"...the West has largely given up knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, for mere power, consumerism and rank ideology..."
I have no crystal ball showing me the future, but if we as a society do not begin to claw our way back to intelligence, productivity and sanity soon, we will surely die from morbid stupidity.
Excellent post. My path has been quite similar to yours. I was a Peak Oil prophet for a time. I now repudiate doomerism with extreme prejudice.
Here's a video from 2016 in which I asked John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Chris Martenson and Dmitry Orlov to consider a transition from privately owned ICE vehicles to a transportation system based on ride-hailing of autonomous, electric vehicles.
I'm sure their answers will sound familiar to you. Even in 2016, their reasoning was starting to sound like the recitation of a memorized catechism rather than dispassionate analysis to me.
It's interesting how the Peak Oil doom crowd dispersed in the Trump years. PO was a big tent that included hippy back to the landers as well as Turner Diaries survivalists, biophysical economists and admirers of Terence McKenna. I never met Terence, but I've interviewed his brother Dennis many times over the years. Now that the cultural left and right are so polarized, you could not reconvene those same audiences at events like the ASPO gatherings without a crossfire of hurled hyperbolic accusations.
Forgive my laziness, but I fed your post and three of my recent Substack posts to Claude, and it summarized them as follows:
From your writing and discussions, I interpret your view as follows:
The cultural left has embraced what you call khesterex - a deliberately contracting system that maintains control through artificial scarcity and "surrogate solutions." They've chosen managed decline wrapped in the language of progress and safety.
This manifests in several key patterns:
Preferring credential-based status over productive capability
Creating bureaucratic complexity that consumes resources while blocking innovation
Substituting metrics and process compliance for actual problem-solving
Viewing disruption of any kind as an existential threat rather than necessary renewal
The stark gender divide in political alignment (particularly among younger cohorts) reflects different responses to system decline:
Young women disproportionately benefit from credential-based status systems and administrative roles in the short term, so they resist disruption
Young men face the system's dysfunction more directly through declining economic prospects and relationship market dynamics, making them more willing to risk disruption
You see the cultural left's fixation on safety, stability, and incremental "progress" as actually hastening civilizational death by preventing the creative destruction needed for genuine renewal and growth.
---------------------
The opposite of a khesterex, the system that dies, is the komerex, the system that grows. It's hard for me to see Donald Trump as the embodiment of a return to growth, but pair him with Elon Musk, and it's an easier conceptual leap. I voted for Elon Musk as much as I did Donald Trump in this most recent election.
Well said, and you have a lot to say about it. In short there are only so many resources, there are plenty of resources if you get rid of a lot of people, is kind of how it has seemed since covid.
I think the crowd you mentioned was sour on the idea of elec vehicles you suggested, in the main because they do not believe society would ever find the initiative for that, but also elec vehicles are not green and do not work very well in the north country, at least in their current iteration.
I am very sympathetic to the idea that government is standing in the way of innovation as it chews up resources. I am absolutely in favor of demolishing the deep state, and really most of our institutions. Open the books and let Americans figure it out. It would be the biggest economic boom in history.
"I think the crowd you mentioned was sour on the idea of elec vehicles you suggested, in the main because they do not believe society would ever find the initiative for that, but also elec vehicles are not green and do not work very well in the north country, at least in their current iteration."
If you watch the linked video, you'll hear Chris Martenson claim that there's not enough lithium to make all the batteries. Here we are in 2024 and the EV market is exploding with no lithium bottleneck and new deposits being discovered all the time:
Arkansas
Researchers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment estimate that the Smackover Formation in Arkansas contains 5.1–19 million tons of lithium. This is enough to meet global demand for lithium through 2030 and could end the US's reliance on imports. The Smackover Formation is a rock formation that spans six states, including Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Nevada-Oregon border region
A large lithium deposit was discovered in a volcano crater in the Nevada-Oregon border region. The deposit is estimated to be between 20–40 million tons, which could make it the world's largest source of lithium.
California
A massive lithium deposit was discovered underneath the Salton Sea in California. The region's lithium concentration in the geothermal brines is believed to be the highest in the world. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that the Salton Sea region could have resources to produce over 3.4 million tons of lithium.
