Wednesday,
April 11, 2007 10:25 AM
Here's the link to Permatopia
- a graceful end to cheap oil. Permatopia highlights solutions
to Peak Oil, Climate Change and ecocide. This is the link
with the flow diagram that I am reworking to make more sense.
I will continue with my version tonight at Lake Havasu. See
you all there.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 6:37 AM
Yesterday I read reams of sad news about the twin sisters
of peak oil and global warming. What, you thought the two
weren't related? There were many things that jumped out, and
I'm not going there this morning. Just one of the many tipping
points that are being watched is Lake Superior, which has
increased its average yearly temperature 3.4 F degrees since
1979. That is a huge increase in temperature for one of the
largest bodies of fresh water in the world.
More upbeat, there are people working to make interconnected
sense of all the things we would have to do to create a new
sustainable life style. They have a great chart of connections
which has every possible bias in it, but it is a start. I
will link to it and I'm working on doing my own version of
it.
Meanwhile, personal news, I've stopped back in Q for two nights,
leaving today for Havasu and Las Vegas. I'll meet family there,
get reintroduced to Little Mac, and actually spend money for
three nights at Sam's Town RV on Boulder. You can bet I'll
spend a lot of time in the shower, hot tub and pool. My soul
is water thirsty after 5 months in the desert. Even more exciting
for about two minutes, was a call from my step daughter saying
the an FBI senior agent Mike Brown had just come to her house.
I had mentioned here before about their inquiry to at Peacehealth,
my part time employer. It wasn't for her, they were looking
for me. My stepdaughter wouldn't give him any way to contact
me - family first - but she called me as soon as he left all
excited. I called him on his cell immediately and it turned
out to be something quite innocuous (for me). As you know
I have a handgun or two, and one of them, long before I bought
it was test fired at the FBI range in connection with a murder
case in Seattle. That all sounds quite CSI interesting except
that they test fired every one of these guns on the west coast.
Anyway, they went back to the dealer as he had contacted them
to tell them the barrel that came with the gun was not the
one they test fired. So, three years later they are back to
test fire it again. They got the barrel from the dealer and
now they want the body of the gun from me. End of excitement.
Phil sent a response to my lumpenproletariat post of yesterday.
I
found your blog this morning to be quite interesting.
It parallels the research I've been doing the last few
days. I started the research because of some of the
comments I've read and heard the last few weeks on the
aftereffects of Peak Oil.
In Sharon Astyk's article on Gridcrash, she states "We're
going to be poorer, many of us much, much poorer".
After my lambasting of her article, Gary made the comment
"Social skills are going to be just (if not more)
critical to survival than one's ability to carve a meager
existence out of nothing but their wits". I agree
totally that social skills will be critical, but it
was the last part that really caught my attention. "to
carve a meager existence out of nothing but but their
wits". It reminded me of a comment that you made
"I want to save as much technology as possible
because I don't wish to live a brutish existence".
The underlying thought behind these comments is the
assumption that our quality of life will be much lower
without the things we are used to having today. So I
decided to try to determine exactly what 'quality of
life' means. The simplest definition I found was "when
all needs are met and we are happy with our life".
I also found several lists of factors that affect quality
of life. The two most common factors are poverty and
social status. Since I can't remember anytime in my
life that I was "poor", I decided I should
find out what poverty meant. I was a little surprised
to find out that, according to the government, I've
lived in poverty my entire life!!! Reminds one of the
old joke "We didn't know we was poor until someone
told us".
For a single person you can have a roof over your head,
sufficient food, a car, and all the tvs, ipods, doodads
you want, and still be classed as "poor".
In the years that I've been working my income has crossed
over the 'poverty line' twice. I found it interesting
that those two years I didn't have a job, I was living
by my 'wits'.
As for social status I probably will have to do some
climbing to reach 'underclass', I think I'm still in
the 'subbasement' level somewhere.
Anyway, all that my research has shown me is that in
reality, if you have food, clothes, and a roof over
your head you're not really poor or have a diminished
quality of life. Most of our attitudes about being poor
or having a meager or brutish existence and that of
class are due to social conditioning. Its up to us to
decided if we want to break that conditioning. Being
happy with our lives is a choice we have to make, no
one can make it for us. Philip |
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:39 AM
It is cool this morning and that feels nice. I've been suffering
the displacement minor depression that attends my every
major move of place. That is so funny because I live in
a trailer a migrate with the seasons as my life choice.
