RFK Jr. Confirmation

RFK Jr. was confirmed yesterday as HHS Secretary and the MAHA Alliance held a press conference to celebrate this important moment in history.

Del Bigtree was RFK Jr.’s Communications Director. Now that RFK Jr. has been confirmed, Bigtree’s job is finished and he’s able to speak for himself without representing RFK Jr.

Sen. Ron Johnson introduces Del Bigtree at 10:20.

Bigtree’s speech starts at 16:00 and is a must watch for anyone concerned about improving our collective health, and righting the wrongs of covid.

If any of you, like me, feel the need for a little revenge after covid, this speech is righteous.

Bigtree brutally destroys the mainstream news media for their incompetence, indifference, and corruption.

This speech by RFK Jr. after his swearing in ceremony is also excellent.

I don’t have too many heroes, but RFK Jr. is one of them. This video is a nice introduction to the man.

Here is the president’s executive order authorizing MAHA. It’s inspiring and worth a read.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/establishing-the-presidents-make-america-healthy-again-commission/

ESTABLISHING THE PRESIDENT’S
MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN COMMISSION

EXECUTIVE ORDER

February 13, 2025

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1.  Purpose.  American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre‑COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years.  This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population.  Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases.  An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.

These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe.  Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate.  Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88 percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated.  In 2021, asthma was more than twice as common in the United States than most of Europe, Asia, or Africa.  Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high-income countries, including the United States, in 2021.  Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America.  Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action.

This concern applies urgently to America’s children.  In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease.  Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s.  Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.

These health burdens have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication.  For example, in the case of Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.  

This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.  Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.  Ninety percent of the Nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions.  In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively.  These trends harm us, our economy, and our security.

To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease.  This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.  We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data.  We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.

Sec. 2.  Policy.  It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.  To do so, executive departments and agencies (agencies) that address health or healthcare must focus on reversing chronic disease.  Under this policy:

(a)  all federally funded health research should empower Americans through transparency and open-source data, and should avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest that skew outcomes and perpetuate distrust;

(b)  the National Institutes of Health and other health-related research funded by the Federal Government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick;

(c)  agencies shall work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world; and

(d)  agencies shall ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and the flexibility for health insurance coverage to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.

Sec. 3.  Establishment and Composition of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission.  (a)  There is hereby established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (Commission), chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Chair), with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy serving as Executive Director (Executive Director).

(b)  In addition to the Chair and the Executive Director, the Commission shall include the following officials, or their designees:

(i)     the Secretary of Agriculture;

(ii)    the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;

(iii)   the Secretary of Education;

(iv)    the Secretary of Veterans Affairs;

(v)     the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;

(vi)    the Director of the Office of Management and Budget;

(vii)   the Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy;

(viii)  the Director of the National Economic Council;

(ix)    the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers;

(x)     the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;

(xi)    the Commissioner of Food and Drugs;

(xii)   the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;

(xiii)  the Director of the National Institutes of Health; and

(xiv)   other members of my Administration invited to participate, at the discretion of the Chair and the Executive Director.

Sec. 4.  Fighting Childhood Chronic Disease.  The initial mission of the Commission shall be to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis.  Therefore, the Commission shall:

(a)  study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism;  

(b)  advise and assist the President on informing the American people regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, using transparent and clear facts; and

(c)  provide to the President Government-wide recommendations on policy and strategy related to addressing the identified contributing causes of and ending the childhood chronic disease crisis.

Sec. 5.  Initial Assessment and Strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission.  (a)  Make our Children Healthy Again Assessment.  Within 100 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, which shall:

(i)     identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries;

(ii)    assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons;

(iii)   assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;

(iv)    identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles;

(v)     evaluate the effectiveness of existing educational programs with regard to nutrition, physical activity, and mental health for children;

(vi)    identify and evaluate existing Federal programs and funding intended to prevent and treat childhood health issues for their scope and effectiveness;

(vii)   ensure transparency of all current data and unpublished analyses related to the childhood chronic disease crisis, consistent with applicable law;

(viii)  evaluate the effectiveness of current Federal Government childhood health data and metrics, including those from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and the National Survey of Children’s Health;

(ix)    restore the integrity of science, including by eliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings and underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, and increasing methodological rigor; and

(x)     establish a framework for transparency and ethics review in industry-funded projects.

(b)  Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy.  Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, a Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy (Strategy), based on the findings from the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment described in subsection (a) of this section.  The Strategy shall address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.

(c)  The Chair may hold public hearings, meetings, roundtables, and similar events, as appropriate, and may receive expert input from leaders in public health and Government accountability. 

Sec. 6.  Additional Reports.  (a)  Following the submission to the President of the Strategy, and any final strategy reports thereafter, the Chair and the Executive Director shall recommend to the President updates to the Commission’s mission, including desired reports.

(b)  The Commission shall not reconvene, following submission of the Strategy, until an updated mission is submitted to the President through the Executive Director.

Sec. 7.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b)  This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c)  This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE,

    February 13, 2025.

<edit>

A few comments below from angry, now ex, followers suggest they were unaware of my gradual transformation over the last 4 years of observing and researching covid, from being certain RFK Jr. was a nut job, to now supporting RFK Jr.’s mission to improve our abysmal and worsening pubic health.

I’ve copied my replies to the criticisms here so that the reasons for my new beliefs are clear.

notabilia: You make excellent, well-researched points at times.
And you throw it all away by being an anti-vaxxer ass clown. 

I too thought anti-vaxxers were nut jobs.

Then the experts I trusted renamed a 20 year old technology, known to be unsafe and ineffective in humans, from transfection to vaccine, pretended transfection was a new miracle technology, and coerced it into 5+ billion people after insufficient and fraudulent testing, including children that had zero risk from the virus, and when adverse event data showed the transfections were dangerous at levels far higher than had been sufficient to withdraw prior vaccines from the market, they doubled down, and hid and denied the data, and they continued to coerce transfections despite the disease being low risk for all except elderly and co-morbid people, and despite several safe and effective alternate treatments being available.

Today the rate of sickness and all-cause mortality is higher than pre-transfection, and the only thing our “experts” are certain of is that the cause is not the mRNA transfections. This despite there being several easy to understand first principle reasons to suspect mRNA transfections will never, and can never, be made safe.

The mRNA transfections are just the tip of the covid iceberg. They lied about every single covid issue, and they used tax dollars to corrupt news media, and to censor social media, to make us believe the lies.

Every covid policy was exactly wrong. To maximize your probability of good health the best course of action was to do exactly the opposite of what they told us to do. Incompetence does not explain this. They would have achieved a better public health outcome had they flipped a coin on every decision.

After observing 4 years of a healthcare system incapable of learning and correcting when new data emerges, and that pathologically lies, I no longer trust a word they say about anything.

So yes, I now proudly call myself an anti-vaxxer.

Go get ’em Bobby!

Anonymous: The health problems of the US population can largely be traced to a crap diet… good luck changing that. Any real attempt to do so will be shut down as a communist plot.

Yes, unhealthy food is a huge problem. It’s also not that complicated. Reducing sugar would be a good start.

We face many existential overshoot threats for which there is no “fix” thanks to MPP and MORT governing our behaviors, and thanks to the core design of the system that keeps us alive.

The threat from relatively recent, extremely poor public health is different. There is nothing fundamental blocking us from improving public health. I think we should support RFK Jr. and try.

A healthy population will be a strong asset, perhaps our only asset, when the everything bubble pops and modern civilization collapses.

<edit>

Secretary Kennedy delivers welcoming remarks to HHS staff.

Godspeed RFK Jr.

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1.3K Comments

Stellarwind72
February 28, 2025 3:33 pm

20’s Civilization/Modernity is screwed.

Anonymous
Anonymous
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 28, 2025 1:24 pm

I know this is taken out of context but Zelensky is collapse aware, ‘his’ country is literally being carved up in various methods by Russia and now the US. His commentary between 0:50 and 1:00 is prophetic of what is to come. ‘You (USA) don’t feel it now as you have nice big ocean but you will feel it in the future.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 28, 2025 3:38 am

nice 😬.

Where’s that kill, stab and burn Bill Gates Emoji when you need it. 😁

Stellarwind72
Reply to  nikoB
February 28, 2025 8:16 am

Hopefully, this website has a low enough profile that the spooks aren’t monitoring it.
I don’t want law enforcement kicking our doors in…

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 28, 2025 3:42 am

Just having a few drinks and feeling it now.

I would just like to say that it would be nice to be sitting around a camp fire with all of you chatting and feeling an analog closeness instead of a digital connection but it is what it is. So cheers all and thank you for the constant comments and this community.

paqnation
February 27, 2025 10:00 pm

Got this link from a commenter on Crazy Eddy’s blog.

Was staring at it for a few minutes. Got hypnotized. It never stops climbing. Nothing shocking, but if you’re into antinatalism, this breeding counter might drive you insane.

