NPD Nation

I've been reading a lot lately about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD for short. My reasons for doing so involve people in long-playing difficulties of the sort which I don't want to discuss on this particular blog. However, in my reading I have discovered a few principles which seem to apply to the current world situation, and to the response of the people and politicians of the United States to that situation.

One of the things which has impressed me about NPD is the way in which malignant narcissists blame their victims for the abuse perpetrated by the narcissists. Often the blaming takes place as part of a combat which is solely verbal. Even when the combat is confined to the merely verbal, the narcissist's blaming tactics can become quite bizarre, to the point of reality-altering distortions of events (also known as “gaslighting”). But without a doubt, one of the most bizarre instances of victim-blaming and gaslighting of which I have read involved physical violence. It seems that while a narcissist woman was physically attacking her sister (who did nothing to retaliate), the attacker started yelling through open windows demanding that the victim stop attacking! (What Makes Narcissists Tick, 2004-2007, Kathleen Krajco, pg. 196.)

Which brings us to current events. I am in Southern California this weekend to visit family, and as I did during my last trip, this time I rode the Amtrak train down here. I had dinner in the dining car, sharing a table with an elderly retired couple who live in Klamath Falls, Oregon. We didn't really hit it off very well, though there were attempts at polite conversation. One of the difficult points came when the wife mentioned recent weather in Klamath Falls, observing that there had been a few days this summer during which the temperature had gotten above 90 degrees, and that “we usually never get that hot! Usually the temperature doesn't get much above 80!”

“Well,” I remarked, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have recently exceeded 400 parts per million. What you are experiencing is a consequence of climate change.”

“Yes,” she said, “and I think the whole world should do its part to reduce pollution,” indicating by her tone and emphasis that she considered the rest of the world to be equally as culpable as the United States.

“The United States has five percent of the world's population and uses over a third of the world's natural resources,” I replied.

“Yes, but there's lots of pollution in other countries,” she replied, a bit desperately.

“That's because the United States has exported much of its manufacturing capacity to those countries,” I rejoined.

“And that's terrible,” she said, then, “and I'm sure you don't want to wreck a perfectly good evening.” Then her husband started talking. “What college did you graduate from, since you've been saying all this about global warming?” I told him, having earlier told him that I had an engineering degree. “Good school,” he remarked. The conversation died out shortly thereafter. Later in the evening, I thought, “How American – to blame others for the problems we ourselves cause.”

I got off the train at Bakersfield, having discovered that one can make the remainder of the trip from Bakersfield to So. Cal. much more quickly by car than by train. While driving a rental the remainder of the distance to my destination, I tuned in to KNX Radio 1070, a CBS news station whose broadcasts cover most of Southern California. I was listening to the news that the United States is preparing to attack Syria for allegedly using chemical weapons against its own citizens, and that no other nation on earth supports the United States in this course of action. I also heard a great deal of hand-wringing on the part of spokesmen describing the “terrible humanitarian toll which has been exacted by the ongoing civil strife in Syria.”

Having learned long ago to read between the lines of mainstream news, I know that American eagerness to attack Syria has nothing to do with “democracy” or alleged cruelty by the Syrian government toward its people or the possible existence of weapons of mass destruction. It has everything to do with the fact that the United States is hopelessly addicted to a lifestyle of undeserved extravagance, and that this country can no longer afford to pay for that extravagance. Therefore, we are exporting violence to the remaining corners of the earth in which significant reserves of natural resources (particularly, oil) may be found, in order to obtain something for seemingly almost nothing. Our glorious country has therefore tried a steadily escalating series of destabilizing moves designed to remove the sovereign government of Syria, starting with trying to engineer a “revolution” through means of mercenaries.

Now we are at the point where, “while beating Sue [Syria], Mary [the United States] screams at her to stop attacking.” Naturally, we will try to scream loud enough for the neighbors to hear. But by now, the neighbors have our number.

On Reaping What We've Sown

It's been rather cold and rainy in the Portland metro area lately.  However, that wasn't the case at the beginning of May, when we were subjected to daytime temperatures that were 20 degrees above seasonal averages for several days.  That was also when carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in history.  The present Portland coldness and wetness can be viewed as a merciful yet extremely temporary respite from the consequences of our actions.

