<An echoing Shhh, or more on mining of oil shale The Oil Drum DrumBeat: June 29, 2006>

272 comments on Inflationary Collapses, or The NPV of Grandchildren

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fleam on June 29, 2006 - 7:34am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yep gotta get ahold of some Tolkien, I've just not dug into his stuff. But I think he had the right ideas all right.

I did read somewhere that he grew up in a village which he saw literally turned into "dark satanic mills" when he returned to it. I in my lifetime have seen ecosystems trashed, just in the space of a few years of my childhood.

Sigh. It's mostly down to overpopulation isn't it?

Looks like the decision is being made for me, but it looks like I'll be Poweringdown quite a bit. First looking for an old Volvo 240 wagon or old Toyota van and the Prius gets sold - there goes a lot of debt. Also to look into renting either a storage space or a small "R&D" office, that means the kind you can run a drill press in. Will cost less than 1/2 times what this apartment will. Officially at least, I'll sleep in the car/van. Got a LOT of stuff to just plain sell, just plain get rid of. No more on-line sales, no more feeding that vampire. The most "industrial" I'll be is taking stuff to the swapmeets locally and selling it. You know, bag up useful stuff like ring lugs and mic connectors, etc and sell for $1 each. What I really want to do is work on artist skills, paper 'n' Conte crayon, technology hundreds of years old or really, thousands. Ultimate desired end result would be I guess, to do without a car entirely and live in a cheep place and just draw, caricatures and cartoons for magazines and stuff like that, the odd sign. And have expenses down far enough so I can live OK that way, or go wash windows and live OK also. But one thing at a time. This isn't even my choice, Ebay/net/computer/credit cards etc are going through their own Tainterish collapse for me right now, and I may only be 6 mos. ahead, a vanguard of large numbers of Tainterish collapses for a lot of people.

So yeah, I'm thinking Tolkian is right on the button right now.

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MicroHydro on June 29, 2006 - 7:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Art is an excellent skill.  Low overhead and timeless demand.  Art might be more appreciated after the oil age.  IMO, probably classical Greece spent a far  higher % of GDP on art than any fossil fueled society.  My sister paid a guy outside a mall to do a portrait of her dog, lots of opportunities out there.    
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fleam on June 29, 2006 - 7:55am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes. Probably why it's so suppressed.

There's no real "journeyman" training in art in the US, it's the plaything of the rich and distrusted by most nose-to-the-grindstone Americans. I was destined to become an artist, but my family crashed from middle class to welfare-class and art was just not trusted.

But no one ever got tired of looking at their own ugly mug!

If you've been around a bit, even the most bone-headed person can see that the present work-til-you-drop way of life is a scam. Most Americans are dropping dead before they ever collect Social Security, it's the top quintile, maybe the top two, living to collect. And everything else in the slush fund goes for .... I dunno, black helicopters or something.

It's looking good, get an old volvo and a shop, and stop spending so damned much money to make a little money. Instead, spend next to no money to make a little money.

If I keep going the way I've been, I'm going to have a heart attack and I'll have to gear way down anyway.

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expat on June 29, 2006 - 8:08am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Well, more than the U.S., that is for certain. I remember reading/learning that in Golden Age Athens, a rich citizen was expected to either finance a play or a warship. To a major extent, this explains the incredible output of drama from a tiny city state more or less in the middle of nowhere.

The value a society places on something is neither an economic or a technological decision - it is a human one.

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Antoinetta III on July 1, 2006 - 6:13am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Yes, everyone should really read Tolkien, starting with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, four thick paperbacks.  Its a long read, but the only complaint on the part of most of my friends, is that the book is too short!

The first of the four, The Hobbit comes across more as a kid's story, and indeed, Tolkien wrote it for his kids in 1936, but it reads well for adults and provides a good prequel, making it easier to get into the main story of The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien himself apparently always insisted that his sole purpose was to tell a rattling good yarn, and he specifically disavowed any perceived parables or metaphors that anyone might read into the tale.  I don't think many believe this, and considering the time it was written, which included the World War II era, (the tale was reworked and evolved even as it was being written; the whole thing took about 20 years following the publication of The Hobbit) it's easy to identify Sauron with Hitler, etc.  And in that light, the book's stark rendering of good vs evil makes sense.  For in World War II, there was no question as to where the evil lay.  And it was evil, beyond the usual depredations of various despots past and present.

Antoinetta III

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272 comments on Inflationary Collapses, or The NPV of Grandchildren

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