philosophy – REAL Green Adaptation

Demons become Angels

We all have demons. In many cases these demons are in the mind. Those things that cause mental pain and suffering. In a reconciliation with acceptance grounded in humility combined with a going forth in newfound wisdom, transformational experience can result. I am speaking here of the spiritual and of the sacred of the individual, but this applies to the macro too. Meaning and truth from experience result in wisdom. A wisdom that is a decision process of what to keep and what to reject. This process can create angels which are serendipitous. Demons become angels.

There is no denying that tech has been our collective angel. It has saved us from so much pain and suffering. It has given us hope in the future. It is also taking us like a boiling frog to the cliff of a status quo shift from advancement to decline. Currently tech is on a revolutionary course that may destroy us. I say revolutionary because it is now self-organizing without real constraints.

It is my view that this process of change is without the basic wisdom of reflecting on what knowledge to keep and what to reject except around the margins. This is most apparent with AI which I have given several posts on, but it is not confined to AI. It is also as basic as the modern car culture that has made globalism possible. It is basically the complexity that we are embedded with more generally. All those things that bring relatively affordable and reliable food, water and shelter to us. Mainly from fossil fuels, advanced materials, and the grid. A grid that is of power and digital.

This complexity exposure risks failure far more than the threat of AI applications of autonomy and performance turning on us. There are many warnings of the machine turning on us once it achieves the singularity of transhumanism. What is more likely to turn on us is a vast investment in a network that can’t be sustained resulting in a bifurcation of destructive change where abandonment, irrational, and dysfunction cascade. This is present even without AI in our complex global culture of just-in-time support but increasingly this complex is now far more exposed with the huge AI bubble.

It is my basic opinion from my life system of REAL Green that this AI bubble of both finance and tech will be stopped in its tracks by basic constraints of human confidence, resources, and economics. It is often the weakest links that bring a system down. The AI bubble has so many weak links. One of the weakest is our civilizational complexity itself. It is apparent resources and capital may be a hard limit, but complexity is less understood. Resources and the capital threat appear less immediate. The complexity issue is less understood but may be more immediate.

The complexity issue points to a door passed through and then a return is no longer possible. We may have created an enhanced system that fails without a backup plan. Many important skills and hard-won knowledge could be lost in a relatively short period of time. Vital resources used up and mal invested in a way of life with no future.

I am speaking of that angel that are those wonderful things both abstract and physical that give our world a feeling of comfort and enjoyment. This angel may become our demon if the AI revolution adapts civilization as the technocrats and tech oligarchs wish for. Robots and an artificial general intelligence may be just that switch which flips an angel to a demon haunting our collective soul with collapse.

I want to offer hope to you that entertain my REAL Green adaptation. This hope I offer is that this AI bubble will burst soon and the result will be painful but longer term useful. I am also speaking of the related renewable and battery tech driving the energy transition. That bubble has burst but has achieved some great tech for the macro decline process that the planet and human civilization is in. This AI demon may hit the wall of constraints both physical and abstract that serendipitously stop the unrestrained revolution of technology. This is the last frontier that could end our civilizational growth based mal adaption fantasy.

The angel of this is some very useful tech that can be applied to powering down our growth-based system. A way of life of manifest destiny which is a way of life without a future. We are still going to need growth to adapt to decline that will be the mess of a failing modern life. Modern life to me is an everything bubble but one that has created some very powerful tech that if reoriented with hard-won wisdom could make the decline process less swift and dramatic. The survival of a species is dictated by its resilience to the speed and depth of a shock.

I have no idea if this demon we have created will end up being an angel. If what is occurring right now were to be stopped very soon before its infection into the vital organs of civilization the resulting and remaining capabilities could help us through the bottleneck ahead of a failure of the narrative of unending growth in a finite system. If a wisdom that comes out of this hypothetical crisis is strong enough to overcome the cascading decline of abandonment, irrational, and dysfunction then we may have an angel of transformation to a new mankind post techno man.

The Clever will be Deceived

Who said, “The clever will be deceived”?

This is copilot:

“No widely recognized historical, literary, or philosophical source is known to have said the exact quote “The clever will be deceived.” None of the major searchable quote databases or attributed sources show this phrase as a standard or famous quotation. “

I remember this from my reading of Taoism but can’t find the exact quote.

Clever person definition:

“A clever person is someone who combines intelligence, quick thinking, creativity, and adaptability to solve problems and navigate life effectively.”

We all want to be clever, right.

I felt like mentioning this quote this morning because our collective lives are barreling towards what tech people call Singularity. AI is the ultimate in clever. The definition is:

“a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change:”

I agree with this but from a different viewpoint, instead of growth what is really occurring is decline. In my view of life, humanity is in a tipping over into decline. This is fractal and hence non-negotiable regarding the cycles of life. The machine does not mesh with life. It is anti-life and because of this life will snuff it out.

This process is the Anthropocene emerging from the wonderfully productive Holocene. It is a process of humanism also in regard to wisdom, which is the guarantor of proper knowledge. Proper human wisdom regarding our place in nature is now effectively mute. Knowledge is increasingly being transformed by the machine not man. We now look to the machine for wisdom.

I mention fractal because AI is not fractal in the sense of life. It is purely technical and it contains no spirituality. Life is strangely spiritual in a fractal sense. I say strangely because we are so wrapped up in our technology these days we humans experience spirituality in ways that can’t be defined so we find it strange.

The machine can’t let go into grace that the spiritual demands. It can act spiritual, but it can’t participate in a spiritual experience. It can’t even assist such an experience because grace is juxtaposed to knowing. Grace is the opening up to the fractal nature of the universe and letting go into it which in a mystical sense is the nothingness of the ego.

AI is quickly using up high quality energy and resources that an advanced society demands. It is layering complexity in such a way that resilience and sustainability are no longer possible. The car culture was bad enough but now the automation and substitution of human agency by the machine will one day leave us cold and hungry.

This will probably happen sooner rather than later because life is speeding up. In addition, we are in what many call a fourth turning where we are battling amongst ourselves, which seems to occur in cycles. This time around, because of our interconnectedness and technical advancement, this turning is particularly dangerous.

If we could only stop here, then maybe we could use these powers for a power down into something balanced and enduring. The problem with introducing such wisdom to this process is technology is now in charge. It is important to realize what this means. Carl Schmidt sums it up best:

“A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology.”

This process is self-organizing in competitive cooperation which is a wonderful example of an incongruous juxtaposition. It is a paradox of humanism which is well grounded in the cycles of life meaning humans advance and decline also.

Humans play a game of advancement with accepted rules whereby the game becomes a deadly serious endgame that humans inevitably fall into in what C.S Lewis called Hell:

“Picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passion of envy, self-importance, and resentment”.

This points to scaling. Humans no longer scale properly to long term survival. This does not need to be species extinction, but it does point to cultural collapse.

Now more than ever I recommend REAL Green. I would recommend this to those advanced parts of society that will experience destructive changes from AI. We do not know how long this complexity layering can go on. We do not know how long this fourth turning of human conflict can continue.

REAL Green could be a place for all those people who lose their livelihood and meaning by being replaced by automation and robots to go to. If society could send back a significant amount of these displaced people back to the land it would create a buffer for decline and collapse.

Since this is unlikely, I recommend REAL Green to those who can who are very few. I am struggling with REAL Green myself. I am in my 60’s with very little help with my homesteading and permaculture farming. I am physically finding it hard to keep up. I tell myself “what the hell else am I going to do”? I need projects and to be close to the land so I will do this until I can’t.

I am in the purgatory of modern life trying to maintain a quality of life and at the same time returning to an earlier time of biomass and localism. To be honest I am throwing money at it because that’s all I have to work with. People are generally not interested in the earlier ways and localism. If they are they don’t have the luxury of time and money.

