SUNDAY, SEPT 4, 2022: NOTE TO FILE

The Ecolate Proposition

For a different outcome

Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS

TOPICS: TO DREAM PERCHANCE TO THINK, FROM THE WIRES, LONG TERM

Abstract: I bought The Eden Proposition: An autopsy of the inevitable [2009-2020] last year, but just read it. Proposed is that the time has come to 'reboot the human race', i.e. kill over 8 billion people (time is 2026 so the population is >8 billion) and restart with a select population (maybe about 200 reproductive (young) and exceptionally accomplished humans (e.g. PhD level cultural creatives). The idea comes from a radical supporter of MPR (Massive Population Reduction). Mere supporters view any significant (massive) reduction in the human population, by any means, as a benefit to posterity and the biosphere (if not those who briefly live through—or not—the reduction). Radical supporters point out that only a truly radical decrease in the human population to a small remnant population (one well below carrying capacity to allow environmental recovery) who are instructed/tasked to build a 'Second Age' of humans after the First Age is over (to be achieved February 20, 2027) could have a chance of actually being able to persist without degrading the recovering biosphere. The transition to a new Eden starts in 2026 and takes six months. Okay, the six months are not so good, will seem lamentable, but if the coming millennia get better and better for the biosphere and a remnant posterity learns to live properly with the planet, then the transition will be an evermore remote historical event as the millennia and epochs pass (as will the Anthropocene mass extinction event). Visions of wicked solutionatiques may be the only viable solutions (there can be more than one) if they were thinkable. Saving posterity and the biosphere may involve too many words, words, words (5.7k words below, sorry about that), and so cannot happen.

COOS BAY (A-P) — I was in high school in 1968 during the 'summer of love', and took an interest in the new youth-lead counterculture revolution. The ideas were not hidden, I considered them at length, acknowledged points made in books (yes, we had grown up absurd) and journals (six years later I was reading CoEvolution Quarterly, the intellectual rag of the movement), but I never joined (when I was 60 I went to Burning Man as another anthropological outing, and I once used morphine when I had a kidney stone). Bottom line: the counterculture was not counter enough, not by half.

I could be viewed as a radical MPR (Massive Population Reduction) theorist/supporter/advocate. I cannot join the movement, however, as they are not nearly radical enough, not by half. I have devoted my remaining life to destroying the Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) form of civilization, aka the World Socioeconomic-political System (WSS), the monetary culture, the Indo-Europeanized expansionist hegemon, the Euro-Sino Empire ('Era of European Predominance... Era of National Sovereignty... a world which had unconsciously become one single interlocking system' —H.G. Wells 1933) as a replay of the Greco-Roman Empire, which, as with all prior empires, selects for its own failure (and collateral damage, e.g. from biomes to the biosphere, i.e. Anthropocene species extinction goes back at least 3k to 4k years as does the denormalizing of humans on a large scale). I seek to destroy it by replacing it with a viable form of complex society (aka civilization) one mind at a time (if I have to, should there be no button to push).

Adapted from Mark Brown, Beyond Growth: Economics as if the Planet Mattered, 2/5/2019.
"Monetary culture" vs matter-energy system worldview. —M. King Hubbert
'Li' is Chinese for the laws—organizing principles—of the cosmos.
Technocracy and ecological economics were/are transitional.
Naturocracy: Technocracy for the 21st century.

The Eden book envisions destroying modern society (globally) as a good start (the how it is destroyed and why at book-length detail), but the author envisions the reboot after reset by starting off the Second Age with a lecture extorting young procreatives (and maybe cultural creatives) to multiply prosperously and then go forth to rebuild (while expecting a different outcome) because they, unlike all prior empire builders, will have learned from recent history (last 10k years). This works because readers (modern humans) would rather believe than know.

Do you believe in belief?
Do you believe in evolution? Overshoot and collapse?
And in nature-speak, the word for 'word' is data.

Sorry, but hitting the reboot button can only work if doing so selects for a different outcome, e.g. a viable form of civilization. Telling young modern techno-industrialized humans to have at it (but do it differently this time) is a weak solutionatique to our current problematique (Anthropocene overshoot). The conditions envisioned after the reboot will almost certainly select for a repetition of the empire-building dynamic (as was the slower by centuries reboot after the collapse of the Greco-Roman Empire) as those who are the dynamic utterly fail to view themselves (and their form of civilization) as a non-viable pathological enterprise, a dissipative structure (e.g. a non-evolvable hurricane or metastatic cancer, full of sound and fury...). They don't even suspect that everything they think they know is error, floating on a sea of ignorance in a thick fog of illusion. They do not view themselves as the storytelling animal who can tell no true stories. Failure to properly estimate the challenge of avoiding another ghastly future will have a determinate outcome.

The lecture to start off the Second Age of Humans climaxes with 'The Future...is ours to create!' Thus begins the second Age of Error, Ignorance, and Illusion (but different this time, maybe, somehow). The future, in evolvable systems, is selected for, NOT chosen by. Full stop. Hu-mans wake up and smell the system. See what is in front of your pug-nosed faces to know how the world system maybe-sort-of works.

All the young humans who had been assembled to be the start of the Second Age are products of and have been recognized/privileged/chosen because they serve (with varying levels of enthusiasm) the Modern Techno-Industrialized (MTIed) form of civilization that is not remotely sustainable. They may go forth to 'rethink everything. Everything! Even the little things.... What should be preserved, and what should be discarded? [as if they could discard their consensus certitudes they are unreflexive of].... Everything needs to be questioned, everything examined, everything seen in a new way [see it first, before collapse, as evidence of possibility...on the downslope no one will have the time/inclination, so why wait?]. We must clearly understand our responsibility, and the opportunity that we have been given, to correct the mistakes of the past and to set a positive, sustainable course, for the generations who follow us.' They all agree with the fine words and pledge to do their best (as their recent graduating ancestors have), cluelessly unaware that, as products of the MTI schooling system, formal and informal, they cannot think outside the MTI box of mere eloquence (their intelligence having been thoroughly bewitched by language). A new form of civilization (e.g. viable) will need a new form of language.

