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129 comments on Our World Is Finite: The Implications of Resource Limitations

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airdale on October 24, 2007 - 12:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks for the reply.

Gail said :
"One thing people did do back in the 50's was have lots of children."

Mhhh...when the war was over and my father returned..sometime in 1945-6 or so.we lived in Ky still..some trips back and forth to city living but briefly...and yes, I agree that on the farm people did have more children BUT that was a biological necessity for in order to continue to farm one needed offspring..to carry on and in case of disablity or accidents and to take care of the parents in their old age. Far better to have a few sons to help out..and daughters to marry well and increase the kinship and extended families that are so important in the rural outback.

And it did happen that way, where the offspring housed and cared for the elders...in fact to this very day you see it happening albeit to a far lesser degree. But old habits and customs die slow..

So then in 1949 my father came to the farm and hauled us up to St. Louis county to something that looked weird..suburbs..the very very early beginning of suburbs...

And I an my brother(the only two offspring) were set admidst a lot of other families BUT looking back most all of them either had no children, or two children and in the odd case three children. Most had two.

I dated girls and had lots of friends back in those days as a teenager and most of those early suburban families usually had just two children.

So where did the huge increases come from then? Was it that divorce became common and therefore new 'mixmaster' families were created...like my wifes? One from a previous and two from the original? The sexual revolution?

Or was it new arrivals in our country? Or illegal immigrants?

Mostly in the burbs where I then lived and grew up..2 was usual and 3 did happen and 0 was there as well.

My wife and I had two. That was all.
My grandfather and grandmother had 14!! Most all of those 14 aunts and uncles had at most 2. And of the males none had another male except for one and so me and my brother were two and he never married..of my two, a boy and a girl..my daughter has only one and no more..my son will never marry.

So out of 14 total that line is about to die out..and in fact no male children of those 14 offspring..only 2 males were born and they never propgated,except for me.

I find this in many kinfolk around here...so I am at a lose as to the dynamics of childbirth of those who have been here for some time...I am 5th generation on my grandfathers side and 12 generation on my grandmothers. Mostly on both sides we are slowly disappearing instead of increasing.

Perhaps my experiences are just far different.

As for Social Security..those of us who are on it surely recognize that the day will come , and not too far , when there will be no more EFTs deposited in the bank. We all pretty much know that its a ponzi scheme.

My feelings on SS is that a lot, a whole lot, more recipents have been 'added' to the roles than those who paid in. All for political gain I think. And then there was those who never paid in but get benefits anyway. Forget the name of that program. Then children were added and so on .....

airdale

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DIYer on October 24, 2007 - 2:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

... on the farm people did have more children BUT that was a biological necessity for in order to continue to farm one needed offspring ...

You've answered your own question there. It is in the nature of biologicals to reproduce. And the "Economy" is thought of in similar grow-or-die terms. We are victims of the success of humanity.

As a side note, I think your family tree is typical. My own is similar: Dad came from a family of 5, 2 of whom were male. None of his sisters ever had children, nor did my brother, and he has a total of 1 grandchild (my child). It doesn't look like she's interested in propagating, so his brother's kids, and theirs, are the only outcome of 3 or 4 generations of our family. His brother's widow is so obnoxious we don't talk to her very often -- I'm not sure how many descendants they have. Dad's other siblings and most of their spouses have passed.

| The problem will solve itself.
|  But not in a nice way.

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oilmanbob on October 24, 2007 - 4:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Airdale,
You and I are in 100% agreement today. There has been a fundimental shift in values in our civilisation over the last 60 or 70 years, and the winning set of values aren't values that will help us survive in a more resource constrained world. What is being mislabeled as capitalism and democracy is actually greed and materialism, and its about to strangle us all. The Islamic conflict with the West is to a very large extent revulsion with this part of our society and an attempt to return to values that are 1400 years old. Unfortunately, they don't work well either with the modern world, and don't include tolerance.

I put the blame on how we get our information. Its pretty unfortunate, but televisions rule most households in America, they are on on a constant basis. And, television isn't an information medium or an entertainment medium, its an advertising medium with that other stuff just to keep us hooked.

We're not that far from the same age. I'll be 56 on Tuesday, November 6 and I think from the things you've said you are about 15 years older than I, but we can both remember the changes that came in society between about 1960 and 1975, when TV pretty well took over. Before then, people satisfied their need for a feeling of community by participating in the community, by being members of churches, local political organisations, local social organisations like lodges or service clubs like the Rotary or J.C.'s. At any rate, they went out and actively participated with actual people in making their communities a better place. People often had their families living near, perhaps a relic of most people having a farm.

But around 1960 the sitcom ideal on television started to make people who didn't live in a big house with two family cars feel inferior, so Mom got a job so the family could purchase these things, and they did. Credit expanded, and instead of people saving up to buy a house, they purchased it with a down payment and a twenty year note. And instead of Mom being home when the children came home from school, even cooking dinner and eating waited on her coming back from her job. And, our society became much more fearful from the advent of all the cop shows on television. Kids weren't allowed to play outside until after dusk.

