by Alfie Turnshek-Goins
The space between. Not wild, not domesticated. Something else. Something new and old. Whether we are reclaiming lost knowledge or using our integrated be-ing to create new ways of floating along with the material needs of life, it makes no difference. Nothing new under the Sun. Indigenous or civilized, the only way forward is through the playful creation of sustainable ways of living. This means, as Derrick Jensen says, not being a culture of occupation. We have much to learn from the indigenous people of this continent. Some of these cultures stretch back 10,000 years or more. The way of living practiced by many of these cultures is green of a very deep shade, before green was a political ideology or anything other than the color of life; green like the quiet of the forest under the canopy, duff and twigs crunching beneath your feet. And a softness to the air, a rich stillness where the processes of life around you march on, perceptibly. Ant footsteps can be heard if you listen. And breathe.
These spaces between open us up to the fact that in our cities and society we inhabit a psycho-physical world where the most taboo things we can feel, the things we are told by our governments and self-proclaimed elites we are not allowed to feel, yet those things which deep down we all know to be utterly, simply true; are that we are powerful and beautiful and free beyond our imagining. That our imagining is the only thing that limits us. That we may be imagining the wrong things. That we are not prisoners. That our needs are greater than those of The System. That the Earth freely provides everything we are currently being tricked into paying for. That we are capable of living together in peace, in concert with the natural limits of our biosphere. Two times, two times for emphasis: we are capable of living together in peace, in concert with the natural limits of our biosphere. Maybe not everyone is, but many are. I don’t know if there’s some sort of pendulum effect (where pendulums near to each other and swinging at different rates will eventually synchronize) in societies. Maybe in smaller, local communities. Whatever the case may be, I’m looking for the ones who are capable of living in concert with their total environment. I call them The Happy-Monkey-People.
When I am in urban space I see ruins. Living, breathing ruins. The structural violence of industrial civilization. A scavenger’s paradise. I see the frustration of the superego; its futility. I see the enclosure, the limits, the boundary of the city. An outpost. In Phoenix, where I currently live, those ruins are sometimes not so living and breathing. They’re just broken down, forgotten buildings with old stories on the façade and older chairs inside, the decay of decades of industry and metastatic economic growth. It’s strange to feel nostalgic about things that are currently happening. There is no such thing as history. There’s only what happened in the past. In The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes: “It struck me, a belief that has never left me since that we [humanity] are just a great machine for looking backwards, and that humans are great at self-delusion. Every year that goes by increases my belief in this distortion.”
When I think of people in cities, I wonder how on Earth we are going to make this transition to living in a way that is predicated on health and wellness for everything. I was led to believe that was the whole point of the Universe (by whom or what, I’m not sure, but that’s what I think, anyway.) All the fixtures of the contemporary American city: the cabs, the restaurants (diabetes and heart disease are on the menu), the trucks, the girls, the guys, the homeless, the criminal, the waste, a great martini, the waste, traffic and horns, urban growth, urban decay, gutter punks, bad water, good art, the afterhours, narcissism, the farmers markets, god damn near everything … (breath) depends on oil, and is thus linked to all the tangible effects the use of that substance entails. And what it entails is ecocide. While that is not news to many of those reading this blog, I am still thinking of American city-dwellers, of whom I am currently one. How is it to be done? What force could motivate the conversion of those who depend on supermarkets for their food and Amerika for their infotainment into those who produce much of their own material sustenance, right down to the rocket mass heaters and Hugelkultur beds? The compost pile hot water heater? The creation of a personality with the spiritual knowledge of a being who can live peaceably and joyfully among a diverse group of biological entities? Is Snooki gonna help with that?
The force we usually think will initiate this conversion is the murky specter of collapse. Peak oil and the Economy! are complex beyond prediction, and it is no surprise that so many of us feel like something is shifting, something so massive it does not immediately register on our scale as powerful movement. The combination of these two forces will most definitely be converting some things in our world, although it’s likely to be the living into the dead. I really hope not. Doom and gloom take the place of rational predictions (although they are still possible) precisely because the nature of the problem does not appear to be rational. The word “non-linear” has been ringing in my ears of late. One side of the function of the exponential curve is about to turn for the heavens, and the other side, in a poetic nod to Lao-tse, is about to dive for the center of the Earth. Peak everything. Except peak mayhem, peak denial, and peak possibility. What peak oil is really about for me, is not how much oil we have left, but how much more of this shit I can take before I spontaneously and compulsively start building cob houses in the middle of the street and planting perennial polycultures in my immediate surroundings, fending off herbicide-spraying landscapers and cops with a combination of wit, bearing, charm, and Spanish. And fruits and nuts and vegetables, of course. You can get a long way with fresh figs.
Carless, mega-village, agroforest. Die-off is a touchy subject that is beyond the likes of a knave like me. I don’t want to think about it. This is not out of a desire for ignorance; as Jan Steinman said recently, “Although I appreciate those who fight against the wrongs in the world, we prefer to work for the rights in the world.” I understand the gravity of what we face. It’s so catastrophically profound of an idea, that I won’t waste another second thinking about it. I’m getting going, most ricky-tick. I want to have kids. I want those little wise monkeys to grow up without having toxins put into their bodies. Without toxins being put into their minds and their spirits. I think I speak for the majority of Earth’s living beings when I say I’m over it. I want to walk outside my earthen berm house that I built with my hands and pick fruit for my family’s breakfast. Trade vegetables and comedy gatherings and beer. Artwork and hand tools. Salvaged battery systems that enable diverse art forms and certain life-affirming technologies to continue. Street corner forums on the continental philosophers. Cheese and herbs. Scrap metal and books. Medicine and massage. I want to feed everyone who needs food. I want to figure out how to grow avocadoes at temperate latitudes, because damn it, I want the guacamolé, but I care where it comes from and how it gets here. I want to live, love, and laugh. Vandana Shiva, in the wonderful documentary, Dirt!, says we must feed the Earth first. What it gives back is our food. Feed the Earth. Feed yourself. Simple, not easy.
That is where I’m headed. The inner spiral, the rooting down, and the outward expansion. I’ve transferred my loyalty. What’s left in the intervening space between this place and a place where I produce my own food, my own hot water, and my own happiness, is the time and effort required to prepare an escape trajectory from the orbit of a death-culture with immense mass and spin. Calculate when and for how long to burn my rocket stove to achieve the appropriate velocity for the interculture voyage between civilization and something else. Figure the correct angle and orientation of my solar dehydrator for a safe re-entry into the atmosphere of a healthy planet. Some people call it dropping out. I call it leaving one world and appearing in another, which is the same world you just left. Not the country, not the city. The space between. Let’s build it.
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Alfie Turnshek-Goins was born and raised in Berkeley, California and relocated to Phoenix, Arizona last August at the age of 33. As a kid, he ran pretty free and spent a lot of time in the woods of the Northern California and the Pacific Northwest with his families, where he learned about what he thought were the most important things in the world. He has worked since before graduating from high school, and finds himself checking the “some college” box on job applications. Occasionally he suffers from fits of leaping and grinning as well as from bouts of running for long periods of time. Favorite thing: shower beer.
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This essay is permalinked at Seismologik.
July 24th, 2011 at 5:21 am
Really great writing here, loved it. Please keep on sharing your experience, strength and hope, your vision is exquisite and priceless. It can help heal the world.
July 24th, 2011 at 6:00 am
We need more of this wise recklessness. Much more.
July 24th, 2011 at 7:16 am
You are most welcome, kind Sir. I do believe we met many years ago, though for the life of me I can not remember when or where. Just way too familiar, if you get my drift
July 24th, 2011 at 8:35 am
Alfie Turnshek-Goins
Excellent,perceptive essay !!
I live in Sun City,AZ.If you would care to communicate my number can be had from phone information.I’d welcome the opportunity.
DoubleD
July 24th, 2011 at 8:38 am
http://www.cnbc.com/id/43867050
Double D
July 24th, 2011 at 9:35 am
Thank you, Alfie Turnshek-Goins, for a perceptive essay, in touch with reality. Yet the guiding forces of the industrial civilization are moving to an increasingly further remove from reality:
TED Talks: Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world
July 24th, 2011 at 1:56 pm
There is no intrinsic morality in this universe. All beliefs and actions are meaningless. The only true god of this cosmos is entropy. Whether you live for 5 more minutes or 500 years is of no consequence; life is no better than death, all your efforts are in vain and everything ends in destruction. The only solution to the suffering and absurdity of life is to build a doomsday bomb and extinguish it forever. I call upon the best and the brightest minds to annihilate the world. This universe is an abomination that shouldn’t even exist.
Have a nice day.
July 24th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
All beliefs and actions are meaningless.
I call upon the best and the brightest minds to annihilate the world.
Bit ‘o contradiction there, ain’t it, mate?
July 24th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Maybe. But. If. You. End. All. Actions. And. Thoughts. Forever. The. World. Will. Have. Buddha. Nature.
July 24th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Alfie: Very nice, I really enjoyed that, thank you. Solar dehydrators, rocket stoves, bermed houses. How do you get there from here? That is everyone’s question. Do you have a plan? These questions seem to now permeate the internet, as people finally begin to realize that this life style is finished. Every job that is based on an unsustainable life style has to be questioned now.
July 24th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
All beliefs and actions are meaningless.
Maybe. But. If. You. End. All. Actions. And. Thoughts. Forever. The. World. Will. Have. Buddha. Nature
More contradictions, eh?
July 24th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Nice essay, Alfie — and thanks for the nod. I’m flattered that something I wrote left an impression!
But what the heck are you doing in Phoenix? Do you think it has more than a snowball’s chance in Phoenix of surviving with more than a few percent of its present population?
I’m currently visiting in-laws in the out-law US of A. It is such a cognitive break to go to Harbor Freight and buy a tool that costs five times as much on my tiny Canadian island. Someone who normally drives about 40 km a week to take raw goat milk products to the local market is astounded at six lanes of traffic stopped on the freeway. Have I made the right choice, to pick a relatively isolated area in which to take a stand? Should I not instead run through Big Lots or Costco with a credit card, and hoard all I can for the coming crash?
Yes. Right choice. Thanks for reminding me of what I wrote earlier. I feel ashamed to be buying bulk organic rolled oats in Oregon, when I cannot afford to buy the same thing from my fellow islanders. I walk the aisles of Costco with dropped jaw, a stranger in a strange land, unable to resist the wiles of so-called “civilization.” Thank goodness family obligations lead me into temptation only a few times a year.
But while feeling shame at my one-week lapse into insanity (at least, I didn’t buy a wide-scream TV), I urge anyone who is so motivated to forcibly cut yourself off from the beast. Move somewhere where you simply cannot get to a Mall*Wart store. Find something to do for income that absolutely does not involve plastic. Produce as much of your own food and energy as you possibly can. Then you can indulge in the luxury of self-angst, when you find yourself with family who can’t possibly understand, in the Belly Of The Beast.
July 24th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
jan said ‘Move somewhere where you simply cannot get to a Mall*Wart store.”
a probably a very good principle for location; & a nother quote to remember.
July 24th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Alfie Turnshek-Goins; loved your essay. i believe it is very important to live within our wiring whenever reasonably possible, & i believe your/our optimism bias is right on!
creative!
July 24th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Victor,
Off subject—Re: Super Congress
Debt Ceiling = Reichstag fire ????????????
I have the elevator-drop feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Michael Irving
July 24th, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Debt Ceiling = Reichstag fire ????????????
We’re in 1930′s dejavu. Rising of the US of A Reich in tandem with emerging Fourth Reich.
Mankind will never learn. 400 yrs ago were liberated from traditional tyranny of the church and monrchies but the revolution was hijacked by the money changers and their tribes.
July 24th, 2011 at 10:33 pm
Another fancy dream story that has no relation to reality. Fabulous fiction but lacking the Asshole character by navid.
The Real space can only be realized when our monekey brains are silenced of our own primate pattern of thinking. That space is the immortal, the Real.
July 24th, 2011 at 10:47 pm
These articles are inline with Breivik’s manifesto laying out a stark picture of the future of the Industrial empire.
Whats next on the agenda?. Oh… and dont forget that the actual industrial productions are already shipped abroad.
If you are all so rhetoric against the Industrialists, just sniff out the bacon, all of the trimmings comes right back here at home. Long live the Emperor and it’s army of Goonies.
July 24th, 2011 at 11:13 pm
We must admit that we are the most NEUROTIC people walking the face of the earth. Psychotic medication is being prescribed at an all time high.
A good explanation to the cause of our reactions.
http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=166
July 24th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Jesus you should check out this article, the Real reason behind Breivik’s motives.
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/gilad-atzmon-was-the-massacre-in-norway-a-reaction-to-bds.html
July 25th, 2011 at 1:35 am
if writing was music, this essay would be pretty good jazz.
‘I understand the gravity of what we face. It’s so catastrophically profound of an idea, that I won’t waste another second thinking about it.’
no need to think of it anymore, once the knowledge has taken root, u can’t escape it.
July 25th, 2011 at 1:51 am
speaking of jazz, here’s a blast from the past u may appreciate anew:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpEfAV1T5b0
so much great music from my youth has been virtually lost in the sands of time. thank gaia for you tube, at least for a while longer. helps keep us entertained, distracted, not thinking unpleasant thoughts…
July 25th, 2011 at 2:35 am
I wish the families of the Anders Behring Breivik catastrophe find peace at this time of world suffering.
We can not look away and pretend that we are not part of this, our own towns and societies are just as much infected with hatred towards Muslims. I will make every effort to help other people around me understand that we are all human beings, equal in all senses, heart and mind. Below our skin color, race, caste, religion, we are all human beings.
July 25th, 2011 at 6:08 am
Debt Ceiling = Reichstag fire ????????????
I have the elevator-drop feeling in the pit of my stomach.
When the only conceivable options are authoritarianism of one form or another, such feelings are to be expected. Climbing out of the box of authoritarian thinking ends identification with that system.
The Real space can only be realized when our monekey brains are silenced of our own primate pattern of thinking. That space is the immortal, the Real.
Could be taken as an endorsement for euthanasia.
July 25th, 2011 at 7:31 am
Robin Datta,
“When the only conceivable options are authoritarianism of one form or another, such feelings are to be expected. Climbing out of the box of authoritarian thinking ends identification with that system.”
I understand heroin use is another good route for escaping reality.
Michael Irving
July 25th, 2011 at 7:35 am
Apologies to Frank, the enforcer, but seemed like this bit of off topic news is of interest. Doesn’t matter in the long run, but in the short run it is pretty worrisome…..
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/07/debt-ceiling-negotiators-propose-super.html
Debt Ceiling Negotiators Propose a “Super Congress” To Do the Dirty Work and Avoid the Wrath of Voters
Huffington Post reports:
Debt ceiling negotiators think they’ve hit on a solution to address the debt ceiling impasse and the public’s unwillingness to let go of benefits such as Medicare and Social Security that have been earned over a lifetime of work: Create a new Congress.
This “Super Congress,” composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers.
***
Legislation approved by the Super Congress … would then be fast-tracked through both chambers, where it couldn’t be amended by simple, regular lawmakers, who’d have the ability only to cast an up or down vote. With the weight of both leaderships behind it, a product originated by the Super Congress would have a strong chance of moving through the little Congress and quickly becoming law. A Super Congress would be less accountable than the system that exists today, and would find it easier to strip the public of popular benefits.
Michael Rivero comments:
This article is correct. The Constitution does not provide for such a sham. This group of 12 will do the dirty work so that the rest of Congress can evade the wrath of the voters in 2012. No doubt the 6 Senators will not be up for re-election in 2012 while the 6 house members will either be impossible to defeat or predicted to lose anyway no matter what they do.
July 25th, 2011 at 7:56 am
Thanks to everyone for the comments. This one sure brought out the peanut gallery in full force.
Frank – Will do. Look forward to talking to you.
Ed – My plan at this point is to do as much research and experimentation as possible for the next 9 months. At that point I will likely be applying to enter a natural building and permaculture internship somewhere in the PNW or CA. Not exactly sure where, but all those plans are moot if this ship doesn’t hold together through the end of the year. I agree completely that unsustainable ways of living will soon be hitting some hard limits.
Jan – In the case of a rapid descent (like if the just-in-time system has a heart attack) I think Phoenix will be one of the worst places to be imaginable. I have plans for that eventuality. We came here for my wife’s job, but honestly, living at the poverty line in the bay area wasn’t much more sustainable for us, still living as citizens of Empire. Coming to Phoenix has been really amazing for me, in that it has fully awakened me to the total and complete unsustainability of this way of life. The bay at least has the veneer of being aware of the nature of the problem, though in reality it isn’t much different from everywhere else in this country. We are here for now, but likely not much longer. I am going to spend the next year accumulating experience and looking for opportunities to work on a permaculture farm where I can learn all the skills needed to make the long-term health of my family and friends a real possibility. Any suggestions would be most welcome.
matrix said:
“Another fancy dream story that has no relation to reality. Fabulous fiction but lacking the Asshole character by navid.
The Real space can only be realized when our monekey brains are silenced of our own primate pattern of thinking. That space is the immortal, the Real.”
I have room in my story for another asshole. You are currently filling that role. And since you mentioned no relation to reality, I must say that the second part of your comment is about as silly as it gets. What I wrote, I wrote as the most real thing I could imagine. Feeding myself and those I love with food that I have grown. Can you tell me something more real? If you want to silence your monkey brain, I hear a bullet works real good. Me, I like my monkey brain. It’s the best part. Hella Zen.
July 25th, 2011 at 8:37 am
thanks to victor and kathy for bringing to our attention this little matter of a ‘super-congress’ development in the u.s. i often don’t pay much attention to the details of political shenanigans, since their broad strokes are oh-so-familiar by now, but this one sure appears to be a doozy!
