The Long Descent- A Users Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
John Michael Greer
New Society Publishers 2008
John Michael Greer has written a fascinating and engaging, but also contradictory and perplexing account of how he sees the industrial age ending.
His primary thesis is that collapse will not come as a sudden, abrupt End Of Days or Die Off scenario- one minute thriving bustling affluent society with the universe at its feet, the next a crumbling pile of rubble with nothing but wisps of smoke to hint of its former glory- but will follow a “catabolic” process of progressive disintegration, over possibly a couple of centuries. In Greer’s scenario, short periods of abrupt and sharp downturns- the beginning of which we are experiencing now- punctuate longer periods of relative stability. Like an organism that begins feeding on itself, society will collapse in a series of stepped-down stages as it becomes progressively unable to meet maintenance charges with income.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the chapter “Tools for the Transition” Greer has a most interesting discussion of the merits of the slide-rule over the pocket calculator, and explains why it is infinitely more suitable to a low-energy world:it is durable- a solid aluminum slde-rule could last nearly geological time-scales-, independent, dependable and perhaps most significant of all its use of transparent- a future archeologist would be able to work out exactly how to use it. I have never actually used a slide-rule, but this discussion has inspired me to get one, and even teach its use on permaculture courses as an example of durable technologies. There are many other insightful observations Greer makes in this chapter, including comments on salvage and organic agriculture, and what will endure into the post-collapse world.
What sets Greer’s book apart and make it really interesting is his focus on “The Stories we tell Ourselves”. He weaves his discussion of the Long descent around what he sees as two modern myths- the myth of unending progress and technological supremacy on the one hand, and imminent catastrophe and collapse on the other. Both are myths or stories that fail to see the much more likely outcome of catabolic collapse.
His analysis of Peak Oil and other resource depletion are astute and draw on earlier writers such as Catton:
More than 20 years ago, William Catton pointed out in his seminal classic Overshoot that the downslope of industrial society would force human beings to compete against their own machines for dwindling resource stocks. His prediction has become today’s reality.
Falling broadly into the category of ecological writers who see human society as essentially subject to the same natural limits as other animals, our prosthetic habits of tools and technology merely giving us temporary escape, Greer covers a lot of ground you will find elsewhere, and this is the first contradiction, because his stance throughout the book is that he is presenting a radically differnt vision to the one presented by many peak oil writers: but who exactly is he referring to?
Yes, there is Jay Hanson’s Die-off.org; there is Matt Savinar and his bulletins on special offers on survival food; and no doubt in America, Greer will come across far more of the hard-core survivalist types than we might in Europe; but in general, I would place him very much in the tradition of the main Peak Oil writers- Heinberg, Kunstler, Simmonds and co.. These are the voices who have shaped the Peak oil movement in the past few years with their reasoned and measured descriptions of the current evidence and what they see as the likely impacts over the next years and decades. By no means do they paint a rosy picture, but nor do they predict an immediate once-and-for-all end of everything. Indeed, the title Greer uses seems to be even a reference to Kunstler’s main work on the topic- The Long Emergency- as well as Holmgren’s well-known Energy descent scenarios.
So I found it a bit confusing to read on the one hand that “the fallacy that bedeviled the Y2K survivalists was the belief that government, business, and citizens, faced with an imminent threat and presented with a clear, constructive response to it, would sit on their hands and do nothing until collapse overwhelemd them.”(p91)
and then that “Statistics from Russia, where a similar scenario played out in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, suggest that population levels could be halved within this century”
and “One dimension of that context is likely to become the preeminent political fact of the age of peak oil: the impending decline- and, at least potentially, the catastrophic collapse- of America’s world empire.” (P100-101)
I mean, how catastrophic is “catastrophic” exactly? Is there like, the Y2K fallacy-type catastrophic, which is what most people think about peak oil but is wrong, and then the “Long Descent” John Michael Greer-type catastrophic which is really quite different and which only Greer has been perceptive enough to see?!
