Why Do I Write About Politics?

Last Thursday I wrote a post called Mean And Stupid Politics As Usual. That story was about how political lies are used to screw the poor. This was my last post before I took a much-needed break. A commenter on this blog thought I should avoid politics altogether.

Several years ago, Dimitry Orlov advised Americans not to waste their time on politics. That was good advice. Dave, your might feel better if you boycotted the so called election entirely. Your readers will not mind if you skip posting a couple days a week and enjoy the lovely late summer weather of North America.

Suggesting that I take Doomer-in-chief Dmitry Orlov's advice on anything was the straw that broke the camel's back, so I took the break. But why do I write about politics, which Orlov disdains?

On Friday morning I put up a lecture by paleontologist and ecologist Jeremy Jackson, who talked about shifting baselines in the oceans. Shifting baselines refers to the observation that current people think the ocean is doing OK, but if you were able to look at the oceans at generational time scales spanning hundreds of years, you would see the profound degradation of marine ecosystems which has occurred over that time. It is a form of the boiling frog problem.

I don't know how many people watched that video all the way through, but I'll wager not many people did. If you did not watch that video to the end, or at all, you missed Jackson's remarks starting at the 24:51 mark. He is talking about the role of politics in discussions of environmental problems. Here's what he said—

The last point is that it's not just about communication [of the science, the information]. It is, inevitably, about politics. And so I'll tell three little 'script' stories.

[image left: the rise of slime in the oceans]

Before I came here I ran an oil spill study. It cost three and a half million dollars, it was paid for by your tax dollars. And in that study I discovered that about 90% of all the corals and the reefs that were oiled died. I was immediately labeled as an environmentalist, untrustworthy, and an advocate because I spent your money to do a scientific study and measure something.

Paul Dayton? [He] measured the disappearance of large fish in the kelp forests out there. For that he is [labeled] an environmentalist, and an advocate, and untrustworthy, because he measured the decline in big fish.

And Dave Keeling? Right? Who discovered, first of all, how to measure CO₂ in the atmosphere, and then discovered that it rose, has been labeled as an advocate, because he did brilliant science.

So, the "dark side" has labeled information as advocacy, and it's your job as citizens to understand that, and it's your job as citizens to not allow people to tell you that information is anything other than information. What you want to do about it, that's up to you. But it's information.

And in the last five years, what we've seen, is the scientific information unshamedly removed from the discussion. We will talk about global warming, but we won't use the scientific [IPCC] report. We will talk about the state of ocean, but we won't look at the fishing data.

Last year, our friends up [on Capitol Hill], not them, but their boss, released a report saying "Another Great Year For U.S. Fisheries."  In that report, if you read it, you will see that they have no data at all for 60% of the species they are legally repsonsible for, and half to 2/3rds of the species they do have data for have declined. But the title of the report is "Another Great Year."

Thus we see that politics is a sure-fire way to avoid difficult discussions of planetary issues like the destruction of marine ecosystems and anthropogenic climate change. Jackson's more specific point is that merely gathering and presenting worrisome scientific information is miscontrued as advocacy. In psychological terms, the scientist is subject to a projection, which is a primitive defense mechanism. In short, he is taken to be somebody he is not.

I too present scientific information on DOTE. I too am subject to projections, mostly by Doomers who must see me as being just like them. I am not like them. For example, I am science-based. I am not sitting around awaiting the Big Collapse as Dmitry Orlov does on his sailboat. That belief is faith-based. But I will write on that subject another time.

Thus we also see, crucially, that understanding politics is central to understanding the Human Condition and our situation in the 21st century. And that is the central point of my writing—I am trying to tell you about the Human Condition and the precarious human situation in the 21st century. I write about politics, as Jeremy Jackson did, from the outside looking in. Human beings are by nature political animals, as Aristotle wrote hundreds of years before the birth of Christ (the common era).

If I ignored politics and the distortions of Reality contained therein, I would be like the blind man who can not understand what color is. Doomers can ignore politics because they believe industrial civilization is rapidly coming to an end, so what's the point of paying attention to what's going on as Jeremy Jackson or I do? In this sense they are mostly oblivious to the large changes occurring on this planet. The collapse itself is construed as a perverse form of Salvation for the Illuminati (the Doomers themselves).

It has occurred to me recently that this blog is an experiment, an experiment which may still fail in some sense. Despite the belief of some readers that this blog is just one among many conveying similar information, this blog is unique because of my approach, which I just described.

It is a pity that some people are incapable of understanding what I am doing on this blog, but that certainly comes as no surprise. I am going to try hard to not let it bother me. One important way of accomplishing this goal is to write about this annoying subject, and that's why I posted today.

