ecosophia | In From The Fringes

I was highly amused to see the following piece from Chris Hedges the other day, thanks to several readers who forwarded links:

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/08/15/chris-hedges-the-final-collapse/

My readers will find quite a bit of it very, very familiar. Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent, author of books, and on-and-off media darling, argues that modern industrial society is in decline and faces imminent collapse, following patterns that differ in scale but not in kind from the fates of past civilizations. He quotes Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History and Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies, and cites quite a range of facts and figures of a sort that I've discussed repeatedly here and on my blogs for the last sixteen years.

That said, I have no idea whether Hedges got the idea for this essay from blog posts of mine. It may be that he simply noticed what's happening right in front of everyone, drew the logical conclusions, and did a little research to fill in the details. Nor am I in the least perturbed to find my ideas being echoed in so much more widely read a forum -- quite the contrary.

That's the secret power of the fringe intellectual, after all. If you happen to live in a society in decline, as I do, and you want to talk freely about what's wrong and why the official solutions being hawked about by tame intellectuals won't work, all you have to do is find some venue for your ideas where you won't be censored. Keep at it, and so long as your ideas are at least marginally less stupid than those you're critiquing, they will begin to exert a weird gravitational attraction on the collective consciousness of your time. Eventually the official pundits will be mouthing your words without the least consciousness that they're doing so. Entertaining? You bet; certainly I'm entertained...

Current Mood: amused

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From: (Anonymous)

I don't actually remember when I first stumbled upon your writing and ideas on collapse, but it was a loooong time ago.

For mine, for a very long time, it has been basically you, Paul Kingsnorth, the adorable curmudgeon Kunstler, and Gail Tverberg. You may have some different takes and disagreements on this or that, but you all seem to share plenty of common ground as well.

Interestingly, you all appear to have been 'skeptical' of the 'vaccines' as well - I don't believe this is merely coincidence. Instead, I credit myself with having a good eye for clever, interesting, amusing, insightful, and reliable sources :P

From:

ecosophia

Definitely credit yourself!

But it's not surprising to me at all that all four of us are quaxxine skeptics. You don't grasp the reality of peak oil and the ongoing decline of our civilization unless you can think outside the canned narratives of popular culture -- and the whole Covid hysteria was all about pop-culture narratives, not about science.

From: (Anonymous)

Hmm, this is something to ponder.

In my experience, the major common feature of coflu skeptics is the distancing/alienation from the daily non-thinking way of living.

This distance is shared by people that think in terms of civilization cycles (like you), people that are trying to live "outside of the maddening world" (like some christians) and people that went into some rabbit hole or another regarding the current economic system (some libertarians, some leftists).

And then we have the posers - just like in the AGW debate we have the people that pretended to "fight the power" but they were actually just following a trend for personal gain. The moment the "trend" changed they became corporate cheerleaders for cash.

From: (Anonymous)

Why thank you! I feel like I've earned a gold star from teacher :)

Yeah, I wasn't surprised that my favourite thinkers were all on the same page about 'the fauxines'. However, I did find it interesting, and also pretty ominous, that all of the people I respect for actually thinking independently were all arriving in similar places independently.

Thinking back on it now, you might have been faster on the uptake than others on this - Kingsnorth certainly came to the party fairly late, but he did come. You also went the furthest by posting your hypothesis and establishing and maintaining/curating a dedicated space for people to discuss it here from early on, and I am grateful for that.

It's not over yet, but your efforts have already helped a lot of people through a difficult period, salved and prevented a lot of pain, and maybe even saved some lives, so clearly you're the one who deserves the accolades, but I'm going to pull a 'Chris Hedges' and steal this moment anyway - yay me! :P

From: (Anonymous)

"so long as your ideas are at least marginally less stupid than those you're critiquing"

I think you're selling yourself a little short there JMG, but thanks for sharing.

The idea of a grinding fall of civilisation is popping up more frequently in the info feeds I follow.

Peter Zeihan's latest book puts some hard detail around how he thinks this fall is currently playing out.

https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Just-Beginning-Globalization/dp/006323047X

I know you prefer to read authors who are long dead, but the commentariat may be interested in Zeihan's thoughts. He places the current intertwined civilisation headwinds in their historical context and sketches his view of how mining, manufacturing, agriculture, trade and geopolitics will play out in the years ahead.

Refreshingly he is no techno-fetishist. Check out his commendable efforts at self restraint when being interviewed by two young know-it-alls from Cathie Wood's Ark Invest - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_gw4eTr-hM.

