Denial. That's how I see this. And a hijacking of all other forms of common, intellectual and intuitive sense by neo-liberal techno-rationalism that gives a false sense of confidence that 'they' the experts will fix things, and markets will prevail.

Wow dear Anne! I love - if I may say so - your character and strength. In my experience in RG I can't remember any answer just smack to the core, a precise jab. Thank you very much, indeed.

Carlos, To envision this, one needs to have a clear understanding of the Big Picture. To see the Big Picture, one needs to understand Time and its grandiose scales. The western concept of 'Linear' time is a meager and feeble tool to comprehend the huge units of time and its reality. Please refer to the following links in the same order:

1. To understand Time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_units_of_measurement

2. To understand the negative attributes of the current period: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga

Thus the collapse you have pointed at is an attribute of Time, where Matter gains predominance over Spirit and affects all aspects of existence.

Hope this helps.

The current number system in vogue and the twin concepts of 'Zero' and 'Infinity' owe their roots to Kapila who gave out the "Sankhya" school of Philosophy. To understand the Big Picture', this Philosophy is translated from the original Sanskrit work into english in the attached work.

Please extract whatever you feel is relevant to your work.

Also please go through the following question on RG: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Technology_the_answer_to_Human_Sustainability_or_the_Evolution_in_Human_Consciousness_to_higher_states

Thank you dear Raveendra. I completely agree with you about the linear time in the western civilization. And I shall read the text from the Sankhya school of philosophy.

Thank you Carlos, Glad to co-operate! Bon-appetit!

Not so long ago, Thomas Jefferson had to first learn Sanskrit to be able to read the Bhagavad-Gita. I have read only English translations, and look forward to reading Kapila, although I know that reading is only a step toward understanding. Thank you for providing a step. jkd

(Between brackets: dear Jhon, long time ago I started to learn Russian in order to be capable of reading Tolstoi and Dostoievsky in their own language).

I think those challenges to one-self make a real difference - one more time: to/with one-self. Great!

To survive, global civilization must develop sustainable technologies, production, and cleanup processes that preserve and replenish rather than degrading and destroying the natural environment, so that it may be habitable and provide renewable material resources to future generations of humans and other species. To be enduringly sustainable, there must also be a greater emphasis on caring "community spirit" and caring personal relationships, because genuine warmhearted caring and mutual ethical responsibility is like the glue that holds society together. When people feel egocentrically/narcissistically divided from one another, society loses its cohesiveness and disintegrates from the inside under the cohesive impact of extreme selfishness and destructive excessive competition, which breeds corrosive lack of trust and unwillingness to cooperate for the common good and survival of everyone. The workplace and public discourse must also nurture the inner being, or heart and soul, of individual persons, personal relationships, and society; otherwise, we become like empty/hollow shells, lacking inner substance, vitality, and meaningful purpose, so we gradually decay and disintegrate from the inside. Just as a tree or flower withers away if it is torn from its roots in the ground, human individuals, personal relationships, and society also decay and perish if cut off from the relational energy of life as love that constitutes the ontic "ground of being," our underlying source of stability, harmony, good-will, renewal, and regeneration. I discuss the psychological, spiritual, and social basis of the current human dilemma and the path to sustainable transformative renewal in two books that I have recently published; for more information, please contact me, see my ResearchGate Profile, or see my author webpage and posted blogs at: http://sbprabooks.com/MaxHammer

Dear Barry, I appreciate your sharing your books with us. I like the holist (if I may say so) approach you take to the question, and the positive or optimist view. Thank you so much.

Everything changes with respect to time, call that evolution or whatever. Unfortunately, the changes mentioned in this question are happening with a negative gradient. Nothing can be done about it.

We have to:

1) recognize the collapse and not acting like not to be a fact

2) accept the changes that are not possible not to be done

3) save time, money and effort from 'dead projects' and push them to new and vital ones

4) prepare the next youth in a zero basis environment and not on the past certainties that we have used to accept

5) philosophize it,

Philosophy is for the difficult cases...

Dear Demetris, I appreciate you point of view. Doing philosophy is a most reasonable suggestion, indeed. Provided that we do not philosophy to the history of philosophy but, rather as critically reflecting on problems, phenomena and dynamics, f.i.

Economic order, or to be precise economic system includes organizations and decision-making mechanisms that control the economic behavior of a society. Economic growth is set as the leitmotif of this order. This growth ensures welfare of the state and its people, so that inequalities within a state can be eliminated. Gross domestic product measures the economic development, where we hope that real national income per capita will increase. The concentration of our struggle should not lie in the maintainig the processes of growth, but in the reflection on the growth definition.

