The (Worldwide?) Peak of Human Resources

In my last post, I discussed the fallen tendency of some of us humans to conduct ourselves as predators and to regard all the rest of humanity as prey. I also briefly described how this tendency has shaped the evolution of industrial society. Another way of framing this predator-prey relationship is that to the wealthiest members of society, the global official economy over which they preside exists for one purpose, namely their own personal enrichment. Just as that economy requires an ever-expanding supply of material resources in order to generate ever-increasing wealth, so it requires an ever-expanding supply of human capital in order to generate ever-increasing wealth for its elites. The Hubbert Peak of the rate of extraction of various non-human resources is now appearing as a threat to the survival of the economy. I'd like to suggest the existence of a Hubbert Peak of the rate of exploitation of “human resources” as well, and that this poses a further threat to the owners of our present economy, in addition to the Hubbert Peaks of use of other resources. I will present evidence that suggests that we (at least in the First World) are already “past Peak” with regard to human resources. As one version of a favorite song of mine says,

Well, there's a change in the wind, you know the signs don't lie,

Such a strange feelin' and I don't know why it's takin'

such a long time;

Backyard people and they work all day,

Day gets wasted, it's safe to say that they're tastin'

to make the words rhyme...

First, it should be mentioned that Hubbert depletion analysis has been applied not only to inanimate resources, but to biological resources that are exploited at rates beyond their natural rates of regeneration and renewal. One such analysis is “Price Trends Over A Complete Hubbert Cycle: The Case of the American Whaling Industry in 19^th Century” by Ugo Bardi, a professor at the University of Firenze in Italy and author of the blog, Cassandra's Legacy. Those who study the history of whaling in the 19^th century will find an interesting perspective among whalers and those who depended on the whaling industry, namely, a failure to recognize or acknowledge the effects of overfishing and exploitation of whales at a nonrenewable rate. The closest anyone seems to have come to an acknowledgement of this reality is found in a book published in 1878 by Alexander Starbuck who acknowledged that declining production of whale fisheries was due to “an increase of consumption beyond the power of the fishery to supply.” However, like apologists for our present oil industry who blame “aboveground factors” for production constraints, Mr. Starbuck cited “the scarcity and shyness of whales” as a contributing factor in fishery production decline.

Since there are limits to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of non-human biological resources, it stands to reason that there is a limit to the maximal sustainable rate of exploitation of human beings as well. Breaching this limit would cause the breakdown of an industrial society even if that society was well-supplied with all other production inputs. Moreover, there would be increasingly severe signs and symptoms of breakdown as the society was driven further and further beyond sustainable rates of exploitation of its members. Finally, it would not be surprising to see the elites at the head of such a society rationalize and refuse to acknowledge the true meaning of these signs and symptoms.

Are there modern societies in which we can see this breakdown taking place? (Is the Pope Catholic?) A better question might be, “Which modern country might best serve as a poster child for the effects of unsustainable exploitation of its human capital?” There are many contenders for this doubtful honor, but today I'd like to focus on Japan – not because I believe that country is worse than, say, the United States, but because the capitalists of that country have created trends which most of the industrial world has been obliged to follow. First, we need to look briefly at the history of Japan from the end of World War Two onward.

The end of the war left Japan both shattered and occupied. The United States provided approximately $18.6 billion in aid, both under the Marshall Plan and other outlays, for the rebuilding of nations whose infrastructure and economy had been damaged by the war. Japan received $2.44 billion. (Total U.S. expenditures from 1945 to 1953 amounted to $44.3 billion.) (Source: Wikipedia, Marshall Plan.) Yet even with American aid, life was very hard for the majority of Japanese citizens just after the war. Their suffering and privation motivated them to quickly fashion an economy which would guarantee robust prosperity for the nation.

Many growth strategies were employed both by the Japanese government and the leaders of its most powerful financial and industrial sectors. While some of these strategies focused on protecting Japanese domestic markets from foreign competition, others focused on building Japan into an industrial powerhouse. One aspect of the building of that powerhouse is of particular interest – namely, the fostering of a certain kind of relationship between the managers of large corporations and the majority of their employees. This relationship was the outgrowth of the Japanese Production Management system (JPM) which has given the world such concepts as TQM (Total Quality Management), JIT (Just-In-Time Manufacturing). SCM (Supply Chain Management), Kaizen, (embodying, among other things, “lean manufacturing”), Zero Defects and Quality Circles. (One other thing to note: although these ideas came to full implementation in Japan, many of these ideas were introduced to Japan by American business and economic teachers such as W. Edwards Deming . This is rather like communism, which was not invented by Russians, yet was wholeheartedly adopted by Russia for several nauseating decades.)

The essence of many of these elements of JPM was to eliminate as much “waste” as possible from the manufacturing process. As JPM spread to other sectors of the Japanese economy, this same focus on “eliminating waste” spread too. The aim of kaizen was continuous improvement of a business process. The measure of “continuous improvement” was continuous growth of profits and continuous reduction of operating expenses. Industry leaders fostered a culture in which workers supported cost cutting and continuous process improvement, identifying fully with the goals of management. This led to situations in which workers on a line assembling car engine parts might have only two minutes allotted per car and no spare time allowed, thus forcing a typical worker to assemble engine parts for 250 cars every five hundred minutes. In such a factory, the production method would involve synchronized production (JIT, no pool of parts and no waste), value organization (to identify the spare time each worker had after one assembly operation in order to identify “waste time”), and supplement production (obtaining the minimum necessary parts from suppliers and subcontractors in order to reduce stock). (Source: “Karoshi – Death From Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of the Japanese Production Management,” Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey V. Johnson.)

This frenzied work environment was not confined to blue collar occupations, but spread through the ranks of lower and mid-level management as well, giving rise to the salaryman as a cultural icon. It has also given rise to Karoshi (death from overwork), a medical phenomenon of epidemic proportions, along with the related phenomenon of Karo-jisatu (suicide from overwork). Yet this work environment has been reinforced through many means, including identification with traditional Japanese religious and cultural values; unions that have been thoroughly co-opted by management; rigorous standardized schooling with heavy emphasis on conformity, rote memorization and high-stakes, standardized tests, and mass media which promotes the idea of the salaryman as a modern-day samurai contending on behalf of his employer. (As one television commercial put it, “Can you fight 24 hours for your corporation?”)

(To those of you who are not Japanese and who have no knowledge of Japanese culture, I ask: does any of this look familiar? Can you see these things happening in your own societies? Karoshi may soon be coming to a town near you.)

Though this culture has taken a heavy toll on Japan, the government, along with leaders of business and industry, have been extremely reluctant to acknowledge that toll. (What? You're telling me that stress kills people? Aw, come on! “Not all scientists would agree with you.”) But now there are signs that the society which has been built on this culture is starting to break down. The origin of the breakdown is among the Japanese youth, who see their parents being dehumanized and worked to death and who are saying to themselves that they refuse to become like their parents. They are angered by their parents' unrequited sacrifices and they are choosing to opt out of the system.

