Ideological Consistency is Foolish: Amish versus Climate Change Cult Hypocrisy

The county I live in has a large population of Amish people who live in rural communities that are surrounded and mixed with non-Amish people. The Amish own small businesses, work in construction, and sell products at farmers markets. Most of the interactions I've had with Amish people have been commercial in nature: buying stuff they make or sell. Otherwise, I've just observed the general shape of their communities by driving through the country or riding through on my bike.

Any casual observer will notice seeming inconsistency in choices Amish people make about technology. When you go to an Amish business, they'll have a smattering of modern technology mixed with 19th century tech. For example, they might have a credit card machine, a wireless phone or a cell phone, but no electric lights. A farmer might run a hay baler that's pulled by a team of horses, but has a gas engine running the baling mechanism. The inconsistency doesn't seem to comport with a lifestyle that's dictated by a religious creed.

Let's compare that with another religious view and corresponding life choices: climate change worrying. There are millions of people who worry about climate change as frequently as other people say their morning prayers and want something "to be done" (in the passive voice). Yet, at the same time, they'll buy a new car every few years, participate totally in consumer culture, or mow a large lawn for decades.

The Amish's apparent "hypocrisy" seems to stem from making intentional choices about daily life. It seems like they avoid technology that ties them into commercial systems, e.g. electric lighting. If you were to wire a large home for electric lights, the project would probably cost at least $10,000, then you'd be tied into the grid and making a monthly payment for the rest of your life. If you were mindful of the cost of lighting a home, and knew of lower cost options, you might elect to do something different.

If a typical american made a lot of mindful choices like that--emphasizing freedom, leisure, community, or health over comfort or paper money the typical american would live a weird hodgepodge life. To that person, it'd be consistent, but there would be no ideological consistency, unless you consider pragmatism an ideology.

Ragnarok and Societal "Collapse"

Fenris the Wolf Eats Odin

My twitter timeline is loaded with prophets of doom. Doom prophesy is a perennially popular way for people to spend their free time.

Financial doom forecasters are relatively popular on youtube. Some are so deluded by the digits of financial instruments that they think the dollar is the sun, so when the dollar "dies" the United States will die. I'm not going to bother counting up the currencies and financial crises of the USA--there have been lots. The financial "system" is a bunch of business deals strung together by debt and bankers.

Climate doom forecasters also make frequent appearances on my twitter timeline as either a subject of ridicule, or as part of an earnest plea to save the planet. The climate doom story is actually a version of the financial doom story. A system run amok will come to an abrupt, unmanaged end, and kill vast swaths of people and also kill the environment.

Guilt and punishment seem to imbue both stories. The "debt death" financial crisis story is the most absurd and myth laden. The "banker" magic Jews will kill us all. A handful of Jew bankers: Rothschilds Soroses or whoever will pew pew the world into oblivion as a sort of civilization level foreclosure. How mind fucked are people to wring their hands over this story?

Saturn's the most interesting mythological characters in many ways. Fenris, maybe is time. The gnashing tooth of time. He's a son of Loki. The weights and measures of Saturn are all lies and Fenris is bound by nonsense--a chain made of:

• The sound of a cat's footfall
• The beard of a woman
• The roots of a mountain
• The sinews of a bear
• The breath of a fish
• The spittle of a bird

But in the end, of course, he breaks free and noms Odin.

Technocrats and Factory Farms versus Permaculture and Intentional Living

There are two paths available to our technological society. When I say "technological" I mean a society whose population is entirely dependent on technology for survival, and when I say technology, in this case I mean technology that makes an economic "system" run. A system produces what the society needs to live rather than people. The viability of the two paths are determined by the availability of energy in easily portable, storable forms.

One path is permaculture and low-tech solutions to the basic problems of life: food, water, shelter, and transport. The other approach is exemplified by Weimar techtopia fantasies like Tesla or the parade of techno-narcissist people on the TED talk stages. The techtopia fantasy needs limitless energy to remove the need to make a choice or to think about anything. The low-tech path assumes we basically live in a terrarium and resources are limited. In this case "low-tech" really means not energy intensive--this technology can be more like magic than the most high tech silicon geegaw.

The limitations of our civilizations life-support systems are probably not solely limited by energy availability. They're also curtailed by our relationship with the soil and with water and other species. The techtopia path is exemplified by something as stupid as robot bees.

The vision of techtopia grows out of the technocratic mass societies that also gave us factory farming, factory schools, and mass media. Factory farming is essentially a method for transforming petroleum into food. It kills the soil. It kills animal life. That path is a dead end.

The oligarchy that's in control of the western world depends on the factory farm system and factory schools and technocrat sophists. They're as dependent on that system as a poor single mom and her kids living on EBT cards and junk food.

When the oligarchs wring their hands about climate change, they're really wringing their hands about keeping this crappy system going so they can retain power.

Divide and Conquer: Three Sides

Divide and Conquer recipe: make a "game" that has two faux sides. People's instinct takes them into two teams. Run both sides from the shadows. The two teams barely notice there's a third party.