Semantography: A logical language for preparing information packages for a near or far future

The technology (engineered virus that kills everyone not vaccinated), while tested to prove the virus did kill everyone not vaccinated, was not 'fully' tested as usual (because such can't be done apart from releasing it, if such is profitable, to see what happens, e.g. smartphones). The vaccine had an unexpected side effect of causing female sterility (obfuscation in the case of smartphones) such that among the select remnant, only one female baby (conceived before the vaccination) would be born in the Second Age with no baby boys.

While there would be men to breed the child when she came of age, the ending merely offers hope that humans will go extinct, allowing for a post-Anthropocene recovery of biodiversity in 10 to 20 million years (i.e. a real solution). But by allowing for the remote possibility that one fertile female human could be enough to repopulate Earth with hu-mans (they would induce early puberty, superovulate her and implant blastulas (3-4) in all pre-menopausal wombs with multiple fathers, and all the mitochondrial DNA is the same, but...), the obligatory 'happy ending' was left to twist slowing in the wind. No final solution was properly envisioned. So I guess I'll have to, as somebody should.

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If the last few humans (all men) had spent the rest of their lives exploring the world for unintended survivors (some perhaps fertile women), and the book ended with the last man convinced that no humans had survived, then that would count as a real solution to the human overshoot problem (the Anthropocene mass extinction event ends). An easy rewrite would have the first and last baby born in the Second Age be a boy (with the last explorer making it back to the elderly living in Eden to tell them no other humans had survived). If remnant populations merely kept on keeping on repeating the pattern every few millennia, that would not be a solution for the biosphere (or posterity who would repeat the pattern of regional overshoot and collapse with increasing collateral damage as usual—biosphere degradation—until hu-mans are extinct).

If the current or a remnant population were to divide into three global factions always at war (a Russia, China, Iran axis, Eurasia axis, and Oceania) such that if one were to threaten to win the eternal war (if any one of the three won, leaving two, then the two would become one with no enemy, and dissipative structures need to dissipate sustainably to persist in an eternal tripartite war, or end), that the other two would form an alliance to weaken the stronger one until the alliance failed when one became strong enough to threaten its ally (the weaker then forming an alliance with their former but now weakened enemy), then while such a dynamic could be sustainably dissipative, it would merely persist as a tumor on the face of Gaia, as a non-evolvable system (or structure), not a 'proper' solution as Nature would remain 'an externality'.

The number of 'real solutions' may be vast, but no human may ever be able to envision any solution more complex than extinction. If there were a few possible designs for a viable civilization (or better, 10k), a viable solution would begin with somehow getting some fraction of a percent of modern techno-industrialized (and schooled) humans to consider them.

'Existential threat' centres, studies, initiatives, think tanks, institutes, research... has become (irony intended) an academic growth industry. Those meeting at Davos and in all hallowed halls, consider their words, words, words. No self-respecting and eminent university could tolerate not having an interdisciplinary team working to add to the list and consider/expostulate upon each existential threat that could conceivably threaten life as we (modern techno-industrialized) humans know it, love it, and live it (all now have Schools of Sustainability to serve a system that is not remotely sustainable).

Curiously, the single greatest threat to humanity (posterity) and the biosphere is missing from all their lists. Not one team, nor their intended readers, can grasp the implications of Pogo Possum's thoughts on Earth Day 1970, an event some saw as evidence of the beginning of a Second Age. By the time Catton published his Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change in 1980, surely we knew enough to alter our trajectory (and transition to a viable form of civilization...). And we did... (and we didn't change course), but as no one, except for a few women, Like to be called Shirley, nobody listened (or maybe there was some other reason).

Due to cognitive limits, I'll mention one viable design. Given limited energy and matter deliveries in a post fossil-fueled world system, a massive and rapid reduction of the human population by birth-off to 50 million (and organizing them into three hydro-powered megacities founded on a new social contract compatible with a sustainable persistence for maybe 400 years as a transitional form of matter/energy viable civilization) would be biophysically possible (viable) and select for humanity's long term persistence as agents serving the biosphere to maximize empower (of the world system of which humanity, human animals, are a subsystem).

In a note to self in 2015, I asked if there were a button that, if pressed, somehow caused 99% of humans to die at random, burdening the 1%, for a time, to do something with the bodies, would you press it? I would press it provided I could leave a record, a message to posterity, of why I pressed it (knowing I would likely die as a result of pressing it along with most everyone I knew as I would learn if I didn't by chance die). Such a reboot, assuming a proper warning, could have a different outcome (lead to a viable form of civilization).

While I could predict that a random 1% selection of humanity would rebuild, the form of civilization selected for would likely repeat the pattern of regional overshoot and collapse (there being no planetary larder of fossil fuels and mineral resources for the taking, there would be no global empire). For over seven thousand years humans built empires and never learned from the prior failure/dissolution of their predecessors. Why expect a different outcome if the only solution anyone can think of involves rebooting the same form of operating system with a different name, one whose screen of death isn't blue?

So in a 2017 note I mention that an act of premeditated culling by means of an engineered virus could have a viable outcome if there was an unforeseen, unintended failure to kill all surplus humans (as intended). Any long term solution involves selecting for a new form of complex social control system (civilization) that manages (sets limits on) techno-humanity's demands on nature's resources. There is no basis for thinking that merely reducing the human population massively will have any outcome other than tweaking the time and extent of the next overshoot, climax, and descent.

Could mitigating the coming overshoot event so humans don't go extinct but keep on keeping on for millennia, extending the Anthropocene, have a better outcome than maximizing overshoot (what we are now doing) with human extinction occurring this century (or next), ending the Anthropocene? No humans know enough to have an opinion. The only real solutions are human extinction (ASAP being better) or ending the MTI form of civilization and transitioning to a viable form, one where humans come to understand the planet and live with it properly. [James Lovelock]

Coming up with the one true design for a viable civilization isn't a viable goal. Designing a transitional form of civilization that selects for a viable outcome is if each of perhaps 25,000 complex societies cannot solve their regional overshoot problem (temporarily) by conquest or exporting surplus population (the 'rules of the game', the social contract, select against such putative short-term solutions). Each makes their complex society work or they fail. An initial failure of 10% per decade would not be an existential threat to the rest, but a benefit if information of why they failed is shared to reduce the learning curve of others interested in not failing.

