Yes, I think it is HIGHLY probable that the world gets population under control before disaster strikes, although to be fair, some of your disasters have been with us so long, it doesn't seem reasonable to just use them as the criteria again, unless you are referring to extreme cases versus all the normal kind.

And for all of us with children, we are already effectively betting their lives on our vision of the future. Certainly if I believed in some of the mad max scenario's, related to starvation lets say, I might deem it reasonable to turn my children into Amish clones rather than the direction I think would do them more good, say, a masters degree in electrical engineering from a solid science school.



Absolutely.



Of course. Obviously, some of what you refer to as "underlying high-tech" infrastructure will be more useful, plentiful or cost effective than others, but in general, sure.



You are supposing something without being explicit....we are headed.....to a future utopia as predicted by Simmons once we appropriately "manage" our oil addiction? And yes, I have the quote and have used it before.



Cleaner. More efficient. Bigger, of course. More electric. A more interesting geopolitical dynamic between the US and China



For Americans, I think our standard of living, headed down since the early 90's and concealed by the introduction of a second earner into the family cash flow, will be hurt for a substantial portion of those 2 decades. 20 years might be enough for a turnaround, or it might not. If nothing else, a decent sized burst of inflation, similar to that after the 1979 global peak oil, will certainly cause some decent chaos and economic irritation for large segments of the population. Same as before.

SOS said:
And for all of us with children, we are already effectively betting their lives on our vision of the future.

What if we had the children before we knew ANYTHING about PO, Dieoff, etc? As is the case with my family.

Are you suggesting that knowing about PO would have stopped your urge to spawn? Certainly few seem to demonstrate such dedication to the idea, and certainly quite a few babies have been born after the The Population Bomb was written, and that was a previous version of the same dieoff discussed here.

But lets say you already have the kids, and you read a 10 year old copy of The Bomb, and are struck speechless with the consequences of resource depletion, or at least that version of it.

What do you do, as far as training the children? I don't really spend much time watching the preparation forums because they don't focus on what I consider to be the most productive solutions for the future, they appear to be extremely Luddite influenced. I wonder how many parents are taking this so seriously that they are doing what would seem like reasonable preps for their KIDS versus themselves. Hand to hand combat training starting at age 8, Amish farmer practice during summer vacation, camping on the weekends, teaching them how to catch rabbits with their bare hands or string and deadfalls, certainly there would be no point in wasting time on a drivers license, dating, or heck, even regular public school, they should all be pulled out and turned into little Rambo's? I never really thought about this from the other perspective, what things I would want to teach them if I thought the world was headed to small agricultural communities within no more than a few years.

six years ago, I had a sub-arachnoid anuerysm burst at the base of my skull, putting me in a coma for a month. (I'm currently 51 years old). It took three months to learn to walk and talk again. Somehow, right after that, I was introduced to some web-site regarding PO. Every since then, I have read everything I can. We have five children; his, hers and ours. I came into the marriage with a now 28 year old son (adopted) and 27 year old daughter (mine). My wife has a (currently living at home) 26 year old son, who is a manager the last two years at the chain grocery I work for. He makes quite a bit more than I, but deservedly so, as he has two degrees. He is PO aware, and sees a very, very grim future. Between us, we have a 14 year old son and a 8 year old son. They are certainly PO aware, as they listen to our conversations all the time, BUT they seem to be "normal" children to me (at least by our societies standards). They are straight A students (not hard since our educational system sucks) and do the basketball/soccer thing. All the kids are obsessed with basketball. (I have no interest). My wife is a teacher, and having grown up in the Philippines and Kuwait/England, etc has little hopw for our collective future also. But she is very pragmatic. We just live every day for that day, are trying to pay down all debt, make some preparations, etc. Which is probably more than 99% of the people.

I have neighbors in several houses nearby on different streets (who fortunately I think are friends) who are hard-core doomers, with arsenals of weapons, ammo and preps and are living for the collapse.

I'm toast if I have to stand up against any of them. (The good news is I probably won't even know I lost).

Fun thread. Mind a join-in?