World Population Clock: 8.2 Billion People (LIVE, 2025) – Worldometer

Stellarwind72
Reply to  paqnation
February 28, 2025 8:17 am

Global one child policy now!

Stellarwind72
February 27, 2025 7:16 pm

‘1.7 million’ Palestinians in Gaza? Trump’s statement raises questions about death toll
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-gaza-population-relocation-1.7457559

President Donald Trump’s assertion that the U.S. can relocate “1.7 or 1.8 million” Palestinians has raised questions about the death toll in Gaza.

Trump made the comments last week while announcing a surprise plan to take over the region, which has been devastated by the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023.

Gaza’s population was estimated at over 2.2 million before the war, and the Gaza Health Ministry’s official death count sits at 48,297.

Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, says she found Trump’s numbers “puzzling” — and a potential confirmation that the death toll is actually much higher, something researchers, doctors and public health experts have long said was the case.

On multiple occasions, Trump has referred to the population of Gaza as being 1.7-1.8 million. Is he mistaken or does his administration have intelligence suggesting that over 400,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza?

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 5:28 pm

Interesting. I’ve heard about injuries from covid “vaccines”, but not run-of-the-mill flu vaccines.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 28, 2025 3:35 am

Yes I know people that had eaten seafood at the time of a vaccine injection and then developed an allergic reaction to seafood for the rest of their lives (so far).

Simon
Simon
February 27, 2025 11:42 am

Regarding whether Trump is playing to the crowd or actually trying to make a difference (I too think the latter), the Epstein release will be a good indication, I think.

“Alina Habba says she just met with Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, and DOES expect the “Epstein List” to come out today, describing it as “shocking”

Habba says she “absolutely” expects criminal charges to come as a result.”

https://xcancel.com/_/status/1895166339804762295

here’s to some (lots) of arrests.

Simon.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 4:02 pm

It is possible that Trump isn’t evil but just a grifter.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 28, 2025 3:33 am

Time will tell my friend. I think we are all traveling blind right now. But take solace in knowing that as individuals we can’t change things on the bigger playing field, we just don’t have any influence. So sit back and watch and try to see the game for that is what it is. I feel your discontent too.

AJ
AJ
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 28, 2025 11:31 am

I was really surprised by Larry Wilkerson. He has been one of the most astute people on war that I follow and now he thinks Trump (Hegseth) is making the military into a white supremist evangelical coup (by Trump) supporting crowd. He is going down the same rabbit hole as Chris Hedges who sees Trump as an out and out Fascist. I don’t get that feeling from Trump – but I could be WRONG.

I don’t think Trump is intelligent or thinks outside his 1st grade bully mentality, he is just a semi smart narcissistic sociopath (like a lot of CEO’s).

AJ

Simon
Simon
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 11:46 am

I’ve had a very similar experience, including having to buy a new screwdriver, while repairing a bluetooth speaker (old batteries and knackered charging port). I did manage to repair the thing, after much faffing. Contrast to, I have some bedsheets from my wife’s great grandmother; they are over a century old, and still in good condition (some repairs, some stains, but nothing I’m not happy to sleep on).

Simon.

Simon
Simon
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 12:38 pm

I’d never heard of those dishes, as they seem to be an American thing. Shame, they look nice. Here’s a video I found about their manufacture. Agreed that it’s hard to imagine such a capital-intensive process being around in a post fossil fuel world.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 5:19 pm

Hopefully, peak oil means the end of planned obsolescence.

paqnation
February 27, 2025 1:32 am

Already 90F/32C out here in the desert. February for fu#k’s sake. Should be 70F. This is more in line with how I think climate change will work. Not so much 130F world record hot days, but a bunch of days/nights where its 20+ degrees above the norm.

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 1:24 am

Haha!!

I keep trying to write a funny line about it, but it just ends up being misogynistic as hell.

Stellarwind72
February 26, 2025 7:02 pm

Trump Shares DERANGED, Sick Gaza Video

Frankly, that video is so morbid and over-the-top that it is almost comical. It basically depicts a theme park built over a mass grave. I just thought to myself “Is our president really this deranged and delusional”?

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 26, 2025 10:06 pm

Everything is a plan within a plan. Most of what we are told is not what is going on. You need to think levels deeper than you are. Start with this, assume that DJT is hyper intelligent (I know it doesn’t seem that way but) how is he trying to trick or manipulate his target with what he presents. We should apply this to all people in power.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 26, 2025 10:08 pm

I stopped watching him ages ago, he just has too much of a used car salesman vibe. So creepy.

paqnation
February 25, 2025 9:06 pm

Sarah Connor has a new one today. I enjoyed it, but I have no idea if this came from a human or a bot.
Engineered Collapse of the Middle Class

Main reason I’m commenting is because I got this link over there from Ali R. I saw this early in my journey thanks to Michael Dowd. Fun to watch again after more than three years have passed… I was a scared, unconfident rookie doomer back then, now I’m a professional maniac😊.

paqnation
Reply to  paqnation
February 25, 2025 9:22 pm

Sorry, I should have at least said what the link is about. LOL.
It’s a short story about how even the rich aren’t going to be immune from collapse.

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 10:40 pm

LOL. Thats my kind of exit strategy… I might have to copycat it.

But they’d have to be very very carefully selected movies. Films like Independence Day or Armageddon would probably talk me out of going through with it.😊

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 8:15 pm

Certainly feels that way.

CampbellS
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 12:48 pm

Nice simple comment from Joe Clarkson on this article on resilience.org. Why does this make so much sense to me but put it in front of others and they either go silent or start talking about solar panels from mushrooms?

“The basic assumption presented here, that we need to use our brains differently, is wrong. The human brain has been roughly the same for 300,000 years and it’s only recently that this brain has enabled modernity and its depredations. Prior to the last several hundred years, our brains allowed us to live on the earth without destroying it, so what has changed?

Fossil fuels. Modernity is not a product of the human brain alone, otherwise it would have appeared hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is only the combination of brainpower and lots of surplus exogenous energy that allowed modern industrial cultures to exist. Take away the energy from fossil fuels and humans are relatively harmless on a global scale. Sure, they can muck up local areas, but so can most other species.

It’s not the brain or the way we use it that’s the problem, it’s the scale of the power made available by abundant energy supplies. We don’t need to change how our brains work, we just need to power down. Fortunately, that’s coming fairly soon, whether we want it or not.”

paqnation
Reply to  CampbellS
February 27, 2025 3:49 pm

I always like Joe’s comments… but I keep looking at this one and can’t stop from nitpicking.

Take away the energy from fossil fuels and humans are relatively harmless on a global scale. Sure, they can muck up local areas, but so can most other species.

I don’t agree, but I guess I can accept it. The problem is when I accept it, I start to lose focus. All of a sudden, it’s perfectly fine that one species busted through the resource constraints of fire & agriculture… seems like flawed logic. 

It is only the combination of brainpower and lots of surplus exogenous energy that allowed modern industrial cultures to exist.

Conquering fire is what created that combo of brainpower and lots of surplus exogenous energy.

The Story of Life: The quest for profit and growth will continue as it has since the first organic cell fissioned. The End.

As long as there’s a fire using species running around on the planet, the rest of life will always be in danger of that species eventually creating a future self-induced mass extinction. 

ps. I give myself half credit for that last quote from James@megacancer because I found it buried in his comment section and then added the beginning and end to make it a complete story😊

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 5:27 pm

The boy who cried wolf.. what’s the lesson that should be learned?

A/ don’t put young amateurs in charge of something important..

B/ The boy was correct there was a wolf and it did eat the sheep.

C/ Always have someone else to blame when things go wrong…

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 8:16 pm

I think most people just want simple answers to complex problems and have no mental bandwidth or inclination to dig deeper wether it is collapse,pharma industry, geopolitics or any other topic.

Just staying with the topic of collapse most people see canada as a safe haven most resilient to collapse. I have friends in Calgary who are completely unconcerned about climate change or any such issue simply because of their location and as such have no interest to dig deeper.

Their point is Canada produces surplus oil , surplus gas, surplus hydroelectric power and surplus grains and has a low population. This means even if the whole world goes down in flames they will remain relatively unscathed. I am sure Hideaway can completely destroy their illusions with little effort but that would involve connecting the dots of complexity of various industries which is not easy for someone like me so I don’t try to contest their logic.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Kira
February 25, 2025 9:01 pm

Since we have the most overshoot aware crowd here I was curious to know what Canadians like Rob think of the arguments of resiliency usually made. It would also give me some material when I have another conversation like that.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 11:11 pm

Thanks for the detailed reply.

Since you channeled Hideaway I will channel my denialist friends in Calgary and play Devil’s advocate.

Alberta is a powerhouse in oil and gas industry along with agriculture and forestry. Yes we import heavy machinery as we don’t manufacture them here but as long as there is any industrial capacity left anywhere in the world we albertans will trade our raw materials and obtain the machinery via trade to continue providing them with our resources.