In this manner, memetic information about what works increases in frequency, is selected for, resulting in 25,000 evolvable subsystems provided each is allowed to fail. Everyone gets to guess then test. No one benefits from the illusion they can choose their future (at best one can make 'choices' determined by such foresight intelligence as one may or may not have, that are selected for), and so this meme eventually goes away. Viable trumps likable. Needs matter more than wants.

The Eden Proposition was a Hail Mary maybe solution, one that depended on the best and brightest figuring out that they are way too clever by half and not nearly smart enough to persist if they continued to believe anything, e.g. that they can choose their future other than as non-evolvable dissipative structures that will rise and fall until they can't, maximizing destruction of a planetary life-support system.

If I were to rewrite The Eden Proposition, I could cut and paste the first half where the billionaire (who correctly realized that he was the only one who could develop the needed virus and decide to deploy it as no government or institution could or would) called together 11 of the planet's most likely experts to help him decide whether to use what he had by then developed to reset civilization so a viable civilization could reboot from the community (at an agriculture research station) that was in place full of young exceptionals ready to be vaccinated.

The flaw is that no non-expert was included among the 11 (i.e someone like me). In rewriting, I'd add one more to the group as 'science is the belief in the ignorance of experts' [Richard Feynman], one who may be able to offer a service only a non-expert know-nothing can provide: abelief.

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The new protagonist would explain to the billionaire and his experts why his plan was not nearly good enough, why they were all seriously underestimating the challenge of avoiding (their plan is to delay die-off a millennium — at a steady 2% rate of growth, planetary carrying capacity would again be exceeded in about 800 years, 32 generations) a ghastly future no one would or could 'choose', or not, as usual. I would then offer a viable solution to our human predicament (non-viable condition). If your computer is malfunctioning, number one solution is reboot. If the operating system (form of civilization) is the malfunction, however, rebooting to the same form of operating system is not nearly good enough. 'In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.' —R. Buckminster Fuller

 

Alternative Ending

Those assembled at the conference would spend four to six weeks writing a warning to posterity. When they could no longer envision a better warning to 15 to 19 year olds at risk of seeking a higher education, they would leave the island and begin inviting potential others they knew, who might help write a better warning, to first write, independently, their warning. The core group would consider the new warning (using a private website post conference) and agree to alter their consensus warning (or not) to incorporate any sapient elements they had overlooked. The new author may then be asked to critique the current warning (revised or not), and perhaps join the endeavor. A core message would evolve, with noted forks of unresolved differences among the elders (as the 15 to 19 year olds may view them), if any emerge.

The consensus view (initially in my rewrite) would be that modern techno-industrial society, the monetary culture, the world socioecomonic-political system, now global, is not remotely sustainable and selects for its own failure (and damage/injury to the world system, Gaia and posterity). When 1,700 of the world's top systems science literate thinkers had agreed to sign/endorse the warning, whether they had written a warning or not, then it would be released (like an engineered virus) in 2026 upon the world socioeconomic-political system. Any young person willing and able to consider the message's what and why, might come to 'bet their life' and 'vote with their feet', to walk away from that which is evidently non-viable, to iterate towards what may be viable as evidenced by the civilization's future persistence.

Maybe 1% of the world's 680 million 15 to 19 year olds would actually consider the warning, and perhaps 0.001% would want to attend an academy based on M.K. Hubbert's 'matter-energy systems worldview' (where biophysical economics is studied, and neoclassical economics and theology are studied by history-of-ideas students) such as the ecolate elders (systems literate thinkers, which could include illiterate/innumerate but sapient indigene non-scientists) envision as an alternative education system that replaces all existing schooling systems, formal and informal (idea: H.G. Wells, 1933).

One billionaire could create the first academy of evidence/reason/insight/sapience in 2027 (detailed planning done by 2026), and 0.001% of young learners who self-select into the new education system would be enough for the first to begin to iterate, over perhaps an 8 to 20 generations period, towards a viable form of civilization provided that the first academy was one of 30 global regional academies to come (some billionaires would hope to have a statue of themselves on one or more campus, and compete to fund them), some of whose members would, in due time, come to form six continental academies from whom some members (all are STs, 'student-teachers'; everyone in the learning community, aka academy, is a student who can also teach 10 year olds and occasionally elders something) could form the global academy (the United Federation Academy of Earth, UFAofE), perhaps located in what was once called 'Greece'.

Each of the 30 regional academies would be go-to places for the bioregion academies within the 30 regional areas (e.g. the Pacific Northwest Bioregion AWMU [Academy Watershed Management Unit] would be near the future ruins of Eugene OR in the East Upper Willamette Watershed), each the go-to place for anyone born into any of the 25,000 complex societies (watershed management units, WMUs), e.g. the Coos WMU or the Santa Cruz WMU), who was eager to learn.

Each WMU subsystem would select for its own persistence (or not) within limits. Each would be a set of interconnected micro utopian (or dystopian) communities (long term, dystopias not selected for). Each potentially viable WMU is an expression of the residents' vision of a hopeful future for themselves and posterity (for 375k years humans have lived in band-sized groups of 20 to 50 trusted others, range 5 to 85, with 150 being a marginally viable maximum group size), together the WMUs form a collage of 25k visions, each containing 20 to 50 band-sized communities of vision working hopefully towards the viable (what renormalized human animals would do).

Posterity is the hopium of the masses (renormalized humans living in a manageable mass of band-sized communities). Exogamy requires an interconnected set of communities as is their biological norm. In Nature, long-term persistence is the exception. Organisms who live a life-driven purpose to persist, despite likely failure to do so, are complex, dissipative, adaptive, and evolvable systems, i.e. normal lifeforms. Modern humans will renormalize or pass away.