July 25th, 2011 at 10:10 am
I also think that there is an artificial distinction between the city and the country that needs to be abolished. When I said “carless, mega-village, agroforest” I was thinking about the spaces we currently inhabit. The world I want to live in is not a world of isolation. The city needs to die, but something else will take its place. I want that place to be a veritable Willy Wonka factory of creative, life-affirming endeavors. On this blog, we often talk about permaculture options as being rooted primarily in rural space. I think it’s important to keep our options and ideas open as to what shape the future may take. I have found http://www.futurescenarios.org/ by permaculture co-founder David Holmgren to be of great use in thinking through all the myriad paths we can take. I would be interested to hear feedback from the readership as to what it is we are talking about, precisely, when we talk about durable living arrangements, and where and how they might be possible.
July 25th, 2011 at 11:29 am
I understand heroin use is another good route for escaping reality.
Staying in the authoritarian box is an alternate and preferred way to shield oneself from reality.
July 25th, 2011 at 11:59 am
Pickle, that is some awesome-good writing! Thank you.
If I were in your shoes, I would not bother spending all that money on a permie course but apprentice directly. Unless you are hoping to make money by teaching others… but that pyramid scheme will eventually run down, as they all must, when high paying customers peter out.
Scenarios… they are seductive, but I think what is more useful is to have a clear vision, and go do it, then modify based on feedback, and do some more.
Durable living arrangements… ah. Well, you know, people talk about them a lot but the only folks who have them are tribal and subsistence folks far away from the world we inhabit. They will do well in the collapse. The rest of us… been thinking a lot about the way we civ humans trample everything we come across, all the livingness around us. Now if we were serious about durability, we’d stop building more roads, and start converting some of the ones there to living surfaces. We would only build microhouses, because anything larger kills too much land. And we would stop clearing more fields, more mining sites, more extraction places, and convert some of what there is back to forest, back to grassland.
You know… it gets me. Permies and greenies go buy land, and the first thing is, they develop it. I would love to know of a community that actually gets the land, and they say, ok, how can we live here WITHOUT developing this land? What is the bare minimum of human artifacts? How can we protect the livingness that is here, so that it keeps on living?
July 25th, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Hi Vera,
Thanks for the compliment and the reply! I am not hoping to become a for-profit teacher so that is good to know. The internships I have seen are not outrageously priced, but doing an apprenticeship where my contribution is in labor and time is much more preferable. Any suggestions on places to study?
The scenarios Holmgren writes about are useful in thought experiments, and I agree that basing your course of action on real feedback from the world is a strategy that will ultimately be the one that provides the greatest potential for success.
I further agree that we are almost completely ignorant of living in a way that is in tune with the biosphere. I think that we have to accept the fact that anything we do at this point is going to have to be an experiment. Whether we choose to learn from indigenous cultures or not, the knowledge of how to live in accord with our planet is out there. We have to find it again or anew, and I love the unknown and the adventure of it. It’s also important to approach this adventure with the benefit of the knowledge of previous “explorations” and not repeat the same colonialist mistakes and transgressions.
I see a lot of truth in what you say about the permaculture movement. If you could find a group of humans who wanted to go back to living a nomadic hunter/wildlife manager lifestyle, maybe you could do it. I guess the thing to consider above all else, is does the land provide the caloric requirements to sustain the number of human inhabitants? If it doesn’t, some kind of increased human intervention will always be the result. I like to think of this project as some sort of creative interplay between the basic needs of human life and our knowledge of the biosphere. If we can build structures, and more importantly, ideas, that allow us to exist upon the land in a way that contributes to our biosphere and does not extract anything that cannot be replaced, perhaps we can create novel communities that resemble societies of the past in many ways, with some new additions. All these ideas MUST adhere to the natural limits set by the planet, and indeed, must also include both the foresight to live within those limits, and the hindsight to remember how we have exceeded them in the past. We’ve got a lot of healing to do.
Thanks again for the reply. Love your blog!
July 25th, 2011 at 12:52 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB-MhZkYVo8&feature=relmfu
Speaking of tiny houses…
July 25th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Just as you thought the news of the environment couldn’t get any worse….well, it has…..
From the Guardian/UK:
Melting Arctic ice releasing banned toxins, warn scientists
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/24/melting-arctic-ice-banned-toxins-pops
Remember all those persistent nasty chemicals, known as “persistent organic pollutants (POPs), we used to throw into the atmosphere causing birth defects and cancers – Chlordane, lindane, PCBs, DDT, hexachlorobenzine (HCB), etc? Well…..they’re back! Trapped in cold water and ice for decades, but now being released by global warming in the Arctic….
July 25th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Dmitry Orlov in ClubOrlov, Dead Souls:
Perhaps the next realization to hit us is that public debt is in runaway mode: it will continue to go up whether government spending is cut or increased. From this it follows that the government’s days are numbered; but few people are ready to make this leap yet.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Permies and greenies go buy land, and the first thing they do is develop it. Or they don’t. I’m not sure what category we fall under, but in 5 years we have put in almost 2,000 perennials on our 24 open acres, 4 ponds, and a bunch of other sustainable thingies. I guess that is development, but the good natural things that have happened because of these actions makes me smile.
Alfie: Jen, my OH has a PDC, and you are probably better off spending your money in other ways. Some of the courses are way better than others, but for the most part they are more about design and what you are looking for is the guts of what you need to do.
M. Ruppert said we collapse this month and it was the easiest call he has ever made. Tomorrow is the 26th. You have time, but not alot. Pick a place that has lots of water, and then make sure it has even more water, and then make sure it has just a little bit more. The NW is a good choice. Carol Deppe’s book is a have to read. We learned a ton from it. Drying squash is something everyone should be doing and she takes all of the guess work out of it. More than Coleman and a bunch of others. Bermed house, we are in the process of building one. If you want the plans, I’m happy to send them to you. That goes for anyone else.
Jan, good stuff. Today was my once a month visit to Sam’s. I go there because about once a month I need seed starter mix and vermiculite. I’m down to pistachios, two types of cheese, and a couple more garden hoses. The cheeses we can make ourselves if we needed too, but items like the hoses, we keep putting away.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
Another alternative for inexpensive learning about permaculture and gardening: http://www.wwoof.org
July 25th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Victor.
Thanks for the link.
I suspect we may not have time to worry about the long term effects of POPSs. The meltdown of the Arctic is accelerating, as we suspected would happen when record low ice cover was reported in Dec-Jan. As we all know, positive feedbacks have been triggered -more melting causing the release of CO2 and CH4, plus the albedo effect-
NSIDC reported:
‘July 18, 2011
Early sea ice melt onset, snow cover retreat presage rapid 2011 summer decline
Arctic sea ice extent declined at a rapid pace through the first half of July, and is now tracking below the year 2007, which saw the record minimum September extent. The rapid decline in the past few weeks is related to persistent above-average temperatures and an early start to melt. Snow cover over Northern Eurasia was especially low in May and June, continuing the pattern seen in April.’
The heating of the planet is already generating extreme weather events. Increasingly unstable climate will make permaculture increasingly difficult: not too many varieties can stand wildly fluctuating temperature and rainfall conditions. (NZ has been suffering from a severe Antarctic blast which has dumped snow in places it is normally unheard of, including Inglewood, just 18km from here.)
When I discussed that aspect with David Holmgren 4 years ago he was contemplating leaving Australia and shifting to NZ, but the rainfall that Australia received over the past couple of years has negated those thoughts, I believe. Who would have thought that parched areas of Australia would be knee deep in water a few months later? I guess the southern regions of the US are praying for similar inundation. The last data I saw reported indicated that 29% of the US was in severe droought.
Alfie. All that makes the choice of a suitable location to settle extraordinarily difficult.
The NZ dollar is currently just over 86 cents US, and people are seriously talking about 95 cents, which will pretty much annihilate the export sector (other than to ‘rich’ Australia, whose currency has rocketed from 55 cents US to nealy $1.10 and to Cjioan, which is apparently desperate for resources. Unfortunately the high NZ dollar is reinforcing the delusions that ‘things are not too bad’, even as the globalised economic system gradually implodes and the environment melts down.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Oops terrible typo I didn’t spot. Sorry.
July 25th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
July 25th, 2011 at 6:01 pm
Our huge web of interconnections will do us in. The river conditions affect the barge industry, but also the industries that ship by barge. Per the article switching to railroad ups costs by as much as 25%. Fertilizer going up uses barges, grain going down uses barges, among other products shipped by barge. More impact on food prices…
full article at http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2011/07/23/missouri-river-flooding-closure-impacting-barge-industry/
Missouri River flooding hurts barge industry
After years of drought, flooding ruins expectations for recovery of shipping
The Missouri River gave the shipping industry too much of what it needed this summer. After a lasting drought in the river basin decimated the corridor’s barge industry for the past decade, this summer’s flooding has washed away hopes for a bounce-back year.
…
“Everything is here. The infrastructure is here,” Jackson said. “It’s just a matter of getting the correct amount of water.”
July 25th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
The heating of the planet is already generating extreme weather events. Increasingly unstable climate will make permaculture increasingly difficult: not too many varieties can stand wildly fluctuating temperature and rainfall conditions.
Kevin
So true – this is the gorilla in the room where permaculture is considered the way of the future. In the end plants need water, but not too much or too little. Climate change brings with it climate instability at first. Few areas of the globe will be unaffected.
So those who get through the Bottleneck through “staying close to nature” will likely find themselves having to frequently pick up and move to find food.
July 25th, 2011 at 10:30 pm
Point well taken, Kathy. Production, whether it be food or other, must still get to market using an infrastructure that provide for timely and inexpensive transport. With climate change and peak oil we will lose much of that. At first,we will experience significant price increases. Later we will experience real shortages as infrastructure breaks down, and food and other goods become too expensive to produce, much less transport.
July 25th, 2011 at 10:37 pm
Alfie:
I know I’m not the only one writing into NBL who has read William Forstchen’s novel One Second After. It’s a vision a civilized people reduced to killer apes by the loss of the electrical grid, and it postulates the violent reduction of the U.S. population to 30 million in the space of a year. If you put it and McCarthy’s The Road on one end of a projected-future spectrum, a history of the world and Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee in the middle, and your piece and various ecotopian visions on the far end, you can start assessing your chances of raising a child in the kind of world you so poetically evoke.
To me, your vision looks like a boatload of magical thinking. I love your phrase “happy monkey people,” but the Albigensians were the medieval model for happy monkey people and they didn’t fare well when confronted with a demonic Pope who said, “Kill them all. God will recognize His own.”
In law enforcement classes I was introduced to the concept of the “human lowest common denominator,” the person who, by his actions, takes everyone to his level. In this culture, that’s the person who’s going to use a gun to get what he wants once civil authority breaks down. That’s why you are going to need a gun if you share your world with ungoverned humans, and if you have a child, you’ll need to teach that child to shoot straight. Turboguy! has some good advice on guns and on the subject of human nature, and you should listen to what he says. He’s one of the people who will set the norm for the rest of us.
I respect your desire for a life in balance with the earth, but I was raised in a family that tried to be in balance with the earth and we managed to sustain ourselves only because my father ceased his fishing and hunting and trapping for a few months each year to work on highway construction or drive bus. My father taught me how to trap, skin, and stretch the hides of animals but for reasons related to my possible reincarnation I hope never to steel-trap any animal again. I don’t mind hunting but it’s not for the unskilled or the out-of-shape and most people fit the description.
Even a sustainable vegetarian existence requires such hard work that it shortens lifespans and causes minds to obsess on chickenwire and humanure. The reluctance of us old people to jump into tribal sustenance schemes, no matter how benign they sound, reflects the fact that some of us have been there and were glad to get out. On a tribal scale, visionaries turn into petty tyrants.
Seven billion humans confront us with a dilemma: either we keep slapping patches on industrial civilization, fracking and leveling the whole planet until and if fusion power becomes practical and we reconstitute an expanding capitalist economy, or the whole distribution and production system breaks down and six billion of us die in the ensuing fight for food. There’s a chance that the survivors might be able to construct a world like the one you postulate, but to get to the other side of the bottleneck they will need both physical and mental toughness beyond any of our present imaginations. As Victor noted, even Turboguy!’s biggest challenges are in the future, when he will have to decide which side he’s on. As Victor Frankl said of his experience in the death camps, the decent ones among us died.
Like Kevin Moore, I’ve been watching the Arctic Ice, and it’s only one indication that the world climate has reached a phase-change. From here on out, anything goes. It makes it hard to grow fruit and vegetables by doing the same thing one year to the next.
I’ve worked with words all of my life, and it’s a real effort to keep them from forming realities complete unto themselves. Your essay, for all its poetry, detaches from the world your much-wanted child will face: on the one hand a lack of space, a chaotic climate, and the difficulty of protecting hard-earned food from people who won’t respect the fences, and on the other–probably worse–a continuation of a death-dealing world-wide capitalist economy.
All that said, I admire people like Guy and Ed and Resa and Jan, et al., who are doing the next indicated thing, which is to build and plant and store things away for next winter, however long it may last.
July 25th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
M. Ruppert said we collapse this month and it was the easiest call he has ever made. Tomorrow is the 26th. You have time, but not alot.
Ed
Mike’s tendency recently to get into predictions is what finally drove me away from his site. It’s like he has entered this mode where he feels it necessary to constantly up the fear pitch. I have no use for that kind of fear-mongering – reminds me too much of our governments….
I was going to re-new my membership for another month or two just so I could hold him to account when collapse didn’t happen, but in the end I had to ask myself why I would do such a thing.
July 26th, 2011 at 12:45 am
John.
Salutary words that I tend to agree with, unfortunately.
Victor.
I understand what you mean re: MR. TPTB will keep the show running a while yet.
What do make of this?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/life-style/5339573/Plant-now-to-survive-in-the-future
Awful photo: freezing cold day and close up wide angle lens.
FYI the 80:20 rule applies. 80% of what is in the article is what I actually said, and the article covers about 20% of what I said. However, since we are dealing with the corporate press, we could expect little different.
As it happens, climate instability hit hard yesterday, with unusually cold air defoliating a large number of my more sensitive plants (pepinoes, tamarilloes, mountain pawpaw).
July 26th, 2011 at 2:44 am
John, thanks for bringing things back to the reality of what lays down the pike. I have taken heat for it before, but I will say it again anyway. An unborn has no voice in their birth. Thus parents who can choose are obligated to envision what life their child might have. I have read One Second After and I think the problems that will be faced are fairly accurately laid out. Since it follows the “hero” who helps their town deal better than others, the dismal things described in detail are the difficulties and successes. The towns that don’t deal well are described more succinctly. But even in the town that does well, huge numbers of people die from attacks from the outside, lack of food, lack of medicines, internal strife etc.
Since the unborn have no voice, one should ask oneself “will this child thank me if scenarios such as this or worse become their life, or will they curse me for bringing them out of oblivion into horror?” Watch a few movies about life when the social order is upturned – Savior, The Secret Life of Words, Prisoner of the Mountains, Triage, or The Grey Zone come to mind.
Those who survive past the coming dieoff (to die later of course) will likely have to kill many others by weapons or by not sharing what they have. While I dislike Turboguy’s attitude, he is right that to make it for very long in the coming times one will have to be armed and unafraid to use weapons to defend what you have. (Jean says the same but in a far less cocksure, abrasive way. Attitude matters too and I would bet he will do better in the future than Turbo)
I don’t want to crawl over the bodies of others to add a few years to my life. And in the end all we can do is add years, for we are mortal.
I recommend One Second After as a guide to what happens when the grid fails (it will in the end fail, but the EMP attack in the book has it fail massively in one second). If your goal is to live the longest life possible the book will address concerns other than growing food that you may face. If your goal is to live well while you live, do those things that bring joy into your life in a daily way – for me my garden and chickens.
Also go visit some nursing homes to see what living long can mean. Living long is overrated for most humans. Drooling old people strapped in wheelchairs unable to feed themselves are surviving….but survival can become a curse rather than a blessing.
July 26th, 2011 at 8:55 am
“Mike’s tendency recently to get into predictions is what finally drove me away from his site. It’s like he has entered this mode where he feels it necessary to constantly up the fear pitch. I have no use for that kind of fear-mongering”
Well said. That’s doomer porn peddling. Stoneleigh does it too. Apparently, fear sells. It’s easy to get seduced into it. On the other hand, Astyk hasn’t written up any doomer porn for a long time… and neither has Guy. Maybe it’s a curable condition!
July 26th, 2011 at 9:39 am
Kevin Moore
What is “Cjioan” that you mentioned in your posting of 7-25-11 at 3:49 pm ?
Also in the same paragraph “The NZ dollar is currently just over 86 cents US, and people are seriously talking about 95 cents, which will pretty much annihilate the export sector (other than to ‘rich’ Australia, whose currency has rocketed from 55 cents US to nealy $1.10 and to Cjioan, which is apparently desperate for resources. Unfortunately the high NZ dollar is reinforcing the delusions that ‘things are not too bad’, even as the globalised economic system gradually implodes and the environment melts down”.
There are many benefits to a strong currency,as travelers to the US know.What economists call favorable “terms of trade” means the NZ dollar
buys more for you,especially when you trade with the US.
Double D
July 26th, 2011 at 10:01 am
Alfie, thanks for your essay. I always enjoy reading the thoughts of others who are dealing with this crazy world. It helps me not to feel so alone.
I must say, though, that I don’t envy anyone who is just embarking on a new career. My nephew is 20 and in his second year of college. His facebook page features all the exciting things he is planning to do with his degree in advanced technology. I don’t have the heart to tell him how useless his efforts will be in a very short time. He’s visited my website, so I know he’s at least read about it – but I can do no more to stifle him – and don’t really want to.
@Kathy:
“If your goal is to live well while you live, do those things that bring joy into your life in a daily way – for me my garden and chickens.