Oil sands may be difficult to obtain but is much easier compared to offshore oil rigs digging down several thousand feet below the ocean. Its just bitumen mined and heated with natural gas to produce the crude as product. So the equipment we need will be excavators, mining trucks and other such machines. Our gas has not yet depleted as compared to US so that will be a reliable and easy source of energy for us.

Since we have abundant gas fertilizers should not be a problem at all which means good degree of caloric self sufficiency. We also have massive biomass energy as well.

I accept your point about spare parts necessity and the fact that we don’t have the manufacturing base to produce the parts that will fail. But we can trade our unlimited resources for those parts and will only collapse after everybody else has and there is nobody left to trade with.

This will probably take decades and will not be relevant to me or my kids who are in their 20s.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 9:32 am

It sounds like a very wholesome life with deep connections to people and land around you. This is in such sharp contrast to the lives that most people lead today with their addled brains hopelessly addicted to their phones, chasing dopamine hits continuously and hopping from one hedonistic high to another.

Even with the deeply rooted life that you had it would take quite a journey to reach a point of overshoot awareness and see the reality but with the kind of fast moving, ‘buy,consume,dispose’ society we have it’s pretty much impossible to even begin to contemplate any of it.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Kira
February 26, 2025 4:05 pm

Hi Kira, …. “ I am sure Hideaway can completely destroy their illusions with little effort but that would involve connecting the dots of complexity of various industries..

I’m pretty sure you could destroy their arguments by just following the lines of reasoning…

The argument is that Alberta can survive longer because we have resources, hydro etc..

However I’m fairly sure Alberta imports all the machinery, household, electrical goods, transformers and nearly every part of the maintenance of the electrical grid, plus every part required for trucks, pumps for oil lines, etc a long endless list..

The assumption is the roads, trucks, ports and ships keep working normally to ‘trade’ with partners. How many ports does Alberta have?? Then the assumption that the next state is working normally so all the necessary trade can happen. Then the assumption that the ports and factories in whichever region you are trading all of the necessary imports from also have ports working normally and world shipping working normally.

The areas that provide all the goods necessary for Alberta to run normally, have to be able to operate normally, so that all the workers turn up to the factories to do the work, plus all the trucks work normally, plus all the imports of raw materials keep flowing into that area, which means all the ports of the raw material exporters need to operate normally, and the mines, plus all the community that supplies all the mines needs to run normally. This takes a lot of machinery and fuel, which comes from factories elsewhere, so other places need to run normally providing all the machinery and fuel, to not just the mines but the whole area/country..

Once people understand that, everything runs on a 6 continent supply chain of all the necessary minerals, fuel, metals, ore concentrates etc, it’s easy to follow a chain of ‘what’s necessary’ to keep any one area or region going with any type of modernity. Without the modernity of electrical equipment what good is a hydro dam? Without modernity how long can the oil sands be mined? Without the huge electrical pumps pumping oil along pipelines that require regular maintenance, how long before it all fails due to lack of parts from elsewhere in the world?

Working normally, is a highly complex network of flows of energy and materials around the world, in a way that no-one fully understands all the links. It has worked on growing energy and materials use combined with larger markets for every single aspect of modernity, all built with debt that assumes the system will get larger to pay back the debt.

I’m pretty sure that when Alberta collapses along with the rest of modernity, most people in denial will be looking for scapegoats to blame for their poor situation.

It’s simple, complex civilization grows until it can’t, then collapses in on itself. No single area totally reliant on the whole of modern civilization can withstand the collapse. Any minor area (like the USA) that thinks they can survive alone, and tries to build everything they need, will quickly run into the joint problems of not a large enough market, not enough workers to produce everything, lower grade mineral shortages, more people and equipment required for ‘defense’ of supplies of necessary materials form other areas etc.

Small areas of civilization can only continue with much reduced complexity, but much lower complexity likely means all the ‘resources’ that an area has become just dirt in the ground as it relies on modern large scale complexity to extract and utilize…

Of course if your friends are like mine when I try to explain all this, they invariable turn to some magic form of undiscovered energy as being the solution, to try and divert the conversation, that they usually start…

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 26, 2025 6:53 pm

Exactly!! Then what about the Northern states of the USA if Alberta wishes to flow it’s oil through them? Likewise I’m sure!! Then to the East through Canada, they will also want the same..

The concept of “our area” will be OK in collapse simply doesn’t and can’t work.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 27, 2025 9:18 am

I sometimes forget how huge Canada is. It’s like 10 countries joined into one massive country all connected by trucks. I think being next to US is a massive risk factor as when America collapses all the chaos will definitely spill over into Canada. There is also a possibility that the resource rich regions like Alberta suddenly develop “organic protests” for secession from Canada and joining the US if Canada refuses to supply the much needed oil.

Being America’s neighbor is like living with a junkie who is functional as long as his drug needs are met but the second he runs out he will go into serious withdrawal and spiral out of control. When that happens he becomes a danger to himself and those around him.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 28, 2025 9:02 am

The farm I assist will struggle without fertilizer, plastic for greenhouses, irrigation pumps and parts, and diesel/gas for machines.

Based on your experience working on a farm I was hoping you could give me your opinion on the most common belief many people hold about contingency measures that could be deployed after collapse speeds up. I get this especially from my Canadian friends.

They say that Canada has a lot of Arable land which has probably not been depleted as much as lands elsewhere along with abundant water supply which is all that is needed for surviving.

If a family of three living in Calgary realized where the civilization is headed and decides to take measures to survive could they pick up farming skills within a few years and be ready?

What are the irrigation options without electrical pumps? Does Canada have robust canal system? Is farming possible without fertilizers and pesticides (as the cold might stop the pests)? Without tractors and other machines what is the draft animal availability? Does the climate support multiple planting cycles?

Sorry about so many questions.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
March 1, 2025 9:17 pm

Hi Rob

I am commenting here as the limit for replies on this thread seems to have been reached.

Rob, here, I’ve copied this thread below to give space for replies.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Hideaway
February 27, 2025 9:05 am

Thanks for that detailed answer.

The problem is that they take the opposite of your systems approach and start backwards by selecting the essentials like agriculture,sanitation or anything else they need and work their way to the end by choosing convenient components and hand waving the rest. I am familiar with this method as I used to do the same.

Unless one has spent decades studying complex systems and mastered the whole interconnected systems approach it is easy to be stumped by the magical thinking approach and be at a loss for words.

For instance my friends in Australia think their electricity is guaranteed as they have one of the largest coal reserves as for them the way to get electricity is to burn coal to rotate the turbines and just “transmit” the electricity to the power sockets at home. I used to think so too. Only now have I realised how much of stuff like sub stations and transformers are needed to get the energy to the homes and manufacturing them needs all of supply chain along with transportation powered by oil.

The ‘what’s necessary’ and tracing that all the way to the end is a habit I have only recently begun to cultivate after watching you do the same. Are there any books that teach systems approach or complex systems analysis that could help?

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Kira
March 1, 2025 2:58 am

Kira,

I always find that Joseph Tainter’s book ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’ combined with ‘Limits to growth’ and a basic understanding of entropy and dissipation is all any person needs to come to the correct conclusions, until the denial gene kicks in somewhere along the way, which happens to most people..

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Hideaway
March 1, 2025 9:33 pm

Hi Hideaway,

Thanks for the recommendations. I am familiar with Tainter’s book and the LTG. My question was about systems approach in general to any topic at hand and not just civilization or collapse. What I mean is if I want to analyze an ecosystem and its complex interactions the tendency is to take a piecemeal approach as opposed to the systems approach. This seems to be a pitfall of modern education system with the specialization and super specialization leading to siloing. This seems to be the reason why so many people who are experts in their field seem unable to grasp the complexity of civilization and all its moving parts. We see this on Nates podcast all the time.

So I was wondering if there was a method to cultivate that mindset/skill where one could see all the moving parts and the various feedbacks and interactions between them. Or is it a philosophy of thinking to be cultivated organically.

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Kira
March 2, 2025 1:06 am

Maybe this is part of what you are looking for:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking_In_Systems:_A_Primer.

So I was wondering if there was a method to cultivate that mindset/skill where one could see all the moving parts and the various feedbacks and interactions between them.

I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to build a model of everything. A model is an abstraction. It will have a limited domain of applicability and aspects of reality over which it will fail miserably. I think we build models to answer specific questions. And it’s OK to have only partial models (slices of reality) to that end.

Kira
Kira
Reply to  Kira
March 4, 2025 9:00 am

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the recommendation.

I have come to the conclusion that it is not possible to build a model of everything. A model is an abstraction. It will have a limited domain of applicability and aspects of reality over which it will fail miserably. I think we build models to answer specific questions. 