Yet other parts of the United States are not so lucky.  I am thinking of the recent massive Oklahoma tornado.  I am also thinking of the doofus responses to the tornado on the part of some of the elected officials and many of the citizens of Oklahoma, not to mention some of the media talking heads who remain constitutionally unable to see the link between atmospheric pollution and an increasingly menacing climate.  Republican Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, who denies anthropogenic climate change, urged her citizens to pray to God for rain in 2011 in response to record heat and drought in her state.  Now she finds herself "praying" to Washington for federal dollars to rebuild some of the devastated parts of Oklahoma.  I wonder if she has given up on prayer to God.  Such a development wouldn't be surprising, as she is typical of a long list of Republican, conservative darlings of the political wing of American evangelicalism (which is really just Constantinianism): loudly proclaiming their commitment to Biblical morality, especially in sexual matters, yet unable to walk the talk in their own personal lives.  In this regard, she is rather like Mark Sanford.

Then there's Republican Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who opposed Federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, yet is appealing to President Obama for aid for the victims of the Oklahoma tornado, saying that their situation is "totally different" from that of the victims of Sandy.  How is that so?  In both cases, a big storm came with big winds which huffed and puffed and blew a bunch of houses down.  Senator Inhofe, what do you like about the Oklahoma victims that you don't like about the Sandy victims?  Inhofe is also a staunch climate change denier and a darling of American conservative Constantinians evangelicals .

I am thinking of all of this in the light of a book I recently received, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore The Obvious At Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan.  (That book has been a good read, by the way.)  When people willfully blind themselves, perhaps there comes a point when they become irreversibly blind.  As the ruin starts to fall around us, let's all have an eye-gouging party; why not?  But before Mary Fallin gouges her eyes out, she should read the part in the Good Book where God promises that whatever a person sows, that he will also reap.

Clueless Conversations (A Look At The Country)

Once again, I am down in So. Cal. for Christmas. This time, I traveled by different means than I normally use. Heretofore, I had always driven straight from Portland to here and back, having developed something of an allergy to flying several years ago. (Who wouldn't be allergic, what with TSA checkpoints, pat-downs of grandmas and grandpas, full body scans, deferred maintenance on aircraft, and pilots who make less per hour than Pizza Hut drivers?) Unfortunately, driving from Portland to So. Cal. takes about seventeen hours, assuming that a driver knows when to judiciously drive faster than the speed limit, and that he doesn't spend more than the minimum time necessary at gas stations, coffee shops, and fast food joints. It takes a few hours longer if you decide to drive at or below the speed limit all the way, although you can shorten the time by driving a car with an extremely large fuel tank and doing without bathroom breaks. Good luck with that!

Last time, I was not judicious enough in knowing when to speed. I also made the mistake of believing that since I had never been stopped by the California Highway Patrol, they were therefore harmless. They got me about 25 miles south of Weed, California. My trip wound up costing an extra $200. At least the cop who wrote the ticket was a nice guy, or the trip would have been even more costly.

So this time I took the train, a choice which provided a good opportunity to study some of the features of mainstream American culture, as most of my fellow travelers were Anglo-Americans. I like to use traveling time to improve myself, so I brought my computer, my guitar, a copy of the Good Book, a graduate level text on HVAC system design, and a copy of the New Penguin Russian Course (Я ещё изучаю руский язык).

Most other people also brought computers and other hand-held data display devices, on which the majority were watching movies or playing video games. Occasionally I saw someone reading a book. In almost all cases, the books being read were popular novels. The man sitting next to me had his smartphone plugged into the AC power socket next to the window, and he was following a football game involving the Seattle Seahawks. A relative of his was sitting in the seat directly in front of him, and was doing the same thing on his own smartphone. Occasionally the two men exchanged comments on the progress of the game. About half an hour out of Eugene, an elderly man sitting in the aisle across from me looked over at my fellow passenger and said, “How 'bout them Seahawks! Too bad they don't have a TV on this train. Otherwise, we could watch 'em! I wonder if anybody has a TV or a laptop we could use to watch 'em!” Suddenly feeling uncomfortable in the presence of my company, I decided to move to the observation car, where I busted out one of my books and started to read.

