The day it all comes tumbling down

Discussion in 'The big picture' started by insipidtoast, Nov 14, 2011.

  1. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Its OK The Darwin Drug Dealers/Pubs will be happy
    One more lot of "Friendly Fire" will hardly be noticed.
    Hopefully we will invite China for war games too.
    That would be fun!
     
  2. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    The day it all came down was earlier this week, how did none of you realize this? ;)

    Marijuana is no longer served in the coffee shops in Amsterdam to the tourists!!!!!

    OH THE HUMANITY!!!!


    :D
     
  3. FREE Permaculture

    FREE Permaculture Junior Member

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    won't happen, I think it will be toned down and much more low key in the central areas though.
    it's the bloody pom's, the're the trouble, they go over for weekend benders and make absolute cocks of themselves.
     
  4. Ludi

    Ludi Junior Member

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    My neighbors are so gunned up, I don't feel I need to be. They also have a lot more stuff than I do! :)
     
  5. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    I am seriousness, IMO, the day it comes down has already occurred and we can only now do for ourselves in our future. Katrina, Gulf Oil Spill, Chernobyl, Fukashima, & so on has already pushed me towards the correct path... ..walking with the Earth instead of against it. The signs are all around us & have been evident for nearly 100 years that this would occur, but our foreparents didn't care, believe, and / or understand the repercussions that our / my generation, and those after me will need to deal with.
     
  6. mischief

    mischief Senior Member

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    Hi Ludi,
    I see you are in Texas.
    My partner is from Texas too.
    (He's still in training, to beat the crap out of his American ways-my mother is determined that he learn .....kiwi humour and not to take himself so seriously, hehehe).

    Better to lie low and look completely uninteresting.
    Let your neighbours take the flack if they wont listen to your good common sense.

    There was a good blog by a Sarejevo survivor on some website that I never bookmarked and that was one key point for them.
     
  7. Ludi

    Ludi Junior Member

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    I agree with you, mischief. "Don't flounce!" is my motto.
     
  8. insipidtoast

    insipidtoast Junior Member

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    What do you tell people who don't believe we're headed for total global economic meltdown? I've got friends with land, and they want to turn it into a farm...only problem is they aren't planning on starting it up until 2014 (after my friend finishes the Peace Corps). I think he'd be lucky to ever come back from the peace corps. I feel I should warn them in the most effective way possible, so I don't come across as a conspiracy-theory nutjob.
     
  9. Yukkuri_Kame

    Yukkuri_Kame Junior Member

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    Show them this: https://usdebtclock.org/
     
  10. insipidtoast

    insipidtoast Junior Member

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  11. Finchj

    Finchj Junior Member

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    Insipid,

    It is very hard to acknowledge our present situation and yet remain a "serious person" amongst people who generally choose not to think on their own. I feel the best thing to do is stay connected to society and fight as hard as you can to change your locality. Once I finally settle down with my fiancee, I plan on taking my knowledge to the schools. Lots of schools are becoming interested in starting gardens. We have to teach the next generation while at the same time trying to change the present one. I honestly feel that the next generation has a right to know where we are heading, why, and what they can do to save their future.

    Most of us writing here live in democracies. Maybe not fully functioning ones, ours is definitely corrupt from head to toe, but that doesn't mean that democracy has failed. All it means is that the people have failed as citizens, having decided being a consumer was more exciting. We can still change this if we fight. Greed and the lust for power may be entrenched in the halls of power now, but those are not the only traits that drive us.

    Donate some food to your local #OWS movement and let them know you are with them. When the time comes, we should be there for each other.

    I'm not counting humanity out yet.
     
  12. purecajn

    purecajn Junior Member

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    I just hate when they respond with: Well the ret of the world is doing it so why should I be the only one trying to make a difference; Why bother, there are too many laws preventing you from going green in the city; The yard will look to trashy. Or the worst, why do you always have to buck the system? You can't win....
     
  13. Yukkuri_Kame

    Yukkuri_Kame Junior Member

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    I know, because I use it on the parts of my own brain that are still in denial.

    Every month or two I just watch it in awe for about 20 minutes.

    The picture has steadily worsened over the last few years. The debt:GDP number is at 99.99% and ticking. 100% has historically been the tipping point into debt implosion.

