It's just a matter of days, now...

First thread here, so be gentle.

My major field of study is in the dynamics of large and small collectives, something I've studied for many years. No, I'm not an academician. I'm an author and a poet and a playwrite and a damn hard working individual. But it would be wrong of me not to share what I've developed with others who might listen.

Part of the study of collectives is understanding how they respond to different types of threats. Collectives almost always respond in the same manner to the same stimuli, because when a dissimilar group of individuals gather together for action their common attributes determine the nature of the collective intellect. As they have little in common, this tends to be the subconcious motivations. Specific to this problem are hunger threats, safety threats, and moral threats. I have social equations for these, and would be pleased to share them with anyone who wishes (although I don't know how to draw equations in BBcode).

Hunger threats result in a tendency for revolution.
Security threats result in a tendency for violence.
Moral threats result in a tendency for destruction.

To understand where we are headed in the next many days, one must understand where we are first. We have trillions of dollars in print, but none are being spent. These are dammed up behind the banks like a leaking reservoir. We must print this money to support a citizenry which cannot support itself after economic collapse. If we did not do so, it would result in revolution. (hunger threat) Additionally, we are constantly reminded of the possibility of security threats. The government must respond (even ineffectively) or violence will erupt. Finally, we have devided western society into two moral camps--progressive liberalism and social conservatism--which can neither communicate effectively nor abide each other's presence.

So here's what you're looking at as a catastrophe, if you're the fear porn type.

First, the stock market will recover on positive news. It will jump wildly upward, and all reports will herald the end of the great recession. This is not the end. This is the beginning of the end.

Next, business spikes. This will take all of a week. Banks will loosen their hold on their reserves of cash. That cash is worthless to them unless it is used, but up until this point they've been afraid to take the risk of releasing it.

The cash drops into the economy like an atomic bomb, destroying everything around it. With so much cash in circulation, the price of everything is going to skyrocket. And the keynesians in the fed will be able to understand nothing other than a continuation of the same policies. This is the trigger.

With hyper inflation, several things must happen. a) revolutionary feelings will erupt (hunger threat) b)The military must be withdrawn from active combat (nothing to pay them with, and they're needed to enforce the peace. c) most importantly, infrastructure must fail.

That last one requires some explanation. The Western economy operates on the supposition that products from anywhere in the world may be quickly transferred to anywhere else in the world. When the price of goods skyrockets, so will the price of fuel. Without the input of cheap(ish) energy, product transportation will all but cease.

Finally, consider that western society has been in moral conflict with eastern society and middle-eastern society for centuries. Given the sudden weakness, I expect war to break out. Not in the middle east, but in Spain, Turkey, Armenia, and Serbia... areas where the tensions are high and the mixture of morally opposed collectives is strong. This starts a bloody conflict which has to sweep the world, if through nothing other than contageon. And moral wars mean killing, and that includes mommies and daddies and babies and puppies.

Finally, the warring forces collapse. Without the transport of food, the will to fight (even when driven by the supposed prestige of God) will eventually falter and fail. By that time we will have been knocked backwards at least 100 years, much as Europe was after WWII. This time there will be no superpowers to rebuild, however. The superpowers will be smoking ruins.

That's my first post. Sorry if it's a downer.

Well kiddo, not a bad job for your first thread. I think mine was on celebrity drool.

But I do question this aspect.

Originally posted by herrw


Hunger threats result in a tendency for revolution.
Security threats result in a tendency for violence.
Moral threats result in a tendency for destruction.

I see;
Hunger issues resulting in violence
Security issues resulting in revolution
and moral threats? Please elaborate.

SnF for your first go, however.

Very well composed first post. I enjoyed reading your conclusions, regardless of the negative outcome

The only comment I have is you inferences are predicated on human nature, which is notoriously complicated. I would love to see the formulations you used.

However, I do feel like you have accurately represented the cause and effect of our nature, though i fear that the responses are no so straight forward, ie. Starvation can lead to violence and revolution. I can not speak to the conclusions drawn, but I tend to be a bit more optomisitic.