Neutrality

One interpretation of the Masonic checkerboard floor is that neutrality is the "true" point of view. The sides of light and dark or any two political sides of a human conflict are severely flawed and limited in perspective. The neutral party has the only "true" view.

With some discipline, a person can abandon the urge to belong to a side. There are a lot of representations of this type of character in fiction, movies, and TV shows. The Maesters on the Game of Thrones are one example.

They are meant to be advisors to the party that happens to be in charge of a political unit. The seer on Vikings is another such character. Lex Luthor on Smallville represents this sort of character until he goes totally dark side. Varys on the Game of Thrones is another such character.

The neutral position, unfortunately, ends up being hard to distinguish from the "moral imbecile" or psychopath. Sherlock's brother is a good example of this type. Rather than obtaining an elevated position via their detachment, or obtaining a position of higher consciousness the neutral can end up as a mere calculator and schemer, so the only element of their humanity they retain is a desire to dominate and win. For this type there's no philosophy, only sophistry. There's no truth telling, only rhetoric.

This Age is Nothing Special and It Will Pass

People in every age are apocalyptic. In the context of their own lives, they're correct. They're the green leafy nodes of the tree of human life. In a broader historical context, though they're wrong. Our age, like every other, will pass. The powers of our day and the delusions that keep them on golden thrones will fade and crumble. The world turns.

The belief that some people are in control of human destiny--that collectively we'll transcend mere humanity is another myth. Geological history, evolutionary history suggests that destiny is made in times of disaster and small groups make it through the gates, possibly just by luck--no skill or virtue required.

Not only will this age pass. It's passing. Big tectonic plate forces are at work all the time. The idea that a new age will be revealed, or is ushered in by one person (like Donald Trump, lol), is a myth, too. It's thousands, millions of people finding slightly new ways to do things--ways that work. Ways that are convenient. The internet is a big tectonic force, but it has hidden, unknown flaws yet to be revealed. It's super energy intensive and wasteful, for example.

The change of eras seems to always be the same process. Ex post facto people write about it. Scholars and thinkers characterize what's happening, but it's way bigger than them. In retrospect, people conflate the thinker with the age.

Transportation Networks and the Brain

This link is to a series of transcribed articles about Northeast Ohio history. It discusses the early days of European settlement in the Western Reserve. (I've written about this bit of history several times in the blog.) The changes in the pattern of life here from era to era--really just a few decades for each--are startling. The things that formed people's entire world just a few generations ago are wiped clean. Barely a trace remains.

For a few decades the Interburn network shaped how people traveled through a large region. The rail networks provided a tree of junctions and lines that ended up in Cleveland, which in those days was a bustling growing city. In those days, people assumed they were building the whole region and one project would build on another. What actually happened was a succession of projects that wiped out and cannibalized what came before. When I first started studying the local history sources, I did it from a sense of nostalgia and sympathy for the people who settled here, but it didn't take long for that to wear off. They were, if anything, way more wanton and careless and driven by unbridled greed than people today. They converted everything nature provided into money until nature couldn't provide, then they just moved on like a swarm of insects.

Prior to the Interurban era, settlement followed the pattern of the native people that once lived here. People lived in river and creek valleys and used them for transportation. It is extremely rare for anyone to canoe or kayak in these rivers anymore.

Howe's Hollow

The place names of the time were directly tied to that geography, e.g. Pease Hollow, Griswold Hollow, Howe's Hollow referred to flat lands adjacent to Big Creek. Generally a family name was attached to these places and in the 1800's there was also an industry attached to these places that could take advantage of the water power; grain mills, wool mills, forges with power hammers, saw mills, etc...

The transportation networks formed the horizon of the society and its activities. When rivers, lakes, and stagecoach roads provided transportation, there were lots of local industries. It boggles the mind today that steel was smelted only a few miles from here rather than in a big factory in port cities. (It's pretty likely that the nails in my old 1836 vintage house were made from locally sourced iron ore.)

Today, there's literally no evidence these industries were around. Similarly, these place names are all but gone. I spent a few hours over the weekend trying to attach the names to the geography, but am still in some doubt over which place was which.

Just as the interurban replaced the rivers and stagecoach roads, the car wiped out the interurban. The ghost of the train roads still remains. In some places, the old grades stand out from the landscape or sandstone abutments stand at either side of creeks and rivers, but the bridges are gone.

Today, the landscape is all but anonymous to the average person and their mind is confined to the interior of their car and the gray pavement.

All the Attentions

The previous post discussed an individual's attention. This one will paint the picture of the sea of everyone's attention.

Think of yourself watching a vast crowd. You're an outsider. You realize all that collective attention is a resource. A thing that can be mined. A thing that has a monetary value. You see it is totally undefended and you can steal it all, then you can work over this mesmerized drooling crowd and have it do what you want, value what you value.

The crowd never imagined such a thief would come along. They didn't think their attention was even valuable. They traded it away for wampum, the same way tribesmen sold Manhattan for a bag of shells or beads.