Resource Depletion, Persuasion, and the Ongoing World Meme
Posted by Prof. Goose on October 25, 2007 - 1:00pm
Topic: Sociology/Psychology
Tags: elaboration likelihood model, energy, media, oil, original, peak oil [list all tags]
All of these sets of attitude objects vary in importance, salience, and validity depending on who you talk to; but all are definitely a part of the din of noise we subject ourselves to every day.
It still remains my concern, however, that the pillars to the myriad houses of problems I list above are those of world energy depletion--namely oil and its peak.
This leads me to my main question, which I will address in this post: how and when are human beings able to cut through all of that noise? How can they be persuaded? Is there a difference between "elites" (defined as the people who read The Oil Drum, of course) and the "masses"?
Surely persuasion and attitude change takes place; people change their minds every day on issues. What insights can we claim from psychology to get those we care about, and even those we don't, to dig deeper to get to an understanding of the pillars of the problems we face, instead of trying to buy aluminum siding for a house slowly falling in on itself?
Ed by PG: This post originally ran June '06. It seemed germane; some of the discussion of late has been about persuasion and individual attitudes...
The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) distinguishes between the central route and the peripheral route as the two paths that can lead to attitudinal change (Petty and Wegener 1999; Petty and Cacioppo 1986).
The central route is typified by persuasive circumstances that require a great deal of thought and scrutiny of the attempted persuasion, and therefore are likely to predominate under conditions that promote high elaboration--or better said, higher amounts of thought/cognition.
What is elaboration? In this case, it is the "extent to which a person carefully thinks about issue-relevant arguments contained in a persuasive communication."
So, this elaboration means that ideas are scrutinized carefully, going beyond simple understanding. In turn, the receiver generates attitude relevant thoughts about the persuasive message they are being subjected to.
What motivates elaboration? Much of the theory of the ELM revolves around personal relevance and an individual's "need" for cognition (which obviously relates to sophistication), which is based on the ability to elaborate, which in turn requires freedom from distraction and sufficient prior knowledge. (In better words, the receiver must be able to understand information in order to be able to elaborate on it.)
Under the central route conditions, a person's unique cognitive response to the message determines the direction and magnitude of attitude change. The more actively one thinks about an argument, the more likely one is to use the central processing route. The strength and the direction of the argument also obviously plays a role in its persuasion capacity.
Ideas imparted via these central routes tend to be much more durable due to the congnitive changes they have on the person receiving the persuasive message. These are arguments based usually on observables (unbiased and empirical information) and things that can be verified by experience or multiple sources.
Peripheral route processes, on the other hand, require little thought/cognition, and therefore predominate under conditions that promote low elaboration.
This low elaboration means that there's little extensive cognitive work required for decision making because the receiver relies on a variety of cues to make quick decisions, and these cues allow us to travel along the peripheral route on auto pilot.
As one of my favorite book's authors, Bob Cialdini, writes in Influence (a book I assign in my courses regularly, but here's a fair review), the peripheral routes reflect the too-often visited world of "Click, Whirr." That is, most of the messages put out by the media and received by those around us merely pass through this peripheral process simply because of information overload; therefore we respond using as many shortcuts as we can.
Add to that, the amount of information around us grows exponentially every day; sifting through it is, quite simply, a bitch. (which raises, in turn, questions about how much information citizens in democracy need, want, and deserve. I often find myself thinking about these quantities as three interconnected containers with the three chambers sharing only few droplets of fluid. But I digress.)
These peripheral processes often rely on judgmental heuristics (e.g., "the Supreme Court is always right") or surface features of a message (e.g., the number of arguments presented by peak oil advocates) or its source (e.g., the attractiveness of the source) to filter information.
Peripheral route persuasion is induced less by the substance of the argument, and are based more on emotional/affective response. These attitude changes can be rapid, but tend not to be very stable, and can be used to quickly (heuristically) dismiss or accept an argument.
These routes are not mutually exclusive of course, and there's no doubt that other factors play a role that I have not mentioned, namely sophistication, quality of message, and the like.
Also, in all likelihood (heh), the ELM's routes should be placed on a continuum and related to other important psychological ideas such as the schema, as well as the continuum between affect and cognition, which relates to the recent "hot cognition literature" and the like, but I have already typed a tome, so I will stop there. After putting just this model to the page, I can see there's a few posts that could follow this one.