Originally posted by beezzer
Well kiddo, not a bad job for your first thread. I think mine was on celebrity drool.

But I do question this aspect.

Originally posted by herrw


Hunger threats result in a tendency for revolution.
Security threats result in a tendency for violence.
Moral threats result in a tendency for destruction.`

I see;
Hunger issues resulting in violence
Security issues resulting in revolution
and moral threats? Please elaborate.

SnF for your first go, however.

Hunger threats IS a security threat. How that plays out depends on a variety of factors.

Moral threats lead to an existential crisis. Same. How it plays out depends.

As for any one date?

Naw, you just don't know.

Just think positive, Op. Watch "The Secret." I'm currently sending love, light, and peace to the World!!

Bag that, gotta buy more ammo!

Nice job.

reply to post by herrw


I'm with Beezzer.

Welcome
You should be a great asset here.

SnF

reply to post by herrw


Well thought out, but why "in the next few days?"

And, for the record, for the first time in history, the banks are making money off those reserves. They are getting interest on their reserves, which is an absurd concept that has only been around for less than 2 years, but for the first time in history, our officials decided the best way to stimulate the economy was to pay the banks NOT to loan out their money?

Anyway, I don't see the cash hitting the market like an atomic bomb, but I'm hopeful. I'd rather get this crash on the road while I'm still young enough to deal with it, instead of waiting to leave it over the heads of my children.

Originally posted by darkhorserider
reply to post by herrw

 

Well thought out, but why "in the next few days?"

And, for the record, for the first time in history, the banks are making money off those reserves. They are getting interest on their reserves, which is an absurd concept that has only been around for less than 2 years, but for the first time in history, our officials decided the best way to stimulate the economy was to pay the banks NOT to loan out their money?

Anyway, I don't see the cash hitting the market like an atomic bomb, but I'm hopeful. I'd rather get this crash on the road while I'm still young enough to deal with it, instead of waiting to leave it over the heads of my children.

I sometimes wonder how this could happen and I consider a scenario where central banks / banks around the world react with panic to a crash of sorts not heeding what everyone else is doing. So where one or a few banks begin stimulus and releasing funds is not a problem, just about every flaming bank launches globally and we have a situation of sudden hyper-inflation. Woops! It's the coordinated / uncoordinated synchronized bank stimulus and funds dump that destroys the worldwide financial system and economy.

Originally posted by beezzer
Well kiddo, not a bad job for your first thread. I think mine was on celebrity drool.

But I do question this aspect.

Originally posted by herrw


Hunger threats result in a tendency for revolution.
Security threats result in a tendency for violence.
Moral threats result in a tendency for destruction.

I see;
Hunger issues resulting in violence
Security issues resulting in revolution
and moral threats? Please elaborate.

SnF for your first go, however.

Thank you.

My conclusions are based on historical data, as interpreted by myself. All conclusions should therefore be suspect and checked for validity.

Hunger threats, that is threats to the basic staples of life (and these change as societies change) almost always result in a tendency to change the organizational nature of the collective in question. Hunger presaged the Boshevic and French revolutions. Economic collapse paved the way for the nazi regime. Every great shift in power has been preceded by either a lack of food or the means to acquire it.

Security threats, that is threat to life and limb, need not be immediate in nature, and they tend to result in a desire to fight. This includes security threat to one's dependents as well as one's self. Consider your own response if you walked into your house to find your daughter being savagely beaten. The immediate response is to respond violently. But what if one imagined the same scene, without actually seeing it in reality? The effect is the same: the deeper psyche cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality, and so the body reacts as if under immediate threat. So 'fear porn' is really 'violence porn' when removed from reality. The suggestion of a threat is as immediate as the threat itself. Once posited, the reaction is gutteral. Consider the collective response of the United States after the attacks of September 11, on that score.

