Aleksandar Malečić

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Aleksandar Malečić
316 days ago

The title for this topic is taken from the book The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. It will be about societies which fail their "perfection". Does failing miserably when you become perfect make sense?

Aleksandar Malečić

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Aleksandar Malečić
316 days ago

No matter how hard we try, we shall never be able to understand the whole reality. You can add descriptions, details and more precise mathematics, but you will always miss something. Reality is like sand in your hand. You can use your rational mind to keep it as long as possible, but eventually you will lose it.

Martin Buber has written the book “I and Thou”. The English translation (the most famous one) uses “thou” instead of “you”. The translator used the older version of you because that book isn’t only about relations between two people. It’s about you (“I” from your point of view) and the rest of the world. If you try to describe your relationship with others, it will be, as Buber says, the “I and It” relationship. It means that you can try to understand and in a way possess the whole reality, but it will never be the case. Why is that so?

First of all, we are the most intelligent ANIMAL species on the planet. We think that we can understand everything. Well, not exactly everything, since very large (galaxies, universe) and very small (quantum) objects are very different from our daily reality and practically impossible to grasp. Still, an average scientist of yours perhaps understands something that you don’t. Being a human being, a scientist/politician/journalist is expected to comprehend something that you don’t, so the situation is presumably under control. Under such high expectations, a scientist/politician/journalist will indeed behave like a secular equivalent of priest. It seems that atheists believe in technology, economy and “everything will be alright” even more than religious people. Atheists tend to even more easily forget our animalistic origin. An average politician of yours, depending on his/her position (winner or loser), is expected to show you a nice or an ugly description of reality. Being a part of a herd (political party), he/she is expected to talk and behave in a certain way. In a “poorly developed” society, you try to control reality. In a complex society, reality controls you. It’s sometimes nice to have a rebel like Slavoj Zizek just to prove to you and other people have awesome your society is, but it would be nice to somehow marginalize troublemakers  such as Julian Assange. Only one interpretation of economic growth or war on terrorism is considered patriotic.

A mathematical model is used for description of reality. It can never be the same thing as reality. Sometimes a previously ignored aspect of reality, such as limited natural resources or limited capacity to tolerate the accumulation of political filth and demagogy, grows significantly. There is somewhere a tipping point that could in a short time dramatically change the situation. Even if you are aware of it, you often can’t do much about it.  A highly developed system is strictly defined and its inertia is enormous. Free enterprise and global competition makes the inertia even bigger. The more specialized and defined (I and It) mechanism is, the less adaptable it is to changed circumstances. For some reason, America is supposed to be the most powerful country in the world from now to eternity. Many things (IMF, dollar, NATO, United Nations Headquarters, popular culture) are adjusted to this “fact”. If it changes (financial crisis, natural resources and climate change (even the majority of humans dying out), emerging national economies), this change will take with it many collateral victims. If Adolf Hitler’s reincarnation became the president of America, it would be forbidden to punish him.

This is the world in which we are supposed to make the biggest change ever in human history.

Aleksandar Malečić

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Aleksandar Malečić
299 days ago

