Porkpie
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“So why not take everything you need for your groceries and other shopping out of an ATM first, and only then complete your purchase? Just to slow down Mr. Gorman’s takeover of your lives?”
Slow down the takeover of our lives, and speed up our actual lives. I think going through the grocery checkout now takes twice as long as when I was a kid. Half the time is spent waiting around for the debit machines, and the electronic tills have not figured out how to start running through the next customer. Instead, everybody just stands around waiting.
Yes, Ilargi, you are certainly correct. Inasmuch as we base our actions on our experience (probably not actually that much) we base it on the past–and things have always kind of worked out…
But a couple of things came to mind:
In my research on behaviour and the brain, I ran across someone who said, “Imagination is just memories of the future.”
But also, David Quammen’s Planet of Weeds.
This article, End of the Wild, references Quammen, and introduces Relic and Ghost species. I think this is where our culture is at–not humans as organisms, but our oilindustrial culture:
“Living on the margins in ever-decreasing numbers and limited spatial distribution are relic species. Relic species cannot thrive in human-dominated environments—which now nearly cover the planet. Facing the continual threat of extinction, relic species will linger in either ecologically marginalized populations (e.g., prairie dogs and elephants) or carefully managed boutique populations (e.g., pandas). Most, including the Sumatran rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis), the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), and virtually all of Hawaii’s endemic plants, will require for survival our permanent, direct, and heavy-handed management, including captive breeding and continuous restocking.
Other relics, such as rare alpine plants, may survive in isolated patches through benign neglect. Over time they will experience progressive genetic erosion and declining numbers, and will rapidly lose their ecological value. In essence, they will be environmental ornaments.
But a large fraction of the non-weedy species will not be fortunate enough to have special programs to extend their survival or will be incapable of responding to such efforts. These are the ghost species—organisms that cannot or will not be allowed to survive on a planet with billions of people. Although they may continue to exist for decades, their extinction is certain, apart from a few specimens in zoos or a laboratory-archived DNA sample.”
“The reason I bring Holland into the picture is that what happens in housing also happens in energy.”
And the longer quote for context and easy finding…
“Dutch house prices fall 4% in September
House prices were down 4.1% in September compared with a year ago, which takes them back to the level of early 2003, Holland’s national statistics office CBS said on Monday. Compared with August 2008, when the market was at its height, house prices have fallen 20% …
The reason I bring Holland into the picture is that what happens in housing also happens in energy. In Holland, energy prices are set to drop, largely due to lower transportation costs (for gas and electricity) for infrastructure owners/managers:
Lower energy rates from 2014 to 2016 will save Dutch consumers and industries €2.1 billion. Energy bills for consumers will fall by 4-5%.”
Hi Ilargi,
I am a little confused by your statement that where fuel goes, housing will follow.
My thought was, if fuel drops, that frees up money for the Greater Fools to spend more on houses, which would raise the costs. Fuel down, housing up.
But, I am thinking you are saying a reduction in spending power means both drop, whereas my scenario requires spending power to stay the same.
Have I got it right?
The thing is, is that the forces of centralization are running up against entropy. Decentralization is a fact of our future. It will be.
What remains to be written is the level of federalism, but we can rest assured regional autonomy will be near total.
A problem, of course, is the time frame. But I am a big believer of just starting to do things because they are inevitable. It is inevitable we will all spend much more energy gardening, so we might as well start gardening now.
I think this is heartbreaking. I also think we need a better narrative. Right now, “both sides” are fighting for the same thing. The “unionized left” wants to return to good pay and buying power for their members, via a return to growth thanks to government spending. The “free-market right” wants to return to good pay and buying power via business stimulation and innovation thanks to government austerity.
The problem here is the notion of good pay and buying power. A billion people could kill themselves and we would have no greater chance of good pay and buying power–we are having the wrong conversation.
I like the Archdruid’s take: There is no better future.
***apologies for all the quotation marks. I am trying to indicate that I understand these are clumsy generalizations.
I think we need a nice simple call to action.
Something like “No profit for banks.” It is a little catchier, though a little less clear than “Banks should be non-profits.”
In addition to Vandana Shiva being a woman, I think this post is excellent, and I forwarded it on.
I particularly like the “left behind, as if ten minutes late for the train.”
Hm. Let’s see how the reply function works….
Sadly, B’sC, that is not how behaviour works. Just looking at the last link in your proposed causative chain, studies find we don’t have Free Will, but rather Free Won’t. That is, the order to make our muscles move is made before the decision to move is made. The decision is, effectively, to cancel the order to move. We get a chance to stop what we never decided to start. Let the metaphors rain down….
There are infinite examples, as well, of change made without awareness or knowledge. The video Ash linked to is largely about this.
I don’t have precise numbers yet, but it seems like we make around 35,000 decisions each day, of which only about 2,000 are conscious.