I chose a seat across a table from a tall, thin, quiet blonde woman. She was also reading (her book was a novel), although from time to time she looked at her smartphone. She never spoke. However, most of the people in the observation car were quite talkative, and as I read, occasionally I focused my attention on the scraps of conversation reaching my ears. Two conversations stood out on account of their extreme banality. One conversation was between two men sitting at a table right behind me, and concerned brew pubs in Portland and the opening of a McMenamins pub out on the West Side (west of the Willamette River for those of you who are unfamiliar with Portland). This led one of the men to talk at great length (rather incoherently) about which brand of beer was his favorite.

The other conversation was between two young women at another nearby table, and concerned work and career. It seems that one of the women works at a Starbucks and the other works in a telemarketing call center, having worked in Starbucks for a while as well. Both women constantly used two particular four-letter words in describing the downsides and the high points of their jobs, which included getting lots of free coffee. One of them remarked to the other that she had wanted to work at a Starbucks ever since she was a little girl. Then they discussed their interest in creative writing and some of the writing classes they had taken, using one of their two favorite four-letter words as a noun to describe the things they wrote about.

The conductors announced that they were taking dinner reservations, so I signed up for a time slot. When my time came, I made my way to the dining car, where I was seated across from a quiet, middle-aged married couple. I also was quiet. For several minutes, I sat and continued listening to the conversations of others. A couple of tables down the aisle, there sat a big, burly young man wearing a baseball cap. Next to him was a cute young blond woman. They were obviously attached to each other. Across from them sat an elderly woman. The couple was in the midst of delivering a long lesson in things Americans like to the elderly woman, using lots of pronouns such as “I” and “we” as they went down the list of favorite foods, sports and other things. I wondered at them, because it had seemed to me that all three of them were Americans (whenever the elderly woman managed to get a word in edgewise, she did not speak with any obvious accent).

Directly across the aisle from our table was another table, at which two couples were seated. One couple consisted of an African-American man married to a Caucasian woman. Both were middle-aged. Across the table from them was a young Asian pair who were, I believe, at the boyfriend-girlfriend stage. The conversation shared between these four, and the conversation I had with my dinner companions, were the most thought-provoking ones I heard during the entire trip.

My conversation began slowly. The couple at my table started by sharing some ice-breaking information about themselves. I found out that they had recently sailed up the Amazon River in South America, and were now traveling from Portland to Klamath Falls. This piqued my curiosity and got me talking. “Klamath Falls? Isn't that where the Oregon Institute of Technology is? I know a bit about their renewable energy engineering program.” I informed them that I am an engineer. They then informed me that they had both worked in the engineering field, the husband as a civil engineer and the wife as a drafter. They asked me how I liked engineering, to which I replied that there were parts I hated – namely the attempt by employers to work us like dogs for 55 to over 70 hours per week, world without end. My comment led to a general discussion of present-day life in America.

The discussion covered some familiar ground, such as the fact that people in most other countries – including many Third World countries – seem to be much healthier mentally than Americans, the fact that most immigrants to this country come here in much better mental health than most native-born U.S. citizens, and the fact that immigrant mental health deteriorates with increasing length of time in America and increasing Americanization. The wife then asked rhetorically, “Why is it so that we are so selfish here, so isolated from each other?” “I think it's because of the myths on which this country was founded,” I opined. “Other nations have realized for a long time that their citizens lived in a land of limits, in which everyone had to sacrifice certain prerogatives so that all might benefit. The dominant culture in the United States has always believed that there are no limits to what we can do or have if we want something badly enough. Therefore we haven't learned effective strategies for sharing limited resources with each other.”

That led us to talk about where we believed this country is heading as undeniable limits are beginning to bite us. It was also at this point that I began to tune in to the conversation between the mixed-race couple and the Asian boyfriend-girlfriend pair sitting at the table across the aisle from my table. The African-American male half of the married couple was relating what sounded like a belief that Asian (specifically Chinese) culture, intellectual power and economic might would bring about the end of American hegemony. It was with some effort that I managed to remain focused on my own conversation. At my table, we reviewed the spectrum of the most widely-held opinions concerning the future of industrial society, and of the United States in particular. Then a moment came when our food was all eaten, our energy spent, our words all said. We all excused ourselves and said our goodbyes for the night.

