[Delete] @Baden

I can agree with this. A utopia that took into account the needs of the many, and not just a few.

What is the idyllic society? Should everybody have a say in how the social order is prearranged and run? Or should the ‘best’ or most ‘capable’ individuals run things? Finally, if this is something we can agree with; how do we determine who those individuals are? — Issac Scoggins

I think it is too late for this question. I think we are headed for a globalized, corporatized, homogenized society and culture with ever decreasing diversity. One world government? Maybe, maybe not. The question to me is how do we make that humane and fair? If that's even possible.

And then the machines take over in 2045 and we won't have to worry about it any more.

Interesting thoughts

Obviously we do not have a definitive answer to those questions (in fact these days the "ideal society question is pretty silly amongst political philosophers), but they have been interesting to wrestle with historically.

I think for a while now the push in Western circles has been for varying levels of cosmopolitanism and that typically occurs within the bounds of democratic theory. You get a handful of folks who push for less enmeshed democratic societies but democracy is the standard in political organization.

Outside of the West I think you see more interesting avenues of exploration: subaltern theorists looking for ways to reorder their political arrangements in post-colonial societies, so called post-Marxists, etc. But I think even there the political idealism question either doesn't hold sway or the conditions were never sufficient to generate the Western fascination with idealist politics in the first place. Hence the emphasis is often sufficiently different than Western circles, but still - generally speaking - pragmatic.

Ideally, we would have a anarcho-capitalist utopia, conservative hegemony or Christian theocracy, etc...

What is the idyllic society? Should everybody have a say in how the social order is prearranged and run? Or should the ‘best’ or most ‘capable’ individuals run things? Finally, if this is something we can agree with; how do we determine who those individuals are? — Issac Scoggins

I think it is too late for this question. — T Clark

It is always interesting to think about the perfect society, but I agree with T Clark: It is too late for this .

At least, it's too late now; but the time may come when it can again be asked. If people like John Michael Greer and James Howard Kunstler (two writers who have given a great deal of thought to what Post-Peak-Oil means) are right, the time for these questions will arise again. Greer doesn't predict a cultural collapse next year, or next week. Rather, he projects a fairly slow unwinding of the energy crisis in decades time. The environmental crisis may be quicker.

AT any rate, at some point in the not too distant future (maybe 50, maybe 100, maybe 150 years) the major and large institutions will have succumbed to the multiple crisis, and people will find themselves in much smaller communities than the present. Then will be time to deploy a better, more suitable society than we have now. (O f course, don't wait until that happens to start planning,)

Both authors (Greer and Kunstler) recommend preparing now for the inevitable.

Society in the future may be more like society has been in the past Most goods and services will need to be created locally. No more blueberries in New York from Chile. No shirts, no shoes, no services from China, No cars. Bicycles? Maybe. Boats? yes. intense cultivation in the summer, then equally intense food preservation, and finally, food conservation. No insulin. Probably no antibiotics. Scavenging for metal and making the tools that are needed.

Owing to major population decline, many towns will be small enough again to have direct democracy, but the ideal society will be the one that the locals want and are able to operate.

There will probably be elements of existing conditions in future societies: strongmen will probably arise here and there, and that may be good or bad. Some individuals will be more important than others because they have unique and crucial skills. Someone who can make beer (or wine) will be more important than someone who can make computer programs for machines that no longer work. A midwife will be more important than a heart surgeon. A good farmer will be more important than a good auto mechanic.

It will be as difficult as ever for societies to be egalitarian and practice mutual support and protection. Anyone who can help people create and maintain the community they have will be very valuable.

It will be as difficult as ever for societies to be egalitarian and practice mutual support and protection. Anyone who can help people create and maintain the community they have will be very valuable. — Bitter Crank

I don't find that a very convincing scenario. Sounds more like one of those post-apocalyptic science fiction stories that are so popular now. As I always say when this type of question comes up, it's just as well I won't be around to find out, but I worry about my children.

I wasn't trying to suggest that once the masses discover that there is no more gas at the pump, they will at once turn to cannibalism. That will happen when they get to McDonalds and discover there are no more Chicken McNuggets and Big Macs. Then, not from hunger but out of blind rage they will fall upon one another.

You might want to avoid fast food joints at that time.

According to the Hubbert Curve, which charts the rise and projected fall of oil, the fall from peak down to minimal extraction will take about as long as it took to reach peak oil -- so the end of oil is not just around the corner. While some opportunities for a better energy policy passed us by in the 1970s, there are still opportunities to prepare for the demise of petroleum energy -- not by finding the miraculous substitute, but rather, learning to live with much less energy consumption.



Both Kunstler and Greer recognize that over a century of time, population will be reduced by the usual Apocalyptic Quartet; but in any given time and place, life will be humming along fairly normally, until another jolting adjustment occurs. The long term adjustment will be step wise, rather than going over a cliff.

In any case, those who have had white hair snowed on them, or those who already have one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel, need not worry. It will be all sic transit gloria mundi before the next oil crisis hits.

Given that hell is sort of other people anyway, those who do live through the depopulating plagues should find life much improved. Just think: if 1/3 of the population are assholes (estimates vary upwards, never downwards) and 6 billion people die between 2050 and 2100, that might be 2 billion fewer assholes to put up with. If God is truly merciful, the dead will be composed entirely of assholes.

Why, it will be like... i don't know, winning the multi-state lottery for $500,000,000.

Given that hell is sort of other people anyway, those who do live through the depopulating plagues should find life much improved. Just think: if 1/3 of the population are assholes (estimates vary upwards, never downwards) and 6 billion people die between 2050 and 2100, that might be 2 billion fewer assholes to put up with. If God is truly merciful, the dead will be composed entirely of assholes. — Bitter Crank

Except you know that the assholes will survive at above their proportion in the population. That's why they're assholes.