Greer is a lot more rational than TFian has been portraying him here.
To be fair, TFian hasn't really (at least not seemingly deliberately) portraying Greer as anything outside his belief that the Internet will cease to exist after "peak oil". He/she hasn't said "Greer says they aren't racially pure", or "Greer says we all need to die for "Gaia" or whatever." In fact, her/his thinking seem much closer to Derrick Jensen or John Zerzan (who are both certifiably insane btw). I'll agree, Greer is a lot more rational, but that's really because TFian just genuinely seems insane. He/she seems to be suffering from some sort of psychosis.
For one thing, I can't seem to find any mention of desirability of racial purity in anything Greer has written, and from what I've read of what he has written, I strongly suspect he would find the notion abhorrent, as well as utterly counterproductive to his community-building cause.
That's probably true, but I found this little nugget.
and Mexico is going to take back the American west within a couple of generations by sheer demographic pressure, so they have everything to gain by being patient and letting us crash and burn. "Poor Mexico," Porfirio Diaz once said: "So far from God, so close to the United States." In another century or so the tables are likely to have turned.
Most certainly not "racial purity" nonsense, but still fairly xenophobic. And worst of all, just flat out wrong. source
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot....showComment=1265349038867#c735328529139306729
Greer does write about "magic" but he appears to be using the term metaphorically to refer to the persuasive power of persuasive speech (in all forms including slogans and rituals; by "spell" he invariably seems to mean "slogan.") In any case, nothing supernatural is implied.
Well, again, there's what he said here
The interesting thing is that nobody ever actually proved scientifically that magic doesn't work, that spirits and gods don't exist, or any of the other things paraded as definite fact by the publicists of modern science. You can test magic by experiment...but the experiments weren't done. The promoters of the Scientific Revolution simply insisted loudly and repeatedly that magic had to be impossible, and that was that. When Rupert Sheldrake did a few experiments on nonphysical causation a few years back and published the results, the editors of the very prestigious British science magazine _Nature_ called for his book to be burnt. Sheldrake committed what, in scientific terms, is the ultimate sin: he'd subjected the basic assumptions of science itself to experimental test, and showed that they don't hold water.
It's often argued that the ideology of science must be true, because technology works. By the same logic, the earth must be the center of the universe, because navigators in the days before Copernicus were able to use earth-centered astronomy to navigate by the stars. Scientists basically take the things that happen to work and cobble together theories to fit them -- that's the scientific method. Of course modern science has a very good working model of how some kinds of matter function, but it's radically incomplete because it leaves out so much.
It seems like he believes in it from some supernatural standpoint to me, but I can't be sure. His writings on anything outside peak oil are vague, almost seemingly purposefully vague. To me, that also would indicate he has an actual "supernatural" belief in magic, and just keeps quiet on it knowing he'd be mocked and ignored by most of the "peak oil" community if he regularly expressed such views. Source
http://www.twpt.com/johnmichaelgreer.htm
He is wrong about some things, though. His writings on the Internet, for instance, indicate that he has very vague and mistaken notions about what the Internet actually is and how it works. He speaks, for instance, of the power requirements of Yahoo's server banks as if they were somehow a necessary component of keeping the Internet running, instead of just a particularly large exploiter of that particular commons. In this light the conclusions he reached about the cost versus benefits of "the Internet" in an energy-scarce scenario are understandable. Dead wrong, but not totally insane, just (mostly) technically uninformed on this particular issue.
Not only that, but he even realizes there's a low powered resilient form of Internet possible, through packet radio. He seems to brush it off as something that'll be actually practiced under the guise that no one is actively working towards it. Which isn't true actually, there's a group now (Noisebridge hackerspace) that's working on a packet radio Internet to span North America. That's another problem I have with Greer, he seems to be under the general mistaken idea that no one is really working towards adapting towards a low energy carbon neutral future infrastructure, which just isn't true.
He also has a fundamental lack of knowledge regarding physics, and his argument that it's physically impossible to run an industrial civilization absent of abundant hydrocarbons, is incorrect. (and the articles displaying it were of course ignored by TFian)
(Which is a shame, because if it were possible to correct his understanding of what the Internet actually is, he might instead come to see it as a good example of exactly the kind of decentralized and resilient system he's in favor of.)
I agree. Not only on the Internet though. If he could realize say, you can make a tractor out of scrap parts for a relatively cheap price, and run it on local non petroleum energy sources like the folks at Open Source Ecology are doing, and encouraged his student "Green Wizards" to learn how to make a computer out of dissembled electronic parts, I think his "Green Wizard" project would have a lot more going for it. In general, he just has a complete lack of knowledge of how anything past 1970s appropriate technology works, and how a lot of it can be bootstrapped to work with very low energy outputs (laptop powered handcrank that is durable is all you need for the informational benefits of a computer) I think his advice is just generally counterproductive, because I think in any energy scarce society, the people with knowhow on more advanced technology will be the winners, since they can downsize it to fit energy scarce requirements. I'll agree with him on one thing fairly strongly, that a better path in the future is a "dissenus" approach, rather than a consensus approach. I think the real problem with his thinking though, is he doesn't realize that's what's already happening, especially on energy. Renewables like Solar/Wind, Nuclear, Algae, Biomass, and etc., are being approached at all levels, governments, corporations, universities, independent scientist teams, independent citizen scientists, and so forth. I think he'd change quite a bit of his narrative if he realized this.
(Perhaps not surprisingly, some of Greer's most vocal critics are
competing energy-contraction movements and
philosophies. The discussion, though, is far more rational and articulate, and far less misanthropic or hateful, than one might expect based on what's been offered here.)
Well to be fair, the whole transition town vs Greer thing was pretty much started by Greer, who baited Rob Hopkins to post a critique of him, possibly to gain attention for his "Green Wizards" website, which apparently worked. But your point stands, the article you linked is WAY more rational (thanks for that, it was quite informative) than anything TFian spouts, and she/he has done a disservice to Greer, by associating him with well, whatever TFian is.
