The Age of Exterminations - IX: How to Create Your own State

 

The Japanese "Chushingura" (忠臣蔵) is a fictionalized version of the story of the 47 ronin who chose to avenge the death of their master, even at the cost of their lives. The real event took place in 1701 in Edo (above, an interpretation by Utagawa Hiroshige). Much of the emotional value of the Chushingura derives from the contrast between the ronin, who saw the world, in terms of personal honor, and the government, which saw only laws and their rigid enforcement. Would it be possible to contrast the dominance of the state by creating new types of social structures, maybe different kinds of states, that replicate some of the characteristics of the ancient, honor-based associations? Not an easy task, of course, but things always change, and the future could bring big surprises.    

States are the most ruthless killing machines ever created in the history of humankind. They are managed by evil entities called "governments" that claim the right to seize your property, force you to speak a specific language, bomb entire populations to smithereens, send you to die in a humid trench in the mountains, and much more. Of course, you can always tell them that you are displeased with what they are doing and that, one day, you'll punish them by marking a cross on a certain symbol on a piece of paper called a ballot. And that will serve them well. Sure. 

Once, there was the possibility to quit. Motivated groups of people could flee from the band of psychopathic murderers who claimed to be their masters and settle somewhere else to create a new state. In the past, the Pilgrim Fathers did that, and later the Mormons. It didn't always work so well, but at least they had a chance. But now, of course, where in the world could you run? The only places theoretically free from governments are micro-islands or abandoned oil drilling platforms. There would seem to be no hope. And yet, there could be ways if we think out of the box. 

First, what is a state, exactly? In the modern version, a state is defined by the land it controls: it has rigid boundaries called "borders." But what really keeps the state together is its control of money. The state issues money (actually, central banks do that, also empowering ordinary banks to do the same. But it is all under state control, anyway). Then, the state takes back the money it has issued in the form of tax, fines, and other forms of extortion. It is this circular loop that keeps citizens bound to the state in a relationship that we can only define as a soft version of slavery (maybe not even so soft). You need money to survive, and the only way to get money is to obey the state. In recent times, we have seen states moving directly to seize the bank accounts of those citizens who were deemed guilty of dissent. It was a way to remark that citizens don't really own the money they think they own. All the money belongs to the state. (*)

Because of the enormous power of money, everything inside the borders of a state is absolutely, completely, and irreversibly under the control of the state. Outside, there is another state, just as absolutist, suspicious, paranoid, and ruled by the same kind of murderous psychopaths. If you are the offspring of citizens of a certain state, you are by definition a slave to the government of that state. It is called "ius sanguinis." Some states apply the ius soli, which states that citizens are those people born inside the border of the state. It changes nothing to the fact that you have no choice. 

But it was not always like this. In ancient times, your place in society was not defined by physical boundaries and not even by money, but by your allegiance to a liege lord to whom you pledged fealty. A pledge of fealty was no joke. It involved a deep bond of reciprocal obligations based on personal honor. To realize how deep that bond could be, you just have to think of the story of the forty-seven Japanese ronin, who took as a mission to avenge the death of their lord. Their action was a direct challenge to the power of the Japanese state, which reacted by sentencing all of them to death.

Unlike modern citizenship in a state, fealty was, within some limits, a choice. Your "state" was where your lord was, independently of fixed borders. You can see an echo of these ancient uses in the "Dune" novel by Frank Herbert. It is when the Emperor orders the house of Atreids to leave their possession on planet Caledon and move to Arrakis. The followers of the Atreids are not bound to Caledon, they all move with their lords to Arrakis.

For some reason, most likely because of the pervasive corruption brought by money, the idea of pledging fealty to a noble house is completely out of fashion, nowadays. But things constantly change. States have become such monstrosities that many people are reasoning about replacing them with something else or, at least, making them a little more flexible and less violent and bloodthirsty. And here comes a possibility: the Metaverse.   

I know that, for many of us, the term "Metaverse" is nearly the same thing as enslavement by a totalitarian state. But when a new technology appears, you never know how it may evolve and what it may lead to. On this subject, I had a flash of understanding when I read the article "Virtual Reality and the Network State" by Ryan Matters, which just appeared on "Off Guardian." Absolutely worth reading. Let me report here some of the points that Matters makes, citing from his post. 