So, dear reader, I pose to you this question: are we doing all we can to use the central route of persuasion? How else can we rise above the din of the less important noise using these psychological insights? What other psychological insights can be brought to bear on the problem?
References:
Petty, Richard E., and John T. Cacioppo. 1986. Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Petty, Richard E., and Duane T. Wegener. 1999. "The Elaboration Likelihood Model: Current status and Controversies." In Shelly Chaiken and Yaacov Trope (Eds.), Dual Process Theories in Social Psychology. New York: Guilford Press.
http://science.reddit.com/info/5z43t/comments/
thank you... :)
When there's a brown paper bag over the gas pump handle or a sign saying ten bucks a gallon, that's persuasive communication. And motivation to change all in one. All else is chatter.
RobertInTucson
I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
That's a very digital interpretation. I suppose your trying to be pithy but it's not helpful. In acuality there will be a period of time where gas prices go from where they are today to 10 or higher. I believe it's that period of time that PG is refering to. You may disagree but there will be a significant amount of communication going on in that time period. The object then is to make sure that those who are 'in the know' communicate to those who are not, as effectively and postively as possible in order to improve the chances of a smoother transition.
In other words, the purpose is to think positively.
-Don
igdonp,
exactly correct...in the times that are coming toward us, persuasion and reason will be even more important, not less.
Does anyone want to agree with the statement "it is possible that we are not past peak?" (and by extension that it was 2.5 years ago). Just want to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Matt
I agree with both of these statements:
"It is possible that we are past peak?"
"It is possible that we are not past peak?"
I would not say that I think there is not adequate evidence for me to agree that:
"It is probably that we are past peak"
I may be barking up the wrong tree here, or just barking, but I believe we need to differentiate between the quantity and the quality of information. There can be no doubt that the quantity of information, news, ect. has never been more abundant. Never, in all human history, have we been subjected to such barrage of information, supplied by the mass media, let's call in news, because most other information, for most people, if it's not 'news' could probably be best described as 'specialist' information directed at an 'elite' audience, much like most of the contributors to the Oil Drum. I wish it wasn't so, but I think we all know it is.
For various reasons I believe we're moving away from a society where the primary source or medium of information is the written word, towards something else. I'm not sure this is a positive development. Words are not only cheap, their easy, robust and contain collosal ammounts of information, and almost become living things in the 'dialogue' with the reader. For example, check out poetry for density of meaning. It's almost like the cognative version of oil!
We as a society seem to be moving towards 'symbolism' again after a long period when words were dominant. Don't we say a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, perhaps, it's actually the opposite that's true. A word is worth a thousand pictures!
Where am I going with this? It's easy to get into metaphysics and philosophy here, and though it's tempting, I'm not sure we've got the time for all that. So I'll just say that I think we're in a uphill battle, against very powerful societal forces that base their power and wealth on pandering to the lowest common denominator and dumbing-down the population.
For example the Murdoch press. News International destroys everything it touches, drains the life and quality out of once pround institutions, like The Times and the Sunday Times in England, and replaces them with dry, husks. Not to mention the ghastly Sun, which should carry a health warning! But here I go sounding very elitist indeed, sorry.
It's said in England that The Sun chooses who is going to be the next Prime Minister. This is slightly over-the-top, but not by much. A politician, or party, or individual that gets on the wrong side of The Sun is in Big Trouble. In England Tony Blair often consulted with The Sun's owner Rupert Murdoch on important issues before he talked to members of his own government, now that is real power!
Murdoch developed his style in Australia. One could call it 'fast food news'. A mix of sex, scandal, gossip, and more sex. There's an anti-intellectualism, or anti-intelligence slant to The Sun and other Murdoch newspapers, that reminds one of the style of Der Sturmer and other papers from Nazi Germany, which is really disturbing.
But to cut to the chase, I think 'reality' will just have to step-up and bite us hard on the arse, before we wake-up. It's not as if we're really asleep, but we are 'drugged'. We're like the Romans, dulled and entertained, with bread and circuses. Obviously this is depressing stuff, if my analysis is true or accurate. Are things really as bad as they seem?