I agree completely but I just wanted to overcome or at least combat this subconscious bias to fragment things into individual bits for analysis rather than taking a systems approach. I am often at a loss for reply when someone talks about electrifying mining trucks and powering it with solar panels. It takes me a while to formulate a response to such BS ideas. Hope this book helps in it.

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Kira
March 4, 2025 11:30 am

I agree completely but I just wanted to overcome or at least combat this subconscious bias to fragment things into individual bits for analysis rather than taking a systems approach.

Yes (I am replying here, because we reached the edge)

I believe it is not really possible to avoid fragmentation using language, the intellect, reasoning. Words are knives. System thinking is another form of fragmentation. Only, reality is cut differently.

To me (and I am not trying to convert here, just sharing), re-uniting (or rather noticing the ever-existing unity) is done at another level (before). A level which requires no effort whatsoever. Let the veil of thoughts down and see. It’s so simple, we can’t get it. “Here” is the only place we can’t travel to.

🙂

Stellarwind72
February 24, 2025 10:09 pm

Maybe humans need large predators around to filter out stupidity like this.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/national/24956420.tiktokers-dropping-heavy-objects-feet-viral-trend-risk-lifetime-pain/

TikTokers dropping heavy objects on feet in viral trend ‘risk lifetime of pain’

A podiatrist has said TikTok users risk “a lifetime of pain and disability” by copying a viral trend to drop objects including air fryers and toasters on their feet.

Creators on the short-form app have shared videos of themselves dropping heavy objects – including a vacuum cleaner, a glass jug and a wooden table – on their foot and ranking how painful each item is.

The hashtag #droppingthingsonmyfoot has been used on hundreds of videos.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 24, 2025 10:38 pm

Film a tiktok video of outrunning a big cat.

The rest takes care of itself and we have plenty of laughs.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  nikoB
February 25, 2025 12:10 pm

Unfortunately Animal control/Law enforcement might end up shooting the big cat to save the moronic human.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 6:47 pm

This makes me ashamed of my species.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 5:59 pm

He is also 88 years old.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 8:49 pm

I’m not religious either. I was just saying that since he is 88 years old, his health problems aren’t necessarily caused by MRNA. If he were younger, I would say that MRNA is the likely culprit.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 10:05 pm

Who is your god?

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 10:35 pm

Like as in the Spanish Gods Thermod y Namics.

Scary deities that control all the power in the universe.

Cool.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 10:39 pm

My god is complex….

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 6:43 pm

That’s funny. My mom and I were talking about this last night because some of her sources are saying the same thing. 

We were contemplating if we should cash out our retirement. We were guessing what a stock market crash might mean to the banks. We figure they would shut down immediately to prevent people from taking their money out. And then guessing what that might mean and so on.

My mom then says “ya, but they would have to open the banks pretty soon after that”. I was confused so I asked her what she meant. “So that everyone could still pay their bills”, she said. She could tell by my reaction (I fell face down on the floor😊) that I was not in agreement. I started to tell her how “paying bills” would be over at that point… same with going to work… same with grocery stores having food… I stopped myself from going into full on collapse mode because I could sense her fear. She had one more thing to add though, “ok, maybe car payments and credit card bills would go unpaid for a while, but the electric company is still going to be expecting payment, so the banks would have to be open for that. I politely said, “good point” and ended the conversation.

Holy shit! And she lives with me and hears my crazy doomerism every day. Now I know why so many people are gonna fall for that brilliant emergency advice the politicians gave a while back, “make sure you have three days worth of food in case the grid goes down”… Whew, it’s gonna be ugly😊.

The timebomb factor is what’s making this so crazy though. Could be tomorrow, or not for another decade. Keeping your sanity till that timebomb goes off is gonna be very challenging.

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 24, 2025 9:08 pm

Ah, gotcha. For some reason “stock market crash” always equals the great crash of 1929 for me. Jeez, my clueless mother was probably more accurate than me in our conversation. LOL  

ps. Speaking of CP, I have an all-time favorite moment with him. Was a while back when his guest was breaking down what currency’s will be best when SHTF. The guest was not talking good about gold and that had Nate squirming around and asking childish “what if” questions to try and make gold look better. It became quite obvious that he’s sitting on a ton of gold. Was hilarious.

I dont follow his channel so I’m sure I got the link here. Do you have any idea which episode or who that guest was? (I’m too lazy to search the comments)

Anonymous
Anonymous
Reply to  paqnation
February 25, 2025 5:13 pm

“The guest was not talking good about gold and that had Nate squirming around and asking childish “what if” questions to try and make gold look better. It became quite obvious that he’s sitting on a ton of gold.”

That was written like you were in a mood or you dislike Canadian Prepper / Nate Polson. He obviously has some gold, but none of us are privy to the actual relationship
– is it real ownership, paid cash
– or maybe purchased using credit

I see a man running a business and sensible enough not to necessarily confront/discuss the real unpalatable truths. Prof. Nate Hagens and many others are exactly the same.

If Polson is relying on leverage (easy credit) to:
– fill his warehouse
– buy his 160 acres, 2013 McMansion with 3 car garage
– buy gold, etc.

Then maybe he is hoping that SHTF will be a hard full stop with no institutions to perform foreclosure, call in his debts. A slow decline, ironically is much worse, with mortgage margin calls and Blackrock sucking up everything.

paqnation
Reply to  Anonymous
February 25, 2025 8:29 pm

I’m not a fan of CP. Don’t hate him or anything, just annoys me with that schtick “I know that last time I did a video like this I told you guys it was the most important video of my life… but this time I really mean it”

Or maybe I’m just jealous that he figured out how to make ridiculous money from fearmongering.

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 23, 2025 10:48 pm

Thanks. Nate pumps out a homerun every once in a while. And just for him mentioning the evolution of Fuddruckers, it was already a great video😊. 

ps. Mike Judge is awesome. This short clip might be his finest moment (1997)

Stellarwind72
February 23, 2025 9:00 am

I commented

15:00 The system believes that we can create wealth by printing fake wealth. That strategy has a limited shelf-life. Our debt-based monetary system, just like any Ponzi scheme, relies on perpetual exponential growth, and when it can no longer grow, it implodes.

el mar
el mar
February 23, 2025 6:40 am

https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/02/el-inexorable-colapso.html

Why are we getting upset? Human biology is not suitable for the civilizations that have developed so far.
Of course, this is often suppressed and denied.

Saludos

el mar

We don’t know how long the system will hold. But what we are seeing tells us not long.

When the collapse begins it will be very fast. Do not expect catabolic collapses or organized decreases. The system is designed for perpetual growth and an existential crisis that implies a continuous decrease, will create an almost immediate negative feedback, because debt levels are incompatible with an economic decrease. Failing to repay debts, bankruptcies will be gigantic, consumption will suffer immediately and the CB’s strategy of flooding society with money will no longer function as in the past, as inflation is present. What we will achieve is an flight of money towards assets and a galloping hyperinflation, as soon as the income earners detect the immediate loss of the value of money. This time, the CBs will try (as in 2008-2020), but they won’t make it, because inflation is already present in the system. The prices of hard assets only grow and the final speculation of the system with the creation of multiple bubbles, is nothing more than the consequence of the massive monetary expansion.

The end is near and it is only a matter of time. But it is not for a single reason, but for the evolution of the civilizing system itself. We just got as far as possible…

This time it is not that the oil shortage fails or a stock market crash occurs or there is widespread corruption. This time everything is failing at the same time. And therefore, it has no solution.

We are at the red dot of the following graph.

el mar
el mar
Reply to  el mar
February 23, 2025 6:56 am

Indeed!

Not easy to understand!

Saludos

el mar

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  el mar
February 23, 2025 6:35 pm

Hi el mar, I really like Quark’s work, but I always cringe when I see the above diagram of overshoot of carrying capacity. Most draw it like the diagram above as it looks like we are just a little in overshoot.

In reality the horizontal carrying capacity line should be 90% further down, well below the words “geometric growth”, then falling after the peak of overshoot (possibly earlier).

When the human population was 4M we were already vastly changing the environment with our use of fire and extinction of megafauna. I question if even that population/living standard was sustainable for something like a million years, which is still a drop in the ocean of geologic time…

This part of Quark’s post, is very very relevant…. “This time, it’s not that the oil shortage is failing, or there’s a stock market crash, or there’s widespread corruption. This time, everything is failing at the same time. And that’s why there’s no solution.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Hideaway
February 24, 2025 2:02 am

I would imagine that 4M would be sustainable if they were coastal and eating seafood mostly.

paqnation
February 22, 2025 2:36 pm

Stumbled onto this movie last night. Caught my attention because I’m a cat person. Only put it on because I thought it was a silly cartoon and I wanted to give my cat some tv time while I was busy doing something else (yes, I have corrupted my Empire Kitty into being a couch potato😊).