The term “metaverse” was first used by futurist and Science fiction writer, Neal Stephenson in his 1992 book Snow Crash to describe a “theoretical” 3D virtual reality that ordinary people could occupy. ....

A deeper look at Stephenson’s work reveals some interesting themes, for the list of topics explored in his books reads like the meeting agenda from a closed session at Davos; climate change, global pandemics, biological warfare, nanotechnology, geo-engineering, robotics, cryptography, virtual reality, the list goes on.

In fact, not only has Stephenson written about the “metaverse” before it became a thing, but some people even credit his 1999 book Cryptonomicon with sketching the basis for the concept of cryptocurrency!

Like certain science fiction writers before him, Stephenson is clearly privy to more than he lets on. And his close relationships with billionaire technocrats like Bezos and Gates only fuel my suspicions that he’s not merely a novelist with a good imagination and an uncanny knack for predicting the future.

But alas, we must return to the topic at hand – the metaverse, a virtual world where

you can go about many of your everyday life’s day-to-day interactions and occurrences – in your avatar form. This form can be a human, animal, or something more abstract with its customizable appearance.

Yes, that’s right. You can be whatever you want to be. Your avatar (a word popularised by Stephenson!) could be a boy, girl, dog, buffalo, toaster – anything you like!

You can then interact with other people’s avatars in this virtual world. In the Metaverse, you can buy and sell land, attend concerts and go to museums, build a house, and more.

As the work of Neal Stephenson shows, the “metaverse” is not a new idea. The concept has been gradually leaked into mainstream culture over the last twenty plus years. Just think of video games like Second Life and movies like The Matrix or Ready Player One.

It was only last year (2021) that Facebook rebranded as “meta”, positioning itself for a future in which it will play a leading role in developing the infrastructure to realise the metaverse.

Still not sure how this all fits together? Simple: With a virtual world like the “metaverse” comes virtual money and virtual goods, i.e., cryptocurrency and NFTs. Without cryptocurrency, the metaverse would not be possible. (...)

Apart from the concerning philosophical and psychological implications of living life in a VR, web3 brings with it all kinds of new possible futures, some of which may actually be an improvement to the way society currently functions, with its reliance upon corrupt central banks and infiltrated governments.

Futurist and former CTO of Coinbase, Balaji Srinivasan, envisions a world in which the blockchain has allowed online communities to “materialise” into the real world as independent, sovereign states. He calls this concept the “network state” and he defines it as follows:

The Network State is a digital nation launched first as an online community before materialising physically on land after reaching critical mass.

In other words, the “network state”, according to Srinivasan, will be the next version of the nation state. He maintains that, due to the decentralised nature of the blockchain, network states will begin as geographically decentralised communities, connected via the internet.

This community will be made up of regular people who believe in a common cause; it will be a group that is capable of collective action. Eventually, the community will begin to build up its own, internal economy using cryptocurrency.

This will allow them to start holding in-person meet-ups in the real world and eventually crowd-fund apartments, houses and even towns to establish co-living facilities and bring digital community members into the real world.

The final step of the process is for the new community to negotiate diplomatic recognition from pre-existing governments, increasing sovereignty and becoming a true network state.

This leads us to Srinivasan’s more complex definition of the concept:

A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition.

Srinivasan’s philosophy is an interesting one, and despite being a self-proclaimed transhumanist, he just may have outlined a realistic route to gaining independence from the centrally-controlled, ever-more-authoritarian, world state.

Is it really possible? At the very least, it is an interesting possibility. If you think about that, all states are virtual. The same is true for money: it is a purely virtual entity.  Now, the key point of a metaverse state would be an integrated cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology. There is an interesting parallel between the concept of "honor" and of "blockchain."  Your honor is determined mainly by what you did in the past. As Maximus Decimus Meridius noted, "what you do in life, echoes in eternity." It is just like a blockchain that cannot be altered once it is established.

