Wow!! What a gloomy picture. Do you see no joy in life?? TomC
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Hi Tom, yes I have found, “The Joy Of The Lord Is My Strength I Will Rejoice And Be Glad In It”. I have found it is very hard to have Real Joy with out the having Living God in My Life. I can have happiness from things, but it can fade away according to my conditions. I’m talking about this Joy that comes from knowing the living God that springs up like living waters with in me, and it just keeps coming. With this kind of Joy in Everyone, everything in this old world change over night.
We would truly have “Peace On Earth And Good Will Towards Our Fellow Brothers And Sisters On This Earth”, I’m looking Forward to it. It is coming soon but not before great Tribulation and Trouble for this Earth. It is possible, that what we have been seening happening on earth is begining to starting to show up. It is called the time of Jocabs Trouble. But the “Thousand Year Reign Of CHRIST”. Is still to come after. Yes we are all liveing in INTERESTING times for sure.
Bob
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Yep, we have a book that predicts all this, and how it ends. We that are saved, win in the end.
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story about wood in the 1980’s living on a commune have a job in forestry plenty of work for everyone . Then someone in charge said I do not want us to go on hurting trees . Most people who had jobs lose them . Also you are not allowed to use wood for heat and have to use propane which was provided by commune . Bill came due for the propane suddenly you have to pay to stay at commune . 1350 people were forced to leave 150 stayed . Person denying any of this happened was filmed while filling his wood stove .
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I saw the homes of 200,000 people turned into lawns in the 1980’s .I asked a friend about it . He said it is good that they are gone . The Church brings people to God and expected more work as people became more desperate .
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Sorry but I have no knowledge of the story you are referring to. From what you did say, it sounds like one of the most strict Socialist experiments. And with most Socialist governments, it failed. TomC
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There is joy in all our lives.
But some of us are deeply worried and wary of the direction we are heading.
There is a cliff in the distance.
Some people are saying full speed ahead when we reach that cliff we will have a solution, if that is even a cliff.
It might be a fake cliff after all…
But hey those folks are optimistic at least.
Another distinct group is say hey that’s cliff up ahead.
We better slow down…
Maybe they secretly think its a fake cliff or something.
Maybe they think if we are going slow enough we will not plunge off the edge.
I can respect that understand there is a problem but they are not all that scared of it.
A few of us are seeing a cliff, I see a cliff.
It scares the hell out of me and I am yelling at everyone on the train that we have to stop.
Some might consider me mad, or a fool, maybe they think I have another motive or do not like trains.
No I am just scared of cliffs and falling.
All it takes for me to react is the sight of a cliff and brother I want to stop moving towards it.
Yes I am a relatively happy person but fear of cliffs kind of masks that when I see my future self falling off an edge of one.
So without getting political about it I simply want to say I see a cliff on the horizon.
I am not trying to ruin the train ride nor am I unhappy or trying spread fear I just want to stop smoothly before the track ends and not abruptly at the bottom.
Cause if I do end up at the bottom of the ravine your never going to hear the end of my I told you so…
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Tom, YES, I do see joy in life.
At the same time, my kids are going to too many funerals for their age peers.
I’m almost afraid to talk to people that I know from net groups. They are all losing their jobs. Luther tells me that he has finally used up all his 401. Nico tells me that he is going to lose his pride & joy, a very nice 50 ft. steel sailboat. He has no house or retirement. Dave got divorced and lost his kids. My sisters husbands have all recently died. My contractor friend, Ed is doing handyman work. My brother and SIL had their income cut back and, are waiting for the walls to close in.
I’m doing fine at the moment. !02 million Americans are not in the labor force. I see them by the thousands around L.A. Blue tents as far as the eye can see. Not a porta-potty in sight.
It’s hard to have a sunny outlook when I see so many people who have no future.
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All I can say is, it has to be a west coast thing, because most of the businesses in the rest of the country can’t find enough people to hire. Here even the trade unions are advertising for apprentices, you use to have to buy a union book for $500 in hope to get a few days work. I say move out if there’s no work.
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In central Oregon, there is great demand for housing. The home builders can’t find labor. The latinos are the only ones who can pass a drug test.
What has happened, everybody wanted to go to college and be a tech wizard. The millennials all expect to be millionaires and, retire by 55. While AI is eating up job niches daily, the colleges are turning out many thousands of people who have no job prospects. Nobody wants to do manual labor and get their hands dirty.
German friends tell me that EVERYBODY wants to go to “Uni” and be a rich professional. The Germans can’t find a plumber or carpenter anywhere…
The Los Angeles Unified School district took out ALL the shop classes. There are a lot of people who need to use their hands to make a living. Myself included. I go crazy when I’m behind a desk. I got out of engineering and switched over to repairing heavy equipment.
I saw the crash coming back in '05. I’ve been getting ready ever since. I started telling people in '07. 1/4 of all welfare cases are in Ca. so, you see a lot of blue tents. Also, there are thousands of old R.V.s parked all over the industrial areas.
I’m optimistic for my personal story. I’m pessimistic for all the hundreds of people that I see sleeping under bridges and panhandling at on-ramps.
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I have a heavy heart for those that can’t work, but nothing for those who won’t work. You live your life by the choices you make. When times change, you have to be willing, and ready to make different choices.
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California is suffering greatly for it pass and more recent deeds. The people there need a revival and need to turn back to the One True Living God that the state was originally founded on. Los Angeles California " the City of Angeles " L.A. is not living up to it’s name and it shows by what is happening there. Keep praying for all the peoples, in all of States and the Leaders of our Country.
Bob
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Amen!