I am waiting to head north later today or tomorrow morning
to Las Vegas, and I know my stops, my route, and yet, being
poised in mid flight from here to there I feel the crawling
passage of time and the heat. It was in this not so good
mood that I began reading yesterday reports that are anything
but sweet on energy and global warming yesterday. You can
do the same. No earthshaking information. My understanding
and observations are really impotent. I am impotent, as
I am a member of the underclass. There is a great word for
us, freechicken or not, which I'll get to in a minute. Your
question might be, "How do I know if I'm a member of
the underclass?" You can almost hear Jeff Foxworthy
standing up to say, "you know your a redneck if . .
"
You
are a member of the underclass if you are working for someone
else, paying monthly bills, surprised at the value of your
house, mortified by the size of your mortgage, outraged
by increasing taxes and medical insurance, even when you
get it through your employer. You are the underclass when
the mechanic at the car shop does a tune up and it cost
$400, because you needed a new serpentine belt, oil an plugs.
The word for the underclass is Lumpenproletariat and each
of us who fit the moniker is called a Lumenprole.
Lumpenprole,
which I read this morning on Kuntsler's blog, it rolls off
the tongue doesn't it. Here is the American Heritage Dictionary
definition:
lum·pen·pro·le·tar·i·at
1. The lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat.
Used originally in Marxist theory to describe those members
of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and
the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness.
2. The underclass of a human population.
This is much different than the middle class, even though
the incomes and obligations and even your jobs might be
similar. I think you're middle class if you still believe
you are in the process of "moving up" the class
line. A middle class person thinks if they just get an advantage,
an edge, get smarter, invest more intelligently, WORK HARDER,
that they will get more good stuff and not be in debt and
will live happily and cruise the world just like the upper
class and upper middle class they see on tours of homes
they will never live in. One constant of the true middle
class is that you know you are at fault for not having succeeded.
Though in the last 10 or 20 years, maybe you're beginning
to get that the game is rigged??
If this
strikes a cord in you, you are becoming a lumpenprole. The
big difference is that you can't mutate into a free chicken
from the middle class, you make that small leap from the
lumpenproletariat - the underclass. A lumpenprole understands
that the game is rigged. He or she understands that if she
cares to look at it at all, that the society is more and
more polarized all the time - the rich becoming fewer and
richer, the poor becoming more numerous and much much poorer.
I am
a lumpenprole, a vagrant, seasonally unemployed, lacking
class consciousness. In fact I don't think there is really
any better life than to be a lumpenprole with a sense of
humor. I have my hard moments, like yesterday when I'm somewhat
beat down by the course our leaders set for all the world,
but then I get angry. Angry at them, angry at you. As Kuntsler
says in a recent blog, the only reality that seems to
filter down to the middle class and the lumpenprole is the
cost of gasoline. As he is fond of saying, it is a clusterfuck.
What I know for myself is that it is better to be angry
and depressed, so I am enjoying the empowerment of my anger
this morning. Society changes more quickly when people wake
up to their disenfranchisement. If you were middle class
on your hamster wheel, running, running, running yesterday,
I know that you will eventually recognize that you are not
moving up, but instead moving down. You have the opportunity
to become lumpenproletariet at that moment, and I recommend
it, get mad. That alternative is middle class shame, shame
that you didn't "succeed." Of course you did.
You are just what a consumer society requires, a consumer
who is in debt and is slowly watching the upper class move
forever out of your reach by spending the energy and resources
of the planet in increasing their wealth - spending your
children's future. Being mad takes the blinders off. Then
you find out you've been taking it up the ass by the wealthy,
the powerful and the users. My butt is sore and so am I.
There are ways of putting together societies and tribes
that are less in conflict with earth and the systems that
sustained life here for millions of years. If you want your
species, "homo civilatus" to persist, if you give
a shit about your children and grandchildren it is time
to stop running on your fucking wheel and to look up. We
are fiddling while Rome burns - and that is your children's
future burning. There are things to do, and few are doing
anything.
Get mad, it is the first step.
