Published on Clusterfuck Nation on May 20, 2013

Discuss this article at the Favorite Dishes Smorgasbord inside the Diner

The collective state of mind in the USA these days may be even more peculiar than what went on in Germany in the early 1930s, when the Nazis were freely elected to lead the country and reconstructed the battered national psyche into a superman cult that soon beat a path to mass death and ruin. America has its own way of going crazy. We don’t goose-step to tragedy; we coalesce into an insane clown posse and stumble into it by pratfall — juggaloes dancing backwards off the cliff edge.

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Discuss this article at the Favourite Dishes Table inside the Diner

Often I hear argument that if we deploy various renewable energy solutions then our modern industrial society can transition to a sustainable society. While many of these renewable solutions do indeed provide better outcomes than the current fossil fuel paradigm they will not – on their own – make our economy any more sustainable. The reason this is the case is because of the issue of perpetual economic growth that our economy demands which is largely (but not solely) driven by our debt based currency system. Until this fundamental issue of growth is tackled then achieving sustainability becomes an impossible task.

In the dialogue below is an exchange between me and fellow Diner and moderator agelbert who is one of the strongest advocates we have in the Diner in renewable energy solutions. Just to be clear, even though I do not see renewable energy as the ultimate solution to providing a sustainable environment this is NOT an argument against renewable energy. Moreover, I am of the belief that a technological solution is possible in the process of reverse engineering into a sustainable economy provided the technology is deployed in a sensible manner and is managed properly. For this reason I do support agelbert and his endeavours to getting the word out on the renewable story. However what I think is equally significant with the message agelbert projects is one of HOPE.

His zeal, commitment and pleasant nature offers people hope and in a world that faces so many challenges, some of which could well be fatal, hope is a powerful force on society and its effects cannot be neglected. One only needs to look at the incidents in Greece with people succumbing to drugs or crime in Egypt to see what happens when people lose hope. It is our duty as Diners to offer people hope and not go full doom Guy McPherson style. We must fight until the bitter end in offering a better tomorrow for future generations. We cannot save everyone but we must to strive to save as many as we can!

For this reason we must offer hope to people for without hope there is only anger and when people get angry they become worse than unproductive; they become positively destructive. So because of this agelbert offers a good service in a similar vain to Eustace Conway by offering an alternative living arrangement to Business As Usual (BAU). All such efforts must be supported and I encourage Diners to do the same. On this note by hitting the Donate button for the Diner you will be supporting the SUN project which is another attempt in escaping the trap that is BAU.

Anyhow, I am digressing here and to back to the original topic on hand I will post this debate me and agelbert had about how to create a sustainable economy in this planet:

agelbert said:

JMG has a better handle on the most probable future in the next 50 years or so but I think he engages in hyperbole by classifying all of us techno-weenies as technology clinging denialists who don’t understand the laws of thermodynamics (I.E. he WRONGLY claims we need too much energy just to build the renewable infrastructure so it just can’t be done, won’t be done, the Archdruid has spoken and us chillen need to cut our losses and flush toilets and get with the program of getting used to having less beer and goodies).

I certainly agree with him that the rationalizations bordering on gymnastic pretzel logic that come from people when their predicted apocalyptic imminent scenarios don’t materialize on schedule is worthy of ridicule. Humans have an awful time letting go of ownership bias, whether it be a thing no longer worth what they thought it was, or an idea or a prediction that didn’t pan out.

Clever fellows like JMG try to sound like they are above it all dispassionately observing the poor slobs tied to faddish ideas, religions, pro-environment mantras, new age predictions or whatever. He’s NOT.

As a matter of fact, he is making the very mistake that he accuses others of. He sees any hybrid approach to solving our energy problem by combining a limited amount of fossil fuels with renewable energy technology during a transition phase as impossible.

I must disagree with this. I can certainly agree that renewable infrastructure does have its benefits and should be more aggressively pursued but I think we must recognise that renewables are not sustainable on a BAU basis. What we have to understand is BAU is based on a debt-based currency system and these currencies can only remain viable under the condition of perpetual growth. Perpetual growth is impossible unless we have infinite resources, infinite energy and bottomless sinks where pollution can be contained. To most people it is pretty self-evident we do not have infinite resources but on the matter of energy we must remember that infinite energy is only possible if the laws of thermodynamics are violated.

It is this requirement of perpetual growth that makes any energy platform (even the illuminatti’s wet dream of fusion energy) unsustainable as you will either reach limits in the amount of resources available, energy or the amount of pollution produced. Growth will end due to one of these stocks becoming a limiting factor. In other words growth is limited under the principle of Liebig’s law of minimum which states that total production is limited by the factor that is in most limited supply in the production process. This may either be resources, energy or pollution and so all these factors must be considered and managed if we wish to maintain a sustainable society. This is a basic fact and we must STRESS that the first law of sustainability is this:

Growth in population and/or growth in the rates of consumption CANNOT BE SUSTAINED!

Until we address the issue of economic growth and the continued rise of consumption then all talk about sustainability is futile. Alternate energy systems such as renewable energy are only viable if they do not operate under the paradigm of constant growth. Now this isn’t an argument against renewable energy and I agree with you they must be pushed but I do think a big part of this sustainability debate must centre on the fact that economic growth must end.

At the end of the day we need to recognise that our economic and environmental crises are – at their core – the result of man’s behaviour on planet Earth. Until we change our behavioural patterns then all technology does is postpone the day of reckoning. I say this because humans have a predisposition to increasing their population and consuming their resources as quickly as possible as they wish to pursue more prosperous lifestyles. This disposition towards population growth coupled with increased consumption of resources results in humans utilising technology and energy as an enabler of resources. As more sophisticated technology is developed; the resource base available to man increases; this increase in available resources allows a rise in living standards. Now if man simply stopped population growth and material standards at a certain level then they could enjoy the increased productivity this new technology would bring. Unfortunately it never works out that way because as living conditions improve human population increases until people live at a subsistence level at this new technological level.

The best example I can offer of this phenomenon at work would be the green revolution. The green revolution caused food production to rise rapidly resulting in food prices declining rapidly. This cheap food enabled human population to grow rapidly, so much so that man has become dependent on this unsustainable food production system at even a subsistence level in many places across the globe. In fact if current populations continue to rise and people move towards a more resource consumptive diet i.e. eating more meat that requires more resources to produce then even this system cannot even sustain future populations at a subsistence level. This creates pressure in developing another “technical solution” such as GM food or some other monstrosity. Even if we assume this technical solution could deliver its promised returns and had no blowback (I know this is never the case but for arguments let us suppose this is the case). What would happen then? Populations and consumption would just rise again until we hit the limits of this new technical solution.

This pressure of population and consumption rises creates the need for technical solutions and because of this nothing really changes if taken on a long-term basis. We are on a constant hamster wheel to hell unless we change the way we behave. Man has a behavioural problem and NOT a technical problem. If we want to develop a manifesto that is truly sustainable we need to include some part that addresses population control and control of consumption. Doesn’t necessarily have to be direct eugenic style of population control nor do we have to set real limits to consumption. You can limit consumption by rewarding society in ways other than increasing material consumption. Some means of population is required and I would be interested in reading how the Japanese maintained their relative steady state economy during the Edo period where population was maintained around 30 million people for hundreds of years. This move towards a steady state economy that recognised the need to preserve the environment never gained traction in the “enlightened” European countries  hence the push for empire building and later fossil fuel solutions to keep the hamster wheel spinning faster and faster to support growing populations/consumption patterns. Off course greed and other vices made all these issues worse. And the pigs and parasites have made things immeasurably worse and they must be punished accordingly.

agelbert said:

No kidding! When did I say it NEEDED to be sustained? Population growth is going tits up ALL OVER THE PLANET! Check the stats. The top priority is to clean up the environment while getting off fossil fuels. Dealing with population pressures is secondary and, as I just mentioned, is less of a problem in numerical projections every year. If you want to get all flustered about how many humans there are, well go right ahead but SHOW ME SOME FACTS!

Whilst I would agree you never said BAU needed to be sustained; in fact I believe you are actually an advocate of ending BAU like me. However the reason I did mention this point was because I feel you do not stress the fact that business as usual can only work on the basis of continued growth. I feel this point really needs to be HAMMERED home if sustainability is the name of the game. In fact by stressing the madness of BAU with it requirements for constant economic growth and the inevitable end-points this mindless pursuit would entail (such as resource collapse, environmental catastrophe and global bankruptcy) people will become more agreeable to alternate means of living which can include renewable energy systems as you advocate. When promoting a sustainable lifestyle we got to understand that renewables by themselves are not going to deliver a sustainable lifestyle if the growth side of the equation is not tackled. What we need to do is address this aspect but that does not mean renewable energy cannot be part of the package.

But you wanted facts so let me offer you some. The rate of human population growth is indeed declining as you say but that does mean population is declining. It is still increasing but the rate of increase is decreasing. If we are to believe the figures provided by the UN Population Fund then world population will hit 9 billion by 2043. Like you have already alluded to the time to reach each successive billion from here on out will rise with the next rise of 1 billion taking 14 years while the one after that will take 18 years followed by 40 years for the final billion. So according to the UN world population should peak at just over 10 billion souls. I have ENORMOUS doubts this will actually transpire but those are the figures the UN currently projects. In any case though the fact of the matter is human population is still increasing so the problem is getting worse.

Looking at your article you open with the following sentence:

agelbert said:

Why the 1% is responsible for more than 80% of humanity’s carbon footprint and why Homo sapiens is doomed unless the 1% lead the way in a sustainable life style.

While this sentence is true this fact does not cover the whole issue here and there are several problems with it. As I mentioned in my previous post there will be several potential limiting factors that will make further economic growth impossible. The example you highlight represents mainly C02 emissions which as we all know is a pollutant. Increasing pollution will wreck the environment and if it is severe enough will cause irreversible damage and will limit economic growth. However we need to remember that consumption of resources is also increasing at an exponential rate and I would figure these consumption rates are not the primary result of what the 1% consume. After all there is only so much a person may eat or drink. Posted below are rates of consumption of food and water. However look up the consumption of fish and other various commodities and all these will exhibit exponential growth and are likely to continue posting exponential if the economy does not collapse.

On top of these resource depletion issues the other problem comes from the implicit assumption that if we somehow eliminated the 1% who committed the 80% of the emissions then we would reduce carbon emissions by 80%. This is unlikely to happen as a new 1% (the Orkin Men perhaps?) would takeover. Why would this happen you say? This is because one of the emergent properties of our economic systems is to reward people who can maximise their consumption of resources. If you are clever and can find a means of extracting more resources then you will be given a good paycheck. In addition to this we need to remember money buys you not only POWER but STATUS also. If a person has lots of money they are deemed to be a “successful” member of society and people will look favourably upon you and tend to ignore mistakes, character flaws more easily and may even ignore FATAL defects if you are rich enough. Just ask Corzine for proof of this! You see this all the time with the most powerful and successful getting away with murder. All these factors act as powerful social cues that provide strong positive reinforcement to pursuing a lifestyle that maximises consumption as such behaviour is actively rewarded from a financial, social AND mating standpoint. Considering one of the primary objectives of all animals is to reproduce then this effect cannot really be understated. I feel even in your article you hinted at this point (please correct if I have misinterpreted something here):

agelbert said:

The chimps engage in rather brutal wars with other chimp tribes where the victors set about to kill and eat very young chimps of the vanquished tribe. This is clearly a strategy to gain some evolutionary advantage by killing off the offspring of the competition.

agelbert said:

I repeat, excessive aggression or same sex sexual activity as a dominance display is a downside to the “strong sex drive” successful evolutionary characteristic.

agelbert said:

This “downside”, when combined with a large brain capable of advanced tool making, can cause the destruction of other species through rampant predation and poisoning of life form resources in the biosphere.