I don't think we have hope in hell of cutting through the crap given the current way our mass media are organized, owned by a handful of 'aristocrats' for the benefit of the 'aristocracy' and their world-view. What's bizarre is, that research has shown that it's not as if most people who read and watch the mass, mainstream, media, even really believe what they're presented with, but they are 'entertained' and 'diverted' and that's probably bad enough, as people only have room in their heads for so much 'news' before they get saturated and switch off completely.
Journalism is in deep crisis too. Journalists are expected to produce more and more, quicker and quicker, with fewer resources. This leads to spreading the butter too thin. Journalists who actually knew stuff, who specialized, are being replaced by all-round generalists who are expected to cover everything and are parachuted into an area and have to get up to speed and then move on. This leads to rather superficial reporting to say the least.
The whole debacle of Iraq shows just how bad things have become. America was dragged into war based on a pack of lies. Lies, often so obviously false and manipulated, that it's hard to believe even a novice journalist could have given them any credence. So our mass media is really, really, sick; but is it terminal? The very structure of the mass media mitigates against understanding and the real disimination of information of high quality, just like Mcdonalds isn't really food at all, it only has the appearance of food. It only 'symbolises' food.
Is there any hope then? Gosh, I don't know! Sometimes one feels like one is drowning in a sea of crap. Surely in a free and democratic society we can take back control from the tiny group of men who have accumulated such enormous media power and use it to further their own narrow economic interests and start over? But do I believe that? No, not really. I'm afraid it's a romantic dream.
But, but, there have been times when information did break its bonds and become free. Unfortunately these were pretty turbulent times, do we really have to wait that long? In the years leading up to the English Civil War, centally contolled censorship broke down, and literally thousands of new presses printed 'radical' pamplets and books. There was an explosion and people were starving for information and ideas, suddenly, everything apparently possible or thinkable and society was in flux. There was revolution in the air people breathed. This period lasted perhaps ten to twenty years, and then the old restraints returned and Britain's presses were under firm control for almost the next three hundred years!
Are we going to have to wait for a period of 'flux' like that, or revolutionary France where the same thing happened? Unfortunately, I think the answer is yes we are. Of course there's the internet, which is a great resource, and opportunity and a fantastic outlet, but corporate control of the media and what we think about, and how we think about it, and the context and framing of the debate, is frighteningly pervasive and effective.
writerman
Phew ! - Once again I find myself agreeing with everything you say.
One positive development you touch on is the way in which web sites like TOD are taking over the function once performed by quality newspapers. Since I started reading TOD I personally have become MUCH more discriminating in my choice of reading matter. For example, whilst I used to hold the Financial Times and WSJ in high regard in economic matters and well over my head, I can now see that much of what they report about, for example, the energy situation, is just so much ignorant crap.
The reportage of the BBC is beyond and beneath contempt. There is more genuine insight and news in a six month old copy of Womans Own.
Nobody likes to hear bad news unless there's some good news in it. Charismatic religious leaders promise a better life or afterlife. Hitler promised a greater Germany and blamed "somebody else" for their problems.
What's our promise of something better? Even in the most hopeful forecasts of the post-oil age it's not going to be much fun around here.
A few thoughts on the structure and nature of the news media
Media and Advertising:
First and foremost the current structure of the MSM news media drives it toward poor coverage. We tend to think of news companies as engaged in the business of investigative reporting. Where they research a story, generate a report and sell it to the consumer to cover the cost. In this model a news company competes with its peers to provide higher quality news. Once upon a time that was true, but now the model is slightly different. Since the advent of modern marketing and advertising news companies are engaged in the business of producing an audience and selling advertising space to cover costs. In this business model the reader, listener or viewer is not the consumer but the product. In this model news companies compete to provide a higher quality audience. Higher quality news uses the central processing route. A higher quality audience uses the peripheral processing route. High quality news is all about critical thought. A high quality audience is all about click, whirr infotainment. Critical thought is not conducive to selling tons of crap that one doesn't really need.
