The Coming Re-becoming

     Everywhere you turn in this nation, you see a society primed for implosion. We seem unaware how extraordinary the American experience has been, especially in the last hundred years. By this, I don't mean that we are a better people than any other society -- these days, ordinary people in the USA make an effort to appear thuggish and act surly, as though we were a nation of convicts -- but for decade-upon-decade, we were very fortunate. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s may seem like a relatively peaceful and gentle "time out" from a frantic era of hypertrophic growth, compared to the storm we're sailing into now.
     We were fortunate to inhabit a New World filled with productive land, lots of minerals, and plenty of coal, oil, and gas; and the land itself was insulated physically from the great theaters of 20th century conflict, though we fought in wars "over there." That experience itself, especially our victory over manifest evil in the Second World War, left us with a dangerous mentality of triumphal exceptionalism. Even now, we think we are immune to the epochal hazards of history. The notion that nothing really bad can happen to us is reflected in the blind cluelessness of our current news media and their simple failure to report what is now happening.
     I drove up along an obscure stretch of the upper Hudson river on Sunday, starting in the old factory town of Cohoes, north of Albany, where the Mohawk River runs into the Hudson. There is a powerful waterfall there, and along the high bank the massive old red-brick Harmony Mill still stands with its Victorian towers and mansard roofs, like a vision from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Behind them are streets of red-brick, three-story worker row-housing from the same period. Today they are inhabited by a different kind of poor people, not necessarily working, and probably suffering from a sheer lack of structure in their lives as well as plain poverty of means. These are people who probably don't follow the Bloomberg financial bulletins, and their experience of a cratering economy may only be the rising cost of cigarettes and beer.
      The tattoo quotient among both men and women there is impressive. In the days when the Harmony Mill was built, only South Seas cannibals and sailors wore tattoos. You wonder: are tattoos now the only way left for this class of Americans to assert their selfhood? And what exactly are they proclaiming? I am a warrior. Or is it: I am a television (I display pictures, too) !? The expanding class of the poor-and-idle has been remarkably passive in the face of their dwindling prospects. Perhaps they passed the point years ago (a generation or two ago!) when there was any sense of sequential improvement for the family's station-in-life. The destiny of their everyday lives must seem totally beyond their control. They are subject to the fate of distant corporations who sell the staple corn-syrup byproducts and gasoline on which daily life is based. Where government is concerned, they are all potential victims of Katrina-ism, awaiting their own personal disaster.
     North of the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson was the old town of Waterford, where the Erie Canal began its journey west -- bypassing those powerful waterfalls. The locks are still there and still in operation for the infrequent tanker ships and ore barges that come and go to the Great Lakes. But the operation of the canal system is automated to the extent that it requires only a handful of people to run the locks now, and the town around them has deteriorated into slum and semi-slum garnished with a few convenience stores and pizza shops. There is no other commerce there. No matter how poor, the denizens are required to drive a car to a giant chain store for groceries or hardware or clothing.
      As you leave Waterford, the river road becomes a suburban corridor of 1960s-vintage ranch houses and stand-alone small retail business buildings which, if used at all now, are mostly hair salons, chiropractic studios, and other services not generally rendered by the chain stores. All this stuff was deployed along the road with the expectation that Americans would be driving cars cheaply forever. Now that this is distinctly no longer the case, corridors like this are entering their death throes. The awfulness of the design and construction of these buildings is now especially vivid as the plywood de-laminates, and the vinyl soffits fall off, and the dinge of neglect forms a patina over it all. Hopelessness infects this landscape like a miasma. Whatever young adults remain in these places are not thinking about a plausible future, only looking to complete their full array of tattoos and lose themselves in raptures of sex, methedrine, and video aggression.
     Eventually, after running through the disintegrating towns of Mechanicville (once a place of earnest labor, just like it sounds, now a morass of sinking car dealerships and Quik-stops), and Stillwater (smaller version of the same), the road turned completely rural and few other cars ventured up there. The decisive Revolutionary battle of Saratoga was fought near there on the bluffs and hills overlooking the Hudson in 1777. You wonder what the heroes of that battle would think of what we have become. What would they make of the word "consumer" that we use to describe our relation to the world? What would they think of excellent river bottom-land that is now barely used for farming -- or, where it is still farmed (dairying if anything), of farmers who will not even put in a kitchen garden for themselves because it might detract from their hours of TV viewing?
       The sclerosis of American life is shocking. If you go further north up the Hudson River, to Fort Edward and Hudson Falls, you'll see a nation that seems ready to crawl off and die. There, it appears too far gone to even put up a proxy fight on a video screen. Frankly, I don't want that version of America to survive -- the America of chain stores, and muscle cars, and grown men obsessed with video games, drugs, and pornography, and women decorated like cannibals, and the vast, crushing purposelessness of it all. I have no doubt we're heading into a convulsion that will wring much of this junk and dross into the backwaters of history. We're capable of being something better than this, of putting our time on earth to better use, including a more respectful treatment of the land we inhabit. This year and the next will be the years of letting go, and out of that we'll commence a re-becoming.
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My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.