I would agree with these points and would also agree with the viewpoint that our increased sized brains have meant we have exploited our environment to an extent no other animal has been capable off and in a way our evolution has lead us into a bit of a dead end. I also agree with the bit you mention how more complex organisms tend to be less resilient as they tend to sacrifice resilience for increased efficiency in a particular environment. If the parameters of the environment were to change sufficiently then the organism’s capability to survive will decline more rapidly than a simpler more resilient life form like the bacteria you describe. This I feel only applies on a species level however as it is possible for there to be complex ecosystems that is highly resilient. This is possible because complex ecosystems can consist of a complex web or interdependent organisms that forms a very resilient network of animals so we must be specific on what level we are talking about when bringing up the efficiency/resilience debate.

Going back to my earlier point though, the big issue we have with the current BAU system is the destructive behavioural patterns that it actively promotes namely excessive consumption. If we wish for people to lower per capita energy consumption more rapidly we need to devise a means where lower capita is rewarded and status can be conferred through means other than greater material consumption. Mating can offer a strong incentive to a certain pattern of behaviour and this picture demonstrates a good example of this:

Why the dimorphism in the pheasants? It takes more energy to maintain a larger body; you become more conspicuous and obvious to predators with those bright colours. On top of that escape will become more difficult from an energy prospective as not only is there more mass to move but it is likely the pheasant will have run that bit further to escape the notice of predators. All these evolutionary costs are acceptable however because the result is more mating. If animals can change their composition by this degree on the basis of increased mating opportunities then imagine what we can do if we rewarded people with status by developing the right habits! Got any ideas how to go about this? I don’t think this point can be understated, BAU rewards destructive behaviours and if we want sustainability we need to tackle this issue otherwise there will always be a 1% to take over the last one.

agelbert said:

Look what the biologist in Africa has discovered and PROVED! Desertification can ONLY be prevented by INCREASING THE SIZE OF THE HERDS MASSIVELY! ??? Can you handle that?  This is exactly the opposite of what science had always believed!.:icon_scratch: It’s there in my channel. The man is an eminent authority on the environment. You can reject his counterintuitive FACTS but they are still going to be facts. :icon_mrgreen:

Is there a lesson there for human populations? Maybe, maybe not, but it does make you think.

This is the case that the biologist killed the elephants but unfortunately the study was flawed because they missed an even bigger ELEPHANT in the room which was man being the main culprit. Was this due to overpopulation or due to the excessive consumption lifestyles of pigmen wishing to gain more profit? This could be a matter of contention however what cannot be disputed is that man has been creating the larger deserts by either farming the land too extensively or through excessive emissions of various pollutants most likely C02 and other greenhouse gases.

agelbert said:

Just to avoid arguments, lets say you are right about the population issue, can you get past that for a moment to consider the viability of a techno-fix? THAT’S my main beef with JMG. I know you want us to “reduce” ourselves because our carbon footprint is “unsustainable”. I’ve already dropped mine considerably for over 20 years! Tell me how many miles YOU drive each year and how many square feet YOUR house has (I drive less than 1,200 miles a YEAR and live in 980 sq, ft.).

First of all, congrats on reducing your C02 emissions! Good work and keep up the good fight! As for me, I don’t personally own a car so my mileage in terms of actual driving is flat out zero. However I do get lifts and the miles travelled in those journeys would probably amount to something like 1,200 miles per year. Reason for not driving is I am not going to spend lots of money financing an automobile. In addition to that I would have to pay around $9 for one gallon of gas not to mention over $3000 dollars a year on insurance for owning the said car. With my limited income this investment makes little sense so I depend on public transport and other good old fashioned walking. My worst C02 emissions likely come from the fact I travel on a plane about 2 or 3 times a year.

Back to your question however: I do think that the human population has to drop considerably especially if we consider the blowback that will come from climate change and the likely other environmental disasters that are to come such as nuclear meltdowns due to a breakdown of JIT supply lines. Because of these unpredictable events it is hard to determine what population will be sustainable exactly. It will not be 7 billion however especially when the rate of fossil fuel extraction declines.

As I said in my previous post; technology enables humans to increase their resource base by increasing productivity. By applying renewable energy systems the carrying capacity of humans can be increased so renewables can help. However it is hard again to say what the carrying capacity will be. You see, in my eyes total consumption rates is a product of population and per capita consumption. If you wish people to have a higher standard of living then the carrying capacity of society must be lower. If you want to increase carrying capacity then you must sacrifice per capita consumption. These sorts of decisions can only really be made on a local and not global level.

If a society wishes to work on a sustainable basis then they must decide what balance they require in terms of optimal population size and per capita consumption. On this note I don’t think it makes sense to maximise population as I feel it is more important to focus on QUALITY and NOT quantity of life (BAU and various religions seem to promote the latter). To me, quality and happiness of the people in the community is the thing we must strive to maximise and to do this we need to insure that nearly all people in society can meet their basic needs comfortably i.e. living comfortably above the subsistence level. It should be noted that on a general historical basis in the absence of rigorous checks on population there will be a tendency for the population to rise until most members can only survive on a subsistence level given the current level of technology deployed. To maximise happiness it is my personal opinion that populations must be kept below this natural limit. I can understand perfectly well if our views on this are matter are different as it is a highly contentious issue. I imagine the final decision made would vary quite markedly for each community.

Saying all that you don’t want population to be too low as that will mean that the amount of per capita consumption will become too great and too high an income will make people more susceptible to greed, other vices not to mention unequal power issues between different local communities which will pose a threat to maintaining a sustainable economy over a larger region. As always there needs to be a balance and what you deem as optimal will vary so I think it is impossible to give an exact figure. I do hope you see where I am coming from in this however. Again though, carbon emissions are only part of the story here as we need to consider resources, pollutants and energy as separate components when considering issues of sustainability. To achieve a truly sustainable economy all these components need to be addressed and we cannot simply put our focus on pollution.

Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 19, 2013

Discuss this article at the Primitive Living Table inside the Diner

Here on the Diner this Sunday, the Population of the Diner Tribe increased by a New Member, Harper Tribann, or “HT” as he will be known in the future.  You won’t find HT in the Member List of Diners, as of yet he can’t Read, Keyboard, or Talk.  He can already Pitch Napalm though, Crying comes naturally straight outta da tunnel. LOL

HT is the Newborn Son of Diners Lucid Dreams and Gypsy Mama, and all the Diners are Celebrating his arrival, Cigars with Suspect Contents are being Smoked across the Diner World, which goes from Oz to Kiwiland to Jolly Old England to The Last Great Frontier through the Midwest of the FSofA in Cheeseland, down to the Border of Mejico and right back to Old Dixie in Virginia and South Carolina, where HT was just Born.  There are Diners all over the World now.

So now there is a new Diner, HT, and he is a Healthy Baby Boy who knows not yet the world he is destined to grow up in, but we Diners do, and so it is all our Collective Jobs to do what we can to Build a Better Tomorrow for HT, not let the Pessimism overwhelm us, and remain Optimistic that at least some solutions to so many intractable problems can be found somewhere.

It is often said it is “Always Darkest Before the Dawn”.  Here on the Diner we all know the consequences of Overshoot, but at the same time if the Great Experiment With Sentience begun so long ago with the Big Bang and the Genesis of the Earth and the Evolution of Sentient Life in the form of Homo Sapiens is to continue on a bit longer, we still do need new Diners on the Earth.  It is thus a good thing that HT was born this day, May 19, 2013.  While we do need new Diners though, we could do with a good deal fewer Pigmen on the Planet. LOL.

I cannot make any Carved in Stone predictions for what the World HT grows up in will be like as we move into the Future of the Collapse of Industrial Civilization we all have been a part of for our Lifetimes.  I am certain though that HT and his generation will need to learn how to live in a lower per capita energy footprint world for Homo Sapiens, and he is a fortunate boy to have Lucid Dreams and Gypsy Mama to guide him through the early years of dependency that we all start out with as children.  Like true Nature’s Children, they were both Born to be Wild.  Sadly of course for all of us Diners Born to be Wild, the world we live in today does not leave much Opportunity for that way of life, but it can be Reborn over time here, though it sure won’t be any Picnic on the way there.

For HT, he wasn’t Born to Be Wild.

Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin’ with the wind
And the feelin’ that I’m under
Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature’s child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild

He was BORN TO RE-WILD.

RE

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on May 19, 2013

Discuss this article here in the Diner Forum.

 In which we walk around the weekly cultural signifiers that indicate that we are, week by week, proudly and confidently approaching the zero point with the same cheery sense of self-assurance with which lemmings are said to approach a cliff.  The Week That Was In Doom, might otherwise be known “as things that make you want to guzzle antifreeze,” with apologies and a tip o’ the Surly Crown of Thorns to Charlie Pierce. Pass the Prestone, hold the ice. And see what the rest of the crew will have, will ya barkeep?

 ”Violence is as American as cherry pie.” –H. “Rap” Brown

We started out the week by celebrating Mother’s Day in traditional American fashion, meaning blowing the shit out of a bunch of people with guns.

Nineteen people have been wounded in a shooting at a Mother’s Day parade in the US city of New Orleans, police say. The victims included two children who were grazed by bullets. Police say most injuries are not life-threatening. It is unclear what sparked the shooting in the city’s 7th Ward on Sunday afternoon. Police say three suspects were seen fleeing the area. The incident happened at about 14:00 (19:00 GMT) at the intersection of Frenchmen and Villere streets. “Shots were fired with different guns,” a police statement said. “Immediately after the shooting our officers saw three suspects running from the scene.” The statement said 10 men, seven women, a 10-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl were wounded by gunfire. FBI spokeswoman Mary Beth Romig said they had “no reason to believe it was an act of terror, just street violence”.

For my money, Rising Hegemon’s rising snark sums up the whole proceedings just fine.

What could be more American  

Than this headline?

It is unclear what sparked the shooting, which happened in the city’s 7th Ward on Sunday afternoon. Police say two or three suspects were seen fleeing the area. Police said that, as well as the 12 people with gunshot wounds, one person was injured in the ensuing panic.

It is all part of a typical week of gun incidents in this country, which the NRA would like to have you completely ignore. Cue Lee Greenwood.

By the end of the week, two brothers with gang ties and a history of drug offenses had been arrested for the deed, the narrative in place, the crime scene tape pulled up, so everything is hunky-dory again, right?

Two brothers with a history of drug arrests and suspected ties to a neighborhood gang each face 20 counts of attempted second-degree murder in a shooting spree that brought a sudden bloody end to a neighborhood Mother’s Day parade.

Right?

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 Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.    ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

How really depraved are we? Really? (h/t Joe P.) Earlier in the week I found myself arguing that the story could not possibly be true, but I discoved that the only problem here is my own paucity of imagination.

Rich Manhattan moms hire

handicapped tour guides so kids can

cut lines at Disney World

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day. “My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

Someone on Facebook observed that at least this gave some occasional employment to the handicapped.  Sometimes we are left without words. And sometimes the news comes pre-loaded with its own layer of snark.