Comments

[John]

Dave, I have followed your writing ever since the Oil Drum days and your take on our global predicament is one of my favorites, for your honesty and your commitment to facing reality. I hope you can continue your experiment for a long time, I would miss your perspective if you stopped.

[Wanooski]

Dave, I dunno if you heard about it or not, but critical thinking itself is now directly, and actually explicitly, under assault in the GOP's official party platform. They are actually attacking the concept of critical thought. If that does not show that we are currently spiraling downward into an insane Orwellian nightmare, then I don't know what does.

[Don Bowen]

You could say that politics is the art of not telling the truth while doing what ever it is you want done especially if that truth will cause pain to a lot of people. The great statesmen do what has to be done while lesser statesmen do what ever strokes their ego. We seem to be living in an age of lesser statesmen.

There are people who see a cloudy road ahead but telling us such things as we will be living with significantly less energy in the future will not get them elected. Getting themselves elected will allow them to position themselves to be among the less affected. They get elected by telling us rosy stories and kissing up to those who want to make sure they retain theirs.

[Ken Barrows]

Orlov's advice to avoid politics is sound unless one is willing to attack the basic assumptions of the political system (perpetual growth and expanding material abundance) and deal with the B.S. responses. I think that you make such attacks and I appreciate it. So if one thinks, for example, science is pointing to environmental destruction but wants to change that course, third party involvement seems to be the answer.

However, chances of success in the near term are zero and in the long run next to zero.

[lightningclap]

"The collapse itself is construed as a perverse form of Salvation for the Illuminati (the Doomers themselves)."

True, Doomers are waiting for vindication of their predictions, with gold, guns, food,a remote location. That's not gonna save them.

[Ben]

If Orlov says auf wiedersehen to industrial society, kisses his ass goodbye, and waits for the end of the world on his sail boat, that's fine. But don't expect anyone like me to take that schmuck seriously.

[John]

I think what it all boils down to is the human condition. Most people, politicians included, in the Western world don't want to make the sacrifices or the hard choices to make it better. And those hoarding gold and canned goods are no different; they just had the luck to look at some charts earlier than other people or maybe they were just closet nutjobs all along that have been made-new by a nice economic doomsday on the horizon(Unfortunately for them and not for us, the political monster under the bed will make it gradual and not immediate).

Most of us didn't see the severity of this deflation crisis until well after 2009, and for that I'd say the majority of people that wander to this website and like-minded ones are simply just looking for something to read: new information on where the economy is going. I think the best we can do is to talk about it and inform people about it. The data can't lie. A wise professor once told me that

"theory may be temporary, but a data point is forever."

If people ignore it, then fine. As you said, they are slaves to their own projections and when oil ramps up to $200 a barrel, and Bernanke's war on deflation prevents anyone from living the lives they once had, they can turn to us for the reasons why it happened, and God willing we will be wise enough to help them.

[Alexander Ač]

Hello.

For anybody interested there is the latest interview of Max Keiser with Orlov here (starting in the middle of the video): http://rt.com/programs/keiser-report/episode-331-max-keiser/

there, Dmitrij Orlov clearly states that current state of affairs can continue for years (see bailouts etc...), Max Kaiser disagreed with that (he expects (stock and monetary?) crash by april next year). Watch for yourself.

The latest youtube video with Jeremy Jackson I found is here (he discussed the mexican oil spill): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w0F5MjXn8s

Alex

[T E Cho]

Dave, I haven't spent the time to get an overview on the variety of worldview,s out there. Maybe it's because there's so much counter-common-sense 'stuff' floating around, such as the Singularity people or the lassiez-faire economics people. Unless one's retired, it's not worth the attention based on available time.

What exactly is a 'Doomer'? Is it just a too short a timeframe of crash or too deep crash relative to ones belief? Or is there a more objective definition. just as 'liberal' and 'conservative' are directions in.a continuum...spectrum, so too is a 'doomer' just a more pessimistic worldview? Or is it based on the reasoning behind the conclusion, the facts chosen or discarded. Two people may arrive at the same conclusion based on very different assumptions.

Maybe one could characterize their opinion in the form of a graph of decline vs. time. Some see just a sharp cliff ahead, others see a gradually increasing slippery slope (kinda like Ayers rock sliced vertically), others see an asymptotic-shaped bottom, others see the cliffs edge 50-100 years away, etc. Some see a more linear decline to 0.

it'd be interesting to somehow get a overview of thoughts on how things will most likely proceed and how deep the SHTF will be. Certainly, there can be no certainty, only informed guesses.

[T E Cho]

...Or the decline could be boiled down into -

- How soon?

- How steep?

- How deep?

[Ken Barrows]

Disagree with Orlov if you want, but you have to admit he made his choice and followed up.