Sunday, April 8, 2007 5:09 PM
Gary sent me a link to a really nice rollercoaster video
that plots real home values from something like 1890 until
today, adjusted for inflation. What does injusted for inflation
mean? I'm sure you know, but it allows us to compare the
real cost of a home from a long time ago until now. IF your
house cost your 50 good horses 10 years ago, it might cost
you 300 horses today. No need to adjust for inflation, your
house, we have all collectively decided is simply worth
more. Who decided? Ah. . . banksters (get the pun? Har har
har). Before they thought if they had to take your house
back they could sell it - your loan was based on them selling
your house if you failed - that was what it was worth. But
I guess, and you know I'm no economist, just a kid living
in an aluminum can in the desert waiting to be picked up
and recycled (OK maybe not a kid, but certainly immature!),
anyhoo, banks some time ago appeared to not have to worry
about whether you paid it back at all because they sold
your debt to someone else to off load it and they took less
total but reduced their risk. So they could give money to
flakes - you know who you are. So we all agree houses cost
more. Why? Watch the video, it's fun. The best part is that
it will only go up forever, forever, yep forever. Watch
the video. Go all the way to the end because that is
the best part. Doesn't it seem very very high? Watch
the video.
Sunday, April 8, 2007 4:29 PM
 |
This
is the climb (or descent) to (or from) Yarnell on
the way to Prescott. I did my best, which means I
did not crash while I held my camera out the side
window to try and give you a feeling of the beauty
and dynamic rise of the escarpment from the desert
floor of SW Arizona (looking east).
The
geology here ROCKS! Hah, sorry for the pun. Exposed
to view, the convoluted mountains thrust from the
earth in full view, unclothed, raw.
The road is a continuous switchback which was ever
more interesting with the trailer on the truck than
when I drove this without the trailer. Which brings
me to a very good thing for today.
|
I fixed
my brake controller! Yea! I don't have to buy one tomorrow
and install it. I was looking under the hood as some controllers
have a fuse near the battery (I have read on the internet)
and there were three there. Two were all right, one, I was
not smart enough to open, and while doing that I saw part
of the wiring harness had rubbed against the metal support
for the battery and wore a wire in half - actually the wear
had exposed it and then it shorted. I do remember replacing
a fuse about 6 months ago. Anyway, I made a jumper wire to
go around the burnt section and if works!
Sunday, April 8, 2007 10:24 AM
I thought I better post before I received more phone calls
and emails to make sure I'm alive. I really like that some
of you actually track me like that. It grounds me in a way,
connects me to the world. Maybe it is a problem that all free
chickens share, when I am unplugged from job and house and
established community - when I am in my traveling mode, I
often feel disconnected from the people flowing around me.
It doesn't take long for me to find connections once I stop,
but when I travel every day, I don't get much opportunity
for big conversations.
I took some pictures on on the way up the Mogollon rim, shooting
out the window while I negotiated hair pin turns with the
truck and trailer. I'll have those up later today if they
are any good.
.
The area around Prescott is very different than the western
side of Arizona. My seat of the pants quick look shows the
complete lack of what I love about the Sonoran desert. I can
stop in any number of thousands of acres from Yuma to above
Lake Havasu, and park and live for free. I have gotten used
to that, and yesterday I was somewhat shocked to find that
as I went north east up onto the beginnings of the Mogollon
rim, that there were very few side roads, no pull outs, hardly
any passing lanes, and mostly ranches. The National forest
land where I intended to camp was posted against dispersed
camping (boondocking) and the two camp grounds at the 150
mile mark were both full, and nearly in Prescott. Prescott
looks like new money from where I sat on the mountain. Boondocking
and money usually so not mix: oil and water.
I felt the lack of my electric brake controller for my trailer
brakes. I was very tentative in the descents. I climbed 5600
feet in about an hour and one half and the truck and trailer
did amazingly well. I visited with a friend for half and hour
and also out in the middle of nowhere. Later with hardly any
traffic, I whiz by an oncoming truck that flashes its lights
at me and then my cell phone rings - "Alan is that you?"
I reply "Scott (Dustyfoot) was that you that just went
by". Later we crossed paths again and we both stopped
and caught up. It was fun and somewhat shocking to run into
him out there. He invited me up to his place forty miles north
of Prescott, and I may take him up on that Wednesday of next
week. He has full hookups on three acres that he is renting.
He is always fun to talk to and learn from.
IT is Easter Sunday and while I'm not a christian, I love
any holiday that worships ducks, eggs and rabbits, so I'm
doing small projects (and ones that have been bothering me
for months), and waiting for tomorrow when I'll buy a new
brake controller and install it.