And it gets worse. Greer points out that one of the more fragile aspects of industrial life is the health system and councils that “It is probably best to assume that by the time the next wave of crisis arrives, your only health care will be what you can provide for yourself” and goes onto say “You probably wont live as long as you expect, and if you need high-tech medical help to stay alive, you’ll have to accept that it may stop being available without warning.”
Well that’s reassuring Michael, I mean for a minute there I thought you might be just another one of those survivalist doomers.
Don’t get me wrong. I happen to agree with this analysis and I also share and welcome Greer’s prescient wise words about acceptance of death and how this is one of the things we need to adress if we are to face the future- any future- with fortitude, but it all seems strangely at odds with his repeated admonitions of whoever he sees as the bulk of Peak Oil commentariat for painting too stark a picture of the impending collapse.
In addition, there are many compelling reasons to feel that our situation at all-time Peak Energy is fundamentally different from past collapses. the higher they climb the harder they fall, as they say, and our dependency on fossil energy and on a functioning economy from day to day is so complete, and our culture so lacking in resilience, and our traditional skills deficit so absolutely vast, that our society seems peculiarly vulnerable.
And then there is climate change, which again will effect people very personally and is already doing so. Overpopulation, species extinction general environmental degradation means that unlike the first character in an earlier collapse, our contemporary urban refugee may have nowhere to go.
Greer is right to emphasize the lessons of past collapses and how they may unfold over lengthy periods of time, and I love his vivid story of two hypothetical characters who live through very different times but who experience collapse in a similar way: the only difference is, in the contemporary scenario, there may be nowhere left for the environmental refugee to flee to.
In this we are given a fresh perspective, but as Orlov has made so vividly clear, collapse will be an essentially personal affair- for many in the developing world, it happened last week with the loss of their job and repossession of their home, and for many more it will happen next week. For some, collapse surely will be indeed a rather abrupt affair, as they suddenly find themselves out on the street unsure of their next meal, their previous life of luxury bought on futures’ markets just a distant dream. For many in this situation- as well as those who suddenly find their life-support systems switched off, or who go hungry because they were unprepared for the supermarket supply-chain disruption, the historical fate of society as a whole will be largely irrelevant.
Greer continues his exploration of stories and myths with a look at New Age beliefs, and he has some interesting observations about for example the origin of the “create your own reality” myth:
Of course each of us does play a part in creating the reality we experience; subtle factors such as expectations and assumptions have a much more powerful role in the way our lives turn out than most people realise… As the New Age movement gained members and lost focus, though, gimmicks of this sort became the basis for a philosophy of cosmic consumerism that claims the universe is supposedly set up to give people whatever they happen to want, so long as they ask for it in the right way.”
He even gives an analysis of David Icke’s Lizard theory which he sees as a kind of projection of “the shadow” – a way of overcoming the reality of limits: if you cant get everything you want, if the universe isn’t exactly what you want, it must be the fault of those evil shape-shifting lizards.
It seems rather paradoxical though, that while for the most part he takes a “meta-theoretical” perspective on different world views and how they emerge, some of his thinking itself appears to be rather New Age: his recommendations for health care in the future seem rather ill-informed and naive:
…While there is some quackery in the alternative field, there’s also much of value, and the denunciations of alternative health care that come from the medical establishment are mostly just attempts to protect market share.
This itself is surely one of the most pervasive of New Age myths: conventional medicine is mainly just out to make money from your illness and is more likely to make you sick then anything else; “alternative” medicine is more “holistic” and treats the whole person in a “natural” way. In reality, “alternative” medicine is simply treatments that have not been proved; once a treatment has been demonstrated to be effective through double-blind clinical trials, it becomes simply “medicine”. (see for example John Diamond, Snake Oil 2001). His specific recommendation of acupuncture betrays a sloppiness not apparent elsewhere in the book:
Many of the most effective alternative systems- herbalism and acupuncture come to mind- evolved long before the industrial system came into being and use very modest amounts of sustainable resources to treat illnesses.