My theory of satisfaction can be understood as an appeal to our awareness about the consumption limits. According to this theory a balance between action and a knowledge of that action is to be made, so that balance between those two aspects could give the answer to the question: When is it enough? It promotes the optimization of our actions, which are dependent on resource limitations. In this was the healing process of our action intentions can also succeed. This theory includes two basic aspects, which are:

1. a mental clarity on the action to be performed

and

2. maximizing the state of knowledge of the action to be performed.

The more the theory is applied, the more we think about our actions and intentions, so it comes to the proper clarification or "cleansing" of the intention of our actions. This can be interpreted as an iterative and incremental approach model for forming the human empathy and the social interest. In addition to this, through the efforts, we also augment the existing knowledge, both everyday and scientific knowledge.

Dear Adnan, I like very much your mentioning your theory that focuses on knoweledge and mental clarity. I am fully onvinced of the need to e¿increasing our knowledgeas as a most feasible way to overcome the crises that are going out out there. Thank you!

We are all the answer. We need to survive and to live on.

I agree with Adnan that we are all part of the answer to society's problems. We need to unite and cooperatively work together to survive. "United we stand;; divided we fall or fail." Financial, Ecological, and Social Sustainability or Survival must also involve unrestricted public access to new ideas, information, material resources, as well as educational and vocational opportunities. If access to these resources is restricted or blocked by monopolistic big businesses, then productive innovation by people who are excluded from such resources is impeded, and then the whole society stagnates because new talent, ideas, information, and material resources are blocked. I discuss this in the final appendix of my book, "Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication." ISBN: 9781618975904

Thank you very much dear Adnan. Absolutely right!: we are the solution to the problem, for it does not make sense "platinizing" the stances who tout considering that make up those stances - civilization, f.i.

@Barry, I appreciate your bringing out your book. I' ll take a look at it and read it.

What strikes me about contemporary discussions of collapse is, honestly, how familiar it all sounds. Looking over the history of just the last two hundred years (although one could go back even farther), it seems each generation - or generation and a half - faces a "new," "unprecedented," "overwhelming" threat of collapse or decay. This isn't meant to say that the concerns, in the past and the present, are invalid or lack merit. Rather, it's meant to put things in perspective: as civilization didn't end over population growth (too much or too little), national "decay," genetic "decay," economic collapse (predicted to happen about every 15 years or so), or starvation predicted on Malthusian principles, I suspect that it won't collapse utterly now either. Certainly there are major challenges and difficulties that need addressing, but we should also not forget how the responses to previous perceived "collapses" could result in horrible outcomes.

That is indeed the case. Numerous works mainly by historians and economists have recently focused on collapse. In the past, the mainstream analyses in both history and economics were about origins, development, upheavals, at most. Besides those two sciences, ecology and environmental studies have turned the attention to severe crises.

In contrast, there seems to be a sort of atmosphere in many sciences that focus - in my opinion not without solid reasons - on decay and collapse.

A sound question then would be, is the degree of the collapse seriously deeper today than in the past? Possibly answering yes to this question would entail a rather negative picture, is that right?

In the early 20th c. there was some sort of atmosphere of decay too. One of the most popular books was Oswald Spengler's Decline and Fall of the Western Civilization.

Indeed, dear Adrian, that is a classical book and most probably the most encompassing study early on in the 20th century.

Dear Michail, Thank you for your comment. I do think that they are natural, indeed. A Collapse implies, rather, a longer time span and a very important element, namely randomness. Would you agree? 

Phillip W. Gray reminds us that there have always been threats of collapses, and we will probably survive also this time. Of course we will survive, but the problems today are on a global scale while previous collapses in history were empires of limited geographic scale. Historian Peter Turchin has studied the collapses of empires through history and found the mechanisms behind the growth and collapse of empires. A collapse is likely only if the following conditions are met: 1. extreme economic inequality between a rich and powerful elite and a suffering general population. 2. The state or elite gets into unpayable debt. 3. rebellion. 4. conflict and rivalry among members of the elite. Others have added: 5. overexploitation of the environment and ecological collapse. I am discussing whether the current world system is likely to collapse in my article "Can a collapse of current economic empires be predicted?" I am constructing four possible future scenarios based on a combination of many different theories. My conclusion is that a complete collapse is unlikely in the current situation, but none of the possible scenarios are avoiding economic chaos, overexploitation of resources and destruction of environment. 

See my article and references in the attached link.

Article Can a collapse of current economic empires be predicted?

Dear Michail, please do not mind your English. It is well understandable. I appreciate the file you enclosed. Thank you very much.

Sincerely, your answers and comments have been of great help to me. (I am currently working on a text on the subject.  

Dear Agner, thank you very much for your comment and for your paper. I shall read it and in due time I may dare to comment it with you. The subject is compelling, indeed: predicting the unpredictable… Fascinating!

