Product Description

A challenging new vision of the future, "The Long Descent" traces the decline and fall of an industrial society fatally out of balance with planetary limits and shows how personal change and local action can shape a better tomorrow.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #161005 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

A 'peak' into the future
I was wary of Greer because of his connection with Druidry - memories of The Wicker Man don't recommend paganism of any hue, however 'enlightened'! Putting aside my reservations, I ploughed in and found page after page which needed to be annotated and stored for later pondering and discussion. His delineation between predicaments and problems was outstanding, prompting me to devise a post peak Jane Austen novel in reverse called Problems and Predicaments where a wealthy British woman has to sell all her goods in order to join a commune of permaculture farmers... The book looks at the spiritual problems of trying to wake people up to the coming decline, namely their thraldom to the myths of progress and science. I have tried to wake up my high school students to peak oil, but all they wanted to do was watch Matilda instead! Greer outlines a very different future to the technological one I grew up with in the early 60s - moon bases, space holidays, underwater cities. Where Greer differs from my own favourite curmudgeon, Jim Kunstler, is his explanation that societies take 250 years to decline and collapse, rather than the 'Road Warrior' vision where the oil runs out and the world turns into a nightmare of looting and Darwinistic struggles for survival. Greer uses the phrase 'catabolic' to describe where we are going - a study of how a society slowly eats itself up in the same way that a long distance runner will actually start to consume his own muscles without replacement nutrients. This catabolic process will be speeded up as we go past the peak of oil production - this may have already happened. What we face is a process of drawn out contraction and decline, where the chronically sick, the elderly, those with special needs, the lazy, the incompetent will be gradually weeded out from the gene pool. Our great grandchildren will live in weed covered ruins of motorways and cities, experiencing hunger, infant mortality levels akin to sub - Saharan Africa - BUT, they will be spiritual giants in comparison with the obese, lazy and moronic 'sheeple' that populate our world. I love the comparison with Frank herbert's Dune - a future that appears archaic, but with elements of sophisticated technology remaining. This book is very profound and deep, and it has personally helped me over the paralysing sense of despair that creeps up when trying to explain peak oil to people I meet - until the deep in-dwelling myths of progress are shattered, there really is no point! I work on my allotment, teaching myself gardening and leave the whole process of catabolic decay in Higher Hands, knowing that we are just going through what every other civilisation has been through before. Thanks Mr. Greer, you have given me a sense of peace this Christmas!