Comments

[Dave]

think i'll take a walk over to walmart and watch some fox and and am america. that always makes me feel better. you should try it, very optimistic ya know.

[smr33]

I think you are quite right. I spent part of my weekend in the mountains of Western Pa., seeing much of what you describe, tattoos included. I did, however, observe many more kitchen gardens than expected; my guess is such things have never ceased to exist in some parts of the country among folks who still maintain some communal memory of what it means to be able to feed ones family when the hard times come. How many people still know how to can? In times such as these, my great-grandmother would have survived and survived well without breaking a sweat.

[javaman8263]

Thanks Jim.

Reminds me of the comic and movie Ghost World.

At first we experienced a slow erosen, now it appears as if the grade as become that much more steep.

Society is in the early stages of changing. The reorganization reality hasn't hit yet and probably won't in a giant portion of this nation. As a result those areas will vanish and be reclaimed by nature.

What I'm waiting for is the panic for those who waited too long and then will make a mad rush to the cities for food, when sadly, the land around them could provide, but the skills needed to do such have long since vanished.

People will die, just a fact.

I see at the end of this century, the earths pop to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 billion and dropping.

[mattbg]

The comment about tattoos is significant, I think, and may explain even more about why we allow our communities to turn into wastelands.

At some point in the last 20-30 years, the middle class changed from aspiring toward the culture of the classes above them toward aspiring toward the culture of the classes beneath them.

[Nicholas Paredes]

I was thinking more about how sex might make me feel mo better... Tis a touch early for some Blanton's.

Very little of this world I mind in appropriate doses. Very little of it I like... But, I remember as a child driving out of Chicago for family picnics, sans the family part, driving past store fronts along Miliwaukee Road. There were occasional shopping centers as the post-war period created these cathedrals for the newly victorious — the WWII generation and the workers who finally got the unions established. It was at least a bit more "we" than "me." Most stores along such routes probably still have the original blinds, and perhaps their elderly shop keepers huddling with the dusty boxes.

Last week at Boing Boing there was a post on a model shop for horror flick fans. Build a monster! Sadly we found better monsters to build. More alien waiting to pop out of our chests, than irradiated creatures falling from the sky. But, the comment was that stuff like that only exists in places like Japan, a culture still in touch with the old monsters and their meanings. Again the horror starts inside, and culture is the only defense. Laws, mores, and practices. Build something the plastic monsters scream.

Rebuilding, rebirth, it's the new me, same as the old me... only more so. I'm not so sure we change. Me wanting to ditch the world isn't a new theme. Me looking behind the curtains has always been my MO. Something tells me that the monsters will remain. Maybe hidden from view until after intermission. Look, I found another quarter! Another game...

Perhaps Monday isn't as optimistic as it should be. I'm thinking the beast won't be full until the tail is long gone, and the monsters realize they just ate their own asses.

[steve duncan]

I'll be happy if all that results is guys wearing their pants waist height and earrings returning exclusively to the lobes of pirates and women.

[mattbg]

The comment about tattoos is significant, I think, and may explain even more about why we allow our communities to turn into wastelands.

At some point in the last 20-30 years, the middle class changed from aspiring toward the culture of the classes above them toward aspiring toward the culture of the classes beneath them.

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

Aspiring to the lower classes? Nah, just more excess. Just as in the 1990s the Excursion topped the Suburban, then full sleeves topped arm bands etc. in the race for tattoo-oneupmansip.

[FARfetched]

This column is better than the last several, JHK. Lots of good stuff to chew on here. I'll be back later with some direct commentary.

Meanwhile, Episode #44 of FAR Future is up: http://farmanor.blogspot.com/2008/07/far-future-episode-44-high-stakes-hide_28.html

[garberpog]

About those clueless, purposeless folks... sounds like the closed system of an urban ghetto. I mostly blame the public schools and teachers unions. Schools should have shown them as children that there are other countries, different cultures (besides rap), and esp. the ways of times gone by (since it looks like we're headed back to them) and how those peoples fed themselves socially and physically. So kids are informed of the possibilities and can IMAGINE and construct a future for themselves.