He does have his blind spots, but to anyone familiar with JMGs writings, these are easily identified. However, his big picture thinking is worth the time.

Darren

From:

ecosophia

I figure a little modesty is sometimes entertaining. ;-)

From:

open_space

I hadn't considered there was a power over the collective by distancing from it. And then that creates a positive feedback loop, the more it is talked about the higher the chances for people to read your work. Nice!

From: (Anonymous)

I hadn't considered there was a power over the collective by distancing from it.

this is why i call Papa THE PRETTY ONE!

From: (Anonymous)

I’ve often thought about that in terms of the old wise man or sage living in a cave up on a mountain in a cave. It’s quite literally a visual metaphor and I hadn’t understood that. Symbology is a major weak point. What do you see? A man with the head of a lion. And what does that represent. I…a man with the head of a lion?

From: (Anonymous)

It is somewhat strange seeing your ideas matriculate into mainstream discourse. Having been a reader for 13 years-I very much remember discussing any of the ideas from The ADR in interactions with friends and family and being angrily dismissed. In the past year or so I've finally understood what you've done magically. "Oh, I see what JMG did there, so that's how magic works-wow!, that's way cooler than Harry Potter." -Croatoan

From:

ecosophia

Heh heh heh. Thank you.

From:

drhooves

Hedges uses the term "magical thinking" in his sub-title - perhaps he's read up on Kunstler. I've been by the Cahokia Mounds site numerous times (it's near the Fan Duel/Fairmount Park horse race track), and if it's an example of the collapse of an advanced society there's some irony there. The mounds appear pretty much like the humps of a modern landfill.

I'm seeing more articles in the MSM regarding decline, and the obvious conclusion of dealing with a predicament, and not a problem. It's been a very slow process over the last 15+ years, but it seems to be gathering some legs. JMG, your work in this area is definitely helping the shift in thinking, IMHO.

From:

ecosophia

Yes, I chuckled at his use of the term "magical thinking." What we need now, of course, is much more magical thinking -- that is to say, thinking that grasps the possibilities that lie open if more of us learn to cause changes in consciousness in accordance with will, and discover that the most important barriers in the way of a less miserable existence are in our own heads.

From: (Anonymous)

"the most important barriers in the way of a less miserable existence are in our own heads."

YES

Thank you for all you do.

From:

vitranc

I second the motion.

From:

walt_f

The term "magical thinking" as Hedges used it is a slur of sorts in this context, because it misrepresents what magic is, by referring to a popular stereotype. But the phenomenon the phrase refers to, such as expecting an effect to occur because it is desired rather than because any cause is apparent, is rather common, and relevant to the topic. "They'll think of something" is a good example. It would be useful to have an acceptable term for it. "Wishful thinking" might cover it (and certainly covers that example) but might not have quite the same scope.

From:

jprussell

I've actually been meaning to ask about "magical thinking" in a Magic Monday one of these days, for exactly this reason - the way the term is used in mainstream psychology is definitely describing something that happens and that it's helpful to identify - for example, beyond only "wishful thinking" the mental process of someone with OCD who believes that his failure to wash his hands will result in some calamity in the outside world is also often described the same way.

Mainstream materialism has a pat answer: expecting a causal or correlative link between actions without any physical explanation for their linkage is "magical thinking". Once you accept that there are non-material causal/correlative links, it seems like it might get rather harder to so simply define which ones are clearly erroneous, which ones deserve investigation, and which ones seem pretty clearly linked.

So, if JMG or anyone else has any thoughts on sorting out the wheat from the chaff in the materialist conception of "magical thinking", I'd certainly appreciate hearing about it.

Thanks much,
Jeff

From:

ecosophia

The term "magical thinking" as used by materialists refers to a real thing -- it just doesn't have anything to do with magic as such. Start with the definition of magic I use: the art and science of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with will. A magical act is therefore (1) intentional, (2) mediated by consciousness, and (3) drawing on an established body of technique, which relates to personal expression (art) but also to formally understood structures in reality (science).

If the OCD person was using handwashing as a tool to transform his consciousness to accomplish an intention, that would be magic. His fear that he will suffer some unnamed doom if he doesn't wash his hands isn't magic, it's psychopathology.

From:

jprussell

Ah, that makes good sense and is pretty close to what I think I was groping toward. I think that the biggest disconnect between materialists and folks who look to other factors is a difference in opinion about just what things are "2) mediated by consciousness", but that "3) drawing on an established body of technique. . ." provides the way out of this for those of us willing to entertain the idea of non-physical causal/correlative links between phenomena.