But from the opening scene I was hooked. Cannot recommend this film enough. Here’s a few snippets from reddit that will give you an idea what it’s about:

The plot follows a black cat, a solitary survivor on a post-human planet seemingly healing from humanity’s scars. The feline’s journey is both physical and symbolic: it must leave the safety of its island-marked by decayed monuments and submerged ruins-and embark on a voyage of collaboration and self-discovery.

For me, this film felt like a dream, where my accumulated memories came alive. Echoes of What Dreams May Come, Avatar, Waterworld, and Life of Pi all seemed to coexist within it. It’s a world where animals are both anthropomorphic and raw in their true forms. This isn’t just a film-it’s a journey through a surreal and subconscious realm.

I need more dialogue-free films. This film is a meditation. One of the more unique things about it is that the creators had the brilliant idea to set the anthropomorphization setting for the non-human characters to about 25%, instead of the usual 75-100% where the characters might as well be humans in animal costumes. The characters’ behaviors in Flow feel entirely natural for their species — It’s just that their intelligence has been enhanced enough to allow them greater self-reflection and interspecies communication.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 22, 2025 2:49 pm

I fully agree with this post of Art’s, it seems he’s either come to the conclusion that there are no solutions, civilization heads where it heads until it collapses itself and probably takes most of the natural world with it, or he’s rapidly coming to that conclusion.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 22, 2025 4:38 pm

I think it’s because he has not put the big picture together yet of how it’s a combination of many aspects that guarantee the collapse of modern civilization, yet he grasps a lot of the separate pieces and treats them as separate instead of part of the whole.

Most people in the doom sphere are similar, they grab on to their bit of understanding of what’s not possible, so think collapse for one or a few reasons, but don’t grasp the importance of other areas they haven’t researched as a part of the whole picture.

I’m still learning and researching as I’m sure i don’t have a grasp of the interactions of every aspect yet…

By the same token people who have been hanging out here at un-denial seem to have the best grasp of the overall reality, and we are a small group….

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 22, 2025 6:22 pm

I left this comment, but it’s not showing yet. See if I can get Art pissed off😊
_______________

Fire leads to full consciousness, which then leads to domestication, agriculture, and mining. Which then leads to fossil energy, which then leads to self-induced mass extinction.

Most advanced overshoot aware people can agree with the above… but for some reason they can’t agree with the below:

Those good ole days of “maintaining balance with nature”…. is just a stage in the process that cannot be prolonged. Very similar to when Old World collided with New World. The Native Americans were at a stage in the process where they looked “good” compared to the stage in the process where the “evil” Europeans were at. But the Natives would have gotten to that European level eventually (with time and energy). Just like those Colonialists used to be “good” back when they were in their earlier stage of the process (3000BC Mesopotamia?).

No species that conquers fire can ever fit in with the web of life. At certain stages it might appear possible, but it’s just an illusion. Let it play out and it will always end up miserably for everyone else. The easiest solution is to remove the fire users. Hence the mass extinction that comes guaranteed when you start playing with fossil fuels. Yes, lots of innocent victims perish, but it’s the only way for Mother Earth to rid herself of the megacancer called humans.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  paqnation
February 22, 2025 6:45 pm

I’d add that conquering fire gives whatever species a huge amount of excess energy available, that then leads to consciousness and all the other aspects you mention. It still took hundreds of thousands of years to lead to Agriculture as the climate was not ‘right’ for the development of Agriculture..

monk
monk
Reply to  Hideaway
February 22, 2025 9:02 pm

Even just the extra energy available to the brain when consuming cooked food!

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 22, 2025 7:52 pm

Thanks.

Ya, I can’t imagine what those early years of MORT were like for you. At that stage where you understood it and it made perfect sense… yet you couldn’t convey it clearly and concisely (kind of like where I am still at for a lot of these topics)

Luckily for me, fire is like algebra101… MORT is more like calculus😊.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  paqnation
February 22, 2025 9:54 pm

Well said PAQ.

Stellarwind72
February 22, 2025 10:28 am

There is a trend in the US of removing old or poorly placed freeways (I don’t know if that trend will continue under Trump)

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/04/19/these-10-urban-freeways-deserve-to-be-demolished-but-will-they
From a perspective of peak oil and climate change, it actually makes sense to be removing some of those freeways.

  1. Removing freeways (especially in central cities) can make the city less dependent of private automobiles and can also free up the land occupied by the freeway.
  2. Removing the freeway can also reduce maintenance costs in the long run.

The US is already struggling to maintain its infrastructure and freeway removal can be a way to collapse now and avoid the rush.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 22, 2025 3:22 pm

Roads, freeways, tollways, railways, water mains, gas pipelines, electric transmission lines, phone lines, etc, are the equivalent to an organisms arteries, veins, lymphatic system, nervous system etc. They are all seemingly a small part of the whole, yet the function of the whole relies upon them.

Eventually all the internal networks of an organism start to fail as it gets towards the end of it’s life. However sometimes during the earlier stages of life some of these networks or parts of them fail, causing either minimal damage or catastrophic damage to the whole.

A thick vein in the leg might become clogged, and surrounding veins expand to take up the blood flow, in which case all is good, providing the blockage doesn’t move to a more important area, like the lungs. A similar sized blockage in a pulmonary vein can be catastrophic to the entire organism.

Will we only close the “important” freeways while managing or maintaining the rest? The problem is no-one wants to collapse first and avoid the rush, far more likely we all collapse together or very closely to each other part of civilization…

Hideaway
Hideaway
February 22, 2025 2:23 am

Just a thought on complexity as I continue to research as many different angles as I can possibly find about the subject, another window opened in my thinking of what gets left out.

While this is seemingly specifically about human civilizations, I also thought of how it would also apply to large stars, a purely physical complex system.

In all the work done on human settlement size and complexity from Prof Geoffrey West et al work, and there are hundreds if not thousands of research papers on this, all based on observation, the quick simple explanation is that as human settlements grow, the physical world of these grow at the power of 85% of the population growth, while the human social factors grow at an exponential rate of 115%, the inverse of the physical size. These are the scale or size power laws.

In nature this has also been observed in a variety of different fields from biology, known as “Kleiber’s law” where the power law tends to be 75%. In biology we don’t understand the increase in brain function of larger brained animals to work out if their are higher forms of complexity in memory, decision making, relationships with others and environment etc, so we don’t know if there is an equivalent to human’s settlements increase in social function by a different power law to the biologic one.

Back to human settlements… All the research I’ve found on complexity misses a simple function we know happens, Jevon’s paradox. Better technology makes whatever cheaper, which leads to greater use and uses. In our human civilization better steam engines, lead to more use of coal.

However it’s not that simple, it also leads to wider uses of coal for a variety of different purposes, that enabled other technology to develop as complexity increased. Likewise for oil and gas, initial uses not only grew, but variety of uses also grew, many of which underpinned further development of complex technology upon which modernity became reliant as it grew (think plastics, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc).

Think of civilization as a pyramid, with different underlying layers. At the very bottom is the early use of energy as in food to feed the fledgling civilization, with not many layers above. As the system becomes more complex with growth, the more efficient and different uses of materials and energy, flows both upward and downward in the pyramid, growing all the layers while adding more newer complexity on top. As civilization grows so does the complexity, with the new complexity affecting all levels below, not just it’s own.

Think of an oil well drill bit, these days it has a range of sensors and other tools for measuring many details of the hole, but without simple plastic as insulators allowing these sensitive electronic components to work, they wouldn’t exist. Of course not ‘ordinary’ plastic, it’s highly specialised plastics and polymers, non of which existed when we were first drilling for oil.

How does Jevon’s paradox fit in? All the new complexity gets cheaper in a growing system, so allows for use of the new complexity in the varying layers of the pyramid structure, including the lowest levels, as it’s now cheap enough to use for the basics of human civilization. However the feedback loop is that now the lowest levels of functioning at the bottom of the pyramid become reliant upon the greater complexity provided by the growth of complexity within the entire system.

Super giant stars as a complex system, in the field known as astrophysics, is a highly complex and rapidly evolving area of science. What we think we know, is that the supergiant stars go through a main sequence of burning hydrogen in fusion like all other stars. The mass of these super giants produces greater internal gravity and pressure than smaller mass stars, all formed from a mass of a gas cloud. Because of the higher gravity and pressure in the core, once it has finished fusing hydrogen, the force of the energy from this fusion diminished, and the star begins to collapse in on itself, which increases internal pressure heating up the star further, allowing the combination of increased gravity and heat to start helium fusion.

To not turn this into a long drawn out astrophysics lesson, what happens is that convection currents from the hot core, go to the surface, with the fusion energy stopping the star from collapsing in on itself, with cooler surface gases and elements falling into the star, which sets up complex interactions of pressure, gravity, fusion of different elements in different layers, interconnecting with each other (hopefully not too many physicists are rolling their eyes in the very simplistic explanation).