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Those paying attention to continued congressional treason and the incompetence and misfeasance of the Obama administration were treated to The Benghazi Dumb Show and Obama’s IRS shooting itself in the foot. Charlie Pierce’s take:

Obama’s IRS answer probably won’t satisfy Republicans demanding a public apology from the president and insisting the story indicates Obama’s White House is run like Nixon’s. But the president put himself on the same page with elected officials of all political stripes Monday who demanded to know more about what happened at the IRS and the firing of those responsible for any malfeasance. No. It won’t satisfy them. He could have climbed up on a cross and driven nails into his own palms and that wouldn’t have satisfied them. Why is that the point? The media has no affirmative obligation to decide that a “political circus” has broken out and that it has no job left except to write play-by-play on what the monkeys are doing. Obama’s White House is not like Nixon’s any more than it is like the court of Robert The Bruce. Because some Republicans are still carrying old Watergate grudges around like goiters in their consciences is no reason for smart people to play along with it. Nixon’s IRS did not call out its own mistakes. Nixon’s IRS did not apologize. Nixon did not call a press conference and denounce the IRS for what it did, and this was because Nixon ordered the IRS to do what it did, and not even Nixon was a rancid enough bag of old sins to do something like that. So what is the purpose of throwing his name in there at all? Because the Republicans used it? That’s not good enough. In 2004, the NAACP actually got audited in the wake of its having been critical of the then-reigning Avignon Presidency. Remember how that dominated the Sunday Showz for months and led to endless hearings in both houses of Congress?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news. The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

This is what got people sent to jail in the mid-1970s. This is the Plumbers, all over again, except slightly more formal this time, and laundered, disgracefully, even more directly through the Department Of Justice. And of course, this is not nearly good enough. And even if you point out, as you should, that the AP is hyping this story a little — The government “secretly” obtained the records? Doesn’t that imply that nobody knew the records had been seized? Wasn’t there a subpoena? The phone companies knew. — the ignoble clumsiness of this more than obviates those particular quibbles.

No Charlie, no subpoena, thanks to the quick work of our friends at Verizon Wireless.

When the feds came knocking for AP journalists’ call records last year, Verizon apparently turned the data over with no questions asked. The New York Times, citing an AP employee,reported Tuesday that at least two of the reporters’ personal cellphone records “were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena.”

Customers of Verizon Wireless, take comfort in the knowledge that your company passed AP reporters’ phone records to the feds. Remember, muppets, “It’s The Network™.”

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In other news, we learn that many of the troglodyte members of the House of Representatives, the mouth-breathing consensus who yearn so dearly for the opportunity to lay a dollop of tar on presumed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton with the Benghazi flap as the tar-laden cudgel, can’t even locate Benghazi on a map. Hilarity ensues.

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And  in less amusing news,  the results of the preliminary investigation into the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas came in. Or not.

Robert Champion, the ATF special agent in charge, said investigators have ruled out the possibility of an earlier fire, spontaneous ignition, smoking, weather or a 480 volt electrical system. He said investigators have not ruled foul play, or a problem with a 120 volt electrical system. The officials would not discuss the arrest of Bryce Reed, a volunteer paramedic and one of the first on the scene, who was arrested last week for possession of bomb making materials. The Insurance Council of Texas estimates the damage to surrounding homes and businesses will exceed $100 million.

Clearly, Texas investigators have also not ruled out attack by the Tsarniev Brothers, an alien energy death ray from a UFO, an attack by Al Qaeda, the Symbionese Liberation Army, or the work of a secret, “self-radicalizing” terrorist cabal led by Jimmy Hoffa and Judge Crater.  But never fear, the usual gaggle of self-righteous hypocrites are showing up for the cameras, squatting down and pinching off the expected pieties:

Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement Thursday evening expressing his appreciation to the investigators. ”While the cause of the fire remains undetermined and the investigation continues, this tragedy has shown the world the definition of compassion, from volunteer firefighters across the state rushing to help their colleagues at the scene, to friends, neighbors and Texans stepping in to help those who lost so much in the blast,” he said. Texas U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz issued a joint statement thanking the investigators. ”Our prayers remain with those struggling to recover and mourning the loss of loved ones. While the cause remains undetermined, it is our sincere hope that at the end of the investigation, the residents of West can find closure and begin to heal,” they said.

Thanks, investigolators, for the camera opportunity to flog a continued regime of deregulation. en, the Grey Lady herself took note  in the NY Times. Texas don’t need no stinking regulations:

Asked about the disaster, Mr. Perry responded that more government intervention and increased spending on safety inspections would not have prevented what has become one of the nation’s worst industrial accidents in decades.

“Through their elected officials,” he said, Texans “clearly send the message of their comfort with the amount of oversight.”

This antipathy toward regulations is shared by many residents here. Politicians and economists credit the stance with helping attract jobs and investment to Texas, which has one of the fastest-growing economies in the country, and with winning the state a year-after-year ranking as the nation’s most business friendly.

Raymond J. Snokhous, a retired lawyer in West who lost two cousins — brothers who were volunteer firefighters — in the explosion, said, “There has been nobody saying anything about more regulations.”

Texas has always prided itself on its free-market posture. It is the only state that does not require companies to contribute to workers’ compensation coverage. It boasts the largest city in the country, Houston, with no zoning laws. It does not have a state fire code, and it prohibits smaller counties from having such codes. Some Texas counties even cite the lack of local fire codes as a reason for companies to move there.

But Texas has also had the nation’s highest number of workplace fatalities — more than 400 annually — for much of the past decade. Fires and explosions at Texas’ more than 1,300 chemical and industrial plants have cost as much in property damage as those in all the other states combined for the five years ending in May 2012.

Have a good look at what deregulation looks like. The explosion in April of a fertilizer plant near West, Tex., was so powerful that it registered as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake. McLennan, the county that includes West, has no fire code. Res ipsa loquitor. Awaiting the results earlier in the week, Pierce had it thus:

Whatever the investigators announce, the explosion will be linked to four decades of conservative-inspired deregulation, four decades of conservative-inspired corporate triumphalism, the deregulatory enthusiasm of every damn possible contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and Rick Perry’s entire political career are pretty damn long, I’m guessing. But give up the e-mails, Holder! Ten more people died here than died in Benghazi.

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In a development will be very satisfying to many readers of this page, particularly those who find room for cautious optimism in the growth of renewable energy and alternative fuels (thinking of you, AG), the nuclear industry had what by any measure has to be described is a pretty bad week.

Once touted as a successor, or at least a competitor, to carbon-based power, the nuclear sector has taken a beating as the momentum behind new projects stalls and enthusiasm for domestic fossil fuel production grows. Across the country, plans to build nuclear plants have hit roadblocks recently—a sharp turn for a sector that just a few years ago was looking forward to a renaissance. *** In recent weeks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled against a proposed partnership between NRC Energy and Toshiba, citing a law that prohibits control of a U.S. plant by a foreign corporation. Elsewhere, Duke Energy scuttled plans to construct two nuclear reactors in North Carolina, while California officials warned that two damaged reactors could be shut down permanently if the NRC doesn’t take action to get the plants back online. The change in nuclear’s fortunes is staggering, given that the U.S. is the world’s largest producer of nuclear power …. “Starting about four years ago, the industry felt it was in the middle of a renaissance” with applications for many new plants pending with the NRC, said Peter Bradford, a law professor and a former member of the commission. “They’ve gone from that high-water mark to a point at which … we’re actually seeing the closing of a few operating plants,which was unthinkable even a few years ago.”

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Of course none of this may make much difference if the sun has its way with us. We are told that a large solar flare may be a prelude to an entire year of heavy sunspot/solar storm activity.

The Sun erupted with a large solar flare in the direction of Earth early Friday morning, causing potential disruption to radio signals in the coming days and serving as a prelude to a period of heavy solar activity. The mid-level flare, classified as an M6.5 solar flare, “was associated with an Earth-direction coronal mass ejection (CME), a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach our planet days later,”according to Science World Report. While X-class solar flares are 10 times more powerful than Friday’s eruption, the radiation burst was the largest on record in 2013 and “caused an R2 radio blackout that has since subsided,” the site reported. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration classifies radio blackouts caused by space weather on a scale from R1 to R5, with R5 being the strongest. Scientists expect more such solar flares this year, because the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle is approaching its peak, expected to arrive in the closing months of 2013, Science World Report noted.

And now were told that NASA is warning that solar storms are possible. The implications of such an event are difficult to fathom. Current sunspots are said to be the diameter of 6 Earths, and some sunspot activity can lead to significant eruptions of radiation.

The Sun is currently reaching the peak of its 11-year solar cycle. The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched by NASA in 2010. The observatory spacecraft is just one of many alerting NASA to signs of solar flares, or coronal mass ejections. One of the biggest concerns surrounding solar flares is the ability the storms have to take down our antiquated power grid. If a massive solar flare is directed at Earth, the fiscal destruction could be legendary. Both NASA and NOAA experts estimate the potential damage of such a direct hit would be in the trillions. The last major solar flare to directly impact Earth was in 1859, the Carrington Event. Telegraph wires reportedly snapped in half and caused multiple blazes. The folks of the 1800s were far less impacted by the solar flare than we would be today. Due to the computerized equipment inside vehicles built after the 1950s, nearly anything on four wheels (or two) would come to a screeching halt.

Just let the implications of that one sink in for a moment. Imagine a Carrington-type of event on top of the current economic and social dislocations we have. The mind reels.  We could be facing “a world made by hand” sooner than even Kunstler imagines.

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According to Annalee Newitz,  We may be in for a disaster or set of disasters so profound they could kick off a series of mass extinctions. Of people this time,  in contrast to the mass extinctions that Homo sapiens has already caused for other species. Ms. new it’s has written a book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction,  that insists that human evolution has prepared us to survive future disasters.

Are we in the first act of a mass extinction that will end in the death of millions of plant and animal species across the planet, including us?

That’s what proponents of the “sixth extinction” theory believe. As the term suggests, our planet has been through five mass extinctions before. The dinosaur extinction was the most recent but hardly the most deadly: 65 million years ago, dinosaurs were among the 76 percent of all species on Earth that were extinguished after a series of natural disasters. But

185 million years before that, there was a mass extinction so devastating that paleontologists have nicknamed it the Great Dying. At that time, 95 percent of all species on the planet were wiped out over a span of roughly 100,000 years—most likely from megavolcanoes that erupted for centuries in Siberia, slowly turning the atmosphere to poison. And three more mass extinctions, some dating back over 400 million years, were caused by ice ages, invasive species, and radiation bombardment from space.

***

During the last million years of our evolution as a species, humans narrowly avoided extinction more than once. We lived through harsh conditions while another human group, the Neanderthals, did not. This isn’t just because we are lucky. It’s because as a species, we are extremely cunning when it comes to survival. If we want to survive for another million years, we should look to our history to find strategies that already worked. The title of this book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, is a distillation of these strategies. But it’s also a call to implement them in the future, by actively taking on the project of human survival as a social and scientific challenge.

So what promises to be another work of techno-optimism. Perhaps we will be smart enough, unselfish enough, and astute enough to employ strategies that will be necessary to save the bulk of humanity. Indeed, part of the mission statement of the Diner is to “Save as Many as you Can.” However my money is on the illuminati bunkering up and leaving a combination of disease, solar storms, acid rain and widespread dislocation to scour the Muppets from their earth.  Or so they think.

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And Just so you know, the truth about lemmings has nothing to do with them committing suicide en masse by leaping off cliffs. it turns out that a Disney film, “White Wilderness,” used selectively shot and staged scenes that showed lemmings leaping off a cliff into water, and from there swimming out to the ocean to their Doom. (The film is still available on YouTube, for the curious.)  Turns out that the demise of lemmings, a voracious little Arctic vole, has much more to do with stoats, fox, owls and other predators. Far more so than cliffs.

 And here, in all the news that doesn’t fit for this week are some other links gathered liking gleanings from the field, and for which I lack the time and attention to  comment. You may find it of interest.   One thing is reasonably sure: next week will bring even more.