As a number of recent publications have shown, there is little evidence that acupuncture works, and what evidence there is, is weak: it could scarcely be confidently considered as an effective remedy, and the suggestion that having been created in pre-industrial times is something in its favour is again a classic New Age absurdity. Systems of health care like acupuncture didnt have the benefit of modern medical science and don’t even recognise the existence of the cardio-vascular system, simply because this had not been discovered at the time. When you read about acupuncture’s recent history- how Mao encouraged it in revolutionary China because there wasn’t the resources to provide modern medicine for the peasants, even though he didn’t believe in it himself, for example, and how “sham” acupuncture- using retractable needles as a placebo achieves just as good results as the traditional methods, it is clear Greer has simply failed to do his homework on this one.
More than that, the multi-million dollar alternative medicine industry is really just an alternative marketing wing of the mainstream drug companies, making good use of the contemporary fashion for anything “natural” and “alternative” to sell its wares to the gullible. (See for example Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science.)
To say “there is some quackery…” is a mind-bogglingly large understatement: the whole alternative healthcare field is rife with the most unbelievable level of manipulation, fraud and deceit. The ignorance and gullibility of large sections of the pblic, and the complicit role the media plays in simply misleading people happens in this area just as much as in the areas of perpetuating the myth of progress. That doesnt mean that science is immune from such aberrations- but it does at least have an internal system of verification quite absent in alternative therapies, and it does actually make real progree using the clinical trial.
By the same token, while Greer’s discussion of the role and future of science in society is valuable and interesting, he makes some big mistakes: his dismissal of Dawkin’s atheism as anthropolatry (the worship of humans) is simply wrong: Dawkins, like most atheists, believes humans are just a clever kind of tool using ape. It is religious and superstitious views- placing humans at the centre of a supposed Creation- that idolise the human.
The reasons for Greer’s blindspots on these matters are obvious: he is himslef a Druid- an Arch Druid in fact- but in this book tells us little about it, leaving us guessing what he feels makes that spiritual tradition more valid than others, or more valid than the other myths he discusses.
So one gets the impression that he may have wanted his last chapter, “The Spiritual Dimension”, to have been more central to the main thesis than it actually is, and while it raises important points about what the role of religions might be post-collapse, and which ones may come to the fore, it is when he mentions “magic” that he loses me completely.
“There is a rich irony” says Greer “in the common dismissal of the lessons of spirituality as ‘magical thinking’ because magical thinking is exactly the form of human thought that deals with the realm of motivations, values, and goals that technical and scientific thinking handle so poorly.”
Is it? I though “magic” was simply what people tend to ascribe to phenomena they dont have an explanation for. This definition would come as a surprise also, I think, to most of the people I know who profess to believe in “magic” which they would probably see more as a way of manipulating the material world through communing with nature spirits and the like.
Greer seems to me to get very muddled here, claiming that Carl Sagan was a “theologian” with his image of “we are stardust” while “magic” is apparently something which has “theoreticians” suggesting it can in fact be studied rationally. This is upside down thinking: science is essentially a method of inquiry which rejects faith-based beliefs; it is not theology when Sagan says we are star dust- Greer misses the point completely- it is fact based on verifiable evidence -which is exactly what sets science apart from myth.
Equally, there is no reason why science cannot handle the realm of “motivations, values and goals” with the same method, and of course there is a large body of scientific literaturee which attempts to do just that. I would refer Mr. Greer to Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell as a good exploration of the issues here.
Greer misses an opportunity to explore the real legacy of scientific thinking, and the likelihood and consequences of a return to pre-rational belief systems in the future.
For all that, The Long Descent is a stimulating and valuable contribution to the Peak Oil literature. I obviously don’t agree with a lot of it, and I find his stance as somehow being more profound than other writers unconvincing, yet he writes well and to some extent does explore the lesser known paths.