The opting-out takes a number of different forms. There are the freeters, young people who deliberately choose low-paying part-time jobs so that they can have control over their lives instead of running in an ever-accelerating corporate hamster wheel. There are also the hikikomori, youth who have been damaged by a high-stakes schooling system and who are unable to face the thought of going out into a predatory world without any social support system. There is the larger movement of the datsusara, people who quit work as salarymen or office women in order to launch careers that are more in line with their values.

These people are a threat to the dominant economy, in large part because they represent lost profits (or, to put it differently, they are escaped prey). They have caught the attention of the leadership of Japan, one of whose members suggested not too long ago that all freeters should be forced to join the Japanese Self-Defense Force and go to Iraq. Yet they are part of a phenomenon which is arising in many different countries. As globalization and uber-capitalism have swept the globe, youth who are now coming of age (along with not a few older people) are also coming to realize that the society created by their masters holds nothing for them, and they increasingly feel no obligation to that society. They are dropping out of their respective societies – much as air leaks slowly out of even perfectly good tires on a hot day. The trick is to escape without losing one's mind in the process.

References:

1. “Karoshi – Death From Overwork: Occupational Health Consequences of the Japanese Production Management,” 4 February 1997, Katsuo Nishiyama and Jeffrey V. Johnson.

2. “The Japanese 'Death by Overwork' Phenomenon,” 25 July 2007, Josefine Cole.

3. “Karoshi (Work to Death) in Japan,” 2008, Atsuko Kanai.

4. “Workplace Stress: A Collective Bargaining Issue,” 2002, Anne-Marie Mureau.

5. “The Impact of Globalization on Post World War II Japan,” 2 April 2010, Phillip Luu.

The Danger Of Telegraphing Your Punches

As some long-time readers of mine may have noticed, my blogging has undergone a bit of a hiatus over the last year. This was due to my working two jobs, one of which involves teaching. The demands of the two jobs left very little time for anything more than scattered, brief commentary on this blog. Now, thankfully, I am down to just one job. Though the pay is significantly less than before, the peace of mind is significantly greater.

At the beginning of my (partial) silence, my writing was strongly focused on the subject of resilient neighborhoods, including topics such as the elements of a neighborhood that provide for resilience in the face of economic contraction and energy descent, as well as steps for building neighborhood resilience. Overwhelming busyness prevented me from exploring these themes further, but I was able to keep up with the writings of others who were exploring these topics, in particular, Joanne Poyourow, a writer active in the U.S. branch of the Transition movement. She wrote a five-part series of articles on economic resilience as applied to local communities, as well as a separate post on her own blog, titled, “Resilience: A View From The Transition Movement.”

Her articles and the suggestions contained therein were both good and practical. Yet as I read what she had to say, along with reading the daily news of what was being done to our nation and our world by the holders of concentrated wealth and power, I found myself having second thoughts, even as I reconsidered my own focus and emphasis. It seemed that Joanne had fallen victim to a blind spot which seems typical among many activists concerned with economic contraction and energy descent. I will attempt to point out that blind spot now, along with what I believe to be the issues that must be faced by ordinary people seeking to adapt to our present times.

I'll start with a quote from Gale Warnings, a blog written by Stormchild. The quote reads in part, “...most of us spend our lives as prey, economically and psychologically. Awareness is the key to understanding this; but once we understand it, we may transcend it, choosing, when we can, to be neither prey nor predator.” The problem people have faced almost from the outset is simply this: the fallen tendency for some humans to conduct themselves as predators and to regard all of their fellow humans as prey. There is a long history of predator-prey relationships across societal and geopolitical scales, culminating in the predation of the entire world by the Anglo, American and European empires.

As I see it, three trends have been at work in the world over the last two hundred years or so. The first trend is the tendency toward the concentration of the power and wealth of societies – particularly in the West – in the hands of an ever-diminishing number of master predators who are able to out-compete their fellows for prey, and who eventually succeed in laying claim to every available bite of prey. The second trend is the fight for freedom waged by the prey against their predators. During the 20^th century, this fight for freedom was ostensibly successful in many parts of the globe and many sectors of American society. Several countries were able for a time to escape from being banana republics or something similar, and many members of ethnic minority groups in the United States suddenly had wonderful doors of opportunity opened for them. While this did indeed upset the elites at the head of fading European empires or the expanding American empire, this fight for freedom was tolerated somewhat, because the continual expansion of the global industrial economy was able to absorb the exponentially expanding appetites of these elites even as they lost some of their prey to freedom. (Of course, between the overthrow of colonialism and the gains of the civil rights movements in the 1960's and now, the elites were able to subtly erase nearly all civil rights gains and to recapture a very large proportion of escaped prey, but that's a subject for another time.)

The third trend should concern us all very much, because it is the trend at work right now. I said that the appetites of the elites are exponential. What I really mean is that the expression and manifestation of those appetites is exponential. Today they want one bite of prey. Tomorrow, they will want e bites. The next day, they will want eⁿ slices, where n is an integer greater than 1. As long as the economy controlled by these elites grows at a rate greater than eⁿ, they can tolerate the escape of a few prey from their grip. But what if the economy should begin to contract because of the decline of its resource base and the inability of the earth to absorb any more of the waste products of that economy?

That is the situation we face now. The well has run dry. The resource base of the global economy is drying up, the global economy is contracting, and no one can do a thing to stop it. When governments and wealthy people at the top of society see these things unfolding, their response and priorities are very different from the responses and priorities of ordinary people who see these things unfolding. We live and function in an economy in which the notional “wealth” held by the largest holders of concentrated wealth and power actually consist of relationships of dependence which they have established with the vast majority of the rest of us through trickery and force. In other words, they have made us to depend on them for nearly every necessity of life, which they are willing to give to us in exchange for our labors. The surplus of those labors is creamed off for themselves, leaving almost nothing for us to enjoy. And the “necessities” which are given to us in return for our labors are very tightly rationed, or in increasing cases are mere junk, froth and “empty calories” disguised as necessities.

One needn't look far to see examples of what I am talking about. How about having to pay thousands of dollars a year for “health insurance” which does not actually guarantee that you will be able to see the doctor you need, let alone avoid medical bankruptcy should you become seriously sick? How about not being able to get from point A to point B without driving a new car that costs tens of thousands of dollars, forcing you to go into debt just to get around? How about being beholden to private utilities, including privatized water and sewer services?

Every relationship of dependence on our formal, official economy is a claim on the fruits of your labor – whether it's an interest-bearing debt you owe because of the cost of buying a house, a car or an education; or whether it's the percentage of “market share” of which your purchasing decisions comprise a part; or whether it is the tax burden imposed on you as an ordinary citizen as part of your government's promise to bail out rich financial institutions. These claims make up a large part of the notional “wealth” of the predators at the top of our society.

Many of us now see that the formal economy is in trouble, and that it can no longer deliver the necessities it promises, and we are talking among ourselves, making plans, publishing on the Internet, trying to start movements, trying to warn and influence the policy makers at the helm of society. But the predators at the top see these suggestions and movements as threats to their wealth. For even if we all cooperatively fashion a society that is equitable and suited to energy descent, this means the loss of the power of the elites. If on the other hand, we ordinary people begin to break free from the system on which we depend – if we begin to fashion survivable, sustainable alternatives to the system – we will be regarded as escaped prey by predators who can no longer count on an expanding economy to satisfy their ever-expanding appetites.

