Speaker 1: The media. So Trump is kind of moving like a
Speaker 1: bull in a china shop, or rather a bull and
Speaker 1: a missile shop. You know, I think that's a more
Speaker 1: apt analogy. The system of government wasn't exactly benign beforehand,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I think it really needs to click
Speaker 1: for people that Trump is not truly exceptional mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Rather he's a product of the normal that people seem
Speaker 1: to be uni for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And the other issues we're dealing with too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think like this is the the crux of
Speaker 2: what comes next. Right, It's like we have this, like
Speaker 2: I don't want to I don't want to disparage people.
Speaker 2: We have this tendency in American politics, this liberal tendency,
Speaker 2: progressive liberal tendency. Even to think that, like basically things
Speaker 2: have been magnificent until the first week of November in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, right, that America was progressing on this like
Speaker 2: linear pathway towards total quality and justice for all, and
Speaker 2: that what's happening now is an aberration. It's the idea
Speaker 2: that there's a few individuals conspiring, rather that there is
Speaker 2: a system which inherently creates interest which we're opposed to
Speaker 2: our own.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, exactly. It's like all of these these
Speaker 1: these problems, the genocide we're waging long before Trump came
Speaker 1: into power, you know, the economic strains people are feeling
Speaker 1: today that people have been feeling for decades for their
Speaker 1: entire lives. You know, the climate crisis that is only
Speaker 1: worse and this time is going on. You know, all
Speaker 1: of this is a product of that normal, of that
Speaker 1: pre Trump normal. And I still hear people asking, you know,
Speaker 1: when are things going to go back to normal? When
Speaker 1: can we settle down? When will we go back onto
Speaker 1: the track of normalcy? And well, if you're listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, I think you already know what time it is.
Speaker 1: This is it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage and
Speaker 1: I'm joined.
Speaker 2: By James again here to talk about the new normal.
Speaker 1: All right, and welcome, thank you. The new normal, the
Speaker 1: ever shifting normal, the phantom of normal and why it
Speaker 1: is that it's really not coming back, and why normalcy
Speaker 1: as a concept is actually pretty weird. So part of
Speaker 1: I think what feeds into this notion of normal is
Speaker 1: this myth of progress that people are obsessed with. You know,
Speaker 1: recently read this book Progress by Samuon Miller McDonald and
Speaker 1: I would like to do a review of it at
Speaker 1: some point for the podcast. But the short of it
Speaker 1: is that it gets into just how pervasive this concept
Speaker 1: of progress is in kind of tripping people up and
Speaker 1: keeping us serve insistems that don't serve us. You know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned progressives Eulier, and you know, even that notion
Speaker 1: I think of being a progressive. He kind of calls
Speaker 1: that into question in the course of the book, going
Speaker 1: from ancient times to talking about a religious sense of
Speaker 1: a promised land to the sort of modern sense of
Speaker 1: a secular or technological progressive improvement or a social progressive improvement.
Speaker 1: He identifies it as a story and a story that's
Speaker 1: so powerful that it acts like a sedative. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't engage with the degree in reality the world
Speaker 1: around us, because be wrapped up in this all powerful
Speaker 1: feet were balance of progress. The progress is linear, that
Speaker 1: we are ever striving forward, you know, and we point
Speaker 1: to examples of things like social progress. But as he
Speaker 1: quotes in the book, it's like what Malcolm X said.
Speaker 1: You know, if I stick a knife into you and
Speaker 1: I only pull it out three inches, that's our progress.
Speaker 1: Put it out six inches. That's our progress nine inches.
Speaker 1: That's a progress. Progress will be, you know, removing the
Speaker 1: knife completely and mending the wound. But I would take
Speaker 1: it a step further and say that is it really
Speaker 1: progress to go back to a state that already was?
Speaker 1: Is it progress to abolish slavery when there was a
Speaker 1: time when slavery did not exist? You know, going back
Speaker 1: to a previous defaulted state is not necessarily contributing to
Speaker 1: Thenat same thing with patriarchy, you know, patriarchy did not
Speaker 1: always exist. Eroding and abolishing the patriarchy reaching a point
Speaker 1: where the limitations placed on women are no longer there?