The higher pressure and temperatures in the core and layers near the core are in a constant flux of interactions, with the higher element fusion dependent upon the earlier heat, pressure and gravity. At some point these super massive stars get to fusing iron, that absorbs energy instead releasing energy, so the energy that stopped the star from imploding into itself drops dramatically. It’s this implosion after it’s used it’s energy that causes a supernova by the whole system collapsing upon itself.

I can see the fusion of higher elements and the distribution throughout the system as a type of Jevon’s paradox, creating more energy for further fusion, keeping the system going, while affecting every aspect of the existing system.

The largest stars also give off the most energy in luminosity, solar winds and mass ejections, while the internal forces seem to become more efficient. I’m wondering if it’s a trait of highly complex systems to have huge efficiencies and inefficiencies at the same time in different aspects or locations of the system and these external inefficiencies are an inherent facet of complex systems. In other words the larger the complex system the larger the waste heat almost by definition.

Back to human civilization, again.. Given all the complex interactions affecting every layer of complexity and the currents transferring complexity into every aspect of the modern world, it becomes more obvious to me that at some point when the energy can no longer increase, to drive growth in complexity, the interactions that rely on the higher complexity will cease to function, rapidly negatively affecting even the bottom aspects of the complexity pyramid, because complexity has affected everything, leading to a very rapid implosion of 8 point whatever billion humans in our civilization.

Our energy cost of energy is the equivalent of stars fusing higher elements until they reach iron, which doesn’t give off energy during fusion, it uses energy in that reaction instead. Perhaps Renewables and Nuclear are civilization’s analogues to this, in using more energy in their mining, manufacture, construction and deployment, while we lie to ourselves about their net energy…

……………..

This was meant to be a short post, but got away from me. It’s still a work in progress, but I’m coming to the conclusion that civilization and every other complex self adapting system all follow basic universal laws of physics we don’t yet fully understand. Yet observation tells us that the largest systems are the fastest to collapse at the end of their lifespan, when they can no longer maintain energy requirements…

Sorry for the long post, it’s just so highly complex….

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 22, 2025 9:51 pm

This theory is too complex to explain it to the masses and therefore will collapse. 🤣

Seriously though. I think that Hideaway has the best complete analysis of the ECOC and ECOM predicament.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 23, 2025 4:17 am

sorry I meant energy cost of energy ECOE and energy cost of materials

but energy cost of everything is probably most apt.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 23, 2025 3:26 pm

Rob…. “One key feature (besides denial) that distinguishes the human brain from other brains is its ability to construct and understand abstract hierarchies of ideas, as demonstrated by our language and its ability to communicate and facilitate the enhancement of complex ideas.

I do wonder about other animals like Elephants, Whales and Dolphins, that have large brains, and also have this ability, but we just don’t understand their use of such intelligence.

Perhaps they have enough intelligence to know that destroying the surrounding ecosystem is a bad idea and communicate this to each other. They all definitely communicate with each other very effectively so have what we would consider ‘language’, that we just don’t (and probably can’t) understand.

The part about our energy use going to access lower grades of metals and minerals and lower fossil energy sources, in a mad rush to build more energy machines ,fusion, fission, solar, wind, geothermal, batteries, EVs etc, being the equivalent of a large star fusing iron, which uses energy instead of providing energy, scares the hell out of me, as it means we are much closer to collapse than I thought..

I only thought of this connection/analogy when I realised the Jevon’s paradox effect of complexity working on all lower forms of material gathering. The cheapness of the complexity as it’s used on such a scale, means simple tractors are not so simple anymore. We now rely upon computer guided tractors assisted with GPS location for planting and harvesting grain crops to get maximum yields.

Go back to old tractors, which are less fuel efficient and the yield is lower as the farmer cannot get the exact distance apart for plants as accurately as the computers.. likewise for spraying, fertilizing, harvesting. Any retracement of complexity, means less efficiency, lower yields, more fertilizer, fuel and sprays in an attempt to compensate. It’s exactly the same for every mining operation and every other operation where we use the natural world for our benefit.

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 23, 2025 6:31 pm

And of course, that huge gap is caused by doing the one and only thing that nobody else does.

I failed to annoy Art in my comment yesterday. Here’s what he said:

Appreciate your thoughts, even if I don’t share them. If fire doesn’t belong in the equation for living in balance with nature, where do you draw the line?
Do we strip out all technology—arrows, spears, stone tools, language?
Follow that logic far enough, and humans wouldn’t have lasted 10,000 years.

Not sure what he’s saying. But I think it’s along the normal human supremacy logic of, “But without fire and the other technology, humans would have had a much shorter run in the history books… and you and I would’ve never been born.”

Which I would answer back with, “Yes, but you make it sound like that’s a bad thing. Sounds exactly how it should’ve gone down in the history books to me. But humans dodged that fate by cheating (fire) and because of it, we are now responsible for the only species induced mass extinction that this planet (perhaps galaxy) will ever see.”

paqnation
Reply to  paqnation
February 24, 2025 3:44 pm

Looks like I actually might’ve struck a nerve with Art. He had some time to sleep on it and replied again to my comment.

You can’t just claim fire led to the human predicament—you need data to back it up.

Evidence from Wonderwerk Cave (South Africa) and Gesher Benot Ya’aqov (Israel) shows hominids controlled fire at least 1 million years ago, and it was widespread by the time Homo sapiens emerged (~300,000 years ago).

Yet, for nearly 300,000 years, human population remained stable at under 1 million.

The first measurable population growth didn’t begin until ~10,000 years ago, with the Neolithic Revolution and the shift to agriculture. There’s no evidence that fire alone caused population increases, species declines, or pollution spikes—including carbon emissions—until farming enabled large-scale ecological transformation.

If you’re making a claim, you need evidence—not just a story that fits your narrative.

Guess I’ll have to put on my David Attenborough field costume and go digging for the evidence. While I’m at it, I’ll gather all the evidence that shows sapiens were zapped with full consciousness around 100-200kya. When I’m done with that, I’ll move onto proving once and for all that God does not exist.😊

I don’t think Art sees the big picture. And based on his 2nd to last paragraph, I’m not even sure if he believes this totally common-sense statement: the only possible way to get to agriculture is by way of conquering fire.

Anonymous
Anonymous
Reply to  Hideaway
February 23, 2025 4:04 am

The difference is we have intelligence and cooperation to work around & slow down the process of rapid collapse into a possible contraction. Purely physical systems like the stars do not and hence their rapid collapse is inevitable.

We cannot defy the law of physics, but we do have a shot at slowing down the rapid & disastrous collapse you guys here seem to blindly believe based on one person’s idea. How well we do then depends on the level of cooperation amongst human (which unfortunately is not high).

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Anonymous
February 23, 2025 2:44 pm

Hi Nony, …. “The difference is we have intelligence and cooperation to work around & slow down the process of rapid collapse into a possible contraction.

Can you please explain how intelligence and cooperation work around the physics of entropy and dissipation of the materials we use back into the environment, plus how a process of degrowth of everything, including complexity also works.

How do we gain access to really low grade energy, metals and minerals without the modern complexity of the required modern technology in gaining access to these things?

I’m looking for this type of feedback, as I’d really like to be wrong about all this!!

Also given the history of past civilizations and current direction of humanity as a whole, how likely do you really think our intelligence and cooperation are really going to slow down the process of rapid collapse??

Ian
Ian
Reply to  Hideaway
February 23, 2025 5:30 pm

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with everything that you are saying about the collapse of complexity based on limits of physics and entropy.. apart from the speed of collapse.

I cannot explain in detail because the whole system is too complex for one person to understand. I’m just thinking along the lines of – as one part or several parts (of the entire system) faces decline, as a community of living things we will naturally attempt to work around it with everything we have, even if it’s just to slow down the “collapse”. This can be in the form of increased competition (wars) for the limited resources or increased cooperation though the former is more likely.

To the observer embroiled within the competition zones it may seem like a rapid collapse, but taking a vantage point above the entire civilization, it may look like an overall gradual decline with certain pockets facing faster declines while the others remaining stable, and these pockets undergoing declines may change regions over time with the overall effect being the decline of civilization back to a more primitive way of life.

It may that because of complexity every part is interconnected worldwide and that will lead to a domino effect of collapse. That’s true if you consider every aspect of our industrial civilisation. But are these modern things really necessary? We can always channel the limited resources we have towards the non-discretionary only especially agriculture. (even if it’s just by increasing the number of manual workers in the fields without machines and reduction in livestocks farming). It’s only the poor city dwellers like me that will suffer more if there’s a food collapse.

I do not have children. I require very little in life to be happy, and I belong to team nature (ironically as a city person). So i don’t think i have any cognitive biases here.

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Ian
February 24, 2025 12:24 pm

Yes (to both your comments).

As you may already be aware, I have had this conversation multiple times with Hideaway before. At this point, it’s a matter of belief, or rather, should I say, conviction about the nature of reality. As I don’t really know myself how things will play out, I just respect there can be several ways to see the world and now (try to) shut up.

