This is Chapter 2 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted "Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's full support and permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). -- To see the first chapter (including the Title Pages, Acknowledgements, Introduction & Table of Contents), go to Chapter 1: Pattern of the Crisis.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have,

~ ronjon

     more »

...This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of "The Long Emergency" accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.

We're in a strange collective psychic bubble. We'd like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up -- what's wrong with that?

But there's an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We're on the edge of something. We're at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you're spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There's no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days? ...   more »

Click on any of the links below to see the full articles.

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• SCIY's Total Downloads set new record in June 2008
• United States Federal Reserve Bank Is Now in Panic Mode
• The Significance of Colours through Flowers: Palash
• The relevance of 1857 in the context of India’s recent history—by Mubarak Ali
• Hints of time before Big Bang—by Dr Chris Lintott
• General Grammar and the Mutation of Consciousness
• Democratic Congress signs off on Funding Major Escalation of Iranian Covert Operations, Seymour Hersh (Alternet)
• Prose and Poetry: The Essence of Poetry. Sri Aurobindo
• The Word: Two Poems—by KD Sethna (Amal Kiran) and by RY Deshpande
• Speech versus Writing in Derrida and Bhartrhari (Arche-writing vs. Sabdatattva) by Harold Coward: U. Hawaii Press
• Amal Kiran on the Mind of Light—by Anurag Banerjee
• Odysseus’s return dated accurately, says report
• ***Roots: The origin of words in the works Sri Aurobindo and Michel Foucault
• Tata and Vivekananda (India Now)
• Picasso and the other faces of Malaga—by Hugh and Colleen Gantzer
• New light on Hampi—by Zerin Anklesaria
• Pournaprema, the Mother’s granddaughter: in Memoriam—by Anurag Banerjee
• The Baby that set off a hi-tech revolution—by Bobbie Johnson
• Happy Summer Solstice with Louis and Ella (U Tube)
• Born Again Ideology: religion, technology and terrorism (u tube) A. Kroker
• Future Bodies: The Technological Future of Human Evolution (CNN Futures summit)
• Present Bodies: Gene, Organism, Environment: Richard Lewinton lecture (U Tube)
• 93: Night in her bosom nursed a greater dawn
• 92: What high change is in thee, O Savitri?
• 91: Human she was once more, earth's Savitri
• The Political Economy of Peer Production by Michel Bauwens (C Theory)
• 90: A crimson seed of God’s felicity
• 89: The superman shall wake in mortal man
• Death Blow to Guantanamo Justice? (The Nation)
• 88: Descend to life with him thy heart desires
• In Defense of Lost Causes by Zizek, book review by Terry Eagleton (Times Literary Supplement)
• Justice vs. Power aka Chomsky vs. Foucault (u tube)
• 87: O beautiful body of the incarnate Word
• 86: O living power of the incarnate Word
• Soros attacks 'craze-following' institutions for inflating oil prices
by ronjon on June 12, 2008 02:00AM (PDT)

• 85: O miracle, where thou beganst, there cease!
• 84: I am the inviolable Ecstasy
• Avatars in the Living Room: 2nd Life in Augmented Reality
• Welcome to Augmented Reality
• 83: Transfigured was the formidable shape
• Triggering Global Revolution
• 82: The Shadow vanishes into the Void
• Faltering Economy squeezes the American Dream
• 81: Her Goddess self grew visible in her eyes
• Obama Makes History
• Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart Kauffman (preface)
• Beyond Reductionism: by Jaron Lanier (Edge)
• 80: It is the storm bird of an anarch Power
• 79: A slope that downward sank
• 78: Earth cannot flower if lonely I return
• Clean Tech Is Only Hope for the Collapsing Economy (Wired Mag. Interview)
• Time's Opuscule
• Only Greentech Can Save U.S. Economy, Says Über-Investor
• The end of the world as we knew it is upon us
• Transition Network: tackling Peak Oil & Climate Change, together
• 77: O dark-browed sophist of the universe
• Max Théon—the Unknown Occultist (1848-1927)
• Bard of Stratford-upon-Seine—by Zafar Masud
• No end to colonial governance—by Rubina Saigol
by RY Deshpande on May 29, 2008 02:36AM (PDT)