An example to try to clarify:
- A) If someone with OCD is using handwashing to try to stave off some unnamed doom, with no notion of whose consciousness might be altered, almost definitely psychopathology.

- B) If someone is following a well-established tradition that handwashing is a necessary step in calling upon the Storm God to avert damages from an incoming hurricane, folks of a magical bent can be reasonably certain that's magic and not pathology.

- C) The gray area would be someone asserting that his handwashing affects some consciousness that isn't part of a recognized tradition - then it's on him to gather evidence and convince others that this is a method and not an illness.

Thanks again,
Jeff

From:

open_space

I really like the materialist pat answer you gave because coming to magic felt like its negation to me. Missing the strings that correlate phenomena is folly; getting out of your way to insist there aren't any is madness; and we've been trained to do that to some degree.

"Show light to the creatures of the night and you hide their light; it is the light that blinds them and for them is darker than darkness."

It used to be very common to note the similarities between the insane and the shaman, between the wandering, tattered outcast and the extreme philosopher, saint or sadhu and so on. I guess it just comes down to learning to open and close the veil or having a hole punched through it but both seem to reveal the importance of ritualistic, intentional acts; it is just that one lets you work with it and the other makes you the thing being worked upon.

I've been to places with mentally ill people and some of them, honestly, seem saner in some sense than the sane.

From: (Anonymous)

It is also often missed that the Mississippi culture didn't disappear, just this one particularly large example of it. The Spaniards ran across a number of these polity further south. Their actions are within recorded history. I have seen (somewhere) that there was localized drought conditions at the time of their collapse.

Localized drought conditions have knocked out a lot of civilizations. Richard Bulliet in "Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran" wrote of a particularly important one. I have no idea why you get such severe droughts within a particular region, and then they go away after a 20, 100, 200 or so years. But it appears to be relatively common. They make for an interesting pocket studies of societal collapse.

From: (Anonymous)

This is one of Hedges' better pieces - sometimes the churchman he once was becomes too visible.
But like many others it neglects or downplays two things. One is the extreme complexity and the tightly-coupled nature of our current social and economic system, and the other is the incapacity of the western political class to face up to environmental, health and other challenges, especially in combination, exacerbated by the destruction of state capacity in recent decades.
Rather than write a long comment, I will, with your indulgence, draw attention to my latest Substack piece, that addresses these questions in detail.
Thanks
Aurelien

https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/when-sorrows-come

From: (Anonymous)

Thank you Aurelien or whatever are your name, it's a challenging and provocative essay.

-A Spaniard.

From:

ecosophia

Aurelien, thanks for this -- a very thoughtful and nuanced exploration of the mess we're in. No question, Hedge's piece has serious flaws; my chortling was partly that it got published at all, and partly that it repeated so many of my standard talking points.

From:

stubborn_ass

To be fair.. Hedges has always been spiritually grounded. So this screed is not something unusual for him... but most of his previous energies were directed towards reforming the system using existing rules for the most part. Of course, the current elites aren't exactly enforcing the law as it is... but Hedges did teach and train a serious number of students in critical thinking, who have stood up to the system and went to jail for it. So he has been unapologetically against the current elites and able to see through their bovine swill for the longest time.

I see the significance of this piece as - ok I've tried my best to save the system from itself, but it's no longer possible. Time to reorient towards making a softer landing.

That just a process we all had to go through..

From: (Anonymous)

Interesting! He may even get into learning about the ancient technology of the Secret of the Temple with him hanging out a mound! Yowza!

I love hanging out in the borderlands and liminal zones myself! Some of those liminal zones are also mounds...

Justin Patrick Moore

From:

ecosophia

They are indeed. I've cycled back into researching mounds et al., with an eye toward an upcoming book project; lots of liminality there.

From: (Anonymous)

Thank you for the link, Mr. Greer. I'm reading too the other ecosophia web, in which you wrote about COVID too.

-A Spaniard.

From:

ecosophia

You're most welcome.

From:

cs2

This is good news! I couldn't read the article because it's behind a paywall (When did I read my freebies at the New York Times? I never read NYT, haha). Chris Hedges is an interesting guy. He started in the mainstream but like many on the left he became very disillusioned with Obama (and has apparently sued him?).

I normally don't do podcasts because the information is delivered too slowly, but while cleaning my apartment I once listened to a 90-minute interview of Hedges by a left-leaning youtuber (the youtuber I believe is a registered Independent, voted for Bernie, then both times refused to vote for the Dem nominee after Bernie dropped out).