(Here I must insert a quote I discovered this last week from a talk given by John Taylor Gatto to the 11^th Annual International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) in 2003. In his talk he described how the elites of our society see themselves – not as conspirators, but rather, “When you bought your last package of chicken parts, or slabs of beef, or a side of salmon, did you think you were participating in a conspiracy against the lives of these animals? It's a ridiculous idea, isn't it? Q.E.D. You and I are the chickens, the beef and the fish.” I don't know that I believe this isn't a conspiracy, but I thought his quote about chicken, beef and fish was right on.)

If you find ways of meeting your needs outside the system and you are unwise enough to publicize them, I see one of three things happening to you. First, what you are doing may be declared illegal, even though before you opened your mouth, it was perfectly legit. The second and third possibilities are especially relevant if what you do involves networking with others or creating alternative societal arrangements. If you form alternative networks for providing services or necessities to people apart from the dominant system, there is the possibility that global uber-capitalists may drive you out of business by flooding their perceived “market” with low-cost alternatives to your network. This highlights something we all need to realize about the wealthiest members of the official economy, namely, that although they are sitting on unholy amounts of claims on wealth which they call “capital,” they are always trying to grow the size of their “capital.” So their capital “chases yield” – in other words, the super rich are always looking for some market they can corner via strategic investing in order to increase their claims on the rest of us while deepening our enslavement to them. (This is why it is so hard to become an entrepreneur or small businessman in the United States nowadays.) The third thing that may happen is that if there is a political element to your alternative social arrangement – if it takes on the character of a movement – you will be joined by infiltrators and ersatz “reformers” claiming to “be working within the system to try to change the system,” and they will co-opt your movement and derail it.

In other words, if you seek to escape from our present economic system because you see that it is crumbling, you will become an offense to the masters of that system, because they are predators and you have just become escaped prey. Now that their system is shrinking, they grudge the loss of any prey, and they will do all they can to make sure their appetites are satisfied at your expense. Under such circumstances, does it make sense to openly talk and write about establishing “Transition Networks,” or to openly talk and write about establishing local currencies and barter arrangements, or to disclose – on the Internet, for all the world to see – any other suggestions for community action and community resilience? Jeff Vail and John Robb have written about the concept of “open source insurgency” as an outcome of the efforts of ordinary people to break free from predatory systems. I admit that I need to study in more detail exactly what they mean by “open source insurgency,” but I think it is now becoming increasingly unwise to publicize many of the strategies people might use to make themselves and their localities more resilient. I think it would be better for people to discuss and plan their strategies for resilience in face-to-face conversations with people they can trust. I also think it is far past time for people to take a step back from technology and to rediscover methods of communication and collaboration that don't depend on the Web and that are less vulnerable to eavesdropping. This may mean that “neighborhood resilience” takes on a multicolored hue, that there arises a huge variety of means by which various neighborhoods and groups of people in cooperation with each other become “resilient.”

Scoring Some Big Books

Our knowledge of history is under threat in the United States – especially our accurate knowledge of recent history. An accurate knowledge of recent history and of the role the United States has played in that history might well cause a great deal of unease of conscience among the masses of consumatrons who make up the vast majority of native-born Americans. Therefore, powerful institutions are at work to try to make everyone forget. Their efforts seem to be working. As an example, I was talking to a couple of kids a month ago and found out that they knew very little about the origins of the war in Iraq.

Accurate online histories are also under attack, and false histories abound. Even accurate online histories can be subject to sabotage.

So I am happy to report that I scored a big prize today. I finally got my hands on two copies of Fuel On The Fire: Oil And Politics In Occupied Iraq by Greg Muttitt. The book was devilishly hard to get. I wanted to purchase it by a particular method: namely, walking into a bookstore and handing over cash in exchange for the book. I didn't want to order it online or use a credit card or Paypal account to buy it. (Partly, this was because I don't want to let the U.S. Government know what sorts of books I like to read ;) ). It seems that you can only buy this book in person if you go to bookstores in Britain. In the U.S., Borders Books only offers an e-book version. Barnes and Noble doesn't offer it at all. Amazon sells both paperback and e-book versions, but you have to tell them a bit about yourself (things like credit card numbers, for instance). Powell's Books right here in Portland deserves special mention. Powell's will sell you the book, but their website states that the book is “available for shipping only. Not available for In-store Pickup.” (Powell's has made a name for themselves as “progressive” and “locally owned,” but as far as I am concerned they are just as evil and consumerist as Starbucks.)

Anyway, I circumvented a few roadblocks by getting a very small, locally owned bookshop to order me a couple of copies. The bookshop was happy to take my cash in return. These books are thick (as a former boss of mine used to say, “Enough paper to choke a horse), and chock full of U.S. and British government and industry documents obtained from the British government under their version of the Freedom of Information Act, which is a lot freer than the U.S. version of the FOIA has become. Now that I have them, I'll be sharing some highlights from my reading over the next several months, as well as discussing and reviewing a couple of other books that are pertinent to adaptation to economic contraction and energy descent.

* * *

P.S. I am sad to report that Naomi's Organic Farm Supply will be closing soon. Neil and Naomi Montacre are the proprietors of the place, which includes a large organic garden and greenhouse as well as an organic gardening store. They are situated on a plot of land that is owned by Les Schwab's Tire Stores, and Les Schwab wants to build another store on that plot of land. A Les Schwab store seems a very poor substitute for Naomi's. Wherever Neil and Naomi go from here, I am sure they will enrich the place of their sojourning, as they have done up to now.

The Sheep Dogs Of Dissent

I was driving home from work this evening (only a week left to go before I won't have to do that again!), and found myself stuck in a long, slow freeway traffic jam. I wanted to find out why the freeway was so slow, so I turned on the radio, hoping to hear some traffic news from KPOJ.

It wasn't quite the time for news, traffic and weather; like most news/talk stations nowadays, they only give you a smidgeon of news, and that only happens once every half hour. What I got instead was a bit of impassioned commentary from Randi Rhodes regarding the privatization of prisons in the United States. She also played an audio clip of the mother of a young teen sentenced to a juvenile camp by a Pennsylvania judge who was convicted this past February of accepting kickbacks from a private prison corporation operating in the state. Evidently the young teen killed himself as a result of his imprisonment, and so at the sentencing of the former judge, the young man's mother delivered a furious rant when she found out that the judge would remain free until his sentencing.

I found that I couldn't stand to listen to more than three minutes of this, and I shut the radio off and delivered a little soliloquy of my own. I was mad, all right – but for reasons which might not have occurred to Randi Rhodes.

It's not that I'm pleased by the commercialization and corruption of the American criminal justice system. Indeed, I've known about it for a few years now, as I wrote in posts such as “Money and Filthy Hands,” and “The Replacement of Petroleum Slaves,” to name a few. The American criminal justice system is a disgraceful evil whose purpose is increasingly to serve as yet another way of funneling the wealth and labor of poor people into the hands of the rich. Part of what made Randi Rhodes' show so hard to listen to is that it is painful to hear of the miscarriages of justice that are still going on in this country.