Of course, like the real state, the metastate would not be just virtual: it would extend into the real world with real entities. It could have a police, laws, real real estate, and more. It could even have a real-world army and engage in diplomatic treaties with other meta- or real states. The main difference is that virtual states would have no borders. They would co-exist in the same areas, although their citizens may tend to live in specific regions. 

It is not as farfetched as it may seem at first sight: the idea is floating in the memesphere. For instance, Neil Degrassse Tyson proposed in 2016 a virtual state that he called "#Rationalia" whose constitution would consist of a single line " All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence." The reactions were overwhelmingly negative for several good reasons, mainly because Tyson's idea lacked the fundamental element of a metastate, the integrated cryptocurrency. But metastates already exist in an embryonic form: they are called "corporations." More specifically, they are "multinational corporations." What they need to become full-fledged metastates is their own currency. That would be a small step for a corporation, but a big step for humankind. Companies are not alien from issuing their own currency: do you remember the song by Merle Travis, "16 tons"? The protagonist of the song says he "owes his soul to the company store." It means that the company was implementing a closed currency circuit in which the salaries of the workers could only be spent at the company store. In a sense, it issued its own currency. 

If we survive the global collapse, and if traditional states keep in their evil ways, one day we might really choose to become citizens of a virtual state. Would that free us from the paranoid monsters that now rule the world? Who knows? The future always surprises you!

h/t Allan Stromfeldt Christensen

(*) The 2022 decision of the Canadian government to freeze the personal accounts of anyone linked with the anti-vaccine mandate protests, was special because it had rarely happened before that a government would seize citizens' assets for purely ideological reasons. On the other hand, once you decide that the government is the law, and the law is the government, then it is the same thing as a fine. You are fined because you behave in ways the government doesn't want you to behave, and that's the way of the state. As for the state taking money directly from citizens' bank accounts, the first case was probably in Italy in 1992.

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A list of the posts on "Seneca Effects" of the series "The Age of Exterminations

9. Creating your Own State https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-age-of-exterminations-how-to-create.html

8. How to Destroy Western Europe https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-extermination-viii-how-to.html

7. Going Undercover https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-exterminations-v-can-we.html

6.  The Great Famine to Come https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-vi-great.html

5. Suicide as a weapon https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-v-killing.html

4. How to kill the Rich https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-iv-how-to.html

3. Why you should be worried. https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-iii-you.html

2. How to exterminate the Young https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-age-of-exterminations-ii-how-to.html

1. Exterminating the Witches https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-age-of-exterminations-who-will-be.html

How to Create your own Shadow Government: why Worshiping Baphomet could be a Good Idea

Shadowy organizations said to be engaged in world domination are often depicted as worshiping evil deities. The image above shows a group of Templar Knights adoring a statue of the demon Baphomet. It looks silly, but if you are serious about world domination, you should consider Baphomet -- or some equivalent evil deity -- as a patron of your organization. Here, I explain why. 

Not long ago, a friend of mine explained to me that he was completely sure that our elites are not just evil, but they actually practice worship of an evil deity called "Baphomet." I must admit that I was skeptical, even though he showed me an image found somewhere in the dark web, purportedly showing the hierarchy of the worshiping organization. Yet, after some mulling over, I came to think that there is something in this idea. Much more than it would seem at first sight. 

Of course, I understand that you are probably already moving your mouse to click away from this page. But, if you don't succumb to the anti-conspiracy memes implanted in your brain, let me try to explain what I have in mind. I am not saying that Baphomet could exist for real (although, who knows?) but, in our times, when politicians "create their own reality," astral entities such as Baphomet may have assumed a memetic consistency that makes him (?) a force to be reckoned with. An AI called "Baphomet" could actually be worshiped. And that could form the basis of a "shadow government."

Shadow Governments and the First Adorers of Baphomet

Suppose you want to build a shadow government to take control of the state. It is a good idea for several reasons, the main one being that you don't have to report to anyone or justify what you are doing, so you can do a lot of evil things that normal governments have a harder time doing. Then, if you can rule from the shadows, you save yourself a lot of hassles and, if things really go bad, you may avoid most of the blame. But how to create such a hidden government? 