BOOKS AND READING even those musty classics. HISTORY.

Could it all be a plot to leave no options left but the military? Or indentured servitude?

p.s. Thanks James for another vocabulary moment: sclerotic, thought I knew what it meant but benefited from checking Webster's.

[Farau]

Hey thanks for a great post!

Been reading your blog for some time now and it has really opened my eyes in alot of ways.

But tattoo's?

Guess we all need to complain about some things but this makes u come off like a your at least 200years old =)

[Empedocles]

A great post this week. I still wonder why JHK, although constantly arguing for localization, continues to support the party of centralized power, i.e., the democratic party.

[scott]

"We were fortunate to inhabit a New World filled with productive land, lots of minerals, and plenty of coal, oil, and gas.."

Underlining the word "plenty" seems to be at the crux of our differences with the collective psyche of America. Whenever I am speaking publicly with strangers about high energy prices, "there's plenty of oil" is invariably at the top of the list of responses and this is not coincidental in my opinion. If we are forced to think about resources in terms even slightly more sophisticated than "there's plenty" then the status quo becomes indefensible if not outrightly absurd.

So there we have it.. the simple concept of "there's plenty" is being aggressively defended by all parties concerned outside of places like this and there isn't as far as I know, any decent replies.

My ears are attuned to mainstream stories about energy and you would be surprised by the non verbal behavior that is exhibited when "there's plenty of oil" invariably pretexts the "fundamentals". There is always some eyerolling and usually some reference

[theroachman1]

@ Empedocles |

You are voting Green, Libitarian or what then?

[American]

Bitch about tattoos? Absolutely.

In a society which has pretty much debased the concept of individual expression via work and character, where recreation involves sitting on your ass pushing buttons while an imaginary version of "you" steals cars and beats people up, isn't it safe to infer that the means people use to distinguish themselves would be, in all probability, fucking stupid ones?

Oh yes, we were talking about tattoos....

[Flamsey]

I am always shocked and I know I shouldn't be at the seemingly average 30 something mom's with Tattoos. It always seemed like a "low class" thing to do when I was a kid. Now there are Tattoo shops in every strip mall. Don’t they know that when they get into their 50's those "tats" will be a blob of goo? My uncle had a Navy Tattoo on hi arm and it was enough of a mess to turn me off to them forever.. That and the fact that paying someone to hurt me never made much sense.

Boy I will miss hot showers and a warm house... But I won’t miss jack ass drivers in SUV's crawling up my ass on the LIE. I am growing a garden on my little suburban plot... But I'll never be able to feed myself and two kids from it.

[asoka]

Another optimistic post! Wow!

"This year and the next will be the years of letting go, and out of that we'll commence a re-becoming."

You are only about a year off. The Mayan calendar sees a new human consciousness that results in things getting radically better along about 2012... after the first few years of heroic effort by all Americans inspired by President Obama...the re-becoming is already underway.

Thanks for the reminder of our birthright.

[asoka]

Another optimistic post! Wow!

"This year and the next will be the years of letting go, and out of that we'll commence a re-becoming."

You are only about a year off. The Mayan calendar sees a new human consciousness that results in things getting radically better along about 2012... after the first few years of heroic effort by all Americans inspired by President Obama...the re-becoming is already underway.

Thanks for the reminder of our birthright.

[Farmgal]

Agreed and well said Jim. The only thing that troubles me is that you perhaps fall prey to the same hopes and wishes of others who upon sensing that we have surely been heading in the wrong direction both as a country and a culture, and that change will be forthcoming, trust that the change will be positive. Who says? While I do agree that we have been heading down the wrong track
for awhile now, and a change in course is needed, I am not sure why many naively believe that the coming "collapse" will trigger a beneficial change. While it may very well eliminate some of the most egregarious blights such as NASCAR, Wal-Mart and the "consumer" lifestyle, how do you know that what replaces it will indeed be better? Or is it that we just have to be optimists in order to continue to get out of bed in the morning?

[HMKrug]

We gave up quite a while ago.
When I first started hearing the never-ending drum of national praise, I knew something was very wrong. Now I hear the same kind of chant about endless resources and growth.
If we're so great and no one should be worried then why are we having to remind ourselves so often?
It' sad really.

