Anyone with an internet connection and the courage to look fate in the face can see collapse either unfolding or coming at us at an exponential rate of knots.
The ever reliable Chris Hedges eviscerates capitalism,the U.S. Empire and the deep state that is grinding the nation, it’s imperial conquests, its victims and by default the living planet, into dust.
Chris clearly lays out the deadly trio of Acidification, Warming and De-Oxygenation of the oceans and the roles they played in the last 5 mass extinctions. “Microbes it seems are set to inherit the earth.”
Image; Waiotapu Thermal Pools, Rotorua, Aotearoa, New Zealand.
“Those who speak truth are marginalised and ignored, dismissed as pessimists in a culture that prides itself on a child like optimism, at the expense of reality. We have a mania for hope, which our corporate masters lavishly provide across the political and cultural spectrum to keep us passive.”
“Dying civilisations make war on independent intellectual inquiry, art,culture and their burnt children.The corporate state rather feeds the thirst for illusion, happiness and hope and those that challenge this myth are heretics”. Not to mention ‘Lepers”
“The human species led by White European men has been on a planet wide 500 year rampage of conquering, plundering, looting and exploiting as well as polluting the earth and killing the indigenous comminutes that stood in their way. But the game is up. These are the forces that now doom us”. “The Urban poor are in chains and these chains await us all”.
“The most daunting existential challenge of all time is to ingest this daunting truth”
These are just some of the highlights in this ground breaking speech from Chris Hedges one of the few to join the dots on the coming chaos, as has the anarchist, evolutionary biologist, award winning Professor Guy McPherson
50 minutes of genius from the ever reliable, ever ‘Revolting’ Chris Hedges are embedded below’
“Rebellion is a moral imperative”. “I don’t fight fascist because I think I can win. I fight fascist because they are fascists”.
Two more recent updates from Joseph Tainter from November 2023:
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
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Oh yeah, I’m pretty damned aware of this. I laugh at the term ‘social media’ when it’s just the extremely wealthy corporate elite in control who all tend to lean rather heavily towards ‘social control’ in their privately-held media empires.
It’s not just them! This cancelled renowned investigative journalist Robert Perry’s website Consortium News and their donation access to funding. It’s why I always send a check when I donate:
https://popularresistance.org/paypal-cancels-cn-account-may-seize-balance
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Yep, as stated it IS a world of make-believe for the faces of the corporate party both Dem & Repub. In conversations with both Wbush voters, Obama voters, Hillary voters, Trump voters, and Biden voters, I point out the absolute similarities between all these politicians to the actual policies they promote.
I guess I’m completely out of the norm in this country. I’ve never gotten ‘with the program.’
This Happened Here: A Draft Dystopian Movie Script
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/27/this-happened-here-a-draft-dystopian-movie-script/
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So this talk says the Dems & Repubs banded together against Trump because they were scared of losing power. Well, Trump is a Fascist as are his funding oligarchy but he was after individual power, a ‘strongman’ psychotic.
But then there’s the other side of the GOP which are also Fascist but corporate-style. As the Dems are, corporate style. No other way of thinking is allowed, no other political party is allowed as anybody with half a brain knows it.
There are a huge number of people in this country that…don’t have half a brain. They cannot get past the indoctrination they’ve been subjected to all their lives.
So we in the US continue to swirl around the toilet bowl in all respects. This is incredibly pitiful to experience, disgusting to live under this umbrella and know it, and damned scary to realize that it will only get worse.
This is what it must have been like for people in Germany in the 1930s who could think, those that realized what was coming and had absolutely no way to change anything. The industrialist backed Fascism just like they are doing here…
sealintheSelkirks
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbH_o-96qZI
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That was a short talk for Hedges!
Two for today:
Biden Accused of Lighting Fuse for ‘One of the Nation’s Biggest Carbon Bombs’
“This is pouring another 5 billion gallons of oil on the fire every year and bulldozing a national forest in the process,” said one critic. “It’s a horrifying step in the wrong direction.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/07/biden-accused-lighting-fuse-one-nations-biggest-carbon-bombs
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Extreme heat, drought will permanently scar California and its social fabric
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2022-06-30/aridification-kills-civilizations-is-california-next
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sealintheSelkirks
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“I don’t share this cultures mania for hope”. Chris Hedges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnkfrA3BawQ&t=35s
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The latest from Joseph Tainter;
https://www.ecowatch.com/china-extreme-heat-wave.html
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We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse, But We Will Probably Be the Last
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/we-are-not-the-first-civilization?utm_source=email&fbclid=IwAR3IbfLVTsf9ejS2XavmAVaWXI1pmUe8TOkC7b7vrsOgmT79sQAZiO5emeo
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Why nothing is going to change except for the worst:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/08/world/greenland-melting-mineral-mining-climate
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The billionaires need more money I guess, eh? It’s all about greed not ‘saving’ the environment. If there are UFOs watching all this they must have a policy like Star Trek; let them who are stupid live or go extinct on their own.
sealintheSelkirks
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO3JfRmfazw
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I first started studying the collapse of complex societies when I was in Guatemala in 1982.