• "The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 6: THE DYING OCEANS
• The Ninth Gate Opens
• Free trade has escaped a U.S. onslaught—by Bill Emmott
• Cogito in the Matrix by Erik Davis
• James Joyce and the pre-history of Cyberspace by Donald Theall (Hypermedia Joyce Studies)
• 76: O soul suffer what thou must
• The humble lotta—by Sadaf Siddique
• Leibniz—A Talk by Asok Kumar Ray
• Manufacturing a Food Crisis (The Nation)
• Remembering Dr.L.M. Singhvi by Aryadeep
• "The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 5: THE PHANTOM AGRICULTURE
• Virtual Panopticon: China's Surveillance Society and American Corporations by Naomi Klein (Rolling Stone)
• Future Bodies: Human Animal Hybrid Embryo ok'd in U.K. (Washington Post)
• The Old Titans All Collapsed. Is the U.S. Next? - Washington Post
• Zizek's My Space Page
• 75: The Avatars have lived and died in vain
• Atlantis—True Story or Cautionary Tale?—by Willie Drye
• Neural Buddhists—by David Brooks
• The Reason Behind High Oil Prices
• "The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 4: THE FOREST
• Passing Moments
• Happy Days Are Here Again - Not!
• Effects of the US recession on Asian growth, by Nouriel Roubini
• Suicide Dictionary, by Paul Lonely
• 74: My God is will and love
• Design and the Elastic Mind: N.Y. MOMA
• Posthuman Film Reveiws: Watching the Posthuman Bildungsroman by Davin Heckman (C Theory)
• Ethical living: finding a laugh in climate change—by James Russell
• Peak oil and The Limits to Growth: two parallel stories
• The Wand of Awe—A Book Review by Aditya Sinha
• "The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 3: Soil-The Basis of Life
• Future Bodies: Discipline, Control, & "the Yoga of Resistance"
• Satyagraha: Simplicity & Splendor in the Glass—by Anne Midgette
• Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger
• Cosmic Conundrum—by Manoj K Das
• 73: A sound pealed through the monstrous realm
• Future Bodies: Evolution & Progress
• Alexander the Great's "Crown" Shield Discovered?—by Sara Goudarzi
• The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs (available May 2, 2008)
• A cosmic insight from Stephen Hawking
• As consumers step on the brakes, will the economy hit the wall?
• SCIY's Readership sets new record in April 2008
• Islamic Scholarship on India by Rajiv Malhotra
• Albert Hofmann, 102; Swiss chemist discovered LSD
• "The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 2: The End of Civilization
• Descartes by Asok Kumar Ray
• James Howard Kunstler: April 28, 2008 - A Collective Psychic Bubble
• The Only Hindu Temple Built by the British
• Evolution and Progress: Writing the Future: MIT Press
• The Trajectory of Change—Pallavi Aiyar reports about the Peking Opera
• Postmodern Film Reviews: Bladerunner by Giovanni Ferri
• 72: On the dreadful edge of Night
• The New American BoogeyMan: Reverend Jeremiah Wright
• Mundus Imaginalis: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Sohravardi by Henri Corbin
• What Darwin Saw Out Back—by Cornelia Dean (NYT)
• • Review of Sri Aurobindo and his Contemporary Thinkers
• Biology as Ideology by Richard Lewontin (review and link to lecture)
• Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (Carolyn Keen)
• Carbon Dioxide & Methane Rise Sharply In 2007
• In the Garden: Humming Praises for the Wild Bee -- by Anne Raver (NYT)
• Recipes for Disaster (NYT Sunday Book Review)
• "The Final Empire," by Wm. H. Kötke. Chap. 1: Pattern of the Crisis
• Anatomy of an Economic Collapse (NYT Sunday Book Review)
• Apologising to an ill-fated Queen by Zafar Masud
• How Darwin’s ideas evolved—by James Randerson
• 71: At first in a blind stress of woods she moved
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Adults Recognition and Management
• John Coltrane
• The Boston Celtics
• • "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future," by SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kotke
• Samadhi of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: Photographs by Gangaram Malwade
• Edward Lorenz: Father of Chaos Theory Dies (MIT Press)
• Arjava—an Impression by Amal Kiran
• Could Science and Art Become One and the Same?, by Greg Wendt
• Wilber's misreading of Derrida and Postmodernism by Gregory Desilet (integral world)
• The Spirit of Jamshoro by Niilofur Farrukh
• Shift Scenario: Averting Extinction, by Jim Fournier
• ½ Second Tsunami…………………………
• John A. Wheeler, Physicist Who Coined the Term ‘Black Hole,’ Dead at 96
• Amory Lovins: Winning the Oil Endgame
• da Vinci’s mother was a slave?—by John Hooper
• 70: Another luminous Satyavan arose
• Brain Doping In Academics, No Joking
• ethno-sectarian competition (David Patraeus: newspeak on Capitol Hill)
• Integral Ideology
• Hybrid power systems for rural Gujarat [and Auroville]
• When luxury [in India] is not a six-figure sum
• Apple's OS Edge Is a Threat to Microsoft
• 'Going beyond God,' Karen Armstrong's transformed views of religion
• Top botnets control 1 million hijacked computers
• Who's on Top in Tech-Readiness?
• Is this the world’s finest bookshop?—by Jonathan Glancey
• Higgs Boson: A Ghost in the Machine
• Supercooled Ice Breakthrough in Michigan
• Shah Jahan’s dagger to be auctioned at Bonhams
• Kyoto has failed, we must rethink climate change policy—by Gwyn Prins
• I dont believe in Atheists: Chris Hedges interview, Salon.com
• The Inspiration and Art of John Chadwick by Amal Kiran (KD Sethna)
• The Game of Life (review) : New Scientist
• 69: All in her mated with that mighty hour
• Getting down to the roots of the tree cull in the city—reported by Patrick Barkham and Jessica Aldred
• Goodbye To All That: Nature and the Future Body in Sri Aurobindo
• The Lives of Sri Aurobindo by Peter Heehs
• A century-old riddle eludes an answer—Anastasia Yelayeva
• SCIY's Page Views, Readership & Bandwidth set new records in March 2008
• Professor Mangesh Nadkarni—by Arun Vaidya
• Digging for the World War II Gold
• Asking a Judge to save the World, and maybe a whole lot More—by Dennis Overbye: NYT