I hope you're all chillin' and enjoying a sweet sunday under
warm skies Be the egg.
Friday, April 6, 2007 5:59 AM
Hi chicklets! Tomorrow I will be on the Mogollon rim, finally
cool. When the Airstream is over 100 degrees, even with
several fans I redefine fun as being wet and in a breeze.
This interferes with my posting and webwork and starting
tomorrow I will be cool again!
Oh I got an email from work, it seems the FBI is doing a
background check on me. Cool. After a secret agent moment
I have to really assume it is about my step daughter's citizenship
application. But for a moment I thought, wow, someone from
the FBI found my blog?
Gary sent a letter in response to Phil's opinion (just below)
from a completely different view point. Below are just two
of Gary's points.
Social
skills are going to be just (if not more) critical to
survival than one's ability to carve a meager existence
out of nothing but their wits.
Tell me that you wouldn't be better off in the collapse
if you had a piece of land with running water and a
very sturdy passive solar (say earthship or monolithic
dome) style home that can withstand the coming climate
change and storms... and that a place would be perfect
for growing your own food, raising animals, defending
yourself, etc... A tribe in a somewhat fixed location
is much better off in a collapse. (alan note - these
are just two points of a long letter, but it sketches
the idea of his letter) |
Phil
and Gary's approaches would appear to be polar opposites
but they are not. Each of us has assumptions about reality
and working with reality to provide what you want. Each
of us also has a core set of beliefs about how we can manipulate
the world to give us what we want. Phil and Gary have different
ways of "seeing."
It seems to me that Gary is centering the discussion on
the transition period out of an economic and social collapse.
Phil is talking about the destruction of the Empire itself
- the death of capitalism and the loss of buy and sell economy.
Phil is deeper into a philosophical point and the actions
he will take because of them in one instance while Gary
wants to position he and his family in a completely different
world.
This is all interesting to me because it shows me once again
how we all are on completely different "pages"
of belief and positioning for an uncertain future, and how
that uncertain future makes each of us expose our core beliefs.
Marcy at
I Bonobo has a related piece today on her blog that
directly relates to this discussion.
"What always surprises me, my being by nature a Renaissance
Woman and agonizingly curious about the world, is how limited
most people's perception is. Even people who question society/civilization.".
read
more. .
Wednesday, April 4, 2007 9:39 AM
Hadn't even finished the post below when I received an email
from Phil. Phil boils it down.
I
read the article you linked to this morning and I found
it to be amusing. The woman who wrote the article is
totally stuck in Empire. She stresses the fact that
people will be poorer than they are now. Bullshit!!!
The idea of being poor or rich is a concept of Empire,
it doesn't exist in the real world. The so-called 'primitive'
people of the world have difficulty even understanding
the concept of poor and rich. When they look at someone
who has more possessions than they have, do they think
he is rich? No, they think he just has more stuff. And
they wonder why he wants all that junk.
When I spent three months in the woods testing my survival
skills, all I had was the clothes I was wearing and
a knife. Was I poor? Hell no! As long as a person has
food, water and shelter he can never be 'poor'. Actually,
as long as a person has life, he can never be 'poor'.
If there is such a thing as being poor, then this woman
is an example. She is poor in thought and in spirit.
What she calls 'poor', I call being free. Philip |
Wednesday, April 4, 2007 7:32 AM
Good morning chickies. Hot here and humid yesterday. So
hot that I was forced to a no brain wave state by 5pm yesterday.
Rick sent
a link this morning which is an interesting read. She
makes the point that you don't need home electricity if
there is an economic crash, or rather, that you won't be
able to afford it. Then she investigates solar power versus
small sell recharging devices. It is a broad sweeping article.
When I read articles like this try to see what assumptions
the writer is making. There are many here, and I'll leave
you to it. However my divergence from her is that she is
always talking about stationary living. Nothing she says
applies to the RV world. Before you think that is silly
because there will also be no gas for RVing, wait and consider.
Running a generator in the early months of a grid brown
out will cost you years of RV gas. True RVing will not longer
be an aimless, sweet roving about looking for best weather
and attractions, but it will be a way to avoid the huge
heating and cooling costs that most Americans pay during
at least one season per year.
With everything I have read I think that the best plan for
me (and maybe you), and I know three people already doing
it, is to have two places where you have the right to be.
