Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

[kenneal - lagger]

He's right you know.

How do you know? Did you read any of it?

[emordnilap]

He's right you know.

How do you know? Did you read any of it?

Well yes, I read it and I concur with it. I don't know he's right of course. I should have said, "I think he's right you know". Or maybe, "He will be right, though we don't know when." Gah.

Anyways, not that it matters in the long term. Nature has survived its blunders before now.

[Standuble]

This guy is right but I don't think much of the copy and paste style of response he creates. It unfortunately makes him look like a madman rambling about the same thing over and over. It has made me wonder whether industrial civilisation should be saved. We evolved in an environment of scarcity and that power is a pure toxic anti-thesis which we have indulged in over history far beyond its healthy limits. We work because it allows us to eat but are we hungry or just bored? For me it is often the latter, the tasty solution to boredom. We did not have much time to be bored in ancient times.

There is one way this is going to go. Resource depletion will cause a population crash and human civilisation will dwindle away. Life somewhere will survive and the world will gradually recover.

[sushil_yadav]

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Celebrating Earth Hour.....Pseudo Environmentalism in Industrial Society.

If people are being stabbed continuously, shot continuously, attacked with Smart Bombs, Depleted Uranium Bombs, Drones and Nuclear Bombs you cannot save them by switching off the lights for 1 hour.....You have to stop all kinds of attacks.

Environment is being destroyed by Mining Industry, Logging Industry, Manufacturing Industry, Energy Generation Industry, Construction Industry, Transportation Industry, Oil Drilling, Oil Refining Industry....You cannot save environment by switching off the lights for 1 hour.....You have to stop all Industrial Activity.

Industrial Activity has been destroying environment for 250 years after Industrial Revolution....Switching off the lights for 1 hour and hoping to create awareness about saving environment is like shooting a person continuously for 24 hours, stopping for one second in between and hoping to create awareness about saving the victim of shooting.

Industrial Activity has risen exponentially in the last 50 years.....It has been destroying environment every moment, 24x7, 365 days of the year.

The planet is dying and gasping for last breath....This is not the time to create awareness about saving environment....This is the time to stop Industrial Activity to save the little environment that is left on earth.

Industrial Activity for production of thousands of consumer goods and services must stop immediately.

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[the_lyniezian]

OK, sir. You have made your point repeatedly.

How then do you think we can go about it? How do we get from here to a viable post-industrial future? How do we make sure 7 billion people are gainfully employed? How do we move away from cities back to rural living? If we're supposed to do nothing that isn't involved in the basics of raw survival, what else are we supposed to do? To enjoy ourselves? To give our lives more meaning and purpose?

Go on, tell us if you will.

[sushil_yadav]

How do we get from here to a viable post-industrial future? How do we make sure 7 billion people are gainfully employed? How do we move away from cities back to rural living?

Animal Species searched for Food

Hunter_Gatherer Society searched for Food

Agrarian Society produced Food

Rural Industrial Society is producing Food

Urban Industrial Society is producing Thousands of Consumer Goods and Services.

Urban Industrial Society is the Anomaly.

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The work of Urban Industrial Society is Extra, Unnecessary and Destructive.

Urban Work has destroyed environment.....Urban Work must stop immediately.

Urban Dwellers are Eco Killers, Eco Murderers and Eco Terrorists.

Production of Industrial Consumer Goods must stop immediately.

Urban Dwellers have to either transform into full time food producers or they have to stop working....They can be given food for free to save the remaining environment from destructive Urban Work.


This planet can only sustain "Food Searching" or "Food Producing" societies....For millions of years "searching for food"/ "producing food" was the primary occupation on earth.

Industrial Activity for production of thousands of consumer goods and services must stop immediately....Millions of other species get only food from earth....The maximum that man can/ should get is food, clothing and shelter.

The collective work of society must be limited to food, clothing and shelter.

A pure non-industrial society is not possible now because Industrialization has increased world population to 7 billion.......World population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion in just about 200 years after industrialization.......In the absence of industrialization world population would have been less than 2 billion today.

If we want to save the remaining environment we must minimize the things that are destroying environment.

At present we are destroying environment for Food, Clothing, Shelter plus Thousands of Industrial consumer goods and services.

We must eliminate the things that were added last to the list......which means Thousands of consumer goods and services, most of which have existed for only about 100 years out of Hundreds of Thousands of years of Total Human Existence on earth .........these have to be eliminated.

