John Michael Greer

[andrew]

This is as good a summary of our present predicaments that I've read anywhere from anyone: 

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-09-18/dark-age-america-the-e...

 

[DavidM58]

Yes, Greer tends to slide a little too far in emphasizing only individual actions and preparations, and so your point is valid. And I agree that there are real differences between Warren/Sanders and Hillary, and even Hillary would probably be better than Romney or Bush or Paul.

And yet I also think Greer has a point; I think whoever fills that role is to a large extent tied to the BAU situation and the real politik of existing structures and memes and ideologies that would make it difficult even for Warren to do much more than Obama has accomplished - unless we hit that crisis point where the public will be ready for something really different. Therefore Warren and Sanders might have more impact by being able to stay true to their ideals outside of the oval office. This might be why Warren is reluctant to throw her hat in the ring.

I like Joanna Macy's framing of the three pillars of the great turning: the need for some people to be doing "Holding Actions" in attempts to slow down or stop destructive powers; others focus on Structural Change to build new forms of social organization; and others focus on the shift in consciousness required by larger numbers to inhabit the new structures.

[DavidM58]

Greer's post is also interesting to read as a companion to Ginny Whitelaw's recent post on The Great Footrace of Consciousness.

Here is Greer's conclusion:

"...Still, there’s another aspect, and it’s one that the essay by Douglas Coupland mentioned above managed to hit squarely: the high-tech utopia ballyhooed by the first generation or so of internet junkies has turned out in practice to be a good deal less idyllic, and in fact a good deal more dystopian, than its promoters claimed. All the wonderful things we were supposedly going to be able to do turned out in practice to consist of staring at little pictures on glass screens and pushing buttons, and these are not exactly the most interesting activities in the world, you know. The people who are dropping out of social media and ditching their allegedly smart phones for a less connected lifestyle have noticed this.

What’s more, a great many more people—the kids hotdogging on bikes here in Cumberland are among them—are weighing  the costs and benefits of complex technologies with cold eyes, and deciding that an older, simpler technology less dependent on global technosystems is not just more practical, but also, and importantly, more fun. True believers in the transhumanist cyberfuture will doubtless object to that last point, but the deathgrip of failed ideas on societies in decline isn’t limited to the senile elites mentioned toward the beginning of this post; it can also afflict the fashionable intellectuals of the day, and make them proclaim the imminent arrival of the future’s rising waters when the tide’s already turned and is flowing back out to sea.

I’d like to suggest, in fact, that it’s entirely possible that we could be heading toward a future in which people will roll their eyes when they think of Twitter, texting, 24/7 connectivity, and the rest of today’s overblown technofetishism—like, dude, all that stuff is so twenty-teens! Meanwhile, those of us who adopt the technologies and habits of earlier eras, whether that adoption is motivated by mere boredom with little glass screens or by some more serious set of motives, may actually be on the cutting edge: the early adopters of the Retro Future. We’ll talk about that more in the weeks ahead."

[DavidM58]

Greer's essay this week, "A Landscape of Dreams" begins by deconstructing the notion of progress:

"...the necessary and inevitable consequences of exactly those technological transformations that have been lauded to the skies in recent years as evidence of just how much we’ve progressed."

"...

Since 1970, in point of fact, the standard of living for everyone in America outside of the wealthiest 20% or so has skidded unsteadily downward. The nation’s infrastructure has been abandoned to malign neglect, and a great many amenities that used to be taken for granted either cost vastly more than they once did, even corrected for inflation, or can’t be had for any price. We pretend, or at least the vast majority of us do, that these things either haven’t happened or don’t matter, and certainly nobody’s willing to address the possibility that these things and other equally unwelcome changes have been the result of what we like to call progress—even when that’s fairly obviously the case.

What’s going on here, in other words, is the emergence of a widening chasm between the abstraction “progress” and the things that progress is supposed to represent, such as improved living conditions, a broader range of choices available to people, and so on. The sort of progress we’ve experienced over the last half century or so hasn’t given us these things; quite the contrary; it’s yielded degraded living conditions, a narrower range of choices, and the like. Point this out to people in so many words and the resulting cognitive dissonance tends to get some truly quirky responses; put it in the form of a narrative and—at least this is my hope—a larger fraction of readers will be able to recognize the tangled thinking at the heart of the paradox, and recognize a dysfunctional abstraction for what it is."

In the latter part of the essay, Greer turns his attention to current events, giving plenty of evidence for what Gebserians would call proof we are in the latter days of the deficient mental-rational stage of consciousness. He discusses Russia's entrance into the Syrian conflict; the U.S.'s inept military efforts, etc. Obama is described as "one of the United States’ least competent presidents precisely because everything he’s done has been so utterly fixated on the realm of abstractions." He also calls Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything an "embarrassingly slipshod and superficial book."

As for the Republicans: "Listen to the verbiage spewing out of the overcrowded Republican clown car and you’ll get to witness any number of vague abstractions floating past, serenely disconnected from the awkward realm of facts."

The essay's conclusion:

"What troubles me most about all this is what it says about the potential for really serious disruptions here in the US in the near future. I’m sure my readers can think of other regimes that reached the stage where moving imaginary armies across a landscape of dreams took precedence over grappling with awkward facts, and once that happened, none of those regimes were long for this world. The current US political system is so deeply entrenched in its own fantasies that a complete breakdown of that system, and its replacement by something entirely different—not necessarily better, mind you, but different—is a possibility that has to be kept in mind even in the near term."

[andrew]

I read this line at the exact moment Tulo hit his 3 run shot last night : 

Or—let’s murmur this one quietly—does the United States have some reason not to want to inflict serious harm on the Islamic State?

And of course i immediately said bingo! 

Anyway, humanity has mistaken technology for progress. In an odd sort of way the automobile and its manufacturers represent a metaphor for our age : oh yes, we will concern ourself with every gidget and gadget that we can imagine; yet continue to ignore and draw blanks when it comes to what is coming out the pipe ..........IOW's what we should be most concerned with is dismissed or worse in the case of V.W.- deep and cynical contempt.......

[andrew]

Metaphorical musings aside, David, and i know you are acutely aware of this;  the biggest denial going in  the philosophy of progress is within academic economics . This is all going to end up terribly bad as the inevitabilities of this present way of thinking about money unfolds . We can't have exponential growth economically with finite resources no matter how much Hollywood projects its fantasies. What I am suggesting (however unorthodox) on the zeitgeist thread is a way out for the elite where all they would have to do is come to terms with reality and use the giant media squid to convince the majority of the population to voluntarily downsize in a healthy manner. Not by throwing 500.00 of dysfunctional welfare at a few people ( which never solved anything ) but by setting up a secondary economy for a few generations ; one which came with commitment to an ecologically sound way of living for the masses in exchange for a global commons non-debt , not for profit currency ( this would be like nothing we've tried before ). This certainly would not be a communist scheme to get Christians to give up their property rights ( As if God had for sale signs in the Garden of Eden ) but that is a different conversation . Something like this is far better than the destruction that may come upon us because of our stubborn arrogance . Not that the elite will be the first to feel those negative effects ; but I doubt they can escape scott free this time . 

[andrew]

The heresy continues ! 

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.ca/2015/11/the-heresy-of-technol...

I must admit that i felt a cold dark dread many years ago with the advent of digital . i intuitively disliked it then and lament the loss of the analog world today. i suspect digital might be some type of copycat attempt at spirituality or faux all-knowing ( now who would do that?) . i'm not sure that I'll lament the loss of nazi bondage porn although I can see that there are many many people who probably will .