Speaker 1: Can we call that progress or suggest rectifying a previously
Speaker 1: imposed state? And so these are some of the questions
Speaker 1: he grapples with. And there's also, of course, the techno
Speaker 1: utopian promise of you know, we getting self driving cars
Speaker 1: any minute, you know, fusion energy AI and didn't work forever.
Speaker 1: You know, all these things are blind to the social
Speaker 1: ecological reality of collapse. But what else would you say,
Speaker 1: might see this myth showing up in politics? I think
Speaker 1: I covered a good few, but I might be missing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I mean it's almost in everything, right, Like
Speaker 2: it's a fundamental myth of liberal capitalism. I guess, like
Speaker 2: it also underlies a certain logic of colonialism, right, the
Speaker 2: idea that like progress towards that then a neoliberal state
Speaker 2: is this can be like the logic of explicit or
Speaker 2: less explicit colonialism, I guess. But like you see it
Speaker 2: there too, right, Like you see it in the sort
Speaker 2: of do you see a lot in nineteenth century it's
Speaker 2: very explicit the idea to uplift, civilize and christianize our
Speaker 2: little brown brothers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the civilizing miss yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The white man's burden and these things that became very
Speaker 2: very on vogue in the late nineteenth thirty twentieth century.
Speaker 2: I suppose you see it a lot there too, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's all notion. I think that Ian's released with
Speaker 1: the concept of civilization when you have that civilized other
Speaker 1: divide that binary of the civilized and the barber area
Speaker 1: and all the civilized and the savage, and how that
Speaker 1: gets turned into this mission that civilization expands, that you
Speaker 1: bring those savage peoples into the fold and you slowly,
Speaker 1: you know, bring them up, make them upright men, and
Speaker 1: closer to being human than the state that they were in. Previously,
Speaker 1: and the whole narrative around that's what has as it
Speaker 1: has evolved with time, led to the situation a bit
Speaker 1: in now. Yeah, and there's this idea as well that
Speaker 1: even when there are these ruptures in normal, that everything
Speaker 1: will go back to its right place. But as of
Speaker 1: people say, you know, history is a series of unprecedented things,
Speaker 1: you know, And one of the unprecedented things in history
Speaker 1: that I wish people would realize is not ever going
Speaker 1: to come back, is is that sort of post war
Speaker 1: economic boom, you know, that nineteen fifty era growth and
Speaker 1: excess that has become the default day that many people
Speaker 1: are striving to return to, when in reality, something like
Speaker 1: that is a historical normally driven by artificially cheap and
Speaker 1: abundant energy. Yeah, you know, the normal that people are
Speaker 1: talking about sometimes it's just this fifty to seventy year
Speaker 1: fossil fuel binge, a binge that we are reaching the
Speaker 1: end of. And I think a fantasy to believe that
Speaker 1: we can replicate for all the time.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but it's the time that so much of
Speaker 2: the like the world that we exist in, was created, right,
Speaker 2: and like people almost see themselves as like a different
Speaker 2: species from human beings in the in the nineteenth century, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they can't conceive of society that way.
Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly, And it's something that I've been well on
Speaker 1: because like, what a time to be alive to see,
Speaker 1: you know, personal cars being so ubiquitous. But the ubiquity
Speaker 1: of personal cars is an aberration. It's a historical laboration.
Speaker 1: It's not one that is likely to be sustainable in
Speaker 1: the long term. You know, even if there are electric
Speaker 1: cars taking a place of gas powered vehicles and we
Speaker 1: run out of gas oil, even the materials necessary to
Speaker 1: produce electric cars are not always going to be around.
Speaker 1: They're not always going to exist. We can't supplement each
Speaker 1: and every individual person with a car for all of time.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, so many of the rare earth minerals
Speaker 1: that are again quite rare, we've we've spent them on
Speaker 1: things that may serve a novelty or an interest in
Speaker 1: the short term, but it's something that we can maintain forever.