And because of exhaustion, we left the TV on and didn't talk to each other any more. So we've sowed the wind, and reaped the whirwind. People seem to have forgotten that they only wear one pair of pants at once and sleep in on bed. We are fixing to start the third generation of people who seldom eat home cooking and have no idea of how to grow a tomato. Even churches have become giant megachurches on television, instead of groups of friends and neighbors doing their charity at home and working on community problems.

Peak oil though has the potential to reverse this process and set us back on the right path as humans. Its going to be such a huge shock to materialism that people wil be forced to look within themselves for the answers, rather than seeking other places to put the blame. The survivalist hole up in the woods with sardines and canned pinto beans and enough guns and ammo to terrorise the world mentality won't be nearly as succesful as organising a community garden and setting up jitney routes to the local train station. In one you have friends and neighbors, in the other you've got to worry about someone to watch your back when you sleep. What has more social status-a 12 MPG Hummer with an empty tank and no ration left or an electric bike that recharges from a solar cell set up on the garage roof? Bob Ebersole

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airdale on October 24, 2007 - 5:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Bob,
I am in my late 60s but I feel more like late 50s.

We agree on a lot more than we likely disagree on.

But to answer my own question, after thinking about it some,I would assume the big change was the 'baby boomers'.

Must have shepherded in a new order of thinking perhaps.

I remember that even when TV came along..we might watch Howdy Doody and a bit of the other but mostly we preferred to be outdoors and the burbs hadn't yet killed off everything,,then later I joined the Boy Scouts and found my outdoors environment there,,then later hunting,fishing and canoeing, then spelunking in caves and on and on but always a hankering to return to living on a farm.

Straddling two far different ways of living , I am more comfortable with the rural lifestyle even though I still work on computers for some of the businesses in town and keep my hand in electronics.

airdale-watching as the future approaches on the horizon

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Gail the Actuary on October 24, 2007 - 8:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I, too, am from the not-so-young group. I remember the days before television and having lots of cousins and aunts and uncles around when growing up. My grandparents lived on a farm, and my mother grew up on a farm. I sometimes visited a one-room school with my cousins.

I have never watched much TV - can't understand how some folks have it on night and day. We have a TV in the basement and watch it when we are there because of tornado warnings. Once in a blue moon there is a particular program I want to watch, and go to the basement and see it.

You are probably right that peak oil has the potential to set society back on the right path again. The story of economics and capitalism and "buy more" has been so pervasive that many people do not recognize it as anything other than the "truth" and the way things are.

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WNC Observer on October 25, 2007 - 9:26am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The question of societal change, and particularly of when and how and why we started changing for the worse, is an interesting one. I suspect that it is a complex set of factors, and can't be put down to any one factor.

Whole books have been written about this, and many more will undoubtedly follow in the future. Here are just a few fragmentary, incomplete thoughts:

Television certainly has played a role. Of course, it was around in the 1950s, but not everyone had a set, the programming was all black & white, and except for a few classics the programming was really not very good - inferior to the old radio programs in some ways. I am old enough to remember turning on the TV and seeing test patterns, so it wasn't on ALL the time. And speaking of radio, of course that filled the niche that television supplanted. It is strange, but listening to the radio seemed to be more of a family and even neighborhood social event than was television. Part of it might have been that an entire room could hear a radio program, while you had to sit pretty close to view TV in the old days -- large screen televisions are a relatively modern invention, in the 1950s the screens were SMALL. Since it didn't require watching, one could be doing other things while listening to the radio: knitting, darning socks, shelling peas, whittling, building a model airplane, etc.; thus, families could be sharing work at the same time that they were sharing the experience of listening to the radio. Maybe there is something deep about visuals + sound hooking our attention in a way that sound alone doesn't. Then too, remember that people were used to watching visuals + sound already -- they had been going to the cinema for years. Even when one went as a group, one sat in individual seats all facing the screen, and everyone's attention was focused on the screen (well, except for the young couples making out in back). Thus, television became more of a cinema-in-the-home instead of a visual radio, and family television time didn't work the same way that family radio time did.

The Kennedy assassination seems to have been some sort of turning point, maybe even a tipping point. I'm not sure why. Lots of people loved him, but in retrospect he was only so-so as a President, and certainly had his share of personal flaws. Yet, it seems to have hit a lot of people pretty hard. The whole psyche of America did seem to change in some sort of strange way after that; I'm not sure how or why, I just know that I felt it at the time.