Visions of a utopian society (one global society) are likely delusional as tribal animals can't live in them (overdensity/overcomplex societies) long term (for more than 8 to 20 generations). A vision of 25k WMUs x 20 to 50 communities each (about 875k mostly viable communities, global population 30 million) living prosperously within a local biophysical economy of enough, diverting energy/matter flows from 1/5th of the WMU (to leave room for Nature) to support their socioeconomic-policy (apolitical) system while serving as agents of the Earth working to maximize Gaian empower to serve long-term species interests (including the human animal) while endeavoring to persist within limits (micro utopias all by intent) is not delusional (provided intentional or unintentional empire building is not selected for by the rules of the game, i.e. policy system, as failure to prevent empire building, from chiefdom to nation-state levels, would select for ever larger overcomplex, overdensity societies unable to persist long term, aka empires, a non-viable form of civilization as evidenced by the last 10k years of history, written and archaeological).

The West North America (WNA) AWMU (one of 30) would be located in the Coos WMU as Coos Bay is the only (but not too busy/stressful) port between San Francisco and Portland and so, like Athens, would be a hub of trade on the West coast north of a viably cool latitude 42 (in a temperate rainforest, a temperate Mediterranean climate where heating and cooling of indoor areas is optional, where dressing warm in winter is viable). The WNA AWMU would support a population of the most accomplished elders from all other WNA bioregional academies. Students would be what are today called graduate students. Those elder STs who wished to, could retire there, instead of in their homelate (home WMU), as the less retired STs would still wish to consult their elders. Some may be invited to go to Greece to serve posterity at the UFAofE (and likely retire there as the voyage back could be too demanding).

If the 30 regional academies were formed before the collapse of the current global overcomplex society, some may survive the marauding-horde phase and serve as viable models for additional WMUs to form about them, more than already had to help protect one another and the core academy WMU during the chaotic collapse phase. The end result, during the 8 to 20 generations of the transitional form of guess-then-test civilization, would be a viable civilization as evidenced by its persistence and evolution as the millennia pass. Or humans go extinct. Nature doesn't care. 'Nature is unkind.' —Laozi.

 

And what would an academy watershed management unit (AWMU) look like? Well, to be sustainable, it would 'seek out the condition now that will come anyway'. [H.T. Odum 1973]

Extinction or persistence (our predicament) is the condition that will have an outcome, one selected for, and humans can endeavor to be selected for (or fail). A low emergy future will come anyway, so no cars, trucks, tractors, no fossil fuel use (e.g. no Haber-Bosch nitrogen fertilizers or mined phosphates, no guano mining as in the 19th century... or anything mined as all mining is unsustainable apart from low-powered mining of peat bogs at or below the rate of peat formation or mining seawater for salt at the rate of evaporation in ponded seawater), likely no ground water pumping or irrigation as salts would accumulate in low rainfall areas and eventually render soils non-productive (e.g. California's San Joaquin Valley).

Any grazing by livestock would be curtailed if any measurable increase in soil erosion was detected. Any soil whose rate of erosion exceeds the rate of soil formation would not be used for agricultural production (and the WMU's population lowered by resident K-strategists to avoid overshoot). All agricultural production, if any (as foraging is what works best in some biomes), would be low intensity as animal labor would not be maximized nor humans used as slaves/wage slaves in complex societies (WMUs) managed to avoid overcomplexity and overdensity overshoot pathologies (to be evolvable, failure must be allowed for).

Most production for local consumption, and any production for export/trade to be certifiably sustainable (by evidence), allowing, for example, some corn to be traded for some cotton to make clothes or for some seasalt, with all trade based on emdollar evaluation (per environmental accounting). Any intrawatershed use of money is optional as it risks selecting for a monetary culture.

Only one language, Semantography, would be required/used. Learning/using any natural languages would be elective. All STs (including elders accorded the highest social approbation) have two places of residence (the agro-WMU norm), one in their satellite community of 20 to 50 individuals seeking to renormalize as functional humans (or fail), and another sleeping room at the central city, i.e. academy campus. Most would live mostly in their outlying community that is within a two hour walk of the central city/campus. Occasionally, perhaps once per lunar month, all would/could assemble in the central city, bringing such food as would be consumed (perhaps for a few days). Returning to one's community to serve one's biophysical economy of enough is the condition that will come (or not as failure to persist is allowed).

Apart from sustainable exports and scant imports (if any), each watershed management unit (WMU) would be supported by the primary productivity of the one fifth of the watershed that humans claim (the 4/5th is never used to leave room for Nature). Academy watershed management units (AWMUs), to support a large ST population (2k-8k), would be located in a watershed with prime agricultural lands supported by rainfall having high environmental productivity. Otherwise, they would structurally differ from other WMUs only in the size of their library/learning labs (ad hoc classes may meet in a grove or orchard).

There would be no graduates. Learning would preferably end at death (there would be assessment tests to help the learner assess their progress in the study of ______). Most would return to their watershed of birth (required to procreate) and share information with co-residents (most would serve to staff the Federation Embassy located in the central city of all WMUs. Each would include a library for autodidacts who could teach themselves to read by borrowing a copy of Rosetta Bliss (Semantography). Any child born in a nomad-forager WMU could, after they finished reading Encyclopedia Bliss, apply for admission to their bioregion academy (or a junior academy in their ecoregion), and perhaps come to mostly teach at the United Federation Academy of Earth (UFAofE) in Greece and write missives read by posterity for millennia to come.

All WMUs would agree that if any WMU was attacked by non-Federation peoples (any WMU that attacked/intruded upon a neighboring WMU would immediately become a failed state), they would send, on request as needed, a contingent of their Guardians to ensure the attacker never gained any net benefit from their aggression. War would not be selected for. Any WMU that transgressed any WMU's boundary, to export population or extract resources, would be viewed as a doctor would view a metastatic cancer in a patient's body (i.e. declared a failed WMU and 'arrested', their development stopped). Any WMU that in any way exploited Nature's 4/5th would be declared a failed WMU, and its social control system (e.g. leaders) neutralized/replaced. Taker culture would end. Empire building would not be viable per the Federation rules of the game and so not selected for.

