A world view based on energy.
Anyone who has read this blog for a bit knows I like a good conspiracy. There are too many strands to the current American narrative to write - or even think about - much less tie together. But I like Big Picture explanations. This often gets constricted into the "conspiracy" box, mostly by those who have abject terror of the word "conspiracy". Often there are over arching explanations to events. Often actual people are behind these events. Not "social energies" or random caprice - real people. Some of them conspire.
Irony, or what passes for it, is the opiate of the chattering classes. So those who hunt for reasons beyond the obvious are mocked. Often with good cause. Often to our detriment.
Randomness is overrated. People plan things - we live by plans. Micro and Macro plans are made all the time - by individuals and groups. Everything from wars to dinner parties are planned every day, all the time. Conspiracies and plans are flexible if those behind them are thoughtful, smart people. (Note: Thoughtful and smart do not equate to good.)
Post modern cynicism (which is fear of the unknown repackaged for the post religious world) busies us with a desperate search for proof that all things are random and disconnected.
"Shit happens" is the slug line for the post modern world. It is our religion substitute. It gives comfort to the startled and worried just as much as having an astrologer make your daily schedule did way back in...say 1983. The explanation that there is no explanation is, actually, a very satisfying explanation. Shakespeare, who somehow knew everything before anyone else, hit on this post modern meme by writing that we live lives full of "sound and fury signifying nothing." Taken out of context this is Sartre way before Sartre. Of course, the character who speaks this is smack dab in the middle of a mammoth conspiracy full of sound and fury signifying quite a lot. Assassinating the King , upsetting the order of things, and so on and so forth. Shakespeare, always ahead of us, was also kind enough to create the word assassination in Macbeth. No doubt knowing how much we'd need it as we went along.
On a metaphysical plane all our sound and fury may well signify nothing. The physical plane is another matter. There are explanations for things. Reasons. Background that explains the foreground. It is worth while for thinking people to attempt to connect the dots. This is not a post about the grassy knoll. It is a post about right now. 2008. Much is happening.
Bank runs, a slow burn oil shock, Presidential candidates conjured out of thin air, food inflation...
There was a classic bank run in Pasadena yesterday. Lines around the block, cops called in to control furious customers, sweaty bank managers - the whole kit and caboodle. It was a real Frank Capra depression era extravaganza.
Peak oil theory has been around a while. Quite a lot about the list above and the coming bank runs becomes sensible and connected if one understands peak oil. Energy is the background for everything. Seeing that the oil party of the last 200 years is winding down - explains a hell of a lot. Connects the dots, as it were.
Terror attacks becomes connected to wars in a tangible and honest way - instead of by way of lies and barely veiled anti-Muslim bigotry.
Run on sentence alert:
The amazing oil based economy and its slow decline explains and relates housing bubbles, to housing crashes, to bank runs, to inflation, to gas prices, to airline failures, to wheat prices, to the cost of your hoagie, to the well being of GM, to a giant plastic sink hole in the Pacific, to the cost of health care, to the obesity epidemic, to globalization, to global warming, to Wal Mart, to the destruction of civic life in soulless suburbs, to to...to.... well, really everything, - except maybe crop circles - but give me time - I'll find the dots there, too.
The point is this: some very powerful actors on this planet know exactly what is happening with energy. They have for a while. YOU ought to educate yourself about energy. By reading this, you are using it, after all.
The world makes more sense that we usually presume. The more you know the easier it is to maneuver around things.
Get a world view based on energy. There is nothing with out it after all.
Act like a 3 year old in the backseat on a long road trip - Keep asking WHY?
Irony, or what passes for it, is the opiate of the chattering classes. So those who hunt for reasons beyond the obvious are mocked. Often with good cause. Often to our detriment.
Randomness is overrated. People plan things - we live by plans. Micro and Macro plans are made all the time - by individuals and groups. Everything from wars to dinner parties are planned every day, all the time. Conspiracies and plans are flexible if those behind them are thoughtful, smart people. (Note: Thoughtful and smart do not equate to good.)
Post modern cynicism (which is fear of the unknown repackaged for the post religious world) busies us with a desperate search for proof that all things are random and disconnected.
"Shit happens" is the slug line for the post modern world. It is our religion substitute. It gives comfort to the startled and worried just as much as having an astrologer make your daily schedule did way back in...say 1983. The explanation that there is no explanation is, actually, a very satisfying explanation. Shakespeare, who somehow knew everything before anyone else, hit on this post modern meme by writing that we live lives full of "sound and fury signifying nothing." Taken out of context this is Sartre way before Sartre. Of course, the character who speaks this is smack dab in the middle of a mammoth conspiracy full of sound and fury signifying quite a lot. Assassinating the King , upsetting the order of things, and so on and so forth. Shakespeare, always ahead of us, was also kind enough to create the word assassination in Macbeth. No doubt knowing how much we'd need it as we went along.
On a metaphysical plane all our sound and fury may well signify nothing. The physical plane is another matter. There are explanations for things. Reasons. Background that explains the foreground. It is worth while for thinking people to attempt to connect the dots. This is not a post about the grassy knoll. It is a post about right now. 2008. Much is happening.
Bank runs, a slow burn oil shock, Presidential candidates conjured out of thin air, food inflation...
There was a classic bank run in Pasadena yesterday. Lines around the block, cops called in to control furious customers, sweaty bank managers - the whole kit and caboodle. It was a real Frank Capra depression era extravaganza.
Peak oil theory has been around a while. Quite a lot about the list above and the coming bank runs becomes sensible and connected if one understands peak oil. Energy is the background for everything. Seeing that the oil party of the last 200 years is winding down - explains a hell of a lot. Connects the dots, as it were.
Terror attacks becomes connected to wars in a tangible and honest way - instead of by way of lies and barely veiled anti-Muslim bigotry.
Run on sentence alert:
The amazing oil based economy and its slow decline explains and relates housing bubbles, to housing crashes, to bank runs, to inflation, to gas prices, to airline failures, to wheat prices, to the cost of your hoagie, to the well being of GM, to a giant plastic sink hole in the Pacific, to the cost of health care, to the obesity epidemic, to globalization, to global warming, to Wal Mart, to the destruction of civic life in soulless suburbs, to to...to.... well, really everything, - except maybe crop circles - but give me time - I'll find the dots there, too.
The point is this: some very powerful actors on this planet know exactly what is happening with energy. They have for a while. YOU ought to educate yourself about energy. By reading this, you are using it, after all.
The world makes more sense that we usually presume. The more you know the easier it is to maneuver around things.
Get a world view based on energy. There is nothing with out it after all.
Act like a 3 year old in the backseat on a long road trip - Keep asking WHY?
posted by John Smart at
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
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