So the generalization I would suggest is that we focus on how to influence the 33,000 unconscious choices rather than trying to get brain space to fight for one of the 2,000.
Wow, you asked a mouthful.
***edit*** I am sorry Ash, this is very rambling. I have been researching this for several years, and am trying to write a clear summation of my research. Your reference this morning opened a whole chunk of new ways to think about behaviour.
OK, but where do we draw the line for “public displays” of action?
I think this is effectively not public. I am alone in my office, using a screen name with someone I will never meet. Few people know I read TAE, and nobody knows when I am reading it, or what I am doing about it (the count of viewers online tries to change that, though plenty of studies show that will be largely irrelevant from a change perspective).
Here is what I want to stress–even if my behaviour were public, the behaviour is that of reading the computer. If what we want to do is increase the social pressure for people to get out of debt, reading the computer is not helpful. What is helpful is to increase the visibility of people “getting out of debt” (quotations to indicate that may involve lots of steps, all of which may need to be visible at times).
In the modern world, I believe what we are doing right now can be quite public and effective at increasing mutual knowledge of the possibilities for change. Whether that’s changing the system, one’s community or oneself, or all three.
I agree this can be quite effective at increasing knowledge of possibilities for change.
What I do not agree is that knowledge is necessary for change.
Bentley’s work, Daniel Kahneman’s work, and the brain research all show we make very few decisions based on facts. We simply do not have the brain capacity, nor the fuel to feed the brain to make all our decisions rationally, based on facts. This is the core of socionomics and herd behaviour that is a foundation of TAE.
So facts are used for very few decisions, some more are made through rules of thumb, or based on emotional factors (embodied or peristaltic cognition). Bentley’s talk is about the mass of decisions that are made through direct copying.
There is very little connection between knowledge of possibilities and action. We do lots of things we know are bad for us, some are even life and death.
Furthermore, because of the screen barrier, you have no idea whether I make my own sauerkraut or not. Even if you saw me eating sauerkraut, you would have no idea if it was homemade, or was a globalized product of Poland.
Aspects of the new site, like the forums, are designed to allow for more transparency on specific behaviours–we chat with people who are doing, and ask them questions as we start to do.
And factual knowledge is simply a more specific component of that change, i.e. how to change, what to change, where to change, etc, although I agree it may not drive the “flock” as much.
Bentley’s work provides a method to reverse-engineer how decisions are made. The sharp jump and gradual decline are conscious, informed, knowledgeable decisions, whereas the bell-curve are copied decisions.
So knowledge is not necessarily a specific component of a change, it may be entirely absent. Knowledge is certainly a specific component of some changes, but at this time, it is very difficult to figure out which ones.
For myself, I have gained very little new and useful knowledge from TAE in many years–since the How To Build a Lifeboat primer. So once I had the core knowledge, why do I keep coming back?
Because knowledge is not a big barrier to action. I am here for the social proof, the copying, the reinforcement that other people feel the same way I do and do not seem to be raving lunatics. I need to see people doing things, not just read that things need to be done.
I think it was you that had a spat in the comments section about whether you should have more manual skills, so maybe the question of what influenced you to engage in certain behaviours and not others will ring true.
Anyhow, thanks for the links and the conversation. Sadly, this has added several more books to my reading list, which doesn’t help me get my writing done.
p.s. Ash,
I have referenced the book Herd, by Mark Earls, in our conversations on behaviour and flocking. Bentley and Earl have worked together in the past, and wrote the more recent book together–‘I’ll Have What She’s Having’.
Herd is actually where I saw the reference to the computer simulation Boids, which I referenced in recent posts.
*I prefer flocking over herding. Birds are cute and pretty, cows look vacant and dumb, and sheep don’t have good connotations. Let’s help people feel fast and powerful, not like they are chewing their cud.
A very excellent post, Ash, and thank you for the links to the Santa Fe Institute–those will be very useful for my current chunk of work.
But I am struck, as I always am when this pattern repeats itself, by how you started the post with the frank acknowledgment–with citations–of the strength and importance of flocking behaviour*, but went on to say the work at TAE is “also rooted in both increasing factual knowledge and mutual knowledge.”
Flocks do not respond to factual knowledge. Flocks respond to actions. Now, the bright side is the lead bird may respond to facts and knowledge, but until we are making clear and public displays of our behaviour, the flock will never wheel away from a predator.
Now, we can shop at a farmer’s market and ride our bicycle, but it is harder to demonstrate we are renters, or that we are 99%ers, or that we have downscaled our work in order to do more urban homesteading. Yet that public display is critical to changing the flock’s direction.
Even I–an analytical and intellectual person–find myself unable to take certain actions that I know and believe in. The momentum of the herd is too great for me to overcome. I need a few signs of others changing direction before I will. In other ways I have changed, but we are all complex and nuanced–very few choices are made on facts, and many are based on the flock, and on emotions.
Thanks again.
Ruben.
