Revolution, anyone? :D

[nkvd]

rather than being nice ppl asking for our govs to be realist, why not smashing them?
if the history train is on the wrong tracks, someone has to stop it, eh?

[Pippa]

Wait for it.....!!! (colonel mustard style voice)

Loads of new systems now in place to "protect" the good general public which include brillient servailance (spelling), alteration of judgemental system (for trials) etc ....... all for the good or will they be useful when masses start trying to revolt?!

Relax ......... and slip under the water........

[MacG]

rather than being nice ppl asking for our govs to be realist, why not smashing them?
if the history train is on the wrong tracks, someone has to stop it, eh?

Aha. You are the one working for the government. Had expected to find the first agent provocateur on po.com, but we are honoured to be first.

All social movements get infiltrated by gov agencies, and the way to recognize the infiltrators is to look for the most violent ones. Ususally those who volunteer to get veapons and explosives.

[Totally_Baffled]

Pippa

You raise an interesting point about about the governments assault on civil liberties by all these laws to "protect" us from the so called "terroist threat"

Now if it is all in the name of giving the government power post peak , then why the slack immigration laws?

If you gonna have starving masses to control , why not have fewer of them and risk race riots at the same time?

I suspect the two are not connected (the new laws and peak oil)

The actions of the TPTB totally baffle me!

Hmmm...

[XENG]

if the history train is on the wrong tracks, someone has to stop it, eh?

It does seem sensible to try and stop it, however governments/TPTB generally crack down heavily on anything that they perceive as a threat to their power or existence, the 1960's youth revolution was a prime example, large numbers of people began to wake up to the insanity of the system, so the PTB stamped it out.
Also, like in the film The Matrix, most people are so heavily dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it, this gives massive power to governments.

These days anyone perceived as a threat to the system can conveniently be labled as a terroist and thrown into prison without trial.

I think the best way to help the system on its way down is by showing people that a different more sustainable way of life exists and can be better than the current one, the only way of doing that is by leading by example and living it yourself.

[MacG]

I think the best way to help the system on its way down is by showing people that a different more sustainable way of life exists and can be better than the current one, the only way of doing that is by leading by example and living it yourself.

Someone suggested the opposite: Nothing but a crash will get this system down, and in order to help things along, you should do everything you can to consume as much fossil energy you can in order to make tha crash come faster.

Personally I subscribe to your view though.

[mikepepler]

I think the best way to help the system on its way down is by showing people that a different more sustainable way of life exists and can be better than the current one, the only way of doing that is by leading by example and living it yourself.

Someone suggested the opposite: Nothing but a crash will get this system down, and in order to help things along, you should do everything you can to consume as much fossil energy you can in order to make tha crash come faster.

Personally I subscribe to your view though.

However, the more people that live sustainably, the more people can continue to burn fossil fuels like there's no tomorrow. People are selfish by default, and it takes a lot to change that. A crash will hurt, and maybe kill many of the vehicle's passengers, but it does stop the vehicle. Likewise, jumping out of the vehicle while it's still moving can hurt, but maybe it's better than hitting a brick wall?

Enough of the metaphors!

[Pippa]

Pippa

You raise an interesting point about about the governments assault on civil liberties by all these laws to "protect" us from the so called "terroist threat"

Now if it is all in the name of giving the government power post peak , then why the slack immigration laws?

If you gonna have starving masses to control , why not have fewer of them and risk race riots at the same time?

I suspect the two are not connected (the new laws and peak oil)

The actions of the TPTB totally baffle me!

Hmmm...

