Fickle is good. Sometimes. In relationships, fickle doesn’t work too well. Fickle
doesn’t work out too well in real estate investments. It doesn’t work out too great for retirement. But, fickle works very well for discarding ideas that don’t work.*
I desire stability and permanence, so I don’t know why I am so willing to move, change jobs, end relationships or never make friends. Perhaps I am fickle. Perhaps my standards are too high. Or perhaps it is a defensive mechanism. I don’t know. I don’t overly care too much, either. I am what I am and if people don’t like it they can lick the sweat off my butt crack before I shower. I won’t ever sit on a psychiatrists
couch and complain how I might have mommy issues or how I need to get in touch with my feminine side. Life sucks, deal with it, or do us all a favor and blow your brains out. Besides, I have my vast legions of loyal minions who slop up my drivel daily. That is my therapy, bitching to a captive audience. Suckers. Also, despite how you think I’m too pessimistic, here I am looking at the bright side. The half full glass. The silver lining. Fickle allows me to walk away from an investment of time and effort in an idea.*
I look at people who are obviously vastly superior to myself in intelligence, and wonder why they can’t see the same obvious conclusions I arrive at ( I also look at people who are not as smart as me book wise but vastly superior at common sense who intuitively grasp the same concept I took years to arrive at and hang my head in shame ). The only conclusion I can arrive at is that they are protecting their investment. They spend money and time,blood, sweat and tears
, to educate themselves. They put their egos into certain ideas. Thus, those ideas must be right, true and correct. I am by no means claiming to be smarter than these folks. I am saying that since I am a lot more fickle, I can discard all my previous efforts at formulating ideas and move on to the next one. Of all my many and varied faults, this one also has a useful side. I put quite a few hours into the study of politics and economics. As I’ve said previously, my bible was “The Great Reckoning
”. It came out in the early 90’s and was a wonderful field guide to the economic collapse. And of course, I put a lot of effort into following politics, concerned the whole time. Well, guess what, I now think that economics and politics are a great waste of time and in the long run don’t mean spit.*
Yes, economics and politics are important for the short term. They affect the opening stages of the collapse. You must understand them in that context. But it is a mistake to look through their lenses when contemplating resource collapse, the die-off. It is about energy and bio-systems. Economics is how we use resources
, politics is how we steal or protect resources. Once resources are gone, they have little bearing. Then, again, once the collapse
has modified into a new stable system coping with the new reality, they will regain their importance. What I am saying is that to understand collapse, you must forget economics and politics for the time being. Through the economic lens, it looks like government regulation or personal behavior change will save the day. Through the political lens, it looks like régime change will do the same. Look through the resource lens and we are severely screwed.*
I apologize to my many fans, admirers and worshipers that it took me so long to throw away the economic and political paradigm. I had been one of the “collapse is temporary and survivable” types. Not anymore. Stewpot or bust, baby! Well, at least I finally came around, even if it took me longer than it should have if I was as smart as I like to think I am. Better late than never.
END
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13 comments:
I think your fears about oil arent right,i see more problems with a breakdown of society due to the economy and dept,you cant buy gas without money!There also would be a reduced demand for oil.People without jobs,money to buy food and keep themselves in housing.rw
"I look at people who are obviously vastly superior to myself in intelligence, and wonder why they can’t see the same obvious conclusions I arrive at ( I also look at people who are not as smart as me book wise but vastly superior at common sense who intuitively grasp the same concept I took years to arrive at and hang my head in shame."
Because knowledge is not wisdom, and you can't buy wisdom. I know many brilliant people who believe stupid things. I'm very glad that they occupy themselves with the minutiae of their particular, compartmentalized fields. For example, if lawyers didn't get wholly lost in their lust for the intricate web of legal jargon and arbitrary utterances by pompous men in black robes, they might cause a lot of trouble for the rest of us.
Perhaps you are right but it seems to me that although it is resources that will bring about the collapse society could have dealt with it if it hadn't been for politics.
Seriously civilization was built by men and our society today has moved more men to just give up and not care anymore. All of that was politics. Those feministic politics have dictated the economy we now have...etc etc etc.
Because of entitlements to mostly women, over gouging in child support, alimony etc men frankly just dont really care what happens. If men did care and weren't smacked down at every turn they could fix what is about to come.
So politics and economics were important just we have gone past them now I suspect.
The conventional wisdom is usually wrong and economics and politics are all about conventional wisdom.
All those chart and graph producing people will realize this after the rag-heads nuke us.
With all that wisdom you have, you should not have any problems, specially financial or marital.
You probably are enjoying a luxury living in your ranch inside that mansion, your maids massaging you all day long while without lifting a finger you are making millions of $$$.
Oh I envy your brighness. Me? I'm just making a quarter million a year struggulling by working 20 hrs a week callocting rents from the peons. Taking advantage of their single daughters that are trying to get a new husband to support their five children. Oh! this is hard.