“Also go visit some nursing homes to see what living long can mean. Living long is overrated for most humans. Drooling old people strapped in wheelchairs unable to feed themselves are surviving….but survival can become a curse rather than a blessing.”
Thanks for those words Kathy – they really rang true with me today. About a month ago my 83 year old father was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. He’s opted not to have treatment and is going downhill very quickly. We thought he was going to die a week ago but he pulled through. He is able to communicate his wishes well and so we are just doing what we can to spend time with him and love him. Soon, we’ll only be able to do that in our minds. At this point, I’m happy to say, he’s in no pain and is able to get around in his wheelchair. He still tells his infamous stories even though his voice is weak and hoarse, sends email, and is able to go down to the senior center to watch his buddies play pool, even if he can’t join in like he used to do everyday.
My 12 1/2 year old dog, Lilly, is also dying. She’s a rotweiller/shepherd mix and has been in my life since she was 8 weeks old. Unfortunately, she can’t communicate her wishes and so I don’t know if she’s ready to die or not. Maybe she doesn’t even really think about it. Maybe all she knows is that she can’t walk anymore and is really tired of lying in her own urine. I’m in denial about her imminent death, so I bought her a wheelchair. Of all the silly notions! A wheelchair for a dog about to die. But I can’t help myself.
If she lived in the wild, she would have been dead a very long time ago. She’s an alpha female and I’m pretty sure a younger, stronger female would have challenged her years ago and ended it. As it is, I keep her alive trying to stave off my grief. In the end, I suspect that all I’m doing is prolonging the suffering for both of us.
Either way, it won’t be long now for either her or my dad. After all, death is the natural outcome of life. In some ways, these type of situations will be less fraught with pain in the future, at least with respect to making choices. Very few will have the option of prolonging life. When someone gets sick, they will either get better on their own, or they will die. There won’t be options of antibiotics, or oxygen, or transfusions, or surgeries, or any of the other interventions we humans have devised to steal a few more days of living for ourselves.
Wow! It doesn’t take long to become quite morbid during these times. But, it can be therapeutic to write it out. Thanks to all for indulging me.
July 26th, 2011 at 10:39 am
John – Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I guess the broadstroke of my reply would be, “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
I actually did not write this piece with the intention of creating an ecotopian vision of the future. In between the lines, there can be read a tremendous amount of suffering, strife, and death. I find a lot of what you say to be accurate, certainly your historical references and your appeal to the common sense knowledge of the base abilities of humans to savage one another make a lot of sense to me. But I would reply earnestly, that my piece is absolutely a boatload of magical thinking. And that is the whole point. Part of what turns me off about the doom and gloom (and not in a I-don’t-want-to-know kind of way) is that it casts magical thinking as a negative factor, when in fact, magical thinking is perhaps the only way out of the mess that non-magical thinking created. It isn’t our intellect that is broken; it’s our spirit. Our connection with the Earth. The stories we tell each other about how hard life used to be, the linear cultural narrative of progress and evolution; these are partly just stories we tell ourselves. We don’t know what life was like for people in the past. We can’t know. We tell ourselves stories about what we think their lives were like. And when their own accounts contradict our beliefs about who they were, we dismiss them as anecdotal or reason them away with our biases. These stories are a creation of the mostly monolithic academic perspective of anthropology, which arose from ethnography and other benignly intended but misguided projects of the Western mind. From a desire for what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “Platonicity.” To cut reality into discernible shapes without fuzzy edges and spectral overlap for easier digestion. For now, we see through a scanner, darkly, as the line goes. Again, the lack of spiritual depth is the source of the problem. More of the same busted misanthropy will never create anything but more of the same problematic thinking with which it is replete.
I agree completely that conventional agricultural techniques translate into hard work and shortened lifespans. I don’t believe that conventional agricultural techniques are at all sustainable, and I won’t be living in any way that resembles that lifestyle for precisely that reason. Derrick Jensen has written extensively on the amount of time that hunter-gatherers spent obtaining the nutritional requirements to sustain life, and what that meant for their spiritual relationship with the Earth. The observable data says conclusively, that these societies expended far less energy to obtain food than their agricultural counterparts, to put it in ERoEI terms. In both my more optimistic intention for the future and your prediction/vision, which frankly leaves me staring into the maw of nothingness (and not in a cool Buddhist way), these societies we think of as extinct, will perhaps be the only way anyone will survive into the future at all. Does that mean that lots of people will die in the conversion? Sure. Probably. But the difference between our views of the future is in the numbers, not in the necessary change that must be effected in order to sustain some life on this planet. We need new stories. This is another thing that Jensen has written about extensively. If we tell ourselves broken stories, we create broken reality. Of course, I am not ignorant of the change our way of living has brought to the planet. I am not deluded as to the nature of the problem and its potential solutions, or lack thereof. I choose to respond in a way that allows for creativity and openness, the very things I’m fighting so hard to bring out in every being around me, the very things that are necessary for living healthfully on this planet, and perhaps the only way out of this mess, through the bottleneck or otherwise.
As to the conversion itself, I’m sure it will be a doozy. I joined the Army (FiSTer, basically an infantryman who is trained to call in artillery fire) years ago having made the decision that I would be able to take a human life. Whether that’s true or not is another matter. You never know until you’re there. And so far I have not had to kill another human being. But rest assured, my children will know how to shoot straight. As to my own preparations, I’m sure Turboguy! and I could talk all day about our favorite mods to our AR-15s, the best way to slice the pie and clear a room, what round provides the most stopping power without sacrificing accuracy, and on and on. To quote my buddy, “When the shit hits the fan, the only language I speak is 5.56.” If we end up in a catastrophic scenario where killer apes roam the streets, I will be one of the ones armed to the teeth, killing as many of those who transgress against me as I need to. I will not however, be one of the ones trying to steal from and hurt others. I live my life by a code, no matter how ridiculous that sounds to the uninitiated. The Samurai used to say that the death-dealing blade becomes the life-giving sword.
So let’s talk brass tacks: I hear the word “collapse” everyday, but what does it mean? What are we talking about, in minute detail, when we say that? Food deliveries stop? Cops don’t show up for work? The grid goes down? FEMA death camps? Hopi Prophecy? How? Why? When? Where? I need details and an operational plan to look at if I am to take seriously all the chicken-littling. No doubt the Earth is fucked up. Badly. I think we’re in big trouble. But address all the previous questions to fleshing out the details. What will this fucked-uppedness cause to happen? I see a general pattern of feedback loops developing, leading us to an increasing likelihood of a non-linear collapse scenario unfolding. That’s about all I can say within the scope of my current knowledge. But it is not enough to say the planet is fucked, it’s getting worse, it’s our fault, and we can’t deal with it. Proverbial Doom. That isn’t interesting to me in the least bit, other than as a model of antiquated thinking, i.e. realism, which to me at this point in time means acceptance of defeat and doom. I won’t do it no matter what names people call me. Here is a perfect example from Kathy: “John, thanks for bringing things back to the reality of what lays down the pike.” Not only is this dismissive, as if there is one, true interpretation of “reality” but it is only and I mean ONLY the reality of one human being interpreting the available data in the way that is meaningful to them. It has fuckall to do with how you see things, or how I see things. Kathy, no offense, but my world doesn’t revolve around your doomer mindset, no matter what empiricism you rely upon to attempt to put my vision in its place. I make my own reality in playful co-creation with the material world. This is exactly what I meant when I wrote “yet those things which deep down we all know to be utterly, simply true; are that we are powerful and beautiful and free beyond our imagining.” We are powerful and capable of doing anything, including living in concert with the natural limits of our biosphere. The way Kathy states her reality tells me more about her self-perceived powerlessness than it does anything about my own mission in life. Regardless, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I must say that I find this type of thinking to be a major part of the problem. Dream it, plan it, do it. Too easy. The rest is just coffeehouse bullshit.
You said that words can become realities unto themselves. I say that’s exactly right. I say that ideas and actions are realities unto themselves too. So what the hell are we doing here on our computers talking, talking, talking? Action is the only validation for all of this mental masturbation. I’m acting, and anyone reading is more than welcome to playfully join in, because these Happy-Monkey-People have guns, and they are not playing around. Fuck the Pope.
July 26th, 2011 at 11:02 am
The REAL Dr. House,
Old dogs. Sorry to hear that you are going through that. I know that pain.
Michael Irving
July 26th, 2011 at 11:26 am
Dr. House – Thanks for the comment. I really enjoy reading your posts about healthcare and your relationship to it in a changing world. I am sorry to hear about your Dad and your dog. I really admire your love for them both, and would be doing the same thing were they my own.
July 26th, 2011 at 11:35 am
Alfie aka pickle:
Aren’t you a double-edged one. Frankly, when I first read your words I thought to myself, another philosophizing dime-a-dozen “all talk, no walk” freeloader. The planet’s full of them. And then you switch gears and it’s “armed to the teeth, killing as many of those who transgress against me as I need to.”
So, deep down, at your core, who’s the real you? Alfie or pickle?
Re: “It isn’t our intellect that is broken; it’s our spirit. Our connection with the Earth.” Speak for yourself. My spirit isn’t broken. Not by a long shot. Neither is my connection to Earth.
July 26th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Resa-
I am likely more than double-edged. I am also likely more complicated a person than my words can accurately transmit on teh interwebz. What you interpret as “switching gears” is only a further revelation of personality. I don’t think that anywhere in the original piece I made myself out to be non-violent, or dogmatic about pacifism. I frequently post on this blog to that effect.
Don’t be silly. Pickle is just a funny name, not an alter-ego. Geez. And from your posts I can tell that neither your spirit nor you connection with the Earth is broken. Congratulations. “Our” meaning the dominant cultural paradigm. Stop playing at semantics. Neither my spirit nor my connection with the Earth is broken either. Perhaps my connection could be called attenuated. What’s with the hostility yo?
July 26th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Perhaps the seemingly impossible contradiction of a Berkeley kid who has a hopeful and peaceful yearning for a livable planet and someone who is willing to use force to defend himself was too much for you upon initial consideration. I get that a lot being from where I’m from and having made the choices I’ve made.
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman
July 26th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Alfie- I enjoyed your essay so much that I printed it for the other farmers here. In my mind, it evoked Jensen with a splash of Chuck Bowden….and I say that as a sincere compliment.
We have been on a path of self-reliance for about 10 years with the motivation being a realization that monkey-business-as-usual may well come to an end. we do not take a fear-based approach but rather a more idealized view so that we may enjoy the process instead of fearing possible outcomes. We do use guns for hunting and killing our pigs etc and would use them to defend ourselves but do not dwell on that potentiality like some do.
We have learned alot in the past years and have implemented much of it to hopefully cushion ourselves from large changes, and I have to say they have been the most satisfying years of my life….so collapse or not, we are way ahead in the game of life. I would encourage others in this same direction….go out there and volunteer through WOOF or other organizations rather than spending $ on permaculture classes. Be selective where you go and ask LOTS of questions. Enjoy the process and give thanks for the gifts that come from mistakes. Do not think that you need to go out and buy your own place and start from scratch….most people that already own land and share a similiar vision need alot of help to make it happen….try to find them.
Pickle…if you would like to know more about our small farm and may like to visit (we are in an undisclosed location in southern utah) drop me a line…..
July 26th, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Resa-
I would also like to know what you mean when you call me a freeloader. What exactly are you trying to say? A label tells me a little, but not the whole story. Are you saying that people who don’t farm or raise livestock are freeloaders? I find your leap to judgement to be revealing about what you think about people who are interested in changing the way they live. What right have you to call them freeloaders? Do you think you’re better than them by virtue of your occupation? Wouldn’t you want to support them in that effort? Again, I’m confused by your hostility. You know, a lot of folks in the larger conversation we’re having would say that pastoralists and farmers were the the problem in the first place. Just sayin’.
July 26th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Alfie: I don’t doubt that you contain multitudes. Most people do. The ongoing struggle is to resolve their contradictions without being lethal to yourself or others.
The most eloquent reply to your posts is that of Dr. House, who has intuitively introduced grief into the conversation.
July 26th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Scott –
Thanks for sharing my words with your friends. I respect Derrick Jensen’s work a lot, and I take it as a very nice compliment to be participating in that conversation. I agree entirely about weapons. I regard them as tools, with extremely limited purpose. They frequently serve as a flashpoint for assumptions about the people who own them, and I too try not to dwell on the possibilities of having to use them to defend myself or my family. I guess that’s why I said I want to feed everyone who needs food. If a hungry person comes to me and threatens me for food, I would give them what I could spare.
My entire point of submitting my essay to Guy was to enter into conversation with all the awesome humans out there in hopes of making connections. This blog is such an amazing source for those connections, (even as the world burns
) and an offer like yours is one of the things I was hoping to achieve as a result of participating here. I would love to visit and am willing and excited to put in some hard work to learn the skills you are putting into practice on your farm. I will send Guy an email so he can communicate my contact information to you or yours to me so we can avoid posting details on the public forum. I look forward to hearing more about your setup and thanks again!
July 26th, 2011 at 1:01 pm
John-
I agree about Dr. House’s reply. It caught me off guard (I try not to be on guard) and brought about a poignant moment of realization of the topic under discussion. No doubt this process is going to be extremely sad and difficult.
Also, I think that sometimes there is an extremely productive space that exists as a result of apparent inner contradictions. My experience tells me there is. I myself grew up in a space between called joint custody. I don’t take Whitman’s quote to mean that all contradictions will be resolved of themselves. I take it to mean that our understanding will eventually catch up with the reality of our dynamic, changing being. That our multitudes are but facets of the jewel of the dharma. Not to get too poetic about it…
July 26th, 2011 at 1:02 pm
We are all freeloaders and parasites upon this planet. I still say destroying all life is the only solution, and if we put our heads together I’m pretty sure we could do it. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…
July 26th, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Dr House, thanks for sharing. Its funny that sometimes it might be easier to know what to do for a human you love than for a pet you love.
In One Second After at the end there is a dog pet that has hung on with the barest of portions because the “hero” can’t let go. But a friend points out that his pregnant daughter needs protein and so the dog becomes a gift to the baby she is carrying.
End of life choices are hard now, but will become harder…
From all you have shared I know that you and your father are very unique and special humans for you have related well despite many differences.
July 26th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Meanwhile things keep looking dicey on the food front – Mother Nature is up to bat. My friend in the pig industry has sent several articles about cow deaths (1,000 to 1,500 across ND), turkeys and pig deaths. And this:
http://beefmagazine.com/cowcalfweekly/0722-effects-heat-wave-corn-prices/
THE EFFECTS OF THE HEAT WAVE
Jul 22, 2011 9:59 AM, By Troy Marshall, BEEF Contributing Editor
I’m no farmer, but I’m a big believer in the marketplace, and the recent run-up in the corn market makes it clear that the current heat wave is harming the prospects of corn yields. This week, heat indices hit 120-129 across Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and parts of Illinois and Kansas.
While the corn crop has always been important to the cattle industry, it’s become even more so with the advent of the federal ethanol subsidies and mandates. Corn prices have doubled as a result of ethanol, but we have been fortunate in that we’ve enjoyed record crops year after year. The latest USDA projections were for yet another record crop, but also extremely tight inventories.
This type of ongoing heat stresses the crop but, as in most things, the timing is the crucial factor, and we are just beginning to enter into the critical pollination stage. Between the floods, drought and heat wave, many experts are downgrading the yield prospects for this crop.
Through the heart of the Corn Belt (Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska), the crop is still in pretty good shape. But, in the short term, nearly all of the risk in the corn market is on the upside. After all, it was just last month that USDA projected a record harvest of 13.47 billion bu. If nothing else, the market’s reaction to that report was telling as “Dec corn” never spent much time below $6/bu. The upside certainly remains gigantic compared to the downside in the corn market.
Maybe Mother Nature is just reminding us of her power this summer. Certainly, with the drought gripping the Southwest, at least she is proving that she’s every bit as powerful as the politicians or bureaucrats in D.C. who have been the major drivers in the marketplace for quite a few years.
July 26th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
Not to mention this
http://www.meatpoultry.com/News/News%20Home/Business/2011/7/Deadly%20heat%20wave%20fuels%20bird%20losses%20reduced%20weights.aspx
Deadly heat wave fuels bird losses, reduced weights
MeatPoultry.com, July 25, 2011
by Meat&Poultry Staff
WASHINGTON – The deadly heat wave gripping the US’ midsection is resulting in unusual bird losses and reducing liveweights on growout farms, especially in the upper Midwest, a region unaccustomed to the triple-digit temperatures that used to cause extensive losses in the South, according to the July 22 edition of the National Chicken Council’s Washington Report. Turkey and egg production is also being negatively impacted by the heat.
“A total of nearly 100,000 broilers have been reported lost to the heat on numerous grow-out farms across the affected region,” relayed the USDA Poultry Market News Service. “The true extent of losses may not be known for several days as reports continue to come in. Particularly hard hit were grow-out facilities in the North where extreme and prolonged temperatures are less common and existing ventilation systems have a difficult time maintaining an ambient environment for the birds.”
July 26th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Sean, “We are all freeloaders and parasites upon this planet. I still say destroying all life is the only solution, and if we put our heads together I’m pretty sure we could do it.” Wow every once in a while you say something I agree with. But not to worry, TPTB are working hard to extinct the human race, with all their nukes, global climate change, etc. We just have to sit back and do our part by letting it happen
July 26th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Pickle, hi right back at ya! I like Possibility Alliance in La Plata, MO. Check them out… no web site, but various write ups by others. They run their farm according to permie principles. Yes, we got a lot of healing to do, and it’s good that you are with us. More and more people know… now we gotta all really start doing it. Lotsa luck! (Thank you for your good words about da blog…)
John Rember, no pope said that thing about the Albigensians. It is said of the besieging general who was there in that city (?), but historical sources do not support it. It is easy to imagine he said it though…
The whole thing about violence… I don’t agree. There is plenty of evidence that crises bring out radically cooperative behavior. It is the elites who fear the aftermath and send in the troops, and often get in the way of the locals helping one another. Another bit of evidence, is the American Revolution. People organized local militias and protected their communities, gradually taking over from the royalist bigwigs. There was some violence against the royalists, but most of it was just intimidation. Apart from the war eventual itself, of course. In any case, none of the craziness of the French revolution replicated here. I think what happens depends on what the communities do. Mad Max types do not thrive well in the midst of a countryside that is against them and which they know poorly.
