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Musings Report 2018-44 11-3-18 Decay, Collapse and Renewal
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Decay, Collapse and Renewal
I’ve been pondering the cycles of decay and renewal. Nature is our model of how these cycles work: leaves wither and drop in Fall, decaying back into the soil to feed the tree. After a period of hibernation or quietude, renewal comes with Spring and the emergence of new leaves and eventually, ripened fruit.
Then the cycle repeats. If renewal doesn’t manifest, the tree dies and its cycle of decay and renewal ends, replaced by a larger cycle of decay of dead wood and the emergence of new seedlings. In an even greater cycle, should the tree species fade, another species of plant life will take its place.
Life is teleological: everything that enters life leaves it. The emergence of life delivers all living things to the end of life.
As humans we have a peculiarly partial control over certain kinds of decay and renewal in our lives. While we cannot stave off death, a decay in our health resulting from habits of diet and lifestyle can by an act of decision and the application of self-discipline be replaced by a cycle of renewal.
A stagnating career that is decaying our satisfaction and health can be transformed into a cycle of renewal by learning new skills, taking new risks, changing where we live and work, and developing a new mindset or understanding of ourselves, the economy we inhabit and of our aspirations, talents and suppressed ambitions.
In an earlier Musings Report, I addressed the impact of aging and exhaustion on our ability to transform our life from decay to renewal. Our homes and yards are apt analogies for this decline. We’ve all seen once well-maintained homes and yards become overgrown and ramshackle as the owners enter old age and are no longer able to do the maintenance themselves. It’s my observation that in this stage of life it becomes difficult to even recognize the decay; the owners habituate to the decay and have lost the will and/or the financial means to pay others to do the work.
As a generalization, humans seem to easily habituate to decay of all sorts of things, from social bonds to civility to economic vitality to their own careers, relationships and sense of self. Our first challenge is to recognize the decay and our second challenge is to muster the will and resources to respond with a thoughtful plan designed to renew whatever is decaying.
Again as a generalization, we’re able to muster the will to transform our lives when we’re young, in our late teens and 20s, and then again in mid-life (our 30s and 40s), often in response to mid-life crises. Unwelcome changes can force a response in our 50s and early 60s (forced retirement, divorce, bankruptcy, health crises, etc.) but beyond this window of opportunity, very few people manage to recognize decay and muster the will and resources to effect meaningful transformation/renewal.
My 64th year, 2018, has been one of internal turmoil as I’ve grappled with recognizing what’s changed/decayed in my life and formulating a response aimed at renewal before I lose the ability to recognize decay and act on it forcefully.
Ugo Bardi of the Seneca Cliff blog (cassandralegacy.blogspot.com) often posts insightful essays on macro-issues, many reflecting his interest is the Seneca Cliff: gradual growth/expansion leads to a sudden collapse.
His recent essay suggested that sudden collapse clears the way for relatively rapid renewal. The Seneca Rebound: why Growth is Faster after Collapse.
I think there is merit in this observation, and that it’s scale-invariant, i.e. it works on the spectrum of individuals, small enterprises, corporations, countries, regions and species. When things collapse, we’re jarred from complacency and are forced to recognize what’s going on and act. In natural selection, this is the punctuated equilibrium theory: species maintain very stable genomes as long as their environment is stable (equilibrium), but when tumultuous change occurs, they quickly evolve in response.
I have long held in my published works that the global financial system, and everything that depends on it, which includes social and political structures, will enter an existential crisis in 2020-2021 and that the crisis will culminate in 2024-2025 with a collapse of the debt-based financial system of fiat currencies. This collapse will likely be interwoven with geopolitical crises (hopefully not global war) and environmental crises (droughts/flooding leading to grain shortages, etc.)
In some of my books, I’ve attempted to describe how the foundations of the status quo are eroding beneath the surface stability. Every effort is being made by authorities and the official media to promote the notion that this deeply unstable surface is solid, but this claim simply isn’t credible. As I’ve explained many times, the system’s buffers have been thinned and the extraordinary measures taken in the past decade to mask the decay cannot be repeated: mass expansion of debt as the cure-all to decay has never stopped, and lowering interest rates again will only encourage destabilizing speculation and inflation.
It’s an open question whether the sudden collapse of the global financial system will clear the way to a rapid renewal or not. It depends of course on what’s left in the way of natural resources to exploit and the social-political structures that are left to support renewal. It also depends on the rise of new social and political structures suited to DeGrowth, decentralized currencies and local control. Laying out an integrated structure of DeGrowth, decentralized currencies and local control is the core of my work.