A person living in a competitive society is “free” to look for new ways for remaining competitive in order to keep his/her head above the water of averageness. As a previously competitive technology becomes easier to replicate, new players can appear out of nowhere. A merciless competition creates fear, anxiety, loosened communities and constant unhappiness (looking for eternal and accelerating economic growth). Let’s take for example athletic shoes. There was nothing particularly wrong with older companies. But, famous sportspersons were paid to wear shoes from new companies. Minor differences in quality or advertising (more in advertising) are the matter of life or death in a highly competitive economy. This environment promotes aggressive behaviour and cocaine addicts among family members of rich and “successful” people. The idea of social equality was defeated during cold war and it seemingly deserved to be defeated. A society capable to create many millionaires seemed to be better for society as a whole. More millionaires mean more money for the rest of us. There are two opposing dynamics sharing the same terrain. One gives chances for people who have competitive ideas and capacity to see new opportunities to be even richer than famous sportspersons and entertainers. The other one forces people to be all the time better (or better advertised) than anyone in the world. The only sense of healthy community that is still left is between common people and celebrities seen on TV. If a company from your area produces clothes, it would better be properly advertised if it wanted to sell their products to you. If global corporations want to grow “forever” (seemingly the only way to stay afloat), they must destroy competitors here and there. It’s a matter of years or days when, if they are not careful, they will also be destroyed. Everything can be bankrupt. A globalized society can be bankrupt as a whole. It will be bankrupt if the system continues behaving the way it’s defined. I can’t see a reason why it wouldn’t. It is highly organized for accelerating competition. Nature and people have their yearly and daily cycles. Our speed for processing information and capacity to understand causal chains are limited. If nothing changes drastically (and I don’t see the reason why it should), we shall witness the whole system going to an abyss and moving increasingly fast. We are not prepared for peak oil (just one peak out of many) and climate changes. The financial crisis with a possibility of national bankruptcy is a new phenomenon, but its origins are older than any living person. It started during industrial revolution when family members were forced to loosen their communities and join the mechanism of competition. It started at the bottom and more than a century was enough time for the process to become national and even global. It’s not only about greedy businesspeople and ignorant and/or corrupted politicians – it’s about the way the mechanism works.

Smart grids and pricing mechanisms adjusted for unpredictable renewable energy resources are focused on maximizing of profit and the collapsing idea of eternal economic growth. A precisely defined system has a reduced number of degrees of freedom in some areas. Sometimes a collapse is the only alternative left to the idea of eternal economic growth and globalized competition (with subtle differences between competitors as the matter of life or death). The new economy is an economy of networks (globalization and interdisciplinarity). Choices customers make mustn’t be made the same way which shoes to buy. On the other way, there isn’t any obvious reason why it wouldn’t happen.

Aleksandar Malečić

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Aleksandar Malečić
264 days ago

If a nation/the world relies on a single "charismatic" person (out of billions) with his/her virtues and defects, there is something terribly wrong and fragile in that nation/world.

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Aleksandar Malečić
261 days ago

A society is complex if it has many different components and if its organization is complex. Problem-solving is the reason for a society to become complex. As complexity grows, new problems can emerge for example after depletion of energy and resources. Back in the day an individual scientist was capable to discover something revolutionary by relatively simple equipment and some relatively cheap equipment. This isn’t the case anymore. Teams of highly specialized scientists and/or engineers can use bizarrely expensive equipment and only hope that they will find out something new. The most famous scientists in any scientific discipline are its originators. An innovation of a similar magnitude as discovering of computer/radio/TV from scratch is, though not impossible, very improbable.

Competition drives new innovations. New innovations are mostly incremental. Computers are becoming faster, more efficient and cheaper, but they are still computers. Big teams working on improvements that would make a company slightly more competitive (for a very short time) are becoming more expensive. Somewhere in the future there is a moment when investments in new technologies will bring less returns. Globalization forces all companies to become and remain the best in the world (or have the best advertising). There are subtle differences between those who kill and those who are being killed in the business arms race and they can change any time.

As already mentioned, complex societies exist for problem-solving. All infrastructure and institutions exist because people want to simplify and make more efficient activities between them and between and the environment. Any house costs some money. The amount of natural resources/energy/traffic/entertainment/you name it being used by people living in the “developed world” is taken for granted. Also, the story of living in luxury as the only lifestyle that makes some sense (celebrities and their life dramas – parties, fashion, marriages, divorces, addictions to cocaine and alcohol…) is being is being spread across the world as only life that makes some sense. A life spent on food production, taking care about water and natural resources or education of other people seemingly doesn’t make much sense especially because it won’t make you very popular and interesting. Instead of spreading the idea of love and care across the world, communities and just taxes, politicians are focused on spending of disgusting amounts of money on killing terrorists. No child wants to become a terrorist when he/she grows up.