Moral threats respresent a threat to one's ideology (religious or otherwise). Such ideologies which have a set dogma represent very powerful motivations for action. Consider the basic 'guy rule' that one does not touch another man in a bathroom. It's not written down, but it's pretty well accepted. Keep your eyes to yourself, as it were. If a man walked up to another man in a bathroom and caressed his shoulder, would it be silly for the offender to not expect a black eye or a bloody lip? Moral threats are those in which dogma is questioned or violated. It can be a question as to the preeminence of Allah, refusal to accept atheism (such as in the 'Terror' of the French Revolution) or ridicule of the existence of global warming. Progressivism is a moral collective. Conservatism is a moral collective as well. Hell, in some senses Keynesianism can be considered a moral collective.

That clear things up?

reply to post by herrw


It does, if I understand correctly, you're describing the precursor, not the post.

reply to post by moniesisfun


I do not pretend to know a specific date. According to my equations (which are relational equations rather than mathematical equations) we are at a tipping point. It is literally days away. I've shared my equations with a fellow student (Masters in PolySci and a defense contractor) whose interests lean the same direction as mine, and his response was, "those are pretty much the same as mine, as far as outcome, but they account for more."

Hunger threats result in revolution. A Hunger threat is not a security threat, because the hunger need not be present. Only the threat of hunger is necessary. A security threat is the possibility that someone might walk up to you and stab you in the neck. Yes, a hunger threat can evolve into a security threat, and vice/versa, but they are seperate in the way they promote response.

oh well, if it cuts the population down by half then that could be a good thing....what half will YOU be..

Sounds pretty accurate to me. The consequences of hunger, security, and morality may be a little too narrow though. Blending and overlapping will occur because most people experience more than one of these at a time. I'm not sure everything will fall apart within days though, although two years is seven hundred and thirty days

Originally posted by herrw
reply to post by moniesisfun

 

I do not pretend to know a specific date. According to my equations (which are relational equations rather than mathematical equations) we are at a tipping point. It is literally days away. I've shared my equations with a fellow student (Masters in PolySci and a defense contractor) whose interests lean the same direction as mine, and his response was, "those are pretty much the same as mine, as far as outcome, but they account for more."

Give a dog a bone.

Hunger threats result in revolution. A Hunger threat is not a security threat, because the hunger need not be present. Only the threat of hunger is necessary.

It's irrelevant if the hunger is real or perceived. The threat will be perceived the same. As a physiological/psychological one, which threatens one's security, real or perceived.

A security threat is the possibility that someone might walk up to you and stab you in the neck. Yes, a hunger threat can evolve into a security threat, and vice/versa, but they are seperate in the way they promote response.

I suggest you learn up on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

A hunger threat is a security threat. It's an inability to secure basic physiological needs.

America and the world economy is in shambles, broke beyond repair, the only way to fix a system so corrupt is to start from scratch. New leaders, Gold / Silver / Platinum Based Currency, and a judicial system without a dualality set of laws.

reply to post by beezzer


My work is based on the principles outlined in my book, The Collective. Per the ToC, I won't try to sell it to anyone, but my name (the author) is William R. Herr if anyone ever cares to look it up. I'm enjoying good sales to India, atm.

My son's godfather is an astrophysicist (and a long long close friend), and he constantly harangues me to document my theories in equation form. For the hell of it, I started work on an equation to accurately describe Mental Unity, or the tendency of individuals to sublimate their own desires for the good of the collective whole. What I ended up with was a relatively simple equation that seemed to work nicely for historical data. Then I tried applying it to more recent history and it fell apart... nothing worked right.

I was about to toss it out and start again, when I decided to change some of the assumptions. I added an additional variable, in the form of a collective which had no leadership, and suddenly everything started making sense. This is what led me to start figuring in other, more chaotic variables (such as economic data) and checking validity against their historical data. Again, it works if I include a collective with no leadership as a directing influence.

Finally, I managed to typify the types of groups with which I was dealing, and came up with the following:

1. CNN--The Collective with No Name: This is a leaderless collective. Its members don't realize they are members. They think with the same image set, and tend towards anarchist results. This collective has membership in the multi-millions.