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If we're supposed to do nothing that isn't involved in the basics of raw survival, what else are we supposed to do? To enjoy ourselves? To give our lives more meaning and purpose?

Destroying the planet with Industrial Activity is not the purpose of human life.....Destroying biodiversity and ecosystems with Industrial Activity is not the purpose of human life.

Art, Culture, Sports, Entertainment and Spiritual Practices have existed in every pre-industrial society.

In fact real Art, Culture, Sport and Entertainment only existed in pre-industrial society.....In Industrial Society every activity turns into overactivity and becomes destructive....Even Art, Culture, Sports and Entertainment.

Industrial Society has constructed millions of Buildings, Stadiums and Complexes for Art, Culture, Sports and Entertainment thereby destroying millions of trees and killing millions of acres of fertile soil with cement and concrete .....It then produces millions of tonnes of Industrial Equipment for use in Art, Culture, Sports and Entertainment whose production destroys more environment.....Millions of Artists, Sportsmen and Spectators use the Transportation Industry to travel millions of kilometers all over the world for the shows and tournaments which destroys even more environment.
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We don't need Industrial Activity to find meaning and purpose in life.

In India, learning to make the mind quiet, tranquil and peaceful through yoga and meditation gave purpose and meaning to life for thousands of years

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[kenneal - lagger]

........ Go on, tell us if you will.

You asked for it and you got it, although that was quite a short posts by his standards.

[the_lyniezian]

........ Go on, tell us if you will.

You asked for it and you got it, although that was quite a short posts by his standards.

Not quite.

He answered the second part of the question. Not the first part.

(And even then ho will we have sport without transportation? for example let's take football or other team sports. How will fans get to see the away game if they can't get there unless they watch TV, a useless consumer good? Or are we limited to playing against the next village with an inflated pig's bladder?)

(I mean, even something basic like a musical instrument, piece of art or football is not food, clothing, shelter or related to such and thus something we do not need according to S.Y.)

All he said in the first part was we don't need to produce so much stuff and such is a historical anomaly. And apparently, if anything, we need to stop just like that.

The thing is if all this supposedly unnecessary production of goods and services halts overnight, millions of people will find themselves out of a job and will probably starve to death. Modern agriculture, at present, does not require quite the number of labourers it once did. Of course as our fossil fuel inputs decline we may have to go back to more labour-intensive forms of agriculture but unless we have a way of making that feed 7 billion plus people we are going to get a massive die-off.

This is the trouble with S.Y.- for him it is all or nothing. Nothing in between, nor any way of transitioning.

I think his key point is quite sound- we produce far too many consumer goods we simply do not need, when the basics such as food, clothing and shelter are far more important. We probably have people working long hours for little pay so we can have cheap goods in quantities we don't need. Maybe if we can have First World standards of education (as opposed to child labour, say, because it's not needed), working conditions and standard of living in the basic things without the First world standards of consumption... well, anywhere, maybe that would be a start. And maybe get to grips with the mushrooming world population. But all these things must happen gradually. Not overnight.

[the_lyniezian]

Of course another thing to think about is "what do we mean by work"? If there are more people than are needed to do the work which is necessary (something made more possible via automation, though then there is still the problem of energy inputs) then people could spend more time on other more marginal pursuits (like maybe gardening or voluntary work).

But as long as we have a money system like we do, someone has got to generate the wealth needed. The assumption has always been if you don't work and can, you don't get a free ride. Of course wealth generation is probably driven by the need for unnecessary growth perhaps again fuelled by debt). So we need a totally different social outlook and economic system.

[the_lyniezian]

I wonder why I even bother using football as an example though. Maybe I am thinking about football before the money men got hold of the game, before massive wages and stadia and TV rights. (If you notice those smaller clubs which play in the FA Cup early stages, you will notice that despite only a few stands exist, half the seats are empty, because they're all watching the Premiership and Champions' League on Sky no doubt rather than support their local side). The trouble is it is probably one of the worst examples of the mess our society is in. and of course, organised sport is a fairly recent phenomenon as is industrial society (going by certain definitions) as a whole. Maybe going back to kick-abouts with an inflated pig's bladder for fun isn't such a bad idea after all...

[snow hope]

Animal Species searched for Food

Hunter_Gatherer Society searched for Food

Agrarian Society produced Food

Rural Industrial Society is producing Food

Urban Industrial Society is producing Thousands of Consumer Goods and Services.

Urban Industrial Society is the Anomaly.

Production of Industrial Consumer Goods must stop immediately.