Opinions about the Media
When thinking of the news media we typically think of the free press. Which directly leads us to think of freedom freedom of speech. Consequently we think that the role of the news media is strongly aligned with the interests of democracy. A free and open exchange of ideas and information being debated in the public sphere. If one has a strong objection to the quantity and quality of reporting on a particular issue, say peak oil, then negative impressions of the integrity of the free press develop. In order to maintain these negative opinions one needs a reason to think badly of the press. For progressives it's Rupert Murdoch and corporate hegemony, for conservatives it's the liberal media. For Joe six pack it's neither, the news is just fine. Joe isn't sufficiently informed about anything to find fault with the coverage. It is worthwhile to note that the low quality of coverage makes it easy to find fault, but the fault that you find is based on what you were already concerned about that was missing or poorly covered. This leads you to believe that the news is biased against your particular values whatever they may be. Since the practice of investigative journalism is rapidly dying (if not already dead) more people are finding fault with the media. News companies are experiencing a credibility problem. We are already seeing comedy routines like The Daily Show replacing network news as a source of news and of course the internet, which brings me to my next point.
Search vs Broadcast
The traditional news media of print, radio and television are all broadcast systems. The news comes to you. The internet is a search system. Open up a browser to the homepage and then go looking for news. If you want to know what everyone else is looking at then you go to Google news or something similar, but if you want to know what the latest news on peak oil is then you need to type peak oil into a search engine. It is not possible do do this with out already knowing the term. Thus using the internet to find the content not presented in the broadcast news is investigative journalism for one and that is not very efficient. News in the sense that we know it requires broadcast systems. So the question is how do we fix the broadcast news? I see two answers. One, we go back to subscription news services without advertising. Two, we create a new system to share all of that individual investigate journalism, sort it, covert it to manageable packets and broadcast it all in a high quality way without a revenue stream from advertising or subscriptions. I'm open to suggestions on this.
Dropping Out
On a closing note many people are realizing the poor quality of the MSM people are dropping out. They are not consuming news. The upside of this is that people are no longer subjecting themselves to the infotainment that passes as news. The downside is that current events are no longer disseminated. Just as anecdotal evidence of this I work at a Cooperative Organic foods store and a locally owned coffee shop, both in close proximity to university area and thus a liberal crowd. Fully half of my coworkers did not know that Al Gore had won the Nobel prize until I asked them what they thought about it.
Tim Morrison
PS Professor Goose, it was nice to finally meet you. Gail introduced me to you after your speech at the conference.
Good to meet you too Tim!
(I pretty much agree with all you say here, btw.)
But "Der Sturmer" didn't have such hot pinup girls.
Still, it's nice to know a newspaper editor (Julius Streicher) can be executed for war crimes.
Now that I've read your whole entry -
When societies were small and simple and news was scarce,
ordinary folks were hungry for information.
Maybe modern complexity has caused a feedback loop that undermines democracy. The rich have a vested interest in further complexity and inequality, and can hire specialized stooges to manage it in their favor. Complexity and specialization turns off ordinary citizens, however, so that they become info-saturated and no longer want to get "involved".
So the only kind of revolution that both nature and popular tendencies support is a collapse of complexity, which is so often discussed here.
Just for the record, Who owns the media?
I think we have as much chance of encouraging people to drive less, use CF lighting, etc will work about as much as we try to have them walk up to the TV and change the station while the Remote Control is still sitting on the table.
We will keep doing what we're doing till we can't, then we won't.
Date this quote:
"The class inhibitions that haunt the contemporary press under its multimillionaire ownership are responsible in large measure for the neurotic character of American newspapers. Because so many fields of editorial investigation and exposition are taboo, the press as a whole must confine itself to a relatively restricted "safe" area.
This accounts for the undue measure of attention given to the underworld; to petty scandals involving actresses, baseball players, and minor politicians; to sporting affairs and the activities of the quasiwealthy. The press, in short, must compensate for enforced lack of vitality in dynamic fields by artificial enthusiasm in static fields. In place of an evenhanded, vital, varied daily news report, the American press as a whole is obliged to present a lopsided news report that is of doubtful reader interest. And in order to recapture the constantly waning attention of readers it must rely upon comic strips, inane "features", contests, gossip columns, fiction, cooking recipes, instruction columns in golf, chess, bridge, and stamp collecting, and similar nonsense. American newspapers, in short, are, paradoxically and with few exceptions, not newspapers at all."
