Collapse and the Technosphere with Dmitry Orlov
Hermitix Podcast
https://youtu.be/-33M7H99Pb8
Aug 31, 2019
Dmitry Orlov is a Russian-American engineer and a writer on subjects related to "potential economic, ecological and political decline and collapse in the United States." (Wikipedia)

He is the author of multiple books including: "Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects," "The Five Stages of Collapse: Survivor's Toolkit" and more. In this episode we discuss Dmitry's overarching theories regarding collapse alongside his book "Shrinking the Technosphere". Dmitry currently blogs at cluborlov.blogspot.com and his QUIDNON project can be found at quidnon.blogspot.com


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this week I am joined by Dimitri all of who is a Russian engineer and writer whose work is based around collapse
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technology and politics he is the author of multiple books including reinventing
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collapse the Soviet example and American prospects and the five stages of collapse the survivors toolkit we will
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be discussing his book shrinking the techno sphere if you wish to support a mythic spot cast please find links to
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our patreon and merchandise page in the description enjoy to be true all of
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thanks for coming onto the Hamitic podcast great to be with you so as per
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this podcast the first question is the emetics question which is if you can
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place three thinkers living or dead into a room and listen in on the conversation whom do you pick well I'm not a big fan
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of fantasy sports but I suppose one one
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outstanding question I have is why does everybody believe that democratic institutions are so good when all that
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ever happens with them as they degenerate into a kleptocracy and so who
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would I ask I suppose the the original Democrat in
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my mind is Genghis Khan he was the first person who arrived at a democratic
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structure for the world's largest land Empire of all time so I'd have him along
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and then a good practitioner would I suppose be niccolò machiavelli and then
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I'd ask an American along Thomas Jefferson and I would ask them that question why does everybody feel that
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democracy is valuable when all that ever happens with democratic institutions is
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they swiftly degenerate into a kleptocracy where a tiny minority fleece
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is the rest so if we stay on that topic what do you personally think that people
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are extremely almost reverent of democracy in general well it's just I
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don't know that they're reverent it's just that that there is this consensus
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it would seem I think it's based on on something that Churchill said that
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democracy is the worst system except for all the others and that seems to be a
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consensus it's very hard to get anywhere with people by telling them that well you know democratic institutions don't
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really work so let's try something else it's just a non-starter and it's just an observation it's not something I think
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it's something I observe so a little tiny bit about your your your history
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here for those that don't know your work and I think the important aspect is that you're the two things I see is making
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your collapse or yeah your your collapse analysis unique is one you you should
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have experienced and written about the experiences at the end of the Soviet Union in relation to collapse and - in
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terms of Technology you you're not allowed are you not anti-technology and you're not ha you know kind of
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hearkening back to some form of archaic nostalgia you you wish to wrestle with
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technology these are the two things I see is kind of unique to your viewpoint here perhaps you could extrapolate just
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a little about your history especially in terms of the the Soviet Union there well I was born in Russia I grew up
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there while Russia didn't exist at the time that was the Russian Federative
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Soviet Socialist Republic and I I moved
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to the United States together with my family as a teenager went through school
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and university in in the United States worked in the United States had several
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careers and at the first opportunity I started going back to - what became
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Russia well first I went back to the Soviet Union in 89 but in subsequent years it was I was going back to Russia
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Russian Federation during the 90s I observed
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the transformation that took place there and that got me thinking I was the
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United States different what I saw in the Soviet Union and in Russia was that
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the system that was entrenched and and and still functioning was becoming
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dangerously depleted at every level starting with being unable to maintain
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the physical plant and equipment that supported the whole thing to being
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unable to replace the elites that that ran the system with same caliber human
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material I started thinking well what how what was wise as the Soviet Union
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collapsed but the United States still hasn't part of that answer was that the
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Soviet Union collapsed first and that gave the United States a new lease on life because what happened in the 90s
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was wholesale looting of everything that wasn't nailed down in the former Soviet
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Union and all that wealth went west it was basically just looted so that was