I
12 Comments
I think in regards to magic what part of what Greer is saying is that for most humans technical and scientific thinking do not lead to their motivations, values and goals. These come from their spiritual side. I’d have to agree that for most people that is the case, but some of us are different. There are those who say that being able to more strongly motivate through logical and scientific thinking is a evolutionary advantageous skill and will help us get through this crisis.
Also what Carl Sagan said was theology. What he said was a no brainer. People are made from atoms and higher order atoms were created in stars. Like you needed to tell me that. But by putting in the context of star dust, he was trying to reach all the multitude of folks that don’t think scientifically. He was trying to put science into mythical terms. That’s theology.
The main point is that most people do not act logically based on scientific reasoning very often. This is hard for those of us who do mostly act logically to grasp. The popularity of, well anything that is popular, is plenty of evidence that this is true. Economics, medicine, psychology have often ignored this to their detriment.
Acupuncture has worked for many people otherwise it wouldn’t still exist. Yet we do not understand scientifically how it has worked for these people. Is that a weakness of acupuncture or science? When human labor is more available than other energy, wouldn’t it be great for a Dr. to know precisely when acupuncture would work and save more energy intensive treatments for when they are necessary?
On the whole I liked the review and I appreciate the deep thinking that went into it.
Peace
Good points thanks. I agree that most people dont act rationally- the more interesting question then is why DO some people- or rather, why is rational thinking possible at all when by and large humans are as Greer rightly points out, “Mythic” beings. One way to answer this is that our evolutionary history has molded us to behave in a way suitable to our environment but that we have become so good at manipulating that environment that we are no longer adapted to it! This is the kind of approach Nate Hagens and others have done, an ecological explantion using evolutionary psycholgy. I find this more interesting that Greer’s approach: what is the process of evolving out of this mythic state? I still think there is something fundamentally different in Sagan’s approach because it is a metaphor that comes out of observable evidence, in stark contrast to myths. And the idea that “acupuncture must work because it has been around so long” seems very weak to me- it could apply to any aspect of our behaviour that has been around for a long time, nothing to do with whether it in fact works. The scientific method- clinical double-blind trials- has allowed us to see that, at the very least, acupuncture and other alternative therapies DO NOT work anything like as well or as much as as we think. More interesting is the growing body of literature on why it is we believe therapies work when they dont, and why we are so susceptible to believing stuff that aint so- start with Dennett, see above.
Graham,
Your review is very interesting. It is neither that I agree with your viewpoints nor Michael’s.
I have an history of exchanges with Michael. I have been perfectly aware of the weaknesses you put the finger at, for years now. The book which explains my position will be published in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, in French. But, an english translation should soon follow.
You know, let me tell you, Michael does not get it completely. You don’t too. I am not sure I do it either. However, from my vantage point, I understand very well what you are both talking about.
All important key-words are in your text. However, and this is the crucial thing, our future is beyond current consciousness. It is there that we shall find the exit door. There, spirituality and science can be, in a way, reconciled. In a very surprising way. Western philosophy, thinking, religion and science is about to be launched on a radically new path.
Yes, I know. It is hard buy this.
But, you will see it with own eyes pretty soon.
Regards
P.S. Please, do not hesitate to get in touch with me.
Strouts was confused by the two statements,
“the fallacy that [... people ...] would sit on their hands and do nothing until collapse overwhelmed them.”
“Statistics from Russia, where a similar scenario played out in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, suggest that population levels could be halved within this century”
It doesn’t require a catastrophic collapse to have population drop heavily over a century. As noted here, Russia has a high rate of deaths from violence and alcohol, and more importantly a low birth rate of 1.34 children per fertile adult woman (compared to the 2.14 required to keep a steady population), and are expected to lose 14% of their current population total by 2050.
Japan also has a low birth rate, but low mortality and high life expectancy, yet still expect a 21% decline by 2050.
So the prosperous country faces a similar or greater population decline compared to the post-collapse country. Thus, a population decline is not in itself indicative of a catastrophic collapse.
