Bubblehammerblog

It's common, particularly among the middle classes I've noted, to hear people say, 'But I'm not a violent person'. Of course you are, fool. Just because you're scared of getting hurt, it doesn't mean that in some circumstances you wouldn't inflict violence on others, either by taking part or consenting to it.

I often feel like punching people who make these smug professions of non-violence, right in the lug hole. Because I try to follow the principle of Ahimsa I'm able to let go of these impulses.

And so, this weekend I took tea & biscuits with two friends of mine; one you might call a gentleman farmer, the other is a scholar of some repute. While discussing the privations that each expected to experience in the coming years, I brought up the Olduvai Theory. Since they weren't aware of it I explained it to them.

Readers can see a 2003 paper, The Olduvai Theory Energy, Population, and Industrial Civilization by Richard C. Duncan Here

Briefly, the Olduvai Theory, originally developed by the historian Henry Adams, grandson, & great grandson of two US Presidents, uses the formula e = Energy/Population to demonstrate that...

' The life expectancy of industrial civilization is approximately 100 years: circa 1930-2030...The exponential growth of world energy production ended in 1970... Average e will show no growth from 1979 through circa 2008. The rate of change of e will go steeply negative circa 2008. World population will decline to about two billion circa 2050'.

A number of independent studies concur.

Olduvai predicts that the end, depicted as a sharp cliff in the diagrams, 2008 clearly visible waving its arms on the headland, will come first through brownouts, followed rapidly by intermittent powercuts, followed by permanent blackout.

Strong stuff. My mate the scholar remarked that he'd always been aware that the current level of population was unsustainable. He'd even dreamed up a few measures aimed at population reduction. Kill anyone convicted of a violent crime, for instance. Top nonces & perverts who mess with children, do away with rapists. The more violent people are done away with, the more peaceful society becomes. The gentleman farmer shrugged in at-a-push agreement, & said he was buying a generator from B&Q.

Of course, my scholar friend quickly withdrew the main articles of his proposal, explaining it was an emotional outburst, or perhaps a thought experiment, like the one his colleague Martin Amis made, when he suggested punishing people for being Muslim. It was obvious, he said, that a Totalitarian state would be needed to carry out mass killings on this scale, & he wasn't keen on that idea.

I only present this to suggest what dangers a deepening economic crisis might bring.

I see in the news that billionaire Damien Hirst, has sacked some of the workers at his Science Ltd., company, where he employs people to produce his 'art'. These people need to be in a union to fight this. I suggest the IWW

Anyone can turn out stuff like Hirst's, which is why he uses gold & precious stones as a kind of copyright. I hear tell of a blacksmith & a butcher in the Yorkshire Dales who've teamed up to produce bisected cows in glass cases, which are loaded onto lorries & taken all over the country.

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