2011- the year of the news overload

Forum for general discussion of Peak Oil / Oil depletion; also covering related subjects

Moderator: Peak Moderation

User avatar
nexus
Posts: 1305
Joined: 16 May 2009, 22:57

2011- the year of the news overload

Post by nexus »

Interesting article by Zoe Williams:
2011: the year of the news overload

From political scandals to brutal killings and earthquakes to revolutions, the shattering headlines just keep coming this year. How can we find time to make sense of it all?
There is such an abundance of news that it's torpedoed the news agenda. How do you make an agenda, when everything is as important as everything else? There is just too much news. It's the kind of news environment that makes conspiracy theorists say: "These things are all connected."

There is also a sense of headspin, of being unable to digest one tragedy before another happens.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... s-overload
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
User avatar
UndercoverElephant
Posts: 13498
Joined: 10 Mar 2008, 00:00
Location: UK

Re: 2011- the year of the news overload

Post by UndercoverElephant »

nexus wrote: How can we find time to make sense of it all?
Easily if we don't have jobs.... :D

There is such an abundance of news that it's torpedoed the news agenda. How do you make an agenda, when everything is as important as everything else? There is just too much news. It's the kind of news environment that makes conspiracy theorists say: "These things are all connected."

There is also a sense of headspin, of being unable to digest one tragedy before another happens.
Yes....except this is still just the warm-up act.

Something I find very curious is a distinct lack of 2012ers proclaiming that the prophecy is coming true. It's like they were all expecting pole shifts or collisions with other planets. Instead we are just going to get the End Of The World As We Know It, which is precisely what the Mayans expected.

I personally feel a building sense of excitement and anticipation. I've been waiting a very long time for Reality to start seriously encroaching on the fantasy world we are collectively expected to believe in. Now we can actually begin to get a sense of how this thing is going to play out. You can smell the fear now, and yet most people remain oblivious to the true scale of what is about to happen. They know it looks bad, but most of them still don't realise just how bad it really is. We've had years to digest and prepare. They haven't.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
User avatar
DominicJ
Posts: 4387
Joined: 18 Nov 2008, 14:34
Location: NW UK

Post by DominicJ »

How is 20011 any different than 2010? Or 2009? Or 2008?
Churnalism
I'm a realist, not a hippie
User avatar
UndercoverElephant
Posts: 13498
Joined: 10 Mar 2008, 00:00
Location: UK

Post by UndercoverElephant »

DominicJ wrote:How is 20011 any different than 2010? Or 2009? Or 2008?
Churnalism
Can't you tell???
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
User avatar
UndercoverElephant
Posts: 13498
Joined: 10 Mar 2008, 00:00
Location: UK

Post by UndercoverElephant »

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-2012 ... io-2010-10
I was careful to hedge my bets in my 2012 book. I never state that anything definitive will happen in that year, or on the date of December 21, 2012. How could I know what exactly will happen? I do believe we are in the crux of a transformation of our civilization, and it is extraordinary that the Classical Maya, from over 1,500 years ago, pointed to our year 2012 as the hinge point of that shift. As I argue in my book, their prophetic knowledge may have been based on their precise attunement to natural and cosmic cycles and their intense pursuit of non-ordinary states of awareness using shamanic techniques.

It does seem that many indicators point toward the inevitability of a global financial collapse, and this meltdown may very well occur around 2012.
:D
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
User avatar
UndercoverElephant
Posts: 13498
Joined: 10 Mar 2008, 00:00
Location: UK

Post by UndercoverElephant »

Actually, I'll take those last comments back. I just googled "2012 financial collapse mayan" and it seems that the connection is now being made. It's just a little bit too much of a co-incidence to be a co-incidence....

8)

Hold on to your hats folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUl3gmnXOLM :P
Last edited by UndercoverElephant on 27 Jul 2011, 13:07, edited 1 time in total.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
User avatar
emordnilap
Posts: 14815
Joined: 05 Sep 2007, 16:36
Location: here

Post by emordnilap »

The coincidence of Mayan date and the current global mayhem is almost scary.

Almost.

"Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful,
Might as well live!"
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
User avatar
mr brightside
Posts: 589
Joined: 01 Apr 2011, 08:02
Location: On the fells

Post by mr brightside »

emordnilap wrote:The coincidence of Mayan date and the current global mayhem is almost scary.
Storm in a teacup, it'll come and go just like the millennium. What did they actually predict, some sort of planetary alignment was it?

Look on the bright side, if the apocalypse cometh we'll not have to worry about the shortfall in our carbon emmissions and rolling blackouts!
User avatar
UndercoverElephant
Posts: 13498
Joined: 10 Mar 2008, 00:00
Location: UK

Post by UndercoverElephant »

mr brightside wrote:
emordnilap wrote:The coincidence of Mayan date and the current global mayhem is almost scary.
Storm in a teacup, it'll come and go just like the millennium.
You reckon? The stormclouds gathering over world events right now does not look like it is happening in a teacup to me. It looks very, very real.
What did they actually predict, some sort of planetary alignment was it?
They predicted rebirth of the world - the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a new order. It is based on the 22,000 year precession cycle. The long count calendar ends on the day that the midwinter sun rises up through a feature of the milky way galaxy (the "dark rift") which corresponds to the birth channel of the Mayan Gods. It takes 22,000 years for the whole sky to rotate through 360 degrees and the alignment happen again.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
User avatar
emordnilap
Posts: 14815
Joined: 05 Sep 2007, 16:36
Location: here

