Showing posts with label co-operatives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label co-operatives. Show all posts

Monday, 3 June 2024

The Porcupine Saga, Part 10, When We Met Jack, Part 4

Allan Harper, evening, Wednesday, April 10, 2030

It had started raining so no one went outside during the break and Angie had light work getting everyone back into the addition for the second half of their meeting.

"We were going to hear reports from the metal working crew and the legal crew next," said Angie, "and we still will, but something else has come up. Jodie, why don't you come up here."

Jodie, Wilf and Cindy's teenage daughter, joined Angie at the front of the room. She had her father's height and lean build and her mother's blond hair and blue eyes. "For those who haven't been introduced, I'm Jodie Janes. This is only my second day here, so I don't really know what I think of the place yet. But do I have a couple of questions. The first is—I'm only sixteen, do I get to speak in these meetings? And I'll just get the second one in before it turns out that I don't. If you have to be an adult to get a private room, when does one become an adult?"

"Good questions, Jodie," replied Angie. "And ones that I don't think we've even thought about yet."

"Well, some of us have been thinking about it more than you know," said Jodie. "Jane and I were discussing this sort of thing in our 'home schooling' session this afternoon. She has some interesting ideas."

"Jane?" said Angie.

"Actually, Jodie is the one with the ideas," said Jane, "I was just encouraging her. Let's let her tell us about it."

"OK," said Angie. "And I guess until we can see some good reason to decide otherwise, you do get to speak in these meetings. Any objections?"

There were none and Angie gestured for Jodie to go ahead.

"Maybe I should think about what I'm getting myself into here," said Jodie with a grin. "But best not to waste the opportunity, I guess. It seems like we are rejecting much of our conventional North American culture. That culture is such a mess that it's probably a good thing to be rid of. But this means we're starting from scratch here, making up a new culture as we go along. Last night Tom did a good job of outlining some parts of that new culture, but there are things he left out.

"Much of that comes under the category of what Jane tells me is called 'reproductive labour'—the things we have to do to make sure there is a new generation to carry on after us. Not just gestation and child care, but passing on our culture to the next generation, as well. Even though we are inventing it as we go along, in this case.

"Actually, Tom, you did mention this last night, and that's what got us talking about it. Mostly, Jane and I were talking about the stages you go through as you grow up, and how a culture supports that growth and marks the occasion of moving from one stage to another. She tells me it's called a 'rite of passage' and consists of some sort of test to see if you're ready and, if you pass, of some sort of celebration to welcome you to the next stage.

"It might seem odd that this comes up when we're just talking about housing, but not really. So far, if I understand correctly, we've decided that babies and toddlers will live with their parents until they are of 'school age', whatever that means. Somewhere from age 4 to 6, I guess. Then they will move to a bunkroom with other kids of the same gender. And then at some point, when they are old enough to be considered adults, they get a room of their own. Andrea, is that the gist of what you've written down?"

"Yeah, that's basically it," replied Andrea.

"OK, I have a few suggestions for fine tuning that plan," said Jodie. "First, has anybody thought to ask the younger kids what they think of the bunkroom idea?" asked Jodie.

Some shook their heads, others got a sheepish look on their faces.

"Not to worry," said Jodie, "'cause I have. We've got two boys who are brothers (my brothers, actually) and two girls who are sisters (Jane's girls), and in both cases they are used to sharing a room. So no problem there. Right guys?"

The youngsters indicated their agreement, and Jodie went on, "as Jane and my mom mentioned earlier, it will be interesting to see how it goes when we get some more kids that aren't related, but I guess that's a bridge to cross when we come to it, and having some trained mediators should help.

"We don't have any babies here as yet, but thinking ahead, I've done some babysitting and I've noted that the culture we are leaving isolates new parents at a time when they really need a lot of help. And hardly bothers to acknowledge their efforts as work, either gestation or child rearing. Often a single mother is left to work and try to manage child care at the same time. And nobody seems to think there's anything wrong with that—sure it's tough, but it's the mother's problem, maybe even her 'fault'. I think we should arrange for parents of babies and young kids to get some rest and even a little, ahem, privacy from time to time. Maybe this can be done without building any special rooms, or maybe we want to have a nursery or a bunkroom with training wheels, so to speak. But parents should get lots of help from the rest of us. And recognition for the vital work they are doing.