-Ferdinand Lundberg, "America's 60 Families", c. 1938
And probably the most disturbing thing about this piece is that since the 30's things have actually gotten worse. The concentration of media power has accelerated, espcially in the last twenty years. The 1930's almost seems like a 'golden age' of ownership diversity! I read the other day that the FCC was considering 'relaxing' the restrictions on concentration even further. The way we're going in a relatively short space of time over 90% of the US media will be controlled by just three giant corporations who 'co-opperate'.
One can also look at the negative cultural effect all this has on American music. There's so much great music that never gets played or heard, because the formats are so proscribed and controlled. These days many of the iconic and groundbreaking bands from the sixties would never get played because they don't conform to the station's format. These 'monopolies' are strangling American music culture, and that's a shame.
Writerman,
Your right man.
So my response is to find that music on the FM radio as 'Golden Oldies' and of course zero 'news' on that station or just a very little.
That music however just doesn't seem to want to 'fade'. Its far too good to do so. Yet mainstream America doesn't listen to it...one wonders just what the hell they do listen to?
I think nothing ...except the incipient(correct word?)..cellphone stuck to their ears and the ubiquitous TV.
My wife was enchanted and enthralled by the 'infomercials' on TV..she thought they were honest folks who knew everything. I suppose to her Ron Popeil was a visionary.
For her generation(the one after mine) she was totally hooked and never could squirm off. It seemed to feed some part of her brainstem, some imperative to just 'listen' to this quakery. And then of course "Go Shopping"....
I never did understand this behavior in her. Perhaps why I live more or less alone sans TV..but lots of sound and music..bluegrass primarily and some favorites from my youth...music that really spoke to the inner person..and not just advertising trash.
To this day my wife hears it on TV..to her its gospel!
She never really was able to read either fiction or non-fiction..her parents had wired her brain backwards I think. My daughter ditto...even if she is a school teacher...my son the same..even if he is a CPA and has a MA in accountancy...they are wired far different than myself...not a boomer. Yet my wife's father was never in the military!
Aloha Professor.
One of my favorite topics: the randomly evolved human brain and how to interject sticky messages into it.
No. I'm not vacationing in Hawaii.
Why did you think so?
Anyway, like the multiple islands in the Hawaiian chain, the human brain has many parallel processing centers. If you want to wiggle the whole chain, you've got to fire off mixed messages that simultaneously appeal to, and resonate with many parts at once (broadly: the reptilian, the limbic and the neo-cortical areas).
Hitting a resonant chord is hard.
Mahalo.
Why do you think all those large corporations hire so many "think tanks" (a.k.a. thought-tankers) to work for them on developing a campaign slogan that will hit just the right note at just the right time?
Example:--> BP: We're Bee-yyyyond (cough cough) Petroleum
"Peak Oil" has never been one of those sound bites that resonates and sticks. No one likes to imagine being at the top (the peak) of the slippery (oily) slope. Too many negative connotations. Best to wash out that phrase from mind the moment you hear it.
Unfortunately, the cerebral amongst us have latched onto this PO phrase and have embraced it.
Cerebral doesn't work.
Ask John Kerry. (For you non-Americans: A USA candidate for the Presidency in 2004 who lost the election because he was too cerebral, too flip-flopitty, and thus appeared to not be a strong man with strong unwavering convictions.)
As a rising movie star, Al Gore finally "got it". You can't talk intellectual to the masses. No. You've got to twang down home country-like and nostalgic about your good ole' up bringing down by the river. About your family, your loves, your hopes and how they may be in danger by a not yet visible frightening thing. That makes the herd pay attention. That pulls at their heart strings.
Before they care what you know, they want to know that you care. One thing to realize about human beings is that they are constantly being lied to. Your version of "the truth" is one of many they hear all day long. They are more interested in knowing if you share their values than your claim of spending a lifetime studying oil hole mud for subtle clues about what is really going on.
Anyways, most Americans and perhaps Earthlings as a whole by extension, believe the government-Big Oil- car companies complex are in cahoots to extract maximum dollars out of your pockets while buying up all the patents for water and magnet powered cars and anything else that threatens their bottom line. If we are running out of oil, it is because the trilateral commission wants us to run out of oil. Good luck with your education campaign.