Last year [2007] alone global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, increased by 0.6 percent, or 19 billion tons... Additionally methane rose by 27 million tons after nearly a decade with little or no increase. -- Methane is 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but there’s far less of it in the atmosphere—about 1,800 parts per billion. When related climate affects are taken into account, methane’s overall climate impact is nearly half that of carbon dioxide.

Rapidly growing industrialization in Asia and rising wetland emissions in the Arctic and tropics are the most likely causes of the recent methane increase. said scientist Ed Dlugokencky from NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory. -- ”We’re on the lookout for the first sign of a methane release from thawing Arctic permafrost,” said Dlugokencky. “It’s too soon to tell whether last year’s spike in emissions includes the start of such a trend.”

Permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, contains vast stores of carbon. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic continues to warm and permafrost thaws, carbon could seep into the atmosphere in the form of methane, possibly fueling a cycle of carbon release and temperature rise. ...   more »

...In light of the present [economic] crisis..., however, two eco-millenarian novels — an old one called “Ecotopia,” by Ernest Callenbach, and a new one, WORLD MADE BY HAND (Atlantic Monthly, $24), by James Howard Kunstler — are worth a look...

Literary utopias tend to emerge when an appropriate niche opens up. The niche that suited “Ecotopia” in the early 1970s and the one that now accommodates “World Made by Hand” have certain similarities. Shortages and unrest in the Middle East foreshadow the end of oil. A brewing recession gives rise to doubts about our economic fundamentals. An unpopular president wages an unpopular war. And across the country, a growing eco-consciousness raises hope that a different system might replace classic, marauding American economic progress. ...   more »

This is Chapter 1 of SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kötke's recently reprinted "Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future. It's so relevant to SCIY's core concerns that, with William's permission, we're going to be serializing all 20 chapters here on SCIY (at an average rate of a chapter per week). The reprinting has been receiving excellent reviews:

This first installment includes the Title Pages, Acknowledgements, Introduction, Table of Contents, and Chapter 1 (of 20): Pattern of the Crisis.  

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have,

~ ronjon   more »

...In his brief but brilliant book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash,” [Charles R.] Morris describes how we got into the mess we are in, with bankers making loans that they expected to sell to investors through ever more complex securities...

One of the most important aspects of the financial architecture that is now collapsing was the way it allowed investors to believe they could make perfectly safe investments when they financed very risky loans. Or, as Morris puts it, “Highly rated bonds magically materialize out of a witches’ soup of very smoky stuff.” He adds, “Very big, very complex, very opaque structures built on extremely rickety foundations are a recipe for collapse.”

The collapse is now under way. In recent years Wall Street profits were built on leverage and on taking risks that were obscure both to regulators and even to the top managements of the banks themselves. Every three months now, we see banks disclosing huge losses from risks that they had never admitted they were taking.

No one — not investors, not managers, not regulators — is sure when this process will end. And that uncertainty has created a credit freeze, with lenders reluctant to lend both because they do not know whom they can trust and because they fear they may need the money to cover losses that are yet to materialize. As the recession gathers steam, there are likely to be more corporate failures than there need to be, because credit has gone from virtually free to all but unavailable. ...   more »

I just received an email from SCIY Editor Wm. H. Kotke announcing the publication of the first reprint of his underground classic: "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future," first published in 1993. I just downloaded the E-book version (for just $6.95) and after a quick scan through its 600+ pages, I'm convinced this is a significant read for those SCIY readers concerned about Earth's sustainability crisis. As an Amazon reviewer said:

"This is an incredibly well documented and prophetic book. Prophetic in the sense that when I first read it over ten years ago, I was skeptical of many predictions. They have all turned out to come true. This book is indigenous and inspiring in the sense that it offers practical earth friendly strategies that affirm the possibility that man is part OF nature, not apart FROM it. Well written! Real history and facts, vitally relevant, and hence empowering! Good medicine for all earthlings. A powerful gift! Thanks Bill!" ...   more »

Science aims to help us gain an understanding of reality, yet how can that which is dictated by the laws of logic be used to explain the parts of reality that are non-logical? -- Is it possible that art can be used in a scientific way to create a more accurate expression of reality and a greater understanding of human experience?

A recent article by Jonah Lehrer in SEED Magazine called "The Future of Science....Art?" asks whether art is better suited than science to portray the reality of inner experience: ...   more »

It may be possible for the global system to undergo a change in state, a fundamental shift from one of increasingly intractable interrelated crises to one characterized by mutually reinforcing synergetic solutions.

The global situation has become