Everybody knows that life doesn't proceed in a straight, orderly and logical line. Everyday, the consequencies of individual decisions play themselves out, often with very surprising results. Heres one (very lowly example)

I need to replace an upstairs window that has decayed over the years. I need to do this because I am worried that:

a) I'm loosing too much heat because the seals have broken down and I am having trouble keeping the house warm

b) I'm contributing to global warming unnecessarily

c) My house value will go down if I don't keep up the maintainence

d) I have to keep up with the "Jones"

So I get some guys in to "do" the job. They come along with a lovely hardwood frame window (to match the existing - tres important) all glazed to new high spec for insulation and emissions values (pucker). The chaps get the tools and stuff out of their van, climb their ladder to the first floor window and start work. They then find they haven't got the right sort of fixings so they're busy discussing where the nearest place to get some is when the phone goes, its the office in a huge flap about some emergency thats going on with another set of fitters. As a result of this they are distracted and then go off to the builders merchant without first securing the site (this is very bad because they should be adherring to our marvellous new Health and Safety at Work legislation - these chaps have left themselves, and their bosses, open to getting in lots of trouble with government departments because of this - if anything happens and they haven't followed the law, the law can "take them out" and lock them up) . Whilst they are away a high gust of wind blows over the ladder they left against the wall and the following happens;

it smashes into the customers brand new greenhouse*/it falls onto a passing pedestrian*/the noise of the ladder crashing down alerts a passing baddie, who having watched the site for a while, realises it is un-attended and pops into the garden, puts the ladder back up and burgles the house*/nothing*

*delete as appropriate

The fitters come back to find the consequences of whatever happens from above, it could be something calamatous or it could be nothing (I could also go on trying to make this point, or I could stop - my preferred option).

What I am trying to say is that by doing one thing you don't necessarily get your primary desired result. Our society is way, way, way to complicated. We believe that we can manipulate and organise ourselves just the way we want to. We make a law to protect the general public, in fact it won't necessarily do that. All we do is take responsibility away from indivuals and into the hands of government and large organisations.

Maybe, the civil servants responsible for drafting and bringing in all this new legislation regarding our liberty believe their tinkering is in the best public interest, maybe the liberal views that prevail when it comes to immigration legal or otherwize overcome common sense and public fear in the short term, maybe big business and the rich are pleased with the increasing numbers of foreign workers all too happy to work for less in a society obsessed with getting more (food, goods, service etc) for less, maybe our farmers who need labour are relieved to be able to pay anyone to do the hard labour involved in large agricultural cropping methods and maybe, just maybe, as things get more and more difficult economically, politically, socially and generally daily, some of todays actions will have very surprising consequences for our future.[/i]

[isenhand]

I think society has a good probability of messing itself up. No need for a revaluation. Best start working together and build things from the grass roots up.

[Andy Hunt]

The revolution is upon us - imposed by nature. It is we (humanity as a whole) who are in danger of being overthrown!

[newmac]

I disagree with the concept that people are either inately selfish, selfish by default etc. This is often put forward as an arguement to justify most of the control mechanisms we have in place to control the masses i.e. laws and police to protect property and wealth.

Evolution and Darwinian theory does not say that humans are inately selfish, quite the contrary. The "selfish" gene is different from a person and could also be equally correctly called the social gene.

I think it is our artificial society and its control mechanisms e.g. consumerist addiction fed by relentless advertising, education system geared to high earning jobs being the ultimate etc, that breeds selfishness and relies on it. It's market forces - you don't sell as many TVs if the whole community shared one.

Divide and conquer - if you make the people scared of each other (crime, terrorism, everyone else is selfish etc) then you have them beat.

A personal revolution and rejection of the control mechanisms on your mind are the first step before you mess around thinking about overthrowing any institutions or governements.

[GD]

I disagree with the concept that people are either inately selfish, selfish by default etc. This is often put forward as an arguement to justify most of the control mechanisms we have in place to control the masses i.e. laws and police to protect property and wealth.

This is the great lie of our times. It has been utterly obliterated by respected economists, but these economists have been all but silenced.

"Keynes . . . advised us that the time was not yet for a 'return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue ? that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable.'

"Economic progress, he counselled, is obtainable only if we employ those powerful human drives of selfishness, which religion and traditional wisdom universally call upon us to resist. The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction. If Keynes says that 'foul is useful and fair is not,' he propounds a statement of fact which may be true or false; or it may look true in the short run and turn out to be false in the longer run. Which is it?

