What next?

Plan for the worst, hope for the best?  

Every now and then when I read James Howard Kunstler's blog I learn something.  Even then I am not quite sure what I might have learned...  

Kunstler referred to the US as a "moron nation".  Now far be it from me to say more (as I don't live there etc) but even as a child I was often surprised by how little Americans I met seemed to know about the world north of the 49th parallel. And I am not sure he manages to explain this phenomena - although the label may be apt.  Another reason might be that despite their wealth as a nation, most Americans (to give the label to USers) are just like folks everywhere else. They have no interest in anything that doesn't directly affect them - and so, believing that they live in the best country in the world and so on and so forth, they cannot be bothered to learn anything about anything else. 

[And then there is their appalling media but that is another story... ]

While the reasons he offers for the seemingly high level of ignorance seem lacking, his description of the US as a nation completely misguided is good.  One can feel the sense of despair.  Well maybe despair is too strong a word.  Disappointment tinged with regret?  Of course, this sensibility is not shared by the great mass of fools who are driving the US over the edge - no these poor benighted folks still believe in recovery, in the American Dream and so  on. Reading Kunstler though I got a sense that there is a class of people in the US, somewhere just below the ruling class and above the shop floor, who believe Humpty Dumpty is truly down and out ...  and who want to believe that it is not their fault...  

[And this is, of course, a new take in the old debate on high and low culture but again that is another story...]

Kunstler began this week's blog by explaining that he did not discuss the population issue as he felt there was no need.  As far as he was concerned, the world was way beyond its carrying capacity but there was nothing that could be done about it...  the problem would 'self correct' at some point.  This self correction would be brutal ... the four horsemen of death are gathering but then like the Black Death, a new world could emerge on the 'other side'.  

Of course, Kunstler is not alone in his bleak assessment of the prospects for human society.  The sentiment is so common that it no longer needs to be explained.  The sense of concern, even despair, has always been felt by those who feel deeply about the natural world - decades ago a German philosopher (whose name I will find) said that even though there may be no hope, we must act as if there was...  

But how does one do that?