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one of the reasons for the postponement there were several others but generally
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I started looking at the Soviet template and applying it or trying to apply to the United States and the West in
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general but mostly to the United States and and it turned out that the Soviet
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Union was inadvertently much better prepared for collapsed and the United States is or ever will be and that
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collapse when it comes in the United States will be far more destructive than what happened in the Soviet Union or in
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Russia and I believe I'm correct in thinking that would and this is one of the things you when you make clear in
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reinventing collapse that that the reasons the Soviet Union was better but it was far more prepared for collapse
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was because the the population there already almost had to deal with collapse
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anyway hardly anyone was making ends meet so they had to there to find these
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skills and and and teach themselves these skills not as kind of additional extras like they would be currently in
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the us but literally because they had to live so as john michael gray you know he
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calls it the long descent the america is within the long descent but it's just kind of just about hardening itself up and not recognizing it's the the
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problems there were so do you think the people in russia kind of knew like this this is coming to an end
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well there were their differences well first of all the positives that russia
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had with regard to collapse was that it could collapse without hurting the the systems very much that kept people alive
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so even without a running economy because it was a command-and-control
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economy rather than a market economy people still had electricity they still
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had running water there was still heat in the houses public transportation kept running there was still some kind of
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food in the stores although you know that that part of the system collapsed relatively quickly but there were stock
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stockpiles still some parts of agriculture grrah culture kept running so you could still get staples there was
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free medical care even though access to pharmaceuticals wasn't very good at
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various times but people still could get their their bones set and you know
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infants were delivered without anybody having to pay for it and so those were
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all benefits that the United States does not have in the United States if you run out of money you're pretty much just out
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on the street digging through garbage there was some of that happening in Russia but not as much at the worst of
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times not as much as is happening routinely in the United States today the
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homelessness crisis crisis just didn't really hit Russia at all it's rampant in
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the u.s. already even pre collapse and then the other huge benefit that Russia had was a very highly educated populace
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that turned out to be extremely resourceful when once they realized that
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they had to start doing things very differently and shifting for themselves they did start shifting for themselves
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it didn't it didn't help matters that the government was just incredibly corrupt and
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and surrendered its its sovereignty to the United States mostly the European
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Union to some extent but they clawed it back under Putin and and so now you have
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a good combination of you know well-educated people basically managing
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their own affairs rather well within a market economy this time without a lot
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of dependence on on outside forces perhaps I'm being a bit stereotypical towards the ideology of Soviet Union
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here but she find there's a little bit of an irony there that against the communist ideology that people had to go
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had to become actually very almost individualist or was this still a form
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of community there that was separate from the ideology well individualism still doesn't get you very far in Russia
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not in a social level people still do depend on each other here to a great
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extent and the traditions of solidarity do appear to hold in a lot of cases and
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you know that's very helpful as far as the communist ideology that died
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sometime during World War two I think anyway you know basically you know once
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once Lenin was dead and and and Trotsky was in exile and then dead you were left
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with Stalin and Stalin was not a really a communist I don't I don't know if
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anybody really appreciates that but he he used capitalist methods to achieve you know socialist victories none of
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that had to do with communism and only after Stalin died did some of that came
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back because of these quote-unquote Ukrainians that went into power which is
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Khrushchev and and Brezhnev and that they they started talking up you know
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international duty so the reason the Soviet Union blundered into Afghanistan
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was to preserve world revolution in some sense and you know that that was just
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the system kind of degenerating but but the public understanding was that the
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ideology was just this tired old bunch of stuff that people were forced to