RobertInTucson
I haven't escaped from reality. I have a daypass.
Robert you're hinting at some of the "influence" points in the Professor's side bar:
Five out of these 6 items are directed to limbic system "values". We humans are tribal creatures. Our brains have evolved to place great weight on social status.
It's a good book. I recommend it and watching a couple of Frank Luntz & Rapaille interviews. Good for intellectual self-dense. You start to notice when these tricks are being played on you (daily that is).
There are many books out there that reveal the tricks of the influence tricksters.
I would recommend Valerie Pierce's book Quick Thinking on Your Feet
It's not about "thinking". It's about understanding how you are being played at business meetings, etc. by tricksters who know how to "appeal to authority" and so forth and what the proper verbal self-defense moves are against each. Highly recommended.
A great little read by a great wordsmith.
Here's Joe describing the Mass Media Created Hologram.
How does this sound, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached PRR, Peak Rat Race. From now on we shall be returning to the past, a much simpler and pleasurable time. There will be more togetherness, plenty of fresh air and free time (Insert graphics: cowboys riding horses on the range, children running through a field of clover, apple pie, mountain stream. We could broadcast Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons and Andy Griffith 24/7. Control the herd.
Powerful interests want to maintain their wealth and will be sorry to see their system of involuntary tribute crumble.They are even more perturbed by reverse cash-flow from their coffers to the needy. Tribute in the United States includes income taxes, interest on loans, and the tithe you pay each Sunday at church. The Bernaysian mind games that have had us mindlessly consuming and paying tribute to the banking royalty and corporate well-connected for the last 90 years will come to an end soon. I'm sure the "more is better" attitude cultivated over the past few decades will soon give way to "less is more" message.
The Romans demanded tribute for their emperor. The Moghuls of India demanded 1/3 of a farmer’s crop yield. I’m sure the Mayan and Aztec priests demanded tribute to maintain their magnificent temples of death. These are just a few examples of tribute. The tribute Americans pay is more hidden but we still pay tribute to those who possess most of the capital.
Perhaps collapse finally comes when the peasantry exhausts the countryside trying to fulfill their obligation to their masters. More growth, more tribute (interest/taxes). “I’m sorry master, but the trees are all gone and the soil is exhausted.” Our tribute is ending now as we can no longer afford to pay interest and taxes and still eat and stay warm. “I’m sorry master, but the oil is all gone and the natural gas is exhausted.” The masters will collect their collateral. I just wonder what they will do with the excess population once they cannot produce wealth for their masters.
We are indeed in for some measurable societal changes, but I would like the public herd to wake up this time instead of being led down a rosy path to hell.
The stages Kubler-Ross identified are:
* Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
* Anger (why is this happening to me?)
* Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
* Depression (I don't care anymore)
* Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)
I tend to see this pattern for those who are open enough to listen to PO explanations.
Kübler-Ross stages were mentioned frequently in informal circles at the conference in Houston last week. And it applies to much of what Professor Goose is saying here. Here's my concern: can the Kübler-Ross process be sped up for humanity's sake? If we analogize the grieving rates of individuals, probably not. The grieving process is inherently individual, each part going along at its own rate. But, can we as a species truncate Kübler-Ross for the sake of survival? It's easier to grieve with a sated belly and the hope for a future than to elongate the process while starving.
I spoke to many people at the conference who were making the conscious effort to speed up their process--moving forward despite inertia's stronghold. Now...off to the masses. A hard sell, indeed.
I understand wanting to speed up the grieving process because it's painful to undergo, but what did the people at the conference hope to achieve by speeding it up? Acceptance means acceptance of tragedy and death.
TOD is a great board--it's participants are far beyond most--but it seems to me most of us here are at the bargaining stage of the grief model. The discussions here are about the nature of PO, how to alleviate the problem, and perhaps even present sytems for a sustainable society. Kübler-Ross's model is about accepting the ultimate end.
Perhaps so. I find myself listening to a lot more Emmy Lou, Tom Waits, Lou Reed and Chumbawamba. Less time for TOD. More time for target practice with my AK. I'm merging my left and right brain so they are congruent that it is too late.