The lesson of the Soviet collapse is not that millions drop dead from famine or civil conflict, but rather that people have a much shittier life, yet somehow muddle along. And one thing they do in response to low available resources is to have less children.
Strouts also queried,
“One dimension of that context is likely to become the preeminent political fact of the age of peak oil: the impending decline- and, at least potentially, the catastrophic collapse- of America’s world empire.”
asking, “I mean, how catastrophic is “catastrophic” exactly?”
Obviously that’s for Greer to say, really. But one definition of catastrophe is, “Any large and disastrous event of great significance; a disaster beyond expectations.” Definitions of “disaster” mostly refer to catastrophes, but the UN tells us that a disaster is,
“A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.”
I think we might be getting somewhere with this. Is there a chance of a combination of events – economic, military, environmental, political – which are a serious disruption exceeding the ability of a country to cope using its own resources? Absolutely.
In fact, if we imagine collapse as Greer does, as its being like Winnie-the-Pooh being dragged downstairs by Christopher Robin – bump, bump, bump – then a “disaster” is the “bump” down, and the period where the country desperately tries to recover is the flat step – until the next bump.
But perhaps the key thing here is the event overwhelming the country’s own ability to handle it. Because in the modern world if one country is hit by a famine or tsunami, other countries step in to help. Notably, countries recently hit by their own disasters don’t send much help.
So as we hit resource limits and suffer climate change, it’s easy to imagine that a series of disasters in different countries mean that each is left pretty much on its own.
And that, perhaps, is a “catastrophe” – when you have a disaster and there’s nobody to help you.
There are other things in Strouts’ article I could respond to, but I think that’s enough for one comment.
Thanks Kiashu Its not that I disagree with the stepped-down nature of collapse that Grrer describes, just that he seems to posit it as being radically different from how others envision it playing out. It all depends where you are and how well you might be prepared. In some areas, gun-toting survivalism might be the best response; in others, Transition Towns. But my main point is that, if we say to people in Celitic Tiger Ireland, for example, that in the future they will be riding donkeys and labouring in the fields, that there may not be enough power to keep their ailing relatives on life-support systems etc., this is already so far from the myth of progress and entitlement they have come to accept that debates about how much and how sudden of a collapse are rather mute points.
The collapse will come fast, and here is why.
Independent studies conclude that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
“By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.”
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Oilreport_22-10-2007.pdf
With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
Greer is well worth reading, though your points about his selectivity regarding the profile of collapse are very valid.
It’s puzzling and amusing to hear a writer chide his fellows for being overly catastrophic, while his personal expectation is a ~2 century catabolic collapse into a new Dark Age.
Sorry, but that makes him a doomer, and as Graham says, so far away from the mainstream that he’s got zero chance of ever being taken seriously by the lumpen proletariat.
I saw James Howard Kunstler give a 2 hour lecture in Vancouver, Canada back in January 2008. Kunstler is regarded by many as a doomer, but he is not. JHK expects there to be complex social organisation in the future – just at a lower level than is currently enjoyed. Something similar to that of the mid 19th century, if we’re smart and begin to make preparations.
JHK gave a laundry list of things we should do:
Fix the rail system and expand it.
Localise food production.
Create walkable communities.
Mixed use zoning of towns.
To name but 4. In spite of this, when it came time for questions and answers, the audience – or at least the questioners – just didn’t get it. There was the Electric Car Kook (there’s always one), there was the angry young man who called JHK a hypocrite for not having made his own clothes (!), and a Woo-Woo of the first order who said that we should all have sat in a circle, and that we’d fix these problems by “telling stories and singing songs”.
All the prophets of Doom have slightly different opinions on the shape of the collapse – it’s an exercise in futility for them to snipe at one another when the gulf between the collapse community and the general public is so vast.
Regarding Carl Sagan: he would been the first to deny being a Theologian. That’s just revisionism, sorry. Carl followed Plutarch’s view that
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, it is a fire to be lit.”
