Sleepwalking

SantaJim Kunstler, over at Clusterfuck Nation, takes a broad look today at the euphoria afflicting our national media, its alarming willingness to ignore “the reality of the threats we face, which are 1.) the loss of primary energy resources, 2.) the loss of technological potency, and 3.) the loss of a comfortable standard of living.” Kunstler credits the team behind the Financial Sense Newshour podcast with defining our current paradigm shift, and shows how we are desperately trying to find ways to get back to how it used to be: “even the greenest captains of environmentalism strive to find groovy new ways to run all our cars, while their counterparts on Wall Street strive desperately to salvage a set of ‘innovative’ financial rackets based on getting something for nothing.”

Kunstler makes a persuasive case that it’s not going to happen. Our future does not lie in recreating a failed past, but in a society based on the new reality:

Our destination is a far less complex society in a larger, rounder, and less economically-integrated world. We will be leaving a lot of our technological comforts behind, staying closer to home, living in smaller cities and reactivated small towns, working the land more intensively to produce the food we need, and possibly organizing our governance at something less than the continental scale our dwindling riches used to afford. That is, if we’re lucky enough to avoid the real possibility of social disorder and violence that would attend a fullblown economic collapse scenario.

Read Kunstler’s post for a cogent analysis of the realpolitik behind the current Georgia/Russia kerfuffle, and a wonderfully cynical (and realistic) look at the much heralded opening of the billion-customer Chinese marketplace to American manufacturing (GM) and retailing (Big Macs).

Every time I read one of Jim’s posts, I know that I should sell everything and put it into Euros in a Paypal account; if I’d done that the first time I thought I should, I’d be a lot wealthier now. And I probably won’t do it today either.