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study and repeat there was no life to it okay okay do you think that anywhere in
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the world since Lenin and Trotsky there has been a legitimate kind of communist ideology
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which people are supportive of as a nation well Cuba made a try of it that Cuba is
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really just socialism with with market elements I mean that's that's the only system that works in the world anywhere
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in the world there's socialism with market elements all there is is that when you consider America than socialism
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with market elements it's incredibly corrupt socialism with mark incredibly
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corrupt market elements yes but it's basically America is unique in that it's it's generally just eating
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itself alive you know it's it's a bunch of rackets as Consular likes to put it
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and I agree with him America at this point is just a bunch of Records okay I'm sure we'll dip back
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into a few of those political things there but um just to just to begin on the the kind of collapse and the
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technology front and I'm sure you've answered this question quite a few times now I feel the discussions I've listened
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to but if I could just ask you it kind of a brief definition of what it is that
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you entitled the Technosphere well I I wrote that book a while ago it it did
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rather badly commercially for a couple
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of different reasons one is that I published it just as Trump got elected
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and in the book I I failed to demonize
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Trump which made me unpopular with the quote-unquote Liberal readership which
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was quite a quite a large percentage of it so a lot of people you know bought the book found out that I was saying
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positive things about Russia as opposed to claiming that Russia stole the election or some stupid thing like that
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and returned it so it didn't really get very far and the other thing is that in
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the book I expect people to consider changing what they do actually you know
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I expected people to do some work and that that's really not a not a winning move expecting people to do something
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it's generally a bad idea expecting people to do less is generally
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a big winner any great idea that allows you to just sit there and do nothing he's going to be popular so in those two
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fronts it really didn't do well but I sort of stuck with the subject and explored it some more and some time
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later I discovered a great Russian thinker by the name of Naomi Wolf who did a lot of research along these lines
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it turns out turn turns out that the term Technosphere was was coined early
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in the 20th century by another great Russian thinker by the name of their Natsuki a scientist who was the
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instigator of the Russian not Soviet but Russian pre-revolutionary nuclear
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research program it was thanks to him that when the Soviet Union became
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threatened with American nuclear bombs they could come up with their own
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nuclear bombs in record time because that they already had a program running he already had stockpiles of material
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etc but anyway he came up with the term Technosphere and and then Guber toph expanded on it
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and came up with this triad which is we have the biosphere of the earth with all
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of the living things within within it and then we have a sort of emergent
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entity within the biosphere which is humanity but not of the sort of humanity
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that sleeps on there around naked and digs around for tubers
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with a stick but humanity that you know creates builds pyramids and creates empires and conquers the world and
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invents sailing ships all of this other stuff and it turns out that there's a
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process that gives rise to communities of people who are capable of more than just their survival he called the
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process ethnogenesis and had a lot to say on the subject by looking at all of
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the examples of ethnogenesis from the last six thousand years or so and then
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the Technosphere is what ethnogenesis creates it is the the universe of
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man-made things which is unlike the biosphere all it ever does is degenerate
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you build it and it falls apart you build it again and it falls apart and and we're in kind of the late stages of
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the Technosphere now where it is very highly developed and you can't tell whether it's being built or whether it's
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falling apart competent competencies are going missing left and right while new
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competencies such as making smarter phones even a smarter are zooming ahead for what that's worth so it's very
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interesting to to look at the world through that prism as as that as that triad and and examine the various facets
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of it so what would you say the the difference there then did you say that the Technosphere only degenerates what
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would you say the difference with regards to entropy would be between the biosphere and the Technosphere well the
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biosphere basically is all based on flows energy flows that are driven by
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solar energy and some chemical energy but mostly just solar energy so it can
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achieve steady-state for long durations and it's also self adjusting so as as