"Anyway, kids keep growing and get to a point where they can be a little more independent and bunkrooms would be OK. As Mom said, we should get some input from parents of the kids as to when they should make that move. Also from the kids themselves. And have parents, or at least adults, nearby for when the kids need some guidance.

"The next big change happens at puberty. Ages vary, but it's something we all go through and I'd argue for putting us in private rooms at that point. But at the very least you should have another set of bunk rooms, separate from the younger kids.

"I'm a teenager, and I can tell you from being in the middle of it that the whole thing is a mess. Maybe, as some say, we do kind of go crazy for a few years. And how could we not—we're left floating, with no idea of how we fit in. I'd say it should be a training period, with a definite goal of being welcomed as an adult at the end, fully aware of adult rights and responsibilities. We have to be able to do better than conventional society is currently doing, anyway. That society has moved adulthood later and later during the last century or so. I would argue that we should move in the opposite direction, especially since our community seems prepared to support its members when it is time for them to take on a new role. Taken to the extreme that would mean rolling puberty and the transition to adulthood into a single event. Some cultures have done this.

"Anyway, moving on, I haven't heard any talk about where the older people fit in, even though we have quite a few of them," said Jodie. "You all seem hale and hearty at the moment, and that's great, but as time passes this will change and we need to accommodate your decline while still encouraging you to contribute. The idea being that you are still seen as a resource, rather than as a burden. Housing wise, at the very least, we'll need rooms you can access without stairs and that are handy to the dining room."

"Well, I think I've about run out of steam for now" Jodie said after a brief pause. "Thanks for listening."

"Jodie, that's an amazing bunch of ideas just from one afternoon of discussion with Jane." said Angie. "I'm very impressed and I think we own you both a vote of thanks."

The group responded with applause, plus various hooting and hollering from the more rambunctious among them.

When they had quieted down Angie went on, ""So, like I just said, that was a great speech, and you kinda snuck in the bit about you having an adult room and not being stuck in a bunkroom with younger kids. I don't blame you and you may well be right—if we put you in with the younger girls, you just end up as a full time baby sitter for the next few years, which wasn't the intention. I take it you really aren't keen on that either?"

Jodie shook her head, "Nope."

"OK," said Angie, "without setting a precedent, which we don't have to do since we haven't yet adopted any out of date rules of order, I'd suggest we give you a room across the hall from the bunkrooms, and put the parents of the younger kids in the other two rooms in the addition. That way, if they need any guidance, there'll always be someone handy. But it only needs to be you if the parents aren't available, and it can be recognized as part of your 'shit jobs' hours if you wish."

"I guess I can live with that," said Jodie, "even though it means my room will be right next to my parents."

"Hardly the end of the world, Jodie," said Cindy, Jodie's mom. "This puts us back pretty much the way we had things before ocming here, but with a clearer plan for what to do when it is time for you to move out on your own."

"Yeah..." said Jodie. "Depending on how you look at it, I'll be moving out as soon as the new rooms are ready, or since you'll always be within shouting distance, I'll never really be moving away. But not to worry. I think this place offers opportunities for independence without taking on as much risk as many young people have to do these days."

"Right," said Angie. "Also bear in mind that room assignments may have to change as more people arrive And actually, I guess I am a bit out of line here. We should check what the group thinks."

As it turned out, they were all happy with Jodie's suggestions.

"OK, now I guess we can move on to the metal crew's report," said Angie. "Don, you're on."

Allan's mind started to wander as the metal working crew reported on what they'd been doing, and what they intended to be able to do. He couldn't help thinking back to what Jack had asked that afternoon. Where did he fit in? It seemed like you had to be part of a crew to make much of an impression at Porcupine. So far, he'd been working on his own, with a bit of help from Tom now and then. It looked to him like they needed a power crew. Especially if they were going to make electrical power out of firewood. Then there was what his father had said about caring enough to have the reach to attain certain technologies. It seemed an about face from what Tom had said the night before, but he thought he understood what Tom meant—some things might just take more effort than they were worth. Allan wanted to make sure that was looked into in detail, not just based on the assumptions of an influential guy like his dad. So maybe a "tech reach" crew as well.

He resolved to bring this up at the end of the meeting and then returned his attention to Don's presentation for the metal working crew. Don was just wrapped up with a quick summary of the things they hope to be able to make for the Co-operative. It was a pretty comprehensive list.

