, self-sufficiency courses. Plan food caches; get in lots of petrol, barbed wire, learn water-divining- otherwise it’s all a bit like the mad female soothsayer running across the screen in Frankie Howard’s Up Pompeii! TV comedy series - “Woe! Woe! And thrice woe!”

I think your scenario doesn’t touch reality at all. It’s just an extended metaphor for - what, exactly?

Hilaire Belloc used to put a bit of a dampener on folks’ spirits by initiating conversation thus: “Will our civilisation maintain its slow journey to destruction or will there be a sudden and irreversible collapse?”

I’m afraid to say that whatever the speed with which the crash might arrive, Belloc largely (and, imho) correctly, attributed its certain advent to The Modern Scientific Spirit, and made little difference as to whether that bringer of disaster expressed itself through Prussia, or Lenin, or Hitler, or H.G.Wells, or Haeckel, or Haldane . . . and Dawkins is by implication included in that list.

Well, I’m sure we all knew already that things are going to get tough in the future, and that some folks will begin to behave badly when this happens . . .

Richard Jefferies, way back in the 19th century, knew this: Jack London, a few years later, gave a new slant on this: literally dozens of people - I’ll just cite John Wyndham for one -  have published readable futurological dystopian fantasies on the coming collapse for over a century. (There are quite a few unreadable ones, and some plain stupid ones too, among which, despite its charm, William Morris’s News from Nowhere stands supreme.)

And to what avail?

Flee to the hills!

Oh, and two last things - first, people who like the boat metaphor might read Belloc’s The Cruise of the Nona - he really knew what he was talking about when he wrote of the sea - and also they could remember that there’s a great difference between the Ship of Fools and the Barque of Peter,  the latter being the receptacle of Belloc’s confidence.

And second, I do hope that White Prophets of Ensuing Doom don’t end up sounding like the egregious Abe Foxman.

Posted by GT on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:31 | #

Nice try, Cladrastis, but it won’t work.  WN Tea Partiers in suburbia aren’t interested in lifeboats.  They are one of two minds:

1.  Take it all back by forming a national political party comprised of friendless, childless, and family-disowned pensioners; preach aracial citizenism colored with libertarianism; propagandize aracialist Tea Partier$ into believing that the sky is falling any day now; produce a program designed to bribe the masses of white asses into voting them into power.
2.  After the sky falls, coordinate the actions of institutional ‘infiltrators,’ pot-bellied middle-aged ‘militiamen,’ and alcoholic/drug-addicted ‘lone wolves’ strapped with IEDs while propagandizing the panicking white ‘masses’ into action via the Golden EIB microphone of cyberspace.

And that’s it!

Lifeboats are a step backwards.

Posted by cladrastis on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:11 | #

It is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. [...] The work of the philosophical policeman [...] is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pothouses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers form a ledger of a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime.

Posted by PF on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 06:28 | #

Interesting framing of the problem, that old problem which all our loyal eyes have been set upon so long as to nearly be burnt out with watching it. The same problem that officially doesn’t exist.

I like the lifeboat metaphor.

We may be adrift on the open ocean for months, and landfall will likely be on a deserted island.

What scenario are you envisioning with this line?

Posted by Wandrin on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 11:07 | #

Is a general collapse possible…?

I’m not convinced of a general collapse but i’m certain there is going to be a collapse in the ability of the welfarist states of Europe and elsewhere and the welfare-warfare state in the USA to maintain themselves at the current level. Whatever the consequences they will definitely be “interesting.”

There would be much to gain from studying the methods and actions of some of the successful and pragmatic contemporary insurgency groups. Of whom the most dynamic and successful in peace and conflict is Hizbullah.

Agree. Also the Northern Ireland groups.

Posted by Gorboduc on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 12:46 | #

Cladrastis: yr. recent quote is of course from GKC’s The Man who was Thursday.

It’s a multi-layered work, and as usual GKC mixes satire, Christian apologetics, paradox, sense, and nonsense.

It’s difficult to be absolutely certain what the true sense of this passage is: anything like an Orwellian thought-police would have horrified Gilbert. Remember it’s a plain-clothes policeman speaking. GKC also puts convincing speeches into the mouth of genuinely murderous anarchist

An absolutely brilliant analysis of Chesterton’s political thought as revealed in his writings is John D. Coates Chesterton and the Edwardian Cultural Crisis (Hull University Press, 1984) [Note that date!]

The Cultural Crisis is that which continues to afflict our own days: Chesterton despised imperialism, Neitzcheanism, Darwinism, artistic modernism, reverent agnosticism, religious inclusivity and syncretism, the cults of aristocracy and scientism, academicism, utopianism and the cults of the Superman and of the machine.
He also despised orientalism, spiritualism and the anthropological analysis of religious writings a la Fraser’s Golden Bough, and would have dismissed with withering contempt neo-paganism and the occult nonsense which finds a placement on this site through the Rose Noire link.
(In connection with the machine cult, he seems to have invented an early lie-detector apparatus in one of his Father Brown stories; although highly efficient, it produces wrong answers as its inventor, a skilled technician, knows nothing of human psychology.)

Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people who post here support the modernistic things that GKC attacked.
If Chesterton had won the battle and had brought Europe back to a sane Christian rationalism we wouldn’t be in the state we now enjoy . . .

He would also have hated the idea of a population cull, which your Lapp fisherman is made out to represent. Whether this gentleman is a true untutored son of nature, illiterate and stuffing seal-blubber, remains to be seen. Certainly he seems to be in touch with certain internet-born currents of opinion: I’m perfectly open to accept correction on this, as I haven’t time to research this for myself, but what I’ve read from him seems derivative, and suspiciously like some of the eco-primitive remarks dubiously attributed to so many Redskin chiefs…

Posted by Dan Dare on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:59 | #

Our “global” civilization depends on huge inputs of energy to support all the social roles necessary for its functioning ... When that happens, there will not be enough energy to support civilization at its current level of intricacy - Cladrastis

It seems to me that this represents a misunderstanding of the root of the problem. There is not a single global boat, on which we are all travelling together but rather an untidy flotilla of motley vessels of various degrees of seaworthiness. We in the west are fortunate enough to be berthed, figuratively speaking, on the QM2 while the rest of humanity has to accommodate itself on a variety of old and clapped-out tramp steamers. As each founders in turn, a clamour will be raised to bring their unfortunate cargos on board, but this we must resist and repel.

The plain truth of the matter is that we in the west have sufficient resources and knowhow at our disposal to ensure not just our survival, but also our prosperity more or less in perpetuity. What we cannot do is sustain the surplus populations elsewhere at anything close to the levels of consumption to which we have foolishly encouraged them to aspire. We simply have to harden ourselves to the prospect of nature running its inevitably Malthusian course elsewhere until such time as the population levels outside the west have declined to match the long-term sustainable carrying capacity.

That aside, the crucial challenge for us is to wean ourselves off petroleum, which is not particularly difficult technically.

Posted by Gorboduc on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:11 | #

I don’t know where you’re posting from, Dan, but if as I think it’s the UK, what are the prospects for us here becoming efficiently self-supporting in the following areas: food, oil (for although “not particularly difficult technically” THAT little problem will at least be time-consuming and expensive), raw materials, metals(including uranium) and coal?

At the same time as the rush to the fields (consult catholic distributists on this) there’ll also be the need for a rush to the sea and air defences, the ack-ack guns and all the rest of it.

It will need thousands upon thousands of skilled and dedicated people.

For starters, ow many MRers have commissions in HM Forces, how many know anything about food production and distribution, the maintenance and running of power stations . . .?

How many have even been NCOs or squaddies, how many can clean and stitch up a wound, how many live off an allottment,  can plough a field, can maintain a motorway,  drive an HGV along it, or send up a satellite to get the SatNav back when the Chinese have just shot down the one you depend on?

How many could take a yacht from (say) Mallaig to Stornoway? Or even load one properly?

I’ve still got the old ID card issued to me in abt. 1949, but although I well remember rationing, all my coupons have gone.

BUT I’ve got the SAS survival manual.

AND the writings of Fr. Vincent McNabb.

Give him a try;  http://vaxxine.com/hyoomik/aquinas/distributism.html

Posted by Dan Dare on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 20:38 | #

Gorbo - I’m looking at the issue from a Großeuropa perspective.

The UK itself of course is grossly over-populated from the perspective of agricultural self-sufficiency, or from one of long-term sustainability in general. All the more reason for us not to fall out with our natural friends and allies on the Continent (especially the Russians), or to engage in Zionist adventures in the Muslim world, at least until such time as we have kicked the petroleum habit (which will have to happen sooner or later, preferably sooner).

Defra recently published a report on ‘food security’ for the UK, which makes for interesting reading.

Ensuring the UK’s Food Security in a Changing World

If it’s not mangling the metaphor too much, the unspoken subtext is that encouraging darkies to clamber on board to avail themselves of the midnight buffet, or encouraging the Chinese to become American-style steak and eggs trenchermen is not likely to aid in the cause of securing our future food supplies.

Posted by Gorboduc on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 22:40 | #

Thanks, Dan, for the DEFRA link.

Well, another problem for us to consider: how to stop our natural friends and allies on the Continent - offloading their refugees onto us.

Does ‘our’ mean ‘the UK’s’ or ‘we WNs’ and are our nfaas France, Germany, Italy etc (and Russia - but why?), or merely those whose opinions chime with MRers?

I’m pessimistic on this.