Hello all. Back with another episode of the wit and wisdom of Jeremy Rifkin. Before I begin though, perhaps I should address a question Eric raised. Who the hell is Jeremy Rifkin and why should you care? To be honest, I've been following his career so long, I had forgotten that he might lack the brand recognition he once commanded. Back in the 80's, it seemed like you couldn't read an article on biotech or gene-splicing without being subjected to his "balancing viewpoint". He founded a small but energetic lobbying organization, the "Foundation on Economic Trends" and instigated a number of annoying lawsuits intended to spike the guns of the nascent biotech industry. Beyond that, he was a moderately prolific author, with no little popularity among the birkenstock set. I first became aware of him in 1987, while reading a refutation of his work in a popular science book. Frankly, what I read did not predispose me to rush out and buy his book. However, in one of those funny little coincidences that make life spooky and mysterious, the VERY NEXT DAY I was urged to read it by a young woman of my acqaintance. Strongly urged. She said if I read ONE BOOK that year it should be "Entropy" by Jeremy Rifkin. She made me promise. So you see, none of this is my fault.

A week later, I chanced across that same young woman at a loud boozy party. She asked me if I had read the book yet, and if so, what I thought of it. I proceeded to tell her (in a loud boozy way)that the book might have been considerably improved by the addition of some real physics. I believe I was on point 4 of my 19 point critique when she began edging away from me with that oh so familiar desperate look. Her parting shot was "I still think the book has good ideas."

Against igorance, the gods themselves, etc. More to the point, the people skills, much practice they require. I haven't seen her since, but she left a rich legacy. To my surprise I found myself getting a real jones for dear Mr. Rifkin. There was just something so endearingly awful about his lackluster prose and luddite pretensions, that I couldn't get enough of him. I found "Algeny" and read it cover to cover. Then I read Stephen Jay Gould's review of the book "...a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship." Don't hold back Steve, tell us how you really feel. "Among books promoted as serious intellectual statements by important thinkers, I don't think I have ever read a shoddier work." Um, yeah, what he said. I actually HAVE read shoddier works, but I had to dig for em'.

Being sporadically completist, I decided to plow through his entire available works. A public library expedition ensued, leading me straight to the subject of today's post "The Emerging Order"( co-authored with Ted Howard ). Cha-ching! Up till this time I had subscribed to the default interpretation of his motives and ideology. He presents himself as a vaguely leftish lawyerly type, well groomed, well tailored, sober as a deacon. Digging into background, we find he cut his political teeth in the 60's anti-war movement. He was a national coordinator for the "National Committee for a Citizen's Commission of Inquiry on United States War Crimes in Vietnam". In 1972 he helped found the "People's Bicentennial Commission" He helped sponsor the first national anti-Vietnam War rally in 1967. In 1966 he organised student opposition to germ warfare at the University of Pennsylvania. So far, so normal. I knew lots of guys like that in college. They tasted the sweet nectar of political activism and never looked back. What sets Jeremy apart from that crowd is that he ISN'T a liberal, secular-humanist, one worlder chowderhead. Within his Dr. Phil-ish breast beats the fiery and brimstony heart of a mystic. A mystic who loves you, yes YOU brothers and sisters, and wants what's best for you. Which, by the way, will involve completely tearing down and rebuilding the structure of modern capitalism. You don't mind, do you?

Which takes us back to the question, why should you care? To paraphrase another critic, why flog the carcass of Rifkin's work? Because it isn't dead yet. Because the man would dearly love to be a menace. Because his paltry, stunted vision of the Human Future would preclude the "full flourishing" of our loved descendants. Because he actually had credibility in Washington once, and would like to get it back, God help us.

What I'm hoping to do here is exhume some of his more spectacular quotes from the memory hole and prop them up, zombie-like, in Eric's nice, shiny, digital window display. People should know that he has a very, very long history of misanthropic anti-tech screedery. Beyond that, I would hope to address the line-up of usual suspects who find themselves fellow travelling with him.
You may know the names; Ehrlich, Kass , McKibbin, Fukuyama, Callahan.
You should also know what they've said. It isn't pretty, and it deserves to be heard more widely. Hopefully, folks will figure out that if a man was consistently an idiot twenty years ago, he probably still is.

This is a bit of a shift from Classical Values more usual beat. If you find the daily political churn more engrossing, well, I can't really blame you. But someday, the war will be over (or at least managed), and we can turn our attention back to peace time pursuits. And the churn will always be with us. So I say, take a few minutes for the long view. The really long view.

If Rifkin, Kass, and company have their way, a great many people are going to die useless, premature, preventable deaths, for no good reason whatever. They will be dying for half-wit ideology, the bad dreams of small dreamers. To ridicule such ideas is no less than they deserve.

But enough preamble, lets get quoting!! (Note the contractually mandated CV exclamation marks!!)

...whatever the standard or expert opinion to which one turns, there is no doubt that the oil spigot is about to run dry. p48

It's hard for most of us to imagine that the usable oil on this planet will be gone in the next twenty years or so. After all, it took nearly three billion years of natural evolution to create this tremendous stock of energy. Nonetheless, there is only enough ultimately recoverable oil reserves left to provide each person with 500 barrels. This means , says Lester Brown, that the average American, driving a full-size automobile and averaging 10,000 miles per year on the road, would use over forty barrels per year, or his entire share of of the remaining oil, in just twelve years. p 49

Good thing Reagan deregulated when he did, eh? These are pretty much a standard part of the Rifkin wind-up, the intro panic graphs, intended to assure that reader that things really ARE as bad as he says they are. Authoritative sounding figures supply him with literal scare quotes.