Non-WMU areas ('abandoned areas', marauding-horde areas) would not be protected (including from bordering WMUs), would not trade with Federation WMUs, nor receive any Federation Embassy benefits, e.g. baseline health and illness/injury care, free information, staff services (e.g. belief/cognitive therapy), nor have the potential to attend a Federation Academy (to perhaps return as staff).

Refugees, born into a marauding-horde culture, who foresaw the way of things, who came to a watershed area adjacent to a WMU, who did not attack it..., would be taught the Federation 'rules of the game' and if mutually agreed to, would be helped to transition to a viable culture (the rules deal with interwatershed behavior, not individual behavioral issues, so if all adults use 'entheogens' daily and annually sacrifice an adult virgin per 'tradition', such would not be a Federation concern, though some limits on harming children (who could apply to emigrate as adults, e.g. if they refused to use neurotoxins—'entheogens', to an accepting WMU that didn't) would be set, including preventing children from accessing the Federation Embassy library. Residents would be informed of how to manage a viable biophysical economy of enough based on their 1/5th of the watershed while their Federation Embassy was being built by residents per information freely provided to them.

If a WMU's children are undernourished to the point of having a significant (>5%) risk of death, the WMU would be declared a failed state (adults could starve to death, but not starve their children to death) due to mismanagement (e.g. the 100-year drought comes... about every hundred years, and failure to plan for it would indicate mismanagement if the adults could not limit injuries to themselves). If sacrificing children on an altar was a cultural necessity, Federation membership would be disallowed.

If a WMU is exclusively inhabited by pedophiles who develop an animatronic doll fetish and, being non-reproductive, maintain their population by inviting pedophiles from any WMU to emigrate to theirs, then such behavior would not be of Federation concern. Attacking travellers on designated trans-watershed routes would be (a WMU's failure to control its citizens would be grounds for being declared a failed state resulting in the dissolution of the watershed's management, removing managers from power). The Federation has no police force, boots on the ground, apart from strategic incident command and control officers who advise/direct WMU Guardians.

The Federation manages and provides services (e.g. free information and protection from conquest) to WMUs by defining limits all must agree to to persist long term. Within a WMU's 1/5th area, citizens could overexploit the land's sustainable productivity, but exporting surplus population or sending warriors to attack neighbors would not be allowed. If they avoided starving their children or exploiting Nature's 4/5ths, they could learn, with Federation assistance, how to properly manage their agroecosystem for long term productivity while reducing their population by means other than by killing their children (infanticide prior to cutting the umbilical cord would be allowed as would abortion and birth control). Global governance is WMU based. WMUs manage individual behaviors (or fail to).

The outcome is to allow the system to select for what works long term (i.e. remaining well within carrying capacity as K-strategists). The Great Acceleration will be followed by a Great Selection. Humans with foresight intelligence, if selected for, have the potential to avoid future ghastly outcomes (overshoot or extinction). Humans can guess then test (and fail). The Federation is unkind (because it listens to Nature who has all the answers, rather than to the humancentric primate prattle of politicized animals about human rights and entitlements). Politics is replaced by policies (few, simple) to manage human demands on Nature's resources, and the form of governance is a naturocracy, rule by Nature's laws (what works to persist long term as a viable subsystem), that replaces the political spectrum and the modern techno-industrial form of overcomplex society.

 

SUBNOTE TO FILE 9/6/2022

I can confess that I provide techno-nerd web services to those who are part of what they have come to call an 'elderhood' of those who have achieved more than just longevity. As a 15 year old is elder to a 10 year old (developmentally and chronologically) and some 30 year olds are developmentally more advanced than some 60 year olds, the common ground for members is not their age but their understanding of 'ecolacy' or systems science literacy, also called sapience (the ability to think in systems), as evidenced by their concerns for humanity and the biosphere. I could guess that Donella Meadows was a founding member (or was the founder), and maybe David Suzuki is a member, but I literally know nothing. I am not a member (I'm not qualified, no bona fides, I am not a 'source'). I don't know the history of the group (other than that early on they called their group the 'naturocracy alliance', nor who or how many members there are. For all I know there is one member who is a 15 year old savant living in her parent's basement (with internet).

As webmaster, I am privileged to a vast amount of information shared by and accessible to 'members' who may know the full URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that is nowhere linked to so search engines do not crawl the content. My services are based on trust (no money involved, costs are on me). I could put Google Analytics on pages and know when, how often, and from where on the planet content is accessed (doing so would be easily detected if I did), but I don't need to know, and I'm used to not knowing.

I will add to my confession that any ideas I share that may seem original are not. I've never had an original idea in my life (that I know of). Any sources I fail to cite are unknown to me, so I don't/can't cite them. The 'ecolate elders' have written hundreds of versions of their message to posterity in recent years and I have read each iteration. They are beginning the 'outreach phase' and are inviting 'ecolate' others, such as they judge them, to write their message to posterity for the elderhood to consider. We live in the future's past, the future has yet to be, and all I know of it is that I know nothing. I, and the 'ecolate ones', can foresee likely futures and have no time for doomers who can see no possible solutions (they can believe there are none, but such is more than they can know). For posterity's sake (and the biosphere's), 'real solutions' that might actually work are needed. Wicked problematiques may require wicked solutionatiques (or not).

 

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SUBNOTE TO FILE 9/12/2022: An American Famine

Historical accounts of famine are of interest, but may not be relevant to our future as no modern techno-industrial urbanized Americans have any experience with famine nor have their recent ancestors apart from some immigrant Chinese (1850–1873, 60 million deaths by starvation in China) and Irish (1845-1849, 1 million deaths by starvation in Ireland).

The mostly modern urbanized, who think food comes from the supermarket, are not normal humans. As a 'normal' American I've never been hungry in my life. From early childhood I've been conditioned to associate the condition of being able to eat more with being hungry. The condition of deficit with respect to meeting bodily caloric needs has never been remotely experienced even though for nearly six weeks I once did not eat.

