This expose is worth taking a look at — the elite are highly motivated and organized to have their way, and in my opinion, the “moral minority” can only win moral victories.

see: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/12/16/815429/-No-One-Is-Going-To-Save-You-Fools

Ten thousand years ago nothing happen in the mind of man except the formation of a new idea. Prior to that, man was not nobler or more humane. This is not about shame or greed or power or religion. This is about an ape with access to way too much energy. This is about scale.

Take a big bunch of bananas and throw them into a group of otherwise peaceful chimps and they literally go ape shit. Give the human species almost free, unlimited fossil fuel energy, its the same thing.

It’s funny to me that we look so hard for the interior rationales of our predicament when we understand peak oil to be in the driving seat of the coming collapse. Well, look no further than oil for the root cause of industrialism in the first place.

The absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to this planet and to ourselves would be a technological energy breakthrough. We’re never going to have a global community of enlightened monks. Humanity is not going to change. The only thing that has a chance to change is the energy available to us. Preagricultural humans persisted for two million years prior to the development of agriculture, not because they were nicer than us, but because they were fundamentally constrained by limited energy resources.

Sure, we’re flawed, but that’s not the problem. Always have been. Always will be.

Therefore, I deduce that you are entering into the realm of Enlightenment, further evidenced by your sense of humor and ability to take yourself and your/our collective predicament to heart in the same moment.

Re : Guy: “terminating the industrial economy in the very near future.”
“Meeting these challenges, as humans did for two million years before the age of industry, requires us to adopt the right frame of mind, a healthy dose of self-reliance, and the willingness to make a contribution to our human community.” “Civilization requires storage of food, which leads to acquisition of power, hierarchy, and separation of duties. Hunter-gatherers, including most Native American cultures, were not civilized.”
and Mark: “I question the extent to which we can actually make a difference… I still wonder what that might that be. I find Jensen’s recommendations to be vague and ineffectual. We contend with a worldview that is global. Miguel Ruiz” refers to it as the “dream of the planet”. Any meaningful change would require that the world awakens from its dream (nightmare).” How not to be a cog?
Rick: “The industrial economy is a symptom, not a cause. The “civilized” approach to treating a disease is, indeed, to address the symptom and ignore the cause.” (my query: Is shame possibly a symptom itself, rooted in the origin of suffering i.e. the belief structures and desire fixations that have been expressed as destructive actions?)
Cindy: “Why is it that we humans seek to manipulate and control the gift of nature, rather than alter our own behavior that caused the problem to begin with?” (Again, NT#2—“fundamental ignorance and desire…etc)
Colin: “All that’s “required” is for enough people to become “aware” and just STOP BEING A COG!” (Ah Ho!)
Brutus: “certain other ways of being and knowing, while not strictly rational, are still worthwhile. Music is a good example.” (Right On! ☺ )

I offer you two examples of agrarian cultures that demonstrate how human beings can live more symbiotically, with and of the environment, rather than just “in” or “on” it:
1. The Hopi/Moqui people (an agrarian culture): “When Hopi elders say Patuwaqatsi, “water is life,” it is not a cliché, but a fact of life. “Water is not a commodity to be bought, sold or wasted … Water is sacred, especially in the Black Mesa region where water is key to our survival,” explains Leonard Selestewa, the president of Black Mesa Trust. Leonard and other Hopi leaders make these pronouncements as natural resource managers who know how to make the best of the meager moisture hidden in pockets within the stretch of the Painted Desert they call home. Increasingly, however, they repeat these ancient aphorisms cognizant that their land is now drier than it has been within the collective memory of their community.
Climatologists and biologists who study tree rings agree with the Hopi elders. It appears that the canyon country of the Colorado Plateau is currently suffering from the most prolonged, severe drought in 1,400 years. Not only has rainfall been unusually spotty for five years, but winter snows have melted quickly, wildfires have ravaged upland watersheds, and most freshwater springs have all but dried up for good.
The Hopi do not interpret these indicators of drought merely as physical changes in the landscape, but also as signs of an imbalance between humankind and the rest of the natural world. Even during the worst of other periods of limited rainfall, a trickle of water still dripped from Hopi springs. Today they ebb because of the pumping of the Navajo aquifer, the sole source of drinking water to the villages on the Hopi Reservation, and to many ranches on the Navajo reservation as well. It has also been drawn upon for the past 35 years by the Peabody Coal company, which has pulled as much as 1.3 billion gallons out of the ground annually to transport coal slurry 273 miles by pipeline to the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada. This process uses 4,400 acre-feet of water per day simply as a transport mechanism. In a bizarre cycle, the coal the water transports feeds the Mohave Station, built to generate the electricity needed to draw Colorado River water over the mountains to southern California. Now the station also powers the growing cities of California, Arizona, and Nevada.” http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/whose-water/693

2. Gaviotas, an apolitical, non-ideology, non-violent, intentional community:
“Alan Weisman, author of Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, stated in an NPR documentary that “Although ecologists originally questioned bringing a Central American species into Colombia’s Llanos, something amazing has happened. In the moist understory of the Gaviotas forest, dormant seeds of native trees probably not seen in Los Llanos for millennia are sprouting. Biologists have now counted at least 40 species, which are sheltered by Caribbean pines. Over the coming decades, Gaviotas will let these new native trees choke out the pines and return the Llanos to what many believe was their primeval state, an extension of the Amazon. Already, the population of deer and anteaters is growing.
Elsewhere, they’re tearing down the rain forest, but I’ve come to a place where they’re actually putting it back, even as they create more livable space for people. I remember asking Paolo Lugari back in Bogota if Gaviotas is really Utopia.” Mr. Lugari replied, through a translator, “Not Utopia, but Topia. In Greek, the prefix “u” signifies ‘no”. Utopia literally means “no place”. It s just an idea; but Gaviotas is real. We’ve gone from fantasy to reality, from Utopia to Topia.”

In all cases, even to anyone such as you Guy, who has “developed new skills to mitigate for a totally new set of circumstances in the years ahead,” and are farther along in the process of withdrawal from receiving your sustenance from or contributing to it,
the encroach of “Empire,” with all of its fixations, is The Threat. As Stan sums it up, “I am afraid that inertia is on the side of collapse and is irreversible. I wish otherwise.” I wish otherwise, too, and consider that what we may ultimately have choice in is indicated by the Third and Fourth Noble Truths, i.e. to endeavor to understand the truth of life, “to catch (our own) subtle shifts of thought before they escalate into harmful actions with their inevitable consequences” and to live mindfully, with Awareness of how life works, in reality, within us and around us, cultivating our poise both inwardly and in our actions, come what may (the image of the Last Samurai, appreciating the cherry blossom with his last breath comes to mind).