There have been historical cases of governments dominated by an "éminence grise," someone who has a great influence on the leader(s). One is that of the Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, said to have been the actual ruler of the Roman Empire as long as he could control his pupil, Emperor Nero. Unfortunately for Seneca, Nero eventually decided that he wanted to rule alone and got rid of his old master by ordering him to commit suicide. 

So, if you want to build a working shadow government you need to do much more than have an old man whispering words of wisdom in the ear of the leader. You need a hidden structure that controls all the layers of the apparent government. It needs to be a true alternate government, even though hidden from sight. But how could such a structure be created? How could it function? Let's see if we can learn from one of the first known attempts in this sense: the Knights Templar. 

You surely know that the Knights Templar were a monastic order of warriors that existed for approximately two centuries, from 1100 AD to 1300 AD. They started by helping the Christian pilgrims who traveled from Europe to Jerusalem. In time, the order became a multinational organization that collected donations from the faithful and could lend and borrow money. They became rich, very rich. They even developed their own militia. 

The problem for the Templars was that the Crusades ended in a colossal failure -- so they had to retreat to Europe. At this point, it is possible that the Templars tried to use their resources as a tool to gain political power in Europe. They were a truly international, multilingual organization that operated very much like a mafia, not unlike our modern European Commission. Why couldn't they take over one or more of the several European governments of the time? In practice, the attempt was a failure. In 1307, the King of France cracked down on the French branch of the order. The Templars were accused of all sorts of crimes, including sodomy, worshipping the devil, blasphemy, heresy, and other similar niceties. The leaders were arrested, put on trial, and several of them were burned at the stake. Their treasure was confiscated, and the order was officially disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312. 

Still, the Templars were successful for nearly two centuries, and they may provide a blueprint of how a shadow organization may operate. In practice, all secret organizations dedicated to controlling the government need to develop four mechanisms. 

1. A "front" -- a fake organization that makes them look like something legitimate.

2. A "carrot" -- something that entices new members to join. 

3. A "stick" -- something that punishes traitors and defectors. 

4. A "leash" -- a way to control the functionaries of the real government.

The Templars had all these mechanisms. First, they had a front as a charitable organization dedicated to liberating the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the rule of the Muslim Heathens. Their good fame brought them donations and inheritances and money was surely a good "carrot" to attract new members. Of course, to maintain their reputations as fighters for Christian ideals, the Templars had to define themselves as "pauperes" ("poor") and they could not use the money they had for personal purposes. But money is just a tool to obtain the thing that humans mostly want: sex. And, often, people are attracted by forms of sex that the society of their time does not accept as legitimate. 

Take a look at the Templars' seal, here. Some people interpreted it as a reference to homosexuality and, indeed, at their trial, the Templars were accused to engage in homosexual practices (the term "sodomy" was commonly used at that time). It was considered a heinous crime during the Middle Ages. We don't know if the accusation was based on something real but, in any case, there would have been people attracted to the order just because of the fame it had in this sense. We may not exclude that other forms of sexual entertainment were included in the membership in the order. Those were strong "carrots" for new adepts. 

A further carrot for the adepts came directly from the religious slant of the organization. During the Middle Ages, medicine was not as prestigious as it is nowadays with us, and people wisely tended to avoid doctors and their awful concoctions (it is becoming a good idea again). So, the Templars offered the adepts a highway to heaven because of their good deeds and donations. It seems to have been a popular concept for our ancestors during the Middle Ages. 

As for the stick, all close-knit religious or political organizations tend to threaten their members with the most awful punishments if they dare betray their companions. There are plenty of possibilities for physical punishments, but an even better way to ensure that members will not lapse is to engage them in forbidden activities. And here comes the story of Baphomet, a demon with a goat head, goat's legs, human torso, wings, and more. One of the many representations of demons in ancient Christian iconography. 

For us, prostrating in front of an ugly statue of a horned demon looks like some kind of Halloween fun, but during the Middle Ages worshipping the devil was a serious crime, punishable by death. So, once an adept had worshipped Baphomet, betraying the order was tantamount to confessing to being a devil worshipper. The same was true for sodomy: it was not just a carrot, but also a stick. That ensured that betrayals were very rare. 