"I should think that thre is now enough evidence to demonstrate that the statement is false in a very direct, practical sense. If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday existence. The Gross National Product may rise rapidly: as measured by statisticians but not as experienced by actual people, who find themselves oppressed by increasing frustration, alienation, insecurity, and so forth. . . . The assertion that 'foul is useful and fair is not' is the antithesis of wisdom. The hope that the pursuit of goodness and virtue can be postponed until we have attained universal prosperity and that by the single-minded pursuit of wealth, without bothering our heads about spiritual and moral questions, we could establish peace on earth, is an unrealistic, unscientific, and irrational hope."

... and he was a peak oiler too. No wonder he' s been pushed to the fringes.

more samples here

[newmac]

Sorry GD, I'm not clear on whether you are disagreeing vehemently with me or agreeing with me somewhat.

I agree with some of the consequences of what is written but again don't see where this global premise of people being selfish comes from.

I constantly see throughout each and every day loads of acts of selflessness and sociability. Yes there are acts of selfishness in the world but these are in the minority and are exagerategd by the kind of society we live in.

[Andy Hunt]

I was chatting with a vicar the other day about environmentalism in the context of 'enlightened self-interest'.

You get solar panels and a wind turbine because you want to do the right thing and look after the planet. To a free-market economist, this would not appear to be 'useful'.

Then all of a sudden, to everyone's surprise, there is a power cut, and what at first appeared to be a 'useless' altruistic gesture turns out to be of direct practical benefit to you - you have power whilst your neighbours do not. (a simplistic and not necessarily technically correct example, I know - but you get the picture)

Under this scenario, those who initially pursue what they believe to be their own self-interest end up losing out, whilst those pursuing the well-being of the system as a whole - at their own expense - find that they are ultimately directly benefited, personally.

It could be seen as a kind of divine joke played by God, where everyone receives their just desserts without actually being aware of how their own actions will determine their fate at the time.

Jesus said something hinting at this: "He who seeks his own will pursues his own glory; but he who seeks the will of the one that sent him, the same is true, and yet there is no unrighteousness in him. He who loves his life shall lose it - and yet he who hates his life in this world will keep it in the next."

I've always thought there is a link between science and religion in these times of 'tribulation'. The more you look, the more obvious it becomes.

[GD]

Sorry GD, I'm not clear on whether you are disagreeing vehemently with me or agreeing with me somewhat.

I totally agree, and was bolstering it with some of what I've seen.

I constantly see throughout each and every day loads of acts of selflessness and sociability. Yes there are acts of selfishness in the world but these are in the minority and are exagerategd by the kind of society we live in.

As do I. Just as there was a time when I believed that RE would smoothly replace FF; there was a time when I never had the eyes to see the countless acts of selflessness that occur every day.

I agree with some of the consequences of what is written but again don't see where this global premise of people being selfish comes from.

Right from the very beginning, economics - the "new philosophy brought with it a new social problem: how to keep the poor poor. " (Cited from RL Heilbroner's "The Worldly Philosophers" (I'll have to dig out who actually said it when I get home).

The selfish world view is perpetuated by the powerful VI's, who have everything to gain by applying the Darwinian struggle for existence into the human social sphere. Thus the economics of selfishness is seen as the true nature of human organisation.

This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms.

In reality, it is the perverse money and tax systems that shift wealth from the poor to the rich. But this can only work if people are competing with each other to drive the market forward. If people should only take what they need and nothing else, this wealth transfer stops. Hence the selfish/competetive view must be perpetuated.

TPTB, in taking the teachings of the classical economists, keeping what suits them, and discarding the rest have left us with the beast that we know today. (E.g. even Adam Smith never believed in an infinitely growing economy).

Interestingly enough, the monetary and tax reforms required to address the poverty issue, are the exact same solutions to the PO/environmental issue. And a market based on cooperation rather than competition would weed out so much waste in duplicated effort, who knows how much energy we could conserve in making that shift!