Category: News Collapse of Society

We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say Vice.com This all goes to say that as long as climate change continues to advance—it seems that nothing can stop that now—and we maintain a global food system perennially subject to volatile price spikes and exploitation from speculators, without reform, our world will be an increasingly restive one. Hunger is coming, and so are the riots.Catherine Austin Fitts-They’re Going to Depopulate or Bankrupt the Rest of Us USAWatchDog.comCatherine Austin Fitts calls what happened to the U.S since the market meltdown of 2008 a “fiscal coup d’état.” Fitts should know because she is a former Wall…

Doomers, especially those of the survivalist, zombie-fearing variety, are sometimes accused of being adolescent gun nuts who have read too many post-apocalyptic science fiction novels and watched too many “Mad Max” movies. All I can say to these accusations is: guilty as charged. For me, such “doomer porn” is one of the few redeeming aspects of our otherwise disposable popular culture. This genre gives us a variety of entertaining and informative previews of what life might be like in the post-progressive world that is bearing down upon us now like a bat out of hell. In an effort to explore some…

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.Mongol General: That is good! That is good. Lately I’ve become obsessed with visions of a coming Dark Age, and of the kinds of men who will thrive amidst the collapse of the old order. Clearly it won’t be the power-possessors of today, the technocrats, financiers and lawyers who have created this Byzantine system of soul-destroying bureaucracy from the safety of their office cubicles…

The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, supreme Hindu god of destruction and creationLike many in the blogosphere, I have expended considerable mental energy in recent years studying and fretting over the various “doomer” scenarios that threaten humanity in the 21st century. There was a time when I found the apparent facts utterly depressing and was convinced that there was no light at the end of the tunnel for mankind – that the future offered nothing but total collapse and devolution. But some time during the past six months or so, and particularly with my recent turn to the “dark side”, I have come to view the doomer…

Gaze with me into the mirrors of your Multiversal mind, and see one possible future coming into view…This is not the world your mythmakers promised you — no Disneyland of techno-prosperity and consumer capitalism for all. No, this world is racked by holy wars and ethnic conflicts, Malthusian catastrophes, refugee invasions, eco-anarchy and Millennial insanity. Do you see it? There, in the frontview mirror? Do you see the chaos approaching in the twilight of this, the darkest of all ages?The chaos is descending fastest across the lands of God-drunk Islam. Thirsty Yemen is falling to the soldiers of martyred bin Laden; modernity is in on the…

Since I’ve recently been accused of being a fascist (and not for the first time), I did a little self-reflection and concluded that, yes, I probably am that. And so, I suspect, are you, if you are honest with yourself and possess any degree of self-awareness. Allow me to explain… Ever since adolescence I have been acutely aware that our glorious species is, for the most part, a vast troop of self-deluding monkeys who, despite our overgrown neocortexes, are still largely driven by hundred million year old lizard brain impulses. Perhaps I had an advantage over others in perceiving this fact, in that for medical reasons I did…

My friends, this may be my final sermon here at TDR, my ultimate attempt to explain why anyone concerned with the fate of humanity and our planetary biosphere should be in favor of continuing our civilization’s technological push forward, rather than wishing for its collapse. Ready?The key point is this: continued technological progress will enable us to transition to a post-industrial age — to reduce our global ecological footprint by localizing manufacturing, harnessing eco-friendly energy sources and moving more of our activity into “virtual reality”. To see this, let’s try to imagine a different world: the world of the “Eco-Matrix”……

“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” –J. B. S. HaldaneRationalists of a certain literal, materialistic mindset look at the world’s current state and its future trajectory, crunch the numbers and conclude that, with a high probability, we’re all doomed. It’s an understandable conclusion, too, if you project current capabilities and priorities linearly into the future. But what is missing from their equations — from their entire worldview, in fact — is the element of what I’ll call, for lack of a…

In my last post I gave some practical tips for aspiring Neo-Barbarians that were focused on fortifying your homestead against Imperial interlopers and marauding bandits. In this installment I’d like to present another option for would-be Neo-Barbs which may turn out to be an even more appropriate (and fun) adaptation to the 21st century milieu of climate chaos, resource scarcity and global guerrilla-dom: hitting the road.I expect this century to mark the beginning of a new Migration Period like the one that reset the ancient world starting in the 4th century A.D. As discussed in my…