Ceaseless and endless and pointless mobility
After the oil is gone
An interview with James Howard Kunstler about his new book The Long Emergency
“If we had to actually reform the way that we live, or let go of some of it, the losses would be politically untenable… But we’re going to have to let those things go, whether we like it or not. Just don’t expect to be led through this in an orderly way. The key to understanding what we face is turbulence. We’re going through big changes attended by a lot of turbulence, disorder and hardship. The reason that I called this book ‘The Long Emergency’ is precisely because it describes an interval of trouble. I’m not saying that the world is coming to an end. I’m saying we’re going to pass through a period of history that’s going to be very difficult. There’s a distinction between calling something the apocalypse and calling something an epochal discontinuity… It’s possible to boil [the upsides] down to the idea that we will not be living in the kind of narcissistic isolation that was so pervasive in recent decades. Geopolitically, the world is going to be a larger place. But our individual worlds may become smaller places. American life will be much more about staying where you are than about ceaseless and endless and pointless mobility…”
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