Discontinuous, Ungradual And Catastrophic

Beginning Now: The Panic Phase of the Collapse

"Economists rely on computer models designed to forecast gradual, continuous, linear changes, such as economic growth.
But these models are incapable of handling sudden, discontinuous, structural changes, such as housing market collapses, mortgage meltdowns, megabank failures, credit market shutdowns, or stock market crashes."

In science there was a backlash against religious idiocy in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Until then god in his smiteful frenzy was the driving force of change in the world, a pathetic attempt by uncomprehending dolts to attribute divine wrath to cataclysmic forces that created havoc now and then. So along came uniformitarianism, an equally lamebrained idea that was a reaction to fundie doctrine. It took a look around and said hey, nothing's happening at the moment so nothing much ever happened in the past for a long, long time, you know, dude?

Both god's wrath and gradualism are asinine concepts. They're used by manipulators to take advantage of us. A far more appropriate way of looking at life is called punctuated equilibrium, a biological term that means nothing much changes until wham, all hell breaks loose, all at once. Sort of like back in Nam, when 99% of the time you were bored to fucking tears until NVA rockets suddenly rained on you from the rice paddies.

To me this is one of those punctuations. I'd been lucky all my life not to have the disposition to buy into the siren song of contemporary american life; I never felt the need to suck normality and smugness from comfortable tits of warm assurances that it all would go on forever and ever. Most people were not so fortunate and bought into the cozy, serene lies. I guess it was easy enough to do, after all you were rewarded for following the rules, banishing self doubt, doing what you were supposed to do, emulating others.

So now it's all coming unglued. Institutions will be loathe to give up the forever fantasy as newsfakers pretend collapse is all a temporary aberration in between the same tired old commercials as dead banks churn out monthgly statements while printing presses churn out worthless currency. It's all over but a small grace period of misguided faith will persist, much like fingernails that keep growing on a freshly buried corpse.

Then all at once it hits you that you really should have bought a water filter when you had the chance, but it won't be divine epiphany, I can assure you.