And btw: taking down people’s hope, what is the point? Pickle’s dream is a good dream; he’s finding a way to walk the path. And another btw: the Amish lifestyle is much closer to sustainable than most of us, and they are neither worn out prematurely nor scrabbling for roots. Community makes all the difference. (And a mule or two.)
Dr. House, why won’t there be antibiotics and surgeries? The ancient Egyptians had plenty of the latter, rather competently done (trepanations!), and antibiotics, I have heard can be made low tech. At least some. (Hugz… losing our beloveds is so hard…)
Pickle, “I see a general pattern of feedback loops developing, leading us to an increasing likelihood of a non-linear collapse scenario unfolding. That’s about all I can say within the scope of my current knowledge.”
You get an attaboy in my world for that. It seems like a lot of doomers lose their epistemic humility along the way.
P.S. Resa did not call you a freeloader. She thought you were, at first. Then changed her mind. Right, Resa?
July 26th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
RDH: A wheel chair? I wish I had known. I carried our chocolate in and out for months. She still had her bright spots so for me it was worth it.
Vera: You make an interesting comment about the Amish and how they don’t wear out prematurely. We have gotten to know some Amish and Mennonites, not very closely, but perhaps enough to see a trend. The women wear out early. I have seen middle aged men with very young wives. Our closest Mennonite friend has 9 children, and an Amish family that we have gotten to know have 4 children under the age of 8. There are some very positive things about their lifestyle, but there are also some downsides. My 2 pennies.
July 26th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
I stopped reading the main post above after only a few paragraphs. It’s just so much twaddle. Similarly, I skip over comments by some contributors (more than I’ll admit, actually) because I know by now to expect little of worth from them. But I zero in on a few contributors, especially John Rember and Dr. House. I wish Prof. Guy participated more actively. I also hope I add something worthwhile as a commentator and erstwhile essay writer. This comment is undoubtly not in that category.
July 26th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Brutus-
Your comment means nothing to me without explaining WTF so much twaddle is. If you’re going to call it crap, then do so. Let me see if I get it, you skip to comments without reading the post, zero in on posts by your “favorites” which are taken out of the larger context of the discussion and call it knowledge? You can criticize all you want, but at least do it intelligently. Your comment is indeed useless.
July 26th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Vera-
I love what you said about violence. I also see radical cooperation as just as likely an outcome, if not more so than violence, of a societal breakdown. We’ll see both, I’m sure.
To qualify my comments in my first reply to John, what human being would sit idly by in the nightmare scenario he depicts and let themselves become a victim of “killer apes?” Maybe some would, but I wouldn’t. It sounds all tuff ‘n stuff, but it really is just a rigorous application of logic from a being intent on survival. But I won’t be the one starting the funk. Thanks for the backup.
July 26th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Alfie,
Get back to me after you’ve tried that hunting/gathering thing in Phoenix for a month. Until then, give me a break.
Michael Irving
July 26th, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Personally, I really enjoyed the essay.
I relate to much of what was written, including and especially the concept that we are going new ways of thinking to survive this. This ‘we are dead already and be ready kill or be killed when they come for your food, and they WILL come for you food’ mentality is the same mentality that got us in this mess, namely the mindset of fear, hoarding, and competition amongst ourselves. While this works well for a developing a society of consumers and corporate profits, it’s a lousy way to live. I know this may sound like wishful thinking, or being a dreamer, or even ‘twaddle’ to some, but really, somebody has to make the jump to a different way of behaving, as obviously more of business as usual is not the answer. I, for one, appreciate the vision for a world worth surviving in, even if we need a miracle to get there.
I’d much rather spend whatever time we may have left working to manifest that miracle over making bullets in the bunker, waiting for the meandering hoards to come.
July 26th, 2011 at 4:11 pm
Matthew – Bingo. Thanks.
Michael – Not once did I say anything about hunter/gatherer lifestyles being viable in their previous incarnation as a way out of this mess. Please give ME a break. Haters gonna hate. Some of you seem to emote hostility for anything that has beauty and possibility to it. To me it says more about you than it does about me. Rock on with your sad selves.
July 26th, 2011 at 4:19 pm
Michael Irving, where the heck did he say he was gonna forage in Phoenix? Some of you are going out of your way to be rude. Brutus, are you just a cranky ol’ fart? You sure sound like one, and hoity toity besides…
Matthew: “This ‘we are dead already and be ready kill or be killed when they come for your food, and they WILL come for you food’ mentality is the same mentality that got us in this mess, namely the mindset of fear, hoarding, and competition amongst ourselves. While this works well for a developing a society of consumers and corporate profits, it’s a lousy way to live.”
Yeah! Could not have said it better. Sometimes they sound like wanting to bring on their worst fears… There is that chaos theory bit that says that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world could have quite an effect in another distant part. I’d rather be a butterfly flapping on the odds that it will make a difference than a professional pessimist curmudgeon taking pleasure in smacking uppity butterflies with a flyswatter.
July 26th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Alfie aka pickle
We were all born into overshoot. None of us had any say in the matter.
Catton postulated the overshoot commenced in the middle of the nineteenth century. And there is a mountain of evidence to support that postulate.
The younger one is, the worse the future will be. Hence, I feel very sorry for you. Indeed, I feel very sorry for anyone under the age of 60. There are few places I can say that, of course, even though we are on track for a largely unihabitable planet by the end of this century, if not well before then.
Over the past four decades I have witnessed everything that matters get worse. And now the rate at which things get worse is accelerating. The only ‘good’ news’ is that industrial civilisation is destroying itself.
We can talk as much as we like about living within the bounds of the natural environment, and I fully agree with practically everything that Derrick Jensen says, but when the global population is arguably 6 billion more than the Earth can sustainably support and most of the natural environment has been destroyed, talk about living within the natural environment becomes meaningless.
I have been actively fighting ‘the system’ for over a decade and have made negligible progress in waking up the general populace to reality. And when it comes to changing any official policy, forget it. As Derrick postulated, the system will not voluntarily transistion to a sustainable way of living. That is not to say there cannot be a turn-around if enough people DO wake up. But I am not holding my breath. All the evidence suggests the toxic, corrupt, insane, omnicidal system that the majority of people in western nations support will continue to destroy the habitability of the planet we live on until it can’t.
If you can start a cultural revolution that will alter that reality without being incarcerated or murdered by ‘the system’, then go for it.
July 26th, 2011 at 4:46 pm
Vera:
I stand corrected. “Kill them all–let God sort them out,” was said [in Latin] by Arnaud Almalric, the papal legate sent to convert the Albigensians. Convert them he did, burning and hanging and putting them to the sword to the tune of 200,000-1 million. His job was made easier because a good many of them believed in non-violence.
In the end, God may have sorted him out, along with his boss, Innocent III.
I don’t delight in taking down anyone’s hope, but false hope is false hope. Magical thinking is less than magical, and articulating a dream doesn’t make it true. Reality sets the parameters for dreams, and a careful empiricism is a pretty good way of determining where those parameters are.
The laws of physics cause dream marriages to fall apart, bubbles to go bust, battles to be lost, and too-cheap-to-meter cornucopias to end up as the smoking ruins of power plants. Even granting that human beings can create their own reality, there are good reasons–among them the law of unintended consequences–to avoid the practice.
Kathy has discussed the violence it takes to insulate the first world from the realities of the third. If we’ve reached a zero-sum world, as seems likely, having a first-world child is killing a number of third-world children.
My point about post-collapse violence is that it takes only one person to start it, no matter how determined everyone else is to cooperate. The lowest common denominator rules. Among our seven billion, there’s undoubtedly someone who will prefer violence to cooperation, and then we’re all back to killer ape status. Thought experiment: post-collapse, what would you to to the Norwegian mass murderer if you had him alone and naked in a room and you had a baseball bat?
I value the NBL community because it is mostly clear-eyed about the pickle we’re in, and has begun the painstaking and difficult work of imagining a viable future in the face of near-impossible odds. It’s slow going, but so far we haven’t fallen into nihilism, which in my experience with idealistic young people, is the next stage after magical thinking. Far better to let them down gently by exploring the realities of climate change, population, and human nature than to deal with their rage when they find out the world they’ve dreamed up isn’t the one they’re stuck in.
July 26th, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Kevin: “As Derrick postulated, the system will not voluntarily transistion to a sustainable way of living.”
Derrick’s right on that one. Therefore, tilting at the windmills of the system is silly. But this is not what pickle wrote about, is it? He wrote about another space.
And john Rember, you seem to have read something else than I have. I looked at his essay again, and this is what I see: “I think I speak for the majority of Earth’s living beings when I say I’m over it. I want to walk outside my earthen berm house that I built with my hands and pick fruit for my family’s breakfast. Trade vegetables and comedy gatherings and beer. Artwork and hand tools. Salvaged battery systems that enable diverse art forms and certain life-affirming technologies to continue. Street corner forums on the continental philosophers. Cheese and herbs. Scrap metal and books. Medicine and massage. I want to feed everyone who needs food. I want to figure out how to grow avocadoes at temperate latitudes.”
Now which part is it that you think is false hope? It must be those avocadoes…
As for violence, you answer your own question. Viable cultures kill their sociopaths who are stupid enough to act out their pathology. Considering that they are vastly outnumbered, this is not hard to do. Unless you live in a social system that goes out of its way to protect them. But that social system is not long-term viable, by definition, as we see all around us.
July 26th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Vera:
Yes, when I first read Alfie’s words, freeloader immediately popped to mind. My position changed somewhat based on his follow-up comments, although I still have reservations (see below).
Alfie aka pickle:
Re: “What’s with the hostility?”
Nope, no hostility. Just my normal peaceable self, questioning conflicting statements.
Re: “Are you saying that people who don’t farm or raise livestock are freeloaders?”
Absolutely not. There’re a dozen different ways to expand outward. As you say, many on this site consider my type the problem. I accept that and move on.
Re: “I would also like to know what you mean when you call me a freeloader.”
Right here is where I pick up that vibe, one I’ve read over and over and over again: “That is where I’m headed. The inner spiral, the rooting down, and the outward expansion. I’ve transferred my loyalty. What’s left in the intervening space between this place and a place where I produce my own food, my own hot water, and my own happiness, is the time and effort required to prepare an escape trajectory from the orbit of a death-culture with immense mass and spin.”
There’s an abyss between words and action. One’s easy. Requires little effort other than consciousness and tapping a keyboard. The other’s laden with blood and sweat. Most people never make the leap.
Show me the essay of your leap and you’re off the hook.
BTW: I have no problem with Berkeley kids defending themselves. I fully expect such to happen.
July 26th, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Wow. Geez, just like christmas again.
Pickel: “Some of you seem to emote hostility for anything that has beauty and possibility to it.”
Some days only One facet shows ? Mama said there’d be days like this, there’d be days like this my Mama said ….
Also, thanks for the excellent essay.
I strongly second/third/fourth “One Second After” as a must-read.
Also, I just finished FERFAL’s “Surviving the Economic Collapse” – recommended here by several people. Again, a must-read. If for no other reason than to see things from the perspective of someone who has lived through financial collapse and chose to remain in an Urban setting. IMO, it makes you question if the “conveniences” of urban life is worth the costs. OTOH, I think his book is full of very, very good advice. (note- Argentina’s ‘collapse’ occurred when the rest of the global economy was healthy – i wonder what it would have looked like if the rest of the global economies were collapsing too… how sweet the city then ??).
Another possible road less traveled:
“The Final Frontiersman” by James Campbell.
Heimo Korth left Appleton, Wisconsin and went north, to Alaska. A very good story about what it really takes to be a wilderness trapper (his family’s treat was fried beaver tail).
http://www.jamesmcampbell.net/
About Asshole-the-Hen. My wife called that little event “a gift” the morning after while she smiled and told me about it. But at the time, according to my daughters, she used the F-word and said “A-hole is **** broth tomorrow.”
July 26th, 2011 at 8:26 pm
Alfie aka pickle wrote: “I will likely be applying to enter a natural building and permaculture internship somewhere in the PNW or CA… Any suggestions would be most welcome.”
Well, I’m pretty biased, but you’re welcome to come be a part of our experiment. It might not prove to be the right thing to do, but we’re gonna have fun working at it, anyway!
We have a volunteer FAQ that would be a good place to start, which has a link to a simple application form, which is mostly for stuff like emergency contact, special medical or dietary needs, etc.
July 26th, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Alfie aka pickle wrote: I also think that there is an artificial distinction between the city and the country that needs to be abolished.
Ever looked into Christopher Alexander? He invented a “pattern language” that covers everything from the design of entire regions to post-and-lintel construction. Anyone with an interest in natural building needs to get very familiar with Alexander!
His pattern #3 is “City-Country Fingers:” “Keep interlocking fingers of farmland and urban land, even at the center of the metropolis. The urban fingers should never be more than 1 mile wide, while the farmland fingers should never be less than 1 mile wide.”
Alexander argues convincingly that cities are wonderful and necessary. They were around for perhaps 9,000 years before the use of fossil sunlight, and I’m certain they’ll be around as long as humans exist — there just won’t be so many people in them, both in absolute numbers, and as a fraction of the population. Before fossil sunlight, it took fifteen families on the land to support one in the city; I expect that ratio will return. But don’t write off cities completely!
July 26th, 2011 at 8:43 pm
Ed wrote: “Today was my once a month visit to Sam’s. I go there because about once a month I need seed starter mix and vermiculite. I’m down to pistachios, two types of cheese, and a couple more garden hoses.”
Sounds like you’re pretty much down to essentials.
I look for stuff that is hard to find in the local dump. I got some stainless steel piano hinge for some chicken tractors I’m building. I also splurged on an air stapler this trip — tendonitis doesn’t get along with swinging a hammer, and it isn’t too difficult to compress air without electricity, even. We picked up over 4,000 sqft of expanded stainless steel that will go into various projects, and a staples are the best way to attach that mesh to wood.
July 26th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
pickle
First, let me take the opportunity to thank you for your essay. It has been quite interesting reading the resulting comments. Whilst there are probably several ways your essay could be interpreted (and has been!), I prefer to read optimism into it. Dreams are good. Keep dreaming and keep honing your creative energies. Survivors in the future will need all of that and more to carry them day to day.
As for “doomers” being overly pessimistic and defeatist, many certainly are. However, I believe there is another side to that. Many doomers are simply trying to bring a heavy dose of reality to the table upon which people like you can begin the creative process. They would maintain that overshoot has placed the human species in an impossible position – as a society, it can’t hang on, and it can’t let go. As a result Nature will in the end be the arbiter of last resort.
With this in mind the difference between “magical thinking” and “building new realities” is the context within which the effort is expended. One must acknowledge and accept the truth of where humanity stands today and where that truth is inevitably leading in order to gain the perspective needed to understand where creative building has possibilities. Incorporating false ideas and suppositions into your dreams turns them into “magical thinking”.
If you are counting on a future involving fossil fuels and/or high technology, you are living in a fantasy of your own ultimate undoing.
If you are counting on the widespread acceptance by human society that we can and will build a new world, declare world peace and feed the hungry, you do not have a proper understanding of historical human behaviour; thus, your created reality will again fail as it was built upon shifting sand.
But if you recognise a darkness is approaching that no one can possibly avoid, that all the rules of current life will be broken and cast aside, that flexibility and resourcefulness and ingenuity will rule the day, then dream on! We need that. We need real solutions based upon hard reality, not fanciful solutions based upon wrong thinking and relying on behaviour, technologies and infrastructure that simply will not exist in the future.
July 26th, 2011 at 11:48 pm
resa
I’m still not certain what you mean by “freeloader”, even after you explained it to pickle. A typical definition of freeloader (this one is from answers.com and seems as good as any) is One who depends on another for support without reciprocating: bloodsucker , hanger-on , leech , parasite , sponge.. This doesn’t seem to explain your idea that a freeloader is somehow one who doesn’t turn ideas into action.
But even if I accept your definition for argument’s sake, why do you think so negatively of a person who advocates for a position but for reasons perhaps known only to themselves do not or can not turn those valid ideas into action? After all, many of us recognise what needs to be done, but for many reasons are unable to make the transition. Why would you judge such a person without knowing them more intimately? Why not simply judge the worth of the idea they promote and avoid personal attacks altogether?
July 26th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
I look for stuff that is hard to find in the local dump.
Jan
That sounds like a really good idea. There must be all sorts of things you would find at a dump. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, and all that?
July 27th, 2011 at 12:43 am
Interesting idea….a litre of solar light.
http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/07/26-0
July 27th, 2011 at 3:14 am
Great stuff, all of you. Thanks. I usually try to catch up on the reading end of it in the AM, then take it outside with me. Helps when you are picking weeds for a couple of hours.
Resa: “There’s an abyss………” Very well put.
Jan: Can you share a bit about the airgun that works without electricity. We use a Pasload for just about everything, but I don’t think that’s what you are talking about. Pistachios are essentials, God, I hope they never go away.
Best to all!
July 27th, 2011 at 7:25 am
Alfie,
Sorry if I had a difficulty with reading comprehension. I’m sure you were perfectly clear; I just had some difficulty sorting out your meaning. You may not have said anything about hunting and gathering, however, there’s this:
“I don’t believe that conventional agricultural techniques are at all sustainable, and I won’t be living in any way that resembles that lifestyle for precisely that reason. Derrick Jensen has written extensively on the amount of time that hunter-gatherers spent obtaining the nutritional requirements to sustain life, and what that meant for their spiritual relationship with the Earth. The observable data says conclusively, that these societies expended far less energy to obtain food than their agricultural counterparts, to put it in ERoEI terms.”
