Collapse

Collapse

I saw a documentary last night called Collapse. It didn't tell me anything I didn't know, but for those of you not familiar with the peak oil/overpopulation issue, it's a good introduction without getting too much into the math and data.

While the main thrust of the documentary was peaking oil, I was happy to see the issue of population given great importance. We currently live on the peak of a spike in historical population levels and, like peaking oil and other resources, it is inevitable that it is eventually followed by a sharp, and likely dramatic and drastic, decline.

We were at a billion people on the planet before the industrial revolution, and it stands to good reason that when the food in the petri dish of planet earth dwindles as the energy we use to produce it becomes too expensive to extract, our population graph will make a bee line to one billion. That means roughly six out of every seven human beings alive today will not survive. That means whole populations wiped out from lack of basic resources.

It also means everything becomes extremely local. The world, at least for a transition period, could get very big again.

Look around where you live and ask yourself what things would look like if suddenly oil was too expensive to bring the food into town, too expensive to grow by conventional means, too expensive to keep refrigerated before being eaten. I know this sounds alarmist because none of this is in most of our experience, but it is happening already around the world. Yes, poverty and starvation have never truly not happened or taken place, but what peak oil "alarmist" are sounding the alarm about is something totally different, starting with it being global.

I live in New Mexico. The combination of our elevation and rainfall means that our soil has very little organic matter. Without burning coal to produce electricity to run pumps, there is very little water to be had. On Deepwater, our well is a combination wind and solar system that pumps when the wind blows and/or the sun shines. It means self-sustainable life as water can create organic matter by growing plants that then get their carbon from the air, but how many people in this State have that sort of system? We have thousands of square feet of roofing that we use to collect rainwater. Then you need to know what to grow, how to grow it, what animals to have around to create closed systems with your agriculture, and all in all how to create permanently sustainable systems despite the constant burning of organic matter caused by the sun.

Most of the planet is in a brittle state, and the place that aren't are the victims of agricultural methods that have destroyed the topsoil. They are trapped in a vicious cycle created by the use of petrochemicals, turning the soil into practically a drug addict that can't operate properly without a fix. If a billion survive the crash in oil production, we'll be lucky. And even if a billion or more make it, in what traumatized, dazed state will they be in? Will infrastructure left unmaintained survive in working condition?

We're not talking about the sun not shining anymore, but our use of oil has practically allowed us to live as if we had two suns despite our failure to properly utilize the energy flowing from the one stable one we have. The domino effect will also be devastating in that while we are peaking in other resources too, our access to them will be next to nothing once oil becomes too expensive.

The data indicates that, in fact, the world has already peaked. We are currently in the rocky top of the peak, replete with micro spikes and lows that in hindsight will look like a blip of a warning before oil is no longer affordable. When it costs more than a barrel of oil to produce one barrel of oil, the music will stop and everyone has to grab a chair. Only for every seven of us dancing around the chairs, only one will find a chair.

A few people have told me that if all this were to happen, they'd rather be dead anyway. Of course, they don't say that about their children, and they certainly aren't saying it in real time. Survival instincts are not to be underestimated. The savage comes out. I won't say we see a person's true colors, but all the colorfulness of people, fueled in fact by surplus energy in society, becomes a monochromatic grey when energy is suddenly very costly. It turns out that we aren't so different after all. Yes, ascetics prepared for indigence for their own energy conserving reasons may find life after the crash refreshing, but most people aren't trained in fasting that borderlines starvation.

Again, we are talking about oil here, not anything less central to our lives. We are all energy freaks, whether we know it or not. We all worship energy to such a degree that we don't even care to count how much of it we consume without even noticing. Collapse points out something everyone should know before they reach the age of 12: Our current method of food production and distribution requires the burning of ten calories of energy in oil and other resources for every calorie of food. Truly, you'd have to make serious efforts to be that inefficient with energy.

Please tell me this is seeping in. Please tell me you are going to do something about this. The shortcoming of so many documentaries on the end of the world as we know it is that they are short on suggestions. Collapse touches on suggesting to create community, but a community without the resources or the systems in place to create self-sustainability might as well be Jim Jones's community. Air may be free, but having the systems in place to get it out of the air and into your belly is anything but free or inexpensive.