Brandon Smith on  terror, circular logic and the debasement of language in the quest for power: http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1501-lions-and-tigers-and-terrorists-oh-my

GO’s article on vectors of human  extinction  

Personal extinction: Suicide rates in middle aged Americans- Mercola http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/16/suicide-rate.aspx?e_cid=20130516_DNL_ProdTest2_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20130516ProdTest2

America’s first climate refugees– with a tip o’ the Surly Crown o’Thorns to JoeP: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2013/may/13/newtok-alaska-climate-change-refugees

Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 2013

Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner

Note from RE:  This article is another re-edit of discussions held on Reverse Engineering in June 2009 on the concepts of Rewilding, Primitive Living and Tribal Formation.  As with Part I of this series I will be adding substantial new material to this post.

One of the long running arguments on Peak Oil revolved around whether we were bound in the end to return to the Stone Age. I generally argued that Stone Age devolution wasn’t necessary, we could return Sustainably to 1750s era technology, sail powered boats, horse drawn Plows, etc. I am rethinking that idea to some extent now.

One of my postulates was that all the metals we use, Iron, Steel, Aluminum etc are endlessly recyclable. They never really DISAPPEAR, they are always here in one form or another. As Iron Rusts, you can always smelt it back into usable form. At least you can so long as you have enough ENERGY to do so.

So let us look at the progress of Civilization through the Bronze Age and Into the Iron Age and finally the Plastic Age of Oil. In the early days, all the Blast Furnaces which created the Bronze tools were powered by Wood Furnaces mostly. What happened as a result? Many forests were burned down to produce a few Bronze Spear Points. As the Iron Age came about, lots of Coal was burned to smelt out the Iron. What happens when you run OUT of coal to recycle rusting iron? Eventually you do not have enough Energy to keep recycling the stuff into a useful form.

In the Medium term, say the next 1000 years or so, a Power Down to 1750s era technology seems likely and possible to me. However, really LONG term, once the total supply of fossil fuels has been depleted or becomes uneconomic to extract, it seems unlikely that there will be enough easily accessible Energy source to continue to run Forges and smelt metals. It would depend on mostly how much energy you could collect on a daily basis from the Sun, excluding either Geothermal or Fission processes which themselves are both dependent on having ICE machines for doing drilling and mining. You might small scale still smelt some metals, but overall I do not think you could collect enough energy to do this on a mass scale.

From this analysis, it appears to me that over the LONG term, most if not all Metals won’t be accessible or usable. That DOES sorta mean Stone Age technology, but not QUITE. Sailboats made of Wood are still possible, Sails made of Hemp fiber are still possible. Energy can still be collected to a certain extent, and the Work done by people can continue to build greater structres for energy collection. It will always take a lot of Human Labor and Maintenance tough to keep such structures functioning. For a good long while (perhaps the next 1000 years) we will be able to Scavenge the products of the Oil Era to maintain a lower level of technology based in large part on metals. Eventually though, most of that will disappear.

Long term, it probably is Stone Knives and Bearskins, as Spock said in “City on the Edge of Forever”. The buildup of our technologies has been wholly dependent on Energy even BEFORE Oil came to Rule the World, first the Forests got depleted and then the Fossil Fuels got depleted. Without some inexhaustible form of energy such as Fusion Power on earth, all we really have is the energy raining down from the Sun each day, and since the days when the first Bronze Spear Point was forged, that has NEVER been enough in one place to keep producing Bronze Spear Points. We had to keep GROWING, keep burning forest, keep digging up coal to keep producing all those Metals. We can never do that again really, we have to REVERSE ENGINEER our way OFF the METALS Jones as much as off the Oil Jones.

However, that does NOT mean the Stone Age of the Cavemen. Its more like Eskimos who made Kayaks using bones and sealskin. More like Lakota who had Teepees, more like Polynesians who had dugout Catamarans they explored the Pacific with. A tough life to be sure, with far fewer people on the Earth, but IMHO that is where we are bound for long term. Building what we can with our knowledge base out of RENEWABLE materials on the earth. Sorry, no more IPhones and no more Laptops, but you still will have a TeePee to shelter you from the elements, you still will be able to fish up a salmon with a Hemp woven net. At least so long as we have not already insured the death of ALL ocean life, in which case we are all TOAST. If that is not the case, I for one welcome the idea of a sustainable culture based on Stone Age technology. The Metals simply caused more problems and more destruction and ever bigger and more violent Wars. Over time here, we will leave the Metals behind, as we soon will leave the Oil behind. Only a few will be left at the end of this, but with luck they will be a better human, more in concert with GAIA,more a part of the total Ecosystem of the Earth operating in Harmony with her rhythms.

It will take EONS to get from here to there in all likelihood, and here at the Beginning of this exercise in Reverse Engineering, we will suffer a lot of pain. You can however be greatful for the fact you were the beneficiary for the last 100 or so years of Technology Burning Brightly before the Candle got extinguished. You probably will not live to see it completely go away either. Your children and their children though will have enormous adjustments to make. Eventually though they will FORGET the time of Oil, the time of conspicuous Consumption of the resources of the Earth. Those that make it through will be in Harmony with Nature, and GAIA will be better off for it.

I won’t be walking the Earth when this all comes to pass, but it will. I will See it from the Other Side. See you there also, my friends.

RE

So, much to ponder on with respect to Reverse Engineering towards a Tribal Society, but it is not like it hasn’t been considered before.  Below an entry from Wikipedia on How to Create a Tribal Society:

HOW TO CREATE A TRIBAL SOCIETY

“Here is some advice on how to create a tribal society for you and your friends. Whether its just for fun or if you’d like to get away with some of your close personal friends, this will tell you how to live primitively with the only rules being the ones you and your other tribe mates want.

1. Decide who else will be included in your tribe. You’ll need guys and girls. Around ten people will be a good start. Make sure all of these people are willing to come, otherwise it will be kidnap. Dont choose people who will be likely to whine or two people who hate each other. You really don’t want arguing!

2. Decide on a chief or several people to be a council to make decisions. Everyone needs to agree on this and having more than one person might be a good idea to keep anyone from becoming too controlling. If you do have one person, be sure that she/he is supported by the entire tribe. They need to be fair and want the best for your group.

3. Find a good location. It needs to be somewhere secluded so that no one will accidentally stumble on the village, it also needs to be near a source of fresh water and food. You will want to live some where with animals (if you will be hunting) wood (weapons, buildings etc.) and water.

4. Research history about the area. Study about native americans in your region. How did they eat and drink? What did they use as shelter? Also study about mistakes that communities made. One example is how a comunity failed because they lived upland, dumped waste upland, and fetched water from downhill. You can guess what happened. The poisons in their waste were in their drinking water, and they all died.

5. Decide on your village type. If it’s in a forest, you might consider tree houses to live in, in a desert, try underground dwellings or caves. There are all sorts of village types to use.

6. Before beginning any work on your village, decide on laws and punishments for those who break the laws. You will need this!! Example: If anyone steals, they will have to return twice the value of the object. Hopefully you wont need to use them!

7. Begin construction of the village, use only resources that can be found naturally in the area you’re building. You might want to still live in your current home while in construction.

8. After the village is built, gather or make things you’ll need. Again try to use natural resources, some things you’ll need are: blankets, clay jars for water, clothing to fit your surroundings, and weapons for use against wild animals (don’t bring guns or knives, use stones and slings, staffs, or any other weapon you can make using your surroundings).

9. Decide how you will cook and collect food. When considering how to collect food you have to decide whether hunting, foraging or farming would be best for your tribe, perhaps a combination would suit you best. Cooking food is also important, a communal fire pit is a good idea, be sure that the fire is far enough away from the shelters to be safe.

10. When you and the rest of your tribe are ready move out to the village.

* Make sure all of the people you are taking with you are in agreement about EVERYTHING, even a small dispute could cause trouble. * Know what edible plants are in the area of your tribe. * Make sure someone knows where you are going, just in case. * Make sure EVERYONE agrees, THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. * Remember if your’re going to be isolated you will eventually have to have kids or your tribe will die out. Make sure you’re not opposed to this idea.”

From Muckingfess

RE- I’m still lurking but I had to comment on this great post. The fact that you have to recognize your own limitations is key. A lot of people don’t have that ability and that is what eventually causes problems. We have here in Texas the beginnings of a tribe. We have a leader and a council. One of the council members can sell any idea the leader and council agree needs to be sold. We are few (about 12 right now) and are developing 100 acres about 2 hours away from the city. i just hope we can get it done in time. more later….. — DEMOCRACY IS TWO WOLVES AND A LAMB VOTING ON WHAT TO HAVE FOR LUNCH. LIBERTY IS A WELL ARMED LAMB CONTESTING THE VOTE.

From RE

*12 people is a nice Core Group to start with, and 100 acres is a good size piece of dirt, assuming there is a good water supply? Not sure 2 hours out of the city is enough, though it depends on the city I suppose. Whereabouts are we talking about (generally speaking if you are Security conscious)?

*Note from RE:  My opinions on Starter Size have changed over the years.  Read through to the end to see how.

RE

From Clipney

James Dakin has a rather inflammatory analysis of tribal dynamics for his Friday blog entry:

“Now, I’m going to write this post and inevitably some moron who somehow managed to hold on to his loyal minion status despite being dumber than a box of rocks is going to make a comment on how I’m a redneck cracker Klucker racist. Even with the following statement: racism is merely a tribal marker to help distinguish members of a group from outsiders. Yes, I understand it might be easy for me to sit and preach, being in the white male position and never having been exposed to discrimination other than being white in Hawaii, being a white male applying to a quota system job and being male in a divorce. The most blatant forms of racism are easy to condone. We speak of ignorance, since the speaker hasn’t mastered the highly educated method of hiding their true feelings. But, racism is a part of human nature. You can’t change it. Tree hugging, Birkenstock wearing, Volvo driving, non-meat eating Democratic voting asshats will implore us all to just get along. They’ll turn carpet muncher or enter into an inner-racial marriage ( before you throw accusations my way remember I’ve had two Mexican brides myself ) just to prove how enlightened they are. Just like the crude stereotypical redneck, they have no idea that playing the racist card is merely a survival trait.”

From RE

Well, I did not find this inflammatory at all, its common sense once you grasp the Tribal model. Its quite true that there are two separate Value Systems in place, the one for all People who are Members of the Tribe, and another for all People who are Not Members.

I thought I made this clear enough when I wrote about what would happen to two classes of people who tried to come here to the LGF when TSHTF. For my FRIENDS, I would WELCOME them, their assistance in helping the Tribe Survive is of Great Value to me. For my ENEMIES, they won’t get within 500 yards of the Perimeter, I’ll drop them on the spot without so much as a “How do you do?”. LOL.

Jimmy brings up the inevitable Racism question, which really is most valid in the US where we have become “multi-cultural” over the last 300 years as first Blacks were imported as Agricultural Slaves, then Chinese were imported as Railroad Slaves, then EVERYBODY got imported as slaves to keep the Ponzi running. NOW that it’s failing, they wanna Deport them all.  LOL.

I lived in NYC for my early years, in a neighborhood called “Hell’s Kitchen.” Its just a short ways up from Chinatown, a stone’s throw from where the World Trade Center came crashing down. In those days in Hell’s Kitchen you had White Gangs and Puerto Rican Gangs and Black Gangs, you ALWAYS have Gangs form up of people with similar characteristics who come from similar backgrounds with similar beliefs. If that is not the most CAPTAIN OBVIOUS thing possible, I do not know what is.

As we spin down here, the likelihood in many places that have multicultural populations that they will divide up, but not necessarily always in a pure Racial distribution. In our current society, it has been going on long enough that similar economics and life experiences will bind Tribes together as much as Race does. Racism will play a part in the forming up of Tribes, but not the ONLY part by any means. Beyond that you have to consider the various CASES of being in different regions with different Racial distributions.

For instance, it might be really bad to be Black in Indianapolis, while it is really bad to be White in Chicago. Having visited Hawaii recently, I don’t think it would be good to be White OR Polynesian. They are gonna eat each other up.