Next, the legal crew was called on for their report. Mark made it short—if they jumped through the right legal hoops and submitted the right forms, it seemed like they could set up a non-profit co-operative dedicated to the goals Tom had outlined the night before. With official government recognition, which would be useful as long as governments were still functioning—a few years yet, anyway. If no one had any objections, he would start on that tomorrow. And no one did object.

"OK," said Angie, "Anyone have anything else before we pack it in for the night?"

Allan put up his hand and was recognized.

"I just have an idea for a couple of new crews which I think we should look at putting together," he said. "A power crew to do the job I'm doing now with generating electricity, and a 'tech reach crew' to look at how high tech (or low tech) we want to go."

"Sounds good," said Angie. "Andrea can add those to the list of crews we'll start setting up tomorrow, but I think the way that has worked so far is that whoever sees the need for a crew rounds up some like minded people and goes for it."

"OK," said Allan. "I'll have a go at that real soon now."

"Nobody else?" asked Angie. No hands went up, so she continued, "Right, it's getting late, so I think I'll declare the meeting closed for the night."

A glance outside made it clear to Allan that it was still raining, and it didn't seem fair to expect Jack to walk home. Everyone else was standing up and stretching so Allan took the opportunity to do the same and then went over to Jack. "It's raining pretty hard, would you like a ride home?"

"Hell yes—I'm no bear for punishment," said Jack, "and I'm supposed to be back here first thing tomorrow morning, so I'd better get home and get to bed. Lead on."

Allan turned back to Erika for a moment, explaining where he was going. "OK, I'll be in bed when you get back—it's been a long day," she replied.

Allan led the way to the back door, and they grabbed their coats from where they'd hung them before supper. Allan selected a set of keys from a board where the keys for all Porcupine's vehicles were hung on hooks.

"Nothing for it but to run," Allan said. "It's the red Chevy Bolt on this side of the lot."

He put his head down and ran for the car, unplugged the charge cord and got in the driver's seat. Jack joined him only seconds later. The car was already pointed towards the road, so all Alan had to do was turn it on and hit the accelerator. Mindful of that bridge, he turned right and headed for the next side road to the west.

They had just turned onto the side road when Jack spoke up, "I guess I should have thanked you folks for letting me sit in on your meeting."

"Oh, no problem there," replied Allan, "you were a pretty quiet observer, anyway."

"Just taking things in," said Jack. "I must say you folks make consensus decision making look easy."

"Yeah, that amazes me too," said Allan.

"What was it David Graeber said?," said Jack "Something about how consensus isn't about argument. It's about changing things around: you get a proposal, you work something out, people foresee problems, you find solutions. At the end, you come up with something that everyone thinks is okay. Most people like it, and nobody hates it."

"Wow," said Allan. "I'm impressed that anybody around here would have even heard of Graeber, much less be able to quote him from memory. I only know the name because Dad is a big fan."

"Well," said Jack, "I picked that up from Tom's blog. And I probably messed the quote up, but you get the idea."

"I think we all do get the idea, and everybody is trying to make it work," said Allan, "rather than deliberately trying to screw it up, anyway, which makes it a lot easier."

"Although Angie did kinda dodge the toilet issue..." said Jack.

"Yeah she did," said Allan. "Hopefully, with a few days to think about it, people won't get surer they hate it. I'm already less upset than I was when Erica brought the idea up."

"Well, I hope you're right" said Jack. "And my driveway's the next on the right."

Allan pulled in, turned around and came to a stop with Jack's side of the car right next to his porch.

"I hope you can leave that shotgun locked up for now Jack," he said as Jack got out of the car.

"Yeah, well... I've had a chance to rethink things," said Jack, "and now I'm thinkin' there's nothin' worth huntin' that's in season this time of year."

"That's the spirit," said Allan. "See you in the morning?"

"Yep, I'll be around about nine with a tractor and chainsaw," said Jack. "See you then."

Coming soon, Part 11 of the Porcupine Saga.