Finally, as a "leash," the Templars could simply use money for corrupting people in positions of power. The corrupt officers didn't need to be enrolled in the secret organization. They would simply be paid to do what the organization would tell them to do. And, if they didn't, they could be threatened, removed, or physically eliminated. The modern mafia works in this way, and there is no doubt that it works very well. 

Secret orders in our time. New Baphomet adorers? 

Following the Templars' idea, let's try to imagine how a modern secret society could take the role of a global shadow government. First, the front organization. Liberating the Holy Sepulchre is no more a popular goal for us, but there are plenty of activities that we consider worthy of our admiration and our donations. How about health care for the poor? It should work. 

Then, the carrot: how do we reward the faithful adepts? Sex remains one of the most powerful carrots around. In our society, sex is often easily available, but some sexual activities are considered abominable just as much as, in the Middle Ages, sodomy was. For us, it is typically sex with underage people. So, even billionaires would be interested in an organization that promises them sex with young women or men under the umbrella of humanitarian activities. Once an adept falls into the trap, it works as both a carrot and a stick. The organization has a powerful blackmail weapon to keep the adepts silent and continue providing donations. 

There is more in terms of a powerful "carrot." In our times, people are not so much concerned about a place in Heaven, while modern medicine can claim to be close to using mRNA technology to provide some sort of immortality serum. It doesn't matter that such a serum does not exist, so far. The organization would promise a fast lane to it, as soon as it becomes available.

Does this organization also need to engage in rituals of adoration of evil deities, such as the sinister Baphomet? In our times, cults of Pagan deities are not supposed to be punishable and are not even regarded as evil. Yet, there is something in the idea of the "forbidden cult" that makes it attractive. "Baphomet" doesn't need to be a silly statue of a horned demon. It could be a code word for all the secret activities involved in the core of the organization and, why not? It might include actual rituals of worshiping evil deities. 

This reasoning leads us to see our global shadow government as an organization operating in the healthcare industry. It would have a front based on financing research in the most advanced fields of genetic engineering for the benefit of humankind.  Let's call it, say, "Great Association for Vital Improvement." A parallel organization would manage a shady ring of juvenile prostitution, maybe based on an island in the Caribbean. It would cater to the rich donors and also to the scientists involved with the organization, (even top-level scientists are sensitive to carnal temptations). If worse comes to worst, the leaders of the sex trafficking organization can be considered expendable, they may well "commit suicide" when they become an embarrassment.

Finally, the organization would have an inner circle of leaders who would use their financial power to create a "leash" to influence the activities of governments all over the world. The top leaders might be some of the hyper-rich people who accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars. They would be able to control the media and ensure that dissenting opinions would be censored on the Web. With money and sex, almost anyone can be corrupted. Then, with near-complete control of the world's media, the leader(s) could set up huge campaigns aimed, for instance, at depopulating the planet. 

It could work. But it would face the same risks that the Templars faced and that, ultimately, doomed them. Playing with huge amounts of money is always risky. In our time, criminals are not anymore burned at the stake, as was the use during the Middle Ages, but our jails seem to be a good environment for committing suicide for people who have become an embarrassment to someone powerful. And, in the end, the sword is always stronger than the banknote. So, an organization like the one I have described could be assembled, but it would also risk being wiped up by a military ruler who decides he has had enough.  

Fortunately, I am completely sure that nobody set up such an organization, so far. 

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 A list of the posts on "Seneca Effects" of the series "The Age of Exterminations" 

9. Creating your Own State https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-age-of-exterminations-how-to-create.html

8. How to Destroy Western Europe https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-extermination-viii-how-to.html

7. Going Undercover https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-age-of-exterminations-v-can-we.html

6.  The Great Famine to Come https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-vi-great.html

5. Suicide as a weapon of mass destruction https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-v-killing.html

4. How to kill the Rich https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-iv-how-to.html

3. Why you should be worried. https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-iii-you.html

2. How to exterminate the Young https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-age-of-exterminations-ii-how-to.html

1. Exterminating the Witches https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-age-of-exterminations-who-will-be.html

