Entries Tagged 'The Way Home' ↓

The Shootist was John Wayne’s last movie – with Ron Howard as a badly behaved teenager, no less! – but this post is neither a movie review nor a reminiscence of John Wayne. The film was made in 1976, set in 1901. There are some aspects of civilisation that wouldn’t be harmed much by going back to that era – yes, all the way back to 1901. I don’t mean the gunslinging. But watching the movie, assuming the set was halfway authentic, they did some things right.

They built houses that today we would say have character. Beautiful craftsmanship, hardwood floors, incredibly detailed ceilings, fine furniture made of real wood and that would last many lifetimes if treated with some respect. Compare that to the crap we have today; you can’t tell me that IKEA is better than the furniture they had. Our houses are marginally better insulated and truly ugly, inside and out, compared to what our forebears built. Continue reading →

Most of us don’t fit into your convenient categories. I am, however, conservative, and liberal, and libertarian, and communitarian, and a social democrat. Everybody is right…partly. Nobody has the whole puzzle, but each group/ideology has a piece or two. Unfortunately, we have been effectively polarized into competing camps, so now each group is trying to force their ideology on the other rather than seeing the commonalities. Or even, hard to accept, I know, learning from each other, because none of them has “the” solution, although you would never know that from talking to them.

What I want, and what I think most Canadians and Americans want, is what works and what’s fair. I don’t care what your theory says if it doesn’t work or if it requires screwing people over. If it has been tried and failed, let it go. Politics is not religion, requiring blind faith in the unknown; we have lots of failed experiments to not repeat, and even a few successes. Take the pieces that work from each ideology and toss the rest.

Here are some of the useful core values of each group; I ignore the perverted values and logic that many people in each group have adopted. Continue reading →

We are currently enduring a recession that some have argued is a depression, and others are warning that a collapse is on the way. What is the difference among them, and what does it mean to you?

We all know what a recession is: unemployment rises as the economy contracts, various businesses retract, some go bankrupt, and usually within a year or so there is a full recovery, meaning all those lost jobs are regained.

A depression is like a permanent and worse recession. Unemployment is much higher and may become the new ‘normal,’ and many businesses go bankrupt. In the last depression, government spending in the U.S. in the form of the New Deal and massive spending for the war ended the Great Depression. It scared the pants off many people, not least the rich, because there were so many people with so little to lose that there was a serious threat of socialism.

A collapse is like a depression on steroids. Jobs are lost and businesses go bankrupt, of course. Population also declines as birth rates drop and people die younger. (Russia’s population growth rate has gone negative post-collapse and the country’s population is declining. Thanks to Redditor bigtoe416 for the correction.) A collapse is more than simply an economic setback, as often the society loses the ability to sustain itself at its current population and complexity due to the loss of one or more key resources – combined with the loss of credibility of the leadership and the dominant ideology.

This last is a key point. Rulers maintain their position by claiming the ability to be masters of the current system that is providing for all. If the system ceases to provide, then the system and the leaders are likely to be swept from power. Jared Diamond, in his book Collapse, suggests that this happened in previous collapses. To use the Mayans as an example, it is likely that those at the top claimed the power to influence the gods to bring the rains that in turn brought a bountiful harvest. When drought hit the region and the rains failed to come for several years, starving people lost their faith in the rulers and the entire civilisation collapsed.

In our case, another depression could easily mean the end of capitalism and the current crop of rulers; a collapse would certainly finish it. This was one reason governments around the world were so eager to throw money at the recent bank collapse; had a worldwide depression ensued, those at the top would now be fighting for their political, financial, and possibly actual lives.

Resources

The books below discuss collapse from various points-of-view. Diamond and Tainter studied the collapse of previous civilisations. Ruppert looks at a likely coming collapse due to the end of cheap oil. And Kunstler’s book is a novel describing a likely post-collapse United States.

In previous articles, I discussed various collapse scenarios and why they are likely. Here, let us consider how to prepare as best we can.

Unless you’re 85 years old, a partial or complete collapse within your lifetime is a good possibility. Even if we somehow dodge this outcome, we must still move to a sustainable way-of-living very soon; oil and natural gas are running out, fisheries are collapsing, climate change is happening, and so on. What to do? The possibilities include total self-sufficiency for the individual, joining a lifeboat community, or positioning yourself as best you can within an existing community. Continue reading →