Of course, the Vietnam fiasco was another thing which damaged the country terribly. We're still paying the price for that in so many ways. Prior to that, I think there was a pretty high level of genuine patriotism and of trust and respect for the government and for those in positions of leadership. That all pretty much died with Vietnam. What patriotism one sees today seems to me to be somewhat forced rather than flowing naturally. Government and people in positions of leadership are despised, not respected, and certainly not trusted. It also permanently damaged the relationships between the generations. Even today, one can still sometime sense a certain strain in interactions between boomers and the elderly. This might have something to do with the decline of civic clubs and other organizations. Most of these are dominated by the elderly, you see very few young members. It is not just the case, I suspect, that people are not active in their communities any more (though there is truth to that); I suspect that a lot of boomers became alienated from these organizations during the Vietnam era, and have never come back around. Unfortunately, they never got around to forming their own alternatives to replace them.

Kids stopped playing in the neighborhood unsupervised and stopped walking or biking to school in the 70s. School consolidations and interracial busing played a small part in ending the practice of kids walking or biking to school. However, the really big factor was that this was when a lot of crimes against children started making the news, and parents freaked out. Why did the crimes start happening in the 70s? Certainly their were mentally deranged people around before then? Yes, but there were also plenty of stay-at-home mothers around then. As a kid, you knew that if you got too out of line, somebody's mother was likely to march out of their house, intervene, send you home, and call YOUR mother to report on you. Everyone's parents knew that they could count on each other to keep an eye out for the general safety of the neighborhood kids. Of course, when women started entering the workforce in increasing numbers, that went by the wayside.

I'm not so sure that it was the case in the late 60s or early 70s that Mom went to work because the family needed the money. Remember that by then, most of the boomers were at least teenagers, so increasing numbers of mothers at last felt free to be out of the house and at work during the day. Since they now also had washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, etc., there really wasn't all that much for them to do all day in the house. Remember, too, that they had seen THEIR mothers work during WWII, so the thought that they might too didn't seem so strange. I'm not sure if the women's lib movement is what prompted many women to take the plunge and head to work, or if it was the fact that increasing numbers were already heading back to work that made the ground fertile for the women's lib movement. Maybe it was a mutual feedback system. In any case, it was only a few years after women started working in greater numbers when the 1973 oil embargo hit, and inflation started spiraling out of control. What had at first been a discretionary thing became a necessity.

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airdale on October 25, 2007 - 10:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

WNC and Gail,

How odd it is that we are all of about the same age group and view our society almost exactly the same!! Well it reinforces to me the changes and how we can recall so clearly how it all was back then.

I agree totally with both of your inputs and views.

When I try to talk to the younger generations about 'how it was' and what might work and why do they do what they do....

I get this very huge 'disconnect'. They just seem to completely lose the whole thread and their attention is always somewhere else..usually due to their cell phone going off..

..and the odd thing is that they consider the cell phone call,,even if irrelevant.to be far more important to answer than to even pay attention to what the other party is saying...its very dismissive..and I usually about then say to myself "well screw them then"..and a bit goes out of our relationship at that point..

I also remember that sitting with my wife when she was always so completely absorbed with nonsense on the TV that I would say something to her and she would not even turn her head,,just give an off the cuff reply..

And so when she started staying more and more away from the farm where we lived...I finally disconnected the satellite and eventually removed the tv...I got the idea then that what was on TV was more important than what her husband of 45 years had to say.

She still sits for many many lost hours watching the TV and the nonsense on it..and thinks that what they say is the
'absolute truth'. Since she lives in N.Carolina now I took the tv down to her for good but I stayed here on the farm.

Perhaps the boomers raised on TV think that everything they hear by the MSM is in fact the truth!!

airdale

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Gail the Actuary on October 25, 2007 - 9:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

WNC Observer,

Your post brings back lots of memories. I was still in high school when Kennedy was shot.

I walked to and from school, or rode my bicycle, every day through high school. My mother was always at home, with the seven children. My mother said as long as she was home with one, she might as well be home with several. Also, the first five were girls, and my parents wanted a boy. (The seventh one was unplanned - another girl.)

My mother worked until a few weeks before I was born. She had a master's degree, and was in charge of the medical laboratory in a large hospital. She hid her pregnancy with her lab coat-thought she might be fired. She never worked after I was born.

Some time in the mid to late sixty's, there was quite a bit of publicity about it not being desirable for women to have so many children, so the birth rate declined . When women only had one or two children, working outside the home became easier. The US Statistical Abstract (Table 76) shows that there was a big drop in the birth rate between 1957 and 1972. This big drop in the birth rate, together with the other conveniences, made it easier to work outside of the home.

The usual pattern was for women to work full time and leave their children in day care (or with relatives) for long hours. I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I didn't need to do this. I chose to work fewer hours, and pay someone to come to the house and help with cooking and cleaning (mostly while kids were at school) and do some child care. This way I was able to spend almost as many hours with my children as a stay-at-home mom, and avoid quite a bit of the household chores. This approach was not a method of maximizing net income, but it was closer to what I was used to growing up.

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