2. The Machine--This is a bureaocratic collective which is very very good at coercing action from others. It is very short sighted. It thinks it leads the CNN, but is actually led by suggestion. As a group, it represents a small percentage of the population. It exerts, however, enormous control.

3. The Other Guys -- This is a loosely associated group of individuals who probably would beat each other silly if they all got together at once. They hold opposing viewpoints and are fiercely independent, but under crisis tend to band together and forgo differences.

Given these three variables, things made sense. Then I started asking myself, 'why would you want to set things up in this manner?' after all, we're on track for a huge sense of mental unity. What would it be good for?

Mental Unity is necessary when nations go to war. Remember the Lucitania. Remember the Alamo. Keep the world safe for Democracy. Nationalism is a good example of Mental Unity. So if we're about to plunge the world into a state of Mental Unity, it really can only mean that we're preparing for the prospect of war. There's no other good reason to do it. After every war, Western Society has tended to further centralize (League of Nations, followed by United Nations after the respective world-wars).

So, that's where my equations have taken me. Sometime in the very near future (I guestimated two weeks, and that was about a week ago) we are going to get the Mental Unity event. And the response will be seen as a good thing. Our congress will act as one. We'll all be behind our president. And then... boom.

reply to post by herrw


I think we have a lot in common!

I'm an artist and writer, and an amateur psychologist to a degree. One of my interests specifically is the coming collapse and how the public will react.

I've written many times on ATS about the catalyst of revolution and about how a sense of injustice is often a flashpoint of a protest becoming a violent revolt. For example, a protest becomes violent through a spiral of acts and retaliation, with a culminating act which mobilizes a larger number of people to respond...

I agree with you on the collapse of infrastructure. This is something that is often overlooked. People have become complacent and believe that a collapse would only predominantly affect a certain group of people in the banking and business world.

A good example of how precarious the situation would be can be found in the fact that many stores only have enough stock to last for thee days at a normal rate of trading. In a collapse scenario there will be millions of people stocking up, supply lines will be hit, stores will be empty within hours of a publicly known threat. It's self-perpetuating, with even a scare potentially causing a "run".

For a first post you've done very well, and I think the majority of people on ATS will agree with everything you've stated. Thankfully there are a lot of awake people here who are far more aware than the general public.

Originally posted by RocksFromSpace
America and the world economy is in shambles, broke beyond repair, the only way to fix a system so corrupt is to start from scratch. New leaders, Gold / Silver / Platinum Based Currency, and a judicial system without a dualality set of laws.

I agree, and then I disagree.

Yes, there is no going back. There is just no way to recover, but not in the manner you suggest. Western Society is supported by a set of ideals which have lost the strength to support us. Likewise, there are no new ideals to take their place. We're tottering on the brink because we're standing on crumbling foundations.

I think that there are solutions, but none of them are very nice to look at. Term Limits for laws and regulations would help enormously. A voting system based on head-of-household rather than 'one man one vote' would help too, as that would tamp down the volatility of the process. However, in the end, we'll probably get tyranny, followed by further revolution, followed by the tyranny of the masses. Mankind learns very slowly.

reply to post by moniesisfun


Actually, the theory of mental unity is based strongly on Maslow's work. However, one cannot rationalize reactions to threats. One must document what is observed in the most impiricist way possible. If we attempt to rationalize, or to assign value of any sort whatsoever, we apply our own prejudice to the problem and invalidate any results.

A hunger threat is simply that: a hunger threat. It is the threat of hunger, or lack of food. A hunger threat is not a threat of immediate physical harm, such as getting shot. Rationally, we might reason that being hungry is a threat to one's security, or that security of the necessities of life is important (and it is) but security of situation exists at a higher level on the motivational heirarchy than survival. And it is the survival mechanisms which aggregate in collectives.

reply to post by detachedindividual


Thank you for the kind words. When I started studying collectives I thought that the process would be maddeningly chaotic. It turns out that large groups of people are very easy to understand, once one stops trying to assign value to their actions. Once you stop looking through the prism of your experience and value system, most every collective works the same way (with minor differences). That was the subject of my book.