Hedges had some interesting things to say. I remember he explained how the co-opting of gender and sexuality politics by both the mainstream Dems and the very online lefties has ultimately hurt their cause and turned a lot of people off. Not mainstream issues like gay marriage, but things more fringe. I think a lot of lefties just ignore all the online noise about that (I certainly do), but the fact remains that a lot of people get turned off by it, so it's a problem, and Hedges pointing that out was good to hear.

From:

ecosophia

Interesting. I'm startled that Hedges' article is behind a paywall for you; it's not on the New York Times, it's on Consortium News, which is free for the reading from here in Rhode Island.

From:

cs2

Oh pffft, I do my daily blog check all at once and was following someone else's link. Thanks for pointing that out! I enjoyed the article.

From: (Anonymous)

I think the common folk in US has more grasp and poetry and they summed it all up by coining the term:
Bananamerica

From:

ecosophia

Ha! I like that.

From:

temporaryreality

I see this awareness in the wider populace as well, and I think it suggests why my philosophizing on my Mimeograph Revival site is pretty much not contested (granted, most of my commenters are looking for more utilitarian tips, but I get lots of visitors who aren't commenting - and they're reading what I have to say about the need for low-tech printing and duplicating tech and why) - just this week I've been having a conversation with one of my regulars, who's probably in his late 60s, and he's in full agreement that any reliance on centralized/industrial/digital processes is a weakness. He didn't go all out and say "because the empire's collapsing" but simply being aware that those processes and materials aren't going to come back (or if they do last awhile longer than this decade, they'll be too expensive for us common folk) is a telling sign of the extent to which many people know what's going on.

I hear the sounds of a lot of seatbelts being buckled.

From:

ecosophia

I'm glad to hear this. The more people start thinking in these terms, the easier it will be to navigate the approaching rough patches.

From: (Anonymous)

JMG,
I disagree with your assessment of yourself as fringe. Yes looking at the present day extreme woke culture, you are way out there. But a historical perspective - even as short as 50 years, puts you right in the middle of mainstream.

During the 70s and 80s, your ideas were accepted and debated by regular people. And if we look further back we see the same ideas discussed in the British Empire.

Most of us here had a similar experience - we did not change but the world around us went insane.

Looking back at the collapse of the roman empire and the weird insanities associated with christianity (from self castration to killing each other over meaningless doctrinal differences) I wonder if our future might be similar.

Is it possible that in 2030 (let's say) pedophilia will be normalized? What about slavery and human sacrifice in 2050? I don't consider it impossible anymore.

From:

ecosophia

If I'm right, a hundred years from now my views will be normal -- but here and now, socially speaking, I'm way out on the fringes, and quite comfortable there!

From: (Anonymous)

With both this comment and your recent post on the other blog, I found a bit of coincidence in that I am currently reading Gustav Le Bon's "The Crowd" - what stood out so far is that ideas that are put forth that seem radical in the present moment can take up to a century to become mainstream - given that he wrote this over a century ago (in a different time when the dissemination of ideas was not so rapid), I suspect your views (many of which I share!) will become normal far sooner than a hundred years...I would submit that many of those views from the last decade or so are already creeping into that normality window...

James in Ontario

From: (Anonymous)

JMG, when you live on the fringe and find your work being gravitationally pulled to the center, do you ever worry about your footing? You don't strike me as contrarian for it's own sake, but contrarian when reality says that's the right stance to take. Being in the center, in the core, in the spotlight has always felt...hmm...not great to me. When I find myself there, I usually scramble back to the edge. I probably have some meditating to do on why this is the case for me. Are you more at peace with it?

Murmuration

From:

ecosophia

It's something that concerns me. I have no interest at all in being in the center, even if that happens because everyone else starts agreeing with me. That's why, whenever my views start being adopted widely, I move further toward the fringes and start talking more about magic, say...

From:

drhooves

Ah, yes. When the crowd zigs, I like to zag. I've been that way my whole life.

On thing I've adjusted relative to the Long Descent is the mental aspect of our predicament. I used to be much more dismissive of changing the mindset to not only adapt to change, but to embrace the decline of the resulting changes in a positive way.

In other words, the old saying of "it's all relative" is more applicable now more than ever. Relative being the operative concept as we in the U.S. see our so-called standard of living decline. There are definitely some upsides to it.

