The revolution
I am not all that satisfied with my last post... alittle too mystical at times :-)
In anycase, it has been some time since I have discussed the revolution and as far as I know, it is no where in print.
The premise is this: I dislike the way that american society and infrustructure has evolved. We are such a wastefull society and I really believe that our psuedo-capitalizm-at-all-cost mentality has cost us dearly in happyness and well being. I love this country and it's people more then anything but I just think that we have worked ourselves into an uncomfertable corner... More on this in a later post. The main point is that contrary to looking for ways to maintain our current way of life I am looking for ways to end it.
[Blessing in Disguize enters stage right] America has been fabulasly successfull for two reasons: Abundent natural resources per capita and the ingenuity to use them! One of our greatest succeses has been our transportation infrastructure. The interstate highway system combined with the most extensive local road network in the world has made the movement of people ridiculously easy. I drive further over one holliday weekend then nearly anyone traveled their whole lives 200 years ago.
This enhanced mobility of goods and people [read: talent and labor] has helped make us the dominant economic force on the planet. Goods and people are used far more efficiently here then any where else.
The unfortunate side effect of this is the disolution of the community. Untill fairly recently humans lived in relatively small but closely nit communities. The nuclear family didn't really exist, how could it? It litterally took a whole community to survive and independent living of the sort we are used to was unheard of. Children were likely raised as a group by the elders in the community and to use a stereotype, men hunted together and women did everything else necessary to keep the community alive together (bless their hearts).
How different this is from how we live today! I come home from school and it is just me, my brother, mom, and dad. We were amicable with the neighbors but I don't think I could call them friends. The friends that each of my family had were typically 15 minutes away by car at the minimum.
Which brings me to the prolog to my point. People say, all the time, that college was the best time of their lives. "You will never make friends like you have in college," is another oft heard comment. My response to this is why? Why can't it be like that? It sure seems like it used to be like that, people living with each other with no other obligations then to keep themselves alive and to hang out with each other.
It could be like that now. We work 8 hours, come home, and then decide that after cooking and cleaning up that it is too much effort to go hang out with other people. Or, the effort required to maintain an entire house is too much to warrent spending several nights a week with family friends. The fact that we live so far apart just makes it difficult to plan and coordinate things with anyone but your closest friends. Even then it usually ends up being traditions like going to the bowling ally every Wednesday night.
The crux of my arguement: the resources and infrastructure that allowed this culture to develop will no longer exist when the oil become scarce. Suberbia will atrophy and die like the inner cities of the past 30 years. World trade will decrease due to the increased cost of transport. There is still Mexico so I doubt that our manufacturing base will come back but at least we wont have to compete as hard core with china. As a consiquence though everything will be more expensive so we will have less of it. The materialism that has come to dominate american culture will at least diminish. The only thing that won't be affected by the increased cost of energy is the exchange of information. That is perhaps the one commodity that will only get more competitive.
The revolution.
The revolution wont happen over night, but it will happen within our life time. Already scientists are predicting that the oil supply will stop increasing within only a few years. What does this mean for us? A sharp increase in demand (China and India) coinciding with a slacking of supply will cause prices will skyrocket. We can't recast our cities and towns to cope with the increased cost of transportation so we will just have to pay out the nose for energy and cope with less goods and services. Less goods and services means less stuff being bought which means less jobs which means less stuff bought and so on... Pretty bleak except for the fact that it will happen over the span of probably 20 years. In a sense our time will come to be defined by both the excess of energy we enjoy now and the crash that follows.
It is interesting to think of how many times in history severe economic collapeses have led to a remaking of society. It required the widespread hardships of the Great Depression to give Franklen D. Rosevelt the support to pass the New Deal legislation. The idea of the government providing more then order and stability to the point of the people depending upon the government was a new one.
A similar transformation will occure during the revolution but what form it will take is hard to tell.
In anycase, it has been some time since I have discussed the revolution and as far as I know, it is no where in print.
The premise is this: I dislike the way that american society and infrustructure has evolved. We are such a wastefull society and I really believe that our psuedo-capitalizm-at-all-cost mentality has cost us dearly in happyness and well being. I love this country and it's people more then anything but I just think that we have worked ourselves into an uncomfertable corner... More on this in a later post. The main point is that contrary to looking for ways to maintain our current way of life I am looking for ways to end it.
[Blessing in Disguize enters stage right] America has been fabulasly successfull for two reasons: Abundent natural resources per capita and the ingenuity to use them! One of our greatest succeses has been our transportation infrastructure. The interstate highway system combined with the most extensive local road network in the world has made the movement of people ridiculously easy. I drive further over one holliday weekend then nearly anyone traveled their whole lives 200 years ago.
This enhanced mobility of goods and people [read: talent and labor] has helped make us the dominant economic force on the planet. Goods and people are used far more efficiently here then any where else.
The unfortunate side effect of this is the disolution of the community. Untill fairly recently humans lived in relatively small but closely nit communities. The nuclear family didn't really exist, how could it? It litterally took a whole community to survive and independent living of the sort we are used to was unheard of. Children were likely raised as a group by the elders in the community and to use a stereotype, men hunted together and women did everything else necessary to keep the community alive together (bless their hearts).
How different this is from how we live today! I come home from school and it is just me, my brother, mom, and dad. We were amicable with the neighbors but I don't think I could call them friends. The friends that each of my family had were typically 15 minutes away by car at the minimum.
Which brings me to the prolog to my point. People say, all the time, that college was the best time of their lives. "You will never make friends like you have in college," is another oft heard comment. My response to this is why? Why can't it be like that? It sure seems like it used to be like that, people living with each other with no other obligations then to keep themselves alive and to hang out with each other.
It could be like that now. We work 8 hours, come home, and then decide that after cooking and cleaning up that it is too much effort to go hang out with other people. Or, the effort required to maintain an entire house is too much to warrent spending several nights a week with family friends. The fact that we live so far apart just makes it difficult to plan and coordinate things with anyone but your closest friends. Even then it usually ends up being traditions like going to the bowling ally every Wednesday night.
The crux of my arguement: the resources and infrastructure that allowed this culture to develop will no longer exist when the oil become scarce. Suberbia will atrophy and die like the inner cities of the past 30 years. World trade will decrease due to the increased cost of transport. There is still Mexico so I doubt that our manufacturing base will come back but at least we wont have to compete as hard core with china. As a consiquence though everything will be more expensive so we will have less of it. The materialism that has come to dominate american culture will at least diminish. The only thing that won't be affected by the increased cost of energy is the exchange of information. That is perhaps the one commodity that will only get more competitive.
The revolution.
The revolution wont happen over night, but it will happen within our life time. Already scientists are predicting that the oil supply will stop increasing within only a few years. What does this mean for us? A sharp increase in demand (China and India) coinciding with a slacking of supply will cause prices will skyrocket. We can't recast our cities and towns to cope with the increased cost of transportation so we will just have to pay out the nose for energy and cope with less goods and services. Less goods and services means less stuff being bought which means less jobs which means less stuff bought and so on... Pretty bleak except for the fact that it will happen over the span of probably 20 years. In a sense our time will come to be defined by both the excess of energy we enjoy now and the crash that follows.
It is interesting to think of how many times in history severe economic collapeses have led to a remaking of society. It required the widespread hardships of the Great Depression to give Franklen D. Rosevelt the support to pass the New Deal legislation. The idea of the government providing more then order and stability to the point of the people depending upon the government was a new one.
A similar transformation will occure during the revolution but what form it will take is hard to tell.
posted by Craig Snoeyink at 9:19 PM
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