Now the fact that rich people profit from locking up youth without cause is nothing new. It was only recently elevated to national attention because of the increasing lockups of non-minority youth. But the minority community (in particular, the Black and Latino communities) have always had to deal with this. (See Color Of Justice and Justice for Some, for instance.) It seems, however, that problems of injustice don't really start to exist until they begin to be experienced by mainstream, apple-pie America. And that I find irritating.

But here's a yet more irritating thing. I admit that I didn't finish listening to Randi Rhodes, but I think I can guess how her commentary was structured: first, to inflame passion and anger among certain listeners with so-called “progressive” political views, then to make impassioned appeals to “work to try to change the system!” Why “work to change the system”? “Because we're all in this together, and we're under the system, so we gotta change it to make the system work better and more fairly!”

The truth is that the “system” under which all but the richest Americans live and operate can no longer be changed by ordinary people of small means. It is evil, predatory, sociopathic and unfair precisely because its masters are evil, predatory, sociopathic and unfair. Its masters are also very powerful. To me, it really seems that there's nothing we can do about this short of disengaging ourselves from the system.

This disengagement may seem like a small act, but it is the one thing we can do to weaken the system. Don't like American public education? Disengage from it. Don't like American for-profit health care? Learn to take care of yourself. Don't like the way most of us get our food? Create alternative means of feeding yourself. But don't tell the world what you're up to. Disengagement may well be the most effective act of sabotage any individual can commit.

You won't find that sort of solution discussed on KPOJ, “Portland's only progressive talk station!” If the KPOJ talking heads seriously discussed how people can disengage themselves from the predatory and corrupt systems under which they now live, Clear Channel would instantly pull the plug. Instead, we get impassioned talk designed to inflame us to go out and vote, or to support one political candidate over another, or "be ethical consumers," or in any of a number of other ways to continue to lend our support to a corrupt and failing system. And every fifteen minutes, there is a station break into which five or six commercials are jammed, telling us to go out and consume even more. Those talking heads who are good at what they do are able to keep their audiences hooked so that they soak up everything, including the commercials.

Meanwhile, the masters of commercialized, faux-progressive mass media in this country do their best to shift their audience base ever so slightly to the right, day by day. How many KPOJ talking heads supported NATO intervention in Libya? Why did Rachel Maddow ask a couple of years ago what the United States should be doing to make the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan “behave”? It seems sometimes that the main job of the faux-progressives is to turn genuine outrage into ineffectual channels that pose no threat to their real masters.

An American Chimera

Over the last year or so, I've almost stopped following the mainstream news. Occasionally I scan newspaper headlines, but that's about all I do unless I happen to be listening to the now ubiquitous “news/talk” radio (with the emphasis on the talk) to find out what tomorrow's weather will be.

An outside observer might have expected my disinterest to change last Sunday when I heard that the United States had assassinated Osama Bin Laden. Such an observer would have been disappointed.

To be sure, I picked up small scraps, bits and pieces of the story. I guess U.S. operatives were supposed to have located and shot Mr. Bin Laden this past Sunday, and to have buried his body in the sea. Bin Laden has provided the U.S. with a convenient excuse for some interesting policies and actions on the international stage over the last decade. These policies and actions have led to the destruction of two national governments, the death of over a million civilians and the attempt to steal the oil of at least two countries.

Now it seems that his death offers more political and propaganda capital than his life did for the leaders of America. What better way to commemorate the ten year anniversary of the September 11 attacks than to announce the death of the so-called perpetrator of those attacks? This will be a big year for the wealthy and powerful leaders of American society, as well as their media mouthpieces. I am sure they will make all sorts of appeals to patriotism via carefully choreographed propaganda stunts and commemorations. Their message will be, “God bless America! And let no one question the sustainability or morality of the American way of life: the unrestrained freedom to pursue material wealth! Support our troops, for they fight to maintain the American way! And let no one question the morality of their fight or the rights of those against whom they are fighting!”

Pardon my skepticism, but the story of Bin Laden's death seems to hold a lot less water than a corpse buried at sea should. “The operation to remove him was so hush-hush, see, that we can't release any photos of his corpse...” For the last few years, Bin Laden has seemed to me to be merely a manufactured distraction from one of the main real issues facing this country, namely the insistence of most of the nation and of all of its wealthiest and most powerful members that America is entitled to control and consume all of the world's resources, regardless of the cost to other peoples or the fact that those resources are now running out.

This issue seems to be too painful for us to bear looking at it for very long. So we look for distractions as we have been trained to by our media, and the media happily dishes up distractions. A week ago it was a certain wedding of two extremely spoiled people in England. (I don't give two cents and a stick of chewing gum about the “Royal Wedding.” He's not the prince of Oregon, is he?!) This week it's Bin Laden. But I'm not distracted.

I care far more about things that our mainstream media continues to ignore – questions like, what's a sievert? How many sieverts does it take to kill you? How many millisieverts does it take to ruin your health for good? How many millisieverts have we in the Pacific Northwest received since the 11^th of March? Will the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster ever be satisfactorily mitigated? How many people know about the gasoline shortages sweeping many parts of the globe right now (including shortages in parts of Georgia and Pittsburgh in the U.S.)? What geopolitical games of robbery will the United States play as global resource shortages intensify? Who will be the next chimera?

Closed The Shop, Sold The House...

It must be tempting sometimes for the most popular collapse-watchers and writers to wonder how others take their words – especially their advice. In this post I'll talk a bit about the effect a few collapse-watchers have had on some recent decisions of mine.

I remember several months ago how I started to become very interested in The Automatic Earth, a blog which mainly focuses on the financial aspect of the decline and contraction of our present industrial society. I learned a great deal about finance from the site (although I must admit that I can still be confused by some of the more abstruse aspects of the world of modern finance). If I had to summarize the main points of The Automatic Earth, I would state them as follows:

• The global industrial economy dominated by the First World, particularly the United States, is in the throes of a deflationary contraction.

• This deflationary contraction consists of the extinguishing of multiple, mutually exclusive claims on wealth and the contraction of available credit.

• The fact that credit and multiple mutually exclusive claims on wealth are being extinguished defines this present time as a deflationary time, even though the prices of energy and many commodities are now rising.

• The best short-term strategy for weathering the present deflationary contraction consists, among other things, of holding as much cash as possible while becoming debt free and securing the means to maintain your own existence.

There's a fair bit of wisdom in these things, as well as other strategies not mentioned here which are listed at the Automatic Earth. But whenever there is advice from a particular source, one is also likely to find somewhat contrarian advice from others.

Anyway, I found myself following the advice listed above, as well as other maxims, such as “Take care of your health,” and “Be worth more to your employer than he is paying you.” I've been working two jobs, one as a practicing engineer and one as an engineering adjunct instructor. Engineering is not the most poetic profession on earth, but then, as Chico Escuela used to say on Saturday Night Live, it's been “bery, bery good to me.” However, I've been working like a dog for nearly a year now. The cash flow has been good – if one's goal is to “preserve liquidity” in the face of a deflationary depression. And I deliberately negotiated a salary with my boss that was lower than the going rate for someone with my experience, so I believe I have been worth more to him than he's paying me.

