James Kunstler makes the case for a return to traditional Taoist communities

[Encephalon]

Before you ask the very pertinent question, "What does the end of consumerism have to do with Taoism?" it is important to remember that Taoism is, among other things, a lifestyle of Radical independence and self-sufficiency (so says Daniel Reid, but I believe this sentiment is registered elsewhere). Consumerism is the antithesis of self-sufficiency. In my not-so-humble opinion, Taoists are the most likely people to successfully adapt to the challenges of a post-oil, post-consumer crash, as long as they find like-minded souls to live with.

 

How ready are you?

 

From James Howard Kunstler - Clusterfuck Nation at www.kunstler.com

 

How infantile is American society? Last night's CBS "Business Update" (in the midst of its "60 Minutes" program) featured three items: 1.) The New Moon teen vampire movie led the weekend box-office receipts; 2.) Cadbury shares hit an all-time high; 3.) Michael Jackson's rhinestone-studded white glove sold at auction for $350,000. Some in-house CBS-News producer is responsible for this fucking nonsense. How does he or she keep her job? Is there no adult supervision at the network?

 

Meanwhile, over at The New York Times this morning, Paul "Nobel Prize" Krugman writes:

"Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts; the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence."

 

Disclosure: I'm not one of the economists that Mr. Krugman talks to (nor am I an economist). But it's sure interesting to know that the ones palavering with Mr. Krugman imagine that that the US can possibly return to an economy based on the fraudulent securitization of reckless debt. Does Mr. Krugman think that the production housing industry can resume paving over the nether exurbs with half-million-dollar houses (to be bought with no money down loans by the sheet-rockers working inside them)? Does he think all those people receiving cancellation notices from their credit card issuers are in a position to flash their plastic at the Gallerias this Friday? Or ever will be again? Is he perhaps misusing the term "recovery?" After all, that is generally taken to mean resuming a prior state, which is, in turn, presumed to be a healthy prior state. Is that what the economy of the past decade was? And, incidentally, what exactly is a "consumer?" And why, at the highest levels of journalism in this land, do we refer to citizens that way? As if the American people have no other purpose except to buy things? Or is that the only way an "economist" can imagine them?

 

I'm sorry to burden the reader with so many questions, but the idiots running the mainstream news media in this land are not doing it and somebody has to.

 

If a "recovery" is not in the cards, then what exactly is going on out there?

 

What's going on in the US economy is a slow-motion convulsion from which we will emerge as a very different nation with a different economy. The wild irresponsibility of the media in pretending otherwise is only going to make the convulsion worse, more painful, more socially and politically destructive. The convulsion can be described with precision as one of compressive contraction. Historic circumstances are requiring us to change our behavior, to make new arrangements for everyday life in all the major particulars: capital accumulation and deployment; food production; commerce; habitation; transport; education; and health care. These new arrangements must be organized at a smaller and finer scale, and on a much more local basis.

 

The main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "peak oil." We've come to the end of our ability in this world to increase energy inputs to the global economy. The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible. Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, et cetera - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.

 

We are seeing a comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector and every level of American life - in politics, business, banking, education, news media, medicine, and the clergy. All are determined to pretend that we can somehow continue the habits and behaviors of the pre peak oil era. They are all unwilling to face reality, and are all engaged in mutually supporting each other's dangerous fantasies.

 

If we don't attend to the transformation of American life by downscaling our activities and changing the way they are carried out, and re-localizing them, we will see our society disintegrate - and I use the word "dis-integrate" with purposeful precision. Everything will come apart - our political arrangements, our households, our health and well-being.

 

At the moment, banking is disintegrating. It's happening because the end of regular, predictable, cyclical, industrial growth means the end of our ability to generate credit without limits, and in fact we passed this point by stealth some time ago leaving the banks in "Wile E. Coyote" suspension above an abyss, where they have lately been joined by government at all levels and the indebted citizens of the land. The profound nausea spreading through the offices of America is the somatic recognition of exactly where we are in all this: off the cliff.

 

It's important to remind readers that so-called "capitalism" is not to blame. Capitalism is not an ideology. It refers to a set of laws governing the disposition of surplus wealth. There is going to be surplus wealth somewhere in the years ahead, even if our living standards fall substantially, even under the strictures of peak oil. All the communist experiments of the 20th century produced some kind of surplus wealth. All of them were subject to the phenomenon of compound interest. What matters in the disposition of capital are the rules created for accumulating and deploying it. In the USA the past two decades, we ignored the rules, repealed some of the critical laws, and failed to enforce the existing ones so that, when faced by the historic circumstances of peak oil, we allowed fraud and swindling to run wild - just at the moment when we should have taken the most care. That is why our money system ran off the rails.