I could be wrong about the timeline, of course; nobody knows how thin the buffers really are and so predicting crises is a matter of probabilities and of self-reinforcing feedbacks. Systems that would have survived a single crisis may fail suddenly when beset by self-reinforcing financial, political and environmental crises, all of which will be made worse by centralized state responses controlled by self-serving entrenched elites.
The point here is to recognize the decay of the macro-structures of our daily life, the financial, social, political and environmental structures that underpin our energy-dependent, credit-dependent lifestyles. As decay leads to collapse, it behooves us to have our own plans for renewal in hand, and our own rapid evolution in mind.
Highlights of the Blog This Past Week
What's Behind the Erosion of Civil Society? 11/2/18
Why Is Social Media So Toxic? 10/31/18
What's the Real Meaning of the Stock Market Swoon? 10/29/18
Shadow Banning Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg: We're All Digital Ghosts Now 10/27/18
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
I received this from reader/correspondent D.C. after we exchanged emails about transitioning/changing locales: "I want to thank you for those supportive words, you barely even know me and yet you spoke to me like the kind of friend I would love to have in my life, people in your social circle should count their blessings to have you as a friend." Wow--thank you, D.C., that is high praise indeed. You made my month and my year.
Musings on the Economy: Capital Flows
Much of what happens in the global economy is based on capital flows--where money is leaving and where it's going. Money is a commodity and so its price is based on supply and demand, which are established by capital flows.
When capital leaves a country, it leaves a currency, too, and so as the demand for that currency declines, the value of that currency declines as well.
As capital leaves a sector, for example, real estate, demand for real estate drops and price declines as supply piles up and buyers become scarce.
It's difficult to track capital flows, so instead we follow price, which is set by capital flows in and out of currencies, asset classes, nations and credit/cash: as people pay off debt, they spend less and credit shrinks.
It's a truism that mobile capital flows to where it's treated well, that is, there is rule of law to protect it, a relatively open and trustworthy financial system, a relatively stable currency, highly liquid capital/credit markets for stocks, bonds, debt and other financial instruments, a relatively high yield, opportunities for speculative gains and so on.
Whatever is being drained of capital stagnates and declines, as whatever is starved of capital cannot be reinvigorated with new investments. Selling begets more selling and as prices decline, loans default and the incentives to sell out and flee increase.
These self-reinforcing feedback loops are core dynamics of capital flows. This is why rising markets attract more capital even when they seem overvalued by traditional metrics, and why sectors that are relative "bargains" continue to drop.
The number of places that treat capital well are dropping rapidly, and capital flows will likely increase: out of places that don't treat capital well and into the few places that treat capital well.
From Left Field
Public Spaces, Private Control (via Laserlefty)
How I Made it to Renmin University’s Blacklist (via Maoxian)
"When I went to get an answer to the above question from the School Party Committee Deputy Secretary Liu Rui this morning, I only got the following response: “When your ideology gets back in line, your name will disappear from that list. Otherwise it will be there until graduation.” But I believe in Marxist ideology–what kind of ideology should I switch to?"
The “Domestication Syndrome” in Mammals (on what might be called ultra-sociability)
Millennial Men Leave Perplexing Hole in Hot U.S. Job Market -- young men no longer have to work to survive....
The elephant as a person: Elephants might have the necessary capacities for personhood – we just need to help them acquire the cognitive scaffolding
Venezuela’s Hard-Partying Beaches Are Now Deserted and Filthy (via Maoxian)
"There are few places as chaotic or dangerous as Venezuela. “Life in Caracas” is a series of short stories that seeks to capture the surreal quality of living in a land in total disarray."
A Year of Plant-Based Life--on weight loss.
Paul Volcker, at 91, Sees ‘a Hell of a Mess in Every Direction’ (via Maoxian)
“The central issue is we’re developing into a plutocracy,” he told me.
Homelessness and Poverty Among Students: Raising Awareness and Providing Support
Understanding China’s Technological Rise (via Iris K.) -- this article claims freedom doesn't matter, but I beg to differ: social mobility and personhood matter, as the Chinese leadership will learn the hard way....
How will we survive when the population hits 10 billion? (via Steve K.)
How the Chile Pepper Took Over the World (via Kurt A.)
"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot." Charlie Chaplin
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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