But he's wanting more and more of me, and over the last several months, it seems that a great many aspects of my life have been put on hold while I devote myself to work and to teaching. This is not a very resilient arrangement, for if the economy suffers the sort of shocks that it experienced in 2008, my firm could lose a number of key clients. There are things I should be doing toward building a resilient neighborhood where I live, toward writing and chronicling the unfolding story of life on the downside of Hubbert's Peak, toward doing good and trying with my neighbors and friends to preserve those things that are of greatest value. The demands of my work have gotten in the way of such things. Most of my co-workers regularly put in workweeks that average between 50 and 60 hours. The only skills we seem to have are cubicle skills. And what good is the money if you die of a heart attack or stroke trying to earn more of it? Or, as the Good Book says, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Thus, over the last few months I have come to certain conclusions. A few weeks ago, I gave my boss notice that I am quitting Although I am willing to stay on long enough to finish a couple of projects, I intend to be finished before the beginning of summer. For the next several months, I will be relying solely on my income as an adjunct professor. (This is my version of voluntary “radical cashectomy”.) I will be reducing my monthly expenses as well. Fortunately my house is paid for and I have no other debts, so debt is not an issue.

I have written out a mission statement of sorts for the next couple of years. It could be summed up in one phrase: “transforming myself (along with the people I care about) into someone who might stand a chance, given the world's assumed trajectory.” (Hat tip to Dmitry Orlov for that one.) The savings I have accumulated will provide me with a bit of “learning curve” time to accomplish this. One of my main goals is to develop a suite of post-Peak skills, with an emphasis on understanding general science and engineering and their application to a post-Peak world. Another goal is to become a competent teacher of these skills, as well as a builder of resilient enclaves and a repairer of culture.

I will also continue to write pertinent posts for this blog. Stay tuned!

The End of Local Currencies? And, A Heist Gone Bad?

Several thinkers and activists in the “post-Peak preparedness” camp have written about how local communities can become more resilient and self-sufficient by creating their own local currencies. Those who write on this topic discuss the many advantages of local currencies in times like these, advantages which chiefly center on the ability of local currencies to keep local wealth in local communities rather than allowing the extraction of wealth from local communities by large, distant, multinational businesses.

I haven't read of any of these writers asking what the large multinational businesses think of this, but it's really not necessary. One man has found out for us. (He found out the hard way.) From the blog ClubOrlov comes this story which originally appeared via Reuters News Service, but which was largely ignored by the larger organs of U.S. mainstream media:

March 21, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A North Carolina man was convicted for creating and distributing a counterfeit currency that was very similar to the real dollar, a U.S. Attorney said.

Bernard von NotHaus, 67, minted Liberty Dollar coins in the value of $7 million dollars. The conviction concludes an investigation that was started in 2005.

“Attempts to undermine the legitimate currency of this country are simply a unique form of domestic terrorism,” Anne Tompkins, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said in a statement on Friday.

“While these forms of anti-government activities do not involve violence, they are every bit as insidious and represent a clear and present danger to the economic stability of this country,” she said.

According to Mr. Orlov's blog, while this story has largely been ignored by the big mainstream media outlets in the U.S. (although, to be fair, it has been picked up by Wikipedia, the Wall Street Journal and a number of smaller outlets), it has not been ignored by Russian media. Seems to me that as long as the only things that can be bought via local currencies are housesitting time, feng shui lessons and foot massages, the Federales will probably not care. But if you try meeting any serious needs via such alternative arrangements, they'll be all over you like white on rice.

Ah, but the glory days of the Federales may be numbered. The attempt by the Western coalition of willing thieves (the U.S., Britain and France) to hijack Libya's oil seems to have stalled. Gaddafi's forces are dominating the insurgency which the West had hoped would quickly unseat him and open his country as an oyster ripe for the eating. Moreover, the conflict now seems set to drag on for a considerable time. This is taking its toll on OPEC oil production. According to a 1 April article in the Oil and Gas Journal, “...OPEC production for March shows sharply lower Libyan output, falling Nigerian volumes and higher Saudi production, highlighting the tight market conditions...” Note that the same article describes the effect of unrest in Yemen on its oil production as well. And according to Bloomberg, Libyan oil output is down by approximately 995,000 barrels per day. There are also rumors that Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah operatives may be among the rebel forces in Libya. The whole “revolution” is starting to look like a fight gone bad.

All of this had me thinking today as I rode my bike home past cars and SUV's stuck in traffic, and past the gas stations, many of which are now sporting prices above $4 a gallon for diesel, mid-grade and premium gasoline. I remember how in 2007, when the Oil Report of the Energy Watch Group was published, I read their conclusion that the global peak of oil production was already behind us, and that it had likely happened in 2006. It seems they were right. Saudi Arabian oil production is not keeping up with shortages engendered by conflicts in other Mideast states. As I rode my bike today, I couldn't help glancing at the drivers of shiny new Chevy and Ford and Dodge trucks and the SUV's of many brands, and thinking to myself, “Oh, that person was short-sighted, and that one over there,...and oh, that one was really short-sighted...”

Чтобы СЪЕСТЬ тебя, маленькая девочка!

(Note to readers and followers of this blog: I haven't been posting nearly as much as I'd like, due to rather severe work demands. I am hoping that will change within the next few weeks. A lot has been happening in the world, and I have a few comments on the flux of events. Stay tuned...)

Over the last few months, as part of my admittedly desultory attempts to become proficient in another language, I read Красная Шапочка, a Russian version of the well-known children's story Little Red Riding Hood. With the help of a dictionary it only took a few hours. I was also helped by having heard the English version when I was a little kid. I think of the scene in which Red Riding Hood discovers that she's been talking to a wolf dressed as a grandmother. The wonder, surprise and terror of that scene seems an apt picture of the surprise many Americans probably feel at present regarding our current political situation.

We who are to the Left of mainstream American politics have had our moments during the last couple of years in which we realized that those who are put forward as the traditional champions and saviors of the Left are actually worthless corporate stooges. (For instance, compare Mr. “Change” Obama's denunciation of the U.S. resource war in Iraq with his continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his invasion of Haiti, and the decision by both Obama and Hillary Clinton to initiate U.S. air strikes against Libya in order to protect the flow of oil – er, I mean to protect the Libyan people.)

Now it appears that many who were swayed to vote for the mainstream Right in 2010 are having the same realization regarding the people they elected to office, as they see government services and protections against corporate power being stripped from them. I wonder how many Wisconsin state employees voted Republican in 2010. I wonder how many voters who elected pro-nuclear candidates are now having second thoughts, even as those whom they elected charge full speed ahead. I wonder how many residents of states now attempting to impose strict “austerity” measures are happy about their own safety nets being cut. I wonder how many small and medium-sized businesses are being hurt by anti-immigrant legislation. Many who voted Republican or Tea Bagger did so because their prejudices were skillfully played by campaign strategists. How many now have buyer's remorse? “Grandmother, you've got wolf breath!”