[JohnD]

Peak Oil and other positive energy inputs counteracted by increasing social entropy equals anarchy. The last 100 years are a piece of a growth to peak to decline cycle, the trough of which we may not see anytime soon. We are not isloated, so the chance of maintaining structure or re-becoming anything we resembled before is nil. Something that declines in worth by 50% needs a double push to get back to neutral. But what would be the power of positive cohesion to restore value and quality? And where will we find agreement on what that is?

[dale]

The thought I'm about to express here is certainly not true of everyone who contributes to this site. There are many thoughtful and articulate people here who regard PO and it's aftermath as a “topic” to be discussed, if not dispassionately then at least rationally. There are others here who can be identified by their fervor and anger, and how that anger is similar to a witnessing to be applauded as the sign of a true believer by fellow zealots.

That is one of the most interesting thing about this website, not the discussion about PO and it's aftermath, but the fact that it is serving as a kind of incubator for a new kind of religion. At times I've wondered why people here are so angry and offended by posts that disagree with the prevailing thought, especially since the prevailing thought is so overwhelmingly negative. Nothing will get you criticized faster here than showing any decent regard for your fellow man. It's a bizarre sort of mindset, until you start to place it in perspective.

If you consider it in the context of a quasi-environmentalist religious sect, starting to evolve around the world, the parallels are remarkable. It's not strange that it would evolve at this time in history, anymore than it is strange that the UFO phenomenon has reached it's highest level of intensity at the beginning of the space age. In place of the Infidels and Jews, used as scapegoats and examples of the unrighteous in Islam and Nazism, around here we see the use of “Merikans”. Much as is the case with these other religions, these unrighteous beings are singled out for appropriate punishment. I have seen numerous people here call for the death of all these fuel hungry (immoral, in this new religion) citizens.

This new religion has it's own liturgy as well. JHK's thesis, fleshed out so clearly and calling for a post PO apocalyptic cleansing, is a kind of “Revelations” without, unfortunately for it's adherents, any Rapture to occur beforehand. It's not too late for that of course, often religions start out on a more practical philosophical basis and evolve mystical factors later. I've seen a few here gush about how they have read “The Long Emergency” several times. I'm not sure if it sets by their bedside as a reference work to have small segments read before sleep, but it doesn't seem to be too far from that.

As is true with many religious adherents, believe and emotion substitute for thought and reason. Likewise, it doesn't really matter what you DO, but what you think. If you are a low fuel using, gardener, for example, that is not as important as being sufficiently fanatical in tone. As is the case with Christianity, “works” is often not important, just what you believe. Trying to discuss things in rational or reasonable terms is infuriating to these people. It's as if you have entered a Catholic Mission with the intent of rationally discussing the possibility that Jesus was a simple human being.

From my point of view, when I look back on human history, nothing seems more dangerous or destructive then these zealots and there belief systems. I sometimes get almost as infuriated as they get, observing how comfortable they become in their smug convictions, but it's part of human nature and for good or bad we are stuck with it unless, or until, we evolve.

[irahan]

This (use to be) nation will not escape this horror film and we are all the actors. I have to disagree with Jim about when our "re-coming" will actually start. This year and 2009 will continue this insanity, assuming countries don't start lobing nuclear arrows at each other.

Its going to take years (if we make it at all) to turn this incredible (several generations) of brain dead zombies into real (honest) citizens. We will also require a government truly FOR the people instead of a criminal gain of thugs that now inhabit places of leadership on every level.

And what about the rest of the world who are just as "fuck-up" as "we the people". Oh boy....I need a drink, a big dam drink!

[hooting]

Great post, Jim. I saw your talk online from the TED thing in Monterey. Great message! Something me and my friends thought about a lot as we watched the desecration of Santa Clara Valley orchards in the early 1960s.

[Riddick]

Excellent post this week Jim! I always look forward to Monday mornings.

Perhaps rich and fortunate nations must be destined to implode by the very fact they have striven to gain the riches. I am sure China will one day and once again (given their long history) experience the same cycle again as well.

With the middle class struggling and contracting it is the "ghetto" sub-world that is rising. People have to find "themselves" and meaning somewhere and TV and MSM and movies provide the clues now. I live in a still affluent area of Northern Virginia (Loudoun), I know you know it well for what it is.

We have kids from the tract mansions with massively baggy pants, earnings and tats, their underwear or even thongs akimbo for all to see. They strut their stuff as if they had the wisdom of Solomon and the future was theirs. Of course, we know better and so do they, but fear and ignorance compels one to hide in plain view as best as possible.