Woe the Doomer
Mark (Bosco, to be clear) got pretty worked up over JHK’s blog this week. Seems Kunstler’s doomer imagery/wishful thinking were a little heavy in this recent post and Mark - well Mark felt Jim needed to pull back from the brink.
Personally, I look forward to JHK’s weekly blog post. I don’t take his view as gospel but, his riffs usually have a good rhythm, the content is interesting to me and there is nearly always some dark, sardonic humour that makes me laugh a little. So, Monday mornings (with Jim) - shortly after nine I like to take five minutes, sip my coffee and read the latest installment of The Clusterfuck Nation. The name of the blog should tell you right off that James Kunstler is not at all happy with his nation’s situation. The origin of the term "clusterfuck " is not totally clear but is largely attributed to U.S. military speak to describe an event or situation that goes wrong and continues to get worse (more refined folk refer to this as a negative-feedback-loop) despite every effort to correct it. Clusterfuck and FUBAR (fucked-up beyond all recognition) are usually used in tandem.
I think both terms are appropriate to define our current state of affairs here (in Windsor, in Ontario, in Canada, in North America, as a member of NATO, as a member of NAFTA, as a leading nation of the world - take your pick). I’m going to limit this to Windsor, Ontario and Canada. Our federal government just tabled a budget that will keep Canada in a deficit situation for the foreseeable future. Deficit means increased debt, means more of the people’s money that should be spent on the people will be spent servicing debts. Which means either higher taxes to make-up the difference or reduced departmental spending to pay-off the holders of our sovereign debt (banks and other countries).
Our provincial government will likely follow the same route - continued deficits, higher taxes/user fees and less service. Of course this leads to municipal governments getting smaller transfer payments to provide the services mandated by the senior levels of government…I hope you get the picture.
Facing a future of much less the plan here in Windsor seems to be to wish and pretend that everything will go back to the way it was. Some magical solution will be found to get our workforce back to work, to allow us to continue to build outward, to continue to ignore the growing cracks in our social fabric…
There are some bright spots but when you consider them against all that is stacking up to make the future road a steep pass to climb one can begin to feel like Sisyphus. Maybe that’s where the big ugly doomerism came from in JHK’s latest post. Perhaps he just felt like lashing out and imagining the end will come sooner, rather than later so that everyone would finally understand just what he was trying to tell them - that car culture, consumerism, suburbia and something-for-nothing will not be part of the future.
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interesting. while JHK’s blog was mildly entertaining, it really demonstrates the necessity for some perspective. describing the demise of the American empire, doom and gloom included, in such fatalistic terms is simply void of perspective. the end of car culture, consumerism, and suburbia really doesn’t spell the end of civilization.
Exactly Rino, people need to focus that its just a transition. Detroit has a local currency called detroit cheers, one of the best urban farming programs in the country. Their being last is actually making them first in some areas.
Localizing our economy and transitioning it to using less energy can improve quality of life. In short Sustainability is the mother of Liveabilty
True civilizations come in many models with different standard features and options. Where things get dicey is when people have to give things up.
At the end of the nineteenth century when large numbers of people came to Canada from say, Ukraine, and struck out for their quarter section in the middle of Saskatchewan to fight through their first Canadian prairie winter in a sod house - this was an improvement over their lives in the old country.
Compare that to the devolution from a global, consumer society to more local, self-sustaining society. Take your average suburban Canadian family and tell them they have to move into an urban neighbourhood, give up the car, pay twice as much for water and power and basically cut their current “standard of living” in half and it won’t matter how much liveability/sustainability sugar you sprinkle on it, they will not like it.
The end of car culture, consumerism and/or suburbia shouldn’t bring about Mad Max Armageddon if people are educated and preparations are made to adjust throughout the transition. But, it is plain to see that only a small minority are aware that we are even in transition. When the majority are finally aware that the world they thought they were entitled to is gone it will have seemed to have happened very quickly and the sudden realization will enrage a public that was thought to be weak and apathetic. They will feel cheated and they will look for someone or something or some group to be held accountable. I’m not making this up, I’m just looking back on history.
I too was getting up in all of the negatives ie: the fall of the US empire, the decline of western civilization etc. That is until I took stock of my own life and realized I can do only for me and not worry what others are doing (even though there might be an impact in my life).
The other thing I did was read a fantastic book that puts Kunstler in his place (as a person who screams about the decline of western civilization).
The book, “The Next 100 Years” by George Friedman the founder of STRATFOR - the preeminent private intelligence and forecasting firm.
Though it is based more on a global scale it shows that western civilization isn’t even close to succumbing to it’s own stupidity. In fact he argues (with facts and a gerat perspective) that the U.S. hegemony will continue to grow.
However I will say that the endless sprawl we continue to see; where local and provincial gov’ts continue to feed into it with their legislation and property taxes (to which we are hitting the proverbial ceiling and can’t go further without detrimental effects); this type of ignorance cannot continue without consequences.
I recommend this book to anyone woh just feels there is way too much doom and gloom. Especially from our media outlets.
Not to jump on the doom and gloom bandwagon, but as one looks around at the heavy reliance on large-scale agribusiness (and its determental effects on the natural environment) coupled with an exploding world population, one can’t help but be a little worried about where our food is going to come from should the great plains of Canada and the US stop producing due to soil nutrient loss.
Just some thoughts……local food security (and fresh water security) is going to become the largest issue moving forward.
Those is Windsor-Essex might read this and think what is this person talking about, we have prime agricultural land and abundant water…….be very thankful you do because not everyone does. What are those people going to do when they can’t feed themselves locally??? Pay large sums of money to import or move somewhere where it is available.
Windsor-Essex should be focusing on its assets, it temperate climate and its prime agricultural land. Funny thing is everyone east of Windsor-Essex is doing it, so why not here?
The world population is actually about to decrease soon enough. Again George Friedman’s book speels out why and I can’t argue with his reasoning.
But I do agree about soil nutrient loss and large scale agribusiness.
Redefine Yourself, I think the reason we aren’t doing it here is because we are so provincial. Ever notice for the most part we are about 15-20 years beind what people at the forefront are doing?