It’s like the difference between a well-constructed fiction story [Sharon] and non-fiction [the personal reality as perceived by the individual. As Tom Clancy once said, fiction has to make sense.

Fair enough, but let’s also recognize that those people looking for tomorrow’s disaster around every single corner – there’s no escape, you know, 99% of people are predicting it – are asking to be tarred with the ‘wacko’ brush. Let’s also differentiate between people preparing for lean time (which is perfectly normal)and those preparing for The Big One while simultaneously telling us there is No Hope.

rod, you miss the point.
there is a fundamental philosophical difference between the hoarding bunker wackos and those advocating sustainability. and this difference affects to pragmatic responses to contemporary issues.
simplistically, it breaks down between who fear an strange new world order, and prepare themselves in the most defensive and exclusive segregated ways possible to ‘protect’ themselves from the imaginary menace that is conspiring to come for them and what little they have.
this is a far cry from making progressive decisions now that will confront, and integrate with, real-life scenarios in the globalized future.
setting aside all of their silly science fiction metaphors, the main failure of the black helicopter paranoids, is that they offer no rational workable ideas for a globalized modern world. the failure is a pragmatic one.
if people spent more time considering what was going on right now in the brasilian rainforests or in the minds of the new generation of chinese provincial officials, and less time quoting star trek or calling up something that happened outside of constantinople in 1018, all of us would be better prepared and equipped for what our shared future holds for us.

Mr. Dreher, @ 2:21 PM, writes:
“Anyway, it’s a neat trick how, if we can associate self-sufficiency, responsibility, thrift and sustainability with wackadoodlism, we don’t have to change a thing about the way we live today, because who wants to be like those nutters?”
Self-sufficiency and responsibility imply the ability to control, or at least influence, the world around one. Furthermore, that ability to control has to also be perceived as a positive thing; something that a sane person would actually want to do or be interested in doing.
I submit that there have been a number of more-or-less conscious decisions made by various members of the political/economic elites to deliberately discourage the typical commoner from attempting to take control of his/her own situation.
In this society, advertising and “public relations”–two institutions whose very existence depends on goading the commoner classes into unnecessary consumption—are deliberately subsidized through tax preferences. The accumulation of personal wealth is deliberately discouraged through taxes on capital and entitlement programs.
Entrepreneurship is deliberately discouraged; the individual who forms his/her/its own business is subtly seen as some form of oddball. We teach our children that the best they can aspire to be is someone else’s employee.
Our schools are increasingly set up to discourage competition, or to encourage it to be considered slightly shameful. (Consider the “self-esteem” movement of recent years.)
Even in the realm of personal behavior, passivity is the expected norm. Our (collective) preferred forms of entertainment are all passive: television and the aural media. Active assimilation of information (reading) is steadily declining. Many people, judging by the popularity of so-called “celebrities”, would seem to prefer “relationships” that are so one-sided that the other side (the “celebrity”) is unaware of the existence of their adoring public as individuals.
What Ms. Astyk describes may be less a matter of conscious choice and more a matter of purposefully-induced learned helplessness, for the greater profit and glory of the political and economic apex-predator classes.
Your servant,
Lord Karth

No, CAP, you miss the point Sharon is making. She’s not saying that those wackos don’t exist. She’s saying that they aren’t representative of the broader movement, but by framing discussion of preparedness as “let’s look at what the bunker nutters are up to now,” the media make it seem that anybody who takes preparedness for these contingencies — economic collapse, peak oil, etc. — is no different from the people who are ready to move to isolated compounds and stock up on ammo. You can’t possibly read Sharon’s books and her blog and mistake her for a “sky is falling!” loony; in fact, she argues that we ought to be doing all these thrifty, self-sufficient things anyway, because they are the morally responsible and sensible thing to do.