 

We're now seeing worldwide a kind of race between the assertion of peak oil and the failures of capital management as to which will provoke a widespread convulsion first. They are obviously related and whichever gets us in the most trouble fastest, our destination is the same: the absolute necessity to reorganize how we live. Among the many elements of this is the fact that "globalism," in the Thomas Friedman sense of the word, is over. The urgent need to re-localize economies makes this self-evident. As a practical matter for us, this means committing to import replacement - making things we need in the US, probably much more regionally. "Globalism" now joins the many other fantasies that we can no longer indulge in.

 

At the moment, going into Thanksgiving 2009, America's leadership has dedicated itself to the worst action it could take under the circumstances: a campaign to sustain the unsustainable. This is what's embodied in the foolish term "recovery." The way we try to explain things to ourselves matters, if we don't want to be crushed by history. Go back to the top of this blog and look at the things we pay attention to. Aren't you ashamed?

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Taoists may be among the people from the middle class who are somewhat prepared for the changes ahead, but actually the homeless and street people will do the best in the long run: they've already accustomed themselves to survival and wrestling a life out of nothing. They are the true and ready survivalists, many of us Taoists here with our computers are not too far removed from the comforts and necessities of life, and will have a hard a time as most people, I would think. Perhaps there are some who are already living with spareness and self-reliance, but I suspect there are few who are not spoiled by modern life. Many of the members here aspire to "radical independence", but are softies when it comes down to it.

 

You're right that consumerism will have to go. But Americans will not make changes until they are forced to. For example, they will not buy fuel efficient cars until gas is punishingly expensive.

 

As for Krugman, you're shooting from the hip again, Blasto. He's not advocating a return to consumerism as a way out. He is simply talking economics, and he has a lot of agreement from many real economists. Stimulus money is necessary to create jobs. For example, a massive project to rebuild our country's crumbling infrastructure is something he has advocated. Sure we spend money and get further into debt, but we have no choice. If our highways, roads, waterworks, public transportation, electrical grid continue to fall apart, we're fucked anyway. The small stimulus that was passed was not enough, unemployment will remain very high for a years to come. And that's barring any unforeseen economic events, like China calling in our debts. If we had not passed a stimulus bill, we'd be in a true depression, not just this sick sludgy recession.

 

The big problem that will probably be the real "2012" end of civilization is the house of cards that our and other countries financial systems have become. Forget about a "magnetic pole shift" lol. Shadiness and greed through and through has created complex financial instruments that will crash the world economic system. Look at the shudders happening today as Dubai has announced it is having trouble paying its debts.

Edited November 27, 2009 by TheSongsofDistantEarth

[Encephalon]

Taoists may be among the people from the middle class who are somewhat prepared for the changes ahead, but actually the homeless and street people will do the best in the long run: they've already accustomed themselves to survival and wrestling a life out of nothing. They are the true and ready survivalists, many of us Taoists here with our computers are not too far removed from the comforts and necessities of life, and will have a hard a time as most people, I would think. Perhaps there are some who are already living with spareness and self-reliance, but I suspect there are few who are not spoiled by modern life. Many of the members here aspire to "radical independence", but are softies when it comes down to it.

 

As for Krugman, you're shooting from the hip again, Blasto. He's not advocating a return to consumerism as a way out. He is simply talking economics, and he has a lot of agreement from many real economists. Stimulus money is necessary to create jobs. For example, a massive project to rebuild our country's crumbling infrastructure is something he has advocated. Sure we spend money and get further into debt, but we have no choice. If our highways, roads, waterworks, public transportation, electrical grid continue to fall apart, we're fucked anyway. The small stimulus that was passed was not enough, unemployment will remain very high for a years to come. And that's barring any unforeseen economic events, like China calling in our debts. If we had not passed a stimulus bill, we'd be in a true depression, not just this sick sludgy recession.

 

Perhaps the biggest pitfall of communicating in online forums is the failure to adequately define the terms we use. It was my fault in representing Taoists as a monolithic voice speaking and living in unison. I don't believe there is any wisdom in recognizing self-identified Taoists as authentic Taoists any more than referring to self-identified Christians as living authentic Christian lives.

 

Sure we spend money and get further into debt, but we have no choice. If our highways, roads, waterworks, public transportation, electrical grid continue to fall apart, we're fucked anyway. The small stimulus that was passed was not enough, unemployment will remain very high for a years to come.

 

I'm in total agreement with you here. I even subscribed to Robert Reich's assessment of the need for more stimulus, but not toward a Wall St. bailout; more of a green-grid direction.

