Crashwatch: "This page is retired." Doom cancelled?

So writes popular collapse blogger Ran Prieur.

www.ranprieur.com...

January 1, 2013. This page is retired. Ten years ago it really seemed like the whole system was about to come apart. People who saw a crash coming were seeing things that were being ignored by people who expected business as usual. Yet we were still wrong. After seeing how little daily life has changed after the 2008 financial collapse, seven years with global oil production on a plateau, and two catastrophic hurricanes, I think the big mistake of doomers was assuming that failures would have positive feedback like a house of cards. At this point, anyone still using the "house of cards" metaphor is not a serious analyst but an entertainer. It's clear that the interconnectedness of modern complex systems makes them stronger, not weaker.

Here is his original page which he has maintained for close to ten years:

www.ranprieur.com...

And the caveat now there:

Spring, 2008. When I started this page four years ago, everyone thought that industrial society would keep thriving forever, and I wanted to balance that with evidence that it's going to crash. Now everyone thinks it's going to crash, but I'm shocked at how many blows it has taken and how little has changed in daily life, so I'm leaning back to the other side: that we'll get a depression, a shakeout of the tech system, but no big crash. I don't even think "crash" or "collapse" are good metaphors, because they imply a change so fast you can't even run, when real changes are slower than grass growing. I'm tempted to kill this page, but I'm keeping it around for reference.

His sentiments echo my own, though I hardly realized it. When I read it, it just really dawned on me that he is totally right.

We've had years of endless war, Katrina, Sandy, Haiti Quake, Japan Quake, Asian Tsunami, the 2008 Economic Crash, various Bubbles burst and....we're still standing.

Even with the latest 2012 hype, we all wondered at some level but mostly just giggled.

I guess what he is saying is that the world is resilient, far more than it may even feel. All of this connectivity makes us keep on keeping on when a blow strikes us - we may stumble, we may stagger but we keep getting up, like we have done throughout human history. Like the Chinese Proverb goes..."Fall down seven times, get up eight."

Ran is really more of a Philosopher than anything so I will keep on reading his regular blog. It's refreshing to know that a really smart person can change their view without any ego attached to being incorrect. We need more of that in this world if we really want to solve some of the issues we face.

I'm wondering if any ATS members have had this realization too? Or do you think we're still at a precipice?

Originally posted by kosmicjack
I'm wondering if any ATS members have had this realization too? Or do you think we're still at a precipice?

After watching how such things have played out in history in various places around the world, I agree that "crash" was a wrong description. Such collapses are more like cancer. Just get a little bit sicker every day. Just a little bit worse here, a little bit worse there.
I've seen a lot of people say things along the lines of "I wish it would all just collapse, so it will finally be over and we can start rebuilding." They're mistaken, the scenario they look for will not occur.

The word you use, "precipice" implies a cliff that one would fall off. I'd suggest its more like sliding down a very very gentle slope. Down, a little bit every day. A few more unemployed here, a bit more debt there. A bit more unrepaired here, a bit more homelessness there.

reply to post by alfa1


I would agree. And some have coined the term "slow crash" - just not fully recovering to our former glory after a series of unfortunate events.

And maybe things will change only after there has been a decline in a area. Nothing sudden or dramatic, just an emergence of new tech or new methods as a work-around for whatever has slowly degraded.

I would say we already fell into the precipice when both parents became workers, because it destroyed many family values. But things can only go up for that.

As for tech and its impact on society, old tech made us progress and work better, not less. Same will be with the future.

Only thing to really hope for is that instead of having society drop its "lowest" members, it helps them get to another level. What I say may impact positively only person in the world, but maybe this person will impact everyone in the world positively too.

Actually, and historically, incomes of a project will determine if we should do it. We should do like in Star Trek, and drop money, and think differently how we develop ourselves and the next generations.

reply to post by kosmicjack


S&F Kosmic -

Don't know how much play you'll get here though - optimism doesn't sell so much :-)

I guess what he is saying is that the world is resilient, far more than it may even feel. All of this connectivity makes us keep on keeping on when a blow strikes us - we may stumble, we may stagger but we keep getting up, like we have done throughout human history. Like the Chinese Proverb goes..."Fall down seven times, get up eight."

The natural world is cyclical - and we are a part of the natural world. Boom/bust, feast/famine, peace/war - change is constant. It's so hard for us to see where we are while we're in it I think. Fear of change is something we all share - and I think we instinctively, or even automatically look to the worse case scenario as a way to plan, cope and survive

Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be

“The end-of-history effect may represent a failure in personal imagination,” said Dan P. McAdams, a psychologist at Northwestern who has done separate research into the stories people construct about their past and future lives. He has often heard people tell complex, dynamic stories about the past but then make vague, prosaic projections of a future in which things stay pretty much the same.

I read this yesterday - also fascinating. I see this as being (in a way) relevant to what your blogger has experienced - placing ourselves in the future is difficult. Imagining the future is complicated. While this article states that we imagine ourselves in a future that isn't going to change much - we're usually wrong. Change bugs us :-)

love this stuff - and every direction it can possibly go

I love the recognition that we are resilient - and life does go on

I wonder what the topic of discussion would be today had there not been the massive (and ongoing) intervention from governments and central banks in response to the collapsing banks and insurance companies in 2008?

Perhaps what we are seeing in the attempt to boost global economic growth that is still costing trillions upon trillions of dollars with no seeming end in sight, is the avoidance of a hard, and very disruptive, landing.

reply to post by surrealist

Perhaps what we are seeing in the attempt to boost global economic growth that is still costing trillions upon trillions of dollars with no seeming end in sight, is the avoidance of a hard, and very disruptive, landing.

So according to a blogger who supposedly had a blog and created a blog calling it the Crashwatch is now saying that a crash or more rather an financial crash now claims its not going to happen? even after all the protests and tax hikes in Europe? i have such huge problems with such bloggers like him.

Perhaps what we are seeing in the attempt to boost global economic growth

Since when are we in a global economic growth?

reply to post by kosmicjack


It is all relative, KJ. Unfortunately that relativity can't be easily encapsulated, either. I mean how fast does change need to take place to qualify as a crash? If you look at, say, Great Britain 300 years ago and Great Britain today, it looks like a mangled car wreck, but if you take that decline in 10 or 20 year chunks (aside from the obvious major bumps in the road ala the Revolutionary War), then it appears as a more manageable decline. Furthermore, it is very much relative to each person's position and place in their world. To quote Ronald Reagan:
"The difference between a recession and a depression is that it is a recession when your neighbor losses their job, but it is a depression when you lose yours."

Personally, I don't know that I can call what I've seen the past 4 years "a crash"... My personal rate of wealth growth has slowed considerably, but I have not been unemployed, have not had to deal with less than previous years, and I have not had to seek any public assistance. From the standpoint of my dreams and goals, I'd say those have certainly crashed, but perhaps some of them were unrealistic to begin with. However, if I was the guy who went from living in a nice townhouse, making upper middle income wages, and with a solid retirement fund to foreclosure, food stamps, and penniless then yeah, it's a crash. Make no mistake, there are plenty who experienced that the past 4 years and there will be plenty more down the road.

That is the reason I believe a lot more people are OK with "watching the world burn" so to speak. I don't blame people for wanting to see a collapse rather than a slow die out. It is a lot easier and less stressful to rebuild from a complete loss than to just watch your home rot around you year after year with no ability to stop the decay.

reply to post by kosmicjack


We are all still frogs in the pot. The destabilization of the infrastructure is happening, but then if one chooses to continue dreaming about how they perceive reality, what to do?