Technology will not save us from decades of bad decisions, bad policy, delusion, and pure unadulterated stupidity. The only chance we have is through common sense, shared sacrifice, accepting reality, and using our God given intelligence.
Rocky Mountain High
By James Howard Kunstler on June 24, 2012 11:15 PM
The techno-narcissism flowed like a melted Slurpee this torrid weekend at the annual Aspen Environment Forum where scores of scientists, media figures, authors, professors, and policy wonks convened to settle the world’s hash – at least in theory. The trouble started Friday night when Stewart Brand, 74, impresario of The Whole Earth Catalog, and an economic cornucopian these days, exhorted the skittish audience to show a little goshdarn optimistic spirit about the future instead of just griping about climate change, peak oil, imploding global finance, and a few other vexing trifles. The audience’s response was to not line up and buy a signed copy of his latest book.
The Aspen Institute is supported by a bizarre array of corporate donors and individuals ranging from the secretive, devious, extreme right-wing Koch brothers to Goldman Sachs, to Michael Eisner to Duke Energy. The mission of the Environment Forum is divided about equally between publicizing the gathering horrors of climate change and promoting an ethos of wishful thinking that all the problems of mankind will yield to technological rescue remedies.
It’s a very odd mix of hard-headed science and the most dismaying sort of crypto-religious faith in happy endings, tinged with overtones of corporate log-rolling and government propaganda. The basic message is: the world is hopelessly fucked up but thank God for technology. There is not even a dim apprehension that many of the aforementioned vexations originate in technology itself, and its blowbacks. Alas, this is about the best that the American intelligentsia can do right now, collectively, and it explains why we have such uniformly impotent and clueless leadership across the board in America, from the White House to the CEO offices to the diploma mills to the news media and every other realm of endeavor where thinking realistically about the future might be considered valuable.
Another strange notion permeating this forum – and probably the entire Progressive intellectual class in America – is the belief that if you can measure things, you can control them. Thus, an endless regurgitation of statistics, which, after a while, resembles liturgical incantation and, pretty much, serves the same purpose, namely an obsessive-compulsive ritual aimed at calming the nerves. If it was, after all, techno-magic that led us to poison the oceans and upset the calibration of the earth’s atmosphere, then maybe fresh applications of magic can make all those bad things go away, fighting fire with fire, shall we say.
Speaking of fire, there was one burning up the valley from Aspen, which made the whole town smell like barbeque Sunday morning while six other wildfires blazed all around Colorado. One of them, the High Park fire, has been going for two weeks and burned over 82,000 acres so far with no sign of petering out. Temperatures in the high Rockies soared over 90 degrees all weekend and there was practically no snowpack left up in the elevations – a spooky development this early in the summer.
The odor of empire’s end also hangs over Aspen these days, despite the sheen of spectacular wealth visible around the little town and the emanations of glowing health in the buff and tanned population of exercise freaks. Everything that makes the town tick is in danger of unraveling. The ski industry can’t possibly survive the eventual effects of peak oil, and the collapse of commercial aviation will put an end to the conveyer belt of tourists. The villas of the Wall Street and Hollywood kingpins that decorate the ridge lines above town give off a desolate vibe of futility, as if the foregone disaster of a global banking meltdown had already sent their once-proud owners to bankruptcy Palookaville. The place gave off eerie intimations of a ghost town in-the-making.
Anyway you looked at America from the vantage of Aspen, Colorado, everything we do and stand for looks out of kilter. Our intellectual resources look spent, our prospects seem grim, and our assets are going up in flames. Maybe there’s some consolation that we’re not Europe. That said, I have never been to a conference in all my vagabond years where so many magnificent buffet spreads and overflowing gorgeous snack tables were laid in never-ending succession. It almost persuaded me that the old Right Reverend Malthus was too Malthusian.
AWD says:
“The basic message is: the world is hopelessly fucked up but thank God for technology. There is not even a dim apprehension that many of the aforementioned vexations originate in technology itself, and its blowbacks”
Yes, thank God for technology, an iphone in front of every face, a 52′ screen in front of every fatbody, a Facebook page for every loutish oaf. Keeps people from looking in the mirror, keeps ‘em from looking into the fetid stinking wreck of their gluttonous, slothful and greedy souls. Distract ‘em while you rob ‘em. Feed ‘em till they explode, distract ‘em with 500 channels of circus. Boobus Americanus, the ultimate “blowback”.