You can’t possibly read Sharon’s books and her blog and mistake her for a “sky is falling!” loony;
I’m not entirely sure about that. Back around 2008 I read some post by her (linked to by you, BTW) asking, in so many words, whether the upcoming week was the one where the economy collapsed (with infrastructure failure, food riots, etc) and thought “this woman is a bit too strident to be taken completely seriously.” Ninety seconds with teh Google didn’t uncover that exact post, but for a slightly less hysterical version of it, I present her predictions for 2009.”
Not that she doesn’t have some interesting things to say, and I think she is living an interesting, rewarding, and productive life regardless of what happens, but I think she is a bit too invested, emotionally, in the choices she made. That is to say, I don’t think she wants to see society collapse, but on the other hand, she wants to feel like she made the right tradeoffs and so she is more inclined to see evidence of this when she looks for it.

I should say also that it makes sense for people like Sharon to be strident, because the more people adopt their lifestyle, the easier it is for all of them. This is the root of the SAHM vs working mother acrimony. Each has an incentive to want as many people as possible to assume their lifestyle, because they are better off if society reinforces their choices.
I would say that this is behind Rod’s strident religious advocacy as well. It is not so much that his religious observance is being threatened, but rather the societal preferences for his choices are eroding, which is not to his advantage.

Rod’s strident religious advocacy?
Where?
I know he is an Orthodox Christian, but this is hardly an apologetics blog.
Susan Peterson

Oh, you know how it is with some people, Susan: simply being open about one’s faith — as long as one’s faith is opposed to the goals of religious and social progressives — is to be a Bible-thumping troglodyte. Is Jim Wallis a strident religious advocate? To that crowd, I’m betting not.

“Let’s just keep going as we are, and wait for science to save our bacon.”
Or “something” to save our bacon.
If you read Keegan, and Ambrose’s accounts of the D-day invasion and the behavior of the average grunt solider in the US military in WWII, their behavior was characterized by adaptability and on the fly problem solving. But that’s an attribute that seems to have been devalued and lost the past 30 years or so. I worry about what will happen when we hit that tipping point and the vast majority of our populace has become so well trained they sit on their hands during a crisis and wait for someone in authority to fix it or the “professionals” to ride to the rescue and tell them what to do.
Nothing kooky about being prepared…I learned it in Boy Scouts…
Sincerely,
Mike

Re: Ask – did most of them get through without some extremely hard times?
Yes. My father came of age in the last years of the Depression– and managed to find a job even without a high school diploma. He also fought in WWII and came home intact. On the downside afterward he buried three wives, a son, and an infant daughter. But that was a case of Awful Bad Luck, having nought to do with any public events.
Sharon cites the dreadful history of her ancestors, and I don’t want to denigrate that, but I wonder if that shades her world view toward pessimism. Meanwhile the fact that my family (my dad’s, my mom’s and my step-mom’s) came through the 20th century’s upheavals unscathed, and such griefs as they knew were wholly private, has probably formed me as a optimist, but with a sense of the tragic that is wholly personal, not communal.
Meanwhile CAPTCHA just suggested “another martini”.

There’s always another disaster lurking…that’s the nature of, well, life. Nothing whacky about taking prudent steps, but I think we can debate how one might define “prudent,” and how that definition might change based on where you might happen to be living. For example, in some places on the planet, having a personal firearm or some weapon near at hand is essential. In other places, less so. I have Mormon friends with plenty of food in their basements, and others, Mormons even, who have nothing beyond what is in their freezers and refrigerators. But all preparation in the world is for naught, I think, if one can’t problem solve their way out of a paper bag, or can’t adapt to changing conditions.
Sincerely,
Mike

The bottomline is that Sharon Astyk and others like her are organizing their entire lives around the belief that energy will become very scarce and expensive on an ongoing basis in the near future.
If that belief is false…as I think it is…then they’ve built their houses upon sand and are acting foolishly, whether they are stockpiling weapons or not.
They are forgoing opportunities and good things now based on a vision of the future that (imo) will never happen.
No doubt, her lifestyle can have some real benefits; less bustle, less waste, less stress, more community.
And no doubt history will present us all with many crises and jolts for which it is wise to be prepared.
But betting one’s life on the prospect on massive, ongoing energy scarcity in the near future?
I’m sorry, that’s absurd…as absurd as betting with Paul Ehrlich in the 70s that the world was at Peak Population and Peak Calories and faced massive global starvation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager

