Why we need the coming second great depression

My title comes from my realization that the change humanity needs can't be done through our current institutions, from incremental change.

I offer this over-generalization seeing how change works at a personal level, and how it works at a cultural level. We all build up strengths that make certain decisions easier and comparatively make other decisions harder.

Well, mostly simply I have a job. I can make good money. The demand is here for my work, so I stay here. If I tried doing ANYTHING else, I'd have to invest years of retraining, years of probably lower salary, to reach what I have now. SO, as long as the money keeps flowing, I've got a strong incentive to stay on course.

Now there are incremental changes that are easier. Rather than going from computer programmer to Medical Doctor, I could try to find a job that uses SOME of the skills I gained from my current job. That's how incrementalism works - building on past success to create new success.

I imagine companies, governments, and nations all do something similar, incrementally changing, take "What's worked for me in the past" and finding new ways for it to work in the future.

The primary strength of this obvious strategy is power and affluence. The primary cost of this strategy is complexity and a loss of adaptability. Humans collectively, over extended periods of time, are very adaptable, but individually, most of us prefer to stick with what we know until it absolutely fails us.

I'm very interested in the issues of sustainability, and there's wide political efforts in that direction, and wide misuse of buzzwords to give the illusion that real change can happen incrementally, but ultimately I don't believe it.

I believe ultimately that complexity breeds greater complexity, and all succeeds breeds overdependence upon future greater success.

It is perhaps amoral to WANT hardship and suffering upon others, and of course I don't, BUT when there's a sense of "unpaid consequences", building up, ever procrastinatable, I know from personal experience that SOME things don't change until circumstances force a chance.

So I can cheer for those like Richard Heinberg, calling for an Oil depletion protocol for rational consumption and distribution of the remaining fossil fuels, I'm too much a pessimist to believe people fundamentally will STOP doing everything that gives them wealth and power (i.e. a JOB), and do something completely different, unless forced by apparent unfightable forces. So for one, a democracy can't hack it, because addicts will always vote themselves to ease the present, at any cost to the future.

I can wonder about "the big picture", how power is actually wielded. Did FDR really KNOW before hand that the Japs were going to Bomb Pearl Harbor? Did Dubya really know before hand that something big was going to happen on 9/11? I won't go into conspiracy of actual aiding the enemy, but who knows?

As an environmentalist I have to say under than bankrupting our country, perhaps invading Iraq has has a GOOD influence on energy - forcing down supply, forcing up oil prices, forcing the issue of our dependence upon oil imports. It has nothing to do with whether we get our oil from Iraq or Canada, the world market demand is growing beyond supply, and even without political limits, it would happen within a decade anyway, so why not raise prices sooner than later? If the American public is TOO STUPID to tax itself into conservation and alternatives, then better to raise prices through supply demand itself?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30friedman.html

I could be a "good guy", and root for incrementalism and smart policy to smoothly transition us into sustainability, but I just don't have the heart for it, and I'm a skeptic that the rest of humanity does either. Every rational solution says America gets less, the rest of the world gets more, and that will never do! No one can take our "God given right" away to consume everything we can get our hands on!
http://www.petrodollarwarfare.com/PDFs/Its_the_Energy_and_the_Economy_Stupid_short.pdf

Hubris requires consequences, and we need them BEFORE we'll get them. Someone has got to LIE and CHEAT and STEAL, create artificial fears NOW for consequences that must come sooner or later. NO REASON is sufficient for a majority to give up one penny of their affluence.

Oh, I have great appreciation for those who try, and perhaps all hard truths requires 10 times longer for the heart to believe than what objective reason could convince without self interest in the way.

Since I'm not in a position to CAUSE a great depression, AND I wouldn't have the confidence to believe I can see the better path, I offer none. I'll sit back like the rest of the cowards and let it all come crashing down in its own good time.

What else can be done? I guess my title was supposed to explain the need for the coming depression. I can't say I succeeded. Anyone who agrees with my premise - that unsustainable behavior must end sooner or later - that further exploitation of technology won't help because its working on the wrong questions - only working on incremental changes when only revolutionary questions can do - and as long as a sufficient majority can live in sufficient affluence and isolation to avoid the have-nots, sufficient resources to change will never be made. It must all crash down, if you agree.

OR if technology is truly the revolution itself in your beliefs, then my concerns are unfounded. You may also believe necessity is the mother of invention SO as long as power exists here, you'll follow it, and IF and WHEN power evaporates, you'll follow my path anyway. Well, so we're all in agreement, right?

If technology saves us, no problem, and if it doesn't we'l muddle through to the next stage, whether depression renewed superstition and a second 500 years of the dark ages, or whatever. Nothing to be done but keep running as hard as we can, right? No use fearing the unknown, right?

Well, I admit, I'm in the bag like the rest, properly lured by affluence. I can try to live a cautious life, a simpler life, not take more than I need, and try to keep myself in a place where I have more to give. I don't know. There's a million different approaches to an unknown future, and perhaps we need most of them to muddle forward, all our limited skills, all our passions, and irrational hopes that our children might still have a life as good as our own.

I'm convinced of the fall, just not of the time or date, so I guess that puts me along with the Christians expecting the endtimes are just around the corner. I just don't expect any holy savior to descend and judge. I don't even believe in karma, don't believe nature cares who's been good and who's been bad. We're all in it together, good and bad alike.

I do still have a little hope over the future - that hard times DO bring out BOTH the good and the bad in all of us, and we NOW have time to develop our character to handle those stresses that will come. We can run as fast as we can now to keep the empire flowing, or we can do enough to keep our corner light lit, and devote some energy to deeper thoughts of what is essential and what is discretionary, what expectations are honest, and which make us cowards.

I rejoice at the expansive success of humanity in the "oil age", but I'll rejoice more when we finally accept diminishing returns of success have come, and its time to abandon this drug.

The depression for me is about letting go of that which afflicts us with fear and blindness. I hope for the best, whatever that means.