Same here . . . except the key-term "know." As far as "knowing" how things will turn out -- we do not. PO (and the outcomes) are just a set of beliefs and supposings. I view them as only scenarios -- and if taken to the more extreme All-Doom-All-The-Time level, many aspect are mutually exclusive (meaning parts would cancel each other out). By the time you get to the Dieoff.org level, you have pretty much reach All-Dingbats-All-The-Time, mho.




Never do discuss the difference between Quantity and Quality, do they?



[/quote]

EZ one, there.

You know the proverb . . . ..

Between two goods -- Choose Both. Between two evils -- Choose Neither.

So kids learning Farming, (along with martial arts, sports, arts, etc.) is all Good. So are the other non-Luddite, as you say, choices. Seen the mention of Electrical Engineering back up the path on this thread. Can be Good or Bad. Just have to choose the Good over the Bad.

So Choose All the Good. Reject All the Evil. That is the family side of our Electric Farm project. Both top end applications of practical Electrical Engineering and down-in-the-dirt farming. Mostly good in all that.

Back in younger farming days we had neighbors who both Mennonite and Amish. So going completely electric, I sort of feel disloyal to the Amish, but Luddite Doomers aside, I do not think history actually ever does go backwards.

For fantasy family fun vacations, I figure visiting these folks in Montana would be the thing (Mrs. Phildo does not concur ) >>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite

I bet such a philosophy goes over like gang busters in Texas.

You can come down here!

Wow, with folks like patience and PeakOiler, what I would consider almost anti-Luddite, a couple of the most active and useful posters in the Planning Forum, I guess I wonder what threads you're looking at....?

Is gardening or farming considered "Luddite" these days? Or installing PV? That's mostly what people post about in that forum. Not much Rambo training.

Really? I am familiar, slightly, with patience's story, but not PeakOiler, maybe if he's the same guy who did the EROEI modeling which Oily has had so much fun with? In either case, they weren't on my mind when I wrote the sentence.

I was looking at that forum just now, and saw no threads about Luddism or Rambo training anywhere near the top. Can you give some examples of these threads?

Thanks.

Sure...although really, I could also make the argument that even some of the basic "back to earth" movements ( let alone Powerdown nonsense from the likes of Heinberg ) are almost by definition Luddite ( using the definition provided by Mirriam of course, "one who is opposed to especially technological change" )...but anyway....



Prepare to Barter...to heck with currency!

Grinding grain is great exercise!

Eat roadkill! Save ammo!

Why buy socks, knit your own!

Communal ovens for everyone! Can you see these in New York?

Directions to make a wooden spoon even a Doomer could follow...with pics in case of confusion over what a saw is!

And Rambo stuff? Rambo? With that one you MUST be kidding!

That is absolute crap. Please link to a 'Dingbat' article in dieoff.org? Just coz u don't like it or think it's evil or not good or whatever (talk about a universe in black and white); don't make it 'dingbat' material.
(Sorry to interupt Shorty, feel free to harp with this geezer if you like, please include links from dieoff.org!)

So bartering, frugality, and making stuff yourself is Luddism.

Okey dokey.

Regarding the Rambo thing, I think you might be confusing the Planning forum with the Self Defense forum.

Geez, when is someone going to ask a TOUGH one?

This was one of the dumbest concepts ever put forth into peaker land...

http://dieoff.org/page125.htm

How about the 3rd figure down the page, did you know that 2008 was DAY OF THE DEAD!!! With skeletons and everything!

http://dieoff.org/

This one isn't a dingbat class thought, but its linked from dieoff.org and shows why Colin spends more time keeping his head down so people won't continually throw his own predictions back into his face.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/campbell/commons.htm



S'all right.

The general definition of Luddism that I am familiar with revolves around the rejection of modern technology in favor of...well....older and simpler and less technological solutions. I hope I didn't attach a connotation that it is "bad" in the moral sense, because it isn't.