I just watched that video. That was quite a response to your query. That could not have been comfortable. I saved it. I love those guys, but no one is going to watch that video and say, "I want to be like them."
I feel like their skepticism is holding up though. As to batteries I would add, it is not so much batteries as micro nuclear that would save mass transportation for the long term.
Assuming that is all recoverable, the price of lithium batteries for my power tools as a contractor have still well more than doubled in recent years. Having access to lithium too does not itself solve the cold weather problem. There is also the matter of the plethora of rare earth metals that go into “renewables.” I’m just saying, electric vehicles are not necessarily a solution to the predicament of declining hydrocarbons. It is more a spiritual deficit, people stuck in a scientific materialist, eternal progress worldview that precludes necessary change.
I used to read JMG, about 2008. He moved his blog and I moved my interest.
I have no interest in a society that cannot wait to leave this planet in the rear view mirror. Good riddance!
I definitely favor transforming this civilization into something healthier for people generally: physically, socially, mentally and spiritually.
I am tired of The West, whatever fantasy that is and in particular a home for America. It’s like referring to women as oarks, because that is somehow more convenient, regardless that it has nothing to do with women.
Is the “West” really just a reference to Aenean?
The Great Awakening seems like just another way to justify avoiding the improvement of our civilization. We can give it a name, and then produce excuses for why it has yet to materialize.
Why is the concept of the of the rapture so enduring?
We certainly need a new model for societal evolution, one that does not involve war, death, and destruction. What good is an economic system that cannot evolve without violence?
Many humans love the idea of Utopia, while also many love the idea of Apocalypse. Very few have given much thought to what a healthier society would actually look like. I suspect the idea of a great awakening is a lot just people not willing to do their spiritual work. My hope is Trump will prevail and start a trend of accountability and dismantling the deep state, which could precipitate a spiritual rennaisance.
“. . . start a trend of accountability and dismantling the deep state, which could precipitate a spiritual rennaisance.” Shiver me timbers! The notion that Trump might inspire a spiritual rennaisance is mind boggling. How many people will put “Trump” and “spiritual” in the same sentence, let alone paragraph?
I’ve had a problem with the concept of Apocalypse for some time. Death and destruction is just not attractive to me. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, and Apocalypse only applies to other people, not me. But the values I’ve been trying to incorporate into my life, namely acceptance and accommodation, seem antithetical to Apocalypse. As for Utopia, that is a pipe dream. And a ride in Disneyland. While I am grateful that Trump won, I do think the future will be a diffcult uphill slog.
Perhaps you didn't see or experience this on your journey but there was a brief explosion of interest in The Unabomber on Twitter in particular a couple of years ago. Ecofascists, neoluddites, primitivists had their moment in the sun - some went further and looked at Linkola. It caused enough of a stir for a Wired writeup. These people and ideas don't just accept the premises of catabolic JMG style collapse they welcome it - they see a return of meaning to the world as life becomes harder (that really is Ted K's belief distilled). That idea is appealing because it reframes collapse and not necessarily in the meme way "I can't wait for collapse so my ideology can rise from the ashes" but more in "this returns us to the essence of life and meaning".
Uncle Ted. There remains some fondness for him on the right, a man of action and intelligence. No one I know supports such action, they tend to see it as a failure of logic, but his thinking generally has held up over time. I tend to believe a restoration is unlikely until we go through collapse, as necessity is the greatest teacher. I just figure I would make a point I don't hear anyone else talking about, such a restoration could begin now, though it would likely require a Caesar figure to initiate it.
A Restoration, post-Dark Age, will eventually happen...
'For the New to be Born, the Old Must Die.'
That said, it will not be like the societies of today, which Consume inordinate amounts of Energy, Metals, Materials, etc. Rather, Future societies will behave very differently, opting to treat Energy, metals, etc, the way we treat money & our assets. Towards the end of my essay, I speculate about this Earthbound society which lives in said Stagnant Equilibrium:
"...the West has largely given up knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, for mere power, consumerism and rank ideology..."
I have no crystal ball showing me the future, but if we as a society do not begin to claw our way back to intelligence, productivity and sanity soon, we will surely die from morbid stupidity.
