As the summer draws to a close, the demons of slow dissolution are stalking the land like so many exotic horned beetles, chewing away at the meaty trunks of our culture and economy. The autumn rituals of school, football, and the expanded holiday-shopping season are poised for liftoff, but that nagging little factor of a completely-imploded consumer economy is getting in the way of full-throated fall enthusiasm. It's just hard to see where any type of "recovery" might come from. Individuals and families are either drowning in debt or totally petrified of taking on new liabilities. Banks are sitting on their cash, because business loans are ultimately dependent on consumer spending, which will continue its slow suffocation. Official unemployment is now stubbornly pegged at around 10%, with the real total more in the neighborhood of 20%. The Obama administration has blown its wad on porky stimulus, faux health reform, faux financial reform, and continued wars/nation-building, leaving little hope for additional, targeted, sustainable stimulus. Local and state governments are swimming in red ink, with the ensuing heavy job cuts set to send more economic depth charges of bankruptcy and foreclosure into the gaping maw of recession. 

In essence, we're in the midst of the dissolution of centralized, top-heavy systems of all sorts. In the metaphor used by Daniel Quinn in the great novel Ishmael , one can think of the entire modern industrial project as a contraption that has been pushed off of a high cliff. While it was designed to fly, it is not ultimately flightworthy. It is simply falling towards the ground and will eventually crash. But while it's still in the air, albeit falling, it appears to many that the whole thing really is working. The contraptions wings are flapping; its bells and whistles are sounding; and its passengers have a great view of the earthbound things below them. But the whole thing is ultimately doomed, and the end may be abrupt. 

That seems to be what is happening to our socioeconomic contraption. It is just not sustainable. It churns out vast plumes of ecological, social, and economic misery, and the payoffs are fleeting, as gadgets and fantasy can never truly replace the deep needs we have as social animals: love, acceptance, companionship, community, dignity, and truth. 

So what will really happen if none of our top-down, centralized structures prove salvageable? What if national school standards never deliver a brilliant populace that can outthink all those damned Asians and Europeans? What if federal action on alternative energy never creates a well-paid, skilled workforce that happily tends the country's windmills, biopower plants, and whatnot? What if the bogus health care reform is dead on arrival, and never even remotely has the funding to get off the ground? What if the federal government never bothers to tackle the Gilded Age disparities in wealth, so that 25% unemployment becomes the norm, as corporate and financial barons vacuum all of the excess value out of the vaunted "free market system"? What will happen if state and federal budgets never become solvent again, and social and physical infrastructure spending grinds to a halt?

We really could be looking at a "World Made by Hand," as Jim Kunstler calls it. This is the title of his speculative novel set in the not-too-distant future, which I highly recommend (the sequel, "The Witch of Hebron," is coming out this fall). So many of the things that we take for granted, the vast digital and physical infrastructure, will prove to be far more fragile than we believe. As the supply lines of products and information start to become more contingent and spotty, the rest of the remaining consumer economy will sputter. People will quickly have to revert to physical closeness to the land, especially with regards to food and fresh water. Collective living will be highly advantageous, as will all manner of practical skill. Education will by necessity reconnect with real labor and local knowledge. And personal charisma, a phenomenon that drove much of premodern history, will be re-leveraged again in non-business settings (thank god). 

The day of the Entropolitan is coming.