In this brief essay, I’d like to take issue with a couple other terms. As I’ve pointed out recently, I’m a fan of the gift economy (which is not based on barter). I explain below. In addition, I differentiate between building social capital and contributing to a decent human community.

My customary gifts include hosting visitors at the mud hut, delivery of presentations for no charge, and copies of my latest book at my cost (or, to those interested in an electronic version of the page proofs, no cost at all). Here at the mud hut, I strive to promote and expand the extant gift economy. This approach makes perfect sense, considering how we began this relationship more than four years ago, when my partners on these 2.7 acres offered my partner and me the gift of an acre (we declined, and we now share the property and the attendant responsibilities). In the name of comfort for our friends and neighbors, we barter, too, and sometimes work within the customary system of fiat currency. But I prefer an economy of gifts, which has been the prevailing model for most of our existence as human animals. Gifting removes the pressure associated with placing monetary value on the exchange of goods and services in a barter system. And, to me at least, it seems more compassionate and personal than other alternatives.

Many people believe they are doing themselves a favor by building social capital. I hear this phrase often, and I bristle every time. Employing the root word of a heinous system that developed as the industrial revolution began is hardly a sure-fire strategy for winning friends and (positively) influencing people. The process of “building social capital” equates connivance with decency. Analogous to use of a barter system, the act of building social capital suggests a deposit is being made, and will be drawn upon later, perhaps with interest (i.e., usury).

In contrast to developing social capital, I believe we should work to contribute to a decent human community. As an aside, I’m often asked why I use the phrase, “human community” instead of “community.” This is exactly the type of question I have come to expect from individuals who wrongly believe we are the most important species on Earth. We’re destroying virtually every aspect of the living planet, and yet we believe we’re the foundation on which robust ecosystems depend. Viewing your place in a human community, and your contribution to that human community, is analogous to development of a gift economy. By striving to contribute, instead of invest, I can focus on developing life-affirming ties instead of dreaming about the return on my investment. By serving my neighbors, rather than determining how my neighbors can serve me, I become an integral part of a valuable system. As such, the whole, holistic system becomes increasingly durable.

Sharing gifts to develop a durable set of living arrangements within a decent human community: If you can imagine a better goal, please let me know.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.
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If oil traders knew the truth about declining energy availability, the per-barrel price of oil would be $300 within a week. If stock traders knew the truth, we’d see capitulation of the markets shortly thereafter. If Americans knew the truth, they just might come to grips with reality, rally together, put their collective shoulders to the wheel, and start building a better world than the ominicidal culture of make believe to which we’ve all become accustomed.
But we’ll never know, because the cabal of morally bankrupt bankers and politicians running this country — and also the industrialized world — will keep playing the shell game as long as they are allowed by the impotent media. Or, more likely, until the reality of oil priced in excess of $200 per barrel interferes with their imperial ambitions.
The consequences of the shell game extend well beyond economic disaster and the likely extinction of our species. In the short term, they include hijacking the world’s marketplace, complete with child labor, hunger, and pollution (especially abroad), continued decline of intellectual “capital” in our universities, ratcheting up the war machine by attacking yet more countries (perhaps bringing a rapid demise to American Empire), further extending imperial overreach, continued shrinking of our credit-based economy, continued enrichment of the financially wealthy (including $100 billion for eight of Warren Buffett’s companies), continued profiteering by the insurance industry, and continued land grabs in poor countries by wealthy countries. All with a U.S. military on the verge of complete collapse and despite widespread acknowledgment that American-style capitalism is not working.
To reiterate the choices facing us: (1) The economically dire truth and potential for chaos, now, or (2) Certain chaos and probable extinction, later. The moral certainty of the former choice is absolute. Perhaps that alone explains why we’re choosing door number two.
Will reality intervene in time to save the living planet, including our own species? Is 2012 soon enough? Stay tuned.
In the meantime, think about what you’d do. Let’s play King For A Day. Would you trust industrial humans with the truth? Or would you commit us to chaos and probable extinction in the name of politics? In your response, please wear two hats: first your own, then, to make the game realistic, the hat of your favorite billionaire.
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This post is permalinked at Energy Bulletin and Counter Currents.

