https://chasingthesquirrel.com/public/music/patrickophulsonwhycivilizationsfail.mp3

Dr. Patrick Ophuls (who writes under the pen name William Ophuls) is an American political scientist, ecologist, and author.

Interviewed by John Bell, Director of The Conciliators Guild, about his book 'Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail.'

And there's moar:


Tainter's complexity discussed, exponential growth.  Patrick understands we are in a double bind.  Collapse could be averted with massive changes that the American polity WON'T put up with.  The speed of social change needed is impossibly fast.  That is one side of this unity of opposites.
The other side of the bind is that normal social change is slow and being slow collapse happens before society makes any significant change.


People don't get that the peak always looks good.

I have been busy.  Doing what I have to do to secure the Diner from the FSoA is no small task, and I don't let it to stop me from making this website a more interesting place.

This is an easy guest post because I'll only give the audio.

You want the text?

Rather than cut and paste the article text from a link that is easily opened, I'll instead tell you how to get it:

• Click the globe in the upper right to go to the main page.
• Below the mosaic of colors tap the green open icon.  You will see the Diner.  Never mind that.
• Click the search icon magnifying glass.
• In the new search field type 'sheep' and hit return or tap the search icon again.
• Now you can make it full screen with the full screen icon.

Or, to put it another way is the title of the article.

The toolbar app you just used is not finished yet.  The men in black have slowed me down.  But it is far enough along to be better than what I had, so I put it up.