For the past thirty years, the American economy has been relying on technological advances in specific growth industries, most of which are now maturing and showing signs of leveling off in terms of growth. Wonder drugs, the computer industry, photocopying and television immediately come to mind. All of these growth industries have been heavily dependant on large amounts of energy and other nonrenewable resources. More important still, there appears to be nothing on the horizon that can begin to replace these older technologies. About the only major technological advances in recent years capable of reaching a consumer market potential of 100 percent are permanent press pants and pocket calculators. It's not surprising that Dr. James L. Heskett, of the Harvard Business School, has remarked: "We have seen the topping out of technology. We won't have the technological advances we've had in the last twenty or thirty years." p 82

It sure was nice of Harvard Business School to have a wacky professor willing to go public. Makes it all sound more credible with an academic on board. I don't doubt that more sober voices, even at Harvard itself, were willing to dispute the point. But Rifkin will never let you hear them in HIS book. And besides, these words were published in 1979. Back then, there was plenty of apocalypse to go around. A few years later, when gene-splicing finally showed up on Rifkin's radar ( A New Hope for industrial civilization!) he decided he had to strangle it in the cradle.It was a moral imperative. Now on with our quotes.

Today, the capitalist system serves much the same function as the Catholic Church did during the medieval era...The capitalist church, like the Catholic Church of six centuries ago, is slowly losing its authority...The American public has become increasingly hostile to the economic system, a trend that will escalate as we move further and further into economic contraction between now and the turn of the century. The list of grievances has become almost endless: unsafe products permanently disable and kill tens of thousands of Americans each year, corporations bribe candidates and illegally buy elections, chemical companies pour deadly substances into rivers and lakes, and the system itself seems unwilling or unable to curb inflation or ease unemployment. p 218-219

This assertion has so little relationship to reality, it's hard to know where to start. I know of no one who thinks of buying and selling as a substitute for faith. Do you? As for the litany of woe, when was it any different? Waaah.

The mass anxiety wrought by the steady breakdown of the present system and the emergence of a new and still undefined economic order is becoming more pronounced with each succeeding day. This anxiety is not yet manifesting itself as a frontal assault on capitalism, science, technology and the professional class...Still, like the Reformation period, the submerged anxieties produced by the shifting from one epoch to another are surfacing around specific occurrences that are related to the larger picture...disease is, once again, beginning to provide dramatic focus for the expression of society's individually and collectively felt anxieties. Not surprisingly, the evangelical-Charismatic movements are turning their attention to this area of concern. p 219

Cancer is the new plague. It strikes without warning and seemingly wihout reason....
Cancer, like the plagues is a direct consequence of the changing economic period we're living in. Seventy to 90 percent of all cancer, according to government studies, is caused by the environment of industrial capitalism...
p 220

Now we're getting somewhere. Capitalism equals Death! But, what can we possibly Do About It ? Just wait, I strongly suspect there is an answer...

Just as the Catholic Church was unable to deal satisfactorily with the anxiety wrought by the arbitrary nature of the plague and its ruthless destruction of human life, today's capitalist establishment is also without answers. If there is one element that has shaken public confidence in science and technology more than any other it would be the ineptness of the commercial health establishment and government in dealing with cancer...Today, with billions of dollars of tax money spent, a solution is no more in the offing than before. The reason is that the problem does not lend itself to a particular scientific cure....

Just one element? Perhaps this analysis is a bit...reductionist? In any event, we can rest assured that a solution will present itself in short order. Breaking the problem down to a tractable size is half the battle...

On the contrary, it is science itself that is responsible for cancer....
Science created chemical pesticides nuclear radiation toxic substances and all of the other ingredients that cause the disease.... p 220

Didn't see that one coming did you? Sounds almost Victorian in it's majesty. Ladies and gentlemen, the Problem is....... SCIENCE.... ITSELF!! Anesthesia, antibiotics... it's all a trap. Don't even get me started on protease inhibitors. But we still need A Solution!

While it is conceivable that the medical establishment could find a new technological cure for cancer, it is more than likely that the cure itself would merely serve to create an even greater set of problems in human biology at some future date. Ultimately, the answer to the problem of cancer (and other more sophisticated diseases that might replace it ) lies in the establishment of a new world view based on an ecologically balanced steady-state economic system. Only by slowing down the entropy process and restoring the natural balance and interplay of nature can the problem of cancer be ultimately put to rest. Until that realization sets in, the popular response to cancer...is likely to ba a mixture of public resentment and hostility toward the scientific medical establishment (which is justified) and a search for alternative cures. That search has already begun.... p 221

This quote is a classic specimen of Rifkiniana. ONLY by following the prescriptive advice of the polemecist, can we avoid the grisly advancing doom which we are assured threatens us. This card is played relentlessly in book after book. As a bonus feature, we can see a popular meme of the time, the "technology doesn't solve any problems without creating worse ones." If I had a buck for every time some ditzy hippy told me that, I'd be a single-malt drinker. Mmm, Talisker...But, I digress. We've worked our way through the wind-up, here's the pitch!

Today, millions of Americans are professed adherents of faith healing as an alternative to medical science.... p 221

The Charismatics have found a new confidence amidst the anxiety and chaos of the modern world...That confidence is providing the liberating energy and the potential revolutionary power that could dislodge the existing order. p 222