As I returned to the observation car, I saw several new arrivals, including some college-age guys enjoying a night of underage drinking. It occurred to me that they, as well as most of the passengers, were so typical of Anglo-American culture at present: unreflecting, sensual, incapable of articulating anything other than the cravings induced in them by our commercialized culture, and totally clueless about the future. Later, as I tried to sleep, my thoughts expanded to consider how the wealthiest and most powerful members of our society had become utterly incapable of giving ground or sacrificing assumed “rights” in order to benefit the common good. I was particularly mindful of the statement of the president of the NRA to the effect that guns were not the reason for the recent shooting rampages in this country, and that instead of restricting gun access, we should install armed guards in every elementary school in the United States. I was thinking also of the most recent shooting rampage, in which an older white male with a criminal history set some houses on fire and then shot volunteer firefighters as they arrived to try to put the fires out, before shooting himself. I thought of the lack of adult, intelligent, realistic conversations on the part of media figures or politicians to address the violent reality of mainstream American culture, or the multifaceted predicament we now face. We are forced by events to acknowledge that our society is killing us, yet nothing is done to effectively remedy the causes of the killing, because to do so would cause certain wealthy people to lose a lot of money, and would force most of us to live far more simply. And that's something that most people don't want to talk about.

The Liberty of Addicts

...Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, “If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s offspring, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn’t live in the house forever. A son remains forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

• John 8:31-36 (World English Bible, a public domain translation)

There is a myth widely taught in public schools today. (At least it was widely taught when I was a kid.) That myth goes something like this: The United States was founded by people who were pursuing liberty – especially freedom from governmental restrictions which violated their conscience, in order that each man might have full liberty to act in accordance with the dictates of his conscience and reason. Therefore the chief priority of free citizens of our glorious democracy must be to guard this liberty at all costs, and to prevent the encroachment of any governmental restrictions on this “liberty,” defined as I have defined it here.

But let write an equivalent definition of “liberty,” using simpler language. The United States has defined liberty as the freedom to do whatever you want. Plain and simple, isn't it?

Let me ask a question. If you live in a country where you can do whatever you want, are you actually free? Suppose you live in such a country, yet you are addicted to alcohol or heroin. Let's also say that you have ready access to however much alcohol or heroin you may desire. Are you still free? Are you free when you are so enslaved to your addiction that you can't do what you are supposed to do, and you can no longer avoid suffering the consequences of not doing what you are supposed to do and doing what you are not supposed to do?

I propose therefore a radically different definition of liberty: the freedom to do what you are supposed to do. Liberty is the freedom to obey moral “ought's.”

By that definition, America is not free. America is a nation of addicts run by addicts. The addicts who run the show are addicted to the continued accumulation of ever more unholy concentrations of wealth. And they continue to enrich themselves by pushing an addictive lifestyle onto the rest of us. The means used by these pushers include advertising, media capture, the promotion of dysfunctional trashy popular culture, and the dishonest manipulation of political discourse in this country. One particularly egregious example of that manipulation is the attempt to demonize any governmental restriction on potentially hurtful behaviors and policies of private citizens – especially when they are wealthy.

Thus we have incidents like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, for which British Petroleum still has not been brought to book. We have blatant lying and misrepresentation of facts by Fox News. We have fraud and misinformation practiced by the Wall Street Journal. We have banking and investment fraud practiced by outfits like Goldman Sachs and MF Global. And no one goes to jail.

But in this country, it's not just the extremely wealthy who can cause unspeakable harm to their fellow citizens. Ordinary people can get in on the act. We have seen two shooting sprees in the last seven days. The most recent shooting spree claimed 27 lives (20 children and seven adults), and happened within the last 24 hours. A few days ago, there was a shooting spree at the Clackamas Town Center (less than 10 miles from where I live); three people are dead. According to some reports I have read, there have been at least five random shooting sprees in the United States this year.

