Today the Wall Street Journal ran an interview with Mike Ruppert (who got me started by publishing my first article on his site, From The Wilderness). It is a sympathetic article, in which the subject of the imminent, inevitable collapse of industrial civilization is afforded a calm and thoughtful treatment.Feed that to your donkey!
[Watch the trailer for the film "Collapse" which features Mike, and which, not coincidentally, opens tomorrow.]
19 comments:
Yes, this is significant in the respectful way the WSJ handled it.
The good news is many thoughtful people are beginning to prepare their minds for the inevitable collapse.
I laughed at the line, in the trailer, "you don't have to run faster than the bear... just faster than the slowest camper." I laughed, then I held still for a moment. This is essentially what you pointed to in Reinventing Collapse. As wonderful as schadenfreude can be, the real, physical issues which lie beneath it keep me up at night. 'A Brisk Day in Hell,' indeed.
It's nice to see Mike back, on top of his game, which is investigative journalism and attempting to get the word out so folks can get as prepared as they can. A true hero, that man.
Kudos to the WSJ and the director.
not a good sign that wsj gave favorable review; unless u are 'bring it on'. they are possibly hedging their bets re warning us.
re the bears. i think a more apt image would be a herd of elephants charging us.
My Donkey refuses it because he does not want to be part of the Corn Economy...
Mr Orlov - That donkey reference comparing the WSJ to Pravda continues to cement you as one of the wittiest bloggers on the Intertubes...
Keep it up!
Looking forward to seeing the movie. Thanks for telling us about the WSJ interview. -- Todd
I sometimes become sufficiently immersed in the environment of people who are 'on the same page' re peak oil/collapse (as in: it's happening) to begin thinking that we are actually a significant voice out there.
It takes a visit to a comment section following such an article in Pravda, sorry WSJ, to be brought back to earth by the flood of cornucopian koolaid, flowing freely and merrily as it carries us toward the cliff's edge.
In response to:
"It takes a visit to a comment section following such an article in Pravda, sorry WSJ, to be brought back to earth by the flood of cornucopian koolaid, flowing freely and merrily as it carries us toward the cliff's edge."
And it takes very little face to face contact with typical Americans to realize that many of them cannot and will never accept the fact that they are, in effect, poor. The exceptionalism (i.e., delusion) is so ingrained that you can't penetrate. I spoke to a group suggesting a few practical things, such as cutting each other's hair, and the response was really disappointing. People aren't ready to do anything, even to use a basic tool like scissors and a trimmer, or just scissors. By the time I mentioned a sewing machine, there was hostility in the air.
"People aren't ready to do anything, even to use a basic tool like scissors and a trimmer, or just scissors. By the time I mentioned a sewing machine, there was hostility in the air."
That comment is spot on. There is a major disconnect with reality going on out there at the moment, with a lot of top-down support from the President and his administration. Something to the effect that we still have the funds that the Wall Street banksters stole, and that the country can continue to borrow, with interest, from the rest of the world to maintain the illusion that we still have that wealth. Jim Kunstler addresses this issue in a fine post he did today at his web site.
Nice, must keep an eye out for that. I especially like the point that left and right are now irrelevant in the face of our impending crunch.
People don't like the thought of reverting to peasant-hood. It's only the peasants, you see, who cut their own hair or sew their own clothes.
My wife and I had a really amusing experience in South Africa once (in 2007), when we were living there. We had bought a pizza and were sitting on the ground eating it, when an elderly black man walked up to us and said "I have never seen white people sit on the ground before."
That's the same sort of sentiment people express to me when they ask "did you bike today?" And I say "yes." And they respond "through the snow?" Again: "yes." I'm not sure what else to say, and neither are they. There's a comprehension gap.
I watched the trailer and was surprised at the clips stressing "We were right!"... I think a little more stealth would be helpful. But I look forward to seeing the full-length documentary. And when facing a collapse, questions of style are secondary.
Tony said:
"People don't like the thought of reverting to peasant-hood. It's only the peasants, you see, who cut their own hair or sew their own clothes.
My wife and I had a really amusing experience in South Africa once (in 2007), when we were living there. We had bought a pizza and were sitting on the ground eating it, when an elderly black man walked up to us and said "I have never seen white people sit on the ground before."
That's the same sort of sentiment people express to me when they ask "did you bike today?" And I say "yes." And they respond "through the snow?" Again: "yes." I'm not sure what else to say, and neither are they. There's a comprehension gap."
This is a perfect example of the mindset that Riesman called "outer-directed" (seeking/needing approval of peers or cohort, etc.) in _The Lonely Crowd_.
My grandfather told me that when he lectured on this stuff in the sixties he would write on the board the abbreviation OD (outer-directed), then cross it out and write FD (for Fucking Dumb). The students loved it... yet, here we are.
It's not going to be easy.
After all this I'm half expecting a market response from the people who've been trying to stick out their portfolio collpasing and deciding to get out now, but what do I know? And there has been quite a bit that's been mainstream -- in addition to this, last night's daily show took the opportunity on the anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall to make some very "orlovian" comparisons of the US to Soviet Russia. (It's at the end of the segment.)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-november-10-2009/legends-of-the-wall
I should also mention that there was a bit in the Guardian yesterday about a co-called whistleblower at the IEA. Thinking back though, the Guardian is British and has covered peak oil before, so even though the story is significant I don't think it'll register on many Americans' radar at least.
When I was at the beach with friends this summer I ran into a British couple. They were wearing crocs. We chatted, and finally they mentioned that they probably wouldn't be able to be flying over anymore, what with "having to get local" and all. This was in the middle of the energy troubles. They obviously didn't want to bother people who didn't know about it if they could, almost speaking in code as they were, and it mostly washed over my friends heads. One of us expressed his faith in innovation and the couple just looked at each other.
I watched it. For those who just want the interesting bit without all the fawning and the preening and the posturing:
When the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union's economy was in shambles, the Soviets didn't have too many friends left because they had acted arrogantly on the world stage, they invaded and occupied Afghanistan, and they had a new, young, charismatic leader... who won the Nobel Peace Prize! Nah, this is completely different. So
So does it hurt when your empire collapses? A little. Like circumcision... That's not too bad then? ...if you are 90% foreskin.
Naw, we all saved, Obama's gonna have a jobs forum. Glad to see him focusing on the problem. Unemployment claims dropped to only a little over 500,000 last week, the lowest since January, when the snowball began to roll.
Someone who is all hot and bothered over "conspiradroid moonbats" (sic) wrote in to say that Ruppert deserves life in prison for spreading lies about 9/11 and that Jim Kunstler is great.
It's really too bad, but the Charter release is HD only. This might not be too bad if everyone besides me has HD, but somehow I doubt it.
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