Sit Down Hard

Kumbayah -A request for divine intervention, singing Kumbayah as we all hold hands and pray for deliverance. Whenever in the course of human events a people are presented with a sufficiently complex set of problems, rather than ponder at length or be comfortable with the difficulty of making projections or finding solutions, most people would rather clasp hands with others and pray for divine intervention.
If you lived through the 60s and 70s and the singer Joan Baez popularizing Kumbayah you may understand the power and comfort of praying rather than thinking. I don't underestimate the power of belief when spread across a large group of people.
I just question the two polarities of dealing with the coming peak oil de-industrialization. The reaction of most people presented with the simple mathematics of pumping oil means less oil, either go to denial or, well, there's nothing to be done, we're doomed. There is a wide space between those two viewpoints, i.e. "we're fucked, don't matter" and "ain't going to happen." In between there is where we will construct the distant future that might allow us to remain on the earth indefinitely. But between that distant future and now, is the Transition Period. It well may be bloody, and certainly complex and often unfair and unequal, but it will come whether we deny or do nothing.
It is time to sit down hard. If your skiing and falling, squat. With the coming "perfect storm" of energy depletion, financial collapse, global warming, resource wars, and a government that not only spins everything it says, but even forces others to spin what it hears, it is time for each of us to lower our center of gravity, spirit, soul and thought.
A friend who has followed my tortuous path to today's page has recently questioned if I have cut the moat from where I am to where my friends and family lie? I understand why it would appear like that to some of you. I am writing less, chatting less, and apparently refusing intimate partner relationship. While the observation has merit, it is not what is going on in me.
I pretend to be bright some times, vanity being one of my many flaws, but the truth is that observation and analysis is just hard work, and I'd rather run off at the mouth than do the hard work of careful reading and weighing, comparing, and testing.

I have no primary resources that you do no have, and I have no direct way to know truth. I am not a good analytic thinker. I sometimes like an idea because it is exciting rather than true. I would rather see the sky fall than the grass grow, because the first is more dramatic. That is my confession, and all my friends certainly knew about me within minutes of meeting me.

That said, I have been hunkering down this last six months trying to think, doing the hard work, for me, of reading material from a variety of sources, and trying to figure out what to do. I have minimized connections and my social life, and I have been listening to activists here in Eugene, reading everything related to energy decline, listening to podcasts from much more eloquent and critical thinkers than myself, because, just like you, just as anyone can if you sit and do it, eventually the various agendas of smart people average out and you begin to see the bones of the problems we are all facing.

So I have been doing what I suggest you do now. Sit down hard. Sit down and begin to think about what you do with and to other people. To answer my friend's question, no, I have not cut myself off from my friends, loves, step children, ex wives, and co workers, I have sat down hard and tried to think how I could make this transition better for all of us, especially my close people.
Doing the hard work of thinking outside my little box does not make me an easy go lucky, well met comrade of the first rank, always quick with a smile and a joke. It makes me goddamn well irritable with everyone around me, especially clucking noises of people who are not thinking at all, but just making "this too shall pass" noises.

No, it will not just pass and even out. This is not like any other time in history, this is not the depression of 29 or the fuel crisis of 1978. This is a new beast - a global loss of free energy. That energy was the lever with which we moved (created) this modern world. This free energy from the ancient gods of Pangea became the food of 6.5 billion people. Fuel is going, people will follow.

There are things we will all as a group do voluntarily, or we will certainly do involuntarily. You will NOT live in suburbia in ten years, you will not be driving the latest model car, your job will have likely evaporated, and you personally will be dead or in much better shape than you are today. You will be walking more, and gardening. You will bicycle more and learn a lot about wind, solar and hydro power. You will have met your neighbors, you will have moved out of an inner city if possible or be part of a gang if you stayed. Your gang may be your block, you can call it the neighborhood work group, but it will be your gang. You will not survive alone.

If the downside of the energy depletion curve is gentle, we here in the USA might not have people starving to death in our sight, but you can be sure that out of your sight around the world they will be dying in enormous numbers. By 2030 hundreds of millions will die, one way or another. The oil will not be there to be turned into food. There is no magic bullet of technology. Technology is NOT equivalent to energy. Technology is the manipulation of existing energy resources. We have used more than half of the easy one (oil, liquid gold), that is what I mean, by the other side of the energy curve. Each year from now on , we loose by depletion of reserves, one Saudi Arabia's worth of annual production. Each year.

Please go and check all that. SIT DOWN HARD and do your own reading, thinking and math. We were running out of oil the very first day we pumped the first barrel. Math skills required are so simple than any grade school student could go it. Take some away, have less. Take it faster, have less faster. Read, think, and break the bubble that the market, government, church and state creates around you. Your current use to the society is as a consumer and a worker. Your use to the future society is as a creator, teacher, participant, farmer, and good neighbor. A good neighbor who has honor, keeps his/her word, and does the hard things when required.

It is horrible to be immersed in the speculation of what comes and beyond and yet it is also wonderful to be immersed in what might come out of this transition period which has NOW STARTED (The collapse of public funds holding derivatives of the sub prime mortgage market has acted as one of the triggers of the perfect storm. It is part of the transition).

As I said above the transition has begun. It doesn't matter what the FED does or the coalition of world banks will do - it could be great tomorrow, Monday morning, or it can be horrible collapse of further funds and market values. Either way, nothing is changed, the transition has begun.

Time to draw your energies in, sit down hard. Put your center of gravity low. There is no information that will come from the general media or from government that will be of value or even true. You are their consumer and worker. They will tell you nothing to upset that. Their wealth depends on your work and purchases. They all will constantly say this is a minor bump, be calm, be well, eat and shop. While in any large herd it is critically important for the herd not to stampede, it is equally true that for each of you staying calm, investing, planning for retirement and the next big purchase is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Instead begin amassing hard assets, not dollars. IF you can be the least bit social, it is time for a block party, meals in the street - projects that all the neighbors get involved in. Involving yourself in local government is wise, wasting even a second on state and federal is totally useless. Unless you have access to power through wealth and position right now, you will have NO effect through political means (above the local level).
Bring your family close, make plans on where to meet if problems arise in their neigbhorhoods, towns and cities. Make plans for getting in motion before roads are clogged.
Build a system of concern points - where you say, well family - when you see this go here. Do your research and set those points. If you think that is extreme then you might be shocked at the number of people who have already left, who have relocating in the last few years. You might also wish to spend some time looking where the power elite in the USA is stashing their hard assets. It is not in the USA.

Sit down hard and start to think where you want to spend the next ten years. Make sure you have the basics covered. You should be somewhere where you are not alone, where you can grow a garden, have water and will have water when it much drier than today. You should be able to walk to get everything you need. If you have medical needs, store what you can, and figure out how to adapt. Think about food, water, heat, shelter and communications. Keep your concerns as loud and public as you desire, but keep your personal preparation quiet, out of sight. Sing Kumbayah with your neighbors and friends but talk about the die off only with those you will trust your life with. Before you buy one more thing, sit down hard and think. Always ask yourself what good is this thing I want when there is NO oil energy.

Kunstler has a point he often makes. If we persist in making no partnerships for survival then we will be given a partner by default. That partner is reality, and he has no remorse.

So what has alan been doing? I've been thinking about me and you and the necessary die off of 4.5 billion currently living people and a billion of the soon to be born. It does make a difference what you do. Sit down hard and do the math, do the heavy lifting, THINK. ACT, or go stand with the other sheep.