To me it seems at present that one of the keys to building a resilient life and a resilient circle of community is for people to structure their lives in such a way that they can meet their needs regardless of who is in political power. This involves creating alternative, “diagonal” arrangements for getting one's needs met. It also involves disconnecting from the prevailing system as much as possible. For me this means giving up on politics as a solution to any of the problems we now face in a post-Peak world and a post-Peak nation. Both sides of the political process have been bought and paid for by corporate sociopaths.

But some are still cheerleading for one side or the other. “Yes, all politicians are corrupt – except for our man; he's different! (Even though the only way our candidate could ever have become well known is via massive injections of advertising revenue from some very rich people.)” “Red Riding Hood, your cries for help are being answered! How about Dennis Kucinich to the rescue! Or, if you like Republicans, how about Ron Paul!”

Or, if you think like me, how about Quinn the Eskimo?

The Development of Post-Peak Best Practices

In the First World, there is a body of knowledge, practices, and wisdom for living in modern society as it has existed for the last several decades, and as many optimistic thinkers believe society might continue to exist for the foreseeable future. This body of received wisdom is predicated on the assumption that modern society and its inhabitants will always have access to ever-increasing quantities of energy, resources and wealth.

Yet there have been those who are willing to look beneath surface appearances in order to question the foundations on which modern First World society rests. Many of these thinkers have come to conclusions that differ drastically from the future which is envisioned by the optimists. From the darker and less cheerful thoughts and writings of these people a different body of knowledge, practices and wisdom is arising. Whereas the wisdom of the optimists is based on a future of ever-increasing abundance, the darker wisdom of the realists is based on the likelihood that most of us will have to live on much less, in a world that is a lot less comfortable and predictable than the world we have been used to until very recently.

There is one thing that can be said for the wisdom of the optimists. That wisdom and its body of techniques has been extensively documented, codified and taught until it has taken on the air of unquestionable truth. Thus most people believe that whether you're building a house, treating an infection, or dealing with waste management in a city, there's only one right way to do it – and even though that right way is based on techniques that require a lot of resources and energy, this is not an issue, “because we live in America, and we are a rich country!” In other words, most of us in the First World believe that our society has created the best possible practices for living together as a society and meeting the needs of society.

The wisdom of the dark realists has not been nearly so well documented, codified or taught. This is the reason for the angst many of us feel at the realization that the foundations of First World society are starting to crumble, its resource base is depleting, its wealth is dwindling, its wells are running dry. The realization of these things naturally provokes the questions, “So what do we do? How do we adapt?” It's unnerving to realize not only that the world is changing in ways we hadn't counted on, but that we have to create an adaptive strategy seemingly from scratch.

To be sure, some great work has already been done in formulating adaptive strategies. I am thinking of a guy named John Michael Greer whose blog has lately been describing a number of low-tech adaptive strategies for post-Peak living. (By the way, I don't necessarily agree with everything Mr. Greer says on his blog – but then again, I don't always agree with everything I say either. ;)) Mr. Greer's work is in turn based on the writings of many people who were part of the back-to-the-land movements in the 1960's and 1970's, and who did extensive, rigorous research on low-tech, low-impact living. I also think of Joseph Jenkins and his Humanure Handbook, a book that describes a safe, low-tech method of recycling human waste into fertilizer. The interesting thing about Mr. Jenkins' book is that although it is written in a humorous, colloquial style, it actually began as his masters' thesis. Therefore he treats his subject with rigor and technical accuracy.

What is needed now is more work of that kind, extended across many different disciplines, from health care to education, from small-scale manufacturing to building design and construction, and more. The trouble with many suggested post-Peak practices is that they are not very well documented, and seem to be sold more on the basis of emotion or symbolism than on the basis of whether or not they actually work.

I am thinking of one example in particular, that of earth construction. I have a copy of the Barefoot Architect by Johan van Lengen. It's a fascinating book based on a fascinating premise – namely, that one can create a useful guide for home construction for Third World residents based on the use of vernacular methods and materials. It's obvious that such a book would be useful for many depressed and declining parts of the First World as well. The only problem I have with the book is that it seems to be lacking in describing mathematical techniques for validating key elements of building design. Where math is mentioned, it is sometimes treated in a cavalier manner – almost as if it was optional. (An example: on page 400, Mr. van Lengen describes the construction of earthquake-resistant walls, then says, “For those who like equations...” before writing a very simple formula. It's as if he's implying that you don't need to know the math behind constructing an earthquake-resistant wall in order to actually build one.)

The same criticism can be leveled against some people in the Portland metro area who offer classes in “cob building.” None of these teachers has a degree in civil engineering, nor are any of them registered structural engineers. Almost all of them look like people who should be wearing tie-dyed T-shirts and Birkenstocks, people who will tell you that you should build with earth because it's “natural” and “wholistic.”

Now just for the record, I believe that earth construction has great potential as a building technique of the near future, due to the wide availability of earth, the simplicity of construction methods, and the extremely low environmental impact of earth construction. But if someone's going to build an earth house for me, I want it done right – and I want to know that it's been done right. (We live in Seismic Zone 3 around here.) Otherwise, I might never be able to get to sleep in my brand new earth house, or alternatively, I might be terrorized by nightmares about my house falling down on me.

Earth construction is just one example of the sort of post-Peak techniques and practices that need to be developed much more rigorously and with much greater technical accuracy. There are others, such as post-Peak (plant-based) pharmacology and post-Peak general medicine. A robust, reliable post-Peak medical practice should be well-researched, evidence-based, with proven results. (I am not a fan of modern First World medicine, but whenever I hear someone say “I reject Western Medicine. Instead, I take bee propolys and colloidal silver and I meditate for three hours under the full moon at least three times a month,” my ears shut off instantly. Some of you know what sort of person I'm talking about.)

I could go on listing examples of disciplines that need more rigorous treatment, but I'm sure you all can think of a few. I'd like to close with a few things I think are needed in creating a body of post-Peak knowledge, skills and practices.

First and foremost, such a body of knowledge must be open. That is, it must not be subject to copyright restrictions, not made into the “intellectual property” handmaiden of a bunch of rent-seekers. (This, by the way, is quite contrary to the foolish and greedy choice recently made by Jules Dervaes and his family to attempt to claim ownership of the English language phrase “urban homestead.”) Secondly, such a body of knowledge must be peer-reviewed by its users and practitioners. That peer-review must be done with rigor, according to established rules of inquiry. (Scientific method, anyone?) Thirdly, such a body of knowledge must be taught by those who have demonstrated mastery of its disciplines. Such an approach would make people more willing to accept this knowledge readily, as proven knowledge.

Mind you, this post is not a “policy paper,” but rather a suggestion – for those who are willing to do the hard work of developing a knowledge base of post-Peak practices.

"Path to Freedom" On Probation

It came to my attention recently that "Path to Freedom," the urban homesteading project of Jules Dervaes and his family, has made some enemies in the urban homesteading/self-reliance/collapse preparedness communities. It seems that the Dervaes family has submitted for trademark registration several phrases commonly used by writers, thinkers, educators and other activists in the preparedness community. Not only have these phrases been registered as trademarks owned by the Dervaes family, but according to at least one source, the Dervaes family has begun sending cease and desist letters to Internet writers who use these phrases, as well as local volunteer urban food gardening teachers.