From: (Anonymous)

I followed the fall of the Empire in a few cards in the the Culianu Tarot:

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n66/mode/1up
3 of Swords
It's possible that the same kind of schism that existed between scientific apparatuses existed in the first American Civil War.
(I am calling the first Civil War implying that there will be a second)

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n69/mode/1up
6 of Swords
In the explosion in La Penca 7 people died, including 3 journalists. Tony Avirgan and his injured wife investigated the circumstances and concluded it was the CIA.

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n77/mode/1up
Professor-Doctor of Swords
Lance DeHaven-Smith in his book «Conspiracy Theory in America» documents how the CIA coined the phrase "conspiracy theory" to discourage alternative investigations of John Kennedy's death.

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n89/mode/1up
Professor of Coins
It is hard to say how Culianu would have wanted us to heal as a nation, but it is certain that he would have wanted us to do so and not to embrace the most nefarious ideas of the West.

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n91/mode/1up
Professor-Doctor of Coins
Debatable what Romania will do now in the current economic situation. A first step would be to take our economic and informational independence into our own hands.

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n105/mode/1up
XIII - DEATH
In this way, [through the radical transformation that comes out of ethics, withdrawal, and focus] we reach the annihilation of any cycle that blocks us.

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n107/mode/1up
XV - THE DEVIL
But even from this purely mental balance one can reach corruption from an excess of materialism. Thus we find that we have spirit also.

https://archive.org/details/magicianul-eduard-florinescu/page/n108/mode/1up
XVI - THE TOWER
Thus all that we have built up that was not compatible with our threefold nature (body, mind, soul) will fall apart.

The whole text in English
https://ia601503.us.archive.org/23/items/the-magician-culianu-tarot-eduard-florinescu/The%20Magician-%20Culianu%20Tarot%20-%20Eduard%20Florinescu.txt

From: (Anonymous)

Some historians refer to the Revolutionary War (18th century) as the First American Civil War. The War Between the States, "The Civil War", 19th century. In the 20th century, our wars were overseas. So, what you see coming might be unambiguously referred to as our "21st-Century Civil War".

Lathechuck

From: (Anonymous)

I was startled to find, in the electric bill that arrived today, a slip of paper announcing the new electric supply rates (for Maryland, PEPCO customers). Note, firstly, that our electric power bill includes separate line items for "generation", "distribution", "administration", and "taxation", and this adjustment only applies to the generation part. And we can voluntarily pay extra to get half, or all, of our electricity from wind/solar sources. This applies only to the generic generation part. But it's a *** 52% *** increase! (The utility calculates that this will cost the typical residential customer an extra $24/month, or about $288/year.)

As it happens, my rooftop solar panels provide more than enough energy for my current household, but that may no longer be true when our new heat pump whirrs into action as the weather gets cold. The price of natural gas is about 2-3x what it's been for the last ten years, though it was even higher in 2005 and 2008. Either way, an energy crisis becomes every other kind of crisis.

Lathechuck

From: (Anonymous)

Quote Bardi...
Yesterday, for some reason, I was rethinking to Einstein's E=mc2 iconic formula. It is fascinating how popular it has become, and how everyone believes it, even people who are fully convinced that the lunar landings never took place. But what it does actually mean, well, it is another story, and not a simple one. For a curious coincidence, today I saw it shown in Simon Sheridan's blog with the caption "Dude, it’s totally magic." Perfectly correct. Sheridan is producing a series of extremely interesting posts on the magical foundations of our society. This one is correctly titled "Drowning on Magic" https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/

And...

Simon Sheridan at his best. Are our leaders possessed by the same demons they are unleashing against us?
https://simonsheridan.me/ideas/drowning-in-magic/

Dennis G

From: (Anonymous)

In high school I was taught that it's the equivalence equation between energy (E) and matter (represented by mass, m). That they are two different phases of the same "stuff", kind of like water and ice are two phases of H2O, only more so.

Since c is the speed of light, which is a VERY large number, and it is squared in this equation (= c times c), a given amount of mass (m) is equivalent to a LOT of energy.

Being a Trekkie, I also knew about antimatter and the teaching that when matter and antimatter make contact, they annihilate each other, converting both into energy.

So plugging Einstein's equation into this, I calculated that if you dropped a piece of antimatter the size of an aspirin onto the (matter) ground, you'd get an explosion the size of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Fun times with science.

- Cicada Grove

From: (Anonymous)

Whenever I see The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, I regard it as an obvious tell on our culture. We are only concerned about what causes the fall of the empire. The fact that there was once a Roman Republic never features into our calculus. Do we ever worry about what causes the fall of the Republic? No, it never enters our thought process

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