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25th June 2012 at 11:28 am
AWD says:
1. Boobus Americanus
Complacent, fat, lazy & stupid US citizen who votes for politicians based upon information proffered by government shills in the mainstream media, or for other vacuous reasons. This dolt not only doesn’t understand the concept of “limited government”, but has never read The Constitution nor The Bill of Rights. He also believes his vote counts and that politicians are honest.
Boobus Americanus Example 1:
“I’m voting for Obama because I’m tired of old, white guys”. (Yep, skin color is important!)
Boobus Americanus Example 2:
“I’m voting for Obama because he’s the lesser of two evils”. (Akin to choosing shoplifting over bank robbery.)
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25th June 2012 at 12:02 pm
TeresaE says:
Funny to see this today.
Went to lunch with hub and there were three single eaters present. All three sat through their entire meal playing with their phones.
Read an article awhile back that talked about our 24/7 distraction leading to a societal/cultural brain drain.
Without quiet, solace, thinking time and keeping ourselves continuously immersed in technology IS, and will only get worse, destroying our ability to THINK and rationalize.
Without the TIME to think wildly, deeply and with curiosity, nearly ALL of our current modern world would never have been invented.
Does anyone really think that Edison would have created so much if all his time was being gobbled up with emails, texts and Angry Birds?
Or Tesla? Or Salk? Or Newton? Or Michelangelo?
Just when our world needs NEW paradigms, we have decided that solitude and thought are bad, bad things.
At least it is temporarily keeping a veil over reality and keeping the young from rioting and killing their grandparents to feed their own families.
Ain’t collapse a blast?
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25th June 2012 at 3:23 pm
Colma Rising says:
From my smart phone to all of you:
“Quit whining. Try it and you’ll just looooove it.”
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25th June 2012 at 3:53 pm
Tator says:
“All three sat through their entire meal playing with their phones.”
I was in Las Vegas on business last year. One evening I was sitting in one of the malls that connect a few resorts together. It was a very nice mall with high end merchandise and lots to see. A family of four walked by, dad, mom, daughter, and son…all four had the heads stuck in smart phones. Not looking around or talking to each other.
It reminded me of The Game from Star Trek…
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25th June 2012 at 4:58 pm
Muck About says:
I don’t own a “smart phone” nor will I ever. I have a state of the art iMac and a Kindle Touch which I love because I can buy books on the iMac and in seconds they are downloaded to the Kindle, ready to read. I do enjoy carrying a library (40-50 books) around with me all the time..
I have yet to finish “Kindle for Dummies” to assist me in browsing a number of growing sites for literally millions of free e-books that are downloadable. The books I have now are the equivalent of all the text books required for an advanced degree in several subjects and only need to be absorbed and understood. Pure Magic!
My cell phone is a Trac Phone, prepaid, and I keep a 60-90 minutes or so of prepaid yacking time on it. Whenever it runs low, I spend $19.95 and buy another 90 minutes for 90 days.
I turn it off while out and around (except when I think my sweetie may need to call me) and very few people have the number of my cell. when I go somewhere, I DO NOT WANT people to find me and disturb what I’m doing!
My sweetie has a Facebook account. I don’t. I enjoy looking at greatgrandchildren crawling around now and then but the overall impression I have of Facebook is of people with not sufficient time to truly be friends with anyone. It’s all one way.
When I want to communicate with children, grandchildren, I write a letter. Put a stamp on it and mail it. I do use email for some functions, such as advising several offspring when to buy and sell trading stocks – but that requires speed and it business, not personal.
I got a written letter from my youngest daughter’s (she’s 53) significant other the other day and was properly amazed. Prose, next handwritten, a message and I knew he took real time to compose, write and mail it! Amazing. I am going to write him a letter back.. Maybe start a trend!
But “smart phones”… I don’t think they are so smart. Perhaps for a businessperson who feels his or her time is more valuable than God but not for me. (please remember I use the term “God” as an example, not a reality!)…
When I go to dinner with friends, none of them had best have an active cell phone or smart phone buzzing, beeping or otherwise interrupting a good dinner. I’ll invite him or her to leave the table and to his distractive business elsewhere. If I was buying, he/she is liable to lose a free dinner besides. Jeez, I’m a meany!
MA
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25th June 2012 at 8:20 pm
Novista says:
Somehow, I have a vision of JHK’s early ancestor … looking at his peers down on the ground, walking and running, telling them “no good will come of this, you know.”
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25th June 2012 at 1:35 am
Destination: Nowhere | Resilistoke says:
[...] “Rocky Mountain High,” The Burning Platform, 25 Jun 2012. [Online]. Available: http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=36483. [Accessed 3 Nov [...]
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25th June 2012 at 4:13 pm