Friday Filler: We’re Doomed
Written by David on January 30th, 2009Not really. Probably.
If you have 21 minutes and 42 seconds to spare, you might enjoy getting really depressed listening to this few-years-old presentation by professional doom-and-gloomer James Howard Kunstler. If you can get past the sweeping generalizations and–umm uh-uh-uh–not-so-smoth-talkin’ verbal ticks, he does make some interesting if fairly obvious points with a pleasingly biting sense of humor.
The presentation’s money quote, highlighted in this New Yorker piece (registration required):
“We have about thirty-eight thousand places that are not worth caring about in the United States,” he’d told the audience, while showing a slide of a bleak intersection separating a Wal-Mart from a Target. “When we have enough of them, we’re going to have a nation that’s not worth defending.”
If that kind of thing gets you going, the New Yorker article will introduce you to several of “The Dystopians” who, as you might imagine, are having something of a heyday at present.
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30
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That was an AWESOME article! Maybe we shouldn’t worry about monetizing our art and worry about how to skin a squirrel. ;)
31
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Yeah, I have just about zero survival skills. So rather than spending time learning new skills, I think I better just put all my chips on the world NOT ending. Would be so much easier if I were convinced that the world as we know it is ending.
3
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I loved Kunstler’s “Geography of Nowhere” - but he seems to have gone off the deep end lately…
3
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Yeah, when I was looking for other vids, I saw him giving some rambling, incoherent speech to the “Vermont Independence Party.” WTF? He didn’t look so good either. Maybe it’s the effect of living in that split-level ranch described in the NYer article.
3
PM
Kunstler is dangerous in that he can go from making well-reasoned arguments to spitting out uneducated assertions in, quite literally, a matter of seconds.
Still, I may have to go out and stock up on powdered milk and shotgun shells tonight.
3
PM
It’s almost like it’s more performance art or something. Somebody needs to ask that guy for his credentials.