Just a poor rich person .
Fickle is *very* good in many circumstances - whenever you figure out you're riding a loser and have the sense to get off. The lack of this fickleness I call the "tergeting syndrome". I first really discovered this when I had a bunch of valuable RF test cables to sell, and was about to put them on Ebay. When you have a bunch of like items, the most logical way to sell 'em is with a dutch auction. You have say 7 of something, you put up a quantity of 7 ... yadda yadda. Well, a friend of mine, a Mensa member who's never employed and his parents support because if they don't, he'll move home, told me to list 'em each as its own auction with its own auction number. It made no sense to me, I'd pay more fees and I felt it would look stupid to the public, who'd see through my method and I'd not get any more for the cables. Well, he was so insistent that I did it. And wow. Once each person put a bid in on a cable, it became THEIR cable and they'd bid it up to a much higher price, and they'd follow through and pay at a much higher rate. "A" cable became "THEIR" cable and it was gonna go on THEIR test bench, dammit!
Now, this targeting makes sense for a predator. Humans can run down rabbits, all you do is never lose focus, realize that the rabbit runs in big circles, and tire 'im out. It's not hard at all. That, the ability to gang up, and our rock-throwing ability, those three things alone, are enough to keep us on the throne of King Of The Beasts, all else is just frills.
But this turns against us when we're losing equity in a house and could come out ahead if we walked away or at least stopped paying NOW, not in a year when we're forced to. Or keeping a job that sucks. Or a partner. Or get all fixated on spending the tax refund on a bigscreen when in actuality keeping the old TV and putting it into preps or paying off a debt or two will provide more lasting pleasure.
I fight against my targeting instinct all the time. I'll get all infatuated with buying something, say a pop-rivet tool. I'll want one real bad. I'll think of all the marvelous things I can do with a pop-rivet tool and they are marvelous indeed. But like hunger pangs, the targeting urge will pass, and once it has, you get into the rational stage where you can ask yourself if you REALLY need this thing. With hunger pangs, 15-20 minutes and you're good. With the targeting urge, I frankly like to wait weeks or MONTHS before buying some neat toy I think I might need.
With the pop-rivet tool, I probably need one. Likewise a good basic propane torch, as for those micro-torches, they're neat, I have one, but for the price of one, you can get a basic propanee torch and 3 cans of gas. Which you can refill from your house propane if you get the fitting.
The problem is, if you don't frustrate your targeting urge for a while to give yourself some time to think it out, you'll end up buying all kinds of stuff on a whim, some of which will be useful but some will not, and your savings will take a real hit.
Which brings me to ..... garage sales! Prices are at 1970s levels right now at these g-sales, and going down. You can get all kinds of useful shit for next to nuttin', and you may want to look into this. Bring rope'n'bungee cords to strap stuff onto your bike and you, but you can get all kinds of useful necessities cheep.
Hsve you read Alex Scarrow's Last Light? Great doomer porn ;). Highly recommended!
I lived through the "energy crisis" of the 70's. Oil shortages, gas lines, rationing oh my.
Anytime there is a crisis it is usually caused for a reason. There was no energy shortage then and there isn't now and won't be in our live times unless it is put in place on purpose to gain more control over the sheep. For whatever reason we must be ready and prepare, on that I agree and love reading your blog daily, keep up the good work.
Is this guy full of it???
"Federal lands, including offshore areas, hold enough undiscovered recoverable natural gas to heat 60 million households for 160 years. They also hold enough undiscovered recoverable oil to produce gasoline for 65 million cars for 60 years."-J. Larry Nichols
Chairman, American Petroleum Institute
and Chairman and CEO
Devon Energy Corp
http://www.worldenergysource.com/wes/stores/1/Untapped-Resources-Are-Key-to-US-Economic-Recovery-and-Energy-Stability-P1296C110.aspx
Maybe the powers that be want lots of us unemployed so we don't use gas. More for them.
Any time the glass is half full, you better ask what's in it.
I think PioneerPreppy has a point; if we'd focused on nuclear power when peak oil theory came about, things would probably be different. It was a political/economic decision to not pursue nuke power as oil was cheap, and politicians won't upset the apple cart since they may not get re-elected. No matter that they knew it had to end some day, and that demographics would eventually make Soc Sec, etc. impossible to maintain.
But hey, Obama is interested in them now. Now that they'll just be a radioactive area to avoid after collapse.
If you want to read about smart people believing stupid things, do a search on "fan death."
Forced to break my word! Fickle? No weak, lacking resolve, low self esteem, I wanted to address mentally being prepared but was told I talked to much and got my name bantered about. Where's the 50 comments and spirited discussion from a month ago? Gone! Lonely yet? You and your beautiful hair. Where have all your minions gone?
Pioneerpreppy,
Your close, Read Atlas Shrugged.
Paragraph number four is some of your best writng ever - not a word wasted.
One could read hundreds of editorials before one reads something so well put as this.
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