prophecy

"Prophesying catastrophe is incredibly banal. The more original move is to assume that it has already happened" - Jean Baudrillard

Well, here's Gerard Celente's forecast on this years zeitgeist trends.

"The importance of illusion in people's lives and the tragedy that arises from it's inevitable breakdown." - One line critique of the Great Gatsby, possibly by F. Scott Fitzgerald?

And here's David Malone's predictions for the economic year ahead.

tipping point

Is industrialised civilisation on the verge of a tipping point to decline? Well, if you have the patience, this sobering analysis is well worth the read.. Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production "We are at the cusp of rapid and severely disruptive changes. From now on the risk of entering a collapse must be considered significant and rising. The challenge is not about how we introduce energy infrastructure to maintain the viability of the systems we depend upon, rather it is how we deal with the consequences of not having the energy and other resources to maintain those same systems."

In the same vein, is the snappily titled Nine Meals from Anarchy from the New Economics Foundation in a 2008 Schumacher Lecture.

As a late addition, here is a link to David Malone's, High Anxieties - The Mathematics of Chaos, in which James Lovelock prefers the model of a slope as opposed to a tipping point in reference to climate change. "..I like to think of it not so much as a tipping point, but as a slope that gets ever steeper and at some point it gets so steep you can't hold on any longer.."

And then of course there is the eponymous book by Malcom Gladwell. And his enjoyable TED talk on spaghetti sauce.

Recommended Reading:

This book is stunning. Profound understanding of civilisation and its unsustainable course. The Final Empire: The Collapse of Empire and the Seed of the Future - by William Kötke. Available to read online at: http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/ "The crisis of the planet Earth is so profound that all of our lives will be caught up in it. Our lives will change because of it. Our lives will change because of the apocalyptic events happening now and the even greater dislocations to come. We cannot avoid these great trends of history but we can exercise awareness and skill in action in dealing with them. The tumult will be environmental and it will also be within the social body of civilization."