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the climate shifts certain species to worse you know other species go extinct
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and something else evolves and it it doesn't really involve a lot of or any
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human intervention whereas the Technosphere if it's not being maintained it
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really falls apart every last bit of it you know even the pyramids are slowly
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being weathered away even though they were meant to last forever but nothing that humans build can last forever it's
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all temporary because it's all based on the Technosphere and and you say in your
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new book that this the Technosphere is that is it not only a demon but you specifically allude to it being a
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Demiurge and I really enjoyed this turn of phrase was there a specific reason
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you called it a Demiurge I basically tried to appeal to the sensibilities of people who who can't think of an
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emergent system because that doesn't mean anything to them so a lot of people
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are more comfortable thinking in terms of a demonic entity or a spirit and just a mechanism that is so advanced in
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complicated that it it shows it demonstrates some some limited ability
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to to reason and actually manifests its a will and can formulate its own agenda
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that's that's a stretch for a lot of people so I used those terms more as a crutch than anything else okay so you
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were in kind of specific scientific terms it would be an emergent system
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okay are you sympathetic to the spiritual views or a you spiritual tool
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well yes I think that that that entire realm is extremely important and
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completely unrelated to the subject matter so the the teleology of the
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Technosphere it's endgame it's the point that it's kind of grasping towards in
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the future you say this is is control and I think we can say that that's the
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Technosphere is aims unto itself but can this really be answered to us do you think can we can we truly say that the
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what the what the teleology for the Technosphere for itself is or we would
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that just be conjecture well it's sort of imagine it as a robot or an
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artificial intelligence network it doesn't have taste or touch
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or human sight it it has certain
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analytical tools it can perform certain measurements right it can take a
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photograph and then distill certain elements from it it can use face facial recognition or it can it can map lines
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or contours on on on a photograph aerial photograph or a satellite photo and
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derived from it and map it it most it has access to a great deal of statistical data so it can perform
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various types of analysis but that is all it can do it doesn't have any human
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sensibility it doesn't have any any sort of instinct or any emotional
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intelligence and so what it could do is it can control various processes that
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are within its control it can for instance allow or deny access to credit
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that's one of the functions that it is generally absorbing it to itself because
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it's much better than human analysts and there are various other functions that
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it can perform but all of them are based on this idea of complete control based on incomplete information because nobody
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ever has access to complete information and that is its undoing I think it tries
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to control things more and more tightly in the process it destroys whatever it is it tries to control because it
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doesn't have access to complete information and this is the one that one of the things you really emphasize in the book that the reason the
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Technosphere and specifically humans kind of almost don't get along or at least the Technosphere doesn't get along
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with the humans is because the Technosphere adores standardization and humans in general at least before being
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kind of assimilated into the Technosphere are are spontaneous and intuitive and free in a certain way at
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least when they're children and so this is this is one of the things you say that the Technosphere does from from
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from the off you know from from day one really is find ways to standardize
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existence well know all standardization is bad for instance if you if you have standard glass
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containers for dairy products that you wash yourself in and bring to to the
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shops empty and they're filled by placing them on the scale and measuring out whatever it is you want to buy then
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you don't have to deal with recycling a huge number of plastic and paper
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containers so that's a victory on the other hand if if what's being
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standardized as human brains children's brains by forcing them to study for
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standardized tests okay that that is definitely bad because who needs
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standardized brains we need the opposite of standardized brains so it's a
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question of who's in charge you know if if you have basically an out of control
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market economy where either you go with the flow or you go broke and then the
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Technosphere is basically in charge you defy the Technosphere and you go bankrupt whereas if the economy is is
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really controlled using an agenda that is based on the production of public