I mentioned in my last expo how much we've spent on this community, and it isn't over yet. We've spent a fortune on the big stuff, but we still have a ton of work to do on the fine stuff. It's one thing to have a drip system, aka irrigation, or even to have 10 gpm from a solar/wind pump system, it's another to have all the microbes in place and doing their jobs. Of course, we needed to build the bigger stuff, the homes for the microbes, before we invited the microbes to live with us, but only by spending a fortune could we even hope to have self-sustainable microbial life.

And it wouldn't matter if we were in the tropics. The issue of water would be solved, but then we'd have many other energy expenditures to handle, not least being the populations currently living in tropical areas.

So I can understand a documentary being rich in alarm and short on proposals. Collapse points out that if you want to start community and survive, you better have a lot of money and a lot of guns. In fact, the reporter in the documentary claims you're too late. Having been doing this for so many years, it's hard for me to disagree.

So what can you do about this? I suspect everyone, whether they admit it or not, wants to be left with a chair when the music stops.

The first think you can do is watch for the signs. Humans can keep things going a little bit with bubbles and other shell games. When those economic ploys don't work anymore and actual Depression sets in, you're seeing a very big sign that resource scarcity is beginning to effect your way of life. More resource wars will erupt around the world, not that we aren't in the middle of them already, and deflation will likely set in to be followed by a response that overreacts to create an inflationary situation. At that point, I wouldn't be surprised if America switches its currency and lets its loans in dollars de facto default.

Food has already increased in price in the last ten years, and you've probably noticed that, but that's nothing. Without cheap energy, food production will largely be limited to what you create yourself. Buy seeds. Learn how to grow things. Work with others to grow more. Learn how to do it sustainably. Think about where you get your water if the tap doesn't deliver. Start now to think in these terms as a practice run if the worst befalls us.

That's not to say you can survive off of your back yard or, if you live in a city, off your balcony or from a neighborhood garden. That would be a pipe dream. But by thinking and acting in this way you make yourself a valuable commodity to a community that needs those skills.

Documentaries on the history of science and technology love to tinker with the idea of everything vanishing and then asking, what do you do. One historian said the first thing you'll do is leave the city and go to the country. OK, but so will plenty of other people. Will you go to rivers? Will you look for lakes or cropland? This particular documentary argued that the history of science began with the plow and, if all went to hell, would similarly end with it. We have a plow here on Whirlwind Community, but our horse could probably pull one shank of it. That means a lot of human hours spent plowing up ground that otherwise would take a few hours with a tractor.

But let's say you find a community that has a plow and beasts of burden. Do the people of the community think like you do? Do they welcome you or, as Collapse proposes what may be, shoot you on sight and compost your body or feed it to their dogs? I know a few people around here, some I get along with and another who doesn't think like I do, who would probably shoot first and ask questions later. Fortunately for me, the one that likes me is the one geared for sustainability and is preparing for the worst, while the other is just an individualist who doesn't like hippies (or illegals), which I am to him.

It's axiomatic that there's safety in numbers, but numbers need feeding and blankets and shelter and self-defense. I'd say find people who like you and whom you like, but also face the realities of peaking resources, and that the numbers you find now are best used to secure something in the future. That means pooling resources now, not later, to start creating something enduring. Make contacts with nearby intentional communities and see if they've got self-sustainability down. I know the top names in self-sustainability and know that when it comes to communities implementing their instructions, picking are slim. But they are out there and even if a community doesn't have its act together, there's nothing to say they can't get organized with a little input of cash and expert advice.

So my main suggestion, and probably more than enough for one day, is to find people who think in these terms and start investing in a future wherein energy is expensive. If you can do these things, your chances of finding a chair when the music stops are greatly increased. And remember that starting from scratch, like we did here on Whirlwind, is not a good idea at this stage of the game. The issue of peak oil is mainstream now, just about, so it shouldn't be too hard to find people aware of the issue and doing something about it.

*** *** ***

If you've read this far, I'm sure you can imagine why I'm not writing too much on yoga anymore. What you may not imagine is that I don't miss writing on it. I've written so much on it in the past, only for people to not listen or not be able to listen. At first I looked at my message and teachings, but in finding them consistent I then concluded that people simply aren't ready for pranayama and asceticism as means to expand the ideas of self past culture, past epoch, past body identity... past the divisional misperceptions. Plus, I had to get going on the community. I'd like a seat, front-row if possible, to fulfill my responsibilities to my own body and the bodies of my kids and those for whom I'm responsible, but also because I want to see this and learn from it. I want to feel the whole thing. I don't want to miss any part of it. And I want to live through it and share in the responsibility. And as Stipe put it, concurrently to feel just fine.

