Aspirational Futurism, Uncertainty and Resilience

One of the secondary effects of the latest set of crises to grip the world is the rise of essays and articles from various insightful folks, laying out scenarios of what the future will look like in an era of limited resources, energy, money, and so forth. Most of these follow a similar pattern: a list of reasonable depictions of a more limited future, and at least one item that seems completely out of the blue.

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/03  at  04:06 PM

While I am aware of many studies of individual resilience, I am not aware of many of collective resilience. Do you know of work ascertaining what makes groups of people/organizations/societies able to rebound and adapt? And what are the dynamics by which groups of people fix on a prophecy of catastrophe so intensely that it paralyzes any will to avert it?

Jock McClellan

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/04  at  12:11 AM

Collective resilience: Good question. I don't know of any work, offhand, but John Robb at Global Guerillas is writing about precisely that problem for his next book.

Paralytic catastrophism: I think that's a subset of the larger issue of people generally believing that they have no agency in creating the future.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/04  at  11:18 AM

Isn't whether you like Kunstler or not somewhat irrelevant? The issue is, is he correct (along with all the other Peak Oil pundits) in his assertions about the energy facts facing the world. I should have thought that by now, with the IEA and other heavyweights in the same camp we should be taking this issue very, very seriously. I really don't care what your feelings are about any commentator. I want you to disprove what they are saying. This is not a beauty contest after all.

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