The economic system which is constantly changing has entered a global scale since its creation and is more and more global at an increasing paste and gradually escaping any political regulation to the increasing control of the global economic agents that benefit the most whose power contrary to the old form of plutocracy is totally out of public scrutiny. In 1998 the system had almost a finantial break down but was recued by a major transfer of our collective wealth to the finacial sector that lead us there.  The summum of irony.  This result also in a slow down of the world economy and a reduction on the inflation on the basic necessity of life for the third world which was beginning to create another major castastrophy with the hyperinflation of basic food necessities which was temporarily avoided by the finacial break down. 

 Already at the end of the 19th century, Pierce was forecasting what is currently happening. He was seeing the replacement of the old fashion gospel of love by the gospel of greed as necessarily leading to the current situation.

http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/evolove/evolove.htm

Should we be pessimist? We have only one responsible choice : we have the duty of imaging new optimistic scenarios where the crisis , the destabilisation of the current system provides an opportunity for the creation of collaborative societies.  Collaborative in all aspect of its self-creation for the benefit of all by  all who want to participate.  The emergence of new forms of social networks for collaboration of all sorts among large number of individuals is a hope in the creation of a truly global democracy.  Not a democracy of nomination, a nomicracy, but of participation in all aspects of societal life, a participocracy.

Voilà a great point, indeed, dear Louis. The times about competitiveness seem to be past. At least that kind or jargon belongs to the past, to be sure.

We do need cooperation on various scales, thus: at local, regional, national and global scales. There are some good experiences all around the world regarding local cooperation that is very much successful. Thank you for your contribution.

''wealth is not destroyed, it is merely tranferred." - Larry Bates

If we want to understand what is going on in the world and what is pushing politic, we should be asking to who wealth has been transferred recently?

Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty provides an interesting answer.

It is, indeed, an extremely insightful and provocative book, indeed. I am currently reading it, but, so far, I do have the same  sense as you do, dear Louis.

My personal concern is, regarding your question, whether that wealth / or crisis, can be solely seen in present tense, or else, if we can additionally go further to a historical or even civilization analysis.

Carlos,

In a few words, what is your vision of the outlines of this big picture? 

I think there would be a great change because everything has a peak and a downfall as seen in the normal curve. People might want to escape the knowledge driven mechanical world- and all might return to the stage of the cave man and try to be close to nature.

I speculate that there would not be any space problems. Natural disasters and competition for natural resources would keep the population in control.

There is a powerful sense of real absence that Steiner has called the “twilight of the West”. 

Carlos:

Only man made systems would collapse. Natural systems and close to nature societies will carry on after a brief hiccup..

Regards

Everything as we know it today is in the process of transformation due to significant changes in the global scene — the globalization of the economy, aggressive competition, and the ‘invasion’ of technology in every sector of public and private activity. Information capitalism, the management and manipulation of information according to the laws of economics, the invasion of privacy, electronic surveillance, among other things, are characteristics of postmodernity. It seems that today’s  “bodiless society” or  gender-neutral society of services is gradually replacing industrial society, a result of accelerated technological developments in combination with the globalization of the economy.Techno know-how is denied to the less-privileged, non-mainstream social groups, and women in particular. People are confronting difficulties in adapting and comprehending this transitional stage of the postmodernist period. This is a complex  question that needs analysis. To avoid future social exclusions, for example,   educational reforms and a technoethos are required, among other things. Certainly, there are efforts or programs targeting the elimination of digital illiteracy and consequently future social exclusions, at least in western societies, but they are not enough.

Dear Irene, thank you very much for your comment. I do agree with you. This is certainly a complex question. My worry is: still, could we consider the changes you mention as regular, or else, as dramatic? I believe that our age is most passionating one. (I am an optimist). And yet, can "change" be equated to "collapse"? 

It is indeed a complex question. Many have put the emphasis on aggressive hyper-capitalism which increases inequality, hollows out the middle class, enlarges social exclusion, depletes resources, replaces democrats with technocrats and generally creates the "end of" scenarios depicted in all those millennial books. Capitalism seems harder and harder to control. Europe and the European value system that has sustained modernity is now in decline. We no longer believe in our own values and the space they once occupied is being progressively taken over by more or less violent non-democratic forces coming from 1) Asian type authoritarian capitalism competing for control with 2) resurgent ethnic fundamentalisms, both of which create fear, intimidation and denial in equal measure. The instance, the Chinese hyper-capitalist-communist regime sit on at least one hundred different ethnicities. What will happen when they all demand their rightful freedoms, their "Asian Springs"? The internet which is promoted as a wonderful new "democracy of knowledge" simultaneously becomes a new "technocracy of surveillance" making violent control of populations increasingly easy. The growth of CCTV is the beginning. Imagine the Stasi plus the internet. Maybe the West might begin to reassert it values. Maybe there will be a rearguard action. However, this seems unlikely as we have become too guilty (Bruckner), too 'crazy about humility' (Sloterdijk), too relativistic to agree on anything, and too interested in our own version of 'hedonistic spiritualism' (Zizek) to fight. Baudrillard referred to our 'collective sub-suicidal state'. We are this ripe for take-over. The news is not good. 