The Mayan ruins were incredible.
They had roads, what this article calls causeways, before wheels were ‘invented’ or evolved might be a better descriptor.
Not many of their inhabitants saw collapse unfolding either, at least not until it played out!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lasers-reveal-massive-650-square-mile-maya-site-hidden-beneath-guatemalan-rainforest/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=lead&fbclid=IwAR0Z5s3EqD-U-pzpwAk6g-gT9SNoJ1r3mIoDyab4dNYGR_wp2J3SRVRDH7g
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Why Rome Collapsed: Lessons For the Present
The word ‘polycrisis’ applies.
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/why-rome-collapsed-lessons-for-the?utm_source=facebook&sd=pf&fbclid=IwAR2XUk8Nyrybafs08mrg07U7GvfRqEMj6XiD4oiWzm2y2HoODoLd06OHVAc
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Steve Bull
Top contributor · 7h ·
“Unexpected stress surges must be dealt with out of the current operating budget, often ineffectually, and always to the detriment of the system as a whole. Even if the stress is successfully met, the society is weakened in the process, and made even more vulnerable to the next crisis. Once a society develops the vulnerabilities of declining marginal returns, collapse may merely require sufficient passage of time to render probable the occurrence of an insurmountable calamity.”
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CLXXXVI (substack.com)
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And here is McKibben’s latest little post.
A Planet Where the Old Rules No Longer Hold
https://www.rsn.org/001/a-planet-where-the-old-rules-no-longer-hold.html
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Bill, the old rules led directly to this. The same people that WROTE the old rules are still writing and it’s just a revised version of them that is always in their financial favor.
Where are the tickets to Planet B sold?
sealintheSelkirks
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[…] “Complexity”, I’ve previously considered that aspect of collapse in my blog post: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies. Chris Hedges & Joseph Tainte…Another pathway to collapse is financial contagion in the banking system.There’s a great […]
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Population overshoot is clearly a contributor to the overall overshoot, contemporaneous with fossil fuels as it’s a major driver, pardon the pun.
Malthus and Anne and Paul Ehrlich’s basic hypothesis didn’t see the ‘green revolution’ evolving so were all wrong on timelines, but the hypothesis is still correct.
Guy McPherson and I have also been wrong on timelines, but I still believe that our conclusions of collapse and NTHE still hold firm, I’d love to be wrong on that and most things, I think!
“Elon Musk asserting that humanity should be optimistic about the future because we WILL ‘solve’ the ‘sustainable’ energy dilemma:”
I don’t believe Musk believes what he is saying but he has billions of $/reasons to want us, the proles, to keep BAU stumbling as long.
He has more to lose that everyone, hence him buying Donald Trump!
I think the most salient detail in this collapse is “Complexity”.
As mentioned in the great article Joseph Tainter’s work on the collapse of complex society’s is world leading!
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CXCI–The Nexus of Population, Energy, Innovation, and Complexity
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Well, this crumbling of the facade of ‘caring for our environment’ was bound to happen by our extremely wealthy corporate owners. Finally, they just dropped all the bullshit posturing and can focus on the only thing that truly matters, more accumulated wealth and power in the hands of the few.
All it took was a few more blatantly Neo-liberal right-wing Fascist-leaning governments installed by the wealthy elite in various western countries and the whole propaganda effort falls by the wayside.
Fuck the planet because we (the wealthy) have our bunkers fully stocked and ready for occupation right?
Latest from Hunziker:
Emergency Summit Regarding Antarctic Meltdown
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/29/emergency-summit-regarding-antarctic-meltdown/
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sealintheSelkirks
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Isn’t it interesting that the ocean has flipped from melting glaciers causing ocean rise to HEAT causing ocean rise?
NASA Report Finds Sea Levels Rose ‘More Than Expected’ in 2024
https://www.theinertia.com/environment/nasa-sea-levels-rose-2024/?spot_im_redirect_source=pitc
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But with Trump eviscerating NASA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service by firing thousands of scientists, we will reach a point where none of this is going to be public. Hell, he’s even cutting the Hurricane Hunter plane crews. No news is good news I guess?
The goal is to turn everyone into a mushroom, growing in shit in the darkness while wealthy Fascists continue to make money on everything and anything they can…until the goddamned planetary ecosystem completely collapses.
But hey, won’t cell phones still work? Have to get those dopamine rushes every minute of every day and what will these addicts do without them??
Oh wait. Didn’t about 90 tornadoes just go ripping through the Deep South Trump-voting states? And isn’t FEMA the rescue response people being ended? What are people going to do?