Speaker 1: You know. I hear people talking about this EI bubble,
Speaker 1: you know, and it is in the sense of the
Speaker 1: financial markets, the financial aspect of AI, and how it's
Speaker 1: affecting our perception of the economy and whether that bubble
Speaker 1: is going to burst economically. But I'm more interested in
Speaker 1: the EI bubble in the sense that how long can
Speaker 1: this EI everywhere thing persist when the material is necessary
Speaker 1: to maintain it because it is material, despite the sort
Speaker 1: of cloud marketing they get associated with it. How long
Speaker 1: until we run out of those materials, until those material
Speaker 1: needs cannot be sustained.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we keep shifting like the goalposts, but like the terrain, right,
Speaker 2: like you know, we okay, well, we've run out of
Speaker 2: fossil fuels, so that's fine. We will do electric, okay,
Speaker 2: we you know with the electric actually relies on our rares,
Speaker 2: so that's fine. We'll find a different thing to make
Speaker 2: batteries out of it for other than acknowledging that like
Speaker 2: we've created a system, or we'll just go.
Speaker 1: To space yeah yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: And trash another planet for another few hundred years. You know,
Speaker 2: when you're driving your track and you have a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff in it and it's hitting the end of
Speaker 2: the rev counter, you know, like you're trying to pass someone,
Speaker 2: it's bouncing. It's in the red zone. Like we've been
Speaker 2: running in the red zone certainly from most of this century,
Speaker 2: you know, since the Industrial Revolution, or certainly since the
Speaker 2: end of the Second World War, and like sustainability is
Speaker 2: a phrase that's been co opted, but like it's just
Speaker 2: not possible to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's really an anomaly, a blip in
Speaker 1: our timeline, I would say, and I think ruptures in
Speaker 1: that normal see, like the ruptural experience and now provides
Speaker 1: an opportunity for us to you know, take an egg
Speaker 1: at ramp to kind of control the transition, to control
Speaker 1: our descent. But instead, you know, it seems like we
Speaker 1: were just rapidly moving towards the more forceful transition, the
Speaker 1: transition made so by the laws of physics, and that
Speaker 1: transition I don't think will be nearly as pleasant as
Speaker 1: it could be. You know. That's why a lot of
Speaker 1: people call it collapse. And that transition is being delayed
Speaker 1: currently with the collapse of the material resources and also
Speaker 1: the collapse of the financial economic system. That stuff has
Speaker 1: been delayed by rent seeking, by new frontiers of exploitation,
Speaker 1: and by ramping up theft in parts of the world
Speaker 1: that we're not as pillaged as other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: or ramping up surveillance and violence to make it harder
Speaker 1: to resist, but eventually is going to hit, you know,
Speaker 1: and I hate that it makes me sound like a
Speaker 1: second comment of Jesus conspiracist or something like that, just
Speaker 1: like well, yeah, it's coming, it's coming, you know, like
Speaker 1: like like I'm a prophet screaming into the into the streets.
Speaker 1: But you know, it may not be some kind of
Speaker 1: prophesiede end times, but we are approaching that point, you know,
Speaker 1: where that sort of narrative of economic roles going back
Speaker 1: to normal. You know, there's this big group project of
Speaker 1: making the literature because that rise and tide will lift
Speaker 1: all boats, you know, the this is this story that
Speaker 1: everybody wins, that nobody will have to lose anything because
Speaker 1: the power will just keep getting bigger. It has to
Speaker 1: come to an end.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how long it's lasted, right, Like certain group
Speaker 2: of society has been able to make the rest of
Speaker 2: society believe that the pie will just keep getting bigger
Speaker 2: when the pie has got smaller for most people, you know,
Speaker 2: certainly for the last few decades, but arguably you know,
Speaker 2: like lives have become worse for us since the Industrial
Speaker 2: Revolution in some ways.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, And you know, people will point to improvements
Speaker 1: in health and sanitation. Sure, you can have improvements in
Speaker 1: health and sanitation without all this other baggage though, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Or you can have improvements in literacy without
Speaker 1: literally poisoning our fresh water and bleaching our oceans and
Speaker 1: killing off biodiversity by the millions of species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a like a package deal, right, Like
Speaker 2: we can have vaccination against diseases without having super fun sites.