We have to have a realist appraisal of the crisis.  The globalisation of the economy and  of the globalisation of ecolological crisis will unite us.  We are accelerating toward our common grave and it is this realization that will wake our deeper instinct for life which are much more stong than our basic economical instinct.  If we only had these economic instincts there would be no way we could escape the graveyard we are accelering towards but situation is waking up our higher life instincts.  We left Africa as separate groups which have grown their own way and we are gradually re-integrating together at the moment where our old-ways is destroying the ecological and the social fabric of the current economical system.  Nothing that is living can continue to live without mutating.  It is alway mutate or die.  We are living such time of transformational crisis.

Wow, dear Rob, a fine-tuned and yet sharp analysis. I canon agree more with you. I can' t imagine, indeed that equation you mention: the Sati plus the Internet. A truly catastrophic result.

Now, you rightly mention Millenarism. From that point of view, could we think that the deep crisis of a part of the world does not, then, necessarily entail the crisis of the whole world as such? I have the impression that there are valuable local alternative experiences and that little by little that are getting linked, somehow. Would you agree?

Dear Louis, I love your trusting in our basic instincts vis-à-vis the economic disaster. I am on your side. I do think that our times are truly passionating. No other period has had such mélange of elements as our time.

And definitely, what you say is very deep: vis-à-vis the crisis, a species -f.i. an economic system -, that cannot change is condemned to disappear. Good one!

Actually, after a second thought, we are not experience a 'collapse' today. All times existed a kind of collapse of the old and rise of the new paradigm. The problem is the intensity of such a process: today probably it is of a higher level than other eras, due to the global interconnection after internet.

We might do well stopping denial, insisting on the life-instinct or true tolerance, and so on. This is our greatest problem. For Sloterdijk, the titanic struggle between the Soul and the Machine is being lost: ‘I am forced, along with the theory-and-disappointment avant-garde of our century, to admit that the world-soul project failed and that, in being able to cultivate small islands of ensoulment, we must nevertheless think ourselves fortunate’. We need to draw upon, ‘rare resources of meaning’. He accuses many critics and intellectuals of being unable and unwilling to imagine the contemporary, “monstrous cold” – isolation, desolation, depression, the withdrawal of meaning. Indeed, he suggests that most thinkers are as secure and complacent in their critical attitudes as ‘the summer guest in his full pension’. Instead, they should become ‘immunologists of culture’. He asks the key question: ‘on what basis are we able to immunise ourselves [today], given that the strong forms of solidarity, like those Plato called the Cosmos, and the Christian God, are no longer available to us’. Complacency and indifference is our greatest enemy. Maybe we should contemplate the "monstrous cold" to strengthen our immune systems. I have tried to do just this in The Anti-Oedipus Complex. The Aftermath of Sixty-Eight. (Forthcoming)

Rob,

''the titanic struggle between the Soul and the Machine is being lost:''     Why?

'' that the world-soul project failed''     Why?

''the Cosmos, and the Christian God, are no longer available to us’''    Why?

Dear Demetris, I like your suggestion that this is an intensity of higher level - compared with the past. Allow then to ask, then in this case, are all crises somehow similar and their differences is just a matter of degree? Can' t we talk of qualitatively different sorts of crises in history?

Dear Sara, I definitely agree with you in that the answer to the ongoing crisis can only be brought in by a community, rather than an individual, by a community rather than an institution. Would you agree with my last assumption?

Dear Carlos: 

It is an aspect of Time. There are tranquil and benign times as well as upheavals and collapses. But the common feature of both phases is the presence of Consciousness as a continuous stream. If that is perplexing, let me put it this way. Advaita philosophy of Shankara states that there is only One that fills the whole Universe(Unified Field). But according to our state of evolution we perceive 'many' forms instead of One. Thus those who have evolved perceive the whole world and forms as One while those who are still evolving perceive the multitude of forms as different entities. These differences create individualities. Indviduals analyse differences and create competition instead of co-operation which sees commonalities and synthesises. Communities share and co-operate while individuals compete. Competition creates conflict and moral degradation(The means justify the ends). Moral degradation causes decay and collapse of societies and communities. History is replete with such examples.It is natures way of getting rid of older 'versions'. Then nature starts anew.