I must have misread it. I jumped to the conclusion that you’re saying agriculture won’t work in the future, that Jensen says h/g does, and you will be going with the latter rather than the former (h/g rather than agriculture).
So you’re saying no agriculture for you, and no hunting/gathering. So your plan for feeding yourself, and yours, is what???
As for this:
“Please give ME a break. Haters gonna hate. Some of you seem to emote hostility for anything that has beauty and possibility to it. To me it says more about you than it does about me. Rock on with your sad selves.”
Pot/kettle.
Michael Irving
July 27th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Alfie,
I’ll try again. I had trouble sorting out your plan for how to get from where we are now to your utopian future world. There are few on this forum (NBL) that would not love a better world in the future. Most, however, feel that the chances of that in the short-to-medium term is simply wishful/magical thinking. Most here believe that forces are lining up in a way that a catastrophic collapse is not only possible, but probable (for some the probability is near 100%). I’d venture that very few (none?) of us here want that. Looking just a short way into the future and seeing the collapse of civilization staring back at you is not pleasant; it does look like Doom. Most contributors at NBL base their thinking on a review of the evidence. Many here are doing their best to develop the kind of existence you postulate; growing food, building things with their hands, reducing their impact, etc. The tone of your comments implies that we do not have a good grip on reality, while you do. So, if you have a plan to get us from here to there, what is it?
Remember, if wishes were horses, even beggars would ride.
Michael Irving
July 27th, 2011 at 9:24 am
Ed, no bananas are the essentials and they are going away.
http://the-scientist.com/2011/07/22/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-bananas/
The Beginning of the End for Bananas?
Oh well just as well, when I can’t get them I won’t have to worry about my part in the exploitation of labor south of the border – free from guilt by extinction of the Cavendish…..
July 27th, 2011 at 9:37 am
Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas
“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer.
“Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”
The research is part of a much larger body of work taking place under SCNARC at Rensselaer. The center joins researchers from a broad spectrum of fields – including sociology, physics, computer science, and engineering – in exploring social cognitive networks.
http://scienceblog.com/46622/minority-rules-scientists-discover-tipping-point-for-the-spread-of-ideas/
July 27th, 2011 at 10:15 am
Dr. House, why won’t there be antibiotics and surgeries? – John
Kitchen-table appendectomy in 1916 Alberta
The first recorded appendicectomy in Australia, done on a kitchen table in Toowoomba, did not occur until 1893.
Lee AE. The history of appendicitis in Australia: a window on abdominal surgery. Med J Aust 1944; 26: 653-660.
July 27th, 2011 at 10:34 am
**MEDIA ALERT** Military Training Exercises to Take Place In and Around Boston
Joint federal military training exercises will take place within and around the Boston area between July 26th and August 5th. Military personnel will conduct training exercises to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments, prepare forces for upcoming overseas deployments, and meet mandatory training certification requirements. Helicopters will be used in some exercises.
The Boston Police Department is working with military personnel to coordinate training sites that will minimize negative impacts on our Boston citizens and their daily routines. Safety precautions have been taken to prevent risk to the general public and the military personnel involved. With that, training site locations are not open to the public and will be guarded by uniformed personnel to provide additional safety.
###
http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/Default.aspx?id=5212
July 27th, 2011 at 10:44 am
Michael Irving, you backpedaling nothwithstanding, I don’t know how you could mistake someone who wants to breed a new kind of avocado as anti-ag. Clearly, he is against *conventional* ag… and aren’t we all here?
Sahlins and Jensen and Godesky and many others have shown that there have in the past been lifestyles much more in line with EROEI than this one, in terms of food. Ag by itself is not a miserable scramble. What makes is so is the superimposition of an aggrandizer class that begins to siphon off resources from the rest of the population. You know. The invention of the treadmill.
I suspect that the ag of the future will be neither a simple return to semi-nomadism or foraging, nor a scrabbling kind of ag that is misery on wheels. The efforts made by permies and others point in the direction of a new amalgam of techniques from all over the world that produce food, enrich ecosystems so that foraging can once again play a role, that changes the nature of dense settlements via food growing in situ, and so on.
As for the Amish women having a hard time of it, bearing a dozen children is not easy. Though I have not seen stats that show their mortality rate is worse that the rest of us. Have you (whoever posted back at me)? I am betting that it’s not, since in many ways their lifestyle is health-promoting with its low stress, fresh food and community back up. I think that for the rest of us, imitating their model makes sense, but instead of a huge family, to build a band where work is shared. The band is the social arrangement that has seen us through all sorts of crises as sapiens, not the least being the ice ages. I think the time is coming when it will again become key to functioning human societies.
And finally, where does pickle say that we here do not have a good grip on reality? The fact that he is hanging here with us seems to counter your claim. Do you have a quote, Michael? I seem to have missed that part.
I think it’s more likely that those here addicted to uninterrupted doom are hankering for their fix, what with Aleigha and now pickle coming in with two doses of brightness. Ha!
July 27th, 2011 at 11:14 am
Here is the organisation behind the organised effort in the USA to prohibit climate change action by the EPA and other federal and state agencies. And apparently their work is extremely effective.
ALEC Exposed: Warming Up to Climate Change
http://prwatch.org/news/2011/07/10914/alec-exposed-warming-climate-change
Quote:
ALEC’s campaign against any regulation of greenhouse gases began long ago, when the U.S. was in the midst of debating the Kyoto Protocol, an international effort to rein in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to control the climate crisis. In the spring of 1998, ALEC ratified a model resolution for states to pass calling on the U.S. to reject the Kyoto Protocol and banning states from regulating greenhouse gases in any way. With ALEC friend George W. Bush entering the White House in 2001, the energy interests that sit on ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force – easily got their way on keeping the U.S. out of Kyoto.
With a Board of Directors that includes lobbyists from ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Koch Industries, ALEC’s interests in avoiding any regulation of greenhouse gases is easy to understand. ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force is currently chaired by the American Gas Association, an organization that promotes natural gas “fracking,” and was previously chaired by Peabody Energy. Other ALEC members include BP America and Chevron.
ALEC also receives substantial funding from fossil fuel interests. It has received at least $600,000 from Koch Industries, between 1997-2009, during which time it fought vigorously against greenhouse gas regulation, which would no doubt help Koch Industries’ bottom line as the company profits handsomely from oil and natural gas, so much so that it was named one of the nation’s top 10 air polluters in 2010. ALEC received an additional $1.4 million from ExxonMobil since 1998. Both companies, and many more whose funding is harder to trace, are getting their money’s worth as ALEC member and Congressional alumni parrot corporate talking points on the dangers of reducing America’s GHG emissions.
July 27th, 2011 at 11:25 am
No Kathy, I’m not just talking about ending all human life, I’m talking about *all* life, including kittens and other cute furry creatures. We must kill everything down to the last microbe to ensure that the life virus never again threatens the world. To quote the Emperor Palpatine: “Wipe them out. Wipe them all out.”
July 27th, 2011 at 11:34 am
Sean, yeah now you are talking. All life wants to stay alive. All life individually fails as living things are mortal. So if we eliminate all life then no creature will ever have to fail again. No fish will ever have to try escape the shark full of teeth. No bunny will ever have to fear the fox. No chicken will ever have to search the sky for fear of a hawk.
One can make a good case that life is an endless unwinable battle and therefore not good. At any rate TPTB are working hard to make the world uninhabitable for most if not all life. Who knows what happens to planet earth if all the nukes fly? Anyway planet Nibiru may be hiding behind Comet Elenin (Extinction Level Event Nine) and smash into us, cause massive earth quakes or allow the Nepthelim to land – perhaps with their cook book for preparing humans. Heck Sean, why stop with Star Wars imagery when there is so much more out there to play with. And play of course is all you are doing. Well I stepped in your sandbox for a while. Now I will return to adult conversation.
July 27th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Our Green radical Nicole would be interested in this, I think. It is Climate Change Activist Tim DeChristopher’s statement to the court before sentencing:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-13
Quote from the last paragraph of Tim’s statement to the court:
I’m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me. If you side with Mr Huber and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away. I certainly don’t want that. I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false. I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government. I want you to join me in valuing this country’s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience. If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them. You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path. You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing. You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM. You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like. In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like. With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow. The choice you are making today is what side are you on.
July 27th, 2011 at 11:47 am
Good morning all,
I would first like to apologize if some of my comments came across as defensive or offended people in any way. The real truth of it is that I would rather have almost all of you here as allies than not.
Kevin-
Thank you for your reply. Your post is a stark depiction of what is going on in our biosphere right now, and I understand your meaning clearly. We are facing a problem which has extremely scary solutions. I can’t say that I disagree with your conclusions, and your knowledge of working against the system greatly exceeds mine. You said: “All the evidence suggests the toxic, corrupt, insane, omnicidal system that the majority of people in western nations support will continue to destroy the habitability of the planet we live on until it can’t.” I agree with this statement and it feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach and can’t breathe. I guess the second part of my reaction involves the statement you made immediately following the previous one. A widespread cultural revolution is the only thing that can begin to mitigate this disaster. I don’t think it’s likely, but I’ll work to that end anyway. Some of us working towards that end will likely be murdered or incarcerated (which is another kind of murder) in the effort, but that’s what happens in a war. I appreciate your thoughtful comment and look forward to reading more from you.
John- I would just like to say again, that I see a world of difference between magical thinking that is totally detached from empirical reality, and magical thinking that is in co-creation with that reality. One will never be real, and the other strives to create new ways of being by interacting with its environment to manifest tangible change. You are wise and correct to take the stance you’ve taken, as I also believe the former type to be damaging in so many ways. Thanks for your thoughts.
Resa- Thanks for the clarification. You are 100% right. Talk means little without action, and you are doing an excellent thing by holding me accountable to the words I wrote. I intend to make good on my statements, and will be documenting that journey the whole way. I personally don’t think that agriculturalists (the Earth-conscious kind) are the problem. We all need to eat, and my food comes from farmers right now. There is absolutely an abyss between words and actions, and I am grateful to you for writing that for the world to see. I won’t let you down.
Jan- Thanks for the links and the info! I think this internship idea is turning into something more like a skills tour of sustainable living setups. I would love to come volunteer and learn with you.
Navid- Thanks for the recommendation and the compliment. The book is in the queue.
Victor- Thank you for your awesome reply. I am definitely not counting on a future with high technology and fossil fuels. In fact, the thing that terrifies me the most is that technologies like fracking will allow us to rape and pillage even more of the natural world into the future. I want them to run out as quickly as possible. I understand that statement seems to contradict my desire to see as few humans die-off as possible, but sometimes when dealing with these issues, contradictions are the best I can do. My essay may not have reflected it, but it represents an effort on my part to engage with the creative and positive energies in the world instead of the hopeless doomerism with by which I have been irrevocably influenced. In order to save my mental stability, and my marriage, and my relationships with the humans and non-humans I love with all my heart, I have had to make peace with the approaching darkness, and get to work shining my own light as far into the maw as I can. Most people I know cannot even begin to deal with these thoughts. I guess that’s what I was talking about when I wrote, “It’s so catastrophically profound of an idea, that I won’t waste another second thinking about it.” To lapse into despair threatens everything that I currently have left in the world, and my recalcitrance towards doom-thinking comes from that knowledge. It’s not that I don’t believe we’ve overshot, it’s just that whatever it is inside me that can still believe in mitigating the collapse won’t give up. If I’m faced with certain death, I’m going out laughing. I think we are totally fucked, but I still love being alive, and I still love working against that perceived inevitability. I don’t think I have an explanation for that, as such, but it feels right. I look forward to more of your great commentary.
Michael- Apologies for my last comment to you. I was cranky and on my way to work to manifest my subservience for the Imperial Citizens of Scottsdale. You are right to point out that hunting/foraging is not a viable option. To propose that it is viable is more of the unicorn rainbow-fart thinking I railed against in the last thread. The truth of it is that I don’t know how I will feed myself and my family in the future. For now, I’m going with another Derrick Jensen idea, that we need it all. Agroforestry for foraging, small-scale sustainable agriculture, hunting, wild foods, living on mountain air like the hermits of yore, etc, and things I haven’t even thought of. I don’t know that Jensen says explicitly that h/g living is the only way to go in the future, but the historical experience of h/g groups is a valuable tool for looking for a way through the bottleneck. My wife and I eat a primarily vegan diet (just the food, not the ridiculousness) but I am truly an omnivore. I would eat a rock if it gave me the energy needed to find more rocks for eating. We eat that way because we feel better and it takes less energy to produce sustainably grown vegetables than it does to produce meat. We eat almost no grains, with the exception of brown rice and superfood grains like quinoa and amaranth. When the SHTF and the food trucks stop rolling in, well, by that point I hope to be in a better spot than we are in now.
You wrote: “The tone of your comments implies that we do not have a good grip on reality, while you do. So, if you have a plan to get us from here to there, what is it?”
I am truly sorry that my comments came across that way. I think the people who contribute here have an excellent grasp of reality. And that’s what is so scary. I have endeavored to take all hubris and arrogance out of my writing, and I’m afraid that sometimes my ferocious enthusiasm gets the better of me. I really don’t see my ideas as utopian. The word Utopia means “the place that can never be.” That is magical thinking at its most harmful. But I know in my bones, that there is ALWAYS another way out. A famous line from military strategy states: “When faced with a situation in which there is no way out, look for a way farther in.” The only way out is through, I guess you could say, and I certainly don’t see a way “back” in our current predicament. My plan, if you could call it that, is to stay extremely light and extremely mobile. To learn and accumulate knowledge while I still can. I don’t have a plan to get us from here to there, much as I wish I did. I am reaching out to develop that plan pluralistically with my fellow awake beings. My essay was written more as a musing of possible future and a condemnation of imperial lifestyles than it was a plan of action. I guess you could sum it up by saying, “we start by beginning.” The people here who are so much more knowledgable than myself as to the state of the biosphere and our probable collapse are right on the money, as it were. So while I am in full agreement with their prognoses, I want to look at this as a moment of peak possibility rather than its polar opposite in despair. This stance is as much for my own mental stability as it is an effort to inspire others to get to work repairing as much of the biosphere as we can. I have no problem admitting that it functions for me as a psychological coping mechanism. I don’t think this necessarily means that it is unreal thinking. I’ve been down the doom path that leads to the voluntary human extinction movement type-of-place, and I don’t like it. It isn’t who I know myself to be.
Also, in Phoenix there are many wild foods that can be found. Saguaro fruit and mesquite pods and grasshoppers abound. Not that it can sustain 4 million people, but for the ones willing to live off bugs, the eatin’ is good. Water, that’s another story.
Vera- I hope we end up in the same nomadic survivor tribe. You rock.
July 27th, 2011 at 11:50 am
Hm. Since you are the only one talking to Sean, been wondering if you are his sockpuppet. Of course, that would also imply that “Sean the Mystic” is just another sockpuppet of the guy behind all those sites. Anybody check the IPs?
July 27th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Oops. The above was directed at Kathy.
July 27th, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Vera: My comments were just observations. The only concentrated study that I could find was by the UMD. They found that the average longevity for men and women in the Amish community is 72. In the general population a woman can expect to live 7 years longer. What’s interesting is that the Amish have kept that life expectancy for over 300 years. During that same period the general population goes as low as 40.
July 27th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
Longish post. Those not interested, hop ahead.
Victor:
Another typical definition of freeloader from Webster’s II is “taking advantage of the charity, generosity, or hospitality of others.” No doubt other definitions exist as well.
I say the following with no hostility or negativity. I simply state facts.
Words are easy. They don’t require anything other than a moving tongue, lips, and larynx, which yes, for individuals with physical limitations can be a challenge. But I don’t place Alfie or you in that category, at least not without proof to the contrary. You come across as elderly, and Alfie as a capable 33-year-old male. (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)
But let’s get back to words, which are all I have to gauge Alfie’s essay. I don’t doubt he wrote them with philosophical conviction and belief. But as a reader with a history, I see holes and misconceptions. I see no substantiating walk. These are the same deficiencies I’ve called you on before.
Growing your own food is bloody hard. There’s little glory in the process. It’s a never-ending battle with weather, climate, soil, bugs, birds, moles, rats, gophers, deer, the neighbor’s cat, your dog, a loose goat, the sun, scab, fungus, early frost, late rains, a freak hailstorm. I could go on forever. Sometimes you end up with nothing. I see none of that recognition in Alfie’s essay.
Raising your own meat is bloody hard. There’s little glory in the process. There’s hauling water, fixing fences, building shelters, storing feedstock, providing protection. There’s injured animals, bickering animals, hungry animals, dying animals, belligerent animals, animals that disown their young, animals that eat each other (yes, chickens are cannibalistic), and animals that hate each other’s guts. They’re difficult births, congenital defects, genetic atrocities. There’re predators: the hawk or raccoon or snake after the poultry and eggs, the coyotes after the lambs and calves, a turned-loose dog after anything that moves for the thrill of it. There’s the 786-lb beef that slips off a meat hook and dangles 8-foot in the air by a tendon, the rabbit that screams because the first blow doesn’t render it unconscious, the sheep that takes a bullet, flips, gets back up and barrels through a corral. I see none of that recognition in Alfie’s essay.
Producing you own heat is bloody hard. There’s little glory in the process. If you go the wood route (I just put up five cord, with a chainsaw and log splitter no less) it’s exhausting, back breaking, and mind-numbing. There’s termites, spiders, ticks, rot, logs that won’t split, logs that splinter into missiles, logs that bugger up the axe, logs that bugger up the chainsaw, logs that won’t stack. And all winter you live with the spiders and bugs and flies that crawl out of the splits you’ve carried indoors. And there’s smoke when outside air is heavy and the flue is cold and the fire won’t catch. And there’s infernos when pitch ignites. I see none of that recognition in Alfie’s essay.