Speaker 2: We didn't need one to make the other. It's it's
Speaker 2: not a like this way or the Dark Ages exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: For example, all London had to do, I mean I'm oversimplifying,
Speaker 1: but all London had to do was stop dumping their
Speaker 1: sewage in the Thames.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a remarkable. It's
Speaker 2: not that hard. But like just look at the disposal
Speaker 2: of hazardous waste and the way that rather than being like, huh,
Speaker 2: maybe we should stop making waste that will be hazardous
Speaker 2: for centuries, for the better part of one hundred years,
Speaker 2: we've just been finding somewhere else to put it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just keep just keep dumping it. Yeah. Even as
Speaker 1: a child, I was like, what are we supposed to
Speaker 1: do with all these sense the garbage, Like, like are
Speaker 1: we just going to keep on piling it up until
Speaker 1: we reach the moon.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, it's like it in San Diego. They
Speaker 2: dump these dump it in the bay. There's a whole
Speaker 2: part of our bay which used to be a landfill site.
Speaker 2: And like I like to to free dive sometimes I
Speaker 2: would be practicing or diving in the bay or whatever,
Speaker 2: and like you dive down and be like, the fuck
Speaker 2: is a barbecue grill doing on the bottom of the ocean,
Speaker 2: And people just continue to chuck shit into the bay, right, Like,
Speaker 2: even though we have another landfill, what we put it now?
Speaker 1: No, but you see, games, it's like that barbecue grill
Speaker 1: was seven dollars on TMU. Yeah right, you can't pass
Speaker 1: up that deal, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then when it turns out to be absolutely crap,
Speaker 2: it will be on our planet for longer than any
Speaker 2: of us. But we've created a system where there's no
Speaker 2: disincentive to buy a TMU barbecue grill, use it once,
Speaker 2: and then throw it into the bay. And like we
Speaker 2: can't see that that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Because of how this system is set up,
Speaker 1: you don't have to think about, wait a second, why
Speaker 1: is the barbecue grill seven dollars, you know who is
Speaker 1: suffering so that this barbecue real.
Speaker 2: Resemble Yeah, right, because they were so detached from that, right, Like,
Speaker 2: despite being so connected, we're also so far away from
Speaker 2: the people who the misery is a consequence of our
Speaker 2: consumption or of the system which which makes our consumption
Speaker 2: the way it is exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, instead of thinking about how we can
Speaker 1: make society resilient, how we can reasonably and ethically and
Speaker 1: with consideration for seven generations use the resources that we
Speaker 1: have without endless throughput all the years, continue to chase growth,
Speaker 1: They continue to chase progress perpetually like a cancer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and everybody is seeing the consequences. At this point,
Speaker 1: the work situation is getting worse because these platforms, these
Speaker 1: these employers are finding ways to game the laws. You know,
Speaker 1: we're seeing shrinking margins and sit in sectors. Because when
Speaker 1: you rely on growth, when that growth comes to an end,
Speaker 1: there's nowhere else to grow. You have to squeeze what
Speaker 1: there is. What's the phrase squeeze blood out of a stone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to force over work. You have
Speaker 1: to and shittify existing services so that you can extract
Speaker 1: more subscriptions. More pay months, more upgrades, whatever the case,
Speaker 1: maybe the liverability of entire cities of it has been
Speaker 1: wiped out because you know, you have ABNB and a
Speaker 1: private companies holing out something as basic as hose in
Speaker 1: for all, and so the pressure is to keep the
Speaker 1: whole machine run and just how grease any long term considerations.
Speaker 1: But like I keep saying, this normal was never sustainable.
