our symptoms are showing...and Happy New Year!

Our symptoms are showing, our symptoms are showing….
and once again I love to get James Howard Kunstler's take on where we are and where we are going and his 2010 predictions are there for all to see.
The theft of the resources of our beautiful planet goes on…..On steroids. We are, barbarically in many cases, extracting the “raw materials” to fuel the orgy many on this planet see as their right! The pigs are at the trough and the rest of us have been so successfully marketed to that we believe living on earth this way is just fine and dandy. Some of my favorite symptoms include casinos, mansions; homes used as ATM’s, shopping malls and all nature of conspicuous consumption. And to many people also residing on planet earth the lifestyle of most of us Americans would look like conspicuous consumption. And, as Kunstler points out so eloquently, once again, we are livin’ large on the margin and have been for a long time. Oh, and I don’t think my favorite button at the moment will ever make sense to my republican mother. “How’s the cancerous phase of unregulated, crony, casino capitalism working for you?” I think she only heard her two favorite words, casino and capitalism, when I ask her, she declared, very seriously, that it was working just fine for her. There is no chance she will, in any way shape or form, sign on to the notion that we might feel some shame for the legacy we are passing on to those who come after. And not for a minute do I think this has anything to do with her being a republican or me having worked politically as a democrat. It has everything to do with her choice of media and the lack of truthtelling we are all living with.

He sums it up here and I think it of as using the dwindling resources of planet earth to fight over the dwindling resources of planet earth. I see no signs in our culture that we are anywhere near giving up that futile addiction. Our culture is so indoctrinated and dysfunctional and there are barely any openings to suggest reality. And what is really telling to me is that just about everybody I talk to is so glad water is not going to be a problem for them and they could just plant a vegie garden on their lot if they needed to or variations on that theme. There is no sense of how this is all coming to an end even if we completely destroy the planet using ever more barbaric extraction methods and all of the fresh water extracting every last possible means of producing energy.

The only real hope I see is that the collapse may save us. So we are off to the long emergency…..

And I am grateful to the dickens of doom for a great summary of where we are and predictions for the upcoming year. You have not failed to keep up and share your wit and wisdom and I look forward to following you in 2010.

Forecast 2010

By James Howard Kunstler
on December 28, 2009 7:32 AM

The Center does Not Hold...

But Neither Does the Floor

Introduction

There are always disagreements in a society, differences of opinion, and contested ideas, but I don't remember any period in my own longish life, even the Vietnam uproar, when the collective sense of purpose, intent, and self-confidence was so muddled in this country, so detached from reality. Obviously, in saying this I'm assuming that I have some reliable notion of what's real. I admit the possibility that I'm as mistaken as anyone else. But for the purpose of this exercise I'll ask you to regard me as a reliable narrator. Forecasting is a nasty job, usually thankless, often disappointing - but somebody's got to do it. There are so many variables in motion, and so much of that motion is driven by randomness, and the best one can do in forecasting amounts to offering up some guesses for whatever they are worth.
I begin by restating my central theme of recent months: that we're doing a poor job of constructing a coherent consensus about what is happening to us and what we are going to do about it.
There is a great clamor for "solutions" out there. I've noticed that what's being clamored for is a set of rescue remedies - miracles even - that will allow us to keep living exactly the way we're accustomed to in the USA, with all the trappings of comfort and convenience now taken as entitlements. I don't believe that this will be remotely possible, so I avoid the term "solutions" entirely and suggest that we speak instead of "intelligent responses" to our changing circumstances. This implies that our well-being depends on our own behavior and the choices that we make, not on the lucky arrival of just-in-time miracles. It is an active stance, not a passive one. What will we do?

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