Unexpected unfolding

Each process that creates scarcity and trips the scarcity/ conflict loop has imbedded with it dynamic characteristics which make their unfolding hidden from our normal thinking.

Our view of the human predicament is like that of a driver going down the road at 70 MPH. We just do not consider that all this speed and momentum can make a crash. Most people do not have the experience of a civilization crash. So they don't know what they are trying to avoid.

Even if we could conceive of a crash we don't know what to keep track of to facilitate not being in the crash. For example few people I know are tracking changes in scarcity as an indicator foretelling civilization collapse.

Further most people don't realize that they have no behaviors in their tool box that will respond to a civilization in collapse. If they did, they would see that available institutional and personal behaviors are like trying to put on a seat belt on the way to a dash board.

And finally each person has little way to evaluate how improbable it is to recover from a crash. Civilization collapse is like a car accident where all the body shops and new car plants have been destroyed.

For example all of our technology is based on having the infrastructure in place, roads, water, sewer, electric power, fossil fuel. It is based on full grocery stores. Yet, all our food production, processing, transport, and refrigeration and cooking are based on this structure which is swept away by the social conflict.

People in cities can not stay there .There is no food or power. People in the countryside are not prepared for the hungry bands of city dwellers foraging in their neighborhood -- eating the next year's seed grain to keep their kids alive.