Certainly any movement backwards into what most of us might describe as a "simpler" life might satisfy many people with its appeal, the days when our children didn't use phones with more computing power than actual computers ( at least when I was growing up ). TV's with 100's of channels, cars you talk to with computers, heck, some cars nowadays ARE computers on wheels, the speed with which information now flows around us, entertainment somehow being confused with reality TV, I certainly can understand the desire by many to "powerdown" or build wooden spoons as nearly a way to maintain a connection with how we grew up, or as a way to avoid what the world has become.

I think this feeling, and for some the unease which is undoubtedly entails, whether it qualifies strictly as Luddism or not, drives quite a bit of the peak oil debate as well. Not explicitly perhaps, but the entire powerdown/transition town angles certainly seem to fall into this category.

His major pedictions for timelines have not been too far off so far. Yep he has messed up several, a lot less than Nostradamus did. I am not calling the dude 'Oh Great One'' I am merely taking offense to the original "all dingbats all the time' quote. I prefer sites and writers which refrain from making predictions per se, as I prefer to be provided with checkable facts and left to decide for myself what they might mean. If you read the revelation in the bible there are some pretty wild predictions with imprecise timelines also; which Phildo would I gues not choose to label as 'all dingbat, all the time.'.

Fortunately, that wasn't me.



The Bible is great reading....certainly I never worried about any predictions contained within it unless strict acolytes were to show up at my doorstep and try and enforce their will upon me based on their interpretation of it. Certainly quite a few of the circular peak references qualify as all dingbat, all the time ( names withheld to protect beat cops and social commentators with no experience in the sciences ) while others can be quite the scholarly dissertation.

It is quite noticable to outsiders that some of these references are relied on heavily, and others are virtually ignored, and this distinction appears to be based upon the enthusiasm one has for the conclusions, rather than any study of the actual thought contained within the work..

For example, have you ever seen anyone quoting "The Battle for Barrels" by Duncan Clark? Of course not. AAPG peer reviewed articles on the topic, like "Energy Resources, Cornocopia or Empty Barrel?" by P. McCabe? Much of anything from Natural Resources Research? Occasionally at best. Work by real scientists on the topic isn't hard to find...but for some reason, the circular reference gang with their incessant ( and obviously faulted ) predictions seem to prevail, and this certainly propagates the idea of a dingbat brigade. IMHO.

Don't be too sure about that.

When I think about some of "Great Texas Religious Minds" like say David Koresh or Jim Hagee who obsess over The Book of Revelations -- I tend to think "All-Total-Frickin' Whack-Jobs-All-The-Time" anytime someone starts into that.

Serious question? Why would you think I would prefer one flavor of Whack Job over another? Keep in mind I am fresh out from LATOC -- aka "doomers.us." I have had more than enough of Nut Cases for more than a while. Is a respect for sanity (and concurrent distaste for lunacy) such a bad thing?

Ok Phildo as long as you are into equality, I'm ok with you despising whack jobs as long as you despise them all equally

As a general rule, I think society is reaching a point where technology is moving ahead faster than cultures can adapt.

If one thinks about it in a historical context, there have always been cycles of optimism and pessimism about progress.

The post war years were filled with optimism about the future of America but also concerns about Soviet ambitions. The 1960s had the Great Society and the Civil Rights Movement but also the Vietnam War. The economic and cultural stagnation of the 1970s was followed by the boom years of the 1980s/1990s. The internet bubble and Pax Americana of the 1990s was followed by 9/11 and the War on Terrorism. The housing boom was followed by the housing bust and the credit crisis.

Everything moves in cycles. During the rough patches, people begin questioning the fundamentals of their society. This questioning leads to innovations that allow the next boom to occur.

There are some who look at something like the "Great Recession" and conclude that we must powerdown and return to the farms. There were those who said the same about the stagflation of the 1970s and the Great Depression.

There are others who look at situations like ours and see opportunities. It is these people who pull us out of rough patches.

People can only handle a certain amount of change in a given time period. People begin demanding a slowdown so that they can cope. The important thing is that society balances the needs of innovators with the needs of reactionaries.

Societies that are too open for too long risk causing such strain on their cultural/economic systems that they trigger a nasty backlash from the threatened native populations. Societies that shut themselves off from the rest of the world for too long, stagnate.