When infrastructure, quality roads and efficient institutions (even when they are ignorant or aggressive towards other nations – “patriots”) are taken for granted, enormous amounts of money must be spent just to keep the status quo. As societies shift from one technology or resource to other, marginal returns from investments in complexity tend to decrease. Somewhere in not so distant future might be a point where costs needed for protection of complexity are unbearable. It happened more than once in the past. In a globalized society relying on advanced technologies and accumulated political filth (“political realities” caused by ignorant and aggressive military interventions across the world – terrorists and bad guys are those who are at the moment weaker) and with the biggest global population ever, the (Inevitable?) collapse could hurt more.

Aleksandar Malečić

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Aleksandar Malečić
250 days ago

We are the most intelligent animal species. As such, we still have unemployed members of society, something that animals don’t have. Unemployed people are usually non-voluntary outcasts, a result of financial schemes somewhere across the globe. Five to six percent of “useless” people who are capable and willing to work are sometimes good for inflation and economy. The idea of people feeding the machine of loosened communities, financial independence and eternal growth is driving the modern society. Money isn’t anymore a way to ease exchange information or talents. It can also become the sole purpose of human activities and as such sometimes more of an obstacle than tool.

For the first time ever in (human and other) history of the world, some countries are becoming postindustrial. It means that the most easily earned money is by people who don’t produce anything or care about the rest of us (unless such a care would bring them more profit). Postindustrial people live in towns and work in the sector of services. When previous civilizations were collapsing, the majority of people lived in villages producing something. When their society was falling down and disintegrating, they at least had a fertile ground to fall on. The third world is expected to produce for postindustrial countries and not thing too much about innovations or also trying to become postindustrial themselves. Food, water and other human needs are, no matter how unprofitable, the root of any society. When you cut off or dry the root, everything will fall apart. Even worse, in the past there were just a few aristocrats waiting to be decapitated after a collapse and they represent the majority of people living in postindustrial countries.

There is a lot of damage needed to be fixed. When politicians talk about the transition to renewable energy, they never take into account peak oil or climate change. We are an animal species just like any other. If we want to keep on living on this planet, we must properly perceive its size and capacity to still tolerate our stupidity. We are brainwashed by success stories of people who are becoming richer and richer by producing less and less of really important (and as such cheap) things. Our mindset isn’t adjusted for thinking decades and generations in the future. Fixing the mess isn’t fun or glamorous. Postindustrial people will hardly do for you or anyone else something (no matter how important) that doesn’t bring enough money. That “enough”, according to the idea of eternal growth in the “chosen” nations (How? By whom? When?), is expected to grow forever.

We are in front of tough challenges. Improvements in renewable energy technologies and tools and data for better understanding of resource management and the environment are not enough. Is the same portion of human population capable to both cause (and globalize) and solve problems?

Recommended reading: Baron Munchausen (the part when he rescued himself out of quicksand by pulling his ponytail)

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Aleksandar Malečić
246 days ago

In the book “Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet” Bill McKibben describes life on Earth after the inevitable collapse and changed life conditions. We can hardly imagine things we’ve never experienced before. When the average yearly temperature increases for a few degrees, it doesn’t make climate “a little warmer”, but instead we are in serious trouble. McKibben claims that it’s time to prepare for life under drastically changed conditions on a more or less irreversibly changed planet (hence an extra “a” in its name). His description of the modern society very much looks like society after the collapse described in the book which shares the title with this discussion topic. A collapse doesn’t mean the end of the world. The point of collapse is to make life simpler and more bearable under changed circumstances.

Institutions and organizations exist for problem-solving. Their role is to simplify things. But, circumstances are ever-changing and organizations must respond to these changes. Organizations, strictly defined as they are (their role is to provide order in society and fulfil human needs), don’t have much degrees of freedom. Bigger and more interconnected system usually means less flexibility. There is a moment in time when organizations and institutions will, instead of making it easier, make life more complicated. In this case, McKibben encourages redefinition of communities and human interaction and a lot of play and improvisation along the path of transition. Joseph Tainter’s vision is bleaker and he sees the collapse as something much more stressful and painful. I hope that the future is somewhere in between. In the meantime, we should interact more with each other and let our voice be heard.