Agreed. If left and RINO trends continue, it will be a dark age and age of militants.
Excellent post. My path has been quite similar to yours. I was a Peak Oil prophet for a time. I now repudiate doomerism with extreme prejudice.
Here's a video from 2016 in which I asked John Michael Greer, James Howard Kunstler, Chris Martenson and Dmitry Orlov to consider a transition from privately owned ICE vehicles to a transportation system based on ride-hailing of autonomous, electric vehicles.
https://youtu.be/FRL7VStgKhk
I'm sure their answers will sound familiar to you. Even in 2016, their reasoning was starting to sound like the recitation of a memorized catechism rather than dispassionate analysis to me.
It's interesting how the Peak Oil doom crowd dispersed in the Trump years. PO was a big tent that included hippy back to the landers as well as Turner Diaries survivalists, biophysical economists and admirers of Terence McKenna. I never met Terence, but I've interviewed his brother Dennis many times over the years. Now that the cultural left and right are so polarized, you could not reconvene those same audiences at events like the ASPO gatherings without a crossfire of hurled hyperbolic accusations.
Forgive my laziness, but I fed your post and three of my recent Substack posts to Claude, and it summarized them as follows:
From your writing and discussions, I interpret your view as follows:
The cultural left has embraced what you call khesterex - a deliberately contracting system that maintains control through artificial scarcity and "surrogate solutions." They've chosen managed decline wrapped in the language of progress and safety.
This manifests in several key patterns:
Preferring credential-based status over productive capability
Creating bureaucratic complexity that consumes resources while blocking innovation
Substituting metrics and process compliance for actual problem-solving
Viewing disruption of any kind as an existential threat rather than necessary renewal
The stark gender divide in political alignment (particularly among younger cohorts) reflects different responses to system decline:
Young women disproportionately benefit from credential-based status systems and administrative roles in the short term, so they resist disruption
Young men face the system's dysfunction more directly through declining economic prospects and relationship market dynamics, making them more willing to risk disruption
You see the cultural left's fixation on safety, stability, and incremental "progress" as actually hastening civilizational death by preventing the creative destruction needed for genuine renewal and growth.
---------------------
The opposite of a khesterex, the system that dies, is the komerex, the system that grows. It's hard for me to see Donald Trump as the embodiment of a return to growth, but pair him with Elon Musk, and it's an easier conceptual leap. I voted for Elon Musk as much as I did Donald Trump in this most recent election.
Well said, and you have a lot to say about it. In short there are only so many resources, there are plenty of resources if you get rid of a lot of people, is kind of how it has seemed since covid.
I think the crowd you mentioned was sour on the idea of elec vehicles you suggested, in the main because they do not believe society would ever find the initiative for that, but also elec vehicles are not green and do not work very well in the north country, at least in their current iteration.
I am very sympathetic to the idea that government is standing in the way of innovation as it chews up resources. I am absolutely in favor of demolishing the deep state, and really most of our institutions. Open the books and let Americans figure it out. It would be the biggest economic boom in history.
"I think the crowd you mentioned was sour on the idea of elec vehicles you suggested, in the main because they do not believe society would ever find the initiative for that, but also elec vehicles are not green and do not work very well in the north country, at least in their current iteration."
If you watch the linked video, you'll hear Chris Martenson claim that there's not enough lithium to make all the batteries. Here we are in 2024 and the EV market is exploding with no lithium bottleneck and new deposits being discovered all the time:
Arkansas
Researchers from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment estimate that the Smackover Formation in Arkansas contains 5.1–19 million tons of lithium. This is enough to meet global demand for lithium through 2030 and could end the US's reliance on imports. The Smackover Formation is a rock formation that spans six states, including Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Nevada-Oregon border region
A large lithium deposit was discovered in a volcano crater in the Nevada-Oregon border region. The deposit is estimated to be between 20–40 million tons, which could make it the world's largest source of lithium.
California
A massive lithium deposit was discovered underneath the Salton Sea in California. The region's lithium concentration in the geothermal brines is believed to be the highest in the world. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that the Salton Sea region could have resources to produce over 3.4 million tons of lithium.
I just watched that video. That was quite a response to your query. That could not have been comfortable. I saved it. I love those guys, but no one is going to watch that video and say, "I want to be like them."