Speaker 1: I will say, though, when we criticize the system and
Speaker 1: we call it out and we talk about how these
Speaker 1: leaders are pushing things in a certain direction, they are.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's easy to fall into
Speaker 1: this notion that they are manipulating the whole thing. You know,
Speaker 1: that they manage the system in its entirety. It's tempting
Speaker 1: to see the system as coherent, you know, to act
Speaker 1: like it's all piloted by one vidual or group yea
Speaker 1: as some wise or malevolent parental figure. And you know,
Speaker 1: these institutions, they all rely to varying degrees under the
Speaker 1: appearance of competence. Right. But I think what recent times
Speaker 1: has revealed is that things are a lot messier than that.
Speaker 1: That political leaders know that they don't know, but won't
Speaker 1: admit that they don't know, or they don't know that
Speaker 1: they don't know, and in either case they are pretending
Speaker 1: or believing that they have this grip on things they
Speaker 1: can anticipate and smooth out the shocks to the system.
Speaker 1: You know, there are those who think that if they
Speaker 1: share the honest truth that they could trigger a panic
Speaker 1: into populace. So they think they're doing something you know,
Speaker 1: brave and benevolent by not giving people all the information
Speaker 1: they need and whose yet they're failed by sharing all
Speaker 1: the information that needed to make accurate decisions, that they
Speaker 1: might lose investments, They might lose investors, you know, that
Speaker 1: the economy will take a hit as a result. That's
Speaker 1: why you have situations where like when the Texas gridfield
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, that the officials were insistent that
Speaker 1: it was stable. Yeah, and so they wasn't, you know.
Speaker 1: Or for the years the UK's hass water, it's water
Speaker 1: infrastructure is used, continues to claim that things under control
Speaker 1: and sewage was still getting into people's reverse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. Yeah, Like I think a lot about Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 2: where the water that people have to drink to survive
Speaker 2: is killing them. And this has been happening We've known
Speaker 2: about did for a decade, and there have been a
Speaker 2: series of politicians for both parties who have just been like, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: don't worry, we've got this cupboard, and like that. We
Speaker 2: fundamentally have not got this cupboard right. But the machine
Speaker 2: is moving so far so no one person can can
Speaker 2: stop and turn it around because the machine will just
Speaker 2: bulldoze them.
Speaker 1: Yep. It's not as steady as unstable as it puts forward.
Speaker 1: You know. In fact that that whole image of the
Speaker 1: system as coherent as stay as stable. I think it
Speaker 1: also serves to keep us from defying it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because we get this sense that yeah, this is just
Speaker 1: like this, this behema of this all powerful love crafty
Speaker 1: and entity that us mayle individuals can truly challenge when
Speaker 1: there are things that we can do directly to throw
Speaker 1: you know, spooks in the wheel if that's the expression, you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's something in this spooks Yeah, Spanner where sticking
Speaker 2: to spokes maybe right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Sure? Would you say there was like a bit
Speaker 1: secular moment when you realize that nobody actually knew what
Speaker 1: they were doing though, Yeah, I'm trying.
Speaker 2: To think if it was like a momental recognition for me,
Speaker 2: or like a sort of gradual one, you know, I
Speaker 2: think a few of the times, like you see it
Speaker 2: a lot when you travel more, right, because the perception
Speaker 2: that like we are helping here, we've got this under control.
Speaker 2: I think with immigration it's a great example actually, right,
Speaker 2: Like so I've obviously spent a lot of time with
Speaker 2: the immigrants, and I think you see this. I remember
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen we had the migrant caravan, right like,
Speaker 2: there have been many migrant caravans. This one was just
Speaker 2: coincided with a mid term in a way that allowed
Speaker 2: it to become like a political football, and the American
Speaker 2: government is like, we are stopping them at the border
Speaker 2: so we can check if everyone's okay, and government in
Speaker 2: Mexico is like, well, we are taking care of them.