After a week of water only, however, I did experience hunger for macronutrients (not calories because as long as there is body fat, ketosis converts fat to meet caloric needs), likely due to hyponatremia or hypokalemia. I acquired a compelling craving (hunger) for V-8 juice (high in sodium and potassium) and took to drinking one small can a day. That completely satisfied my hunger for salts (30 calories also provided, but incidental to getting the salts my body (as distinct from conditioned wants/mind) craved (hungered for). I continued to see how long it would take to experience caloric hunger, but never did. My wife thought I just didn't want to eat in her presence anymore for some reason, as I never mentioned my little experiment.

My activity level was unaffected. I've never been clinically obese, but at the start I was, like 70+% of Americans, overweight. I never ran out of fat (I used about 1/2 lb. of adipose tissue per day and had over 20 lbs. of body fat at the start) and never interpreted any sensations of being able to eat more as hunger (I did not believe a lifetime of conditioning and so had no anxiety (evidence) I was causing harm, just curiosity to see what a condition of actual caloric hunger might be). My PFC, unlike my mother who seemed to think that, when I was a child, not eating three meals a day would be life threatening, had no basis for concern.

For no compelling reason I recall, after 40 days I started eating again, no big or little deal, as if I hadn't missed a meal. I did 'believe' (conjecture) that my ancestors didn't eat everyday and didn't view that condition as even 'a deal' (certainly not 'big') if they were carrying some body fat, i.e. I knew my body could do its ketosis thing without missing a heartbeat or calorie, so any sensations or belief that I was hungry would have been an illusion.

Some years later I repeated the experiment, but after a few weeks (same results), for social reasons, I resumed eating. Someday I hope to actually experience caloric hunger (but my guess is it will be similar to the actual hunger for potassium I experienced, as a natremic hunger would have led to a fixation on the salt shaker instead of the high potassium V8 juice, which my body 'knew' had potassium in it as did my label reading mind, but the actual hunger was clearly somatic in origin (not psychological) as would real caloric hunger, I'm guessing, but I have yet to experience that, along with about 335 million other Americans).

For a glimpse of normal humans, read Catton's opening story in Overshoot 1980 (p. 3) about famine in Russia (1921-1923, 7-8 million deaths). The American journalist (not a normal human) asks an elder among the dying why they didn't overwhelm the one soldier who was guarding piles and piles of bags of wheat (seeds for next year's planting). The leader explained that while most of them will likely die (half already had), they will 'not steal from the future', from posterity. What percentage of Americans today, or at any time in their history (the half who had not yet died from starvation) would give that answer to a sociopathic moron who didn't know right from wrong? There was no faminarchy involved.

This was famine as usual (in ancient China, for millennia, officials recorded famine somewhere in China every year or two, and in England, before turning fossil fuels into food and stuff, famine happened about every 15 years. Americans, for generations, have prospered by stealing from the future. When famine comes to America, faminarchy will be an added feature as almost all will keep on doing what they have been doing, what their mostly expansionist Indo-European ancestors have been doing for seven thousand years.

In 1941, Leningrad's 2.5 million people were cut off from all food imports for 900 days by Germans, and 800k died. Blockade Houston Texas for 900 days, no food in or people out. Would there be 1.7 million still alive when the cage was opened?

The first chapter notes that when famine comes to America there will be chaotic conflict (anarchy). In the developed world, famine will rise from the bottom up. How many know that today 50 million people in 45 countries are 'teetering on the edge of famine', with 345 million facing acute food insecurity? The near famine condition is added to the ongoing famine unto death in Madagascar, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen today. When card houses fall, it takes just a bit longer for the one on top (USA) to fall the furthest and hit the hardest. Mainlining one quarter of the planet's resources (for the prosperity of 4.2% of the planet's humans) feels good for a time, but is a short-term condition of dependency on energy and material flows.

The USA is exceptional. It has by far the most weaponized and denormalized public on the planet, ready to take what's coming to them, and blame the government if their sense of entitlement is frustrated or if getting their 'needs' (actually wants) are thwarted in the slightest. A story that the President muttered 'let them eat cake' when told of starving Americas can spread at the speed of an electron today, and a fake video of her saying the words could go viral within an hour. But visions of how modern techno-industrialized humans die or manage to persist for a time is a distraction (if I were a billionaire I could pay writers to tell me 10k stories about the future in collapse and die without reading all of them, but to do so would be a distraction). I could have skipped the next 268 narrative pages, but mostly didn't (150 pages are 'Famine Stories' which I mostly skipped apart from those involving the main character as events might be referenced later). I was beginning to wonder if the imaginative fiction would end with the last page, but in Part 3 chapter 13, the narrative account transitioned to claims to consider, which I read and then (having marked the start) reread.

Intransigence of the collective mind-set, the mass psychology, the groupthink that dominates the beliefs of the average human matters, and are to consider. One need not wait for the famine to consider them as they are the sea we swim in. To quote instead of paraphrase:

'For many decades now people have been subjected to hyper-sophisticated messaging emanating from their ever present electronic umbilical cord [I used to have to sit in front of the 'one eyed babysitter']. We are continually bombarded by all these little morality plays expressed on video, movies, TV, etc., that show us what we should believe. We have the ubiquitous spiritual leaders [news flash from today: Joel Osteen baptized 1,000 converts in a 4-hour televised event I missed, damn it] proclaiming their moral "truth". All of these fundamental messages are accepted and essentially unexamined by almost everyone--and they have embedded themselves deeply into our brains.' [Amen, brother.]

'This ubiquitous meme-pool that espouses growth, greed, and the happiness derived from material success is never questioned and never even examined by everyone because it is reinforced continuously through a constant and overwhelming media barrage.'

'And so even when confronted by collapse of a civilization that was directly caused by these group-think beliefs, the good folks of... still found it impossible to step back and truly grasp the root causes of the collapse. They simply can't escape the brainwashing that they have been subjected to for their entire lives.'