Die. It’s pretty simple for the wealthy to answer that question because they are using the words of Nazi Germany to describe anyone who isn’t in their ‘Class’ as parasites, freeloaders, useless burdens on the State who are poisoning the blood of…well, you know the rest.
Living in a disintegrating Empire is rather…stressful, you know, dude?
sealintheSelkirks
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[…] On the March 2020 episode of Nature Bats Last Kevin and Guy were joined by George Tsakraklides. Our discussion included the collapse of industrial civilization and George’s recently published book “Disposable Earth: How and why we gave the earth an expiration date”.Our interview is embedded following: “Collapse Means Collapse”Any blog post on collapse has to include the seminal work of Joseph Tainter: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies. Chris Hedges & Joseph Tai… […]
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[…] The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies. Chris Hedges & Joseph Tainter.… […]
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Another fascinating musing from Justin on our unfolding collapse.
Complexity has always been our weakest link, that complexity manifests in when this set of living arrangements fully unravels, we lose the Aerosol Masking Effect, and we have over 450 nuclear power station meltdowns and infinitely worse than that 1200 Spent Fuel Pool Fires.
I used to be in the walk away, tear it all down camp, but understanding the AME and nuclear legacy robbed me of that luxury!
Forsaking Cahokia: Five Lessons From The Collapse of a Native American Empire
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Yep, the myth as fact. We don’t need any more stinking science bad news!
Trump administration shuts down EPA’s scientific research arm
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/20/nx-s1-5474320/trump-epa-scientific-research-zeldin
NOAA gets de-funded, National Weather Service, NASA, pretty much everything science-oriented is being chopped. Except of course the Fascist secret masked police, cops, the military, and building more concentration camps.
So take that you science eggheads, you book-reading elitists who think libraries are better than monster truck pulls; Daddy Trump says to eat shit and die sick and poor because you ain’t rich!
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I’ve read a bunch about Cahokia but never had the chance to see them after I learned about the mound-building people. I haven’t crossed the continent since the mid-80s and that was flying unlike my travels-by-thumb in the 70s when I went back and forth a couple of times… Air travel is not really ‘traveling and seeing the world,’ ya know? Other than looking down at it from 35,000 feet if you get a window seat!
The photos I’ve seen are amazing, though, and I have relatives from Iowa who say they have seen them but, as they are (most of them) from Iowa and voted for Trump; twice! they don’t really have much curiosity about who built them. I had an uncle that said they were probably built by Vikings and not them ‘damned lazy indians.’ That would be typical thinking I guess for that area…and it’s only gotten worse since he died from what I read!
I think what this article talked about, a dispersal by choice and the people who built and maintained them just walking away from it all, isn’t really relevant to where we are today. Industrial civilization has flatly done too much damage to the ecosystem and poisoned too much of what little natural resources are left. The water systems, both above and below ground, are drained and full of toxic shit, the soil has been degraded so badly that they’ve been made dependent on petro-chemical fertilizers to ‘enhance’ what is left of the topsoil so that the Big Ag corporations can continue to plunder what’s left… And bluntly trying to calmly ‘disperse’ a population of 350,000,000 just ain’t gonna work out real well I don’t think. It’s likely to happen at one point or another, but in every direction one goes you will be met by the fleeing refugees from another giant city in that direction.
Then there is the weather that, to be mildly blunt about it, is not really cooperating with growing seasons any longer. Look at what is happening right this minute over a huge portion of this continent; another goddamned Heat Dome is setting up ranging from just east of me all the way to the Atlantic Ocean with temperatures with a ‘feel like’ of near 50’C. I expect I’ll be hearing from a few friends about this in the next few days.
The people of Cahokia were lucky. Very lucky.
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sealintheSelkirks
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It’s so refreshing for me to read the considered thoughts of someone else who is trying to navigate the perfect storm of non-linear change and exponential cognitive dissonance.
The quotes and analysis on Joe Tainter’s work are laser guided.
My experience in psychology was during my 16 offshore yacht deliveries and 100 or so races. I learned to study the strengths and weaknesses and tell-tale signs of stress in my crew.
Yawning is an indicator of oncoming sea sickness, if people get cold on their watches, often associated with being wet, their cognitive ability decreases.
Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh CCXIII
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Just published, Rachel gets an update from the mercurial Joseph Tainter, one of my hero’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzHrqzHAxwc
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Over the many decades that I’ve been interested in the collapse of complex civilizations, I’ve come across Dr Luke Kemp from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.
My take on Dr Kemp is that the analysis he provides to the corporate media, is the edited highlights, I’m quietly confident that the reports he’s sending to the British government and military offer a much starker prognosis on our shaky future.
Both the British and American militaries have described climate change as a “Threat multiplier,” again, sugar coated vernacular.
‘Don’t Be a Duck’: Corporate Media Outlet Reports Collapse
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