Predictably, the latest shooting spree has revived discussions regarding gun control. Predictably, the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association are gearing up to oppose any new restrictions on gun ownership, and to further weaken those restrictions that already exist. But it's funny how the number of shooting rampages in the United States has been increasing every year since 2007, when the Federal Government under President Bush allowed a number of gun ownership restrictions to lapse, and several state houses controlled by Republicans began to to allow just about anyone in those states to own and carry a gun. According to Mother Jones, there have been at least 62 firearm-involved mass murders in the United States since 1982, and 43 of the 62 mass murderers were white males. In the vast majority of cases, the weapons used were obtained legally. According to other studies, the United States is the most violent nation in the OECD, and the American South is the most violent region in the U.S.

It seems obvious that mainstream America is increasingly a nation of disconnected, antisocial individuals who are a menace to themselves and to each other. It also seems obvious that rectifying this situation will involve placing restrictions on people's access to technologies and devices that can be used to hurt a lot of people. Guns are at the top of the list of things that should have very restrictive access. But cars can easily qualify as well. Many people who buy large SUV's do so not because they need these vehicles, but because such vehicles serve as instruments of intimidation.

Finally, it seems obvious that unless this nation becomes truly free – free to do what we ought – many of us are likely to destroy each other in the pursuit of doing whatever we want. Trying to do whatever you crave doesn't work well in an age of economic contraction and energy descent.

Starving Google to Death

Hopefully this post will get the attention of some folks in Mountain View, California.

I hate to bring up personal business, but it seems that someone tried to hack my Google Gmail account today.  I have been trying to talk to a live human being at Google, either via email or voice, but it seems to be impossible.

If Google's security is so lax that I can be so easily hacked, and if Google's staff is so insulated and unresponsive that I cannot be helped by them, maybe it's time to ditch Google.  Wordpress.com has a much better blogging interface, and there are other email providers with much more secure email accounts.  Something to think about...

Riots In The Magic Kingdom

...If as a culture we can't imagine a history – any history – if history isn't a dimension of our quotidian daily lives, if history casts no shadow across our imagination, it is almost impossible to imagine consequences.

• Junot Diaz, “At Home In Global America,” Radio Open Source, 14 September 2007

Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are with him on the way; lest perhaps the prosecutor deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. Most certainly I tell you, you shall by no means get out of there, until you have paid the last penny.

• Matthew 5:25-26 (World English Bible, a public domain translation)

I was down in Southern California last week, visiting family. At one point, I was driving my mom around. She likes making conversation while I tend to be much quieter (unless you get me on a subject I'm interested in ;) ). I was a bit sleep-deprived (on account of driving all the way from Portland to So. Cal. the day before), which made me even quieter. My mom likes talking a lot about what she sees on television – a subject which does not interest me at all usually. “Did you hear about the riots in Anaheim?” she asked. I thought, “What riots? Did someone get in a fight over a pair of Nike shoes?” Aloud, I was all, “Nope.” “Wasn't it on the news in Portland?” she asked. “Mom, Portland is a thousand miles away from here,” I said. “Well, down here we hear about what goes on in Portland,” she rejoined. I rubbed a fatigue headache away from my temples and kept driving.

I have to admit that I was a bit of a grump during that conversation. But later that night, after a meal and a chance to chill a bit, I said to myself, “Riots? What's this about riots?” So I busted out my laptop and Googled, “Riots in Anaheim.” I came up with things like this.

It seems that the Anaheim police department has shot a number of Latinos this year. At least one of these people was unarmed. It seems also that while Latinos make up over fifty percent of the population, they comprise only 33 percent of the electorate. And it seems that there are some unhealthy divisions in the city of Anaheim. The most densely populated parts of the city lie to the west of the 57 freeway. This region is mainly inhabited by the working-class and the working poor. Between the 57 and 55 freeways there is a mixture of working-class housing and light industry., East of the 55, one finds oneself in Anaheim Hills – the suburban/exurban haunt of sons and daughters of privilege. The majority of people living in the working-class sections are people of color. The majority of the people living in the Hills are white.

In the heart of the working-class “flatlands” are some of the crown jewels of Anaheim: Disneyland, Angel Stadium, the Arrowhead Pond, and a row of very big hotels (including the Disneyland Resort) along Harbor Boulevard south of Ball Road. Most of the menial jobs that keep these crown jewels shiny are held by immigrants and people of color. I can guarantee you that these people don't get paid much for their labors.