'The ultimate computer (the human brain) has created the marvels of the electronic media, and just like its silicon half-brother, this creation has also provided the platform for the ultimate computer virus [our belief in belief]. Unfortunately, as we know, the only solution to a sophisticated computer virus is a re-boot. I fear that is what is necessary now. The current meme-pool is a dead-end [and the education system, formal and informal, is broken], it has [been] proven so by the current collapse, and there is no reason to believe... that it will be any different in the future.'

'The only real chance of creating and sustaining new memes lies with the next generation, or perhaps one (or several) generations after them. These next-gen people will not be subjected to the constant media brainwashing, as there will be no [electronic] media. Perhaps then they can have a clear path to arrive at a new way of thinking.' [As autodidacts provided, information packages can be preserved with a little help from their elders.]

Okay, so now that we're talking brass tacks, the question is, this being so, and then what? Are there any near mutants out there, or young humans who, when their 'teachable moment' comes, could mutate memetically? Pre-collapse, 'people would rather believe than know' [E.O. Wilson, aka anti-human racist as viewed after he died by true believers who didn't like him for some reason].

Are there any humans who would rather know than believe? Well, there is evidence that Kurt Dahl and Jack Alpert would rather know that the future (anywhere on the planet in the coming century) is likely not a good place to be nor is the likely future good news for 10 year olds (i.e. today's 50 year olds may have a 50% chance of dying a natural, non-Malthusian, death, 10 year olds a 10% chance of dying a normal death mostly by 'old age', and 1 year olds, maybe a 1% chance.... And not because Kurt and Jack deeply believe we are so fucked, but because if you listen to Nature (who has all the answers), do the arithmetic, or at least listen to those who endeavor to listen to Nature (e.g. systems ecologists), then the question becomes, how could posterity (or most other living things) have a good Anthropocene, the one we Anthropocene enthusiasts believe in?

As Mark Twain noted, 'Denial is not just a river in Egypt.' It is the all embracing consensus narrative that lulls us to sleep. Will we awake to pleasant dreams? Maybe, as dreams are not out there, but then what? Or will we awake to lamentation and sorrow? 'Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamentation and sorrow.... While they dream, they do not know that they are dreaming.' —Zhuangzi.

Like those who would rather know than believe (perhaps the 0.001%?), I love the smell of data in the morning. Interpreting it is a bitch, and all data and interpretation thereof can be wrong. All models, including our very best conceptual models (and climate models), are not the system modeled. Worst, it is possible to be wrong about everything, as evidenced by graduates of our modern techno-industrial society-serving educational (schooling) system who have no clue as to the extent of what they do not know, and hence personify hubris man (i.e. hu-man, server of the patriarchy; hu-woman is naturally superior, hence more sapient, able to have posterity concerns, and more likely to renormalize. Sorry to be sexist, but that's what the tea leaves of evidence are telling me softly).

And as the years go by, it is of personal interest to note that there are perhaps more Cassandras out there than I had any evidence or reason to suspect. Cassandra's Dilemma is also Cassandra's Curse. No one believes me, and such is all I could hope for. Unlike Cassandra, I don't actually know anything, hence I believe almost nothing (I'm a fideist as a few beliefs remain, won't go away). But alas, for some reason, my fellow hu-mans don't extend the blessing of unbelief to everyone else.

I've claimed that no humans will persist much longer, and that hundreds of billions will hollow out Earth's mantle for more space and build floating cities from seashore to shining seashore, to make Earth the Trantor Issac Asimov would have liked to live on. But I don't believe anything I say, so why should anyone? Not listening to Nature, however, has extinction as outcome, but not because I say it does. 'To think is to listen. Listen.' [Kogi máma]

Another excerpt:

'Unfortunately, a crisis that unfolds in slow motion is easy to ignore [by humans and frogs in water slowly coming to a boil]. As each day comes and goes, peak oil, population growth, soil degradation, water shortages [longages of demand], and climate disruption all seem to be no worse than the day before. And because most people now have such a short attention span and short-term thinking, the vast majority of people never see or acknowledge the gradual yet inexorable deterioration of our planet's life support systems.'

'For the general public, a combination of apathy, denial and false hope obscures the reality of the dangers ahead. The existential question then becomes: Can the general public's apathy, denial, and false hope ever be overcome? So far, the Cassandras among us have completely failed. I think I know why. I believe that our civilization suffers from an inability to conceptualize our dangerous future.'

Inventing a worm-hole camera that would show people posterity's (their children's and their children's children's) ghastly future in the most extreme detail imaginable, would predictably have one outcome: they wouldn't believe what you were showing them. Even if you could transport them through the worm-hole (and back), they would rather believe Joel Osteen when he told them (as Q will confirm) that it was all a trick of the devil (the deep state). 'PEOPLE [modern techno-industrialized humans] WOULD RATHER BELIEVE THAN KNOW.' Full stop.

This is what is in front of our pug-nosed faces. That there are now some fraction (possibly more in the future) of a fraction of a percent who would rather know than believe, is to note and consider as the memetic mutants they are. Whether humans (last 375k years of ancestors) are by nature hardwired to be true believers is not obvious nor even evidence based. That we moderns are not normal, is evident. Figuring out how to change the consensus narrative, a story being told for at least seven thousand years (the Indo-European expansionist/exceptionalist one that has Indo-Europeanized virtually all humans on the planet, e.g. CCP (Chinese Communist Party) unnamed billionaires], may not be the only way to have a viable outcome for the human species. I seek to destroy MTI society, not humans per se unless there is evidence they cannot be renormalized as adaptive and evolvable K-strategists (or come to live sapient lives in Jack Alpert's megacities).

 

Looking towards our greatest of leaders, be they thought leaders or 'cultural creatives' who can maybe walk on water (or political, religious, military, economic, legal, educational, intelligentsia, academic, business... leaders) for real solutions to our overshoot meta-problem is questionable. They haven't been leading (running the show) and can't. They have been riders of the storm (dissipative structure) and taking credit for the growth everlasting, but they will thereby be falsely blamed by we riders of the storm, as usual, for any slowing of Growth as such is evidence God doesn't favor them anymore.