Regards

Dear Carlos,

We may accept a measure of the crisis intensity and this cannot be different than the affect of them to human life: From this point of view the worst crisis in Europe was the black death 1346-1353:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

Our crisis is a little more intellectual, since we don't observe such a loss of lifes.

Dear Louis,

'' that the world-soul project failed'' Why? I think we should have in mind like Sloterdijk  (following Heidegger) the the immense advances of techno-rationalism right down to the widespread understanding of human beings as machines, mental illness being just a biochemical problem, consciousness as an epi-phenomen, artificial intelligence, robotics and so on. Just think about the creation of human embryos for experimentation and think about the rights of the foetus. There is thus no place for the self and no place for the Soul in such an ultra-materialist utopia, reduced frequently to a "user illusion". 

''the Cosmos, and the Christian God, are no longer available to us’'' Why? Linked to the above in the sense that narcissistic consumers of sophisticated gadgets and so on have no need of morality beyond so-called ethical buying and that Christian churches are being persecuted throughout the world and not just by violent Jihadists. However, I agree with Rene Girard, that there is no way of knowing or predicting where the Spirit may come alive. 

Dear Raveendra, I do appreciate your comment: i learn from it. Thank you very much!

Dear Rob, you fine conversation with Louis produces a sensitive turn along this post, namely towards the spiritual. Raveendra has already made a remark in that direction.

In general, prediction is truly hard. He can barely predict the immediate future, I guess, no much far beyond it. Still, we should be able to imagine as good as possible the trustful future of out crises and for the crises.

Dear friends, if you allow me, I'd like ti share the following paper with you. it was originally published by Helbing in Nature (2013):

Rob,

'' There is thus no place for the self and no place for the Soul in such an ultra-materialist utopia, reduced frequently to a "user illusion". 

I agree that in that utopia there is no Soul , nothing alife, no love, basically a very cold place so another utopia is required where it is central.  A lot of these have and are being written. Anyone trying to find a door for the living or the human into a plot whose scenario style exclude it methodologically is not going to succeed.  First we have to see the root of that methodology into an aspect of human nature and to see how all other aspects of the living and of humanity cannot be expressed that way and why.  Our crisis is primary a mind crisis.  It is much wider than the crisis of a certain form of culture, spirituality.  No the crisis is built in into the economic system that such a mind way to operate created and perpetuated this type of restricted mind operation.  

Carlos,

I quickly look at the paper and I like the idea of building our collective nervous system.  It is an idea that was invented a few years after the invention of the telegraph and which has since taken many forms.  In this paper, it is explored from a very specific aspect of monitoring of socio-economic networks.    There is too much emphasis on the questions of phase-transition and instability and not enough emphasis of actual political power feedback for steering the whole system towards some directions.

Dear Louis, just between us (may I?): what truly stroked me about this paper was how easy it is to be written, the very structure and the scope. To be a Nature paper it is quite… huh… easy. (ooops!)

Dear Carlos,

I look at this paper because you pointed to it.  I do not know how to interpret your last post.

Getting the roman citizenship in the early times of the empire was a remarkable privilege as it led to some important capacities, like free trade, legal actions and fair justice, property security, etc. The more the empire grew, the more it levied taxes to fight to its boundaries and maintain together an heterogeneous bulk of people sharing very little in common. In the end, they had to attach physically farmers to their land so that they would keep working and pay for the taxes... and nobody did want any longer to have the roman citizenship. Curious to see that with FATCA's enactment and its worldwide enforcement, some Americans start to relinquish their US citizenship. Any analogy ?

Patrice,

That some rich Americans relinguish their US citizenship is a direct sign that more and more rich will move to the new offshore republic of the rich that is made of an archipelado of juridictions that are fiscal paradizes whose financial bridges to all the markets is ensured now by the local representative of the global plutocratie.  The citizenship of the offshore republic and only value is MONEY.  It is ruled by money for money and it rules the world.

Louis:

Money only appears to rule the world. It is only a form of energy which people exchange in return for goods and services. It is a man made contrivance for ease of exchange of energies.The actual natural forces which govern the world are not affected by money. Only the humans are affected and among them, only the humans who value money. Those who do not value money remain unaffected.

So the fault lies not with money but with man, and more precisely with the centre of thoughts in man-The Mind. Understanding the human Mind will provide solutions to the collapse this question seeks answers to.

Regards

Raveendra,

Money had many benefits for the exchange of goods and services. But it change human relations. It exists for a long time but with the industrialisation and the gradual shift of power to the economic agents. The economic agents have penetrated to the core of all democraties and commanded the change of legislations favoring them and thus the concentration of money/power in fewer hands.  In big cities througout the world peoples are not having warm human relations because more and more human relations are money related. In normal human relations we not only do materially something for each other but we get to know each other and sympathise and do not expect equal physical benefits.  But overwelming invasion of money prevent that in many ways.  People get paid to harass other peoples on the phones for money.  Everybody in their job have to deal with customers according to money guidelines. Etc, Etc. Etc.  I am reading the book of Georg Simmel : philosophy of money in order to understand more what money does to us.

