"You never cure structural defects; you let the system collapse."
As I contemplated this proposition taken from a recent piece by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I realized what profound implications accepting it would have for all those engaged in attempting to address our current social, political and environmental ills.
If it is true that modern capitalism is incompatible with effective action on climate change, if it is true that top-heavy, bureaucratic nations always eventually become captive to their wealthy citizens, if it is true that our centralized, complex, tightly networked systems in finance, agriculture, shipping and manufacturing are exceedingly fragile and prone to failure--if these all represent structural defects, then they cannot be addressed by tinkering or "reform." Those in charge cannot be persuaded to "do something" which is contrary to the structural necessities built into these systems.
The choices then are: 1) Do nothing, 2) insurrection (for which you might be jailed or worse) or 3) start building a decentralized replacement. Since I'm discarding choices one and two, I'll address choice three.
First, adopting choice three doesn't mean we should abandon critiquing the current systems under which we live. Quite the contrary. Those systems are where future adopters of decentralized replacements currently do business. They are the Brand X against which new systems can and need to be compared.
Second, we have good evidence that small-scale governments can actually respond to climate change when large-scale governments can't. Citizens of seaside communities experience the rising ocean waters first hand and have direct access to their elected officials as do those who experience droughts. And those cities have actually taken significant (but still inadequate) steps toward addressing climate change. It is counterintuitive that decentralized governments could act more quickly and effectively on issues of international scope than national governments until we see them in action.
Third, modern communications have become bifurcated. There are large media establishments very much wedded to the status quo and the power elite. The heavy concentration and centralized nature of this type of media makes them uniquely incapable of understanding and communicating much about the merits or even existence of decentralized alternatives.
Then there is the thriving and ever more seamless worldwide digital communication network which allows people across the planet to share their ideas, practices and discoveries with one another without mediation. We should not in this context, however, devalue good old face-to-face communication which still works best of all.
Much of what passes for "media" online is really an attempt to exploit readers for commercial gain and therefore much more a part of the centralized media system. But even here, little-known businesses with new approaches to serving small, niche needs provide an alternative to the conglomerated consumer companies of our age.
Fourth, the worldwide tightly networked systems which dominate our lives today are too fragile to last. But that doesn't mean they will dissolve all at once or at the same rate. Parts will decline, parts will evolve and parts will disappear on different schedules. Certain aspects of existing systems might actually be of some use in the new decentralized system. A warehouse used for international trade can just as well be used for regional trade.
We can boil at the inequities and destructiveness of the current system. There are times and places that are appropriate for that. But our best chance to traverse the the path to a more decentralized world while minimizing harm and maximizing success is to begin building it.
Kurt Cobb is an author, speaker, and columnist focusing on energy and the environment. He has been a regular contributor to the Energy Voices section of The Christian Science Monitor and is author of the peak-oil-themed novel Prelude. In addition, he has written columns for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen, and his work has been featured on Energy Bulletin (now Resilience.org), The Oil Drum, OilPrice.com, Econ Matters, Peak Oil Review, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights and can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
2 comments:
the worldwide tightly networked systems which dominate our lives today are too fragile to last. But that doesn't mean they will dissolve all at once or at the same rate.
I think an exploration of "tightly networked" is in order. "For want of a nail.." failures might easily dissolve all of our high tech systems all at once, particularly because they are networked so tightly. I would hope that governments are identifying key parts of these networks so as to be able to compensate for them if they fail, but we probably won't know until one or more failures actually happen.
I think the most critical part of our modern industrial civilization is banking. If confidence in the integrity of banks is permanently lost, we then lose the letters of credit and other financial instruments that allow international trade to occur. Without trade, everything collapses. It almost happened in 2008 and could happen again at any time.
I'm throwing this out there because we seem to be always looking towards government policy to "help" get on the right track(please be kind, first time posting here). However, isn't the best catalyst for change is the citizenry taking personal steps/action outside of any government local or otherwise? Do I want to "wait" for endless meetings, proposals, reviews by government panels to do what I can on a local/personal level? I do realize that some actions require approval when dealing with public concerns. But always looking to policy change seems to me stalls what an individual/community can do on their own especially in regard to climate remediation which can start with simple conservation measures. Sometimes the public needs simple tools to immerse them in the community.
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