Hot rocks. Soon. In the lifetimes of my sons, if not mine - but clearly visible *to others* in my own.
In "Last Blade Of Grass", the rulers nuked their own cities to spare the people this line of thought (and a fruitless search for food).
There is a huge difference between end of life in 40 years and end of life in 4 billion years. Whatever.
cfm in Gray, ME
Hey hey kids,
First off, you are leaving out the last and most important step here.
*Action (Action is doing something about it.)
Second, Dryki,
I'm replying to you post because reading it made me sad. This isn't the end. The eminent die off? So what? Everybody dies, everybody, always. Things are going to suck for the next 50-100 years but after that they will get better. Things are going to get better in 100 years and none of you reading this will be alive to see it. The knowledge that humanity has amassed thus far is not going to be lost. People will rebuild. They might even learn from their mistakes. There is a chance that humanity will reorganize after this in a better way than the way we have now. And that possibility gives me hope. I'm planning on doing everything I can for my community and then relocating to build a life boat. Not because I hope to survive but because I hope to build something better for the future.
Off the deep end here. We are a couple of billion creatures on a rock floating though space. What are we doing? What's our goal? What are we driving at? If we don't have a plan then what's the point?
I don't know if there is an after life. The idea of some preordained dogmatic bureaucracy doesn't sit well with me. The idea of some self absorbed short term nihilism doesn't sit well with me either. I need to believe that there is something out there worth doing. We all do. If we didn't there would be a die off that had nothing to do with energy. I believe that there is a possibility of a world where personal, spiritual and cultural development will be more important than GDP, nationalism or church on Sunday. I believe that we are in the adolescence of humanity and adolescence is and awkward, reckless, painful and sometimes violent act of discovery.
In short I believe that we are at a critical juncture here and the loss of cubicles and cheap plastic crap is only a loss if that is really the best we can do.
Tim
Dang, another "ELM"?
Although the concepts of central vs. peripheral pathways, and hot vs. cold cognition are no doubt useful tools for certain discussions, my feeling is that Prof. George Lakoff (UC Berkeley) really has the best approach for understanding reactions to political (and peak oil) matters. If you haven't read his book Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives, then do! (You can get it for as little as $0.83 used, or $8 new, at that Amazon link.) I think it's absolutely spot-on.
Elaboration is a typical response for progressives, where referring to the established paradigm is an automatic response for conservatives. As long as people feel like they're faithfully following the Strict Father--in the US case, Cheney and the rest of the war hawks who seek control over the world's oil--they are sure that they're right. That's why they can still believe people who have proven themselves to be liars, still keep doing the wrong things (because everybody else is doing them) and keep falling for the same old tricks (like rosy assertions that we can continue to increase energy supply for a long time to come).
As soon as you present information contrary to such a paradigm, the reactionary response is not to take that information under serious consideration, but to try to throw it out, in order to maintain the boundaries of their worldview and avoid elaboration as much as possible.
When the Strict Father comes around to admitting the truth of our desperate situation, then those people will follow, and act as though they were aware of the situation all along (as, indeed, in some ignored corner of their minds, they probably were). But not until! As long as the order of the day is to beat our chests and pursue dominance at all costs, that will be their walk: the quest for dominion over all the earth.
By contrast, the Nurturing Parent model that progressives respond to is tailor-made for sensitivity to the flip side of dominion, which is stewardship. The threats of peak oil and global warming are easy sells to them.
Along those lines, I have made several abortive attempts to engage some of the peak oil-aware crowd in a discussion on how to reframe peak oil so that it conforms to the Strict Father model. I would welcome any input on that question, either here or privately.
For example:
- Peak oil poses the possibility of major hardship for your children and grandchildren.
- Bush and Cheney both have state-of-the-art homes equipped with solar PV, rainwater catchment and other "green" features. If it's good enough for them, isn't it good enough for you?
- The most effective way to defend ourselves against Muslim fanatics is to stop funding them by buying foreign oil. That $2+ trillion that we've committed to spending fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could have bought a whole lot of domestic renewable energy, and put us in a much more defensible and sustainable position.
Etc.
--C
Energy consultant, writer, blogger www.getreallist.com
Millions for defense, not one penny for bowing to reality.