Louis:

The problems you describe affect only the industrialized and the urban(in the mind). It is a self-created disease and the solution too lies only within them. But there are also people who live in the NOW and not affected by money. Solutions to the collapse can be sought by examining the lives of the calm and un-greedy.

Regards

Raveendra,

The desease of greed is spreading and the realm of the un-greedy is diminishing.

A review of the philosophy of money:

Economic exchange, Simmel argues, can best be understood as a form of social interaction. When monetary transactions replace earlier forms of barter, significant changes occur in the forms of interaction between social actors. Money is subject to precise division and manipulation and permits exact measurement of equivalents. It is impersonal in a manner in which objects of barter, like crafted gongs and collected shells, can never be. It thus helps promote rational calculation in human affairs and furthers the rationalization that is characteristic of modern society. When money becomes the prevalent link between people, it replaces personal ties anchored in diffuse feelings by impersonal relations that are limited to a specific purpose. Consequently, abstract calculation invades areas of social life, such as kinship relations or the realm of esthetic appreciation, which were previously the domain of qualitative rather than quantitative appraisals.

Just because money makes it possible to limit a transaction to the purpose at hand, it helps increase personal freedom and fosters social differentiation; money displaces "natural" groupings by voluntary associations, which are set up for specific rational purposes. Wherever the cash nexus penetrates, it dissolves bonds based on the ties of blood or kinship or loyalty. Money in the modern world is more than a standard of value and a means of exchange. Over and above its economic functions, it symbolizes and embodies the modern spirit of rationality, of calculability, of impersonality. Money levels qualitative differences between things as well as between people; it is the major mechanism that paves the way from Gemeinshcaft to Gesellschaft. Under its aegis, the modern spirit of calculation and abstraction has prevailed over an older world view that accorded primacy to feelings and imagination.

I like your idea, but isn't it in opposition to Coase Theorem? If everyone act rational, there would be no friction, right?

Dear Carlos, I agree with many of the above observations, but  I need ask you, forgive my ‘ignorance’,  what do you mean by space solutions “little if at all about space solutions”?? Are you referring to digital-virtual space (new technologies) or to sustainable land management, transport, workplace design, interior design, namely space-based solutions?

Why Study Money and Theology with Philip Goodchild

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDCNhjj2gyQ

Goodchild makes us think about our economic market based system and about money in a way that it is equivalent to a belief system or a theological system.  The current sign of break down in confidence in the system we are withnessing today might motive us to reflect if we could imagine another theological economic system, one that inspire more confidence.

CAPITALISM AND RELIGION

A review of Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of

Piety

http://www.jcrt.org/archives/05.2/iyer.pdf

What is Wrong with the Global Financial System?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjHmDGEB0ck

The current economic, social and cultural crisis, indeed derived from the virtual financial crisis is worse than that of the beginning of the 20th century.  It seems that at least during the Great Depression people had maintained their humanity, solidarity, etc.

Fantastic dear Irene. Maintaining and strengthening our humanity in the midst of crises and even in spite of the crises. I could not agree more with you.

Louis, Irene, and Carlos, I wholeheartedly agree that the key to building a better future for humanity is to maintain our humanity or compassionate solidarity and cooperation in the midst of crises as well as in calmer times. Below, I am enclosing a link to my article, "Developing A Truly Compassionate Society", in which I present an innovative vision of what a more compassionate society would involve and how best to develop it.

https://www.academia.edu/8675781/Developing_a_Truly_Compassionate_Society

Dear Barry,  thank you very much for sharing your article. A compassionate society: voilà  a most wonderful proposal, since traditionally compassion has been usually considered only in the relationship between individuals.

Thank you for your interest in my article, Carlos. As an Appendix (Appendix K) to my book, "Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication", the article extends psychologically healthy principles of compassionate dyadic relationships between individuals to society as a whole. In the article, I emphasize that psychologically healthy compassionate patterns in dyadic relationships and society cannot develop until and unless individuals first gain insight into psychologically unhealthy patterns that reinforce non-constructive, egocentric, narcissistic, brutalizing attitudes, and also develop an experiential appreciation of the relational nature of reality.

Just en passant, your remark, dear Barry makes me think about Granovetter's "The strength of weak ties". Of course, I understand that the contexts and scopes are quite different. I just figure out about compassion as a "weak tie" in Granovetter's terms.