The Place of History, indeed. Very interesting, thanks for posting the link, Rod. I’ve never looked in on Sharon’s blog. I’m going to have to start doing so. Not only was the essay interesting, so are the commentariat.
She’s relatively relaxed about the upside and downside of the New York Times article. Lots of people would just go ballistic that the reporter didn’t act as a stenographer for their views. Yet the subject admittedly is arcane. I’ve put in a lot of time with journalists only to see a very simple, reductionist version of some issues appear in print. The commenter at Sharon’s blog who mentioned reporters’ use of go-to guys is on to something. If they have dealt with someone before, they don’t have to start from scratch. Introduce new elements and who knows what will make it in and what will be left out in the writing or editing process.
Coincidentally, Sullivan writes at this blog today about British versus American conservatism, asking why “conservatism – as opposed to pseudo-conservatism or American exceptionalism or populism or libertarianism – has had such a hard time putting down roots in America. There is something about late American capitalist culture. . . that is always about progress, success, achievement, plowing through doors, seeing bright futures – even when decline is so apparent you need goggles to ignore it. There is a core element of the tragic in conservatism. And yet America resists tragedy, denies it, moves past it, feels threatened by it. But until you have truly grappled with tragedy, you haven’t fully grappled with reality.”
I think the more arane your interests and views, the more you accept the fact that some people will stereotype you. Try, try, try, explain as much as you can. But you’ll face frustration. It’s human nature. Some things we can talk about pretty well, especially on this blog, where you encourage civility. Parents. Children. Marriage. Start moving away from that and things get dicier. Even within organizations that share a common culture.
I wasn’t an upper level hire in my current workplace, I came in at a mid-level and rose to a senior rank. So I often act as a bridge between those who know things on the micro “go through these steps” level and those who deal with the big picture. But even there, it takes a lot of work, a lot of listening, a lot of explaining, before people put down barriers and go “aha.” Sometimes it just isn’t doable, a lower-ranked person will remain firm in his view that management is bungling and clueless. Or an executive will remain convinced that the worker is petty, narrow minded, ignorant of broader goals, and overly self absorbed. Neither is accurate in his view but from where they sit, it seems, feels, true, so it must be true. Marriage counseling gets into some of that, with the technique of asking people in conflict to mirror back to each other what the spouse just said. If we have to work at these things within our own families and organizations, professions, industries, is it any wonder that people trying to explain more esoteric matters end up frustrated or stereotyped?
My hat is off to Sharon for handling it as well as she did.
Captcha: gummiest lives
Yes, they sure can get gummed up!

I see someone already brought up Paul Ehrlich – the single worst thing that ever happened to environmentalism, IMO. Every time I hear about another catastrophe in the making if wedon’t change our wicked ways, the ghost of Ehrlich steps forward in my mind’s eye and I respond ‘yeah, sure.’
Has he *ever* admitted his errors and apologized for discrediting his cause?

wait for science to save our bacon
Not science per se, but the constant operation of something as un-esoteric as the price mechanism in its unceasingly cruise-controlled calibrations, and the profit motive, and the adaptive innovation they enable to the extent they are not subverted by political intervention. Although paranoia tied to resource depletion, environmental catastrophe, technical advance, and changes in the economic structure are a constant in human history, our deepest collective troubles lie such marquee issues as the growing long-term unsustainability of federal fiscal policy, and the threat posed by those who, should they acquire advanced weapons, are susceptible to non-prudential belief systems that respect not the logic of self-preservative deterrence.
“wilmot of” – why, Rochester, you old rake – as I live and breathe!