I would observe that cities and urbanism were the most vile, and anti human development in history, imho. Plus a disastrous waste of resources. The surest way to kill the planet.
Amen again. A great Canadian science and environmental issue spokesman, David Suzuki, has been speaking for years of the affliction of "nature deficit disorder ". He makes a solid case that being isolated from nature is damaging to people, and worst for children. When our lives are channeled into such devoid ways, it’s not so surprising that people are insecure and flailing for meaning, medicated or self medicating. We’ve been sold a bill of goods, a way of life of consumption without meaning by corporations and wealthy people. (Only to make them richer and more powerful in the short term, while we know in the backs of our minds darned well it’s very wrong, and condemns our children’s future. )
No wonder city people think when we do this planet in mortally we can just all fly off to Mars. They are already living in that fantasy, isolated from nature bubble now, thinking they are not connected to the natural world at all.
To paraphrase Vonnegut, I doubt many people now worry much if the world will exist for their children, only the now matters.
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Stefan Verstappen has some very good vids. here is one and, I encourage you to watch other os his.
Man made the transition from hunter-gatherer to agrarian life. He then made a transition to the urban life. But, will this transition be successful in the long run?
Almost the entire existence of man was spent inside the clan structure. We have now broken the clan structure along with breaking the nuclear family. Our children are little socialists. The little blighters just consume without producing. All we get from them is dirty nappies. The clan is a socialist structure where the producers support the non-producers. A clan has genetic homogeneity. THAT is the reason that we tolerate the drain of resources from the non-producers. The family and clan are socialist.
A nation is an attempt to stretch out the protection of the clan over a much larger group who do NOT necessarily have genetic homogeneity. Look at the cohesiveness of the Japanese. Compare that to the lack of cohesiveness of nations that have a lot of genetic differences.
Man is well suited to clan living where every member has a niche. The destruction of the nuclear family has broken that arrangement. Mental health has suffered greatly. Can we still have a workable society when everybody is afraid and crazy? Millions are trying to escape the current reality. Either by suicide, drugs or electronic stimulation. Will we have to revert back to an agrarian lifestyle to reclaim our sanity?
The big reason that I write a blog on economics is; to put in words things that we mostly know as “feelings”. Once we recognise the situation / problem, we can at least prepare and address it.
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That is perfectly true William. We did live that way, and we WERE well oriented and we DID each have our niche. Would you agree that the terms clan and tribe are synonymous? There still people that do it that way. Unalakleet Native elder Lorena Paniptchuk - YouTube
But would YOU want to live by what the ‘elders’ say? Would you like to live without property rights? Not me man.
Rindert
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The purpose to develop detailed, illustrated instructions for the fabrication, installation, and operation of a biomass gasifier unit (i.e., a “producer gas” generator, also called a ‘wood gas’ generator) that is capable of providing emergency fuel for vehicles, such as tractors and trucks, in the event that normal petroleum sources were severely disrupted for an extended period of time.
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I am skeptical of claims that things were better in some past golden age. Ultimately I do not think it is the societies that we build that are the problem, I think it is the human nature that drives certain people to exploit whatever system is in place for their own gain. Being a small-scale farmer sounds pretty idyllic to me, but I suspect that the idea of being a truly self-sufficient farmer has not existed since the stone age.
Once you depend on other people, then your happiness and freedom is limited by the least benevolent member of your supply chain. Even within a tight-knit clan, there are those who would try and put themselves first. Just think of all the family fights over inheritance. We have made things immeasurably more complex in our modern lives, but I suspect that people with selfish intentions have been around since the dawn of time. I dont think that arguing that going backwards will somehow change human nature: you would just transform a cut-throat wall street banker into a cut-throat wool merchant who “fleeces” you out of your farm income 
What we need is meaningful changes in human nature, but how we get there seems quite unclear…
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As long as we continue to add 131 million people to the planet each year, none of this will matter. in the long term.
The rule of 70: Take any number that is growing. Find its annual growth rate in percent.
Let’s say 3 percent. Divide that number into 70. The result is the number of years that it takes for that number to double.
The answer is 23.3 years.
Now apply that rule to the population of the earth:
70 divided by 1.2 percent (population growth currently) =: 58,3 years from now, or about 2077. We will be at 2.X 7.5 billion or 15 billion people.
Do you think clan vs city will really matter then?
Pete Stanaitis
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I agree with you Carl, humans are the basic problem, by our nature. Kurt Vonnegut humorously called this disaster "the era of big brains " in one of his novels, saying humanity became dangerously clever, surpassing our limited intelligence, driven by evolutionary biology suited for beings with very limited reach. He knew we are intrinsically doomed.
I joke that if the starship Enterprise appeared in orbit, and scanned the earth for intelligent life, they would find none. Just a bunch of short thinking, dangerously clever prideful monkeys playing with fire on a planet killing scale. The next step would probably be to get out the giant can of bug spray…
And Pete is right, though increasing mortality will prevent us from ever seeing 15 billion, though we may see 10 by 2050, which will be the death warrant for the planet.
It’s a shame we can’t learn to live more humbly. I still believe permaculture is the only sustainable path, but agreed it was no paradise either, except in post cards. But it’s closer to what we are really built to do.
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Achieving a human mission to Mars has been a fascination of humanity for some time. In the 1990s, Dr. Robert Zubrin proposed the “Mars Direct” mission architecture, using conventional rockets and Mars in-situ resources to establish a sustained human presence on Mars. NASA Ames Research Center is developing science and technology to make such missions and sustained presence possible.
It is not possible ,
You say it is not possible to live on earth as our ancestors did thousands of years ago . I think you can but no because we have to pay taxes .
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