This is one of those things that isnt a Moral question at all really, its a PRACTICAL question. Would *I* as a White Person have a real good chance at being an Accepted member of a Tribe of Aboriginal Australians, and would it be a good idea for me to move to the Outback just because its sparsely populated? How fucking STUPID would that be?

If you are a Black Person, a smart thing to do would be to go where there are LOTS of Black people relatively speaking, you won’t STICK OUT like a Sore Thumb! If you are a White person, go somewhere there are LOTS of White people, relatively speaking. If you have your choice here, pick Alaska over Sweden. We got more freaking White People per capita than anywhere else on EARTH.

Of course as it spins down, its not ENOUGH just to be White or Black to make the Grade in your Tribe. A next step is your Religion. You might live in Baghdad and look just like your neighbor, but he is Sunni and you are Shiite. You might live in Kabul, but you are Buddhist and your neighbor is Muslim. Then there is your Caste. In Calcutta, you might be Brahman or Sudra, in Boston you might be Old Money or New Money, whatever. The closer the people you affiliate with are to you in ALL respects, Race, Religion, Caste, Politics etc, the more cohesive your Tribe is. A Tribe is a COLLECTIVE. You do not function well in a Collective by being DIFFERENT. You function in a collective by conforming to the needs of the collective above your own individual needs. That is of course anaethema to the Individualist paradigm we are sold on in our decaying system.

Remember the words of Locutus of Borg. “Resistance is Futile”. The Collective ALWAYS wins in the end. The trick here is to join up with a Collective of sufficient size and strength that is the closest match to your Individual point of view and place in the society. Bad idea to be a Rich White Boy joining up with a bunch of Gang Bangers from Harlem. Bad idea to be a Black Lawyer in Hyannis Port. As you Tribe Up, you want to be as Homogenous as possible here in ALL things, from the way you LOOK to the way you THINK and even to how you FEEL. Then you can operate as a UNIT,and everything inside the Unit is Good, everything outside the Unit is Evil. Long as your Unit is strong, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. So said Locutus of Borg, and it is the TRUTH.

RE

Fast forward 4 years to today, and all these concerns are still with us, nowadays in even more sharp relief than they were back in 2009.  In her recent post What Would it Take to get to a Steady State Economy, Gail Tverberg of Our Finite World details once again all the difficulties involved in downshifting off the Oil Economy.

In our recent Blog-a-thon about the modern day Mountain Man Eustace Conway, all the difficulties of separating yourself from the decaying state and monetary system were glaringly apparent, and not even all the Diners can agree on whether his methodology is good or bad, necessary or unnecessary.

Even more than the Energy and Goobermint Regulations issues you have to deal with though is a much more involved problem, which is that of the nature of Human Relationships and Personalities, which shape themselves inside the societies they form up under.  While it is comfortable and natural for say a Kalahari Bushman to live under Tribal codes, taboos, rules and restrictions, this doesn’t come second nature to a Metrosexual Stockbroker from the City of London.  LOL.  Redefining codes which can work to transition Homo Industrialis to Homo Neo-Tribalis is the most difficult of problems, even more difficult than figuring out where all the Energy & Food to perpetuate the species will come from.

When I first began this adventure of observing the Collapse of Industrial Civilization and trying to figure out Means & Methods of Survival, the first and most popular (still is) means applied is that of the Individual or Extended Family Doomsteader, where fairly well-to-do people with means enough to do so purchase their own Rural Doomstead in the 50-100 Acre territory, set it up as a Permaculture Farming arrangement and then in many cases arm themselves to the TEETH with AR-15s, sawed off Shotguns and RPGs and ready themselves to defend their Gardens from Waves of oncoming Zombies exiting the Big Shities.  LOL.

While this Mad Max type End Game scenario may play itself out, it is probably not the most likely one.  More likely is there will be Political Reformations as large Nation-States Collapse and reform into more Local Regional Units.  Stuff like occurred in the old Soviet Union circa 1917 after the collapse of the Romanoff Dynasty with Collectivization is a likely possibility in many neighborhoods.  Here in the FSofA, Fascist takeover of individual Doomsteads by TBTF Corporations like Monsanto and Conagra is a likely scenario, in fact it has been occurring for a long time already.

Sorry, a Dozen or even 2 Dozen people on a Doomstead is not going to be able to Protect & Defend said Doomstead either from Zombies or the Political Machinations of the State as it devolves.  To have some ability to negotiate this period successfully, you will need your OWN Political Unit of decent size, at least sufficient to hold weight inside your local neighborhood.  My conclusion thus was the best means of Survival through the Downspin is Tribal Formation, seeking to create Tribes at MINIMUM the size of Dunbar’s Number, around 150, but better in the neighborhood of 500-1000 Human Souls.

Discussions here inside the Diner have evolved and refined the concept some now, and a number of us have begun the Sustaining Universal Needs (SUN) Project here on the Diner, to define social parameters and physical needs for a Community of this size to form up as a Planned Community, beginning first in Cyberspace as a Phyle, then migrating out to the Real World as a Tribe on Physical Property.  It remains a Work in Progress, and we invite other interested parties to work with us in developing this plan.  We hope to have a general Prospectus for a new Non-Profit Organization up in the next few months.  You will read more about it here on the pages of the Doomstead Diner as it progresses.  Meanwhile, we seek ideas and input from all folks now aware of the Ongoing & Oncoming Collapse of Industrial Civilization.

RE

Published on The Slog on May 14, 2013

Discuss this article at the Epicurean Delights Smorgasbord inside the Diner

The boy v girl friendship thing

Perhaps the most crushing offer a girlie ever gives to a bloke is “Can’t we just be friends?”….a line I can only be grateful for not having been handed for over fifty years now, although the elation-to-deflation plummet associated with it lives on in my psyche as if it was yesterday.

It has been one of the relative oddities of my life that I have, on the whole, greatly preferred the company of women to men. I don’t mean by that ‘the company of women in a group’, because to be honest they’re awful in hen-party mode. Rather, I’m talking about the far greater ability to be frank with female friends about one’s doubts, demons, feelings about ongoing sex relationships and, well, just being open about it.

That said – and think about it, there is no contradiction here – the truly close male friends I have are the best friends I have. The reason is simple: they’re far more willing to accept criticism from time to time – and far more constructive in the way they criticise me. So while my female chums are seen quite a bit – and able to offer invaluable insights into their own interminably mysterious gender -  it is the bloke-mates to whom I feel closest. You see, with blokes after a certain point there is no defensiveness…otherwise I gently drop them. With the bumpy-front friends, there will always be the Mars-Venus thing: you know -  the “you’re a bloke so WTF would you know” knee-jerk in the groin.

I know lots of blokes I would call passing acquaintances and valued former colleagues. Sometimes they become ‘cronies’: for example, when ghastly (but mercifully rare) occasions have to be borne with the help of irascible male companionship and rather too much alcohol. But they fail to become confidantes because the blokey dick complex creeps in….that inability to resist nudge-nudge-wink-wank remarks about waitresses and previous secretaries. Women don’t indulge in that with male friends, and so the blessed relief from having to listen to tedious fantasies is worth its weight in saffron. I wonder, by the way, if the saffron sector is manipulated as well these days. How one’s mind divagates around after sixty.

I have one female friend for whom I have infinite affection, because at a time when others passed on the other side of the road, she took me out of myself and devoted selfless time to helping me back on my feet. But she is as daft as a brush about cultural issues, and her fluffiness is at least 95% related to an upbringing that combined liberal bollocks with an outrageous level of privilege. However, when I try to tell my chumette that some of her observations are so socially ignorant as to cause dental roots to shake in their stanchions, she bristles like a daft brush for whom bristling has been her inalienable right since birth. There’s nowt so queer as folk, as they say in Yorkshire.

Another lady mate has a serious downer on Men. I use the capital letter there because (a) it reflects the emphatic tone she affects when talking about my gender and (b) capital punishment is (not too deep down) what she claims we chaps should face sooner rather than later. The only friction in her outlook is that she keeps on falling for the sort of psychopathic blokes I would happily kill given the freedom from prosecution to do so. But when I so much as raise this tectonic tension – dare I say contradiction – she turns grumpy and goes off the air for several weeks. When she comes back on again, she’s met yet another disastrous twerp…and so the circus continues. Except for one vital talent she has, I’d avoid her like the plague. But I am here to tell you that, shove one’s new girlfriend in front of her, and she will predict the outcome with clinical accuracy. Go figure.

Yet another has an image of herself which is wildly at variance with reality. When I try to get a word in edgeways to explain why she is in fact Hillary Clinton and not Florence Nightingale, a predictable Tsunami of ruffled rationality heads my way. The odd thing here is that it’s the Hillary thing I find so likeable (and valuable) about her. She is in that sense the almost identical twin of a lady from an entirely different continent: she tells me of her utter rejection of all materialist considerations in favour of an undiluted return to nature….and then sends me an email recounting her latest foray into the restaurants of Knightsbridge.

The only real saving grace of men (if you too are a man) is that they do retain an engaging ability to see how completely bloody silly they are about most things to do with hypocrisy. You can, at the end of the day, poke fun at a bloke about his double standards: on the whole – in my experience, he added carefully – you can’t with a girlie. When George and Ringo took the piss out of John Lennon about his ownership of endless New York condos while promoting the song Imagine, Lennon replied “For f**k’s sake fellas, it’s only a pop song”. I don’t like to think about how Yoko Ono would react if you tried the same shtick with her.

The Gender War has been going on uninterrupted for more than 850,000 years. This is the bizarre conclusion I’ve reached: men think everything is funny, but some things are worth dying for. Women think nothing of any importance is funny, but nothing is worth dying for. I am beset by an insatiable need for the advice of the latter, and the clubbable company of the former.

Discuss.

Published on the Archdruid Report on May 15, 2013

Discuss this article at the Favorite Dishes Table inside the Diner

Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 16, 2013

Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner

When I came up with the notion of running a Blog-a-thon, I thought it was at least plausibly possible a few other of the Collapse Bloggers would join in and contribute a support post for Eustace Conway and Turtle Island.  How WRONG I was!  Out of 8 or so Collapse Bloggers I emailed on Saturday who we cross post here on the Diner, not a single one to date has written anything on this topic on their Blogs.  Only Lucid Dreams of Epiphany Now who is also a Native Diner also Blogged about Eustace so far.

Not to say there has been Zero support, Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform who I used to blog with and get into innumerable Napalm Contests with during our Tumultuous Association cross posted the kickoff article on TBP and Featured it also, which definitely has helped bring more people to the change.org petition as Signatories.  Last I checked, the Countdown Number was down to 7890 or so, down from about 8290 when we got going with this at the beginning of the week.  That’s about 100/day average, if it continued 25,000 might be reached in 80 Days, about how long it took Phineas Fogg to Circle the Globe.

While counting on the other Bloggers out there for writing support so far has been an Epic Failure, the Diners on the other hand have come through in SPADES, simply pouring the words off their Keyboards inside the Diner, both in support of Eustace and in criticism of his Means & Method.  So once again, in order to get a Diner Size Meal out of this, I don’t actually have to write the bulk of it myself, the Diners are cooking it up for me!  All I gotta do is write the Intro and copy/paste some of the ACTION from inside the Diner!

So, without further ado, here are some of the Highlights from today’s Thrilla in Doomervilla on the subject of Eustace Conway and Turtle Island inside the Diner.

——————–

From Lucid Dreams:

seems you overlooked the key part in his post, lou:

Quote

Certainly, Mr. Eustace can live his life undisturbed as long as his endeavors are private. He hasn’t chosen that route, he must navigate his way around predictable difficulties.

