another attempt to explain to myself why the worldview of so many of the #systemsdynamics people started to collide with reality since COVID or so, and many lost their marbles in sad and creative ways:
THIS is just not what most of us expected. these people are seeing everything through an #energy lense, for a justified reason, but also bc this group came out of the #peakoil crowd.
1/
so we were not wrong, finite resources peak, that is just the way it is, but ALL the factors that led to industry going: "yes we should try out shale rock" and kept the whole thing going to this day were not considered.
that should have been the first indicator that the #energy lense has been incomplete. not wrong, just not telling the whole story.
we have been the closest to the point of real energy price causing societal #collapse right before the 2008 crisis. some say it significantly contributed to it.
there was a point, because every other industry needs #energy for their activity energy price raises all other prices. inflation and energy price go together.
that confirmed the paradigm: that resource, especially #energy scarcity, will, as resources peak and decline, ultimately lead to societal #collapse. all the models assume that scenario, whether bardi's stuff, world3, you name it. this was the talk of the town in #environmentalist circles. we could all agree that exploiting finite resources is not #sustainable. it was simple, it was logic.
and then trump & COVID happened.
there were exactly 2 people in these circles that saw coming by a long shot what trump meant. one was heinberg, wrote a whole book about it, called "power". the other was regoczei, computing guy, he always said to me: fascism is a result of local #limitstogrowth #collapse. not the big thing, but the small, local injustices that wear down on everyday life in a crisis.
by now i think those two got the closest you could ever get to actually understanding what is happening right now and what happened with COVID.
the others *SIGH* no gonna name & shame any of these guys anymore, i am so over it, slowly lost their minds in the COVID-to-ukraine timeline. some became literal antivaxxers during COVID. some have been since 2022, and are to this day openly celebrating the downfall of NATO and US hegemony as some sort of anti-imperialist strike.
and i wonder WTF happened to us.
... a lot of things just flew in your face that you have conditioned yourself not to understand.
COVID, a non-resource related finical crisis. the US not being the bad guy in a war for a change (ukraine). trump who fundamentally defies all logic or any form of analysis...
i can see myself trying to frame these crisis in the limits-to-growth framework, not bc i would like it to happen, but bc it is modeled to happen in my lifetime. but it all just wont fit.
one of them is on X lamenting about how #trump is the outcome of a system in decline due to resource constrains. as i said: when #energy & #ecology is the only lens you see the world through things can look surprisingly simple (and you can get it tragically wrong).
and it is most disappointing when it comes from people who should have learned some respect of #complexity.
i have tried to discuss this like 7429343219 times with them.
with all i have explained about their thinking i just cannot come to their conclusion that:
- collapse is generally inevitable
- a multi-polar world order without the US as leader will be peaceful
- you cannot fix, or at least try to use the #democrats for good purposes
it is just a lazy, no respect of #complexity, no revision of you past predictions -ass attitute which stems from a simplistic understanding of a world that has been upended by COVID.
if they only left the #energy maximum principle and non equilibrium #thermodynamics out of it. two things i hold very dearly.
they are not the reason for trump. they are not the reason why democracies lose trust.
there are maybe a million reasons for #trump but the #systems #ecology had absolutely nothing to do with it.
it just shows their loss of the narrative.
very funny when it happens to the MAGAs. very sad when it happens to your own.
my direct question to the #systemsthinking community: if you had to redo world3, include the massive effects of social inequality, include big money & power, global, all encompassing #posttruth #misinformation campaigns corrupting the feedbacks - what would it look like?
@kali
I think there is a deeper cycle in human affairs. Resources (also epidemics and other natural disasters) can be triggers and accelerators of change, but are not the root cause.
The cycle I see down through history is where a society initially makes significant advances, typically due to some new technology, but eventually gets stuck when a few individuals try to retain control to keep their privileged positions.
Eventually some other group will develop some advantage and the stuck society will be overtaken and/or overthrown.
kali
ocratato