Neither do the inhabitants of the working-class “flatlands” get to enjoy much of the benefits bestowed by City Hall. For while most of the population (83 percent) lives in the working-class flatlands, the nicest parks, schools and libraries are to be found in the Hills. And there is a disproportionate number of these amenities to be found among the sons and daughters of privilege, who have the finances required to get candidates elected to City Hall. Candidates are chosen in city-wide elections rather than district elections, so one has to campaign throughout the entire city in order to be elected.

Anaheim sparkles like a jewel in the American imagination, in much the same way New Orleans must have sparkled right up until Hurricane Katrina. And as in the case of New Orleans, Americans are shocked to discover the ugly fault lines of inequity that run through such a jewel. But Anaheim and New Orleans are merely part of an American pattern of a privileged minority capturing a disproportionate share of resources for itself while waging war against those less privileged (or, in some cases, trying to sweep the less-privileged under the rug). (You may not realize this, but the same pattern can be seen in Portland, Oregon. A disproportionate share of urban renewal money has gone to benefit wealthy business owners and residents of the affluent West Side, whereas most of the lower-income households are on the east side of the river – especially North and East Portland.)

The course now being pursued by American sons and daughters of privilege cannot last forever, however much the sons and daughters might wish for it to last. The resource base required for extravagant, privileged life (namely, material resources and people willing to endure being exploited) is failing – both here and abroad. And the mechanisms of oppression no longer work as well as they used to. America is finding this out now in international affairs. The privileged among Americans are also likely to find this out on their own home turf. Maybe it's time to make peace with one's adversaries. (Maybe it's time to stop making enemies in the first place.) “Can't we all just get along?”

P.S. The Anaheim riots happened over a month ago, yet I first heard about them last week – and not via the mainstream news media. It seems that KPOJ and the Oregonian and Fox News didn't think it was important to let people in this part of the country know about something happening in Anaheim – or if they did, I guess I must have been sound asleep. I know the riots were not given prominent coverage. This seems to be part of a disturbing pattern in mainstream media coverage of our country lately. Those who want an accurate picture of what's going on in our country might want to build and maintain networks of long-distance friendships.

The World, According To Me

I've been busy. That is why I haven't been blogging over the last six months. Ironically, my busy-ness has consisted of me scrambling to find ways to become less busy while still paying the bills. At my last office job, I found myself being worked a bit too hard for my liking (they wanted me to be available between 50 and 60 hours a week). So I've been teaching a bit and trying to freelance. And I've been exploring ways to lower my “burn rate.” It's the teaching and the scrambling to freelance that has been keeping me busy.

My abstinence from blogging has made me aware of the divide that exists between those who have a powerful voice in our society and those who have no real voice. Being a blogger, by the way, does not automatically grant a powerful voice to a blogger. After all, I have to admit that there are probably not that many people who read my blog. Even as an active blogger, therefore, my voice has been very small. But having taken my place for a few months among those who have no voice, I have been observing how much effort, how much money and how many words have been expended by those whose voices are powerful. All that effort and all those words have been expended in order to inculcate in ordinary people a world view that just happens to be convenient for those with powerful voices. I thought it might be good to let these people know just how an ordinary person without a voice views the world, so that they can see whether they have been wasting their time and money. I can't speak for all ordinary people, but I will speak for myself.

To sum up what the people with powerful voices have been saying, I think they've been trying to convince ordinary people that the United States is still a first-rate nation, that the U.S. is the blameless and pure defender of freedom and democracy, that we still live in a world of abundance un-threatened by shortage of any kind, that the “free market” can be trusted to distribute said abundance to any and all who are worthy of it, and that our mad scramble for material abundance is having no effect on the earth. The most pressing thing that ordinary Americans should worry about, therefore, is which teen star is getting divorced.

If this is what the loud-voiced have been trying to communicate, I'm afraid they haven't succeeded with me. The disconnect between their message and my world-view can be summed up under four general headings: oil, geopolitics, climate change, and economics. There is also a fifth heading, which I call “the proliferation of sheep dogs.”