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

Maintaining the lists of links that I've been putting at the end of these posts in getting cumbersome, so I have decided to just include a link to the Porcupine section of the Site Map, which features links to all the episodes I've published thus far.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 16 November 2021

What I've Been Reading, September and October 2021

Links

Above the Fold

Miscellaneous

  • Kim Stanley Robinson on the structure of feeling of this perilous moment, by Cory Doctorow, Medium
  • What Is Up With American Trucks? by Quinten Dol, Medium
    "We’re all suffering for your masculinity crisis."
    I'd say this is a case of vehicle manufacturers talking advantage of our innate, and often frustrated, drive to dominate. Culture takes advantage of those innate drives and uses them towards its own ends, in this case to make a tidy profit. And make no mistake, selling those trucks is a lot more profitable than selling smaller, more appropriate vehicles.
  • Review: A “Dune” Sanded to Dullness, by Richard Brody, The New Yorker
    "Whereas David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation turned Frank Herbert’s fantasy world into a visceral cinematic experience, Denis Villeneuve’s version remains in the realm of worthy principles."
    I read Dune in highschool,around 50 years ago, and have re-read it at least once since then, as well as most of the sequels and prequels, but not recently. Still, it seems this reviewer has got some of his details mixed up and is clearly a fan of Lynch's version.
  • Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Is A Future-Shock Masterpiece, by Chris Nashawaty, Esquire
    A more positive review. But I just have to say it, Dune is certainly not the best science fiction book I have ever read, and despite being praised for introducing a generation to ecological ideas, it makes at least one significant mistake, ecology wise. Only in an appendix does it address the question of where all the oxygen is coming from on Arrakis, and even then it doesn't answer the question of where the sandworms are getting the energy to release all that oxygen.
  • The Enduring Appeal of “Dune” as an Adolescent Power Fantasy, by Ed Park, The New Yorker
    "When you’re a teen-ager like Paul Atreides, it can seem like authority figures are always forcing you to do pointless, excruciating things."
  • Vikings lived in North America by at least the year 1021, by Bruce Bower, Science News
    "Scientists used tree ring data to more precisely date a UNESCO historic site in Newfoundland"

Coronavirus

Co-operation, Mutual Aid and Direct Democracy

Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

  • David Graeber American Anarchist, Brian Rose interviews David Graeber on London Real
    "When I say the word anarchist you probably have an image of a bomb-throwing skinhead shouting slogans and facing down riot police. This week’s London Real guest David Graeber is going to change that image forever. A self-proclaimed anarchist, David is far more the picture of the soft-spoken, thoughtful academic than a combative activist. But David’s credentials as a campaigner and anti-capitalist thinker speak volumes."

Agriculture

  • The Myth of Regenerative Ranching, by Jan Dutkiewicz, Gabriel N. Rosenberg, The New Republic
    "The purveyors of “grass-fed” beef want you to believe that it solves meat’s environmental problem. But this is merely a branding exercise, not a climate solution."
  • Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story, by Joe Fassler, The Counter
    "Splashy headlines have long overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and economics. Now, extensive new research suggests the industry may be on a billion-dollar crash course with reality."

Recipes and Cooking

  • Lost In The Sauce, by Nicholas Hayward, Medium—One table, One World
    "Sauce Hacks, Simple-Delicious"

Genetic Engineering

Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

  • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
    "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
    A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
  • GMO labeling: Trick or treat?, by Nathanael Johnson, Grist
    "Many of the arguments against Washington state's GMO labeling initiative make sense. Here's why, despite that, it should pass."

Practical Skills

Writing Skills

Debunking Resources

These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

Science

Lacking an Owner's Manual

The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

  • How do you handle a situation where someone shows up empty handed to a potluck and then wants to leave with a load of leftovers? by Karlea Morallo, Quora
    Chock this up to the concept of mutual aid—one of the most powerful ideas in human culture.
  • How to maintain a healthy brain, by Kailas Roberts, Aeon-Psyche
    "Adopt these lifestyle changes and you will not only sharpen your mind today but also reduce your risk of dementia later on"

    • Books

    Fiction

    Non-Fiction

    Posted by at No comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Monday, 23 November 2020