Speaker 2: And get there and you're like fuck, like these people
Speaker 2: haven't had water today, and like at that point, you know,
Speaker 2: I was already sort of predisposed to thinking that perhaps
Speaker 2: the state didn't have all the answers, and like to
Speaker 2: be clear that Mexican states a lot more than the
Speaker 2: US state in this instance and provided these people with
Speaker 2: a place to be, which it would have been much
Speaker 2: worse if they hadn't had that, But like it was
Speaker 2: just this realization. I was with a few friends. All
Speaker 2: of us happened at the time to be full time
Speaker 2: bicycle people, so we didn't have jobs that needed us
Speaker 2: to be like in a place at nine am. So
Speaker 2: that realization that like, if these people are going to
Speaker 2: get water today, it's going to be because we go
Speaker 2: to Costco and buy all the water bottles and then
Speaker 2: we we ride back whilst slowly destroying the suspension of
Speaker 2: this pickup truck because we've got so much weight in
Speaker 2: it and give them out, like because no one else
Speaker 2: is going to right, and like there's this whole world
Speaker 2: of NGOs and governments and states, so like didn't matter, right,
Speaker 2: these people stidn't have water.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of rule for direct action still, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the powers that be're not as competent as they
Speaker 1: may a first glance appear. In other words, if they
Speaker 1: say they have everything under control, don't believe them.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think also that instability within the system is part
Speaker 1: of it, you know, it's part of how it works.
Speaker 1: It's part of what's necessary for it to keep going.
Speaker 1: The competitive tune of the gapitalist market, the shifts of
Speaker 1: industries that you know, upgroove people's lives just part of
Speaker 1: how the system operates, you know, the booms and bus
Speaker 1: in real estate. They all always for the powers that
Speaker 1: be to expand their wealth in some way, to expand
Speaker 1: their regions and territories, and people, for the most part,
Speaker 1: just go along with it. You know. Daily life is
Speaker 1: complex as it is without having to grapple with the
Speaker 1: full scale of all the global issues, you know, the
Speaker 1: following the leader, just going along with what they say.
Speaker 1: It does give you some psychological breathing room. You know,
Speaker 1: it's hard to grapple the existential threats that we face.
Speaker 1: I don't have time too in many cases, right, especially
Speaker 1: when you have an administrative strategy that involves flooding the
Speaker 1: zone with so much mess. It's so much drama, with
Speaker 1: so many different controversies and lies and incidents, that it
Speaker 1: feels like the best thing to do is just throw
Speaker 1: your hands up and you up. And then I'm speaking
Speaker 1: both from the perspective of what I'm observing in the
Speaker 1: Trinitian government and what I'm observing in the American government.
Speaker 1: But I see this at dude of raguns, callousness and corruption,
Speaker 1: it's like they're not even trying to maintain a veneer
Speaker 1: of legitimacy or intelligence or anything like that. Studies go
Speaker 1: through the motions to provide the things that it claims
Speaker 1: it's necessary to provide, you know, but they're feeling not
Speaker 1: even that, and they're so cocky about it. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: so careless about it too. So they're smiling in your
Speaker 1: face and lieing to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: People do see what's happened, and they're responding in a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways. You know. They panic, of course,
Speaker 1: or they fall into conspiracies, or they deny that there
Speaker 1: is an actual problem. They continue to insist that everything
Speaker 1: is normal, that everything is fine. If they double down,
Speaker 1: they hustle harder, they consume more, they carry on as
Speaker 1: if nothing's wrong. And there are those who see that
Speaker 1: something is wrong, but they see everybody else carrying on
Speaker 1: as if everything is fine, and so they go along
Speaker 1: as well, you know. Or there are people, of course,
Speaker 1: who disengage, who are burnt out to a numb who
Speaker 1: are just drifting or going through themotions. But only a
Speaker 1: portion have turned to challenge the concept of normal itself,
