<Senate Testimony on the Energy Water Nexus The Oil Drum Dr Robert Costanza on ecological economics>

79 comments on LEARN: An Acronym to Avoid Societal Collapse

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Keith Akers on March 24, 2009 - 7:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

While the resistance of individuals to change is very important, it is a different topic than the resistance of social groups to change.

Regarding Nate's excellent "I Don't Know" post, just taking a straightforward reading, Nate looked mostly at the phenomenon of resistance to change in individuals, and many of his points in fact relate to individuals within specific scientific disciplines. The "Planck problem" and the quotation from historian of science I. B. Cohen illustrates the phenomenon of resistance to change in a scientific discipline. But scientific disciplines are very peculiar social groupings. The training to be a "citizen" in (say) the U. S. A. is very nebulous and much less disciplined. E. g. the Bush administration for example is widely regarded as having acted in blatant contradiction to the Constitution, probably correctly, yet this has not really created much of a scandal. So much for standards.

But secondly, societies behave very differently from individuals. The situation is much more fluid. Societies can and do change rapidly. It's called a "political revolution." People have studied the French Revolution for several centuries and still haven't figured it out. The problem of individuals resisting change, and societies resisting change, are very different. There is not a lot of understanding of how these things happen, but they do. I think the correct response is "I don't know how or if it will happen," not "I know that it won't happen." In a political revolution, you need precisely a political collapse for things to move forward. The day after a political and financial collapse, we would still have largely the same people, same resources, and same knowledge that we had the day before. This is a necessary condition of progress.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
creg on March 24, 2009 - 9:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

keith Akers
"The day after a political and financial collapse, we would still have largely the same people, same resources, and same knowledge that we had the day before. This is a necessary condition of progress."

well said. one of the issues u raise is ; individual change & societal change.i guess the ladder is studying herd behavior, at least for the sizes of current structures in the US; not my area of expertise.

re individual change we almost always need sufficient 'emotional experiences' to change- our beliefs, ways of thinking,& rewiring us emotionally as well; especially for a major shift/change.[ often takes a trauma]

so yes after,[rarely before something like]
" political and financial collapse,"
will the opportunity to be a catalyst for change be 'ripe'.

we will get leaders then; hopefully a great one.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
thirra on March 25, 2009 - 1:44am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Keith,did the French revolution change much of anything for the better? Not too many years after the Bastille a certain dictator by the name of Napoleon embarked on a series of military adventures which resulted in the deaths of millions.

Did the Russian revolution of 1917 result in an improvement over the Czarist regime?

Political revolutions tend to be captured by thugs who are equal or worse to the ones who they deposed.A real and sustainable revolution will come from the conscious proletariat,not political operators.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Keith Akers on March 25, 2009 - 1:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Good question. The answer to both questions is, "well, sort of, although there was a lot of unnecessary suffering, and a lot of what they accomplished might have happened anyway, and they could probably have done a lot better."

In both the French and Russian revolutions, reading and thinking about these events is fascinating, because in such a chaotic situation, it is easy to see how things could have been very different. What if Louis XVI and the revolutionaries had come to some sort of agreement whereby Louis XVI would embrace the revolution, take aim at the nobility, and ally himself with the middle class?

The general problem in both cases is that people got caught up in the taking and holding of power, and didn't devote enough attention to what they should actually do with it. Thus, as you point out, we get wind up with people like Napoleon and Stalin who have got lots of power, but are blundering around killing millions not even to the ultimate benefit of their respective causes.

It may be just as important, or more important, to come up with a plan for dealing with peak oil (and environmental problems generally) as it is to promote awareness of peak oil itself as a problem. This plan should be as clear on general principles as possible. I would look in the direction of Herman Daly and ecological economics.

Keith

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

79 comments on LEARN: An Acronym to Avoid Societal Collapse

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version