A comment about the techno-optimism: it’s a techno-optimism that is not loaded with urgency for trying to make the techno-bet work out. Together with the complacency about how things are going that you mention and the conviction that the practical worriers are nuts is an odd (to me) lack of support for science and R&D spending, for trying to meet ambitious targets for future performance of solar tech or efficient tech or what have you (or interest in what targets would be good choices, for that matter), or for long-term efforts like the fusion-research effort in France or here.
We can of course differ – or just not know (and to some degree we can’t know at all in advance) – about the effectiveness of targeted R&D efforts. And we can doubt that particular efforts like the ITER fusion reactor are going to come to anything, or think that in general that “fusion power will stay thirty years away indefinitely.” And so on. Certainly that’s true. But, still, there’s a strange tone to the “techno-optimistic” side, a tone which is simply lack of interest, even in its own bets. Like, the most public political interest that I’ve periodically seen in R&D funding is interest in cutting funding that is seen as being “in the wrong direction”, as opposed to the right direction. That can get vehement… but I’ve rarely seen comparable support for funding R&D directions that are “in the right direction.” Far more predominant are the various memes that “we already have the tools that we need right now to solve our problems”, with the only issue being the level of adoption of those present and ready solutions, and the variety consisting of which tools are favored and which problems are mentioned. Or, of course, that the problems are overblown in the first place.
I agree with your discussion, but I wouldn’t myself call the naive consensus “techno-optimistic”, because to me that description suggests interest in the tech and in the bet itself, and I don’t see that. I see just a bland general impression that things are going to continue as they have been in our lifetimes, and that the matter merits only whatever mild interest people are already directing to it.
Which bothers me, because I’d feel safer if the other, active, interested, “this-has-to-actually-work” kind of techno-optimism were more prevalent. Because… peak oil, as a long-term historical picture, is a real problem, as are some other possibilities. We need concern with hedging our bets.

Like, the most public political interest that I’ve periodically seen in R&D funding is interest in cutting funding that is seen as being “in the wrong direction”
Hmmm. Well, I’ve seen plenty of government encouragement of alternative energy projects…though it may very wisely take the form of incentives and public / private partnerships rather than centrally-managed “R & D.”
What about the US Govt’s loan to Tesla, to encourage mass market electric vehicles?
Tax rebates for energy-efficient appliances and cars?
Outsourcing of the Shuttle program to private companies…so the best and brightest are incentivized via the prospect of huge US and foreign government contracts to develop an efficient way to colonize space?
The smartest minds in the world right now are betting massive fortunes on more energy…cheaper energy…greener energy…and the colonization of space.
How sad to build one’s entire life preparing for a regression of energy, travel, and resources if it never comes.

Rick: I’m relieved that those things are there. I wish I were surer of the security of them, and of the levels of them, into the future, given the public’s inattention to them and given their vulnerability to people looking to make political hay by talking about silly-sounding things with no constituencies yet. (And of course I want more of them.)

@JayR 5:12, writes, “I should say also that it makes sense for people like Sharon to be strident, because the more people adopt their lifestyle, the easier it is for all of them. This is the root of the SAHM vs working mother acrimony. Each has an incentive to want as many people as possible to assume their lifestyle, because they are better off if society reinforces their choices.”
I haven’t read enough of Sharon’s blog to know whether she is strident. When she has commented on Rod’s old and new blog, she has sounded quite moderate in tone. I’m not convinced stridency is related to a desire to have others join one’s lifestyle and to make it easier for a person. I believe stridency often may have a negative rather than a positive basis. Some people are more self-actualized than others. In my experience, that more than anything else explains why some say “I’ll go my way, you’ll go yours” while others insist that nothing someone else says can be right. I think the latter comes more from feeling threatened than from a desire to make it easier on themselves by wishing for more adherents to their viewpoint. There are a lot of people who face adversity and pusback, while being way ahead of the field or trailblazers, who soldier on alone for long periods of time with astonishing serenity.
In some fields I’ve studied, stridency is viewed as a red flag, because it might be a symptom of unease which then becomes attempts at domination. In real life, you can watch body language as you talk to someone and get early warning of the “I’m starting to feel uncomfortable, don’t go there” zones. (Not so in comboxes, or less easily.) I don’t see insecurity or anxiety in Sharon or Rod. It may have a small part in the working mothers or stay at home mothers battles, but at heart, I think most people just want to be understood and accepted or respected. The number who insist in an authoritarian manner that others agree with them or conform to their views precisely is just a small subset, at least it has been among people I know and hang with most often.