Speaker 1: whether it is that they're experimenting with simpler living, developing
Speaker 1: some program for survival, some strategy either for themselves, for
Speaker 1: their household, of their community, engaging mutual support. And of
Speaker 1: course this is only a portion of the population because
Speaker 1: many of us like fishing water. You know, we can't
Speaker 1: really recognize the socioeconomic structure that we are within. It's
Speaker 1: hard to recognize what you are immersed in as a
Speaker 1: thing itself. And some really, in seeing and reading about alternatives,
Speaker 1: they can get a glimpse of this normalcy and question
Speaker 1: to realize this system isn't natural or inevitable. There's an
Speaker 1: aberration destined to decline, no matter how much we want
Speaker 1: to believe otherwise. That the script of work, in consuming career,
Speaker 1: in accumulating property in all is unnormal. That is actually
Speaker 1: kind of weird, you know, like it's strange that an
Speaker 1: entire society is dependent upon globe spanning supply chains, volatile markets,
Speaker 1: and oriented entirely around the court, evenens of elites. You know,
Speaker 1: it's strange that whiteness, maleness, cis, heteronous evilness are treated
Speaker 1: as the default, the starter kit, even though only a
Speaker 1: fraction of humanity fits in any one of those molds,
Speaker 1: let alone the combination of all of them. You know,
Speaker 1: it's strange that normal is so narrowly conformist with those
Speaker 1: who don't conform, a marginalized It's strange that normal means
Speaker 1: an illusion of independence. The disguises the webs. You will
Speaker 1: always rely on that you can claim to be independent
Speaker 1: and say, yeah, well I just bought that seven dollar
Speaker 1: grill off Timu, and not think about the the well
Speaker 1: of relationships that brought that seven dollar grill to your
Speaker 1: doorstep and eventually to the landfill. Yet to feel self
Speaker 1: sufficient while the system hides the label the ecosystems logistics
Speaker 1: and the people who them up.
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking now about like people whose whole thing
Speaker 2: is being like homesteaders, but their homesteading is in itself
Speaker 2: a performance for the global supply or like the global
Speaker 2: market for distracting or entertainment or whatever you want to
Speaker 2: call it, right like, And they do not exist outside
Speaker 2: of those supply chains, like they are doing this performance
Speaker 2: of of like independence because they are so codependent, right like,
Speaker 2: Like they exist to generate like a revenue or affiliate
Speaker 2: links or however influences make money. Sponsorship.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's like one of the influencers.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, like there's a guy who I remember like
Speaker 2: a year ago, am because I'm like, I know broken inside.
Speaker 2: I had gotten to an argument with someone on x
Speaker 2: dot com. Oh yeah, this guy was like posing as
Speaker 2: a homesteader, and like, you know, I grew up on
Speaker 2: a farm, right, Like I've I spent lots of my
Speaker 2: life around like domestic animals and around domestic like I
Speaker 2: know how to fix things, I know what tools look
Speaker 2: like when you use them, and like this guy was
Speaker 2: very clearly just posing and posing a series of photos.
Speaker 2: It just really like I don't know why that particularly
Speaker 2: threw me for a loop, right, but like the idea
Speaker 2: that this guy is performing performing independence for a system
Speaker 2: he himself is reinforcing. It was just such a strange
Speaker 2: thing to understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a system means dependent on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, a system he's entirely dependent on, like more
Speaker 2: so than most of us even, right, Like like he
Speaker 2: makes nothing other than photograph so that people look at
Speaker 2: on their phones, Like he makes no tangible product, Like
Speaker 2: at least if you're a you know, you could be
Speaker 2: a cabinet maker, right and yeah, you install kitchens for
Speaker 2: each people, but you know how to make things with
Speaker 2: your hands. This guy just gets, you know, a saw
Speaker 2: that looks like I hadn't been used since the had
Speaker 2: Wardian era and stands around for photos next to a
Speaker 2: log in the same breath. I guess that I condemn that.
