Seeing the world the way we want it to be makes us extra-protective of the politics and ego through which we filter reality. Anything that contradicts our worldviews undercuts our perception of reality, and our assessment of ourselves. That's why, I think, we are so driven to demonize our opponents: Reducing them to inhuman neutralizes the validity of their arguments. We are viable one more day. Excellent post!

All things are transitory.

Even when we are not deluded about what is there, we cling to it, not wanting it to pass, staying in a state of fear that we will lose it. So we try to get more of it while trying to protect ourself and what we "have" from those forces that will try and take it.

The complication in it all is that we are always once removed from "what is there." There is the thing and the word for the thing. And that is one thing to many.

Caught in the prisonhouse of langauage as we are, it is never as simple as asking people to open their eyes. We can never be sure what it is we are looking at, and when we are sure it has already passed, as if in a dream.

Further complication: what is there is layers of complex systems within complex systems, overlapping with other complex systems which are themselves part of complex systems, feedback looping endlessly, emergent features unfolding unpredicatably, kicking and dampening forces altering and upsetting systems, impacts cascading in infinite multiple directions. Decisions having to be made without any assurance of the real consequences.

Energy was cheap because all of us (yes, all) stole it from the future. And now we have stolen so much from the future, that future became today.

Liberalism and its "inevitable" expansion and progress as we know it was based on the shared prosperity gotten from the cheap energy. Without cheap energy, economies don't grow 2-3% a year. Therefore it's also impossible to pay back debt -- and therefore it's impossible to have capitalism as we know it. The middle class will shrink back to the mercantile class, the poor will expand. As human energy is now required to run the farms. Factories will disappear and consumer based economies will dry up. Expect to see a slide back to earlier times and mores. The idea of universal healthcare will recede into distant memory as an impractical idea. Indentured servitude? Feudalism? People will trade security for freedom extremely fast. Self-governance will shrink as bands form around strong figures.

Society will most certainly restructure. More granularly and more around persons rather than laws.

Too many people, not enough planet. Millions of years of liquid sunshine stored in fossil fuels used up in a mere 150 years -- much of it in war activities.

We are of nature and our supposed "elevation" from it was mere illusion for the briefest of moments. What rises comes up, comes back down.

And usually much faster.