Post by emordnilap »

When the Moon is in the seventh house,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars


Total bovine defecation but who cares? Not a bad song and that's all that matters.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
postie
Posts: 445
Joined: 06 Nov 2010, 10:53
Location: Bishop's Stortford

Post by postie »

UndercoverElephant wrote:
Hold on to your TIN-FOIL hats folks. :P

I adjusted the sentence above for you :D

:tinhat:

No offence or anything UE, but that guy was barking. I think it is fair to say we're all expecting something to change in quite a big way in the near future, or else we wouldn't be on a Peak Oil forum, but mystic fortune telling based on a culture that didn't see their own demise by sweaty Spaniards... then nope, like the Spaniards, it doesn't wash. :D

Besides. Here's what confuses me about this Mayan malarky. Did they predict the end of the world... according to OUR calendar? Or theirs? And if it was ours.. how did they know it, being on the other side of the world and all? AND.. were they using Julian or Gregorian? And have we adjusted for that? ...
Learn to whittle now... we need a spaceship!
User avatar
mr brightside
Posts: 589
Joined: 01 Apr 2011, 08:02
Location: On the fells

Post by mr brightside »

[quote="UndercoverElephant"]You reckon? The stormclouds gathering over world events right now does not look like it is happening in a teacup to me. It looks very, very real.[quote]

It looks to me like human beings are continuing to run the planet badly, with this going on chaos in inevitable.
User avatar
JohnB
Posts: 6456
Joined: 22 May 2006, 17:42
Location: Beautiful sunny West Wales!

Post by JohnB »

I thought it was just the end of their calendar, and the start of a new one, so no big deal. At least that's what some bloke who claimed to be a descendant of the Mayans said on YouTube.
John

Eco-Hamlets UK - Small sustainable neighbourhoods
User avatar
PS_RalphW
Posts: 6978
Joined: 24 Nov 2005, 11:09
Location: Cambridge

Post by PS_RalphW »

I think the economic news is looking like another 2008 global recession, and this time the sheeple are primed and can see it coming.

This time it is also looking more global, with US. EU and China looking on the brink. US and EU are broke, China is in an enormous property bubble.

All countries are printing money, and trying to do it in lock step to hide the relative devaluations. Only the price of gold, Swiss dollars, etc. give it away. Because most of the third world trades in OECD currencies, they are being drastically short-changed, leading to increasing hunger and poverty. However, apart from the drought in Africa, this is not news.

The oil exporting nations are, of course, making money hand over fist, but most of the money disappears into those Swiss accounts, or is dissipated on populations that are breeding and consuming out of control, and require ever higher imports of food and consumer goods.

So this time, when the bubble bursts (which one)? the banks will go belly up, international trade will collapse, there will be massive deflation (not that it will do me any good, unless I can hide a 6 figure sum in cash under the bed, because my bank will default on my savings).

The price of oil will collapse as demand collapses, the OPEC countries will see popular uprisings, leading to collapsing oil production in those countries, there will be a rapid increase in resource wars as the US, China and others pitch in to support one band of rebels against another,
world hunger will explode, but reporting of it will evaporate.

We will be hungry. Many people in Africa, middle east, south east Asia and China will starve. We are consuming more food than is being grown in the world as it is. Climate change is currently looking to be damaging food production at an alarming rate. PO, leading to fuel shortage in the third world, and the collapse of trade will seal our fate.

The more I look at it, the more likely a fast crash (months or a few years) seems likely for most of Industrial civilisation. I just hope it doesn't go nuclear.

Will it happen this time, or will the banking elite hold it together one more time?

I suspect the sheeple can see another recession coming, but they still cannot see the bigger picture. They won't see it this time around, or if we survive, the next time either. For them, the time before the last recession is distant history. They live in the present (virtual) world.
User avatar
UndercoverElephant
Posts: 13498
Joined: 10 Mar 2008, 00:00
Location: UK

Post by UndercoverElephant »

postie wrote:
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Hold on to your TIN-FOIL hats folks. :P

I adjusted the sentence above for you :D

:tinhat:

No offence or anything UE, but that guy was barking.
He was just enthusiastic... :D

I think it is fair to say we're all expecting something to change in quite a big way in the near future, or else we wouldn't be on a Peak Oil forum, but mystic fortune telling based on a culture that didn't see their own demise by sweaty Spaniards... then nope, like the Spaniards, it doesn't wash.
The skeptics will never believe the prophecy was correct, even if the global financial system actually melts down on 21st December 2012 (which is a Friday, BTW). They will say it was a lucky, vague guess.
Besides. Here's what confuses me about this Mayan malarky. Did they predict the end of the world... according to OUR calendar? Or theirs? And if it was ours.. how did they know it, being on the other side of the world and all? AND.. were they using Julian or Gregorian? And have we adjusted for that? ...
The prediction was by their calendar, which was itself based on a scientifically well-understood astronomical phenomenon. It has nothing to do with our calendar. The Long Count ends on the winter solstice of a specific year. What we choose to call that day is irrelevant.

What is actually going on here may be even more complex than that though. I personally believe the most relevant concept is retrocausality, but that is a long story...
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
Post Reply