That’s the main idea of my activities in this meshwork. Since you are reading these words, you are already very aware of the situation. We don’t have the right to be silent. Perhaps you are not sure whether this is the right place to inform and motivate other people about the noble cause of sustainability. There has been long time ago a critical mass of relevant experts who are either aware of this meshwork or have friend who are aware. If this idea for building an online community focused on the transition to renewable energy and sustainability fails here, it will fail for good. I guess I would be partially responsible for its failure because of my (perhaps) useless and irrelevant texts like this one. I’ve been receiving some encouraging feedback for my activities here and also my activities aren’t too frequent so I guess that I’m not making too much damage. More feedback and more activities by other members would motivate me to visit this virtual place more frequently and write and think on the subject more. More active members would show me the direction and make my jumping between topics, pages and content less random and more focused. I could post here more about technological aspects of renewable technologies. Actually, it will happen. But, it’s a vast area and it would be nice to have more active members.

If you hesitate to put your feet in these sludgy waters of meshworking, I hope you have good reasons. “There aren’t enough active members and their activities” isn’t a good reason. This is the virtual place where we shall either succeed or fail - right here in front your nose.

Aleksandar Malečić

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Aleksandar Malečić
182 days ago

The title of this discussion topic is taken from the book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph Tainter. According to Tainter (he is right), complex societies as we know them are like time bombs. Structural and organizational complexity emerges within a society from a need to deal with complications from the outside world. Complexity requires investments (money) and knowledge (specialization). Competition forces companies to become more efficient, but in not so distant future there will be times when a company should put a lot of effort in order to become slightly more competitive. They are two (most important) ways in business as usual to increase competitiveness: more money and more specialization. Global competition forces companies to look for creative ways to squeeze more money, such as cheap labour abroad and debts stretched to (and occasionally beyond) the reasonable limits. The idea of eternal economic growth is the main gear of the System. The debts will be returned because the economy will presumably grow forever. The accelerating growth is the expected status quo. Take it away and the System will either a) drastically change or b) fall apart.

Back in the day, politicians and business people were perceived intelligent, capable and charismatic people, as role-models. But, the System was shaping them as much as they were shaping the System. When a societal/political/economic paradigm reaches its peak and it can only go down, the leaders in business and politics can be perceived as a weak offspring of mighty ancestors. They look greedy, decadent and incapable to do anything that matters. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them, it’s the System that defines their degrees of freedom to work, behave and make decisions. Shift Henry Ford either in space or in time (e.g. America in 2011) and he won’t look so awesome anymore. The System is tired. As complex as it is, it is strictly defined in some parts and can hardly be transformed without tectonic movements.

Above all, we are supposed to think more about renewable energy and sustainability, to add more layers of complexity. These layers would cost us both money and knowledge. It would be nice to have sudden breakthroughs in this field. It’s not the same thing to have free space for new ideas made by a relatively small group of people (the most well-known scientists with scientific disciplines are their originators, because only they were capable for quantum leaps to something entirely new) and to have a strictly established technology, organization or paradigm. Also, it’s doubtful how much the postindustrial system itself encourages radical industrial innovations and industrial revolutions. We shall be capable to fully understand our dependence on energy and the (limited) environment only after we have partially or completely stayed without them.

You create your reality, but don’t forget that your reality also creates you. If you live in a country with a very dense history, you can witness during your lifetime many ideas rising and falling: nationalism/internationalism/nationalism/internationalism, capitalism/socialism/capitalism/disappointment, myths/reality/myths/reality, love/hate/love/hate/love towards Russians etc. Right now the world is in the middle of something radically different: collapse, transformation or their mixture. Whatever it is, it will be different. We should be prepared, but how?

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Aleksandar Malečić
110 days ago

European politicians are busy in figuring out how to punish countries (parts of the Union) that don’t properly deal with the financial crisis. It looks like Titanic in slow motion, trying to fix an ever-growing hole. These are bad times for renewable energy and sustainability. At least the people in charge have other priorities even now when the rich are still getting richer.

As long as they hesitate, it will be more complicated and painful to do something later. Even online social networks are redirecting our collective intelligence in a totally wrong direction (having fun in times of crises is moving up on the list of priorities).