it’s normal for people to use times of plenty to prepare for lean times, because people with historical memory know that good times never last</i?
Yeah, but just let any state legislature try to build up a surplus for the future lean times that will surely come, and the Grover Norquists et al. will say we can’t do that! It’s stealing from the people!

trying to close tag

MikeW, I’ve read Ambrose and agree that he provides and interesting, vivid, if not all encompassing picture of the U.S. solider in World War II. (It’s a war that I find you really have to read many books about to get what was going on and even then, you realize the U.S. was spared a lot of horrors that Europe was not.) However, I disagree with you that we’ve lost our adaptability and ability at problem solving. There are industries and professions that have become quite calcified and now are scrambling to catch up and improve or even survive. But there still are workplaces where you see innovation, brainstorming, agility, and good problem solving. And the younger generation of workers actually expects to find that, many millenials believe in that approach to tackling issues.
I think it just feels sometimes like the good times are over, because we’ve gotten so used to putting up barriers in other areas and hiding behind them. Management scientists long have encouraged taking a collaborative, team oriented approach to finding solutions. And it can have good outcomes in business, to some degree, although getting it to work is not always easy. (Never underestimate the ability of control freak personalities to bring things to a screeching halt or throw monkey wrenches into the process.) And it won’t work as well in organizations that depend on or do better with top down control. You have to study an organization’s culture before deciding which elements to absorb. Still, there are enclaves where people still value adaptability and are working towards long term solutions. The trick is to demonstrate that there is a return on investment in taking that approach, that multi-discipline, multi-perspective efforts can have a good payoff.
OK, no more computer time for me this evening, too much else going on.

JayR, You can’t possibly read Sharon’s books and her blog and mistake her for a “sky is falling!” loony…I’m not entirely sure about that….for a slightly less hysterical version of it, I present her predictions for 2009…
Thank you JayR. True point.
What makes Sharon a loon is not her odd lifestyle. If that were the case, the Amish would be loons. They are not, they are a very self-sustaining group, and they understand the real world very well – every inch of their ideology fits the physical world, as they have proven over many generations.
No, she’s a loon because of her attempt to make the world fit her ideology, rather than letting practical facts guide her understanding of the world. This is the ultimate failure of liberalism – lack of acceptance of the physical world. It’s why they are such suckers for MMGW freaking out, or peak oil misunderstanding, or the population bomb, or rejecting family and children, or whatever is fashionable at the time. Sometimes they even get the facts right (say, peak oil) but completely misunderstand what the facts actually mean (again, peak oil).
Conservative loons tend to fear political power and the angry mob and like to hide out; most times and places they are wrong but not harmful, and sometimes in rough patches of history they are even right. Otoh, liberal loons are wont to use ideology to twist the physical world into a place they want it to be and thus are always wrong – they think they can change the world itself if they just work hard enough at being myopic and yell. This is why it’s rare to find rigorous science-types as liberal loons (check out the engineering department), but writers and artist-types are found as liberal loons everywhere (check out the Woman Studies or Journalism department).

“Knowing what one is talking about” is a deceptively simple phrase that is pregnant with larger implications. We do not wish to evade these implications, or pretend to be blind to them. Thus, we must admit – or, if you wish, assert – that such an emphasis is not easily reconcilable with a prior commitment to an ideology, whether it be liberal, conservative, or radical. For it is the nature of ideology to preconceive reality; and it is exactly such preconceptions that are the worst hindrances to knowing-what-one-is-talking-about. It goes without saying that human thought and action is impossible without some kinds of preconceptions – philosophical, religious, moral, or whatever – since it is these that establish the purposes of all thought and action. But it is the essential peculiarity of ideologies that they do not simply prescribe ends but also insistently propose prefabricated interpretations of existing social realities – interpretations that bitterly resist all sensible revision. – Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol, founding editorial, The Public Interest, Fall 1965.

mdavid-
that is one of the most earnest, articulate, and cockamamie analyses of liberalism that i’ve read in a long time.

This post and the comments make me think of the Panic of 1837 – an event that took place nearly 200 years ago. And in particular, this cartoon, which has a surprisingly modern atmosphere (i.e. urban, not rural).