If these things are true, it would be a big disappointment - yet it would not be entirely unexpected. Many of those who are interested in urban farming and simple living are trying to escape a dominant, predatory economic system. It makes sense that those who rule that system would try to block the exits - or, perversely, try to charge escapees some sort of fee in order to use the exits. In my mind, Jules Dervaes and his family used to stand as a model for people who are trying to escape from a dominant, exploitative system into a more equitable way of life. Now it seems they are trying to cash in on the system they claim to be rejecting. One may as well try to collect rent from people who watch the sunrise. If that's what Jules Dervaes and his family are up to, it's unethical and immoral.

It may also cost him big time. I have written him an e-mail asking him about these things. If I don't hear back from the "Dervaes Institute" within a week, or if I don't like the answer I do get from them, I will remove all links to "Path to Freedom" from my blogs. I am sure there are many other bloggers who are of the same mind. But if on the other hand, we have all misunderstood the Dervaes family, it may cost some of us - in terms of humiliation, egg on our faces, sheepish apologies, admissions that we misunderstood some really decent people and let ourselves be swayed by rumors blown out of proportion. I really hope that it's the latter. I'll know in a week.

My Resilient Neighborhood, Part 2 - A Homeschooling Experiment

In my last post, I said that as teaching has become an integral part of my strategy of personal resilience, so it has become the mainstay of my outreach to my neighborhood. I also began to describe my efforts in teaching guitar to some of the kids in my neighborhood. In this post I'd like to talk a little about a few of my motivations for teaching these kids.

Much of what has been written about building resilient neighborhoods has focused on the psychological, relational and social aspects and benefits of building community. So it is that many posts on building resilience have focused on the social power of collaborative efforts such as group cannings, neighborhood block parties, people meeting to sing together, and so forth.

Believe me, I value these aspects just as much as anyone else, and I see their importance. I think particularly of the human element of working with children, and how emotionally stretching such an exercise can be. Anyone who has taught kids (and who has cared whether they learn or not) knows that working with kids can break your heart sometimes – or be the source of some of the best experiences in life at other times. (The anticipation of those “best experiences” is what keeps me going.) I also think of how good it has felt to befriend some of my neighbors – especially those who are not originally from the U.S. – and for us to begin to learn to rely on each other.

But to focus only on the psychosocial or relational aspects of building resilient neighborhoods turns many resilience-building activities into mere symbolism rather than practical actions that can meet practical needs. Therefore I have also focused on the practical applications of initiating an neighborhood teaching effort. I am thinking particularly of a C-Realm podcast I heard of an interview with Jeff Vail back in July 2010, in which he described how the “nation-states” of the world are in decline due to the failure of various “states” (national and sub-national governments) to live up to their social contract to care for their constituent “nations” (that is, the people who actually live within the notional borders of the various “states.”) Of course, we can see that the failure of the social contract between states, especially in the First World, and their constituent nations is due to the hollowing out and wholesale ripoff of these states by the wealthiest members of the constituent nations.

What this means is that the median members of various nations are seeing their standard of living and quality of life being gutted in order to maintain the wealth and prerogatives of the richest members of those nations. Government programs and institutions which were created in order to raise the quality of life of all are now being gutted in order to maintain the wealth of society's richest members. The government's sole remaining claim to legitimacy is that it controls the official, visible market of the official, formal economy. However, the abandonment of median citizens by the state is opening a huge door for the emergence of a parallel, “diagonal economy” consisting of locally-created alternative arrangements for median citizens to get their needs met, or, as Jeff Vail puts it, “...for highly networked groups of scale-free, self-sufficient communities to begin taking care of themselves within the crumbling or increasingly irrelevant auspices of [the State].”

What does this look like where I live? Well, one parent I know told me a few months ago of her concern over the Portland school system's decision to cut school hours and class offerings for her elementary school kids. Social institutions such as public schools have already been largely turned away from providing median children with a real education, and now in many states the small benefit that public schools provide is in danger of being removed entirely due to strapped state budgets. The failure of the State to provide for the education of its median children (i.e., the vast majority of children who are not from rich families) opens a door for local, volunteer-based, grassroots educational solutions.

But the test of a “diagonal economy” or the emergence of local, grassroots alternatives to services no longer provided by the state or its official institutions is that these alternatives must work at least as well as the things they are replacing or supplanting. Otherwise the emergence of a “diagonal economy” or local alternatives is nothing more than useless symbolism. Thus it is that in my efforts to teach guitar, I am actually trying to teach guitar. I aim to make my lessons fun, engaging and relational; borrowing a page from Ivan Illich, I try to create a convivial learning environment. But I also am doing my best to make sure my students know all the chords in first position, how to tune a guitar in standard tuning, how to read music in standard notation, what a time signature is, what a key signature is, how to fingerpick ergonomically so that they don't develop tendinitis, and how to play interesting and challenging pieces.

This is all being done pro bono, after hours, informally, and I think it is the way a lot of people in a lot of neighborhoods are going to be doing things as they seek to meet the educational needs of their own neighborhoods. Moreover, if I can get away with providing a rigorous, technically exact basic education in music in this way, it will prove to me that I can also teach other subjects in this way – necessary subjects like mathematics, biology, basic Mendelian heredity including plant-breeding, small livestock husbandry and other subjects pertinent to a post-Peak future.

This leads to the question of what sort of subjects would make a good curriculum for post-Peak education and how rigorously those subjects should be developed. Although some writers have already tackled this question, I'd like to add my two cents. But not tonight; I've got to practice guitar for a bit.

My Resilient Neighborhood, Part 1 - Laying The Foundation

As I promised in my post, “Adjusting My Own Oxygen Mask,” I want to write a bit about the steps I am taking to make my life and my neighborhood more resilient in the face of uncertain times. In this post, I will briefly state some of these steps.

The Personal: I see the need for a proper balance between the pursuit of money and the achievement of other life goals. This is especially true now that the money economy is fragile and my place in it is uncertain. My time goal now is to work between half time and ¾ time so that I can have the remainder of my week devoted to building a healthy lifestyle and a healthy neighborhood. My money goal is to be able to live on less than half of my salary so that the rest can be devoted to meeting personal and neighborhood needs. So far I am doing well on the money part of this goal, although the time part has lately been a bit harder to achieve.

Both the time and the money goal are important, and cannot be neglected. In this time in which many powerful politicians, rich people and media voices are promoting selfishness, in which many government social safety nets are being shredded, it is ever more important to prepare oneself to live a life of charity. As the Good Book says, “Let our people also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they may not be unfruitful.” (Titus 3:14) I intend to use my spare time and money in some interesting ways. There'll be no room for certain right-wingers to howl “Socialism!!!”, because, after all, it's my time and money to do with as I please, isn't it?

