We begin this post with a mention of the reason for the use of the word "Sickology" in the title.Admittedly that word comes downstream from the impact of the popular documentary "Sicko" by Michael Moore.
But Sickology goes beyond those Health Care Debates/Wars into a much broader notion of Sickoness, applying the notion of pathology to civilization itself.
Yes, Sickology goes further than mere individual health issues to encompass the study of the health of the fundamental behavior of current civilization itself.
We Sickologists have even captured, with words and ideas, a workable vision for the societal dynamic that is the subject of our study.
We have isolated the motherly educational source for the fundamental behavior to a realm we tag for discussion purposes by the use of the acronym "MOMCOM".
And finally, for treatment purposes, we have isolated the resultant behavior engendered by that motherly education with the notion that MOMCOM, in essence, is the source for the infection of the hyperactive amygdala of current civilization.
We now continue this post with a quote used by blogger Randy in comments yesterday:
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship(Aldous Huxley, emphasis added). I doubt that Huxley really understood how that would happen, since he used a traditional pharmacological mechanism to articulate his vision.without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”
Even though as it turns out he was correct in principle, it is just that he did not understand that the mega-drug would be oil.
Oil is the drug of choice that fits the bill for "a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude", it is just that the "pharmacological method", as it turns out, is not addiction to something you buy at the local traditional drug store.
Instead, we buy the big drug at the local gas station (the "service station" in 1950's parlance), the Quick Stop, the Seven Eleven, or "the convenience store" (in post-peak-of-sanity civilization's parlance).
And we love it, like Huxley said we would.
The other word used in the title of this post, "Penology", needs to be addressed because it sounds less poetic, but in context it waxes a bit poetic as well:
pe·nol·o·gy:(Dictionary). Imprisonment is the subject of penology, traditionally the study of confinement in a traditional prison, but that is a minor issue when compared to the big league imprisonment studied by Sickology.
1. the study of the punishment of crime, in both its deterrent and its reformatory aspects.
2. the study of the management of prisons
In Sickology there is by necessity the study of a crosscurrent, a study of the removal of freedom, the removal of democracy, because in our study we can't help but notice that increasingly the people of civilization are having to make choices based upon a partial, incomplete, rather than a full exposure of relevant factors that will bring about their demise or to the contrary their longevity as a civilization.
We see the manifestation of the disease increasingly showing up clearly since the people increasingly cannot make the choices that have traditionally been promised to them, because the neurological election systems within democracies have become spastic.
Finally, there is a poetic meaning to the word penology if you believe in the metonymic adage "the pen is mightier than the sword".
Regular readers of Dredd Blog know we got our pens workin' in this new realm of Penology because we hope to "spring you" in more ways than one.
Happy Spring ...
Yes indeed, oil - the concentrated energy of millions of years of sunlight - is indeed the most intoxicating of drugs. It has allowed the construction of a technological society and levels of population that are simply unprecedented in the history of the world. A wiser race would have heeded the warnings and planned for the window of oil-based opportunity to gradually shut, but the allure of the drug has, and continues to be, too intoxicating to resist. Certainly over the course of the next 100 years or so we're going to experience the painful effects of mass withdrawal, and it's not going to be pretty sight.
ReplyDeleteEven if there were a viable alternative(s) on the horizon (which there isn't, nothing even remotely close), the transition would be long and at least somewhat painful (especially to those who are currently profiting so much from the addiction itself), as there would need to be huge investments in infrastructure that private industry won't make and government cannot afford, all in a global crony-capitalist financial environment where investment payoffs are judged quarterly by the investment class, who will take their money and run to the higher returns of the casino economy in a heartbeat.
There will be no good outcomes from our oil addiction. The window of opportunity has already shut in my opinion. We've made our choices and now we're in for the roller coaster ride of the century on the way down. If anyone remains to write history 100 years from now, it should be a fascinating read.
Happy spring to you too, and happy trails of ink ...
ReplyDeletedisaffected,
ReplyDelete"if there were a viable alternative(s) on the horizon (which there isn't, nothing even remotely close)"
I can't agree with you there.
That is the feeling any addict has and it is as real as withdrawal or the dread of withdrawal, but it is also an illusion as much as the fear that real pain and discomfort will never go away once withdrawal sets in is an illusion.
We can do it with a plethora of real energy sources as soon as we drop the "alternative" energy, which is oil.
I say there is an alternative energy source, and that it is oil, but there is also a one and only lasting source in the sense that it allows civilization to last along with it.
It is not oil.
The real energy is wonderfully multifaceted and waiting for our minds to grasp and use it abundantly.