George R. Stewart’s 1949 disaster classic, Earth Abides, provided the template for all subsequent disaster books and films. Stewart puts the disaster at the center of the book, giving it as much depth as any character. The disaster becomes the thread stitching together the plot, and it’s also the material from which the novel is woven. Although it is categorized as science fiction, there’s nothing “science” or futuristic about Earth Abides. Except, of course, that is tells us right where we’re headed.
Disaster strikes at the outset of Earth Abides when a virus wipes out a huge proportion of Earth’s human population. The few survivors try half-heartedly and unsuccessfully to rebuild civilization. For their purposes, human capital proves insufficient in the face of an unrelenting Earth. Assuming we avert a biological disaster within the next year, our situation will be much different, at least with respect to one important feature: We lack non-human capital to rebuild civilization, but we have a far larger human population than will persist in the face of declining planetary resources.
When the industrial economy fails, “the spike buck will graze farther from the thicket without knowing why, and the fox cubs [will] play beside the dry fountain in the square, and the quail [will] hatch her eggs in the tall grass by the sundial.” That’s from chapter 2, by which time Stewart is telling us what we all know, deep in our hearts: Nature bats last.
Twenty pages later, the book’s protagonist is trying to drive across the country when his route is blocked by trees felled by a recent storm. “Highway 66, that famous road! [Remember, it's 1949.] Here it was, blocked by the chance falling of a tree! A man [or a woman ... remember, it's 1949] might cut his [or her] way through this obstruction, but there were, or would soon be, others. … in a few years, to take a car from Chicago to Los Angeles on Highway 66 would be a task for a pioneer in a covered wagon.” [For which, of course, horses would be damned handy. In 1900, we had about 30 million people in the U.S., to go along with 30 million horses. Now we have about 300 million people and 3 million horses. Clearly, the problem is not too many people, but too few horses.]
When our traveling protagonist meets his first small group of “settled” people, “he began to think that the Negroes [remember, it's 1949] had really solved the situation better than he. He was living as a scavenger upon what was left of civilization; they, at least, were still living creatively, close to the land and in a stable situation, still raising most of what they needed.”
At this point, before 60 pages have passed, Stewart recognizes there are essentially two routes to pursue when civilization fails. I am choosing the route of sticking to a specific location. More adventurous — and I believe wiser — souls will choose the route of the road in the years ahead.
Stewart addresses the culture shock experienced by characters in his book with language that serves as a wonderful predictor of forthcoming psychology: “Destroy the culture pattern in which people lived, and often the shock was too great for the individuals. Take away family and job, friends and church, all customary amusements and routines, hope too – and life became walking death.”
It’s as if Stewart could imagine Americans without American Idol.
Most of Earth Abides describes life in the small village that settles around the book’s protagonist. For the most part, the villagers are a hapless, hopeless lot, as revealed when the reservoir upon which they’ve relied for more than two decades dries up: “Here they had been for twenty-one years merely using water that continued to flow, and yet they had never given any real consideration to where the water came from. It had been a gift from the past, as free as air, like the cans of beans and bottle of catsup that could be had just by walking into a store and taking them from the shelves.”
Do you know where your water comes from? I don’t mean the tap.
As the book winds down, it becomes clear industrial civilization cannot be restored. It’s a once-on-a-planet event. “Was it all for the best? From the cave we come and to the cave we go!”
And finally, in the book’s final pages, Stewart comes to an epiphany of sorts: “Yet certainly he [the protagonist] could not help thinking that the men had lost that old dominance and the arrogance with which they had once viewed the animals, and were now acting more or less as equals with them. He felt that this was too bad, and yet the young men were going along just as unconcerned as ever, cracking their little jokes and not feeling that they had been at all humiliated by having to detour the lion, any more than if they had had to detour around a fallen tree trunk or a ruined building.”
In the final pages of Earth Abides, Stewart gives us great hope. He envisions the day civilized humans will give way to worldly humans, abandoning dominance and arrogance for coexistence and humility. He imagines humans living with the world, instead of apart from it. He imagines us becoming part of nature, so that, when nature bats last, we’ll still be on the planetary stage