Indeed we are facing social justice deficiencies. I agree with Louis Brassard comment “The disease of greed is spreading and the realm of the un-greedy is diminishing”. Although published in 1987, it seems that Robert Kuttner’s “The Economic Illusion: False Choices Between Prosperity and Social Justice” is still not outdated… On the other hand, I need point out (with regard to the realm of the un-greedy), there has been a significant increase in volunteerism, social activism, new social movements have appeared throughout the globe, results of  of today’s crisis. Namely, a form of bridging social capital.

Dear Lyn, the parallel with the decay of the Roman Empire quiet suggestive. Of course there are a couple of differences. The collapse of the Romans lasted nearly 5 centuries. The US collapse has taken, so far, some 20 years. I am aware of the notable differences in time perspectives. though.

Following up your suggestion, it would be intellectually passionating reading that book: "Rise and Fall of the US Empire" - very much like Gibbon's three dick volumes.

Lyn,

If the american elite would wish to control and restrict immigration it would.  But high immigration is finantially beneficial for them.  It prevent wages of the low income american to rise.  Middle class californian enjoy cheap nany, grass cutting and a lot of cheap services.  My normand ancestor , Antoine Brassard, immigrated to Quebec city in 1636 as a new immigrant searching for better opportunities.  I myself had to leave the Quebec and moved west not by cultural preferences but for better job opportunity for me and my wife. The pressure on borders between economically weathy territoties and economically depressed territories will always be proportional to the economic gradient.  Keeping the cracks open allows to increase the internal economic gradient at the same time as diverting the attention from the source of the internal inequalities and the real problems.  False problems , false ennemies have to be constantly provided in order to direct the public attention away from the problems.

Dear Louis, thank you very much. I agree with you. Please allow to roughly paraphrase wjat you have just said, thus:

Anthopology teaches us that the "lowest" jobs have always been run by the "inferiors" in the social scale. Perhaps a conspicuous example is this: security, cleaning, cooking and transportation - four key activities in any society have tradittionally been in charge of either the immigrants, or the lower classes, historically. From Rome to the Middle Age, from Modernity to our days.

Remember the film Matrix when Neo decided to take the ''bluepill'' and he wake up from a dream world into the deadly real world.  I almost had the same experience by watching the six Gifford lectures given by Bruno Latour:  First lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC3E6vdQEzk

The answer to the question of the thread given by Bruno Latour is that we have falsely entered into an illusion of modernity (the matrix) and that now we are entering (bluepill) into the anthropocene.  An masterpiece series of lectures that I recommend.

Thank you very much, dear Louis. Latour is certainly a lucid and critical author. I love that his takes on the history and philosophy of science are quite… unorthodox, to say the least.

I'll enjoy those lectures you recommend to us. And yes, the real danger seems to be "out there", in the matrix.

In this talk: ''The Task of Political Theory''

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYhljV2sVsY

Roberto Mangabeira Unger do a superb presentation of our current social situation explaining it by the ideological trap we have fallen into.  So in order to see out of this trap we have to look at this ideological trap, 

Dear Carlos and All, regarding the collapse "we are currently entering into", it seems we have entered it a very long time ago....  Check out this 'cosmopolitan' video, namely it represents ALL OF US, every nation, every language. The video is entitled “In case I don’t die - A Greek whisper to Europe” by Nicolas Androulakis on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/123068294

    As Androulakis points out: “This video could begin or end with an imposing shot of the Acropolis or the Olympic Games, or the deep blue waters of the Aegean. Or with people losing their jobs and homes. Or others sleeping in tiny carton boxes. Or others driving luxurious cars. But this shall not happen. Because this video wasn't made to impress nor to shock you. Because these words are not a scream. They're a whisper. I could be reading this in English, or German, or French, or Spanish or Portuguese, or Finnish…”

Irene,

Very good.  As Roberto Mangabeira Unger explained there is nothing natural to these finacial systems and these depth.  All of that are results of previous arrangements.  When the old arrangement, the promess to the dead should not command the sacrifice of the new. As Philip Goodchild explain, why venerate the god of money.  All that are simple arrangements.  Why should we wait for crisis of major dimension for moving this arrangement.  Imagination can do that without unessary suffering.  We should extend this reasoning to the whole international system and look back at the colonianism and its heritage.  

Good point Louis!

In the theory of what it is to be an investor in a capitalist system, to make a loan and to take a risk of not being paid if the party that is borrowing is not able to pay back.  But when the financial system collapse in september 2008, just after the elction of Obama, the normal theory was not followed.  These big banks had made bad loans and all the governments should have let them fail.  They took the risks, they mis-calculated the risks and they should have lost all their assets.  Instead Obama wrote them a 700 billions check , engage the tax payers, you and me to pay the bankers.  The other governments did the same.  Now we are supposed to pay the big investors.  The governments should have save let all the big investors loose their money and they should have only bail up the small investors, their pension money.  We would not have all these depths that are crippling the economic systems, depth to the richest of the world.  That was a total mistake and that policy should be reverse everywhere.