Urban Dwellers have to either transform into full time food producers or they have to stop working....They can be given food for free to save the remaining environment from destructive Urban Work.


This planet can only sustain "Food Searching" or "Food Producing" societies....For millions of years "searching for food"/ "producing food" was the primary occupation on earth.

Industrial Activity for production of thousands of consumer goods and services must stop immediately....Millions of other species get only food from earth....The maximum that man can/ should get is food, clothing and shelter.

The collective work of society must be limited to food, clothing and shelter.

A pure non-industrial society is not possible now because Industrialization has increased world population to 7 billion.......World population increased from 1 billion in 1800 to 7 billion in just about 200 years after industrialization.......In the absence of industrialization world population would have been less than 2 billion today.

If we want to save the remaining environment we must minimize the things that are destroying environment.

At present we are destroying environment for Food, Clothing, Shelter plus Thousands of Industrial consumer goods and services.

We must eliminate the things that were added last to the list......which means Thousands of consumer goods and services, most of which have existed for only about 100 years out of Hundreds of Thousands of years of Total Human Existence on earth .........these have to be eliminated.

This is the answer to a similar question I asked Sushil many months back. Now we are making some progress with this discussion.

Deep down in my psyche, I agree that this is the level of change that we may actually have to make to stop the destructive path we are on. I don't like it one bit. And we would need the will and the ability to do it soon - over the coming years/decades to save anything.

But it is such a colossal change for civilisation I doubt we can achieve it at all. We cannot uninvent what has been invented.

We are an animal species that demands to move forward and make (what we think is) progress. We have a voracious appetite to do that. I can't begin to imagine the change of mindset that would be required to make the changes Sushil suggests are required. Hence why we will collapse like the civilisations before us have done. This is a no brainer to me - we WILL collapse, we will not make the changes required.

Very interesting and fundamental discussion. It irritates me that people keep criticising Sushil, when he is the man that is probably getting to the fundamental source of the problem homo sapiens have now managed to get themselves into. The ultimate Catch22.

In India, learning to make the mind quiet, tranquil and peaceful through yoga and meditation gave purpose and meaning to life for thousands of years

This is the kind of mindset change that would be required........ when I think about it, I just start to laugh but in a sad, sick way, as I know it will never happen, not until the global population is down a few billion anyway....

[emordnilap]

It irritates me that people keep criticising Sushil...

Me too. It's either because he doesn't engage in the usual form of 'debate' on here, or he repeats himself a lot (not always a bad thing) or there are guilty consciences around. Or all three plus more, who knows?

...when he is the man that is probably getting to the fundamental source of the problem homo sapiens have now managed to get themselves into.

I think quite a few of us realise this. Many feel trapped by it. That's the part of the thread that's missing, how to untrap not just oneself (plenty of discussions on that hereabouts), but wider society.

[snow hope]

Trapped? Hmmmmm
As I have expressed before, I am a business man and have a small IT company, we sell computer systems and do support for some quite complex IT environments. This is about as far as one can get from the life Sushils states we need to get back to.

Yet, because of my awareness (awakening out of the sleepwalk) of PO I have been living a double life for the last 8 or 9 years, as many of us have. I am used to this.

I don't feel trapped. I don't want to, but I will switch from the business life to the living off the land life, when that switch has to be made.

I think we are only trapped in as much as our conscious acceptance of the alternative PO reality?

I looked back at the first page and see that I was the second person to respond to Sushil. Many of us accept that what he has outlined, is in fact fundamentally true. But what are we doing about it?? And how are we suggesting that we deal with the situation we are now in? I am aware that I am doing bugger all, so that doesnt reflect well on me.....

Et tu?

[emordnilap]

Yes, trapped. I doubt any minority worlder could drop out of the industrial society s/he inhabits. You say you don't feel trapped - most people don't - but you are, we all are, me included as well as the most anarchic hereon.

J2M would 'survive' if he actually practiced what he preaches but his would be a gruesome, selfish and pointless existence.

Maybe that would change if we experienced more than just the slow crashing that's going on at present, if/when some gigantic upheaval takes place. But how many could really survive without the trappings (hah!) of industrial society?

[PS_RalphW]

Dimitri Orlov has a new book out on the five stages of collapse and how to survive them.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013- ... ook-review

And he is an entertaining read.

He is reductionist - break the problem into parts and find an adaption set (physical and mental) for each of them in turn. The problem is keeping it all together in your head without exploding...