I then realized that I couldn't expect people to be able to listen or be ready for the simplicity of the theory of self in a world on the brink. And since I wasn't going to write to entertain, there was little point left to writing on yoga. It seemed like more fiddling as Rome burned, and even I, who doesn't listen to radio or watch television, find the fiddling in the mainstream to be deafening.

Also, I think there will be plenty of time for genuine yoga training in a society that acknowledges just how much energy it truly has at its disposal. You see, our energy gluttony on a social level translates into a de facto energy gluttony on a personal level, and that is entirely antithetical to the principles of the theory of self. When asceticism in terms of social energy is thrust upon us, or at least those who survive the dearth of food, personal asceticism will be natural. So teaching the theory of self at this point in time, when most of the world is still in denial about how little energy we really have and how much you really need to spend to survive and be happy, is counterintuitive and counterproductive.

Admittedly, I've disregarded remote teaching to such a degree that I don't even know if I have any readers anymore. I willingly dropped thousands of readers when discontinuing the Weekly Messages, then dropped tens of thousands of readers when deleting and discontinuing the GWR Forum, and now with the expo I am perforce losing audience for lack of matter. While I am sorry if I let down reader who were relying on me for yogic substance, I can't live two lives or be of two minds.

I know I shouldn't bash my audience, but I hope my readers can receive this with just a "mustard seed" of self-reflection: I have met many people who would be ready for yoga in a post peak world, but none who are ready prior. I am sure you all know and feel that this world eats at your yoga, whatever little you can muster in your day. I hope this expo submission explained a little bit why. It the past, yoga teachers, and I mean the good ones, put the challenges of yoga in terms of discipline, concentration, effort, will, determination, enthusiasm, etc. Never have I read it put in terms of what's behind all of these: energy. All of these require the kind of psychological energy that society, with all of its ephemeral surplus energy, doesn't supply and in fact strips our lives of. Simply put, unless you've done yoga and asceticism for several lifetimes, you don't stand a chance.

I can only hope that the people who find a chair when the music stops will use it to look within. Until then, the rock band Yes has some lyrics that are appropriate, and the sitar patch in the beginning aren't bad:

It Can Happen by Yes

You can fool yourself
You can cheat until you're blind
You can cut your heart
It can happen

You can mend the wires
You can feed the soul apart
You reach
It can happen to you
It can happen to me
It can happen to everyone eventually

It's a constant fight
A constant fight
You're pushing the needle to the red
Black and white
Who knows who's right
No substitute you're born you're dead
Fly by night
Created out of fantasy
Our destinations call

Look up - Look down
Look out - Look around
Look up - Look down
There's a crazy world outside
We're not about to lose our pride

It can happen to you
It can happen to me
It can happen to everyone eventually

As you happen to say
It can happen today
As it happens
It happens in every way

This world I like
We architects of life
A song a sigh
Developing words that linger
Through fields of green through open eyes
This for us to see

Look up - Look down
Look out - Look around
So look up - Look down
There's a crazy world outside
We're not about to lose our pride

It can happen to you
It can happen to me
It can happen to everyone eventually

As you happen to say
It can happen today
As it happens
It happens in every way

As you happen to see
It will happen to be
Nothing happens to nowhere and nowhere

Solo

Look up - Look down
There's a crazy world outside
We're not about to lose our pride

It can happen to you
It can happen to me
It can happen to everyone eventually

As you happen to see
It will happen to be
Nothing happens to nowhere and nowhere

You can fool yourself
You can cheat until you're blind
You can cut your heart

You can fool yourself
It can happen to you
You can cheat until you're blind
It can happen to me

You can cut your heart
It can happen to eveyone eventually
As you happen to say
It can happen today
As it happens
It happens in every way

You can mend the wires
You can feed the soul apart
You can touch your life
You can bring your soul alive
It can happen to you
It can happen to me
It can happen to everyone eventually

As you happen to say
It can happen today
As it happens
It happens in every way