Sara,

Thanks for the reference to John B Thompson.  

Mass media were invented in the 1800's and here is what Kierkegaard thought about them:

''the presence of God alone can give, we would soon find ourselves irretrievably part of a collectivity with only mass communications to shape our hopes, formulate our values and arrange our thinking.

Suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube which, say, could be heard over the whole land...I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used...

On the whole the evil in the daily press consists in its being calculated to make, if possible, the passing moment a thousand or ten thousand times more inflated and important than it really is. But all moral elevation consists first and foremost in being weaned from the momentary...

If Christianity is really to be proclaimed, it will become apparent that it is the daily press which will, if possible, make it impossible. There has never been a power so diametrically opposed to Christianity as the daily press. Day in and day out the daily press does nothing but delude the masses with the supreme axiom of this lie, that numbers are decisive. Christianity, on the other hand, is based on the thought that the truth lies in the single individual...

Dear friends, please accept my sincere apologies. I was out of ton for easter holidays.

 have read and learnt a lot form your comments, remarks, and references, from Kierkegaard to T. S. Elliot. I cannot thank enough for your generosity and kindness.

I have, though, the impression that the very idea of a collapse is something quire new in our scientific research. It goes far beyond the mere idea of crisis, even of networked crises, for it aims at the consequence of such a networked, systemic and systematic crisis/crises.

I have come back to re-reading J. Diamond, and there we seem to find some hope, too.

Carlos,

Thanks for mentioning : Jared Diamon.  I did not know him.  His books:

 The Third Chimpanzee (1991), Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997),  Collapse (2005) and The World Until Yesterday (2012)

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond

All sound very interesting.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed

Synopsis:

This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.

That is indeed one of the sources, dear Louis. Historically speaking, we all know, f.i., Gibbon's classical stay in "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire". Furthermore, we all know the wonderful book by Cohen's "The pursuit of the millennium" (perhaps the best book ever on Millenarists. The know, of course, Spenglers's wonderful, "The decline of the west".

However, the concept of collapse, as such was never introduced before in the study of societies, cultures and civilizations. Only in our current situation.

Yes, indeed dear Sara: lots of imagination, that's what we need.

In the more concise framework, no one can be real scientists if he/she is not able of thought experiments, of imagination and fantasy. We scientists may have wonderful libraries, data bases, networks and labs. However all that is not enough for a good scientist to be. He/she needs the freedom and courage to carry out imaginary experiments. After all, the greatest moments in the history of science are grounded on thought experiments, indeed.

Thought is thought experiment but there is the well paved path and there is the outbound.  We are told that we should be daring, critical thinkers and outwardly encouraged to be revolutionary while in fact we are trained to be obedient, we are reward for our obedience with good marks.  Education is a must but it is also a training to think in certain ways and not in other ways.  It focus the attention on certain aspects and not on others.  Statistics show that for most people the peak of creative was 5 year old and after kindergarten it goes down. There is something poisonnous to creativity in the way we are trained to think in certain ways.  

Absolutely right, dear Louis. There is this jargon out there talking about innovation, organizing lots of conferences about it, but the truth is that "they" are scared about truly changing things. They talk about innovation, but those are sheer words. For what prevails, it appears, are a set of restrictions and constraints, as it happens.

Should we go back and try to be kids agains? I don't dislike the idea, at all.

Money is a way of measuring. Instead of measuring money (and possessions) against other money, we need to re-establish that money be used to measure against values.

Only when a unified value emerges, will the crises be dealt with in ways which would then be obvious.  This unifying value will seem obvious to children and other open minded people.

It seems quite obvious to me that some sort of 'looking beyond' our current view of the world, is needed to find a unifying value. I suppose this value alreaady exists. Most of us don't see it yet. And those that do are considered as dangerous because it will be a threat to anyone who has closed their mind around their own opinion of their world.

The idea that 'space', meaning,I suppose, somewhere off this planet, must in some way be part of a new world view, which can show us how much alike we all are, has been developed in science fiction many times. We just need to wait until this view encompasses the entire world. We can, and perhaps should, try to push it faster, but be prepared to be burned out and see only minute changes in the overall momentum.  And please understand that violence will only make things move faster if it DOES NOT come from the mind of any person or group of people. There is enough violence in nature already to keep things moving along.

Dear Frank, thank you very much for your comment and remark. - Would you say that nature can be taken as one (the) unified value that you mention? Or else, are you thinking about a universal value money-based in the future, say (whimsically, the X, Y, or Z currency?).

What I like the most about your comment is your invitation to "looking beyond" the current situation. A most imaginative task, indeed!