Speaker 2: I feel like the way that we deal with the
Speaker 2: end of this, it's the same way that we help
Speaker 2: each other get through the middle of this and the
Speaker 2: collapse of it. Right, Like, I've seen people do mutual
Speaker 2: aid with such scarce resources and manage to make such
Speaker 2: amazing things, like both in terms of like physical objects
Speaker 2: and in terms of like these beautiful things we do
Speaker 2: for each other were so little, and like the ingenuity
Speaker 2: that's still there. It's not like people have forgotten how
Speaker 2: to exist without team, right, but we just haven't created
Speaker 2: a way a situation where we have to and in
Speaker 2: mutual aid spaces, I sometimes feel like we already have
Speaker 2: the solution to this, which is to depend on and
Speaker 2: care for each other. It's just that we need that
Speaker 2: to be the way we do everything, not just some.
Speaker 1: Stuff exactly exactly. You know, the whole homestead and fantasy
Speaker 1: is very comforting illusion and fiction in my view, because
Speaker 1: if we're talking about going back to the land, people
Speaker 1: who live on the land who live off of the land.
Speaker 1: They did so in community. Yeah, you know, very very
Speaker 1: very very rarely did someone live entirely by themselves without
Speaker 1: contact and anyone else. Because you can't be an axe
Speaker 1: maker and a carpenter and a cook and you know,
Speaker 1: a farmer and a hood and all these different things,
Speaker 1: all of these different rules. A madisone maker all these
Speaker 1: different things at the same time. That is why we
Speaker 1: as a species have survived and succeeded, because we are
Speaker 1: able to share our skills with others and you know,
Speaker 1: collectively accomplished more than the summer of our parts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fantasy. I was recently in a place
Speaker 2: called Chako Kanyon. I don't know if you've if you're
Speaker 2: familiar with Chako Kanyon at all, No, but there's this
Speaker 2: idea I think that like pre the arrival of capitalism,
Speaker 2: that's how indigenous people lived. And it's just not like like, yeah,
Speaker 2: this was a large, thriving communitium. I'm interested in Chako
Speaker 2: Kanyon because I'm interested in what you're talking about, like
Speaker 2: a society which consumed at an unsustainable level and then
Speaker 2: collapsed and what came out of it. But what came
Speaker 2: out of it is what kept the working class people
Speaker 2: in that society of life throughout it, which is helping
Speaker 2: each other, right, Like, yeah, sure people had these little
Speaker 2: plots where they grew grain, but also like by doing
Speaker 2: their ceremonies, by coming together in community, they had something
Speaker 2: which could sustain them even when the economic reality completely
Speaker 2: changed for them. And it's like it's that part that
Speaker 2: people forget right that they think they can. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: think they can grow their own food. Yeah you can.
Speaker 2: But when you need a new plow, what are you
Speaker 2: going to do? You're going to buy a forge on TMU?
Speaker 2: You know, like it's so detached from the way anyone
Speaker 2: has ever lived.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, and it cannot lasts. And me personally,
Speaker 1: I would rather not wait until supply chains break down
Speaker 1: completely and stones wipe the slate and blackouts cut ale communication.
Speaker 1: I would rather wait for those things to create and
Speaker 1: sustain those networks of dependence, networks of interdependence, so it's
Speaker 1: local networks of aid and cultural practice and you know,
Speaker 1: meeting of mutual needs. There's a saying that the sort
Speaker 1: of hustle bros would say that your network is your
Speaker 1: net worth and that I must concur you know, the
Speaker 1: community support and the share resources are going to matter
Speaker 1: a lot more than your personal purchase and power. Being
Speaker 1: part of something is emotionally easier than carrying everything alone.
Speaker 1: The matter now and the matter even more in the future,
Speaker 1: as crisis makes the invisible all too visible. The normal
Speaker 1: that we remember is an illusion, but once you've seen it,
Speaker 1: you can't unsee. I think the departure from normal is
Speaker 1: an opportunity or chance to make something better, to be
Speaker 1: adaptable to the shocks that come with courage and with clarity,
Speaker 1: and I hope that this conversation is able to put
Speaker 1: towards what I'm sure that I'm not alone in feeling.
Speaker 1: That's all for me today. All power to people. Peace.
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