There are and were smoke-filled rooms of men (mostly), but they didn't 'choose' to build empire, have an Industrial Revolution or a Green Revolution or put Putin in power. If mutants come up with 'rules of the game' that select for a different outcome, then there will be a different outcome, possibly far worse than anyone sucking in air now can imagine (or not, and a viable civilization is the outcome).

A few realize humanity is playing a high-stakes endgame. Fewer realize that those who realize we are playing such a game are playing it badly if at all. And none of the environmentalists tell us the truth because they don't know it (they would rather believe in their fine words, their calls to action). They have been told 'it', but they can't believe it as their belief in political solutions and human rights gets in the way.

Believing minds cannot understand the implications of the exponential function, humanity's greatest shortcoming. No believing mind can. Only the abelieving mind (a currently mutant form) has even the remotest ability to see through a glass darkly what is in front of their pug-nosed face. To an abeliever, the condition of belief-based thinking looks like cognitive pathology. Abelief, in turn, looks like a cognitive pathology to all believers.

This be conflict, and if irreconcilable and upon me proved, then unthinkable thoughts become thinkable: i.e. divorce as in walking away from Omelas time. The true belief-based mind and its monetary expansionist culture cannot co-inhabit the planet (be bedfellows) with the reason and evidence-based matter-energy systems worldview. The current socioeconomic-political system is not selecting for sapience, ecolacy, or human persistence, but is selecting against the matter-energy systems worldview.

We who have concerns for humanity and the biosphere could join the political spectrum (as the 0.001%?) and hope our faction 'wins' to take power (a less than 0.001% chance) for a time, or join John B. Calhoun's 'compassionate revolution' spelled to mean 'prescription for our continued evolution'. A world where true believers are offered belief therapy (free with all due compassion for their suffering and dysfunction), may select for a different outcome, one that isn't bad news for 10 year olds.

A common failure among those who foresee collapse (climax of the world system and descent in the near future, this century) is to view the descent as short-term, less than 20 to 50 years, and that the remnant population would then begin recovery. But as Robert Browning asked, 'What says history?'

When complex societies collapse (or 'fade away') as all prior ones have, most on the downslope are soon conquered by outlying upstart empire builders as they weaken, and so post conquest, further conflict/scarcity driven descent may cease as most are soon killed or enslaved to depopulate the region. In the absence of conquest, however, some complex societies recover after a 'dark age' that on average lasts 290 years (11 generations).

But in the absence of conquest, four times as many complex societies that collapse in regional isolation do so to regional extinction, i.e. a 'darker age' where descent continues unto dissolution, e.g. the Late Bronze Age Land and Sea Peoples (a marauding horde culture selected for over a 12 generation period having no viable outcome), and the Indus Valley Civilization (8-12 generations on the downslope to regional extinction). If those on the downslope fail to rebuild within 500 years (20 generations), they stay on the downward spiral unto local extinction (if, in their weakening state, there is no outliers to conquer them, e.g. Malta).

For the first time in history, there is one global empire. There are no outlying upstart empire builders (unless the Klingons show up). The two outcomes are a dark age or a darker age (or maybe transition to a viable form of civilization), and the darker age (extinction) may be four times more likely. The dynamic on the downslope selects for what works (taking, as was selected for on the upslope), and if you are the product of 8 to 12 generations of downslope taking, then, even though the population may be well below carrying capacity, the taker/marauder culture doesn't just end. Each generation does what its programming dictates (what worked for generations on the downslope and to drive growth on the upslope). When there are no altruistic, productive, giving humans to take from, the dynamic selects for competing takers taking from one another until those who are among the remnant population are so dysfunctional that they cannot successfully raise non-dysfunctional children or even any potentially reproductive children. 'Fuck posterity, what did they ever do for me? Eat the little bugger, that'll stop him from whining' is being normalized with a foreseeable outcome.

The outcome of 8 to 20 generations on the downslope may select for extinction. For the Indus Valley Civilization (larger than the contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian overcomplex societies), assume that after the second or third generation post climax, no literate Harappan was left. The evidence is that the only culture that survived may have been memes transmitted by wandering monk forest dwellers who spread some religious memes outside the Indus Valley to become incorporated into the Rigveda written to serve the new Aryan Indo-European overlords (who became the Brahman class) who moved in to fill the post-collapse vacuum and spread throughout India.

That the Harappan collapse to regional extinction was caused by climate change is a popular story because thinkable. The unthinkable thought is that what happened (overshoot and collapse) to them could happen globally to us (and it won't be the added stressor of climate change as should be obvious—except to the highly schooled—since resetting all climate change to 1950 norms forever with one push of a button would change our overshoot and collapse trajectory insignificantly).

When our Euro-Sino Empire collapses, there may be no one to repopulate the planet as all pockets of functional humans could have been consumed by those living on the downslope. Or worse, somewhere a pocket of semi-viable humans persist (e.g. the Philistines post Bronze Age collapse) to maybe spread to repeat the pattern of empire building, of overshoot and collapse, regionally until they can't.

Extinction of humans in the next century or two could be the better outcome (for the biosphere). This clarifies what 'high-stakes endgame' means. My concern is that not enough moderns will ever grasp the difficulty of renormalizing to thereby do so, and that if everyone is a product of the downslope culture (perhaps almost everyone under 50 today), that renormalizing will be impossible. I'm guessing wild Norway rats will persist (Coos Bay, a port since 1853, has an endemic population of Norway rats). Not so sure at all about we hu-mans of NIMH.

Envisioning a viable civilization is to consider, e.g. Jack Alpert's Design for a Viable Civilization. Lamentably, there are too few biophysical mass-and-joules based envisioned designs to consider. A viable education system would produce hundreds to thousands of teams of designers/envisoners of potentially viable designs to consider. To implement, start with guess-then-test designs, then form make-it-so teams and add pioneer residents to empirically endeavor to see what works (to end the Anthropocene mass extinction event).

 

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