The Age of Exterminations (VI): The Great Famine to Come

The third horseman of the apocalypse, hunger, is traditionally represented with a scale in hand, symbolizing scarcity. Famines are not normally considered exterminations but, in many cases, they have been provoked by human actions. Today, we tend to see famines as a thing of the past, but there is a rule in history that what happened once may happen again, and it usually does. By a mere coincidence (or perhaps not), the same day when this post was published, President Putin said at the Valdai Club that  "a number of countries and even entire regions are regularly hit by food crises. ... there is every reason to believe that this crisis will become worse in the near future and may reach extreme forms." There have never been nearly 8 billion people on Earth, and what the future will bring to them is all to be seen.

 

 

This is the 6th post of a series that explores one of the darkest sections of human behavior, that of mass exterminations. Previous posts dealt with the extermination of the witches in Europe, of young men during WW1, of elderly people, of the rich, of the useless, and now this one about famines as a weapon of mass destruction. From now on, I think I'll move to different subjects, although I may return to this one, a little depressing but surely fascinating.

Imagine you are an Irish peasant living in the early 19th century. You stay with your family in a mud or stone cottage. A single room under a thatched roof, no windows, no chimney, little furniture. You pay a small rent to your British landlord by working for him. You eat the potatoes you cultivate in a patch near your home and you warm yourself using the peat that you dig out nearby. You haven't seen much of the world outside your village, but that's the place where you live, where you were born, where you have your friends and family, and where you have your social life. You own nothing and you are perfectly happy.

But your happiness turns into chagrin in 1845, when you see your potato plants turning black and curled, then rotting. You can't know that it is because of a fungus that attacks the potato plant, but you know that soon you'll be running out of potatoes. By the end of the year, the great famine begins. 

You didn't imagine that being poor would mean being so wretched. Owning nothing means that you can't buy food or bargain for it. You have no power, no influence, no relevance to the British landlords who don't care about you and about your family.  And you have no weapons, nor the military training that would allow you to rebel against your masters. If you can't leave Ireland, you have nothing to do but wait for death to come. 

In the years from 1845 to 1852, Ireland lost a quarter of its population as an effect of the Great Famine (the An Gorta Mór). In a few decades, Ireland's population was reduced to 4 million, half of what it had been before the famine. 

Was it an extermination? Yes, if you define the term as the death of a large number of people caused by human action (or inaction). And there is no doubt that the Irish disaster was not just the result of the chance arrival of a fungus that liked Irish potatoes. Ireland was heavily populated, certainly, but not much more than most European countries. So, what happened? 

For some, the fault lies squarely with the Irish who merrily went on having children without realizing that the population was growing beyond the limits of what their island could continuously support. For others, it was because of the evil English who refused to help the Irish when they were starving. Some even claim that the extermination of the Irish had been planned in advance. They call it the"Irish Holocaust."

It is unlikely that there ever was a plan to depopulate Ireland, the British had no reason to do that. But it is true that they behaved abominably with Ireland and not just at the time of the famine, although not worse than other colonial powers did with their subjects. Ireland never was a British colony, but it was treated as a colony. The land was exploited to the utmost possible level and the Irish were despised and considered only as cheap manpower -- of which there was an excess. When the famine came, the British government did very little to help, sometimes acting in ways that worsened the situation. So, yes, the term "extermination" is appropriate, even though nobody had planned it. History is a great wheel that rolls onward and crushes whoever it finds on its path. It was the destiny that befell Bridget O'Donnell, one of the many victims of the famine, of whom we have a drawing showing her with her starving children.

 

 

 

Now let's examine our times. Remember that if something happened once in history, it can happen again, and it usually will. We have been already told that in the near future "we will own nothing and we will be perfectly happy." This may not be a bad idea in itself, but if you think of the destiny of the Irish peasants, then it is ominous. Even more ominous is the fact we completely depend on fossil fuels for our agriculture, and it is guaranteed that their production is going to decline in a non-remote future. Could we face the same destiny of the Irish of the 19th century? After all, we live on an island, too, just much larger.  