Oil

A lot of well-placed people have been insisting over the last year that Peak Oil is a fallacy, and that the world has plenty of hydrocarbon resources to last for several decades more. Even people who pretend to be members of the counterculture have said things like this. (See, for instance, what George Monbiot and Noam Chomsky have been saying.) For me, however, the Bible on Peak Oil has been the 2007 Oil Report, titled, “Crude Oil – The Supply Outlook” from the Energy Watch Group of Germany. That report made a number of bald, blunt statements and predictions: first, that global oil production peaked in 2006; second, that global oil production would experience steep declines post-Peak, and third, that the steepness of the declines can be quantified (for instance, the authors asserted that production would decline from a 2006 high of 86 million barrels per day to 58 million barrels per day in 2020).

I like predictions and statements like this, because it's easy to tell whether the predictor is right or wrong, and you don't have to wait very long before finding out. (Which is easier to verify – a predictor telling you that you will meet someone famous at some time in your life, or a predictor telling you that you will meet Genghis Khan and his Mongol army tomorrow morning at ten?) I believe the Energy Watch Group report. I believe it because, from 2007 until now, the world has been acting as if the report's predictions are true. Everything that has happened from 2007 to now makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of those predictions, from the oil price spike and economic crash of 2008 to the slow bleeding economic death of the West and the OECD at present (and the frantic attempts to rob oil-producing countries like Syria and Iran by means of “regime change”).

That means that an ordinary person like me regards as liars those people who deny that we are living post-Peak. This includes people who made a name for themselves writing for sites like The Oil Drum and who are now writing articles claiming that global oil production is still growing, albeit slowly. Whenever someone posts an article like that on the Web, they are wasting their breath (and keystrokes) as far as I'm concerned, because I'm not going to read what they write. I also regard as suspect those articles which dismiss the peak of conventional crude production by pointing to steady levels of “total liquids” production. (Just such an article appeared here, of all places. Suffice it to say that the production of many of these “liquids” yields either a very poor positive return or an actual negative return on energy invested.)

Geopolitics

The decline of the energy resource base of the industrial world has, of course, led to a mad scramble for the world's remaining energy resources. This is paralleled by the scramble for the other raw materials needed by a modern industrial society. This is the reason why Syria has been branded a rogue regime, and the reason why the West has instigated and is financing the insurgency against the Syrian government. This is also the reason why the West is trying to destabilize Iran.

I normally don't save newspapers, but I have a copy of the Oregonian from 2007 in which there is an article describing a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate of the Iranian nuclear program. In the view of the U.S. intelligence community, there was no evidence that Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon. Therefore, anyone who writes an article claiming that Iran must be prevented from building nuclear weapons is regarded as a liar by an ordinary person like me, along with people who say that we have a moral obligation to remove Hafez Assad from power in Syria, or those who say that the 10,000 well-fed American troops who went to Haiti after their most recent earthquake were sent to help the Haitians, or those “compassionate conservatives” who insist that America has a “responsibility to protect” the citizens of other nations from using their resources as they see fit.

Climate Change

Need I say anything about this? Many well-funded voices in America, both secular and religious, have insisted that climate change is a hoax by the liberal Left who “hate our freedoms!” and want to hinder the prosperity promised by free market capitalism.

To those who have said such things, I have a question: How do you like our summer so far? Have any of you keeled over from heat stroke? How many of you have lost your homes to wildfires so far? How many of you will be starving due to crop failures? I'd like to weep for you all, but the heat has dried up my tears.

I'm struck by something the Governor of Oklahoma said recently when questioned about the climate change-induced drought gripping her state. She asked people to “pray for rain.” Now, I am a Christian, and the Bible does command Christians to pray for their needs. But I am a peculiar type of Christian. I believe that the chief thing God wants to do with Christians is to transform us into decent people. The main point of our earthly lives is our moral development, not the satisfaction of all our earthly cravings. Therefore, God frequently allows us to suffer the consequences of our stupidity – in order to teach us a lesson or two. In asking prayer for rain, this Republican ditz makes it seem as if what Oklahoma is suffering is some supernatural judgment, and not merely the natural consequence of ignoring very simple physics and chemistry. (Let me ask you, if you play on the freeway and get run over by a semi truck, was it due to a supernatural act of God or your own stupidity?)

Unfortunately, I suspect that Governor Mary Fallin's “request for prayer” will be typical of the responses of a large majority of Americans to the age of limits, as they chuck adult reasoning in favor of appeals to magic.