    But that number is just published for appearances - the real number is the unfunded liabilities - over $1 million per taxpayer. We are way beyond the tipping point, it's just all off the balance sheet, ala Enron. It's over.
     
  14. insipidtoast

    insipidtoast Junior Member

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    what's the name of a good documentary that explains in detail how offshore bankers have used loans and a private monetary "printing" press to put the world economy in debt and then present themselves as the savior under the guise of world government?
     
  15. LonerMatt

    LonerMatt Junior Member

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    Guys,

    With all due respect, this thread is too vague to have any impact. Most of the 'reasons' raised are easily quashed (for example, the understanding of international bdet is lacking, it can literally vanish overnight).

    A general feeling of malaise doesn't equal systemic, global problems (just like systemic, global problems don't always result in people feeling unease or upset).

    People up in arms about this and that need to take 5, look at some history, and consider things logically. It is in almost no one's interest for global apocalyptic anarchy to break out, so it won't. It is that simple. Really, genuinely and concretely.

    Even in the depression there were elements of stability (a lot of them).

    Prepare how you see fit, but just consider things more carefully - in many ways the world is the best its ever been for a lot of people - there are issues that need addressing, of course, and changes that will need to be made (this is the premise of living after all), but again, compared to 50, 100, 200, 2000 years ago we live in a paradise.

    ...and it's not fragile.
     
  16. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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    I wonder how true that really is Matt...

    I thought there was a study into happiness (Westernised world I guess) that indicated people were at their happiest and most prosperous in the 1960's - that would be fifty yeas ago.

    1911, I'm not so sure, things probably were pretty shitty, but the world itself was still cleaner, surely? You didn't have unhappy fat kids lounging around in front of Playstations, or anorexic pre-teens idolising fantasy women

    I suspect there were a lot of people who were actually much happier in the past. Sure there have always been the less fortunate, and we are often asked to consider them as the only people who lived in the pre-idustrial age. The world was certainly a lot cleaner and a more closely aligned to what I would call paradise. I don't think there is anything particularly paradisical :think: about the world we live in now. High levels of pollution, the majority of waterways unfit for human consumption, raped and eroded landscapes, clear-felled ancient rain forests. Displaced peoples. Extinct species. Corporations. Bankers.

    I dunno bro, I reckon this is a line that gets fed out quite often. Sure there are a select few folks who don't have a worry in the world these days. But there are a hell of a lot who would say things were a lot better 2000 years ago. Ask the kalahari bushmen. Ask the Australian Aborigines. Ask the American Indians.

    I'm not convinced.
     
  17. Yukkuri_Kame

    Yukkuri_Kame Junior Member

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    "Money As Debt" is a pretty good introduction to banking issues:
    [video=youtube;Dc3sKwwAaCU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc3sKwwAaCU[/video]

    Now I see there is a sequel, I'll have to watch:
    [video=youtube;lsmbWBpnCNk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsmbWBpnCNk&feature=related[/video]

    Freedom to Fascism made me sick to my stomach...
    [video=youtube;lUpZhhbKUBo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUpZhhbKUBo[/video]
     
  18. LonerMatt

    LonerMatt Junior Member

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    Happiness can't be measured, really, so a study like that is never going to be perfect.

    Cleaner? We had whales being hunted for their blubber, for lighting, TB, small pox, polio, whooping cough, cholera, typhoid, etc running rampant and unchecked. Famines springing here and there (unchecked and unstopped, unlike a lot of famines in the post 60s world). Females were 2nd class citizens in any way worth mentioning. People think the class gap is bad now? Jesus, the Victorian era is reknowned for the class gaps. Instead of anorexia, we had corsets, and rape, and sexual and domestic abuse as mainstream.

    So what? The past had comparable, or even worse (the plague lasted for 5 centuries from Asia to Europe). We've got the great modern luxury of choice, and that counts for a whole lot. I'd have shit, not even food to eat, let alone the possibility of creating a better world, 100 years ago. Give me today any day. Ok, sure humans have been animals that impacted the world less, that's fine, but that's NOT everything. That line of thought says only 1 criteria is relevant, and I can't agree with that.