@Rod Oh, you know how it is with some people, Susan: simply being open about one’s faith — as long as one’s faith is opposed to the goals of religious and social progressives — is to be a Bible-thumping troglodyte. Is Jim Wallis a strident religious advocate? To that crowd, I’m betting not.
Oh come now, Rod. You’ve posted time and time again on your desire for a retreat from modernity and secularism, not just for yourself, but for society as a whole. And you’ve often advocated this in a fairly forceful manner. This is beside the point, though.
My point is that this sort of thing is natural. People prefer things not just for themselves but for society, because the ease with which they live their lives is related to the extent that society mirrors their preferences. The less society reflects their preferences, the more forceful people are inclined to be in expressing said preference (and, probably, the more people react to them as unreasonable). This is the case with Sharon’s preferences about sustainable local economies, yours about modernity and religion, stay at home and working mothers (who each have valid complaints that our economy doesn’t fulfill their needs as well as it could), and so forth. In all these cases (and many more) people aren’t content to just quietly live their lives with the choices they have made because their lives are easier if other people participate.
Other beside the point things: you used the word troglodyte, not me. And yes, Jim Wallis advocates religion, even stridently. He’s a minister and a public figure. That’s what he’s about. Why would anyone think otherwise? I happen to also admire him and agree with much of his political agenda. What’s the contradiction?

@JayR, everyone has justifiable complaints that something (the economy, whatever) doesn’t meet our needs. People just have to learn not to look at everything through their own needs and to learn to think more broadly about what affects action or inaction. As easy as it is for people to sit back and cluck cluck about modernity and self absorption, the fact is, it is tremendously difficult to say, “OK, here’s how it looks to me. I might e missing something, tho, What complex set of factors may affect those who look at things differently? I gotta talk to others about this.”
Sullivan is on to something when he writes about how we have gone off course in ways that other nations havent: “There is a core element of the tragic in conservatism. And yet America resists tragedy, denies it, moves past it, feels threatened by it. But until you have truly grappled with tragedy, you haven’t fully grappled with reality.” (I purposely left out the name he mentioned as I myself see the issue as systemic.) Sully’s broader point fits in with what Sharon is saying. Being overly optimistic and overly pessimistic both can stem from having had it too easy and being unprepared for down cycles. Our consumer culture and our political culture both are premised on the idea, “you can have it all.” That is what has weakened us. That started in the 1950s with the former and in 1980, after people turned away from examining the idea of malaise, with the latter.
There need not be just Klingons or Cylons. Solutions, if we are to find them, will have to come from the practical, “let’s roll up our sleeves and work out what we need to do” types. They are out there, among ordinary working people and yes, among the leadership classes. But other elements in our culture have come to over-value righteousness and attempts to force conformity. Too many people get off on making others outcasts or enemies. That’s a weakness not a strength. Some of us who are people of faith have learned the wrong lessons. Despite our religiosity, we’ve lost sight of the fact that man is weak (we ourselves included) and that we’ll get farther with more humility and co-operation and partnering than by stereotyping each other and huddling with our own tribes. We need to have the discernment to recognize the difference between the real loonies and those who have something to offer, even if we take a cafeteria approach to their options.

Several people in this thread have brought up Paul Ehrlich vs Julian Simon. If Ehrlich losing to Simon on metals prices “discredited” environmentalism, then Simon losing to David South about timber prices and then chickening out on a second bet with Ehrlich about global average temperatures surely “discredits” techno-magicalism. Then again, Simon’s death also aptly discredits his techno-magicalism.
If you read Keegan, and Ambrose’s accounts of the D-day invasion and the behavior of the average grunt solider in the US military in WWII, their behavior was characterized by adaptability and on the fly problem solving.
Theirs was a governing paradigm that accepted and normalized the likely deaths of tens of thousands of the participants. I for one refuse to live in a society organized in such a way and will do my best to make sure we never have one.