I am one man tending many acres, animals, and things. It should be a large family with animal power with the support of a local community much like it was around the 1850’s. That time is gone but it may return in a rhyme.

A chat with Grok

Greetings from “God country”. I am fading away into irrelevance and loving it. This is part of my mystic journey. I have said enough although occasionally if inspired I will post something. I never was anything special. REAL Green is little more than a survival strategy doomed like all others. Yet, it is a very rewarding lifestyle.

I believe AI to be anti-life. It is a mechanization that will further the trap of modern life. It will be the last human effort at the unattainable. That said it is inevitable in the battle between spirit and science which is human duality. “Battle” is a binary term that misses this point because the reality is this is just the interaction of the sacred in the cyclic which is above good and evil.

I had a spiritual experience 20 years ago in a beautiful confluence of two crystal clear streams a mile from the mighty Missouri River on a magical farm, late one night after a thunderstorm. That night lighting did something to me or so I thought. This was November 2003 during the Harmonic Concordance which added to the sensationalism in my mind.

I was told the real web is connectivity of the waterways of the world not the human web of internet and grid. This was part delusional, but it is in the delusional where we are tricked back to reality through grace, so this was more a reality adjustment which can result from a spiritual dellusion.

This was the birth of REAL Green which is an imperfect but necessary effort at reconciling the trap humans are in. It is a journey not an end. It is about simplifying complexity but more a synthesis not a movement to one or the other. This modern world is much like the vast ice sheets that primitive man live near at the beginning of the end of the last ice age. Modern life is our constraint like the ice sheets of old.

We humans want to think this is all our doing but really it is just part of the cyclic disposition of the sacred. This mechanization of life we call modernity will end and as a matter of fact is turning over now. We are journeying back in a hero’s journey of duality but deceived by our cleverness. Collective grace awaits us somewhere in the fog of the future.

Twenty years ago I discarded my electronics and lived purposely anti-modern only to make a round trip back to asking Grok about REAL Green years later. What was once a “terminator” I lived in angst of to now a curiosity I asked a question to.

My message is about the current and the eddy. The eddy is a product of the current not an opposition. Modern life is an eddy about to be absorbed back into the current only to spin out again somewhere in deep time.

This is from Grok:

It seems like you might be asking about “REAL Green Adaptation,” which could refer to a specific concept or framework. Based on the context available to me, “REAL Green Adaptation” appears to be tied to a philosophy or lifestyle promoted through a blog called REAL Green Adaptation (realgreenadaptation.blog). Here’s an explanation based on that context:

“REAL Green Adaptation” is a term coined by the anonymous author of the blog, who describes it as a form of “green prepping.” It combines environmental awareness, self-reliance, and resilience to address challenges like climate change, resource depletion, and societal decline. The approach emphasizes realistic and relative adaptation to a world perceived as being in a state of ecological and civilizational decline. Key elements include:

Localism and Low Carbon Living: It advocates for living locally with a focus on low carbon capture, blending traditional (old ways) and modern (new tech) methods to reduce environmental impact while maintaining practicality.

Spiritual Permaculture: The concept integrates a spiritual dimension, encouraging a deeper connection to nature and planetary health as part of personal meaning-making, often described as a “hospice” for accepting decline.

Hybridization and Resilience: It involves adapting by salvaging useful aspects of modern life and merging them with simpler, more sustainable practices from the past to enhance local resilience and sustainability.

Behavioral Shift: The philosophy stresses changing individual behavior to acknowledge and mitigate a “collapse process,” not as an inevitable end but as a trajectory informed by systems dynamics and ecological limits.

The term “REAL” seems to stand for Realistic, Relative, and Accepting Localism—reflecting a pragmatic approach that works within the constraints of modern society (e.g., carbon dependency) rather than rejecting it outright. It’s aimed at individuals and small communities seeking meaning and preparedness in an uncertain future, without promising global solutions.