In calling human beings “stardust” he was speaking literally – but in POETRY, not PROSE. In one scene in the TV show Cosmos, he is asked by a 10 year old:
“Is the Earth a part of the Milky Way Galaxy?”
“YOU are a part of the Milky Way Galaxy.” he replied.
A mediocre teacher would have simply answered “YES” to the question. Both answers would be correct – but the kid who heard Sagan’s answer has a much better chance of not turning out “dumb”.
HI Graham
Thought-provoking and fascinating as usual, and picked out many of the things that troubled me with ‘Long Descent’. For me the best bit was the bit about stories, his demolition of conspiracy theorists is excellent. I do however think that your attack on acupuncture is a bit misplaced and somewhat naive and troubling. It is, of course, valid to argue that therapies and medicines need to be tested to see if they work and if they have the effects claimed, but it is vital to be aware of how medical research happens at present.
In today’s news, Pfizer, the largest Pharma company in the world, are opening a huge research centre in Cambridge in partnership with the University. http://www.pfizercambridge.com/ . Most medical research is not done by independent scientists, dedicated to the accumulation of knowledge. Most of it is done by the drug companies themselves, linked to Universities whose medical departments are now deeply dependent on these companies’ funding both in order to function and to fund PhD researchers, and linked to the NHS, which has an absolutely staggering bill for medicines. Many of these medicines create a spiral of intervention and dependency, rather than promoting health from the basics of good diet, exercise and less stressful lives, what you and I might think of as health. One could argue, and many do, that the NHS has become merely a retail outlet of Big Pharma.
It is akin to agriculture. Yes, if you add nitrogen you will get bigger crops. You can prove that in double blind trials. If you add mashed up sheep to cows their milk yield will rise. If you spray DDT on crops it will destroy the pests. Lots of research has been done on these things, again, often funded, directly or indirectly, by the very companies who stand to profit from the findings of that research.
Look at people like Mark Purdey, who tried to do the work no universities or research organisations were doing, looking at how the mixture of chemicals that farm animals are exposed to could be a trigger for BSE. Vital research, but no-one wanted to fund it because there was little to be gained financially from it. Likewise, funding for research into organics obviously gets far far less funding than research into chemical farming.
Yes, we need rigorous testing, but it is somewhat naive to assume that out there in the world there is a level playing field when it comes to research, whether it be into drugs, agrichemicals or whatever. Universities are increasingly funded by multinationals, and research, the kind that gets in Nature and Science and the other journals (which is increasingly one of the key outputs expected of academics) is expensive.
You claim that “the multi-million dollar alternative medicine industry is really just an alternative marketing wing of the mainstream drug companies”. If you are talking about vitamins and supplements you are perhaps correct, at least partly, but in terms of herbal medicine, acupuncture and so on, that is really not the case. In comparison to the UK’s conventional drug bill, both are negligable.
Testing, it would appear to me, is not the unbiased, apolitical, neutral, impartial tool dedicated to the universal good that you seem to think it is.
Finally, I have had a great deal of acupuncture in my life, I think it is extraordinary. Had some on a painful back the other week, worked a treat. Acupuncture is based on many centuries of the observation of subtle phenomena. Acupuncturists read 5 pulses as opposed to the 1 in Western medicine. Western medicine has evolved by, in part, using the human body as a tester, adding various formulations of chemicals and seeing what will happen. Chinese medicine is about a built up body of knowledge based on observing subtle phenomena, and I have always found it very effective. None of my children have ever been vaccinated, nor have they ever had any antibiotics. They are strong and healthy (touch wood).
Personally, I am deeply suspicious of many of the medicines that Big Pharma produces. In the same way that GM is sold as being about ‘feeding the world’ when really it is about maximising corporate profits, a great deal of modern medicine and research is driven by profit than by health. What next, Zone 5 arguing the benefits of double blind tested GM crops? There’s plenty of entirely impartial research on that out there to choose from…..