That’s the thing…he is private, as in not public.  There is an application that you must fill out, and then you must be accepted before you can show up and take part in the Turtle Island.  That is private.

Two people in bed together are private correct?  There is more than one person there, and yet it’s still considered private…it’s not public.  Mr. Conway’s school is not public, it’s private.  There is a no trespassing sign at the gate to the entrance onto his property.  I can have people over to my house, and they can stay the night, or the month, or the year, and they are not the public, they are my private friends.  What we do is the business of us and nobody else, much less the god damned meddling bureaucracy.

An anonymous call my ass.  Those fuckers can’t abide people learning how to not give a shit about codes and JIT trucking.  Why?  Because they become irrelevant.

This ain’t about money, it’s about control.

From Reanteben

in my reading steve’s not suggesting anything of the sort, that esalen is sustainable. what he is doing is putting eustace’s operation in the same category of development as esalen – commercial. steve rightly puts them in the same category. eustace effectively codified his operation as commercial by his marketing (flaunting) of it. his point is that if you are going to play that game you are going to have to bring some game like esalen – money and power.

his explication of eustace as a ‘developer,’ in the commercial sense of the word, is brilliant to me. benevolent as eustace is, he is that kind of developer, because he sold it in the same way, and to a big society, that commercial developers do. what makes us not want to see that is because he’s developing something we like. just like progressive yuppies like LEED building developers.

eustace needs to just be the change he wants to see in the world. it’s not as if he could’ve taught theses skills to any fewer people by word of mouth in the underground movement.

From JD Wheeler:

Actually, from what I gather, Eustace is quite good as a Media Whore.  My understanding is his speaking fees are what paid for the land, and he doesn’t personally need any other source of income.  Raising awareness is his personal mission.  I definitely agree with you RE that though we can learn a lot from Eustace in terms of practical knowledge and life lessons, his methodology is definitely not suited to the average person and we should use other tactics.

From Steve from Virginia:

RE, there are a  billion rural poor who lack electricity, running water and sanitation. They aren’t found easily in N. America or Europe but are common in South or Central America … as well as the rest of the developing world. These are the pool of recruits for urban slums.

The ongoing energy- and sustainability ‘crisis’ we fret about will come and go without any of the rural poor noticing very much: ours is a bourgeois crisis.

The poor don’t need lessons on how to be poor, they already are adapted to poverty, they are desperate to learn how to escape it. The privileged don’t want to learn how to be poor, either. They want to know how to preserve their advantages regardless of circumstances.

What differs between approaches is fashion. Militant survivalists offer firearms and military-style training so that those who have these things would be able to dominate or enslave those without. Finance analysts offer strategies to sell investments ‘short’ allowing ‘insiders’ to gain at the expense of others. Real estate gurus offer strategies for flipping houses so as to gain the landlord’s share. Politicians and ‘thought leaders’ offer different flavors of always-fashionable Nazism, eugenics and totalitarianism: the undeserving ‘others’ are simply rounded up and marched off to become ashes and puffs of smoke emitted from chimneys. Technicians offer singularities and 3d printing, nano robots and perpetual motion machines: in this world nothing changes, the men in lab coats have fixed everything, today’s advantaged will be advantaged tomorrow and for all the days after that.

It is the narrative to be wary of not the means by which it is presented. None of the tactics offer any advantage in the end, not only are we in the long run all dead but our advantages have morphed under our noses to become liabilities.

From WHD:

Steve,

I think you sound here like the perfect amalgamation of the archetypal petty bureaucrat AND the Capitalist Pigman. A post-modern, neo-Liberal wet dream. LOL Better to make the land a wildlife refuge if you can’t civilize those pagan heathens, the retributes, the savages – IF THEY WON”T PAY! Dammit!

Well, speaking as someone who has $11.11 in his account, just returned from a meeting with a threesome of likesame code nazi’s mining me for another $475, because my garden is considered an official “nuisance,” FUCK OFF!

From Uncle Bob:

WHD, I understand your frustration but that was uncalled for. SFV’s points are valid a very smart guy imo, Just being a down to earth realist.

We can put up a fight, but we must also know when to admit defeat and cut losses and try something else sometimes. Whatever it takes not whatever we want. In EU countries they are making all gardening illegal if you dont use approved monsanto seeds, like they just did to mexico. Whats the answer? Whos going to feed your family if you do as your please and get sent to jail? Maybe a forest garden is the answer, or just plain not drawing any attention as much as possible. Thats the lesson Im taking anyway.

From RE:

What differs between approaches is fashion.

Oh Good Grief, not the Elvis Fashion Show again.

There is nothing Fashionable in the least about living in the back woods in buildings without plumbing and flush toilets.  The fact that Eustace chose to live this way as opposed to being born into it in rural poverty in Bangladesh is about as unfashionable a choice as you could possibly make.  It is also not terrifically Fashionable to fight City Hall to try to maintain this lifestyle and teach it to others.

Regardless of how the Rural Poor live in South America, whether still out there in Amazonia or transplanted to the Favelas of Rio, here in Amerika you can’t just Become Poor to go live off the land without Electricity.  Just ask Roamer or LD or WHD.  Ya gotta have some MONEY to live that way here!  Whether Eustace got his Preserve from Dear Old Dad or earned it as a Media Whore through speaking fees, he clearly got a decent piece of change together to buy that land and pay the taxes on it every year.

Eventually of course everybody’s gonna have to learn to live again without Flush Toilets and Electricity, but you’ll do a whole lot better with it if you learn how to do it NOW, before it gets thrust upon you.  As BC2Ks signature line says, “Its too late to prepare for a crisis when you already are in one” (or something like that anyhow).

You rant on and on about Industrialization being a “Fashion” choice, and then when some guy goes AGAINST that Fashion and tries to fight it you go and say, “No, you can’t fight City Hall, Lawyer Up, buy the Plumbing from Home Depot and Meet the Codes of Industrialization.”  If that isn’t the most hypocritical bunch of bullshit I have ever read in the Collapse Blogosphere, I don’t know what is!!!!

Anyhow, for those of us working on the SUN  Project, we are fully aware of Code issues, and we got no intention of trying to fight the state on such a battlefield.  We look for Loopholes and Workarounds to these problems.  RVs and Portable Buildings don’t have to meet these codes.  If you gotta have Flush Toilets and Hot Running Water to be allowed to Keep Your Kids, we’ll put up one Longhouse that EXCEEDS Code.  This is CFS.

Eustace is on another Agenda, he’s decided to draw a line in the sand around HIS PRIVATE PROPERTY and not Kowtow to the local Pols and Biz Interests in his neighborhood.  I wish him well in this fight, and I started the Blog-a-thon here to support it, because it raises awareness about what is the RIGHT way to live, the UNFASHIONABLE way.  It’s good he is a Media Whore, because it actually appears he is having some success with this and the local Pols may be fashioning up some other Regulations that will allow him to continue to operate this way.

In the long run of course, Eustace will win this fight by default, that Nabe is probably gonna be among the first to be shut off the Grid anyhow, Appalachia is Dirt Poor by Amerikan Standards, always has been.  Eustace is just out on the Front Lines, Leading the Way to a Better Tomorrow.

RE

From WHD:

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more discussion ’bout:

Quote from: steve from virginia on May 14, 2013, 11:54:28 AM

If Eustace’s program was as good as his marketing he would not be in his current mess. Buzzwords are not a program. Sustainability is … or it isn’t, it occurs or it doesn’t. Evidence suggests he needs subsidy which in turn means he does not have anything to offer other than building styles, leisure activities and public relations.

Quote

What Eustace has are PR skills, he’s a media hound.

I must say I am definately leaning in SFV’s direction unless someone brings something to the table that is logically compelling (and unemotional) from the “other side” of the argument/debate.

JoeP,

There is no “other side”. Eustace “needs” subsidy because his friendly government is forcing it upon him whether he needs it or not, by fiat. Prey tell, he was doing fine for twenty years before gov stepped in and said “FLUSH TOILETS!” If you don’t want to shit on a composting toilet, don’t pay the fee to stay there. Steve acts as if the code is some pure thing that can not be altered, that MUST BE COMPLIED WITH. WTF? Did GOD come down and say there has to be an electrical socket on every wall exceeding four feet? What the fuck, excuse me for being emotional, are we talking about here at the Diner, if not the end of Industrial Civilization? And you all are like, he should get a lawyer and a permit, and comply with every motherfucking rule whether it makes any sense or not; because, apparently. LOL

What a conundrum we are going to have here, apparently, if the county changes the code without him having pulled a permit. Armageddon. LOL

From WHD:

Quote from: WHD on May 15, 2013, 05:21:42 PM

I was wondering…

What happens if they change the codes, to accommodate Turtle Island Preserve? Will he be a pathfinder, or a whore to the State. LOL.

BTW – Has anybody here read The Last American Man?  I did, and to hear Elizabeth Gilbert tell it, he made most of that money himself, and put that 1000 acres together piecemeal, like jdwheeler said, mostly from speaking engagements and presentations.

Personally though, I think the $1400 week long trainings, plus the charging for the personal horse and buggy ride with Eustace, are a bit much. 

How much can you learn in one week for $1400 buckolas?  I think you get a lot more Bang for your Buck spending $40 for a month of UNLIMITED Downloads from Books Great Choice and D/L every survival manual, wild edible plant manuals, medical textbooks yadda yadda and reading all of them.  Once you got the Info stored in the Brain, then you go out and Practice it, maybe on Weekends if you are still employed.

I can believe Eustace put together the Preserve from his own earnings over time, rather than buying the whole 1000 Acres at once, but I still have trouble with the College Years.  Where was he living during those years?

It also is said he made his own clothes, but every Photo I have Googled up shows him wearing what is obviously commercially made clothing.  While Teepee living, where did he store extra clothing sets, where did he wash his clothes so that when he showed up for Class he wasn’t all Stinky?  When he Walked the Appalachian Trail in Winter, was he wearing Buckskins he made himself or a Parka from LL Bean?

At any rate, I will never fork over for a Personal Buggy Ride with Eustace. He’s an interesting character, but I’m not gonna pay him to chat with me in a Buggy, that is nuts.  What kind of idiots do that?

RE

I know about Eustace Conway what Elizabeth Gilbert wrote about him. I don’t particularly care about Eustace Conway. I do care that he has built something extraordinary, and the code nazi’s of the world apparently want to destroy it. They can’t bear to think something is existing quite nicely, out of compliance. LOL  That isn’t dictated, that doesn’t conform to what is SET IN STONE.

How authentic is the legend of Eustace Conway? Whatever. Have you ridden a horse across America, twice? LOL. So daddy paid for college, or not. Whatever. Here are a thousand acres with at least 20 extraordinary buildings made by hand and simple materials, locally harvested, the land presumably healthy and the people happy. People pay big buckolas to hang out there and learn character-building things. The code masters say – you MUST SPEND! What, $300,000? Debt bondage, Elvis is apparently into.

Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 15, 2013

Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner

The debate inside the Diner on the Turtle Island project has evolved into a discussion of means & method; and whether Eustace Conway is a Visionary and valid example for moving off the Oil Economy, or merely a Media Whore more interested in Self-promotion than in helping others to change lifestyle to a more sustainable and ecologically sound way of life.  I will add some of my thoughts on this at the end of this installment of the Blog-a-thon, but first I want to bring up a few anomalies in the story which don’t add up well for me, and after that bring some of today’s debate inside the Diner onto the Blog so readers can get a better idea of how the two sides of this debate have lined up.

My main issue here at the moment is exactly how Eustace put together the money to buy the 1000 Acres in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, beginning it is said at the age of 17 with nothing but the clothes on his back and a few rudimentary Tools made of Metal, a Knife, Axe, perhaps a Camp Saw and nothing else.