I've been working part time as an engineer and teaching part time as an adjunct engineering instructor. I'm thinking of going back to school myself to get my master's degree. Such a move would make it easier to get a job teaching full time. If I decide to go back, I might study semiconductor fabrication with a view to learning more about organic semiconductors. It's not that I think organic semiconductors will enable us to live a high tech lifestyle, but rather, that I believe that in a low-energy future, the only semiconductor technology that will be available to society will be based on organic materials with performance that is not nearly as great as the silicon-based semiconductors we enjoy now. But a little bit of something is better than nothing at all.

I've almost finished building a chicken coop in my backyard. (I can hear people saying, “What?! You write a blog like the Well Run Dry and you don't have chickens yet?!!” Hey, I'm working on it...) One of my other projects is quite mundane: I need to clean out my garage this spring, so that I can start a workshop. I intend to explore home-based small-scale manufacturing and refurbishing. I am also continuing to study Russian, although my effort is confined to self-study right now. Once I become reasonably competent, I'll brush up on my Spanish.

The Neighborhood: As teaching has become an integral part of my strategy of personal resilience, so it has become the mainstay of my outreach to my neighborhood. In “My (Somewhat) Walkable, (Somewhat) Russian Neighborhood,” I wrote about the Russians and eastern Europeans I have met here where I live. One of them found out that I play guitar, and he asked me if I could teach some of his relatives. So over the last year I have had a handful of kids over at my house once or twice a week. It has been an experience, believe me! The kids are typical of kids everywhere: warm, sensitive souls one minute and crazed creatures the next. (The fact that I'm teaching them shows that the Almighty has a sublime sense of humor...)

I also may get to enjoy the privilege of being a learner in my neighborhood, as I have been talking to one of my Russian neighbors about having one of his relatives teach a beekeeping class to some of us. Hopefully that will happen this summer.

Teaching, both at a university and in my home, has gotten me thinking about many things – things such as pedagogy, the “diagonal economy” of Jeff Vail's writings, neighborhood-based solutions to neighborhood needs, and the process of developing a curriculum for the learning of skills appropriate for a post-Peak society. In future posts, I will explore these themes as I describe them through the lens of my weekly guitar class and my other neighborhood initiatives. My aim will be to show how a neighborhood composed of diverse cultures can come together in a calm and reasonable frame of mind to improve its quality of life even in the midst of a declining economy.

Laser Bigotry

I'll start this post with an illustration.

Lasers are interesting devices. The word “laser” is actually an acronym formed from the first letters of the words “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” Lasers work as follows: a “lasing” material (either a special crystal or gas or semiconducting material) is “pumped” with electromagnetic energy. This energy raises the electrons in the atoms of the material to higher “orbits” as the electrons store the energy pumped into the material. Then as electrons start to give up this energy and fall back to lower energy states, the energy is released as photons (light), which strike other atoms in the material, causing them to give up their pumped energy as well, ultimately resulting in a cascading flood of photons which comprise the light of the resulting laser beam. The laser beam has some unusual characteristics, which make it both interesting and useful. First, the light of the beam is monochromatic; that is, it is composed of light of one color only. Second, the beam is coherent; that is, it does not spread out except over very great distances. The light of the laser beam is the result of a series of deliberate choices by the designers and makers of lasers, as laser light is almost never found in nature.

Which brings me to the Arizona shootings this weekend, and to further reflections on American social life in these troubled times. There are many who write and comment on the societal consequences of resource depletion and economic collapse, and who state their belief that such times promote the rise of fascism, bigotry and intolerance. The way these writers talk, however, makes it sound as if adverse conditions cause fascism, bigotry and intolerance to just bubble up from the body politic in some inexplicable way that can only be described as a mysterious social force untraceable to any one individual.

I think such an explanation is nonsense. There are, to be sure, many idiots, bigots, and all-around doofuses in the United States these days. Our American society is now faced with post-Peak Oil, the depletion of a host of other resources, an economy which is long since past its peak, an environment which is increasingly degraded to such an extent that it can no longer support life, and the decline of our influence and hegemony in the world. Even within the U.S., the dominant Anglo sons and daughters of privilege are finding that they must now function within a multipolar, multicultural society. They have been used to being the sole center of attention for too long. For too long, they have been overloaded with all the toys a kid could want, and they have not had to share with anyone else. Our post-Peak nation in a post-Peak world will be forced to learn to share. This is a cause of angst and resentment among some of the sons and daughters of privilege.

Given the right environment, this angst and resentment could be constructively worked out. After all, having to share is not the end of the world. On a purely physical, technical level, it is quite possible that we could all live securely in a managed contraction of our economy, with high quality of life, if we were simply willing to share what we have with each other. But ours is not the right environment.

The present social environment of mainstream America is the deliberate product of its makers and designers, who are the wealthiest of the sons and daughters of privilege. They would rather tear this country apart than share the mountains of things they have piled up to themselves via the impoverishment of the rest of the nation and the world. They own the majority of the media and the majority of its politicians and most prominent mouthpieces.

So we have Fox TV and Fox News telling us that the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 arose because banks were forced to lend to minorities. We have Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh making all kinds of bigoted, racist statements to the world. We have Fox News agitating for war in Iraq even though the war was unjustified. We have all the Fox talking heads calling Obama a closet Muslim, a terrorist and a Nazi, even though their accusations had no basis in fact. We have Steve Forbes and Dick Armey creating the “Tea Party” and we have nearly all mainstream American media focusing an inordinate amount of attention on the Tea Baggers while ignoring genuine grassroots expressions of public opinion that run counter to the “me first” message of the Tea Baggers. We have Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes now able to vomit their hatred through thousands of mouthpieces. We have the Arizona immigration law and Republicans poised to try to push similar laws in several other states. We have the primary school textbook industry now taken over by right wing zealots who want to use public schools to push their jingoist propaganda. We have places like Walmart and Fred Meyer hawking books by Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and George Bush – right next to the newsstands carrying Star, the National Enquirer and Cosmopolitan. And we have Sarah Palin targeting her opponents in the crosshairs.

Under such a media onslaught, it's not surprising that a few narrow-minded working-class redneck types would find themselves getting “lased.” Like atoms being pumped by light of a certain frequency, these people are gladly allowing themselves to get pumped by propaganda that validates their evil beliefs and desires. Is it any wonder that when they release their “pumping energy”, the result is violently destructive deeds?

To be sure, there is now a “debate” in the mainstream media over whether the right-wing garbage now emanating from most American media mouthpieces is actually responsible for the appearance of white supremacist militias and acts of violence such as the Arizona shootings. According to the McClatchy Tribune, a professor from USC “cautioned against coming to any conclusions about the motivations of the shooter in Tucson.” Similar backpedaling can be seen from Fox TV and Sarah Palin. And one person wrote, “Leave it to the liberals to expect one person to be held accountable for the individual actions of every person who hears them. It's representative of the liberal nanny state dream come true!”

Funny thing, though, is that a couple of decades ago, when these very same right-wingers were religiously campaigning against indecency on television, their opponents tried to deny any causal link between indecency in the media and sexual activity among young watchers of TV and movies. Now the right wingers are trying to use the same defense. Ah, well, to borrow a line from the Crucible, “God damns (punishes) all liars.” (By the way, the Good Book says something similar in Revelation 22:15.)