    You don't have to be, all of those groups got screwed, all of them are also indulging in nostalgia. What the fuck do Aboriginals alive today know about Aboriginals 1500 years ago? Not much. They certainly don't have definitive proof people were happier, or that life was simpler. That's a line people tout a lot, it's simple nostalgia, as far as I'm concerned.

    Bullshit life was simpler when there wasn't conformity, an easy life, cushy, boring jobs and perfect moulds in society. Life was hard, death was constant, starvation a real threat, community only recently evolved, and those American Indians sure weren't united, friendly or unwarlike - we just forget that the past was as brutal as it was because it's convenient. Oh, the Mayans had biochar, they also had human sacrifices. Oh today has scientologists and porn, we've also got solar technology and permaculture.

    The world is what you make it, look for tragedy, it's there, look for love and peace, it's here too. Just don't paint the past as what it wasn't, and could never be.

    If the cleanliness of the world is all that matters, than pre-amobea is the cleanest. All animals destroy their environment to an extent - we're just one of thw few species that's (unsuccessfully) trying to moderate that.

    In any case, the world isn't ending, at all.
     
  19. Yukkuri_Kame

    Yukkuri_Kame Junior Member

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    Yes, that's exactly the problem - the entire house of cards can literally vanish overnight - at any point.

    Deflation has been happening on global scale - that means debt vanishing. Default is on the table for many nations. Iceland already did.

    When nations default, if often leads to war. (For example, Germany's repudiation of reparations).

    And what happened right after the great depression? WWII. I'm not sure I'd call it apocalyptic anarchy, but it certainly was unprecedented death and destruction for humans and the biosphere.

    Let's keep in mind that the Rothschild's rose to power by loaning money to warring princes, usually playing both sides. War profiteers have a vested interest in chaos breaking out.

    Besides peak debt, there is also peak oil, peak water, peak soil, peak phosphorous, peak fish, peak forests, peak human beings, etc. etc. Multiple systems collapse is inevitable on our current course, only a matter of when.

    Debts can be dissolved if the powers that be decide upon it. But there is no way to give CPR to the dead zones in the ocean.

    I have been reading various 'doomer' material for about 10 years, and for the most part, the vast majority of what was predicted has come to pass. The housing bust and stock market busts were predicted. The subprime crisis, lehman shock, collapse of the eurozone, etc. etc.

    I don't think civilization is going to fall off a cliff next week, but I am certain there will be no recovery or return to business as usual. The party is over.

    The next chapter is ours to write. JMO.
     
  20. Finchj

    Finchj Junior Member

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    Humanity is pushing the ecological limits for its own survival. That much is true. And since happiness cannot be measured, it is impossible to say that we live in paradise today. Are we better off, well, it depends on how you look at it. I guess if you want to trade technological and medical 'progress' for near ecological and climate disaster (from the human perspective), sure. Am I happy that I needn't worry too much about TB and other diseases? Oh yes, but I'm also frightened for our future.

    I would argue that indeed, the world is fragile. Of course, I am talking about "the world" according to human needs here. Sure, earth will do what it does and the universe will go on no matter what we do. Eventually the sun will gobble the earth, the universe may or may not collapse after expansion stops, whatever. I don't really give two flying hoots about planet earth if humanity isn't on it. I'm not a misanthrope. I love humanity and I love the rest of creation that we coexist with, so I'm not going to take solace in knowing that planet earth will not end (yet).

    How can it be said that the ecosystems that sustain us are not fragile? They may be resilient when given space, time, and intention to rejuvenate. But those three things are not happening throughout most of the world.

    Also, FWIW, wealth disparity by all metrics has returned to Gilded Age levels in the United States of America. The difference is the majority of us have "more things," mostly due to the economic boom of the 50's and 60's (itself a consequence of geography & human intent). The levers of power, at least in my country, have been under the control of corrupt individuals for decades now. We've seen a thirty year trend towards wealth concentration at the top, declining wages at the bottom, and economic uncertainty rise to Depression era levels. Unemployment in the States is not 9%.

    It is my opinion that the time to change course was decades ago. All the more reason to double down on our efforts to change hearts and minds. A switch from consumption to rejuvenation is necessary if we are going to restore the systems that humanity has upset. We may yet fail, even if everyone pitches in. But it is worth trying.
     

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