Somehow though in his Early Years, Eustace was able to travel down to South America to do some Primitive Living in that environment.  Minimum here, you gotta have Plane Ticket money, he didn’t Hike down there through Panama.  Then he also came up with a Horse to do his Cross Country FSoA trip.  Horses cost money, so does all the Tack, Saddles etc.  In his early years, he couldn’t have been enough of a Primitive Living Guru or well enough known to be making THAT much money teaching others, and where was he keeping the Horse while living in a TeePee for the first 17 years of turning himself into a modern day Jeremiah Johnson?

Then Eustace ALSO managed to Graduate with Honors from Appalachian State University with a degree in Anthropology.  As we all know, a College Education doesn’t generally come free, though perhaps Eustace was able to get Scholarships.  Still, was he commuting in from the back woods on Horseback to class at ASU for 4 years?  This seems highly unlikely to me.

The conclusion I reach from all of this is that Eustace in fact did not do this from nothing, at the very least I think he was supported and backed in his chosen life by his parents, who paid for his college education; who paid for his plane ticket to South America; who also bought him the Horse.  I can’t see any other way he could have pulled all this off in his early years without Financial Backing of some kind.  Remember, the Legend of Eustace also has it that at the age of 12 he went out to live in the Woods for a week by himself.  This indicates to me his Dad was likely an avid back woodsman type himself who taught Eustace a lot, and then supported him as he further went down the path of becoming a Primitive Living Expert.

So for at least the first 10 years or so of learning his trade, Eustace could not have been Earning much money as a Primitive Living Skills Guru, in fact he had to be spending money during this time, never holding a “Real Job”.  Eustace was 17 when he started and is 51 now, for a total time of 34 years.  Subtract the first 10 years, you are left with 24 years.  However, Turtle Island was purchased some 20 years ago I believe, which would have only left 4 years for Eustace to earn enough money to buy a 1000 Acre Preserve in the Appalachian Mountains.  I don’t know precisely what the cost of an acre in those Mountains was 20 years ago, but it is hard for me to imagine it came much cheaper than say $300/acre, which means he had to put together $300K in 4 years, which is about impossible in that line of work.

Conclusion:  The land was purchased on a Mortgage which his Dad co-signed and he then paid off over 20 years, or may be still paying on, who knows.  Only other possibility is Dad himself bought the land outright.  I do not think Eustace could have got a mortgage himself to buy all that land with no real job, living in a TeePee in the woods.  It doesn’t add up.

Does this make Eustace’s Life Adventure less Cinematic?  Of course it does.  It also indicates any truly BROKE person with no backers who tried to duplicate what he did would not be able to do so.  However, while it is a good deal less cinematic when you consider it, it still is quite remarkable that he spent his life this way, learned what he did and is trying to pass the knowledge onto others.

OK, now that we have looked at some of the anomalous aspects of this story, let us go inside the Diner to look at some of today’s debate off the keyboards of the Diners.  For a complete reading of all posts made, go inside the Diner to read the whole thread.

——————-

From Golden Oxen:

This thread has little to do with Mr. Conway and much to do with oppressive out of control government in my view. We reap what we sow.

When ever a Libertarian minded person, espousing cutting back on big goobermint runs for office, the same old nonsense starts.

The Left starts screaming about the environment and protecting the children as they panic thinking about the government teat being taken from their mouth.

The Right, who are just as bad, start with the he will cut defense, fuck up all the subsidies their industries enjoy, panic over the break up of their monopolies through free markets and minimal local regulation etc.

The limit and cut back goobermint  candidate is always projected by the MSM as a kook, a childish dreamer living in the past, a jerk with no chance of winning, why waste your vote on an ass hole?

We have all signed the petition against Eustace and other wonderful people like him, this silly attempt at cleansing our conscience is bull shit.

Enjoy, “We Reap What We Sow”.

I hope my Diner friends in the foxstead, or Sun project, or whatever it is called these days are paying close attention. Go it alone, or forget it. What more do you need than the heartbreaking story of this remarkable man to realize the folly of hiding from the government goons?

From RE

No, at least in terms of Admitted Signers, only 16 Diners have copped to making a Silly Attempt at Soul Cleansing here.  Membership alone is well over 400, and since the Poll is Open to Guest Readers also, not many are Standing Tall with Silly Attempts here at the moment.

Anyhow, I just finished tomorrow’s entry into the Blog-a-thon, Render Unto Caesar.  Besides LD, I am not getting the Hoped For Support from other Collapse Bloggers, so LD & I at the moment have to go it alone.

If I have to write every goddamn article this week, I will.  I NEVER QUIT.  I won’t roll over here for Da Goobermint Goons until I am well and truly DEAD, or they pack me off to GITMO.

Man, if you accept this shit and won’t FIGHT IT in some way, you well and truly deserve what you will get.  NOT ME, NOT RE.  I got a KEYBOARD and I got my Bully Pulpit here on the Diner.  I will go down SWINGING, or I will WIN.  Either way, I go to the Great Beyond fully confident that I have fought the Good Fight and will be Rewarded for doing so in the Kingdom of Heaven.

RE

From Golden Oxen

I had said “Against” in the quote RE, referring to our complicicity in what has happened to our government. You are fighting for Eustace and not against the government that oppresses him, in that sense you have given up.

What good does fighting for one person do when we all sit back and  let them take our liberty, our free press, our legal system, our planet and it’s food supply, our water, our freedom of assembly, our freedom of speech, our money, and the principle of limited government our country was based upon?

What war are we being put in next!

What state is going to be placed under martial law next!

What group of protestors clubbed and tear gassed into submission is next!

Your concern for Eustace and offer to help is admirable, but you are making the situation worse by wasting precious resources on a tiny insignificant battle, while the war against all who desire freedom is being waged.

From RE

Nah.  Just picking battles.  Even if I cannot Win this one, I can’t Lose too bad either.  It is practical strategy GO.  I don’t got the NUMBERS yet I need to take on the Big Boys.  Gimmee time here though, I will get there.  It is a process.

RE

From Lucid Dreams:

Being naturally pessimistic, I see all of your points Ox, and I’m inclined to agree…but…

For some reason it feels good to at least try to keep Turtle Island open.  It’s especially important because of the foxstead, because what Turtle Island is is very important to the future foxstead.  If Turtle Island can’t exist than how can the foxstead?  Either way there are many lessons to be gleaned from this situation.  Namely hiding in plain site.  My first thought is that the foxstead definitely needs a front…but I should stop now because this is a public thread…as in open to the public

Sure there are many many battles to be fought in the war to gain our freedom back.  Let there be no mistake, we have no freedoms in this country, just the illusion of freedom.  When they can take your ass to jail for no reason, label you a terrorist, ship you off to gitmo, and you never heard from again, and all with you having done nothing wrong…and this is all legal…we have no freedom.  Your illusion of freedom only goes as far as they allow it to go.

So we get all of the electronic signatures and they allow Eustace to continue operation as he has.  Good, we saved one very important man’s life work.  It will be one small victory that we can win.  Unless they decide they don’t give a shit about the signatures, in which case we did what we could.  I’d love to see Turtle Island allowed to continue without the bull shit codes.  I’d say Eustace should just comply and get the plumbing and electricity and colonoscopy, but why should he be forced to pay for it?  He doesn’t want it.  He’s only helping people with his Turtle Island.

What Eustace is and has been doing is very important for our future.  How much easier will it be to have been taught these skills rather than having to fumble around trying to figure out how to live without machines and fossil fuels?  Hell, just gardening is a bitch to learn on your own.  I know, nobody taught me how to do it.  I had to read a lot of books and do a lot of research.  Most importantly I had to experiment and fail year after year.  I still don’t know what I’m doing.  It would be nice to have somebody to say, “don’t do that, don’t plant pumpkins next to potatoes” or whatever.  To be taught produces results much more quickly.  It helps keep us from wasting valuable time.

At any rate, I think what RE is doing is awesome.  As pointless as it all may be, and as helpless as we all are, and even without any freedom, at least he’s trying to do something positive.  We all need something to hope for.  I don’t want to take my Soma shot and resign myself to Two Minutes Hate on account of keeping my family up in the manner they are accustomed.  I want to get my job at the Ministry of Health so that I can make the foxstead a reality.  Hide in plain sight.  And eventually resign entirely from the Matrix so that my son’s can watch it collapse from a safe vantage point off in the distance.

I’m not fighting for me, I’m fighting for the future generations.  I don’t care about the Zombies.  I don’t care to save the zombies.  They are hopeless.  I only care to save my family and those who are already aware of the problems we face.  It’s a good bet that all of those who belong to the Turtle Island preserve are our brothers and sisters in Doom.  They need our help.

From WHD:

Did steve from virginia really just call him Mr. Eustace? Did reanteben just say [paraphrased], that’s what you get, bitch. 

I do find it strange, however, that there is no mention of this scenario on the Turtle Island Preserve website. None. I sent an email yesterday asking about it. Their Spring 2013 newsletter download is inoperable, but they are offering 2013 classes. They specifically request, no pop-in visitors. They seem open to teaching classes for a fee, but  otherwise closed off. I started a blog post, railing against government, but it sits in stasis until I hear something from them other than the Change.org petition that was offered, last updated Dec 12, with only 1600 of the signatures coming since that update.

Who knows what Ms Palms is about, but if Eustace is feeling persecuted, he might try reaching out more, rather than wigging out. Otherwise, tyranny in the mundane, for sure. Grinding exceedingly fine.

http://www.hcpress.com/news/trespassing-charges-for-eustace-conway-of-turtle-island-preserve-dismissed-for-insufficient-evidence.html

From Golden Oxen:

Hi Lucid, Your noble and good feelings as well as intentions are understood and well founded. They are after all good Christian deeds and are commendable. My problem is not with them; but with our failure to address the real issue, we are tending to a small shrub in the Forest, while forest fires are destroying the entire forest; hundreds of thousand of acres at a time.

Was it Pogo that said ” I Have Seen the Enemy and it is Us?”

Let’s get serious, these bastards have built FEMA camps for us already. Let’s not forget about the billion hollow point bullets either, much too little discussion about that topic as well. 

From Lucid Dreams:

Sure, I get it, but my guess is that there ain’t a damn thing we can do about FEMA and those billion rounds of ammo.  I agree we ain’t talking about all of that, but what would the result be of talking about it?  Turning ourselves into Martyrs?  No thank you.  Of course the very fact that we are talking about all of this to begin with, on the net, means that Big Brother is already aware of it.  Even the PM’s and private boards are no exception.  They know.  Which is probably the only reason why they haven’t labeled the Diner and all Diners as terrorist already.  However, if they felt they needed to, they would.  So if you want to talk about the real issues, and what we’re going to do about it…and be honest about it, then you must first address the fact that there is an NSA city in the desert recording every form of digital communication you can participate in.

Otherwise we’re all just having a delusional virtual circle jerk.

William…what is your point with that last link?  I went to it…what am I missing?  Has this whole thing already blown over and we didn’t get the memo or something?  Can you be a bit more specific for me?  Sometimes I miss the obvious.

From WHD

Having read the Render Unto Caesar post, I can say as a former builder, building and remodeling homes 2003-2007, building codes exist as a matter of coercing a particular kind of economic activity, that happens to be grossly wasteful and exploitative, and otherwise obsolete. To advocate for every building to be built to conform to code, is to exercise a certain kind of madness, very much a kind of crime against humanity and the earth. More than any single thing, it is not about rendering unto Caesar, it is about maintaining GDP growth by FIAT. I.E TYRANNY, leading unto ecological, economic oblivion.

Elvis is merely arguing, the thing justifies itself.

….

From Steve from Virginia:

Given the state of the world, there is probably no more important example of how to get off the Oil Economy and become self-sufficient as Turtle Island.