 

As for Krugman, you're shooting from the hip again, Blasto.

 

I don't understand your reference. I'm not Paul Krugman. A lot of urban geographers, planners, and New Urbanists subscribe to Kunstler's view that the stimulus package should have taken three basic forms - localization and decentralization of the agricultural/food system; revitalization of the inner cities; reconstruction of a national railway system (reducing automobile dependency being the unitive element of the three). Interestingly enough, once the New Urbanists caught wind of Obama's urban plan, they basically said thanks, but no thanks. This is what Kunstler has been saying for years; trying to sustain unsustainability is futile. And auto-dependent suburbia is unsustainable.

 

Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" is a terrifying book, but it is the most thought-out piece on what will happen, region by region, when resource flows begin to stop. He is ultimately an optimist, but only for those who secure adequate greenbelts, water supplies, and traditional skills of pre-1850s. The midwestern towns of 20,000 to 30,000 population could fair well, as will the Northwest. The entire American southwest has no future without energy and water inputs. The Southeast will resolve the problem the way they have for generations- by killing each other, and the Northeast will pretty much denude everything in sight before dying off.

 

Early Taoist communities were self-sustaining to a large extent, due to the availability of resources and skill sets. This is the connection I'm pointing out.

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

It's hard to imagine what we will face if society shuts down. Everything is soo interdependent now, that long term survival amid total chaos will not be possible for most. Unless one is already living in a completely self-sufficient, isolated situation or community, the cluster-fuck will get most of us. Those who prepare may just last a little longer. So go ahead and prepare, but realize that it may be futile. I will. But I'm also going to get a nice little supply of China White. I've never tried heroin, but the end of civilization might be the time for my first (and last) Big Happy Trip...

[idquest]

 

he main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "peak oil." We've come to the end of our ability in this world to increase energy inputs to the global economy. The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible. Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, et cetera - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.

This is why I have always supported the carbon tax of 100% and more. This is the only way to prepare society for oil-less reality and develope alternative technologies. They are not cheap, mind you.

[Pietro]

Before you ask the very pertinent question, "What does the end of consumerism have to do with Taoism?" it is important to remember that Taoism is, among other things, a lifestyle of Radical independence and self-sufficiency (so says Daniel Reid, but I believe this sentiment is registered elsewhere). Consumerism is the antithesis of self-sufficiency. In my not-so-humble opinion, Taoists are the most likely people to successfully adapt to the challenges of a post-oil, post-consumer crash, as long as they find like-minded souls to live with.

 

How ready are you?

 

From James Howard Kunstler - Clusterfuck Nation at www.kunstler.com

 

How infantile is American society? Last night's CBS "Business Update" (in the midst of its "60 Minutes" program) featured three items: 1.) The New Moon teen vampire movie led the weekend box-office receipts; 2.) Cadbury shares hit an all-time high; 3.) Michael Jackson's rhinestone-studded white glove sold at auction for $350,000. Some in-house CBS-News producer is responsible for this fucking nonsense. How does he or she keep her job? Is there no adult supervision at the network?

 

Meanwhile, over at The New York Times this morning, Paul "Nobel Prize" Krugman writes:

"Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts; the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence."

 

Disclosure: I'm not one of the economists that Mr. Krugman talks to (nor am I an economist). But it's sure interesting to know that the ones palavering with Mr. Krugman imagine that that the US can possibly return to an economy based on the fraudulent securitization of reckless debt. Does Mr. Krugman think that the production housing industry can resume paving over the nether exurbs with half-million-dollar houses (to be bought with no money down loans by the sheet-rockers working inside them)? Does he think all those people receiving cancellation notices from their credit card issuers are in a position to flash their plastic at the Gallerias this Friday? Or ever will be again? Is he perhaps misusing the term "recovery?" After all, that is generally taken to mean resuming a prior state, which is, in turn, presumed to be a healthy prior state. Is that what the economy of the past decade was? And, incidentally, what exactly is a "consumer?" And why, at the highest levels of journalism in this land, do we refer to citizens that way? As if the American people have no other purpose except to buy things? Or is that the only way an "economist" can imagine them?

 

I'm sorry to burden the reader with so many questions, but the idiots running the mainstream news media in this land are not doing it and somebody has to.

 

If a "recovery" is not in the cards, then what exactly is going on out there?