TTT, well, the Ambrose version, interesting as it is (and I enjoyed reading his book), doesn’t begin to cover all the issues. Rod touched on some of them in one of his prior threads about World War II. I happen to believe we had no choice but to get involved in World War II. (Unlike one of the posters at Sharon’s site, I don’t believe that war was about oil. The Allied bomging of Ploesti obviously centered on the Axis’s military capacity, not on oil, per se.)
That said, we Americans do have a tendency to avoid looking at some of the darker aspects of our history. Look at how everyone here has avoided addressing Sullivan’s point. I personally think some of the conflicts over our national self image result from that. It’s easier to say “they” are responsible for decay, erosion, whatever, rather than to say “we did this right and this wrong, admitting we did this wrong doesn’t diminish what we’ve done and still do well.” We manage to do it in our business culture, at least in organizations that value learning and improvement. We rarely are able to apply those principles to national issues.
As much as I enjoy reading the essays here, there is less cross pollination among the commentariat on the threads here than I would expect. A lot of issues end up getting reactive, glancing responses although some of the dots could be connected in thoughtful ways if people had more time to think things through.
Captcha: actively discussed.
Yep, how’d you know that’s what I’m looking for?

What really discredits Paul Ehrlich is his prediction of imminent mass global starvation in the wake of what one might call “peak food production.”
Of course food calories available per capita globally has soared since the 1970s — not only keeping pace with huge population growth but far surpassing it. Obesity is the threat today; not famine.
And Ehrlich was only following in the footsteps of Malthus, who was similarly discredited.
I’m confident the energy alarmists are treading the same path too.
Whatever jolts and crises the future holds, productivity per capita will increase in the years and decades ahead, due to more and more efficient energy.

I’ve often written about the same point – all our images of the future tend to be about a techno-utopia or Armageddon, without anything in-between. As one writer put it, it’s like hearing the weather tomorrow will be an inferno or a blizzard, without allowing for other possibilities.
In the mid-20th century, the future was what Sharon calls “Klingons” – people believed the giant technological projects of the previous century would continue forever, and that a world of flying cars, domed cities and moon bases was right around the corner. In evangelical terms, they were post-millennialist, projecting that we were becoming better and better and would someday establish the Kingdom of God on Earth and ascend into the stars.
After the 1960s counterculture, though, the national mood darkened, and people began projecting a future in which technology destroyed us (what she calls “Cylons.”) In religious terms, everyone went pre-millennnialist, looking forward to the apocalypse that would leave them and a few other believers alive to create a new world. The Rapture became popular in religious circles, politics became more apocalyptic and science fiction turned to ever-darker visions. These days, most video stores have a single section for science fiction / horror, because any future they show is likely to be horrifying.
I don’t believe we will have what Sharon calls a “Klingon” future – we seem to be facing peak oil, as well as the peak of many other resources. At the same time, there probably won’t be an apocalypse, a moment when the world goes away and your life gets an exciting do-over. I suspect the world will get simpler and more traditional in the long run, and the mainstream will meet Sharon Astyk on the way there.
But let’s say peak oil is not happening, or that the things Sharon and I describe – growing our own food, re-using things, building community – will not help. In that case, it can still help people get by in this difficult economy. Or bring together isolated neighbours into a neighbourhood again. Or make us healthier. Take away one of those reasons, and the others still exist – and a simpler life, within reason, does ourselves and the world no harm.

Rick: The bottomline is that Sharon Astyk and others like her are organizing their entire lives around the belief that energy will become very scarce and expensive on an ongoing basis in the near future.
If that belief is false…as I think it is…then they’ve built their houses upon sand and are acting foolishly, whether they are stockpiling weapons or not. They are forgoing opportunities and good things now based on a vision of the future that (imo) will never happen.
Why is it foolish to turn one’s household into more of a unit of production, as opposed to consumption? Why is it foolish to build better and more complex (and economically- as well as friendship-based) relationships with one’s neighbors? Why is it foolish to acquire all the skills Sharon Astyk apparently has? It seems to me that learning dairying, gardening, horticulture, and running a small, home-based business based on the same isn’t foolish at all, but rather clever and resourceful.
I don’t have to agree with (most of) Sharon’s points to recognize her accomplishments. And so what if “peak oil” doesn’t occur anytime soon? The knowledge and resourcefulness still become part of your “investment.”
LOL to the sentient CAPTCHA: “morality dual”