In any case, more fundamentally, to me, now, life is not about getting there, avoiding that, etc. Just presence suffices. Ahh, I don’t know how to express it…

On a more practical note, I recently finished reading this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/989670.The_Humanure_Handbook (

Click to access Humanure_Handbook.pdf

) and that one https://books.google.fr/books/about/Vida_em_Sintropia.html?id=0vmdEAAAQBAJ (not available in english).

Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Ian
Ian
Reply to  Charles
February 25, 2025 2:06 am

Thanks for sharing.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Ian
February 24, 2025 8:14 pm

Hi Ian, thanks for the response..

It may that because of complexity every part is interconnected worldwide and that will lead to a domino effect of collapse.”

This is what I’m expecting in the future when overall energy availability starts to decline at an accelerating rate, assuming nothing else breaks first.

I expect the first part of collapse to be debt defaults and financial chaos, brought on by inflation that CBs and govts cannot control. People in the Western nations are already suffering from a ‘cost of living crises’ that no-one in the mainstream attributes to the combination of higher energy costs and higher energy costs of minerals and metals, plus the burden of unattributed inflation in asset costs, which is real inflation to those without assets.

But are these modern things really necessary? We can always channel the limited resources we have towards the non-discretionary only especially agriculture. (even if it’s just by increasing the number of manual workers in the fields without machines and reduction in livestocks farming)

Firstly the “modern things” really are necessary in the mining of fossil fuel energy, and metals and minerals. The grades of nearly everything are so low, that only our complexity with high energy use is keeping the flow going. The simple steel tools, still comes from iron ore mined in Australia, shipped to China, smelted there, forged into tools there, then shipped overseas, to large ports, then transported by diesel trucks to the nearest “shop/shops” to wherever you live.

In a collapse situation, where central control goes out the window, where does the cooperation and coordination towards non discretionary agriculture, with more manual workers come from? Who is directing whom to become the manual laborers when they use to be teachers or engineers or managers or hairdressers in the city? Where is the accommodation and facilities for all these extra workers, close to the farms, which use to be huge grain enterprises with large tractors and very few workers. Where and how does food get to these new manual laborers, who enforces that they don’t breed animals for their own use with almost nothing going back to the cities?

Realistically, I look at past civilization collapses for a guide on the way down, except this time we have 8.2B humans, not a few hundred thousand to a couple of million like previous civilization collapses. The prior civilization collapses all had plenty of virgin forest/jungle for the refugees from collapse to retreat to, we no longer have that luxury.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Hideaway
February 24, 2025 10:44 pm

I forgot to add how we are leaving the Holocene very rapidly with the damage we’ve done to the climate and environment, so what makes the odds of any type of agriculture possible in such a situation?

We were never able to settle into any type of civilization before the Holocene, despite 100,000+ years of Homo sapiens existence, so why will the future with wild climate and weather conditions make it possible?

Ian
Ian
Reply to  Ian
February 25, 2025 1:58 am

I’ll reply here to avoid the continue narrowing of threads.

Thanks for the replies. I would think the serious limiting factor is the amount of arable land we have left for agriculture (which means i’ll have to “escape” somewhere with this in mind in future). As for coordination & control and tools/equipment availability, that may actually be less of an issue at least at the initial stages. I did read somewhere that farming is actually a lot more difficult than what an inexperience person like me tend to assume though.

But like Charles said I still think we can’t know for sure what will happen. There’s an entire spectrum of possibilities and severity for how this will play out. Time will tell!

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Ian
February 25, 2025 2:30 pm

I did read somewhere that farming is actually a lot more difficult than what an inexperience person like me tend to assume though.

It is. I would say, like every complex skill, you need 10 years of regular practice (by that I mean, roughly the weekly time of at least a part-time job) to see the whole picture. Then is the start of the path towards mastery.

Maybe, it can go faster if you have a skilled teacher and are not stubborn like me (meaning that, you follow your teacher’s way and do not try to find yours)

But, that’s if you want to keep doing things the way they have been done and are thus bound to continue failing.

So the reason I didn’t want to follow any teacher’s way is that agriculture, as practiced in the mainstream, doesn’t feel right to me (even at a low scale): it is extractive, destructive, goes counter-flow of natural processes. Just plain evil: raze the ground, then till, then plant your plants, then fight every plants and animals except yours and provide everything for your plants, then harvest and repeat. Human centered all the way. Full of separation and dominion. To me, this is not a way which can work for very long. And indeed it does not.

However, I think part of the difficulty comes from the fact that we usually approach the task in a purely technical manner (because our culture tells us so), rather than be guided by the heart. And another part of the difficulty comes from the fact that we are starting (in most places on earth), from extremely degraded land.

Ernst Gotsch presents the way life travels through space and time with this graph:

In his interpretation, life naturally follows a path of aggradation leading to an increase in complexity, the natural succession. It goes in a direction opposite to entropy: life creates more life.

Except human beings and their domesticated animals. (Ernst opinion is that some human groups did not adapt to the forest gaining ground because of the deglaciation happening 12000 years ago, and so they started waging war on the forests to keep the conditions of the steppes. I don’t know it that’s true. It’s a fun story to tell, though)

Anyway, Ernst Gotsch distinguishes three broad systems in this succession: colonization, accumulation and abundance. Colonization corresponds to the bootstraping of life (from bare rock to the first soil and plants), then accumulation starts until there is enough dead organic matter to cover the soil all year long, then is the start of abundance.

Each system has the life forms (and thus plants and animals) which are appropriate to its specific conditions (and needs). Basically, human beings are animals of the abundance phase.

Because of the way (most) agriculture has been practiced and other human impacts, most agriculture is now done on land that has regressed to “accumulation”. And it cannot work: the soil requires the accumulation plants (which this culture calls weeds, hence tilling and herbicides), the plants are not adapted (they require too much, hence fertilizers), pests attacks sick maladapted plants which are going to further deplete a fragile soil (hence pesticides).

All our “solutions” stem from our misunderstanding of the natural processes of life, of an incorrect interpretation, of a war against natural flows, (solutions to problems created from previous solutions <= that’s not Gotsch, but Fukuoka, among others).

So this starts to change (individually and collectively), the day we stop waging war. Farming methods which do not go counter-flow but act in the same direction as life are a way to travel together with life towards abundance. And, once the system is back to abundance, are easier, effortless (in the sense of the absence of friction, more optimal). But, most places are very degraded, and human beings (me included) are still going in all sort of strange directions, and skills are lacking, and there are many humans, and, and, and (all which Hideaway and other depressed and rightly so collapsnik will tell you). So, I guess, a man reaps what he sows.

Real change starts in our heart, with the desire for life, striving to observe and listen, finding pleasure and our function in the living community, in service to the macro-organism. (I know this sounds cheesy: but is it? Or are we programmed by 12000 years of bad habits?)

I try to follow natural farming (Masanobu Fukuoka) and syntropic farming (Ernst Götsch). To me, both are saying roughly the same thing, but within different philosophical frameworks, cultural traditions and diffferent (not really opposing) technical details. Only Ernst Götsch is probably bolder on following natural succession further along its path. Fukuoka had some more luxury for time and a more primitive, less scientific outlook. Both are dear to me, as well as Anastassia Makarieva with the theory of the biotic pump.

Today, I was in the mood for writing all this. Just my opinions 🙂
There, really, at this point, are no guarantee. That is, for those who are expecting a particular outcome.

Still, there can be joy, there is constant renewal, there is.

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Charles
February 25, 2025 3:23 pm

40 years ago if anyone wanted to build a shed on their farm for whatever purpose, you went and built the shed, or contracted someone to do it.

Now if you want to build a shed for some purpose, you have to get a planning permit, including technical details (from professional services at your cost) to make sure it’s going to be compliant in a number of ways. It often takes several different professional services to write reports to pass the ‘planning’ aspect.

Then you need a building permit, to make sure it’s compliant with relevant building codes, again more cost. Then you either build it yourself or get a contractor to do it, once you have gone past all the permits..

To farm, you need money and a money source, plus you are in competition with other farmers, who are all trying to make money to pay all the costs involved and eke out an existence for themselves and their families. There are rates to pay, land tax, water access fees, insurance, most of these have gone up in price well in excess of official inflation. Small farms are subject to exactly the same packaging and handling rules and regulations for products sold to the public, all in the name of ‘food safety’ or ‘quality control’ and end up with approximately the same hurdles to pass as large corporate farms.

The larger the farm, the less per acre is paid in all these types of fees and expenses. These farms also have economies of scale in using less labor per unit area by having large machinery often automated if large enough. The system we live in favors the economies of scale, which is making the small farm less viable, unless you have a favorable niche market, which only will work in relatively good times.

I expect the situation to be more skewed towards larger farms as we head into collapse, as the system sees these as more efficient, which they are in energy terms, of what produces a lot of food for cities, despite being totally reliant on fossil fuels.