And then there’s property tax whether you work on or off the land. I need to come up with $5000 (and rising) each year to satisfy local coffers. Splitting my own wood and growing my own food covers none of that bill. So days are nightmarishly long because in reality, you live in two worlds. I see none of that recognition in Alfie’s essay.
Last week I needed a tool that a not-so-close neighbor possessed, someone I don’t know well other than a mess of alpacas run his hillside. (Yes, you borrow when you can.) I gave him a call. He said drop by any time. I did so and found him with a skinned and gutted alpaca hanging from a winch and three more bleeding out on the ground. His young daughter, perhaps eight or nine, was holding the hanging alpaca’s forelimbs open so he could split it with a hand saw. Bone chips littered her hair, face, and t-shirt front. He looked at his daughter then at me. “I eat my alpacas,” he said. Understood. I eat my Jerseys. I see none of this recognition in Alfie’s essay.
Waxing philosophical is an armchair activity. Billions do it. So yes, I want to see the essay after the leap.
Is that explanation enough?
Alfie:
I wish you success. Your heart appears to be in the right place. I hope willpower endures. That will be your greatest challenge.
July 27th, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Vera,
Thanks for sorting me out.
Michael Irving
July 27th, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Alfie aka pickle,
Now that’s what I’m talking about, clear and to the point. My plan is… I know this… These are some things I don’t know about yet… Here are some shortcomings I will need to deal with…
Thanks for that!
On the note of me asking your forgiveness if I misread your words, only about 90% of the people responding here are of genius quality. I’m in the other 10% and need all the help I can get.
Michael Irving
July 27th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Vera, I reply to Sean/Cosmist/etc from time to time for my entertainment. Mostly I ignore him. I am not his sockpuppet or related to him in any way. I hope you were teasing. If so I am amused. Otherwise I am offended. Who is behind all his (or her) various identities we don’t know. He or she is no doubt a troll (do trolls have gender).
Frankly sometimes the “real” conversation gets seeming a bit unreal to me. I see a future of total civil breakdown. I see the rise of the religious right, the return of the Klan, the death of millions in the US and billions in the world. I see the planet raped further in the process. I see nukes eager to fly. Some of the real discussion seems so unreal to me that a bit of sparing with the troll makes as much sense as anything.
July 27th, 2011 at 1:43 pm
Vera a PS. I revealed my full identity in the essay I wrote that Guy posted at http://guymcpherson.com/2011/01/lessons-on-living/ – Lessons on Living.
July 27th, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Back to reality
COX’S BAZAR, 26 July 2011 (IRIN) – Heavy flooding in southeastern Bangladesh has forced more than 20,000 people from their homes in Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf districts, say local authorities.
“The homes of more than 20,000 people have been completely destroyed by the floodwaters,” Rafiqul Islam, district relief and rehabilitation officer (DRRO) for Cox’s Bazar, told IRIN, with another 84,000 homes partially damaged. “When the water recedes, many of these may also be inhabitable,” he said.
The newly displaced add to the more the 400,000 people already forced from their homes and unable to return due to rising floodwaters. When they will be able to return remains to be seen.
“When the water started rising, we were forced to leave our home and move to the hills. It has already been a week. My house is still submerged,” said Ainul Hoque, a resident of the Ramu sub-district of Cox’s Bazar.
So far at least seven people have died in the floods, say the authorities. Cox’s Bazar and Teknaf, both coastal districts, are prone to such disasters.
The severity of recent flooding has caught many by surprise. “Never in my life have I seen such flooding. The worst cyclones never submerged such a huge area for so long,” said Abdul Quddus, a resident of Piyemkhali sub-district of Cox’s Bazar.
Full story at http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93335
July 27th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Kathy, my apologies. I was simply wondering why you were feeding the troll. That is what keeps them entertained and rewarded. Glad we settled that one…
Pickle, you sound like a good band mate to me too!
Ed, interesting. Shows ya… what? That their way of life is stable and promotes well being, at only a small disadvantage. Nah? Considering that the extra years for us moderns are only won at great expense to the planetary system… sounds like a good trade off to me.
Resa, a good rant. There is a reason why people prefer to buy their meat in a plastic tray. No need to face any of it. And yet… and yet. There are lots of good reason why to raise your own, or get it from neighbors by trade. The freshness. No more bad faith and support for animal abusers and toxifiers. The mindboggling-good food at a pig killing feast. The sense of self-reliance. Enjoying animal companions. The sense of being part of the cycle of life. Those and others too must be added to the balance.
But of course you are right. We doomers come in two herds: the antelopes and the yaks. The antelopes have made the leap. The planet is holding its breath… will the rest of us just keep on yakking?
July 27th, 2011 at 2:39 pm
Resa: Oh and the heat? If you radically shrink the square footage of the house and do passive solar, very little wood cutting labor is needed. That is the path I am aiming to take. (Of course moving to the subtropics is another path. Meself, I like snow.)
July 27th, 2011 at 3:00 pm
Vera:
LOL.
RE: heat. Where I live I’d best plan on wood. I’m not even sure I received a week’s worth of sunshine last winter. At least I don’t recall such. Heck, summer hasn’t even hit 90 degrees yet, and it’s the end of July.
July 27th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Vera, I have previously advised others about feeding this troll. But free will is a myth so I take no responsibility for my actions. My other brain made me do it.
July 27th, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Alfie, I appreciate your follow-up remarks for their humility and rapprochement. And in response, I apologize for my inflammatory remarks. I do, in fact, get grouchy about … oh, I dunno … the anticipated deaths of billions of people and extirpation of … lemme see … thousands of species. In light of that, your imagining of a bright post-bottleneck future clearly rubs me wrong, but I’m wrong to take it out on you, especially considering how others draw value from it.
vera sez: We doomers come in two herds: the antelopes and the yaks. The antelopes have made the leap. The planet is holding its breath… will the rest of us just keep on yakking?
Touché. That’s me.
July 27th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
Brutus- No harm no foul. I enjoy your posts here and also on your blog. I also get extremely upset about the things that you point out in your last post. I recently reached a point of such utter despair that I knew I had to put my energy into imagining and creating the future I would like to see, otherwise that knowledge of the coming storm would consume me and take me out of the game for good. It was a personal reckoning that was cathartic in that I realized that for me, the only way forward was to concentrate entirely on the changes and actions that I am capable of making, and then make them. I think about die-off and collapse every day, and it becomes more real the more I am out in the world functioning as a part of this mess. I spent the afternoon driving around the freeways of Phoenix (not for fun) and it hit me so hard what this is all going to do when gas is less available, when food is less available, when water is less available etc. It’s funny, for some people the picture I paint is an image of their nightmares, where they can no longer follow the exploits of the Kardashians and facebook their lives away, yet for others it’s nowhere near nightmarish enough. I agree that my outlook comes off as rosy, but that’s only because I have found the way of negativity to be less effective at inspiring action. That is not meant to be a slap in the face of those who feel more negative than I do about our situation, just that it works better for me. Even though many here have a more pessimistic outlook than I do, we’re all here talking about the problem, and many of us are acting on that knowledge to. That gives me a reason to keep going. Thanks for your comment and explanation.
Resa- Great post. Seriously. Even though you don’t see what you wrote coming through in my original post, I am aware to a certain extent of the labor and hardship of living in concert with the biosphere. I have no conscious illusions about it, although I’m sure that there will be those that come into being once I am living in the way you describe. My illusions will also meet hard limits and collapse. I will remember your comment about willpower well.
July 27th, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Alfie,
I have recently discovered that getting from “here” to “there” is a difficult thing. I made the move from the city to the country. I started working on my little abandoned 12 X 20 cabin and thought myself well on the way. Then suddenly found myself hit by grief so huge that I became frozen, unable to accomplish the simple task of building an outdoor structure to house my cats so I could bring them over to be with me. I cried for 24 hours, possibly ruining my dad’s birthday, though he is too kind to say so. I wish I had read your essay the day you posted it because its quiet hopefulness would have helped me pull through my dark night.
As it is, I am sitting in my old house in the city waiting for my mom and dad to build that cat enclosure so I can take the kitties back to my new home with me. I find it terribly odd how the mind works. I feel fine with the idea of packing up my cats to bring them to the finished shelter but I found it emotionally impossible to build the shelter itself. The shelter became the representation of all that I was leaving behind. My kids, my home of 15 years, my life, my identity, my job, my ego, my always on internet that I can log into while lying in bed. EVERYTHING is changing.
I look forward to the new life I am moving toward. I have dreamed about it long before peak oil and climate change was a part of the world’s daily discourse. But there is loss in every change and that loss caught up with me last week. I am fortunate to have my parents watching my back. I can’t imagine how difficult this change will be for those who must do it alone. Would it be possible?
Over the last two days I have caught my breath. I bought a small solar panel system from Costco (talk about the world changing). It should be large enough to run a light and my laptop so I can watch movies and compose emails to send in the morning when I walk over to my parent’s house. I have been dreaming about making my bookshelves and kitchen area. Thinking about framing in the “new” windows and insulating with straw. I am trying to not think about what next little brain fart is going to occur preventing me from forward movement. Without a doubt I will run into another wall or two along the way. Before that happens I hope to have in place more social support systems to help me through the hiccups. I don’t want to drive my parents crazy and have them run me off the property! ha ha. I think I have found a cool meetup with a group of foragers who know about mushrooms. What could be better?
Good luck with your plans and thank you for your essay.
Carrie
July 27th, 2011 at 6:42 pm
‘As for the Amish women having a hard time of it, bearing a dozen children is not easy. Though I have not seen stats that show their mortality rate is worse that the rest of us.’ -vera
margaret sanger’s mother died from pregnancy complications. it was something like her 14th pregnancy, and all those previous pregnancies had taken a toll on her health, according to what i read in several biographies of her daughter who became one of the great social revolutionaries of the past century.
margaret was bright and ambitious, becoming a nurse who worked among working class new yorkers in the early 1900′s. there she saw repeatedly the toll on women’s lives and bodies from too many and unwanted pregnancies. back then contraception was strictly prohibited; even knowledge of how to pursue it was banned severely, as puritanical zealotry was in vogue among elite officials in the u.s., britain, and i believe most nations, no doubt influenced by religion and industrialists/politicians seeking abundant cheap labor and cannon fodder for imperial ambitions. margaret basically devoted her life to promoting contraception and placed it on the line in pursuit of attaining the forbidden knowledge/technology and making it widely available. she was arrested 8 times, and at one point had to flee abroad a year from ‘authorities’ during which her youngest daughter became ill and died in her absence. it was quite an education reading about her social activism, the resistance it encountered, the price she paid for it, and other matters related to fertility limition, like lengthy breast feeding of infants serving to naturally suppress fertility and limit pregnancies/births. but for our discussion here, suffice to say that ruthlessly promoting population growth was standard policy for many generations in the civilized world. the urgent need to throw that policy in reverse is still being ignored.
July 27th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Well you can tell that no one above really ready your piece, because they are not all asking…
WHAT THE HELL IS SHOWER BEER?
July 27th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
Well I Googled “shower beer” and have to admit it…I am officially an old fogy at the premature age of 57.
July 27th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
Carrie- Thank you for commenting. Your story was really great. I anticipate a good deal of grief and perhaps something resembling withdrawal along the way in this process. If you don’t mind sharing, could you tell me a bit more about your motivations for making the move and what led you there?
Casamurphy-
LMAO!
Beer in the shower. Only works after a long, long run, or a hard day of physical labor. Thanks for the laugh.
July 27th, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Michael Irving
“On the note of me asking your forgiveness if I misread your words, only about 90% of the people responding here are of genius quality. I’m in the other 10% and need all the help I can get”
July 27th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
My computer won’t let me send messages any more. Do you think I’ve been blocked by te Governments of the World?
The Green Radical
July 27th, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Using another computer – that helps!
Thank you Alfie. For your first essay and your subsequent comments. Like you, I love life and am doing what I can to help make the best of the hell that is on its way. Like Resa, Ed and others, I’m already down the track of farming, and yes, Resa is right. It is bloody hard work, and for us there is still a long learning curve ahead of us, but I wouldn’t change jobs for anything. I know that it’s going to get much harder, but as someone else mentioned, I’m hoping that young people like you will want to come and join us. As a group, we’ll achieve so much more. We might even make it through the bottleneck, who knows?!. At the moment we have 4 young Wwoofers staying with us – 2 from Germany, one from England and my son. It makes life so much easier. And they are learning survival skills. My son is on the cusp of starting his life adventure as an adult and doesn’t want to hear of doom and gloom, but he is sufficiently aware to know that the farm is where he wants to come back to when TSHTF. He wants to travel and see the world. I’m fearful that he’ll be stuck in Europe when international travel grinds to a halt, but he’s promised me, he will do everything in his power to get back to Australia, even if it takes years.
Victor, thank you for the compliment. I would never have described myself as a Green radical, but the further I get into the book “Deep Green Resistance”, the more I empathise with people like Tim DeChristopher. The book’s quite a tome – or else I just don’t have as much time to read as I used to, but I would recommend that anyone who cares about the Earth should read it and make up their own minds about its message. I find it so tragic for all concerned that someone of such unstable mind like that young Norwegian should be fuelled on by the media and too the Governments of this world to search for a scape goat to explain what’s wrong with his world. He thinks he’s fighting a war against Muslims. Yet the real war needs to be against the rich and powerful who are destroying the planet for their own personal gain. I don’t believe gratuitous violence will win us the war to save the planet. I would love to see it won with non-violent resistance, but I don’t for one moment believe the rich and powerful will willing give up what they believe to be theirs.
July 27th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
Completely and absolutely off Topic. And then again,…
Now I’m not sure whether this was correct what I heard on the news this morning. Have Greece and Ireland been borrowing money to the Us? I mean all of them are broke – so it doesn’t really matter.
This again leads to the question and I believe in raising this, I might risk my “membership” here.
There is (another) war going on. The brave and the free, aided by their European poodles are, once again, bringing peace, freedom and de mock crazy to yet another country. One might think about the kind of government in Libya whatever one may. But the toll this country is paying now – it’s beyond words.
Spy-, lie-, lame-, brainwash media doing an excellent job on creating Orwellian truth.
The situation of “awareness”, population and our “leaders” have – I wonder if Orwell had this in mind, to me, when reading 1984 such a long time ago, it didn’t seem possible, yet looking around, it way exceeds that scenario.
My personal efforts against this war have been writing, discussing, phoning – people, governments, secretary of state, embassies. Ah well, funny thing is, on different “levels” within the hierarchies one might find quite some partners for understanding and discussion, the system as such is stuck in proceeding. The most hostile response (from officials) I received, where from embassies of Norway and Us. Funny no?
Mentioning Love & Peace on earth was the other part of receiving aggression, outright hatred, by just mentioning those words. Funny no?
So to keep this short, the question. The Us (and the Eu) are in deep trouble. Being broke at a level that exceeds anything that looks payable -at first sight. Solution? The Us are spending (officially) more than 0.7 trillion a year on armament, on war. The debt is exceeding 14 trillion. So cutting the spending on armament and warfare to zero and a, say 15 year plan, this problem could be solved somehow.
Don’t you think?
Love and Peace on earth.
July 28th, 2011 at 12:16 am
Alfie, That is a long long story, filled with whining and woe is me when the truth of the matter is that I am unbelievably lucky. My mom and dad have owned the property I moved to since I was in 2nd grade. I grew up there. This year they bought the adjoining 10 acres which the abandoned shack I am converting into a livable space sits on. Dad built their house starting with the logs off the property. I will say that peeling logs is NOT one of my favorite activities and it is damn hard to get pitch off your ass so make sure you wear pants instead of shorts! Mom has been canning their vegetables for years. Her peaches and green beans are to die for.
As for my motivation, what better motivation then the klaxon call of Mr. Guy McPherson? I tried to ignore it for a couple of years but the annoying urgency of it refused to be denied. Though I will say, even if it wasn’t for the eminent demise of the world as we know it, I would still have made the move, I just would have done it a bit differently.
If you are interested, here is my blog entry about the shack. http://zenobia33.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/my-new-temporary-home/ I am pretty excited about it. It isn’t much to look at by today’s standards but in ripping out the walls, the house has been telling me a story of the life it has led. For instance, it almost burned down one night. The second layer of wall board was burned through behind where the stove must have been, and the boards underneath were blackened! If I close my eyes I can see them waking up to the smell of smoke and running to throw water on the the burning wallboard.
I also have a friend there named George. He/she is a little squirrel who is infinitely interested in what I am doing. George wakes me up early every morning, yelling at me to get to doing something for it to watch. Then it will peek around the corners at me, seeing what I am up too. The critter lives under the house, I think. I do hope my cats don’t eat it….
July 28th, 2011 at 12:42 am
Well Bernhard….how can I say this? Your heart is certainly in the right place, and your loyalties on the right side. And whilst we might stop spending on war and aggression and spread love and peace, we would increase spending in other areas. Let’s say we spend that money on green technologies, education, food for the hungry masses, medical care for all, environmental clean-up and social justice everywhere. Does that pretty much cover the possibilities? Likely not, but you get the point.
In this case we would still have to pay the bankers what we owe – which is not going to happen because the solution today to paying off debt is by accruing even more debt – using one credit card to pay off another. From a financial view, we are truly up the creek without a paddle. The only sensible, though horridly painful and disruptive, way to fix this is to simply default – have a Jubilee year and cancel all debts. The bankers would go under immediately, the economy would take a brief dive, but we could, by nationalising what is left of banking services and re-assuming the government’s power to print money, recover.