Economics (and Sheep Dogs)

The loud voices which dominate public discussion in our country are all preaching the same message: namely, that the chief aim of our society must be to pursue economic growth at all costs. Selfishness and greed are exalted above all virtue, while frugality, community spirit and altruism are demonized. Above all, the message has been that economic growth is still possible, and that there are no structural, functional limits to growth. Therefore, everyone can be rich if he wants to be, and everyone should want to be.

By contrast, a counterculture has arisen in the United States and other countries. This counterculture recognizes that economic growth has ceased throughout the industrial world, and that those things that look like growth are merely zero-sum transfers of wealth from one group of people to another by means of swindles. Many people within this counterculture are able to accurately trace the reasons for the cessation of growth to the decline of our resource base and the pollution of our environment by economic activity.

However, a funny thing has happened as certain members of this counterculture have become more popular and have acquired powerful voices of their own. What has happened as time has passed is that the message of these “powerful voices” has changed to resemble the message of the mainstream which this counterculture is supposed to oppose. In other words, the supposedly countercultural voices have been turned into “sheep dogs.”

Let me define the term “sheep dog.” In a society dominated by privileged ruling elites, there are certain people who become popular and well-known spokespersons for those exploited and oppressed by the elites. These spokespersons are tolerated as long as their popularity and influence is not great enough to threaten the established order. However, once they achieve a critical mass, both they and their message are usually co-opted by the ruling elites in the hope and expectation that the energy of both the spokespersons and their followers may be turned in directions that are harmless to the ruling elites. They become the sheep dogs of the elites. Sometimes these sheep dogs are manufactured by the elites. (This process occurred in the ancient Roman Empire, by the way. There's a book that describes the process – I think the name of it is Subversive Virtue.)

Within the Peak Oil/climate change/limits-aware counterculture, a fair number of sheep dogs have arisen. I have time to mention only two just now. I think of Tom Whipple, a retired CIA analyst whose first involvement in the Peak Oil scene was commendable, in that he raised the issue in an intelligent, easily understandable manner. But Tom has lately seemed to run off the rails – on the one hand, foaming at the mouth about how Syria and Iran are rogue states which must be overthrown, and on the other hand, raving about how new breakthrough technologies like cold fusion will enable us to continue to lead an opulent life for decades to come. (Earth to Tom: even if “cold fusion” was a viable physical process (which it isn't), scaling up a fusion power plant to produce the amounts of energy our society demands while keeping the physical size of the plant at a reasonable scale would quickly turn the “cold” fusion plant into a “hot” fusion plant, with all the problems that entails.)

Then there's Jay Taylor, a supposed finance “whiz” who hosts an Internet radio program, “Turning Hard Times Into Good Times.” In his radio show, he claims that he will guide you into keeping your money from “Wall Street” by giving you information on stocks that's not found in the “mainstream media.” He can show you how to grow your money by smart investing, yadda yadda. According to Mr. Taylor, America is in its present jam because we have let the Government get too powerful, rather than letting the free market work its wealth-creating magic.

(Earth to Jay Taylor: if you claim that you're trying to keep me from being robbed by Wall Street, why are you then telling me to invest in mining stocks? The age of “investment” characterized by people getting something for nothing merely by purchasing the right stocks is over. Our entire debt-based economy is running off the rails. You are not the counterculture. You sound just like the Wall Street Journal.)

Yes, indeed, that's what Jay Taylor sounds like. (For that matter, even Max Keiser has lately joined the cheerleaders of “free market” economics.) Such people appeal to the greed of those members of the upper middle class who seek to hold on desperately to unearned privileges and prerogatives. To this class such people say, “Yes, the world is a dangerous place and your wealth is under threat! Come here and we'll tell you how you can guard all your stuff from the coming zombie apocalypse! We're trustworthy; we're not the mainstream!” But I've got something to say to anyone who claims to be countercultural, yet allows himself to be interviewed by one of these bozos: Don't grant them interviews anymore. But if you do, tell the rest of us exactly when you start talking on the show and when you stop so we can skip the ads for stocks and the free market rah-rah. Otherwise, people like me may not bother listening to you anymore. My cat can beat up your sheep dog.