Lack of oil (diesel) in particular, along with fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides etc, will effect the corporate large farms far more than small farms far faster. Food just not getting to cities will be one of largest signs of very immanent collapse, but I still expect govts to be pushing for larger farms right up to the point where they lose control.

This is also before we consider the rapidly changing climate that is likely to make any form of agriculture unviable anyway, which seems to be overlooked too often, because all of us have denial genes that kick in when something threatens our world and life view …

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Hideaway
February 25, 2025 11:15 pm

Yes. The system is crazy, obsolete. Just let it rot and die.

At some time, a lucrative and useful (but not that easy) business may be to take some 0 rate credit from the system desperate to make more liquidities, buy the land of a large agricultural exploitation (see the vocabulary we are using in our culture), divide it in smaller plots and sell them individually (that is, if there are still property rights, notaries, land registers by then…)
Basically the same idea as real estate, but in the opposite direction.
That’s just a random idea: I certainly don’t have the guts, energy, means to do that 🙂 I just lower my expectations and try to avoid the crazy system.

You are right. Farming as a business has most probably a limited timespan. Farming has a limited timespan. And in a way, that’s what is beautiful with Ernst method: you enrich the whole community of life while getting something that you need. You accomplish your function and get rewarded for it. Guided by inner pleasure. And in the end, there is (in most part of the world) a forest: you did your part in getting the location revert back to where the macro-organism wants it to be, instead of fighting, struggling constantly.

Yes, there are no easy answers and we all love different things.

Best.

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 25, 2025 11:26 pm

Thank you.

I do hope to have a few of my own beds again this year but I’m going to focus on fewer crops that I enjoy eating, keep well into winter, and are not too hard to grow like spinach, kale, carrots, and beets. The beets I grew last year are keeping well in the fridge and I’m still eating them. Just made another 2L batch of refrigerator pickled beets.

That’s great.

Ian
Ian
Reply to  Charles
February 25, 2025 6:20 pm

Very interesting and all very new to me! Saving your post for future reference and research – i.e. the rabbit hole

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 22, 2025 8:36 am

I don’t know what is going on, or why they are doing this. It’s bewildering. Matt Ridley is in denial about overshoot so he may be missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley

Stellarwind72
February 21, 2025 10:46 pm

Israel drops leaflets threatening Gaza’s population ‘leave or die’
https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-drops-leaflets-threatening-gazans-leave-or-die

Israel has sparked global outrage after dropping leaflets over the besieged Gaza Strip, warning Palestinians to either cooperate with its forces or face forced displacement or eradication.

The messages, written in Arabic, carried explicit threats, including the chilling statement: “The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza cease to exist.”

The move, condemned as a psychological warfare tactic, has intensified concerns over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, with many seeing the leaflets as an open admission of ethnic cleansing.

States committing genocide usually try to conceal their crimes. Israel isn’t even trying to hide its genocide.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 21, 2025 10:48 pm

Here is a full translation of the leaflet, apparently twitter/X won’t fully embed posts longer than 280 characters.

“To the honorable people of Gaza,

After the events that have taken place, the temporary ceasefire, and before the implementation of Trump’s mandatory plan—which will impose forced displacement upon you whether you accept it or not—we have decided to make one final appeal to those who wish to receive aid in exchange for cooperating with us. We will not hesitate for a moment to provide assistance.

Reconsider your position. The world map will not change if all the people of Gaza cease to exist. No one will feel for you, and no one will ask about you. You have been left alone to face your inevitable fate. Iran cannot even protect itself, let alone protect you, and you have seen with your own eyes what has happened. Neither America nor Europe care about Gaza in any way. Even your Arab countries, which are now our allies, provide us with money and weapons while sending you only shrouds.

There is little time left—the game is almost over.

Whoever wishes to save themselves before it is too late, we are here, remaining until the end of time.”

Stellarwind72
February 21, 2025 8:33 am

How Elite Surplus and Inequality Lead to Societal Upheaval with Peter Turchin | TGS 164

To be honest, I disagree with him about Trump. I believe that Trump poses a grave danger to what remains of American democracy. As an alternative, I think America needs someone more like FDR. Surface level reforms won’t cut it. We need deep systemic change to address what led to the rise of Trump in the first place.

AJ
AJ
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 21, 2025 12:04 pm

This was a most enlightening conversation. Too bad Turchin is a techno-optimist and overshoot unaware because then he would see that there is truly no hope for our PREDICAMENTS.

However, that said he is brilliant in diagnosing where societies go wrong in that over time they overproduce elites and immiserate the other 90% of the population. He gets it with regard to this having occurred in the U.S. since the 1980’s when real wages stagnated for the lower classes while the ranks of the 1% oligarchs increased.

How to “save” the U.S. requires a more equal sharing of wealth and avoid violent rebellion. He also sees the future as very contingent on decisions that some of the elite do (such as Trump), “the most important thing a dictator can do is appoint the right people”; hence maybe Musk and RFK Jr. can make positive change. He also said that “all good comes from collective action”. Dems at the moment are pushing violence and that would be counter productive. It would be better if both sides tried to make the system more equitable but with declining resources I doubt that’s possible.

AJ

Stellarwind72
Reply to  AJ
February 21, 2025 12:56 pm

Frankly, I don’t think the Trump administration has any desire to reduce wealth inequality.

nikoB
nikoB
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 21, 2025 2:08 pm

Tend to agree. Billionaires will not let their wealth go as that removes their power.

For someone with TDS you can still see very clearly. 😁

Hideaway
Hideaway
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 21, 2025 2:49 pm

I also watched, but have been reticent to put in my 2c worth, as all I took from this discussion was we have another expert in a field, that is so engrossed in their work/findings that they no longer see the forest for the trees.

Early on he did briefly mention that whole societies were wiped out in the neolithic period because of overpopulation, with the groups blaming each other, lots of blood spilled then revenge until virtually no-one left in the area.

Any techno-optimist that understands how 4 million humans meant overpopulation in some areas, that doesn’t understand 8,200 million humans is a problem has lost touch. The later hand wave of solar and batteries getting cheaper solving energy, climate, etc, even Nate Hagens took a deep breath and moved on.

This highlights the problem of complexity as a physical law as real as thermodynamic laws. It’s very, very complex, not simple laws like thermodynamics.

A complex self adapting system has so many moving parts, that leaving out any major, and possibly even minor aspect can render the entire conclusions as irrelevant. In Turchin’s case his theories of too many elites has probably worked in the last 10,000 years of increasing energy use, material use and complex technology development, in a stable climate with background levels of extinctions.

However to think the same will work in the period going forward of less energy, less materials, chaotic climate, more extinctions and collapsing technology is puerile at best.

I’m not saying his research about elites is waste, I’m sure it’s part of the overall big picture, but is not the sole main event, because of everything he leaves out.

The future will be totally different from the past, because the parameters operating are completely different from the past. It will be a world of less energy, less materials, more chaotic climate, decreasing species diversity, with greater levels of pollution leading to a more toxic environment for life in general.

The only way to look at the future is from the view of what happens to complex self adapting systems in a similar situation of where their major sources of energy, materials and environment change for the worse. The results are always the same, the system changes drastically, with the largest systems tending to have the fastest collapse, whereas the smallest systems last much longer with their collapse possibly giving time for adaptation to the changed parameters.

All higher lifeforms are very complex self adapting systems and all have a very fast collapse that we call death. A human body is composed of up to 30-40 trillion cells, with interactions vastly more complicated than our civilizations. We can adapt up to a point with new and different foods, environments etc, but a change too great for the body to overcome, or too little energy intake, and the body collapses in death, which is the rapid breakdown of every part of the highly complex system.

Stellarwind72
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 21, 2025 4:21 pm

Our monetary system must growth or else it will collapse, and we’ve hit physical limits to growth, but a way to fake real growth is to concentrate growing paper wealth in the accounts of the elite.

We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. We will have to let go sooner or later, and when we do, the whole Ponzi scheme will unravel. How would we even begin to transition away from a debt-based money system?

Charles
Charles
Reply to  Stellarwind72
February 22, 2025 3:59 pm

My guess, all money will lose value fairly rapidly and then life will be about survival. (which doesn’t necessarily mean everybody against everybody: that’s part of the current myths, social darwinism and such)

AJ
AJ
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 21, 2025 10:00 am

Loved this discussion. Very ethical docs who explain the persistence of the Covid antigen in the body as referenced in the Yale study above. And a good explanation of the whole seriously flawed mRNA transfection approach (except from a Pharma/Medical System making money approach). If RFK Jr. does anything it should be to ban mRNA “shots” or at least take away the EUA for them and bring back liability for all “vaccines”.

AJ

Stellarwind72
February 20, 2025 11:06 am

I noticed that one of my posts got deleted. Is there any reason why?

paqnation
Reply to  Rob Mielcarski
February 20, 2025 12:41 pm

What a tease. Now I’m super curious what that post said.