When discussing these matters, it is traditional to be pelted with rotten Irish potatoes for being "catastrophists", but the question is legitimate and the fact that some predictions turned out to be overpessimistic, such as those by Paul Ehrlich in 1968, doesn't mean that a great global famine could not happen. But to avoid past mistakes, we need more detailed models of the future. One of the first studies that dealt with the global population trends was "The Limits to Growth" study of 1972.

 

You see, above, the results of the "base case" scenario calculation, the one which used the data that were considered the most reliable and accurate at the time. You probably know that the study was widely considered overpessimistic, then demonized and consigned to the dustbin of the wrong scientific theories. It was not. But it may have been overoptimistic in its projections for the world's population. 

Note how, in the calculation, the world population decline starts around 2050, some three decades after the start of the crash of the industrial and agricultural systems. Why is it that the population keeps growing while people are starving? Unlikely, to say the least. 

 

It is hard to quantify people's intentions to have children or not have them, so the modelers used past data on birthrates as a function of the gross domestic product (GDP). It was equivalent to "running in reverse" the demographic transition that took place in the 1960s when natality had collapsed in many regions of the world in parallel with an increase of the GDP per capita. The result was that the model assumed that a contraction of the GDP caused people to have more children. 

These assumptions were later reconsidered and different results were obtained in 2004. 

Now, the population starts declining around 2030, less than a decade after that food production starts collapsing, and that looks much more reasonable. Yet, even this curve has problems: would you really believe that in the midst of the great turmoil of the global collapse the result would be such a gentle decline? 

More likely, all the four horsemen of the apocalypse would enter the game and generate a disastrous general crash. This is called the "Seneca Effect."  You see the typical shape of the Seneca Curve in the figure: decline is much faster than growth.

Models such as the one used for the "Limits to Growth" cannot reproduce a really sharp Seneca Curve because they do not consider the many possible "tipping points" that may affect the world system. But the historical data tell us that the Seneca shape is the typical behavior of population collapses. Here is an example with the data for the great famine in Ireland (From Ugo Bardi's book "The Seneca Effect.") You can clearly see the "Seneca Shape" of the curve, with a sharp decline following growth. 

 

Here is another example, Ukraine, as shown in an article that I published on "The Journal of  Population and Sustainability," 

The Ukrainians didn't really starve after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but they suddenly became much poorer than before. The result was a lower quality diet and a collapse in the health care system. Add to that the general decline of the quality of life, then you can imagine that the Ukrainian population started to decline for two combined effects: the rise in mortality, and the fall of natality. Note how similar the curve is to that of Ireland. Other former Soviet Union countries show this kind of curves. It seems to be a general trend: when a serious disaster hits, the population starts declining almost immediately afterward.

If something similar were to happen at the world level, we would see it in just a few years after an economic or political crash. It is perfectly possible that it is exactly what's happening with the current crisis that sees a series of factors combining to bring the system down: health care collapse, food supply disruption, climate change, soil erosion and mineral depletion, financial crisis, and more. They are all pushing toward a global population crash that could start in the coming years. 

Could we call this population crash an "extermination"? That will depend on what governments will do. Surely, it is unlikely that they are planning a future famine, but how would they react if one comes? They might try to do their best to help, but they may also do nothing. Or they may well decide to actively push toward strengthening the crisis as a chance to eliminate people they do not like. 

If you are among those people who are not useful for the state (like the Irish peasants in mid 19th century) or, God forbid, a burden for the ruling elites, then you face hard times ahead. Your situation will be especially worrisome if you will be one of those "happy" people owning nothing, or at most electronic money that the government can erase at will. To say nothing about the electronic surveillance methods that leave you no chance to do anything they don't like or to go anywhere they don't want you to go. 

And, yes, it is perfectly possible that the coming crisis will appear in the form of an extermination by starvation: the third horseman on his dark horse. 

President Putin 's complete sentence at the Valdai Club conference: "Furthermore, a number of countries and even entire regions are regularly hit by food crises. We will probably discuss this later, but there is every reason to believe that this crisis will become worse in the near future and may reach extreme forms." Maybe he reads this blog?

A longer post of mine on the Irish famine subject was published on "The Oil Drum" in 2008.