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goods and on an appreciation of what the common good is where the profit motive
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is forced to take a back seat then the Technosphere is not in charge humanity
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is in charge and humanity makes use of the Technosphere it's a question of who
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is riding who you see do we allow the Technosphere to ride us or do we ride it
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and this well there's hundreds of clear why's now where it's writing us and I
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mean ruining our neuroplasticity from day one and molding us into kind of
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attention drained automatons but one of the one of the really important things I
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think that's happening that's being overlooked it especially at least from my personal opinion in terms of meaning
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and purpose is that against standardization death and especially suffering almost just can't exist then
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they're not allowed to exist at least from the technical point of view is a nonsensical points of contention
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and do you think as a way to kind of almost push back as you say shrink the
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Technosphere we should begin to form again a more realist and ER standing of
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suffering and death well that is a question of culture and I think the West
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the US and the UK and probably a lot of Western Europe has gone very far in the
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direction of sort of putting everyone in hospice care even while they're still relatively healthy you know keep
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everyone sedated so they don't struggle because there's nothing for them to look
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forward to so you might as well just hand out drugs and whatever and make sure that nobody is offended with
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anything all forced to think because thought is so painful you know unless you think a lot when you're forced to
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think about something when especially when you're forced to consider two contradictory notions at the same time
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my god for unpracticed people that just makes their heads explode so don't do that you know just keep everyone
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comfortable and sedated until it's all over that seems to be the approach but that's not how the rest of the world
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functions there are large parts of the world where thinking has come just completely foreboding I think there are
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a lot of places in the world where you're just basically repeating what everyone else says or you're in trouble automatically and then there are other
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places in the world that are renowned for tolerance of just every kind of
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thinking where there's no internal censorship whatsoever and that can be good or bad but that's what I prefer um
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you know switch places do you think do you see as those places who are
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completely tolerant of of any opinion or internal thought Russia is definitely
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one of those places these days it's extreme in terms of its embrace of
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freedom of speech you can get away with anything in Russia except libel and incitement of violence
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what do you think that is because it would be far more expensive to
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repress than to simply allow and the government has enough on its plate that
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it's just not going to bother and so the would you say that the means that other countries I mean I'm thinking
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specifically if the UK and America here that the the the means in which they're
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suppressing thought it's kind of almost twofold it seems to me that liberal politics definitely plays a part
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and also just tech in terms of things
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like streaming services binge watching TVs smartphone addiction these are kind of secondary causes which were almost
26:48
what intended to do this but have ended up doing it through their addiction
26:53
based design mechanisms do you think those two especially that I'd like to hear your comment on that on the the
27:00
liberal politics of the UK in the US and the West in general now and the way where you see that heading well I I
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think it's a mess but I could separate a few pieces out of it one is as I
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mentioned the idea that you know of hospice care for for the entire society where everybody has to be sedated and
27:20
comfortable because they have nothing to look forward to and so their freedom of speech is
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repressed because you are not allowed to say things that make people uncomfortable that cause cognitive
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dissonance and force people to think and it's almost illegal to force people to
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think in the West it seems another is that these governments the US and the UK
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especially and to be the entire kind of CIA controlled echo chamber that is Western media have been lying
27:54
continuously about a great number of important things and so the way they
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they make sure that they can continue to lie and that they're not found out as
28:06
complete and utter Liars is to suppress every other kind of message and and to
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label those who disagree with them as as the enemy or or conspiracy theorists or
28:18
simply Russians now that's becoming increasingly popular well the reason you're saying that is
28:23
because you're Russian that seems to be a typical approach these days so they have to do that and then you know
28:30
another reason that people in the West have to absolutely keep their mouths shut is because they've been stuck in an
28:37
explosive situation where if they speak their minds the result will be utter
28:43
social chaos and the problem there is that in the West people have been
28:48
increasingly herded together with people from incompatible cultures incompatible
28:55
on an organic level they it's not that they don't want to get along it's not
29:01