Stephanie and Brian, I agree there are many intrinsic rewards to simplicity, frugality, and certainly to tightly-knit communities. I don’t disparage this at all.
But pursuing this lifestyle can involve sacrifice of real goods too: Relocation and loss of one’s existing community; foregone travel; foregone cultural and educational and leisure opportunities; curtailed opportunities for one’s children; marital stress; marginalization from the larger society.
These sacrifices might be worth it for the sake of other goods. But if the reason for the sacrifices is primarily a hyped expectation of global collapse…and if that collapse doesn’t happen…then the sacrifices and lost opportunities were in vain.
And I find that very sad…as I’ve seen it play out in different lives.

Rick, I hadn’t thought about the foregone cultural and educational opportunities. Having had some opportunities to travel, I think that is a loss. You can expand your horizons a lot by reading, but there’s nothing like actually getting to visit different places. We already have a lot of problems with insularity. Good point.

You can practice frugality in travel too. No one says you have to stay at the Marriott and eat as Le Chateau Ritz. Motel 6 (or even campgrounds in decent weather) and local diners (as recommended by locals) can allow one to travel on a budget.

I think that the idea of preparing for a difficult future can be rephrased in terms of Pascal’s wager:
If you make no effort to confront a difficult future, and this future DOES come to pass, then you will have lost INFINITELY.
If you make no effort to confront a difficult future, and this ordeal DOES NOT come to pass, then you will have gained NOTHING.
If you make an effort to confront a difficult future, and it DOES come to pass, you will have gained EVERYTHING. Perhaps you will even take deep gratification from the challenges life throws at you.
If you make an effort to confront a difficult future, and it DOES NOT come to pass, then you will have GAINED a virtuous and meaningful life, which is still SOMETHING.
Ergo, according to the Pascalian logic, the person who makes no preparation either receives nothing or loses everything. This logic would dictate that one ought to prepare for a difficult future. But this is the truth of all wisdom: we age, we face challenges and ordeals we could never fully imagine. What the modern industrialized world provides are limitless opportunities, whether through the media or through plastic surgery, to deny these fundamental changes.
future difficulties, and they happen, you
for a more chaotic and disruptive future, in which scarcity beco

If you make no effort to confront a difficult future, and this future DOES come to pass, then you will have lost INFINITELY.
Really? Infinitely? Even survivalists die.
The best that can be said for survivalists is that they increase their odds of surviving for a period of time in a world gone to pot. Hooray.
In return, they sacrifice years of present goods.
Too me it is a lousy trade-off…at least when survival preparations are taken to extremes and require moving, living off the grid, etc. (Of course I support simple and low-key preparations…cutting debt, learning simple skills, having a few weeks food and supplies on hand, knowing one’s neighbors, etc).
You want to know a really powerful survival tool?
Caloric restriction.
Cut your calorie intake 30%, live in a state of constant hunger, and you are very likely to add years to your dotage.
Most people, though, don’t want to live their life in constant hunger to boost their life expectancy from 82 to 88. And I don’t think Pascal would say they should.
A few years of increased life in difficult circumstances is not of “infinite value” when weighed against years of deprivation.

Rick,
Everyone should have at least a week of supplies on hand, and some emergency resources like a camping stove, lanterns, etc. Also: a small stash of cash. That’s just common sense, as no part of the country is truly free of the threat of natural disaster which can destroy power grids and hinder shipments.
And playing right along, CAPTCHA gives me volcanos 10.

Jon,
I agree 100%. What I think would be extreme is, say, moving from Philadelphia in the expectation that it will be flooded soon because of global warming.
Or rigorously eating local, not for health or lifestyle reasons, which are fine, but in the expectation that food supply chains will soon break down due to Peak Oil.

What Sharon is describing is classic bipolar behavior: either
a)I feel wonderful so I don’t need to change, or
b) I feel awful, so there’s no way I CAN change.