Thanks Rob I dont disagree re Big Pharma and the NHS, but anecdotes are not sufficient to provide evidence as you very well know!! The fact is, causation is difficult to prove; as Ive consistently argued on these pages, the potential for humans to delude themselves or simply make mistakes should not be underestimated- there is a wealth of fascinating literature and studies on this subject. Until we have large scale statistically relevant double blind studies on a health treatment the jury is out. Acupuncture simply has not demonstrated such results; nor have you offered any evidence that this is specifically because of lack of funding for research. The problem with your arguments is that they are anecdotal- along the lines of “My Granny smoked 20 Rothman’s a day and lived until she was 108″ or they are epistemological- ie general comments about how evidence is collected- they tell us nothing about a particular cause and effect- the fact that Big Pharma wants to make money does NOT mean that acupuncture works better than placebo- as I say there are many studies that have been with sham acupuncture that strongly suggest it is all in the mind. Check the evidence in the link I supplied in the text- and dont tell me acupuncture and other alternative practices are not also very keen to charge for their services.
Rob wrote “None of my children have ever been vaccinated… They are strong and healthy (touch wood).”
He didn’t mention whether they have had any of the major diseases for which children are vaccinated (measles, mumps…) which, incidentally, are often more serious in adults than in children. If they haven’t had them (yet!), then that’s probably because the vast majority of people in any community ARE immune to these diseases, either because they were vaccinated as children or because they’ve had them.
However, if enough people do as Rob did and refuse to vaccinate their kids, then the stage is set for new outbreaks of measles, etc. This may not sound very serious, but people do sometimes die of these diseases; before vaccination, a lot of people did.
Here’s a little homemade scientific hypothesis which should be easily testable.
Fact 1. The idea of not vaccinating your kids spreads in a viral manner among certain subsets of the population.
Fact 2. Transition is another idea which is spreading in a viral manner among certain subsets of the population.
Fact 3. Both movements are likely to have little concrete impact until a “critical mass” is attained within a given community, at which point there is likely to be an outbreak of childhood diseases, or Transition-related activity (according to whatever measure you care to specify). (I think I’m still on safe ground here).
Hypothesis. The subset of the population who are open to new “alternative” ideas includes both groups mentioned above, and there is substantial overlap between the two groups. That is, if you are open to the idea of not vaccinating your kids then you are also likely to be open to the idea of Transition, and vice versa.
Corollary to the hypothesis. Measles outbreaks are more likely to occur in active Transition Towns than in the population as a whole.
If this turned out to be true, I trust that Rob would come out in favour of vaccination on the Transition Culture blog!
Thanks Robert Yes I was thinking something similar myself- what a tragedy it would be if the Transition virus turned out to be a carrier for the “vaccination is bad” meme. Alas Im afraid there is a real issue here, not just with Transition but with the environmental movement in general. I think Rob’s “…touch wood” says it all really…
I’m not saying that the Transition and anti-vaccination ideas are intrinsically connected in any way – I don’t think they are. In fact I think they are independent – neither one promotes or undermines the other. My hypothesis is simply that they tend to “infect” more-or-less the same subset of the population: people who are open to “alternative” ideas in general. In fact, this means that Transition could be used to promote, rather than undermine, vaccination programmes, depending on how Transition is formulated.
As for Chinese medicine – I am convinced that what the world is waiting for is a genuinely evidence-based synthesis of Western, Chinese, Indian, and other traditional medicine – using the principles that work and chucking out the ones that don’t. Rob is right that Chinese medicine is based on centuries of careful observation and experience – but unfortunately, a continuous synthesis of experience based on erroneous first principles can never outgrow its basic limitations. (The giraffe has a longer neck, but no more vertebrae, than its ancestors. A hyper-efficient car is still a car, not a bicycle. And organic agriculture is still a form of agriculture, it’s not forest gardening.) However, such a synthesis is going to be a long time coming under a system where scientific research follows the money.
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