that they then brought up wrong so they can't get along is that they never will there are like different animals of
29:08
different species that don't mix and that is not a message that can be
29:14
allowed to get out because the result will be social explosion so anyone who voices the idea that certain people are
29:20
not compatible with certain other people in the world which is a very obvious point you know is is met with a great
29:28
deal of derision and and anybody who espouses those ideas runs the risk of
29:34
being labeled as you know whatever people like to call us you know calling
29:39
names fascist or racist or whatever else right-wing populists you know there's a
29:47
long list of derogatory terms that is deployed and this ties in with actually
29:53
your latest book which I which are read and and it's quite taken up taken aback by everything everything is going
29:59
according to plan and so just just to spring off the title there and this is
30:05
something you do explain in the book there's this you see that there's a underlying can I can I say a gender to
30:12
all of this would that be correct yes it's a it is an unmistakable sort of
30:19
adrift to to what's happening and I don't I don't know that any human
30:27
thinking intelligently as a free agent set that agenda or had anything to do
30:32
with it it's just it seems like more of a trap everybody everybody is automatically falling into if I was to be extremely
30:39
speculative could we say that the trap we've fallen into is almost being set by
30:45
almost like a pseudo conscious to Technosphere yes we could say that I
30:50
don't know well consciousness is it's difficult to you know difficult to measure how
30:58
conscious someone is but you can definitely see will within it it it's it
31:08
it's clear what it wants to do so you know as people are replaced with robots
31:14
we need fewer people to have fewer people we have to convince people that the planet is overpopulated and they
31:20
shouldn't have children you know that that's logical because we have robots we
31:25
don't need people and there are a lot of thought processes like that that sort of short-circuits any moral argument you
31:31
might you might have in favor of a much more simple argument that is purely organizational purely technical um just
31:39
to stay on the Technosphere here as well I don't know if you're familiar with acceleration is still but as one of your
31:47
kind of primary focuses is political I would like to see what you make of it so the idea that the only way out of this
31:53
is through that we should accelerate the process of Technology economic expansion and just just to quickly overview the
32:02
three major currents so left-wing acceleration ISM is to go towards automation and emancipation of man for
32:09
high technology right wing is towards a singularity and unconditional is just to
32:15
let it do do what it's doing and just see what happens but each one of them wishes to
32:21
accelerate it for its own aims do you would you think this callous or do you
32:27
think there's something then this is especially against kind of older methods of reversion already
32:32
well what what disgusts me about both of them is that they use the word we
32:39
gratuitously and they they tend to use the word must as well so who the hell
32:46
are they to tell everyone what to do that's my first question that that may be that may be me just explaining it in
32:54
a kind of relaxed overview no no it's no but they always say things like we must
33:03
we meaning everyone all humans on the planet and must in terms of them telling
33:11
everyone what to do at least you know intimating that their idea is very
33:17
important and we should listen to it and my approach is there is no we there's you whoever you are which is
33:25
different from Who I am and your opinion is not really important to me
33:31
necessarily you're just in some institution somewhere talking to people
33:37
like you leave the rest of the planet alone and my feeling is that there are a
33:43
lot of different civilizations or lack of civilization on this planet and and they will go set their separate ways and
33:49
one of the biggest problems with the world is that they're all being herded in the same direction and right now and
33:55
that is just not going to work at all but in in terms of where different countries are going there is a gradual
34:04
breakdown having to do with the quality of energy that's ongoing and it has been happening for a while now it's it's
34:11
really a technical issue the energy returned on energy invested in in the
34:18
energy that sources that drive the entire economy has been falling continuously whatever replacements
34:24
people are coming up with are worse so you know corn ethanol is just absolutely
34:29
horrible windmills and and and solar panels are a little bit better but still
34:35
bad everything else is is just slowly
34:40
dwindling except maybe for natural gas in certain areas and because of that a lot of economies are shrinking
34:47
so the Italian economy is an example as I think gone down 25 percent so far this
34:53
century there's overall economic shrinkage as the energy industry eats up
34:59
more than its previous share eventually it'll just eat up all that's
35:05
left and and so that's happening so
35:10
that'll that'll result in some countries being energy rich in some countries being energy poor and and you can
35:18
definitely see those shifts happening today you know people are not really adjusting to the situation they think in
35:25
in in sort of twentieth-century terms even though we're pretty far into the
35:30
21st century so they they still think for example in the West they still think
35:36
that Russia absolutely must export oil and natural gas because what else could they possibly export and it turns out
35:43
that Russia doesn't really need energy exports anymore to maintain a positive
35:50
trade balance with the rest of the world isn't that a shock they don't have to sell you or the natural gas they only do
35:57
it because they like you you know sort of question is why but but their shifts
36:06
like that happening that are breaking the planet into clusters technology
36:11
clusters or lack of technology clusters the u.s. is quickly becoming a lack of technology cluster you know it's
36:18
becoming incredibly challenged in all sorts of areas it can't rearm itself without the help
36:24
from China you know China is the only place where they can buy the machine tools so that they can make rockets to
36:30
point back at China you know a lot of lots of examples like that but I don't think that any sort of techno
36:37
triumphalist stand a chance because they have to think of what part
36:43
of the world they're going to appeal to because there's no one world anymore
36:50
there won't be it's over this kind of sludge and not being one more to that
36:57
that's pushing us into as you say these separate areas of Technology and in
37:04
different areas of the world but if a big a big question is is within that especially within the future and it's a
37:11
big question in a lot of your work ISM is freedom and of course as we've mentioned with the Technosphere
37:17
freedom has already completely obscured under layers and layers of technological
37:25
crap you know a good example that you give is the classic kind of the freedom
37:31
to wear in your car but everyone says it's so freeing but really no one thinks about the freedom is really the freedom
37:37
to pay upkeep commute to work potentially getting a car crash etc etc the the downsides to technology
37:44
are never I never brought to the fore ever it's always new technology is good more technology is good old technology's