I feel like their skepticism is holding up though. As to batteries I would add, it is not so much batteries as micro nuclear that would save mass transportation for the long term.
Assuming that is all recoverable, the price of lithium batteries for my power tools as a contractor have still well more than doubled in recent years. Having access to lithium too does not itself solve the cold weather problem. There is also the matter of the plethora of rare earth metals that go into “renewables.” I’m just saying, electric vehicles are not necessarily a solution to the predicament of declining hydrocarbons. It is more a spiritual deficit, people stuck in a scientific materialist, eternal progress worldview that precludes necessary change.
I used to read JMG, about 2008. He moved his blog and I moved my interest.
I have no interest in a society that cannot wait to leave this planet in the rear view mirror. Good riddance!
I definitely favor transforming this civilization into something healthier for people generally: physically, socially, mentally and spiritually.
I am tired of The West, whatever fantasy that is and in particular a home for America. It’s like referring to women as oarks, because that is somehow more convenient, regardless that it has nothing to do with women.
Is the “West” really just a reference to Aenean?
The Great Awakening seems like just another way to justify avoiding the improvement of our civilization. We can give it a name, and then produce excuses for why it has yet to materialize.
Why is the concept of the of the rapture so enduring?
We certainly need a new model for societal evolution, one that does not involve war, death, and destruction. What good is an economic system that cannot evolve without violence?
Many humans love the idea of Utopia, while also many love the idea of Apocalypse. Very few have given much thought to what a healthier society would actually look like. I suspect the idea of a great awakening is a lot just people not willing to do their spiritual work. My hope is Trump will prevail and start a trend of accountability and dismantling the deep state, which could precipitate a spiritual rennaisance.
“. . . start a trend of accountability and dismantling the deep state, which could precipitate a spiritual rennaisance.” Shiver me timbers! The notion that Trump might inspire a spiritual rennaisance is mind boggling. How many people will put “Trump” and “spiritual” in the same sentence, let alone paragraph?
I’ve had a problem with the concept of Apocalypse for some time. Death and destruction is just not attractive to me. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, and Apocalypse only applies to other people, not me. But the values I’ve been trying to incorporate into my life, namely acceptance and accommodation, seem antithetical to Apocalypse. As for Utopia, that is a pipe dream. And a ride in Disneyland. While I am grateful that Trump won, I do think the future will be a diffcult uphill slog.
Re footnote #3 "maybe McKenna was just intuiting something in the far future, misinterpreting that as happening in his lifetime..."
Maybe Musk is intuiting this (and misinterpreting this) too...
Maybe. The science that would have us not just get to Mars, but thrive on Mars is not really present. I am writing about that in my next post.
Perhaps you didn't see or experience this on your journey but there was a brief explosion of interest in The Unabomber on Twitter in particular a couple of years ago. Ecofascists, neoluddites, primitivists had their moment in the sun - some went further and looked at Linkola. It caused enough of a stir for a Wired writeup. These people and ideas don't just accept the premises of catabolic JMG style collapse they welcome it - they see a return of meaning to the world as life becomes harder (that really is Ted K's belief distilled). That idea is appealing because it reframes collapse and not necessarily in the meme way "I can't wait for collapse so my ideology can rise from the ashes" but more in "this returns us to the essence of life and meaning".
Uncle Ted. There remains some fondness for him on the right, a man of action and intelligence. No one I know supports such action, they tend to see it as a failure of logic, but his thinking generally has held up over time. I tend to believe a restoration is unlikely until we go through collapse, as necessity is the greatest teacher. I just figure I would make a point I don't hear anyone else talking about, such a restoration could begin now, though it would likely require a Caesar figure to initiate it.
A Restoration, post-Dark Age, will eventually happen...
'For the New to be Born, the Old Must Die.'
That said, it will not be like the societies of today, which Consume inordinate amounts of Energy, Metals, Materials, etc. Rather, Future societies will behave very differently, opting to treat Energy, metals, etc, the way we treat money & our assets. Towards the end of my essay, I speculate about this Earthbound society which lives in said Stagnant Equilibrium:
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/proem-for-all-post-dark-age-civilizations?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web