So now we are recovering, what next? On to the green projects, and spreading love and peace. Sounds inviting, eh? Except we forget one thing. Devoting our efforts to ceasing war, and turning them to feeding people, taking better care of the medical needs of the masses, and providing shelter for people will, on the one hand, make life so much better for so many. It will enable people to spend more for their own benefit. The quality of life will increase. People will be happier.
It will save lives. It will extend lives. Lives that consume. Seven billion people’s lives that consume. Seven billion people who depend on accessible fresh water resources, commercial agriculture, arable soil, forests and seas to supply oxygen and absorb carbon, seas and fresh water sources capable of sustaining fish and the products fish eat, a planet capable of sustaining a viable and bio-diverse habitat for all creatures, a global just-in-time transport and distribution system to sustain people all over the globe and dependable weather for all creatures including us.
Seven billion people consume enormous amounts of natural resources – you can even see the effects from space! Seven billion people living happier lives will consume even more. Seven billion people depending upon fossil fuels to live, a non-renewable resource that is rapidly being depleted. Seven billion people creating mountains of waste, poisoning the waters and the air, consuming the forests, warming the planet, acidifying the oceans, eroding the topsoil, destroying habitats, melting the ice, raising the sea levels, consuming all the fish and accelerating massive climate instability.
Ah, but we would devote our newly found riches to creating a green society, one might say. First, we wouldn’t that – it’s way out of character for us as a species, both socially, economically and politically. Secondly, creating such a society would take, of itself, enormous amounts of fossil fuels to accomplish, many many years to complete, massive and expensive changes to existing infrastructure – changes that would have to be implemented during a very stressful period of social change, economic hardship and rapidly depleting natural resources (esp fossil fuels and fresh water sources – both of which are needed in huge amounts to create the necessary technologies).
It is like Professor Bartlett has said on many occasions – the changes one would have to make to reverse the population overshoot and to live sustainably into the foreseen future are changes that we have historically considered unacceptable, even immoral, and to be avoided at all cost if at all possible. If you list the things that improve the quality of life, and list those that shorten life and keep the population in check, you find that all the things on the “shorten life and keep the population in check” list are the things we most avoid – we are wired to survive.
So where does this new world leave us as a species and all our fellow creatures? Down the shit-hole, I’m afraid. It will just take a bit longer if we rid ourselves of the bankers and stop making war, and more damage will be inflicted on the environment in the meantime, very possibly leading to an uninhabitable world.
We have at least six billion too many people on the planet. All, as a species, committed to an infinite growth economic model, and all using natural resources far beyond the capability of the earth to sustain them. The physical laws of nature demand that there can be only one result. It’s coming. Prepare.
July 28th, 2011 at 1:15 am
Victor
Your list, your outlooks, no disagreement there.
It’s coming, has been since when, 200 – 500, 10k years or since ever?
I know, for “Pacha Mama” as the living system, that our economic system should crash, the harder the better, the sooner the better. Shaking off as many of mankind as possible, maybe better all of us.
But I choose to speak out about the insanity that is going on. Making friends whilst doing this? Not really, seems talking of love and peace brings forth the most bitter in man, still a little in wonders as to why.
To Libya, if there is one thing that truly and since “ever” has been upsetting me -it is war and all it’s lies:
http://news.myjoyonline.com/features/201107/70073.asp
http://www.workers.org/2011/us/cynthia_mckinney_0804/
I know mankind isn’t giving nature a chance, but I’m filled up with joy to see what else is possible:
John D. Liu – Large scale restoration, starts one third into the film,
posted this before;
http://webbtv.compodium.se/tallberg11/
Banging head onto the wall? Sure, have been doing this a lifetime, so why change now
July 28th, 2011 at 1:40 am
Vera, VT – there are some statistics on maternal deaths at wiki – While the statistics are slightly different measurements it does look as though the risk increases with multiple births.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death
“Maternal Mortality Ratio is the ratio of the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. The MMR is used as a measure of the quality of a health care system.” Sierra Leone has 2,000 per 100,000 live birth while the US has 4 per 100,000 live birth
“Lifetime risk of maternal death” accounts for number of pregnancies and risk. In sub-Saharan Africa the lifetime risk of maternal death is 1 in 16, for developed nations only 1 in 2,800.
Death from childbirth will increase post collapse. Its the risk evolution took in making such big heads on human babies. The fairy tales of the wicked stepmother no doubt have roots in a past when it was more common for children to be raised by their father’s second wife. The fact before modern medicine the midwife was a respected job relates to the fact that unlike other animals, the human animal does better in childbirth with another human helping out.
July 28th, 2011 at 2:58 am
Carrie: Good luck to you. We have a friend that lives in what she calls a gypsy trailer. Half the size of your place, and she does just fine.
Up to a couple of weeks ago (last time I heard) the price of scrap metal was way up. If your parents have been there for a long time they probably know someone that could come in and haul off all the metal and pay you for a portion of it. Depending on how much is there, you could pay alot of bills with the income. Looks like you have a crawl space around the bottome of the house? If so, close it in before it gets cold, and the skunks etc move in for the winter. On yeah, that cute little squirrel, will run off with everything that isn’t locked down, and if its a red squirrel they will chew through wood to get to the goodies. Reminds me of when we first had muskrats in our ponds, we were so excited until we learned that they will drain your pond in short order.
Let us know how it’s going.
Guy, what would it take to have a blog roll so we could keep up with NBL intrepids?
July 28th, 2011 at 5:43 am
Apologies for this, but when I saw it, I had to post it. This kind of action is happening more and more frequently as we approach Collapse. Many police, who are supposed to protect us, are turning into vicious killers. Either through armed gangs (aka SWAT teams) or through calling on back-up where many officers respond and turn into a deadly mob, they are losing the public trust.
Do not view this if you are sensitive. If you follow the link there will be not only a video showing this action but also a picture showing how the victim looked after the police finished protecting themselves and society from him.
Caught on tape: Police beat and taser ‘gentle’ mentally-ill homeless man to death
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Police-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man-Kelly-Thomas-37-death.html#ixzz1TP3Dz4JR
July 28th, 2011 at 6:25 am
This is like ‘News from Lake Wobegone’:
The Gazelle Rye continues to do well and the hard red spring wheat is doing nicely also, although much shorter and two weeks behind. The regular rye is just sitting there. Most of that may be due to the weather. I know that much of the country is having record high temperatures. Here, however, it seems summer will never begin. We have had three (total) nights where the temperature has remained above 50°F (53°F being the maximum night-time temperature so far), and last week it was down below 36°F three times. It’s been really tough for the corn, squash, tomatoes, etc., to get going. Berries and fruit are doing great, however, and I will be picking strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, red and black currants, gooseberries, and cherries this week and later expect an abundance of apples and plums. The serviceberry crop has been great too, although the bear that has been hanging out in my woods thinks they belong to him instead of me.
On another note, the current construction project has me once again thanking industrial civilization for inventing bolt-stock. Any of you who have worked with round-wood timber frame (logs or poles) will know what I mean, it’s just really time consuming to do the joinery without bolts. I know, I know, not very pure, but it is effective.
Michael Irving
July 28th, 2011 at 7:10 am
Michael
You make me jealous AND hungry!
July 28th, 2011 at 7:43 am
On another note, I was looking at a working model of Leonardo da Vinci’s water screw (based on Archimedes) at an exhibit of his works last weekend. It looks like it might work in my situation. Do any of you have any experience with water screws? If so, what is the maximum lift that could be expected using only one person as the motive force and what outputs could one expect?
Victor, I’ll give you some if you want to help pick.
Michael Irving
July 28th, 2011 at 7:47 am
Michael
Not a stingy offer at all, but I fear the commute time would be a bit over the top for me….
July 28th, 2011 at 7:49 am
As for screws, I know a bit about metal screws, and wood screws but water screws are a new one on me.
July 28th, 2011 at 8:30 am
Ed, Thank you for the well wishes. The squirrels love to chew through the wood. In removing the inner wall boards, which were stinky as all get out, I discovered tons of nests. Squirrel, pack rat and bees. The critters chewed through the outside barn boards to get to the inside cavity. With the inner wall boards out I can stand at the back of the cabin and look through the holes and see what is going on at the front of the house. ha ha. Makes the room nice and airy though! I am going to be insulating with clay slip, which is clay coated straw that binds together and creates a solid draft free insulative mass. It is my hope that the critters will find it unpalatable. At the very least there will be no cozy cavities in the walls for them to nest in. Mom and Dad have a terrible time with squirrels chewing access holes then taking off with their pink insulation. The little stinkers will come out of the house with it all stuck in their cheeks, then build nests out in the hawthorn trees for Mom and Dad to look at out their windows!
The space under the house is about 6 inches high. I am going to have to get it sealed up. I am thinking about using brick. We have lots of it lying around and it is in keeping with what the previous people have done. I just have to make sure good old George is out of there before the last brick goes in place. Skunks under houses is terribly unpleasant!
As for the metal, most of it is gone. The previous owner had it written into the sales contract that he would take out all the broken down cars and such. He took it in for scrap. He probably made a bundle off it but I am glad they are gone. I think I would find that project over whelming in addition to all the other things that need to be taken care of.
July 28th, 2011 at 8:53 am
Victor-
Thanks for posting that link, as atrocious as it was. Rage and sadness mixed together in equal parts make one feel a bit off in the morning. I think you are absolutely right that we are going to see more of this kind of thing as the situation deteriorates, right up to the point where there are no more police or they morph into something even more paramilitary than they already are. The comments of the father, as an ex-deputy, are particularly astute. This is what happens when you have a generation of young (mostly) men raised on a steady psychological diet of fantastic violence and hyper-masculinity. They beat people to death under the color of authority. In garbage, out garbage.
As the squeeze gets tighter, police find themselves in a schizophrenic place between keeping “order” and realizing their true role as defenders of the status quo, a role that a lot of them probably didn’t sign up for. Not all cops are bad, but the bad ones kill people all the time. There is no way that guy should be dead. Judging by the extent of his facial injuries, (I used to be an EMT) I would say that he was beaten around the head well beyond the ability of someone to consciously resist arrest. That man was murdered by the State, just like Kenneth Harding and Charles Hill, shot and killed in the past month by BART police and SFPD respectively. The public response to the Kenneth Harding shooting was immediate and violent. It’s going to get worse, and the State’s only response will be to become more violent until things just explode. The State knows nothing but punitive measures. It is largely devoid of recuperative ability and its solution to a loss of “order” is to increasingly use force as a deterrent. Stupidly, these tactics have never worked and likely never will. Hate and violence begets hate and violence. As someone who has known for a long time that what it means to have a warrior spirit is to be a peacemaker, a non-aggressor (I agree with Robin here) I am frankly disgusted. I saw this in the Army, and I got the fuck out of there for precisely that reason. Violence becomes a reality unto itself. Those dudes are nothing but thugs. We all need to watch out, because the cops are not our friends “anymore.” Yuck. I’m going to go water my plants, feed my dogs and my wife and myself and remember that evil can beat us until we’re dead, but it can’t take away our moral rectitude.
July 28th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Carrie- Thanks for the link to your blog. Your place looks like a slice of heaven pie from where I sit, in 110 degree heat. I look forward to following your progress!
July 28th, 2011 at 9:00 am
Oops. Kenneth Harding was shot and killed by SFPD after running from a MUNI fare evasion, and Charles Hill was shot and killed by BART Police within one minute of making contact. In my previous post I had them reversed. Not that it matters, they were both killed by police, and they’re both still dead.
July 28th, 2011 at 9:13 am
Carrie, I join with everyone to wish you lotsa luck with your project. The cats will almost certainly destroy the squirrel… if you like it, catch it in a haveaheart trap and move it. I am a big cat lover, but the devastation they cause is getting to me. Mice and voles, ok. The rest, not ok. Lately they’ve mostly been killing birds.
I am not sure where you are going with the maternal deaths, Kathy et al. Is having babies risky? Sure. Life is risky, and ends in death. We all choose which risks to take and which ones not so much. The use of midwives has made Holland one of the safest countries to give birth.
It would be better if we focused on preserving some simple things that can be done to prevent pregnancies (besides breastfeeding) and to make deliveries safer in simple conditions. This would go a long way towards not making childbirth mortalities jump like the ones in Africa. Pushing every woman to deliver in hospitals is itself unsafe, and just another waste of resources we no longer have.
Bernhard, the Lybian thing must have been planned for such an opening (provided by Egypt and Tunisia). They were of course a tyranny, but in many ways well run, with the wealth distributed all around. An alternative economic system that is not in debt to the banksters must not be permitted anywhere. It was one of the places still left to plunder. Ellen Brown (The Web of Debt) caught on right away when the Libyan offensive started… one of the first things the “rebels” did was to start a western-style bank!
Brutus, welcome back. Alas, I too am a yak. Hoping to change that this year. My illness has provided an excuse, but t’hell with it. It’s now or never.
July 28th, 2011 at 10:29 am
Vera, actually re childbirth, culling by nature should take care of things over time. Those who die in childbirth won’t have any more children. Those who can pop out babies and go back to work in the fields will have many. We have thwarted evolution by saving people with modern medicine. Evolution is a hard master, every species on the planet exists because some other species that might have filled its niche stopped existing. (think of the other homos – Neanderthals) Every adaptation is a result of selection by death before reproduction.
But as you note hospitals are not good places to have babies. Something in between hospitals and refugee camps is best – but I think every tribe and society recognizes the need for many mothers to have a learned assistant.
Myself I am glad for being able to limit reproduction with birth control because I popped those babies out easily and could have gone on having lots and lots. (#1 7 hrs, #2 2 1/2 hrs. both without anesthesia) I like being pregnant, liked giving birth, but found being a mother quite wearisome. Once I had 3 foster children – ages 8, 6 and 4 when mine were 8 and 5. ‘Bout did me in.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:01 am
Kathy,
Once I had 3 foster children – ages 8, 6 and 4 when mine were 8 and 5. ‘Bout did me in.
Good God!….the woman has not a lick of sense about her!…
Vera
Gaddafi refused to bend to the international banker’s will in establishing a central bank under the authority of the banking cartel. he also tried to establish a new gold-based African currency to replace the dollar among African nations. Those were the primary reasons he is in trouble – has absolutely nothing to do with killing civilians or running an undemocratic state. Besides, his oil is the lightest, sweetest oil in the world – oil to die for…literally.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:02 am
Yikes, Kathy! That’s way too many!
My great grandmother had 11, and 9 survived. She lived to a high old age. I don’t know how she did it.
Yeah, evolution will take care of things. I don’t mind a dab of cultural evolution into the mix, to help us along, though.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:03 am
The State knows nothing but punitive measures. It is largely devoid of recuperative ability and its solution to a loss of “order” is to increasingly use force as a deterrent. Stupidly, these tactics have never worked and likely never will. Hate and violence begets hate and violence.
pickle
This is so true! And it is just as true internationally as the US has become the most hated nation in the world. It was not always like that.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:06 am
That is the info I have been getting too, Victor.
“he also tried to establish a new gold-based African currency to replace the dollar among African nations”
Yeah. That’ll do ya in. I heard that Dominique S-K was working on some scheme to get off the dollar standard. Hence, the soft assassination.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:42 am
Vera, Victor – we were working on a project in Appalachia. We decided to be foster parents and put in for 1 at the most 2. They brought 3 siblings to us at 11 PM one night. They had no other home available and said that if we couldn’t take them in they would have to house them in the jail. What could we do eh? We had them for 7 months until the Klan started burning crosses on our front yard. We decided in the end the best was to move. So we worked with Social Services to get custody to the father and his wife. They had been with their mother when social services took them – she had been doing drugs, living in a car etc. It was an interesting time to say the least.
Yes Vera cultural evolution through memes is part of our bag of tricks as humans. When I was in high school I read The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. The heroine was a strong peasant woman. She came out of the fields when she knew the baby was coming, squatted, delivered, cleaned up and back to the fields. Pearl Buck lived in China for a while so I presume she was writing from experience. Squatting to give birth is making some resurgence and takes advantage of gravity. But as Robin noted some time back if you haven’t squatted frequently all your life your bones change and it is not as easy. Oh well, once we have burned all the furniture we will change the sitting meme back to the much healthier squatting meme.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Vera, I have similar views about DSK. Powers that be are smart. Use rape accusations against a powerful man by an immigrant maid of color and the left will be conned into shouting “Shame Shame Shame” instead of trying to see what the controllers are up to. Just as the left lost their voice for far too long, when Obama became president. It should have been clear when he made his Cabinet nominations where he stood. But the left kept hoping, and hoping, and hoping that our first Afro-American president was going to be JFK reincarnated.
July 28th, 2011 at 11:48 am
Victor,
You can find the water screw via Google. Actually being able to play with one is a revelation. Boy, were those guys smart. At first blush it looks like it makes water run uphill. Archimedes used an actual screw-like device. Leonardo improved on it with a pair of metal tubes spiraling up a round log with a handle on the end. The key is to have the device tilted at about a 45° angle which is what works to both pick up some water from the source each time the bottom of the screw/tubes comes around and as it turns a bit farther it keeps the water from running back downhill. It works slicker than anything. So I’m thinking a framework holding the log in place and the log wrapped in a spiral of salvaged plastic pipe (an old garden hose would do). Archimedes’ worked without tubing. Anyway, post electric grid, it is a way to get water from the creek to my garden without hauling it up in buckets. Been there, done that, no fun.
Michael Irving
July 28th, 2011 at 12:10 pm
Michael
What about fixing a set of water paddles to the bottom of the screw and let the force of the stream do all the work of turning the screw?
July 28th, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Michael- I’d be really interested in seeing this water screw in action. Got any favorite youtube videos or the like? I’ll do some looking around as well.