One in a cooler area and one in a warmer area. When an economic
crash occurs I believe we will find may RV's for sale, especially
in the early trigger period. Put on RV at each location.
Travel between them in the cheapest way possible (kudos
to Gary, as this double ended RV solution is his). In the
beginning that might be mass transportation or a small car.
Later it might be by horseback. I hope to expand this for
you in an article soon, as there are many ways of achieving
this which don't require you to own the land on each end.
This solution removes the biggest energy burden from each
family, and provides them with a way to garden, and to create
workshops, earth rammed storage structures in addition to
their RV. Call it RV plus. Best, no matter what happens
in an economic crisis, you can move the RVs, a completely
different experience than the great depression provided
for the large numbers of people who had their property seized
in foreclosure. If it reaches that point, which will be
just short of revolution here, then you simply drive, or
tow your RV to BLM, Forest Service, or State land and squat.
There will be so many people doing the same thing that you
will have greater security than a single family fighting
to save their own home from an ARM mortgage that is destroying
their ability to respond to the future.
I think that might even be the definition of poor. The inability
to use your personal economic energy in the now because
you are busy trying to pay Empire's charge for your past.
Why? Because you are busy looking at a stack of bills and
your memes will not allow you to laugh at them and take
whatever economic power you have left and use it for your
preparation and adaptation. Instead poor people believe
the bills are real. The single best thing you can do for
yourself and your loved ones is to STOP buying. Stop going
to the movies, stop buying from Costco and Walmart. Dump
the toys, and start making yourself happy by working on
YOU! You are magificient, you are a miracle. The big BOAT
is just a thing that will fall to pieces, it is you that
is important. One smile, one laugh, a good joke, a backrub,
great sex, bad sex for that matter, they are just a few
of the millions of valuable things about you. How did we
ever get programmed to think that we could buy happiness?
Free chickens know they have a right to live and they are
equal to any other person born on this planet. Nobody was
born on this dirt of this third planet from the sun with
more rights to share the environment than you.
We are all living in the middle of a farce of such gigantic
proportions that we are unable to see the edge of the stage.
Bill Gates, George Bush, and you and me are identical. We
were all born and we will all die and we are part of this
world. You have as much right to space on this earth as
anyone else, it is the Empire that has made us slaves to
rules they put inside of us.
Dismantling those rules and rebuilding a soil loving, low
impact society of much smaller scale is where I am putting
my love and affection. I do not love Empire. Bad enough
that it is bringing our world to collapse, but please do
not let it keep programming you to serve it. It is a hell
of a lot easier to be creative when you don't have internal
dialog that you are "bad" or not "doing it
right." Those are just memes installed by Empire through
TV, books, movies, radio. If you are to have fun during
the collapse - YES, FUN, then you have to reclaim your birthright.
You were equal and complete when you popped out of mom,
and you are still equal. That is what the framers of our
Declaration of Independence (Tom, Ben, John, those wackos)
meant by "inalienable rights."
Everyone, everywhere has them. Sometimes you have to be
willing to stand up about it. Empire needs you docile and
going to work and paying your mortgage and mostly Empire
needs you to program your children in the same way. I could
not be more seditious. Don't do it. Give your children and
your friends love, and the tools to work things out themselves.
Don't give them the poison pills of platitudes that roll
so easily off the tongue. God and Country, for the good
of the many, Dying for a good cause. When you blow that
poison into the little ones they become the slaves of Empire
and are destined to think they are not enough already and
that they must compete for mates, resources, assets, money.
BULLSHIT. They have by right everything and the bounty of
the earth is all around.
Back to the point that the collapse can be FUN. Feels disrespectful
to think that you might be better off in a collapse than
we are now,bbut consider the huge amounts of medications
necessary to keep America at their slave wage jobs. Wellbutrin,
Paxil, Celexa etc., etc. Most of us will have a chance to
wake from the zombie sleep of Empire in the next few years
and it will open our eyes, and our hearts, and our compassion.
We will be scared, we will talk to those around us, we will
party, love, sweat, be cold, be hurt, hungry and not. But
we will come alive and it will be worth the discomfort.
We are an industrialized world of sleep walkers, and waking
up is exciting. What you do will matter to you again. Everyday
you will do for you, not for the civilization. What every
child does will matter and they will be included and necessary
to the world that comes. It might be an uncertain future,
but a least we will be alive again.
Get out here and make new free chickens.
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