Well, I'm simply going with the experts in the field (the physics guys), almost all of whom say that there is nothing even remotely close to oil in terms of the amount of useful energy it provides from such a compact source. Which really shouldn't be surprising to anyone. If there were, we surely would have at least discovered it by now.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say that there are no alternatives out there whatsoever, but it IS to say that no combination of those alternatives whatsoever - NONE - that we can even currently imagine, will deliver the same lifestyle that we now have with oil, especially anytime soon.
And that's a problem, because our dependence on and faith in oil to deliver the goods has led us to build an unsustainable society by any measure. We're over populating, over polluting, and generally over consuming everything in our wake, an attitude which we've so embraced that we've even made it our new official "religion," PERPETUAL GROWTH CAPITALISM.
Yes, we will eventually have to embrace alternative energy sources - in that, there will be simply NO CHOICE WHATSOEVER - but, it would be wise to acknowledge that the longer we wait, the harder that transition will be, as we will need the power of remaining oil stocks to facilitate the transition to alternatives.
BUT, either way, current levels of consumption in first world countries will not be sustainable for the long term, never mind transitioning current third world countries to the same standard of living. Nor should any sane society even want them to be.
But there's the rub. And you've said many times here before, this society has passed peak sanity MANY, MANY, MANY years back, and our slide into the abyss is now a foregone conclusion. Managing the slide is the best that can be hoped for now, but unfortunately, we're showing no signs whatsoever of even being that intelligent.
disaffected,
ReplyDeleteGoing with the "experts"?
Not at all.
You are going with the jackoff X spirts ... the sexless mouth organs of MOMCOM lizards who propagate by propaganda.
It seems disingenuous to incessantly bloviate about the death of society because of oil and at the same time invoke the holy grail of MOMCOM ... "there is no alternative" to oil.
Horse shit!!!!
That has been their mantra forever.
And the real source for which there is no alternative has always been there.
Wonderful societies existed long before oil was discovered, the drug which made only one thing possible, the destruction of civilization, not its continued existence.
Now you harp their mantra because you seem to want society to die. You really do.
That is the effect of the drug MOMCOM the suicidal maniac, wants in every mind.
Shake it baby, if you know what I mean.
There is a concept of civilization without oil, it is called "a sane civilization".
We need to get back Jo Jo, get back to where we once belonged.
Randy,
ReplyDeleteOnce again, you hear what you want to hear. All I'm saying is that any sustainable society that exists post oil will be NOTHING like the one that now exists. I don't what the population will be, but it certainly won't be anywhere near the current 6.8B or so that now exist. And that IS gonna be a bitter pill for people to swallow.
It's far better to acknowledge that right up front, than it is to string the next generation along under the guise that if they just "go green" then everything will be just the same as it's "always" been (but in fact has "only been" for the past 100 years or so).
The end of cheap oil will in fact be a stark turning point if you believe in society as it's currently constructed, which will be made all the worse by the fact that we in the US have NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER of giving it up.
The current "green technology" ruse, while it may in fact be our only choice going forward, certainly - barring some kind of miraculous technological breakthrough which is not yet on the horizon - is not going to maintain our current lifestyle anytime soon. To lead people to believe otherwise is to maintain the current fantasy that has gotten us where we are today.
Sanity is not an alternative energy, insanity is the alternative energy that must be rejected.
ReplyDeleteI love Paris Hilton ever since she said "see you at the election bitches" ...
ReplyDeletedisaffected,
ReplyDeletePoint taken.
We will be "green".
It is just a matter of how many of the "not green" will kill those of the "green", but ultimately only those of the green will remain.
Probably the theme song will be Coldplay's Viva La Vida, especially the lyric "that was when I ruled the world" ...
dig it, the whore MOMCOM is going down dude ...
and BTW for MOMCOM see you at the cosmic elections bitch !!!!
For the record, there is no such thing as "cheap oil".
ReplyDeleteOil costs civilization its life.
How cheap is that?
Oil exacts the ultimate price, your life.
Get that strait disaffected or your name is a lie, because you most definitely are affected whether you want to be or not.
Talk about denial, dude.
Stop being goddamn fools my dear friend bloggers, please!
Lily Tomlinson quote:
ReplyDelete"We are all in this alone."
Quotes
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI love Paris Hilton ever since she said "see you at the election bitches" ...
Yep, we think she must crack up when she reads our MOMCOM thingy ... we do love her too and have said:
"The visible persona of MOMCOM has been depicted by Dredd Blog as a beautiful, intelligent, witty, and entirely competent creature"
(Jabber The Whut?)
Washington's Blog has a good post on point:
ReplyDeleteThe Failure To Stand Up To Evil Leads To Insanity ...