"To close on a small word of caution: there was never any certainty that the events I have described here would actually happen. Social mood theory provides a probabilistic forecast, not a certainty. But at the end of my book Mood Matters, I argue that it is probably a mistake to think that the long-term negative social mood is over. The DJIA topped out in real-money terms - relative to the value of gold - in 1999 and it has been downhill ever since.
"I quote John Petersen, founder of the Arlington Institute, a non-profit think tank which specialises in predictive modelling. He believes we are at the start of "megachanges", including the collapse of the global financial system, the end of oil, serious climate change, dramatic rises in food prices, and more. I would add the loss of everyday jobs such as car worker, and supermarket or airline employee. What makes the situation uniquely complex is that the multiple trends are converging.
"So, to keep up with the rapidly changing circumstances of the coming years, and cushion ourselves against the "social tsunami" we are facing, the best strategy is to follow Petersen's advice: stay flexible, remain open to new ideas and, most importantly, stay cool."
On May 28, 2010, at 5:46 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
> On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> That's an interesting point. I always suspected something like that was
>> going on with a certain kind of environmental purist, but I didn't have
>> enough empirical data to back it up.
>>
>> Also, I'm wondering if it's not just doom, but the longing for some sort of
>> irresistible ecological compulsion towards neoprimitivism. We *can't* have a
>> materially abundant society - we *have* to go back to the land, etc. etc. Of
>> course, we'd have to dispense with several billion people, but you know,
>> details, details.
>
> I don't think so. In my (nonquantifiable) experience, primitivism is
> nearly always a subset of doom and only gets called out rhetorically,
> when the speaker knows that it will boast his case for the
> irreversible existence of the handbasket we're going to hell in. Say
> what you want (and there's a lot) about the odiousness of primitivist
> demands, but at least they posit/imagine (however poorly) modes of
> living that are different from current arrangements. Doomsayers can
> only imagine the eternal continuation of the present.
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