37:51
bad etc etc so from this kind of new freedom that we've got where your freedom is basically based around
37:58
latching yourself to the latest in quotation marks innovation where can we
38:04
still find there are say an authentic freedom is it possible it is possible it
38:12
is very difficult it's it's a challenge that I've tackled in my own life you see
38:19
I I'm an engineer by training I found several careers in high-tech and at some
38:26
point I decided to open up with these ideas that I've had for a long time for
38:33
over a decade and start writing and so I started a blog and I started writing
38:39
books and then I found out that my career prospects in terms of engineering
38:45
were becoming complicated by the fact that people wouldn't hire me based on my
38:53
writing things that they didn't necessarily think would be agreeable
38:58
agreeable to their various corporate stakeholders that I would not be a sort
39:04
of person that they would want around because I might make people think about
39:10
things other than next quarters profitability and that's bad okay so for
39:19
a while there you know I I had to find new ways to to sort of get around those
39:26
limitations and I did find ways but yeah the moment you
39:33
start trying to jump out of the mainstream and do and exercise your freedom as it were become free not just
39:41
repeat whatever is saying and you know not agreeably when you listen to absolute nonsense as you have to at the
39:49
moment you do that you you marginalize yourself socially not a lot of people are able to deal with the stress and not
39:56
a lot of families can put up with members who go through that process and
40:01
not everybody can emerge on the other end with a living arrangement new new
40:07
set of you know patterns to live by that that is agreeable to them too and that
40:12
makes them happy it so those are the limitations of freedom you know either you stay locked in the cabinet or you
40:19
escape but once you escape and you know nobody is going to be stuck you know
40:25
replenishing the cookie jar in the cabinet for you automatically so in what
40:31
ways do you feel you found freedom because I understand you you'd live on a you live on a boat
40:36
well I made a number of changes one is I made a number of changes first was I just quit the corporate work altogether
40:43
I did there is gigs but you know that that's kind of different than having a
40:49
position so that's kind of a step down and then I got rid of that too then I I
40:56
decided that you know the hugest drain on people in probably in you know in the
41:04
in the UK and in the United States and in much of the West is paying rent people spent absolutely exorbitant
41:11
amounts of money most of their income just on rent and so I cut that out by
41:17
buying a Bowden and moving aboard with my my wife and I found out that you know
41:23
we liked sailing and wanted to go sailing but sailing is incompatible with
41:29
any kind of a work schedule at all because the wind doesn't keep to a schedule and say you want to go sailing
41:37
when the wind is good and we'll work on you know calm rainy days and so I adjust
41:46
it to that and went sailing and then we found out that spending winters up north
41:53
is a bad idea so we started spending winters in the tropics and then later on I discovered that you know with all of
42:01
the ability these days to do stuff via the internet just just about everything can be done via the internet nobody has
42:08
to show up anywhere anymore in person so there's no reason to stay in the West at
42:15
all so now we don't really spend a lot of time anywhere in the West at all it's
42:22
just we're just leaving that whole thing behind you know it we still have various you know relationships personal
42:28
work-related etc that tie us to the United States etc but we don't have to
42:35
spend much time there at all and do you think that people because everyone goes on about wanting to be
42:41
free wanting to escape is the classic one do you think people truly believe
42:46
this always our people our people apathetic or are they ignorant or even
42:51
knowingly ignorant of their of the trap they've been caught in well a lot I
42:57
think a lot of people just aren't really capable of making any dramatic changes
43:03
in their lives because oh all their lives have been directed towards forming
43:08
habits you know some habits are good like you know doing your homework some
43:14
habits are bad like you know going out drinking beer but they're all habits so
43:20
if you're a creature of habit you can't really do anything radical with your life some people are you know their
43:26
entire character is some combination of their various vices you know if if you
43:31
rid them of their vices what would be left just some very boring entity so if we just um dip back into the technology
43:39
discussion as I said before your your your unique position is that you want to wrestle with technology and when I draw
43:45
it back to and to a point of almost the
43:51
point where where each and every bit of technology has a a purpose and we kind of go through it
43:57
almost perhaps this is a wrong word but in a conservative manner and where do
44:04
you draw the line between gratuitous tech which is you know just a shiny trinket and legitimate innovation
44:12
because we always hear that word innovation and people hold up iPhones to kind of try make some point about us
44:18
progressing but where is the line where you go you know what this is legitimately needed and useful well I
44:26
think that there's a standard to go by see there's this post post modernist
44:32
take on reality which is everything is it's a narrative and an opinion and
44:39
everything is virtualized everything is just a message everything is based on
44:46
appearance and and so all of the innovations that we've had so far the virtualization of various things
44:53
electronic this and and network that and you know all of those sorts of things
45:00
basically aren't real on a fundamental level that they're basically that they
45:08
exist until the battery dies after that they don't exist anymore it's amazing
45:14
what happens in a blackout not just various devices run out of juice and
45:19
wink out or the network goes down but people's brains go down people lose their minds it's it's got gotten to that
45:26
point so that's how you tell that you've gone in the wrong direction with the Technosphere if if the power goes out
45:32
and people lose their minds and society falls apart okay well that all of that
45:38
is not worth preserving whereas if the power goes out and you just means you go
45:43
you go out back and start the generator and everything's everything's back in order you know that's kind of a stopgap
45:50
because there you are until the gasoline or the diesel runs out you can improve
45:57
on that quite a bit by being relatively independent of that sort of you know
46:04
tightly organized system making it more autonomous so power goes out you still have would you still have a
46:11
wood stove there are still potatoes growing out back and life goes on you have books to read life can be a lot a
46:19
lot simpler but in addition to that simple life you can have major
46:25
advancements you can have good medical care you can you can have good education
46:31
you can have all the trimmings without the dependents and I think that's what
46:37
people should strive for is that the we can have the option to pick and choose
46:42
you don't have to have everything that since I don't know I think Greer says from the 70s onwards
46:49