That’s a bit hyperbolic, his might be one of many … or it might not be at all. Right now there are at least one billion people who are outside the Oil Economy. None of them are giving TED talks or are on YouTube. To exit the oil economy, one only has to be poor. The challenge that matters for the bourgeois is for them — the non poor — to exit the oil economy, or rather, for those non-poor to exit and not be destroyed by the process or for them to not destroy others.

If Eustace’s program was as good as his marketing he would not be in his current mess. Buzzwords are not a program. Sustainability is … or it isn’t, it occurs or it doesn’t. Evidence suggests he needs subsidy which in turn means he does not have anything to offer other than building styles, leisure activities and public relations.

Certainly, Mr. Eustace can live his life undisturbed as long as his endeavors are private. He hasn’t chosen that route, he must navigate his way around predictable difficulties. Anyone who has ever built any sort of building anywhere in the US would be familiar with these difficulties: permits, occupancy, use, fire, water and sewerage, food handling, community standards, etc. Mr. Eustace owns a large parcel he still lives in a crowded country with many competing interests. Mr. Eustace claims a form of moral supremacy however he does not have a monopoly on it and his claims are questionable if not dubious. Others’ claims are just as valid as his. Certainly someone with an identical claim complained to the local government. The solution is for him to get a permit. It’s not hard, they simply cost money. The are for his benefit as well as others’.

As for his buildings, he has a particular design or form in mind. If he cannot make his structures conform he should hire someone who can. It’s not hard, there are engineers and architects practicing in North Carolina. It just costs money. He should hire an attorney. Having an incompetent attorney is the same- or worse than not having one at all. He would be free of current difficulties if he had competent counsel. Any attorney would have told him in the beginning to obtain a building permit. Since he doesn’t have a building permit ipso-facto he does not have representation.

What Eustace has are PR skills, he’s a media hound. These skills don’t work with people who simply read from a rule book. These same people can make him hate his own life. He can do as he pleases and good luck, it’s not my problem if it was, if called me up and asked what to do I’d tell him to get the damned permit and be done with it.

If he cannot pay the life-cycle costs of his project  then he shouldn’t bother. That’s why a developer does such an analysis, VAR, capital-on-capital, time costs, etc. Eustace probably can’t pay life cycle costs which is the problem, what he’s trying to do is gain an indirect subsidy. He’s not sustainable, in other words. No wonder the state and locals are jumping up and down on his head.

Eustace cannot have it both ways: he’s a major landowner with operations that involve fee-paying clients. He takes on the manner of a willfully destitute person … and does so in the Wall Street Journal! He seeks to parlay his manner into a dispensation from what are very ordinary community standards.  By doing so he seeks a subsidy. That’s why I’m not sympathetic. Eustace is a developer and a fairly clever one, rich but not rich enough. Instead of building a golf course or an equestrian center he proposes a ‘school’ … a project that he puts his own label upon. Here is a prototype:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esalen_Institute Esalen was offered free use of coastal California property + development funds from a Sears executive: rich + rich enough.

Better to make the 1000 acres into a wildlife refuge.

….

From Eddie:

I’ve deliberately avoided commenting on this thread because I know very little about Mr. Conway or his school. But here are a few thoughts concerning some of what I’ve been reading.

Steve said

As for his buildings, he has a particular design or form in mind. If he cannot make his structures conform he should hire someone who can. It’s not hard, there are engineers and architects practicing in North Carolina. It just costs money

Building codes are and have been an impediment to innovation for the past 40 or more years, and it’s getting worse as our empire matures. It’s all about making certain politically connected groups (like corporate builders, and purveyors of materials) happy.

Building Codes

Many studies show that outmoded building codes that regulate residential construction impede technical progress in the construction industry. Although the stated purpose of these regulations is to protect consumers from unsafe buildings, the regulations prevent the use of new and less expensive materials and construction practices. Various studies conclude that if the 10 most “wasteful practices” required by building codes were eliminated, the average cost saving for a single family house would range from 5 percent to 15 percent.

Why do building codes penalize society in this way? Several explanations have been offered. Oster and Quigley (1977) hypothesize that the probability of an innovation in material, design, or organization being permitted by a local building code depends on the professional background of the chief building official and the perceived level of conflict caused by permitting the proposed change. In turn, the conflict is a function of the actual or potential interference by firms, organized labor, and housing consumers.

These interest groups engage in informational or persuasive activities if their potential benefits exceed their lobbying costs. For example, if nonmetallic sheathed cables for wiring are cheaper and easier to install than metal conduit and can be installed by less-skilled electricians, both manufacturers of metal conduit and electricians (especially highly-skilled, high-wage union electricians) may oppose their use.

Oster and Quigley’s study of four innovations shows that these factors do determine the rate of adoption. For example, if the chief building official has two more years of education (they average 14 years), then the probability of permitting preassembled plumbing and wider placement of studs (both of which reduce the demand for local labor) rises by 5 to 6 percent. The higher the percentage of local workers who are unionized, the less likely that innovations reducing the demand for local labor are adopted. Similarly, as the average size of local construction firms increases (and hence their fixed costs of lobbying decrease), it is less likely that innovations will be permitted.
SOURCE:

Oster, Sharon M., and John M. Quigley. 1977. “Regulatory Barriers to the Diffusion of Innovation: Some Evidence from Building Codes.” The Bell Journal of Economics 8:361-77.

In my opinion,there should be exemptions to the International Building Code for buildings constructed primarily to experiment with construction methodologies that don’t fully conform but show promise in reducing

As you can see, when the Diners Get Going, the Whole Kitchen Sink of Problems we face gets pitched into the mix.   We’ve got GITMO, FEMA, Martial Law, oncoming War, the WORKS going on here in terms of how we look at this Microcosm of the whole problem.  Which it is, it’s just one small facet in one small place in Appalachia, and resolving it one way or the other won’t do a damn thing to resolve World Problems, but for anyone seeking to make some attempt at escape from those problems, there are many lessons to be learned here, and I consider the situation to be one worth examining in its own right.  So I am not going to get Highjacked off the topic of Eustace and Turtle Island to discuss the Big Picture of FEMA and Death Camps awaiting Billions.

The main post I will respond to in this essay is the one made by Steve from Virginia, aka Elvis.  In his most recent post on the topic, Steve Sez:

To exit the oil economy, one only has to be poor.

This is absurd, poor folks don’t exit the Oil Economy, they just end up in Slums which leach off the Oil Economy, pirating Electricity, scavenging Oil Age materials to build their Shanty Towns & Favelas, eating on Food Aid or Dumpster Diving etc.  The Billion or more desperately poor people around the world haven’t exited the Oil Economy at all, they still remain totally dependent on its continuing Functionality.

These folks do not know how to Grow their own Food or even find Wild Edible Plants either.  They are 100% dependent on the Oil Economy for continued survival, living generally in Sewers that are the flotsam and jetsam of the Age of Oil.

Even most of the Inuit up here who still live in places like Barrow and do Subsistence Fishing & Hunting haven’t exited the Oil Economy, they live now in Modular Housing dropped there by Barges and Ferries, they get Electricity from local Diesel Generators and they sure don’t go fishing or whaling in Seal Skin Kayaks anymore, they use Aluminum Boats powered by still more Diesel.  When the Diesel stops coming in, I suspect they are not that far removed from the way Grandad lived they won’t be able to return to living that way, but they also will take a hit here to be sure.  They will do better than the vast majority of desperately poor people living in Calcutta, Mexico City, Athens, Detroit and Stockton though.

I don’t deny Eustace Conway is something of a Media Whore, and likely a fairly wealthy dilletante also who only was able to accomplish what he has because he had some MONEY backing him somewhere.  At the same time however, we NEED Media Whores and Experts who can teach people how to live off the land.

Far as looking for “Subsidies”, I don’t see this as valid at all.  Eustace doesn’t want the services of the Fire Department at all, so why should he have to meet fire codes on his property?  The people who come there to learn from Eustace don’t want Toilets, and they want to be able to drink Raw Milk and eat the Chickens they Slaughter.  I am sure they sign Waivers before Eustace will start teaching them this shit, and this is then THEIR risk.  If they get sick from eating the chickens or drinking the raw milk, that is THEIR problem to deal with.  Under the Property Ownership Paradigm, this is HIS plot of land, or really that of the Non-Profit Turtle Island Preserve Corporation.  He isn’t looking for a Subsidy, he is just looking to disengage from the Matrix, which he cannot do entirely but he still does pay the taxes on the land.  So he is Looking for Loopholes, and that is good old fashioned BIZNESS.

In any event, at the moment it appears Eustace is either Winning or he is at least holding even with his battle with the State, using the Media and the Internet to publicize his effort, which is all well and good IMHO.  I think he could do a better job of this, for one thing responding to Emails of support would be a decent idea. LOL.

Bottom Line:  If there IS to be a sustainable future for Homo Sapiens, the route Eustace Conway took through his life and clearly wishes to teach to others is one of the better paradigms out there, certainly a whole lot better than living in a Slum off Pirated Electricity while Dumpster Diving for Food anyhow.  Is he a bit rich but not RICH ENOUGH?  Probably so, but it still makes sense to fight the Good Fight here and exert pressure on the Local Goobermint to make exemptions for this, rather than try to meet the costs of bringing all those buildings and roads “up to code”.  The school likely does not bring in enough income to make those changes, and neither Eustace or the people who go there to learn from him want these changes on PRIVATE PROPERTY.

For others like the Diner SUN Project and Foxsteaders, it does serve as a Lesson that if you want to make something like this work, confrontation with the State in its current incarnation is not a good methodology, and finding ways to “Hide in Plain Sight” are the better tactic.  Regardless of that, IMHO what Eustace is doing to confront the State also must be done, though unless he is really fucking good as a Media Whore he will eventually get squashed here.  It does raise awareness generally speaking though, and somebody gotta do this.

RE

Published on the Doomstead Diner on May 14, 2013

Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner

Already inside the Diner the discussion regarding the feasibility of Turtle Island in the face of Goobermint Regulation are heating up.  Steve from Virginia of Economic Undertow dropped on the following two BOMBS on the regulatory aspect of the Turtle Island Project:

Conway needs to

hire a lawyer. Right now he’s trying to operate a business that is open to the public and he has little room to maneuver vis the authorities.He might be more successful operating a private club where interested parties would become members before being allowed entry.Not only does he need sprinklers and a rest room it must be an ADA compliant rest room; a certain number of stalls per planned number of occupants.He’ll also need parking places, fire exits, etc. If he gets an exemption then every business in North Carolina will demand the same exemptions.

RE: Jeezus says in the Bible, “Render unto Caesar” what that means if you have some sort of public accommodation you have to play by the rules.I’ve dealt with this sort of thing for 35 years there is no way ’round it. Building rules are there b/c the big manufacturers want them, so do contractors, insurance companies, other businesses … and so does the public. Parents don’t want their pumpkins to be burned up in fires or get poisoned by bad plumbing or have their legs broken by falls. They want TV. There are reasons for the rules, it costs more not to have them.What this means is project owners are compelled to use standardized goods in their buildings. That means toilets, windows, electric lights, roof shingles, siding, ductwork, furnaces with thermostats, etc. It’s Eustace vs. Home Depot, he can’t win. Even if he does he’ll wind up flat broke.It’s better for him to either hire a planner and conform, open a gun club or a commune or sell to a (self-created) business shell that can manage the establishment … in other words, he has to survive. He is clearly in no wilderness, he needs to come up with an appropriate ‘Plan B’.When the time comes there will be little in the way of authority, Home Depot will be busted flat and people will do as they please … and Eustace will be free of the need to earn money by way of instruction. Until then … he must render unto Caesar.