 

What's going on in the US economy is a slow-motion convulsion from which we will emerge as a very different nation with a different economy. The wild irresponsibility of the media in pretending otherwise is only going to make the convulsion worse, more painful, more socially and politically destructive. The convulsion can be described with precision as one of compressive contraction. Historic circumstances are requiring us to change our behavior, to make new arrangements for everyday life in all the major particulars: capital accumulation and deployment; food production; commerce; habitation; transport; education; and health care. These new arrangements must be organized at a smaller and finer scale, and on a much more local basis.

 

The main "historic circumstance" mandating these changes goes under the heading of "peak oil." We've come to the end of our ability in this world to increase energy inputs to the global economy. The routine "growth" in industrial activity and production that has been the basis of our financial arrangements for 200-odd years is no longer possible. Offsetting this decline in oil energy "input" with "alt.energy" is a dangerous fantasy because it distracts us from the urgent task of making new arrangements for trade, food production, et cetera - the very things that would provide jobs and social roles for our citizens in the future.

 

We are seeing a comprehensive failure of leadership in every sector and every level of American life - in politics, business, banking, education, news media, medicine, and the clergy. All are determined to pretend that we can somehow continue the habits and behaviors of the pre peak oil era. They are all unwilling to face reality, and are all engaged in mutually supporting each other's dangerous fantasies.

 

If we don't attend to the transformation of American life by downscaling our activities and changing the way they are carried out, and re-localizing them, we will see our society disintegrate - and I use the word "dis-integrate" with purposeful precision. Everything will come apart - our political arrangements, our households, our health and well-being.

 

At the moment, banking is disintegrating. It's happening because the end of regular, predictable, cyclical, industrial growth means the end of our ability to generate credit without limits, and in fact we passed this point by stealth some time ago leaving the banks in "Wile E. Coyote" suspension above an abyss, where they have lately been joined by government at all levels and the indebted citizens of the land. The profound nausea spreading through the offices of America is the somatic recognition of exactly where we are in all this: off the cliff.

 

It's important to remind readers that so-called "capitalism" is not to blame. Capitalism is not an ideology. It refers to a set of laws governing the disposition of surplus wealth. There is going to be surplus wealth somewhere in the years ahead, even if our living standards fall substantially, even under the strictures of peak oil. All the communist experiments of the 20th century produced some kind of surplus wealth. All of them were subject to the phenomenon of compound interest. What matters in the disposition of capital are the rules created for accumulating and deploying it. In the USA the past two decades, we ignored the rules, repealed some of the critical laws, and failed to enforce the existing ones so that, when faced by the historic circumstances of peak oil, we allowed fraud and swindling to run wild - just at the moment when we should have taken the most care. That is why our money system ran off the rails.

 

We're now seeing worldwide a kind of race between the assertion of peak oil and the failures of capital management as to which will provoke a widespread convulsion first. They are obviously related and whichever gets us in the most trouble fastest, our destination is the same: the absolute necessity to reorganize how we live. Among the many elements of this is the fact that "globalism," in the Thomas Friedman sense of the word, is over. The urgent need to re-localize economies makes this self-evident. As a practical matter for us, this means committing to import replacement - making things we need in the US, probably much more regionally. "Globalism" now joins the many other fantasies that we can no longer indulge in.

 

At the moment, going into Thanksgiving 2009, America's leadership has dedicated itself to the worst action it could take under the circumstances: a campaign to sustain the unsustainable. This is what's embodied in the foolish term "recovery." The way we try to explain things to ourselves matters, if we don't want to be crushed by history. Go back to the top of this blog and look at the things we pay attention to. Aren't you ashamed?

 

 

Agreed with most of your analysis. Just a question. How would your analysis change if we had, within 5 or 10 year, unlimited amount of energy through Nuclear fusion?

(not fission, but fusion). I am not interested (ok moderately interested) why you think this is not possible... assume it is possible, and tell me (us) how would the situation change.

Since you correctly link our surplus with the extra energy coming from peak oil, having another form of abundant energy might change the picture? Or not?

[Enishi]

I think overpopulation and destruction of the nutrient content of the soil would get much, much worse if fusion or some of the theoretical zero point technologies I hear about were ever implemented.

Edited November 27, 2009 by Enishi

[joeblast]

post-oil, post-consumer crash...sure, just like we saw post racial, post partisan what shortsightedness.

[John Zen]

post-oil, post-consumer crash...sure, just like we saw post racial, post partisan what shortsightedness.

 

The human Ego is a Black Hole, endless, infinite hate. From it, comes racism, which too, will never die.

 

Oil, on the other hand, is a very limited commodity.

 

China is most likely to survive this Economic Crisis. Let's all just meet there and build Taoist societies.

