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Summary of the week:
As noted in previous Musings, I place the events in Egypt within
these
fundamental contexts:
1. over-expansion (ecological over-reach) of the planet's
human
population to the point it exceeds current capacity to supply food,
energy and
water (the FEW Resources, in my idiom). Prices inevitably rise, not as
"inflation" but in relation to all other metrics of "money" or
value--that is,
in absolute terms. Revolutions result from this crushing burden of
rising
prices.
As Chris Martenson noted this week, Egypt's population has
basically
tripled in less than 3 generations, its arable land constitutes a mere
3% of its
total land, and it has become a net importer of oil recently.
In other words, democracy is only a surface challenge; the deeper
ones are
not amenable to political reforms which don't address
ecological/demographic/FEW
resources issues.
For more on revolutions and military control, please see the
book
Coup d' C9tat: A Practical Handbook which I wrote
about a few months ago. For more on long historical cycles of rising
prices and
revolutions, please see The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of
History (courtesy
of correspondent Cheryl
A.)
2. The evolutionary science idea of
"punctuated
equilibrium" in which profound environmental changes force a species (or
in this
case, a culture, society and economy) to adapt/evolve very quickly, or
expire
for lack of successful
experimentation/transformation.
3. To these I would add the
"stick-slip
phenomenon" http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb10/stick-slip-housing02-10.html
The typical example of this is a sand pile which grows higher as a
stream
of sand continues pouring onto the top. At some ill-defined point, the
sandpile
experiences an avalanche and the "sticky" sand "slips"
catastrophically.
One of my correspondents was traveling in Egypt in December 2010,
just a
few months ago, with an experienced Cairo-based correspondent for
US public
radio. Her account of her trip in January included the usual
frictions of
travel in corrupt, dysfunctional developing nations, but not one word of
seething political frustration. These are smart, global-savvy people,
including
a political correspondent with years of experience in Africa, and they
saw no
evidence that the political sandpile was about to experience a
trend-changing
"slip"/avalanche.
This shows how internal pressures and fragilities can be completely
hidden,
even from those within the society.
After the fact, of course, every Standard-Issue Pundit (SIP) who
could worm
his/her way onto TV is pontificating on the situation as if he/she
were not
caught completely off-guard.
In the same way, the global financial situation only appears
"sticky" and
stable; beneath the surface, the pressures are building for a
catastrophic
avalanche. For example, see "Monetary Disorder
And Global
Fragilities" (Doug Nolan)
http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/creditbubblebulletinvie
w?art_id 3D10497 (courtesy
U. Doran)
4. The Survival+ analysis overlays a variety of contexts and tools,
from systems
analysis to history to the politics of experience. From that
"integrated
understanding," we can discern a paucity of civilian institutions in
Egypt that
can support participatory democracy and the sort of transformations
which are
needed to evolve quickly.
The
US has learned
to its great sorrow and loss in Iraq and Afghanistan the great
difficulties caused by a lack of institutional structure and
experience. Egypt faces two parallel challenges: constructing
broad-based
participatory institutions while also evolving responses to the nation's
pressing ecological, food/energy/water and financial
challenges.
Item #1: urbanism and cities
I'm going to focus on one topic which relates directly to Egypt's
challenges as well as the global over-expansion of human populations and
consumption of resources: the city.
Mike Davis aptly described Cairo and dozens of other
barely-functioning
megalopolises in his book Planet of Slums![]()
. the
basic situation is
dire: not enough work or income in rural areas exposed to
globalization, so
tens of millions of people pour into cities designed for 1/10th or less
the
current population.
One of our student friends returned home to India in December, and
she
reported on the sort of informal "housing" which crops up in Mumbai and
other
mega-cities with geographically-defined borders: tiny lean-tos propped
up
between substantial buildings, powered by an extension cord from
somewhere
(legal? No way). Inside, there's a laptop computer on the makeshift bed:
it's
home for a struggling student.
Here in the US, we've hollowed out our cities to enable auto/truck
traffic,
but we've paid a horrendously costly price for that "convenience":
please view
this short but tremendously insightful video about Donald Appleyard's "livable streets" analysis:
The US city is being transformed in a number of ways. You can track
these
changes with these tools:
populations by ethnicity: