Starting forest fires, one spark at a time.

Ah yes, the cleansing power of the flame! There’s really nothing like it, is there? ***inhale***exhale***

Of course, our geriatric-kludgocratic-Sovietisedi western society at present is always trying to prevent fires – and not just the forest variety – but what if fires (and fun) are actually essential to humanity’s long-term health and well-being? I mean, what about all those serotinous pinecones that stay sealed until scorching flames melt their sealing resins, thereby allowing their seeds to germinate and grow? Doesn’t now seem like as good a time as any to lean into this natural wisdom, especially since we’ve already just experienced 50+ years of relinquishing actual progressii in favour of spreadsheet-maxxing?

Now you might be sitting there – comfy in your Eames lounge chairiii – saying “Pete, there’s a moral argument to be made that the now-declining and increasingly centralising western empires at present should aim for a soft landing so as to minimise damage,” but on the flip side of the coin there are also arguments to be made that we should just rip the goddam band-aid off, torch this shit, and start fresh! I mean, so what if it takes a few centuries (or millennia!) to start the process over?iv I mean, we’ve been at this “humanity” thing for a few million years already,v what’s a couple more generations to make sure we get it right?

Certainly the “degrowthers” seem to be all aboard this train, doing as they are all they can to channel famous fiddling Emperor Nerovi (37-68 AD)vii by embracing quasi-Shariacviii stone age values (because at least those religions aren’t so shy about gender roles), and literally burning the world’s forests downix (because if accidents aren’t getting the job done then surely intention can). Y’see, for all the unseriousness octogenarian vampiricismx that is “secularism” with its dead-end “homo economicus” MO, the next generation still needs to create opportunities for itself, y’know? And goodness knows there’s a serious excess of “fuel buildup” at the top of the current food pyramid that’s only too ready to be turned into kindling, so why don’t we just see if we can create a few sparks? It’s for the children!! Why won’t someone think of the children??!?!!11

We can start simply enough: ignore the warning labels, grab some darts, and light ’em up. Smoking may not be good for you,xi but it’s probably good for us!

Plus, it still looks really, really damn cool.xii ***inhale***exhale***

 

  1. Kludge = Sludge = Too Old, Too Dark, and Too Gooey

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  2. ie. control over the world of atoms. ↩
  3. Like a dude. ↩
  4. The Third Temple is never as far away as it seems, it’s just that our lives are too short to see the whole picture! ↩

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  6. Roman Emperor Nero gets a bad rap these days mostly because he scapegoated the wrong Jews (ie. the early Christians) for starting the Great Fire of Rome, and history has never forgiven him! But much less an arsonist and sexual deviant, he was a lover of the arts, democratiser of political influence, and builder of empire, having strengthened Rome’s grip on the restless and unruly tribes of Britannia.  ↩
  7. The late great MP was obviously the exact opposite of what you’d call “woke” but even he was pro-burn-it-down as far back as a decade ago:

    Incidentally, you know the joke with the two jews and the piece of dog turd ? that’s exactly “us economy” : i will eat your moderately stinky shit and call it hamburger if you eat this very runny shit and call it a slurpee. this is “economic growth” to these muppets. and the problem is insoluble, because shit drives away the food. and even when it isn’t. kid getting to choose college will predictably not go to the one that actually teaches something. by now, obviously kid is more likely to “go to college” than summon up his entire extended family and make each person eat some of his shit at a great family reunion, “because you people suck”. “no mom, i’m not holding a wedding. i’m holding a “you people suck” party, attendance is mandatory, and you will all have to delight in my excrement while telling me how just like pork and beans it tastes”. because sure as hell i’m not doing it to your dumbass excrement. i don’t suppose a generation war – in the proper, 20th century sense, with mass rapes, mass graves and concentration camps – was ever this morally necessary. forget justified, it’s not that it’s justified, it is that it’s a sine qua non mandatory requirement, just like hanging the nazis. now consider that Nero lived in very similar times, and all of a sudden you might see the lad as a very heroic figure. I’m persuaded that if I lived at that time, I would have also set Rome on fire and fiddled while it burned, also made horses senators and in general, the whole nine yards. It’s a historical necessity.

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  8. We all just wanna know what our jobs are!

    Related:

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  9. To quote Doomberg from his recent piece (emphasis added):

    Such logic makes what has occurred in the UK and other countries across Europe rather curious. We turn to a story from 2018 for some early details:

    “The 12 cooling towers at the Drax Power Station have dominated the flat North Yorkshire countryside since the plant was built to burn coal from local mines in the ’60s. It’s the largest power plant in the UK, and for years it served as a visible reminder of how essential coal has been for the country. But five years ago, Drax started switching from burning coal to burning wood.”

    In the intervening years, four of Drax’s six generators at its Selby facility have been converted to burn wood, while the two remaining coal-fired generators have been removed from service. The station currently produces about 4% of the UK’s electricity and sources much of its wood from abroad, especially Canada and the US. The rationale for this exercise is downright perplexing:

    “Drax started transitioning its units off of coal and onto wood fuel because the UK government is putting tight restrictions on carbon emissions to help fight climate change. This year, the country announced its plan to cease burning coal for electricity entirely by 2025. And under EU [and UK] law, biomass is classified as a source of carbon neutral energy.”

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  11. I say this tongue-in-cheek. Stimulants make the world go round! Skip the weed and fentanyl-laced party drugs, kiddos. Stick to nicotine (and caffeine) and take over the world:

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  12. From the forum:

    Pete: This thread is right up your alley 113. Marko Jukic: There is some kind of deep irony in nobody foreseeing that computers would fail to decentralize bureaucratic organizations, but succeed at decentralizing the labor of record-keeping they were burdened with, shifting it instead onto the customer/user/hapless victim.

    113: Totally. It’s why I’ve always hated the surface of blockchain utopianism. as though an “unstoppable” bureacracy machine made of something no one can think about (as is evident by the culture already here even) won’t install nightmares into human lives. at the moment it is opt-in. but systems at network scale become soft-coercive. hard for many classes of people to avoid having facebook accounts around 2012 etc. then if these systems ever became mandatory or enforced by something with monopoly on violence.. it’s meet the new boss, pretty similar to the old boss. lots of people here would be THRILLED by that outcome. “mass adoption”. I’m optimistic and tremendously pessimistic that computing could trigger the world to notice its illiteracy wrt to systems. infinite civilizational-stakes battle caused by the inability to look this in the face, computing maybe eventually will force the issue and/or spawn actually enlightened new gadgetry or vantage onto systemsness, coordination, consensus etc

    Pete: This seems like an increasingly likely outcome. In this western vacuum of ethnic tribal warlords who also have computer/systems competency. China isn’t alternative. They’re built for mega-centralisation.

    113:

    I assume bc my longpost lol

    Pete: I should really quit smoking eh. Keep starting all these forest fires.

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