[Encephalon]

Agreed with most of your analysis. Just a question. How would your analysis change if we had, within 5 or 10 year, unlimited amount of energy through Nuclear fusion?

(not fission, but fusion). I am not interested (ok moderately interested) why you think this is not possible... assume it is possible, and tell me (us) how would the situation change.

Since you correctly link our surplus with the extra energy coming from peak oil, having another form of abundant energy might change the picture? Or not?

 

I still think Kunstler does the best job of cataloguing oil substitutes and the options don't come close to supporting a population of 7 billion. You know as well as anyone that commercial fusion reactors are still decades away, which leaves humanity a lot of time for mischief, i.e., resource wars. If fusion arrived tomorrow? We'd go back to guzzling, of course!

 

I'm really not the person to ask these questions of. I'm a cultural geographer, but I try to conceptualize my geography studies along global lines. I know full well that oil won't simply stop flowing one day; "energy descent" is the catch phrase amongst the peak-oilers, but it is entirely viable that a bankrupt America could lose the ability to patrol international shipping lanes. We're stuck with an extraordinarily inefficient energy and transportation system and we will need the remaining petrol reserves just to retool for energy descent. Oil economists don't see the world having too much sympathy for our plight.

 

My conviction is that this planet built for 2 billion will once again have 2 billion when the cheap energy runs out, and you can draw whatever geo-political conclusions you want from that scenario.

 

The human Ego is a Black Hole, endless, infinite hate. From it, comes racism, which too, will never die.

 

Oil, on the other hand, is a very limited commodity.

 

China is most likely to survive this Economic Crisis. Let's all just meet there and build Taoist societies.

 

Ancient China is my favorite culture. Modern China is a catastrophe and will likely render its biologically productive land unfit for habitation. It's filthy - it already loses 10% of its GDP to pollution-related medical diseconomies - it's desertification rate is off the charts, it's running out of water, and it will try to seize Siberia in order to feed itself. It will be interesting to see how Russia responds to that move.

[Trunk]

My conviction is that this planet built for 2 billion will once again have 2 billion when the cheap energy runs out, and you can draw whatever geo-political conclusions you want from that scenario.

Some years ago (10?) I read in National Geographic that the human population was well above the carrying capacity of the earth.

[Pietro]

If fusion arrived tomorrow? We'd go back to guzzling, of course!

 

Yes, but as it was pointed out above, there is only a certain point after which the earth just cannot take anymore.

 

But the good news is that people have started using Permaculture at big scale. Reorganising farms of thousands of hectars, consulting with the US ministry of agriculture...

So maybe not all is lost.

 

My conviction is that this planet built for 2 billion will once again have 2 billion when the cheap energy runs out, and you can draw whatever geo-political conclusions you want from that scenario.

Amen to that?

 

Ancient China is my favorite culture.

Really? You must like to live in a culture with torture, dictators, poverty and imposition.

 

For me I would rather stay in any time of native American versus any time of ancient China.

[Encephalon]

For me I would rather stay in any time of native American versus any time of ancient China.

 

that's a good point. I should have said that I believe ancient China contributed more body/mind disciplines and understanding than any other culture, even India, if I may be so specific as defining body/mind practice as simply fine tuning the human nervous system for extraordinary feats. But Yeah, give me the Nuxalk Indian tribe of Bella Coola, BC any day.

[Owledge]

Another of 'those appeals'. I don't know how to say it differently. It like a diversion from the core problem. Trying to fix a way of thinking with systems and organisation?

I think that we could actually keep all the things that are demonized like big corporations, massive energy use and others if people were different. The institutions themselves are just an effort for making things more efficient. If they had adhered to the rules set by the people, there would be no problem. But laws are broken, people let themselves be manipulated into hatred.

Focus on people and everything else will manifest 'automatically'. Because all institutions are just creations of people.

[Encephalon]

Another of 'those appeals'. I don't know how to say it differently. It like a diversion from the core problem. Trying to fix a way of thinking with systems and organisation?

I think that we could actually keep all the things that are demonized like big corporations, massive energy use and others if people were different. The institutions themselves are just an effort for making things more efficient. If they had adhered to the rules set by the people, there would be no problem. But laws are broken, people let themselves be manipulated into hatred.

Focus on people and everything else will manifest 'automatically'. Because all institutions are just creations of people.

 

I would respectfully disagree, not out of my own original thinking, of course. Robert Korten, author of "When Corporations Rule the World," makes a forceful case that corporations wield disproportionately greater influence than merely a collection of individuals, by virtue of their advantages of incorporation - i.e., they only have rights, no obligations, and no accountability to anyone save that of their shareholders. Of course, it's all legal!