Society

Collapse psychosis: navigating the madness

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The psyches of empire’s citizens are ill-equipped to deal with variation from the system’s proscribed roles or functions. Empire, like a “good” parent, gives one everything one “needs” in return for production-until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, the citizen has no recourse emotionally because he/she has lived in psychological symbiosis with empire since birth.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Seize the Moment

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We all know it is politically difficult to shut down the U.S. automobile industry in the midst of a deep recession, so the problem becomes one of finding something for the automobile industry to do that does more good than harm. Wasting shrinking national resources and taxpayer dollars cranking out another 10 or 20 million gas-guzzlers during the last few years of cheap oil can only be classified as major harm.

Facing Decline, Facing Ourselves

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Beyond the technical issues that occupy so much peak oil discussion lies the murkier realm of collective emotions and cultural narratives that so often blocks constructive action. A new book by Carolyn Baker, Sacred Demise, makes a valiant attempt to start a conversation about this dimension of our predicament — a conversation we desperately need to have.

Public health and the episteme of growth

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Academic public health is ensconced in an institutional matrix of growth. It owes much of its existence to the socioeconomic expansion petroleum facilitated during the 20th century. … The best option I see for academic public health is to reorganize itself around the question: “If growth and economic development as they have been understood are no longer possible, then what kind of public health system is sustainable?”