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The apocalyptics
Readers have asked me what I think of the school of writers The New Yorker has dubbed "the dystopians." There is no shortage of slap-in-the-face reality on this blog, so you can decide whether I am one of them. Chief among them is James Howard Kunstler. Another is the Russian emigre Dmitry Orlov. In the magazine, Ben McGrath writes:
Thomas Malthus first lent rational philosophy to the apocalyptic
inklings of religious prophets with his “Essay on the Principle of
Population,” in 1798, and secular doom booms have tended to coincide
with periods of political upheaval or economic breakdown ever since.
The Malthusian movement has expanded with time into a kind of peaknik
diaspora. Peak oil and peak carbon (i.e., global warming) are the
heaviest. The bank and auto industry bailouts have thrust a new concern
to the front: peak dollars…
inklings of religious prophets with his “Essay on the Principle of
Population,” in 1798, and secular doom booms have tended to coincide
with periods of political upheaval or economic breakdown ever since.
The Malthusian movement has expanded with time into a kind of peaknik
diaspora. Peak oil and peak carbon (i.e., global warming) are the
heaviest. The bank and auto industry bailouts have thrust a new concern
to the front: peak dollars…
Malthus was wrong in his time, of course. Kunstler, on the other hand, has proven remarkably prescient in the here-and-now.
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