is really the the time period that we're dealing with when we start talking about collapse and the long emergency that's
46:55
the Reagan Reagan era Homewood seems to be the point where it really pushed into high gear you can have parts of that but
47:03
you don't have to have all the excess that came with it so Duke what do you this this era which
47:09
I I don't know if you'd agree kind of started in the 70s and will probably start to Peter out let's say 2040 2050
47:19
or at least we'll start seeing very very clear signs clearer than the ones we're getting now which is still pretty clear
47:24
for those that are looking what do you think obviously this is quite vague with
47:30
the next 10 to 30 years will will look like for us I think it'll be different
47:36
in different places so if you look at I don't know San Francisco which is full
47:43
of kind of drugged out zombies well I'll probably be even more drugged out zombies right that's the trend and if
47:52
you look at I don't know I'm Shanghai well they're putting up
47:58
high-rise buildings and becoming ever more prosperous and and and rich so I
48:04
guess that's going to continue to be the trend that if you look at the Congo well
48:11
that's going to probably have more Ebola outbreaks and there is plagues etc and
48:17
that that will be the trend there so you you you will have to look at each
48:22
in the world and and not in general terms but in case you want to go there
48:28
you will have to evaluate it based on what it is and based on what it is to you because people have limited options
48:37
in terms of where they can fit in and blend in and become compatible you briefly mentioned rent earlier and I
48:45
think we'll kind of finish on this just as fine a little discussion here about you this is your I believe an ongoing
48:51
project and it's your kind of current project and quid non which is kind of
48:59
yes yeah we've had yes it's a it's basically a kit boat that I've been
49:05
working on for a number of years with several other people and at various
49:11
points people got excited about it but there there have been some delays and now it's at a point where I think we we
49:18
are we actually can see when we're going to produce a set of plans that we can
49:23
build a full-scale boat from so far we've been only working with models but basically it's an extremely durable
49:32
low-maintenance cheap place to live autonomously could be at a marina in the
49:39
center of town or it could be you know just a completely wild place it's it's
49:46
it can handle the ocean it can handle rivers and canals it's roomy enough so that a family can
49:52
live aboard and now that young people in various cities in the US are paying
49:58
upwards of $1,000 a month for a bunk bed you know that it actually will offer a
50:06
very good alternative for a lot of people so that they can save up money and escape instead of squandering it all
50:13
on rent you say that it'll allow people to be autonomous I mean how far will it
50:20
allow that will it allow certain elements of self-sufficiency as well well yes because we've we've thought
50:26
very hard about how to heat it how to cool it how to supply it with drinking water how to make it move using the wind
50:34
so that it's not an entire dependent on on gasoline how it could generate electricity by itself various
50:41
aspects like that have been taken care of so it can actually be you know a pad
50:47
in the center of town at a marina where you just sleep and and save money on rent or it could be a sort of summer
50:54
production platform where you go up up a river somewhere and and grow food or
51:02
gather food or fish or hunt and preserve
51:07
all of that food and bring it back with you you know there are a lot of options what in terms of what the use one can
51:14
put this vessel to you know it can even be used as a floating clinic so that
51:19
medical and dental services can be delivered to remote areas there is just no no limit to what people could do with
51:26
it and it's all basically it's it's a kit some parts are plasma cut and welded
51:33
using expensive and and advanced techniques and much of the rest of it is
51:39
basically just something that any amateur builder can handle in fact
51:45
somebody who can assemble IKEA furniture is pretty far along in terms of being able to build this boat do you see the
51:52
sea as a the sea and generally where the rivers in generalism as an entirely
51:58
underutilized source of both living and you know
52:03
well existence really well I think what we're seeing is almost a doubling of the
52:11
amount of precipitation and a lot of places we see record flooding in a great
52:17
number of areas ocean levels are predicted to rise not everywhere on the planet because also the ocean currents
52:24
are becoming reconfigured but in a lot of places where people live along the coast there they're going to be swamped
52:30
and so living a board a boat that can float up when there's a flood and settle
52:36
down again when when the waters recede is incredible life hack it's just so
52:44
much better than living in a house that's just going to flood and become ruined and then you what do
52:50
to build a new house well you're going to run out of money pretty quickly doing that so living aboard a boat that is on land
52:58
but a land that is no longer quite habitable in the usual way is an option
53:05
that will be available and will be the only option available to a great number of people in the coming decades in fact
53:13
you know that'll be that will be their only choice so when the waters recede they'll they'll get around by bicycle
53:19
and when when when there's a flood they'll get around by boat
53:25
you know paddle around and that's the way people will live they will have an
53:32
autonomous source of drinking water from from rain from gathering rainwater there'll be a lot lots of driftwood they
53:39
could they could burn for heat and for cooking and and this boat design takes
53:46
all of that into account so when do you think quid non will be ready I don't
53:54
know I will do what I can as quickly as I can and we're probably looking at a
53:59
couple of years before we have some number of quid non's floating around in various parts of the
54:05
world but I've had people express serious interest in this design from for
54:11
many parts of the world many parts of the US UK New Zealand Australia Poland
54:17
Holland Russia and and so I think I think it's it's going to be an
54:24
interesting project final question here as I've I've asked both gianmarco Greer
54:30
and James constantly you know to other collapse collapse experts so to speak
54:37
what advice would you have for specifically younger generations who are
54:44
maybe a bit more clued up things they can be doing heading into the future to be a little bit more prepared it's all
54:51
about skills and not skills that have to do with sitting in front of a computer but skills in terms of dealing with
54:58
people and things you can do with your hands using tools you own so that's what
55:03
they should console trade on and this is anything you'd like to add or talk about that we've we've
55:09
missed then I think it's a good place to finish well my book the five stages of
55:15
collapse is finally coming out in Swedish I'm happy to announce it's been
55:21
many many years politics in Sweden has advanced to the point where my work is is now acceptable
55:27
to the general reading public there so that gives me great joy any Swedish
55:33
Swedish listeners all of five stages of collapse is now now available yeah it
55:38
it's not yet but it well okay we'll be suitable okay yeah thanks very much for coming on thank you