Kathy- I don’t know if I entirely agree that modern medicine has “thwarted” evolution. In some cases, perhaps the majority, undoubtedly. But nature itself provides humans and non-humans alike with natural healing compounds and intuitive healing techniques. I can’t see that being the case if we are somehow transgressing against nature when we practice medicine. As with anything, it’s what you do with the knowledge that matters. I’d like to hear what Dr. House thinks about that.
July 28th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Pickle, think vaccines – thanks to smallpox vaccine we have not been culled for resistance to small pox for a long time and worldwide since 1977. Unfortunately several countries still hold small pox samples. If some country ever releases them, well all the younger folks will face culling again. Us older folks may still have some resistance due to having gotten the vaccine as kids.
In Third World countries kids are culled for their ability to handle the germs and parasites in the water. In the first world we are no longer culled because we have treated water and sewage treatment. Thus when a first worlder goes to a third world country the rule is “don’t drink the water” unless it is treated – otherwise Montezuma’s revenge.
Babies that nature would have culled are saved from late miscarriages – sometimes by months in an incubator. Oh my I could go on.
Well if malaria moves north many of our african american citizens who carry one gene for sickle cell anemia will have some protection. Us without will not and the culling may start there….. the slaves revenge.
July 28th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2011) — After a 10,000-year absence, wildfires have returned to the Arctic tundra, and a University of Florida study shows that their impact could extend far beyond the areas blackened by flames.
In a study published in the July 28 issue of the journal Nature, UF ecologist Michelle Mack and a team of scientists including fellow UF ecologist Ted Schuur quantified the amount of soil-bound carbon released into the atmosphere in the 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which covered more than 400 square miles on the North Slope of Alaska’s Brooks Range. The 2.1 million metric tons of carbon released in the fire — roughly twice the amount of greenhouse gases put out by the city of Miami in a year — is significant enough to suggest that Arctic fires could impact the global climate, said Mack, an associate professor of ecosystem ecology in UF’s department of biology.
“The 2007 fire was the canary in the coal mine,” Mack said. “In this wilderness, hundreds of miles away from the nearest city or source of pollution, we’re seeing the effects of a warming atmosphere. It’s a wake-up call that the Arctic carbon cycle could change rapidly, and we need to know what the consequences will be.”
Smoke from the fire pumped greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but that’s just one part of a tundra fire’s potential impact. The fire also consumed up to 30 percent of the insulating layer of organic matter that protects the permafrost beneath the tundra’s shrub- and moss-covered landscape.
In a pine forest, fire would burn up leaf litter on the ground, but not the soil beneath. Because the Arctic tundra has a carbon-rich, peaty soil, however, the ground itself is combustible, and when the fire recedes, some of the soil is gone. In a double whammy, the vulnerable permafrost is not only more exposed, but also covered by blackened ground, which absorbs more of the sun’s heat and could accelerate thawing.
“When the permafrost warms, microbes will begin to decompose that organic matter and could release even more carbon that’s been stored in the permafrost for hundreds or thousands of years into the atmosphere,” Mack said. “If that huge stock of carbon is released, it could increase atmospheric carbon dioxide drastically.”
The study shows how isolated fires can have a widespread impact, said University of Alaska biology professor Terry Chapin. “When you think about the massive carbon stocks and massive area of tundra throughout the world, and its increasing vulnerability to fire as climate warms, it suggests that fire may become the dominant factor that governs the future carbon balance of this biome,” Chapin said. “The paper by Michelle and her colleagues raises this possibility for the first time. It presents a very different perspective on the way in which climate change may affect this biome in the future.”
Using radiocarbon dating, co-author Schuur and researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Alaska Fire Service and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, found that carbon up to 50 years old had been burned in the 2007 fire.
Mack also developed a new method that can now be used by other tundra researchers to measure soil loss. By comparing the tussocks of sedge plants, which resprout after a fire, Mack was able to quantify soil heights and densities before and after the burn.
Mack hopes her findings will open a dialogue about how tundra fires are managed. Because the Anaktuvuk River fire was in a wilderness area, it was not suppressed or contained. With better data on the long-term impact of tundra fire on global climate warming, Mack says, putting out these fires might become more of a priority.
“This fire was a big wake-up call, and it can happen again, not just in Alaska but in other parts of the Arctic, like Canada and Russia,” Mack said. “Suppressing a fire in the wilderness is costly, but what if the fire causes the permafrost to melt? We
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110727131415.htm
July 28th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Kathy-
The article you just posted is yet another “oh shit” moment for life on planet Earth.
Vaccines are derived from nature. Everything has its genesis in material reality. The view that science is some sort of forbidden knowledge feels kind of like the story of being cast out of Eden.
July 28th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Michael:
If you haven’t already found instructions for calculating the geometry of your water screw, here’s a PDF that describes such for the Archimedes type:
http://www.math.nyu.edu/~crorres/Archimedes/Screw/optimal/screw.pdf
Looks like a neat project. I’m tempted to give it a shot. I’ve also “been there, done that, no fun.”
I use gravity as much as possible to move water on my land, but I don’t have a lot of slope, which limits flow. However, there’re several locations where a water screw type device could be beneficial.
I like your tubing idea also.
July 28th, 2011 at 3:48 pm
“It should have been clear when he made his Cabinet nominations where he stood.”
That is what I put my energy into at that time, scanning the nominations. And in particular, the ag secretary. Vilsack? Yeah, right. That was it for me. The left… well, look, the political lefty loosey righty tighty thing is just a ruse anyways. Yet another one. They got lots of them.
Hugz — V.
July 28th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
Victor,
What a great idea. Thanks.
Michael Irving
July 28th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Resa,
Thanks. I will check it out this evening. I’m putting together a small building today (with a deadline) so I have to get back to work.
Michael Irving
July 28th, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Pickle, EVERYTHING is derived from nature. Duh…no where else for it to come from. What drove humans to go from milkmaids who got smallpox being immune to vaccines was learning and using natural processes. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make anymore, but I will forge on with some further info.
Humans in the Americas did not have cows or other domestic animals and were never exposed to smallpox before humans from Europe who were semi immune from their populations being exposed brought it over. The native Americans died in droves…culled down to the much smaller number who had the ability to survive that and other old world diseases.
The point is that with vaccines manufactured from natural sources humans were able to thwart the culling process and create a new generation of humans who have never been exposed to smallpox. No humans in the world have died from smallpox since 1978 due to a human eradication by natural humans using natural smallpox vaccine. If it is ever reintroduced all the children that normally would have been culled in a small pox outbreak will have lived and be vulnerable. It will not be as bad as for the Native Americans as Europeans still have a long history of living with smallpox. But it will be bad.
Antibiotics are natural because everything comes from nature. But they work a heck of a lot better than herbals, which is why the outcome for soldiers in war is now head trauma more often than amputation from blood poisoning.
The point is that our natural enhancements to medical care through vaccines, antibiotics and surgical procedures have saved people that were not saved in the past. When they are gone diabetics are going to die, people will get gangrene, heart attacks and many accidents will be fatal, and nature will deem who lives and who dies and thus cull the human tribe by the environment they have to live in. Provided of course we don’t extinct ourselves.
I have read enough of Dr. House’s comments over the past few years to know that he will likely agree with most if not all of what I have written.
Meanwhile when cows start having cowpox again the protection from smallpox will be milking a poxy cow.
July 28th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Carrie you have two great nurseries over there, Raintree, and Forest Farms. We have used both of them and their plants are excellent, but the freight costs to the east coast are crazy. Check, they may have end of the season sales. Both have great selections of edible perennials. Great place to start. It’s an area where we should have done more of 5 years ago.
Kathy it takes a while, but this 1st worlder finally got to the other side. By the time I left Riyadh and Hong Kong I could eat and drink anything. The body is really amazing in how it can adjust, though it can take quite a while for that black soot thing to go away.
We start work on our root cellar on Monday. Will document costs and time and let you know what we end up with. Photos will go to our blog.
Best to all,
July 28th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
evil can beat us until we’re dead, but it can’t take away our moral rectitude. – Alfie aka pickle
The purpose of “religion” is not so much to save sinners as it is to strip away the encrustations so that one recognizes oneself. That recognition is also the recognition of the self of all sentient beings. It is the answer sought to the question “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”, but not an answer from the intellect. Rather, it is an answer from direct awareness
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. – Genesis 1:27
Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me – Matthew 25:40
July 28th, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Who was it that said not to be overly concerned with one’s life?
The end of life is death, no matter what.
I’m not going to beat around the bush.
I’ve had some very unusual experiences.
Perhaps this is not the place to talk about them.
So please ignore me if I’m out of line.
Rather than say what I have experienced,
I’m going to mention three things I have seen.
If they don’t come true, I will be relieved.
The first I am the least certain about.
In fact, the first and the second could happen in any order, but the third will come last.
I saw Hilary becoming president, but not without a great deal of controversy.
I am fairly certain this will happen, only because this is the kind of dream I never have, I don’t care about her, and have no reason to have such a dream.
The 2nd is that a city, I am pretty sure it is Vancouver, but perhaps it was Seattle, is going to get really shaken up by an earthquake.
The downtown office buildings are not going to collapse, but they will have major fractures, and people will leave the city.
Because this dream showed me things I could not have imagined, I am reasonably certain it is going to happen.
If I lived there, I might not leave, but I would try and put myself into a situation where I would avoid damage.
The 3rd, and the most likely to happen, is rather terrible, and is that the city I live next to is going to get nuked, that is Toronto.
The sick bastards are eventually going to bomb each other, and I guess no one is going to save Toronto.
I suppose the extra-terrestrials could save us from ourselves, at least temporarily.
But why should they, that would entangle them with us, for who knows how long.
I know what you must be thinking, another kook.
But I assure you, I am quite sane, hold a demanding computer job, pay my taxes, love my fellow citizens, and believe in prosperity and peace and a happy life.
You people are all trying to survive.
I wish you all the best.
I suppose I should be planning my survival, if not just for the kids.
That’s a hard thing to deal with, knowing that your kids may have a shitty future on what’s left of this planet.
Where is God?
I suppose God knows that we all die anyway, and perhaps the most trying times are the greatest teachers.
I think we have a much longer future in store.
In the big picture, our future is fantastic.
There are endless worlds, and endless time.
Only there are no shortcuts, each person is responsible for his/her own self-inquiry and eventual liberation.
There is no magic pill, social status, or amount of wealth that can save anyone from dwelling in their own ignorant, ego-related, karmic suffering, hostile feed-back loop ad-infinitum.
July 28th, 2011 at 8:17 pm
Alfie aka Pickle and Kathy,
Much of life today is “unnatural” (depending on your definition of unnatural). As an example, I mentioned my dying dog earlier (she’s made a momentary improvement, btw). She is 12 1/2 years old. She has reached that ripe old age because I have “unnaturally” provided for her and cared for her. By feeding her and giving her heartworm medicine and flea and tick medicines, etc., I’ve extended her life by at least 5 years, if not quite a bit more.
The same can be said of people. I’ve done extensive work on my genealogy. Many of my ancestors had 12 or 13 children. Often times, only 3 or 4 would reach adulthood. My father had five siblings, only one (besides my dad) reached adulthood and he was sterile from a childhood polio infection. Today, almost all children born in this country reach adulthood. The difference is the result of medicines, sanitation, and nutrition.
It’s difficult to know how many of those children who died did so because of a genetic susceptibility or just luck of the draw. So, by extension, it’s difficult to know if the genetic pool has been diluted by the survival of modern children who would have died without the advent of vaccinations.
I read an interesting article not long ago about the dramatic increase in recent years of eczema and other auto-immune diseases. The theory discussed in the article was that vaccines, anti-bacterial soaps, and all the other things we use to protect ourselves from germs, are causing our always primed-and-ready immune systems to fight the only left to it – the human body.
So, I don’t know if that directly addressed the topic you were discussing, but if not, you may want to refer back to the essay I wrote here on NBL regarding healthcare in a post-collapse world. A variety of different viewpoints were discussed.
July 29th, 2011 at 1:31 am
It’s kidding time again, and we’re in drought again. Just once, I’d like to enjoy kidding without the sadness of burying the kids that the does haven’t been able to carry through to a healthy birth. The first ones were born today, twins. Both were weak, but the smaller one didn’t last longer than 15 minutes. Our young Wwoofers got a lesson in life – and death. Devastated they held the tiny babe as she gasped her last breathe. I then showed them how to help the surviving twin. After a day of helping her suckle, we are pleased to annouce that she is now happily following Mum, wagging her tail whilst suckling on her own, and is likely to make it through the cold night. She has been named Regina – after a famous female German boxer because of her fighting spirit. Not my choice, but how could I deny the young Wwoofers’ first intimate celebration of life.
Yet when I watch this life – death struggle, I think of Somalia, and I think of what it will be like for young mothers here in the not too distant future.
July 29th, 2011 at 2:41 am
“Chicken pox and measles, although by this time endemic and rarely fatal among Europeans (long after being introduced from Asia), often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox proved particularly fatal to Native American populations.[43] Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that at least 30% (and sometimes 50% to 70%) of some Native populations died after first contact due to Eurasian smallpox.[44]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#Initial_impacts
July 29th, 2011 at 2:57 am
Ed you wrote “Kathy it takes a while, but this 1st worlder finally got to the other side. By the time I left Riyadh and Hong Kong I could eat and drink anything. The body is really amazing in how it can adjust, though it can take quite a while for that black soot thing to go away.”
Yep some hardy adult bodies can adjust over time. But what about children. That is where nature’s effective culling takes place, before reproduction age. I watched several babies die every night at the Chidren’s home in Port-au-Prince. I watched kids being treated for worms cough up 6 inch or more worms. Every one of the nuns in training (Haitian women) who I had talked to had lost multiple siblings. I find it hard to believe that nothing but chance left those women to grow up, while their sibs died, even if chance played a part.
Oh well post collapse the culling will be rather indiscriminate at first but I think, baring nuclear war, that those populations that have lived with raw sewage and untreated diseases will fare better.
Ah well, why argue. We have about 6 billion to die early to get humans down to a sustainable population. By the time that is done no one will be discussing anything other than getting by one more day. Whether the remainder are there by accident or genetic hardiness won’t matter to the ones who have watched most in the world die untimely deaths.
July 29th, 2011 at 3:06 am
We have about 6 billion to die early to get humans down to a sustainable population.
Even 1 billion is looking highly questionable. Every day that 7 billion consume and waste reduces the remaining natural carrying capacity of the earth through soil erosion, habitat destruction, deforestation, poisoning of water and air, acidification of the oceans, global warming and climate change. IMO the 1 billion figure is quite significantly overstated and becoming more so annually.
July 29th, 2011 at 4:54 am
Victor I agree that 1 billion left is high. I seldom mention any lower number because I get enough grief when I state 1 billion left. 1 million might be more like it. And 0 is of course highly possible if the world we have left to live in is pockmarked by thousands of nukes.
July 29th, 2011 at 5:03 am
Dr House. Apologies. I usually don’t try to say what other people think. I only brought your name into the discussion because Pickle did, but that is no excuse. I only meant to imply that you agreed about the efficacy of herbal medicine over modern medicine, not the culling bit but I stated my comments poorly and may even have misrepresented your view on herbal vs. modern as well. Sorry.
As for the eager herbalists, I am quite sure many herbal remedies work, and in some cases may be better than modern medicine. I know modern medicine has its failing, including saving lives that should not have been saved. But also as Dr. House notes we may have created some auto-immune diseases by leaving the immune system nothing to fight (antibiotics, vaccines and over cleanliness). In fact I have read that polio in infants doesn’t cause paralysis and it was the clean environs early in this century that prevented infants from contracting polio leaving them vulnerable to the ravages that polio inflicts on older children and adults.
That said, herbal healers in the future need to not only treat what they now encounter. They need to treat tetanus, diptheria, whooping cough, cholera, rabies, blood poisoning, gangrene etc. Since these are seldom encountered in our vaccinated, antibiotic healed world it is easy to forget that for the future you will need to learn about them. Death by rabies or tetanus are slow and nasty so I have read. I contracted whooping cough as an adult when my childhood vaccinations no longer covered me. It was brutal. 1 month in bed and lost 20 lbs despite modern medical care. It was once common – my sister had it as a child and had one lung collapse. Perhaps that explains her whinny nature
July 29th, 2011 at 5:10 am
With my thanks to Alfie for a provocative essay, a new guest essay is up.
July 29th, 2011 at 11:02 am
Thank you Guy for the opportunity to participate here in this way, and thanks to all who took the time to comment and discuss my essay and our thoughts on our shared future. The connections I’ve made by doing so will carry me a long way towards my goals. Gratitude!
July 29th, 2011 at 11:20 am
And I forgot to thank Dr. House for weighing in after I called forth the wisdom. Thank you. I’m going to re-read your essay now.
July 30th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
Ed wrote: “Jan: Can you share a bit about the airgun that works without electricity.”
Electricity is a very high grade of energy — meaning it has a “long tail” of embedded energy.
Compressed air is a lower grade of energy. You can run a compressor directly from falling water, without turning it into electricity first.
That’s all I meant. We aren’t actually doing this, but we have a belt-driven compressor that could be quickly adapted to an overshot waterwheel.
“We use a Pasload for just about everything, but I don’t think that’s what you are talking about.”
Had to google that… no, that’s not what I meant. The Pasload appears to use rechargeable batteries, which I think will be dinosaurs soon.
I have mixed feelings about cordless tools. On the one hand, they have a fraction of the power of a tool that runs from 120 VAC, and the batteries are a financial and environmental drain.
On the other hand, people use them until the battery wears out, then they chuck them in the dump, where I pick them up and wire them to run from a car battery: expensive cordless to free corded!
Regarding the Archimedean Screw powered by the stream, look up “hydraulic ram” for something that can easily be built from Dome Heapo parts. We’re planning a 20,000 litre ferrocement tank filled by a hydraulic ram as our new domestic water system.