    What I've Been Reading, October 2020

    Links

    Above the Fold

    • Howard Zinn: Don’t Despair about the Supreme Court, by Howard Zinn, The Progressive
      "It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to uphold justice."
    • The Tragedy of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, by Matto Mildenberger, Pocket— Scientific American
      "The man who wrote one of environmentalism’s most-cited essays was a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamaphobe—plus his argument was wrong."
    • A response to Pollin and Chomsky: We need a Green New Deal without growth, by Jason Hickel, on Jason's blog
      Good stuff, but one needs to be aware of EROEI and the surplus energy problem to really have an intelligent discussion of Green New Deals. And to be aware that as we speak the planet's carrying capacity is decreasing, and so the sustainability target we are aiming for is continually moving.
    • Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game, by Jeet Heer, The Nation
      "Trump is refusing to concede and purging the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. The moment requires vigilance rather than panic."
    • 'Sustainability is wishful thinking': get ready for the energy downshift, by John McCrone, Stuff—Environment
      "Renewables can’t deliver in this way so energy abundance is about to become energy poverty. And we need to get ready."
      "Focus on eliminating the need for energy rather than on worrying how to keep increasing its supply."
    • San Francisco just banned gas in all new buildings. Could it ever happen in Australia?, by Susan M Park and Madeline Taylor, The Conversation
      Perhaps all those who are eagerly awaiting their gas hook ups here in Kincardine should ask if this could every happen in Ontario.
    • Degrowth: A response to Branko Milanovic, by Jason Hickel, on his blog
      This is a must read, even if it is ridiculously optimistic about the likelihood of such policies ever being implemented. It is important to know what we are going to say no too, as we rush on toward collapse. And do follow the links, which lead to a bunch of good articles.

    Miscellaneous

    Things end up in this section not because they aren't important, but because I can't figure out what other section they should go in.

    Suddenly, "liberal" is a dirty word

    And with good reason, it seems.

    • David Graeber on the Extreme 'Centre', by David Graeber, YouTube—Double Down News
      “It strikes me that what’s called the moderates are the most immoderate people possible”
      "Previously unreleased video of David Graeber talking about liberalism. Originally filmed at the start of 2020. We planned to make a dedicated film on the subject with David upon his return to London. We release this video with the blessing of his beloved wife Nika.
      Rest in Power David Graeber"

    Coronavirus

    Capitalism, Communism, Anarchy

    • The radical aristocrat who put kindness on a scientific footing, by Lydia Syson, Aeon—Psyche
    • Economics for the people—the challenge of reclaiming the commons from capitalism, by Dirk Philipsen, Aeon
      "Against the capitalist creeds of scarcity and self-interest, a plan for humanity’s shared flourishing is finally coming into view"
      We should be concerned about the "tragedy of the private", not the "tragedy of the commons".
      While this article recognizes the role of fossil fuels in driving growth of the private, it also makes a statement like, "We produce and grow enough for every child, woman and man to have a good and dignified life wherever they live". True, but we must consider the cost to the planet of producing and growing that much, and ask ourselves how long it can be sustained. (Not long, in case anyone is wondering.)
      Scarcity is real, capitalism only makes it worse, even as we produce more and more while ignoring the consequences
      Ordinary people these days have tastes borrowed from billionaires (comfort, convenience, entertainment) and no idea of frugality, so when you say "we produce enough", and talk about prosperity for all, it is taken as something entirely different from what this article means.
    • Are You An Anarchist?, by David Graeber, YouTube
    • David Graeber on basic income, by David Graber, YouTube
      "David Graeber speaking at 'Basic Income: How do we get there?' Basic Income UK meet-up at St Clements Church Kings Square, London, 3 December 2015."
    • David Graeber on a Fair Future Economy, by David Graeber, YouTube
      David Graeber was an anthropologist, a leading figure in the Occupy movement, and one of our most original and influential public thinkers.
    • The Future Is Worker-Owned, by Douglas Rushkoff, Medium—Team Human
      "It’s time for businesses to work for people, not the other way around."

    The New Fascism, and Antifa

    I hear a lot of well educated people saying that the people some of us are calling fascists don't meet all the criteria for being "real" fascists. Others have even accused us of calling anyone we disagree with a fascist. I predict that a few decades (maybe just a few years) from now those same people will be saying they wish they hadn't been quite so fussy with their definitions, and had acted sooner to oppose these "new fascists", even if they weren't identical to the fascists of the twentieth century.

    Resource Depletion, formerly (and still including) Peak Oil

    The change in title stems from the fact that it's not just oil that is peaking.

    • The fall of an empire, by Felix Salmon, Axios
      "The decline of ExxonMobil has been remarkable in its magnitude and unexpectedness."
    • Shell To Shut Down Louisiana Refinery, by Irina Slav, OilPrice.com
      "Royal Dutch Shell will shut down its Convent refinery in Louisiana after failing to find a buyer for the facility, Bloomberg reports, citing a statement by the company."

    Climate Change

    • Russian Arctic Sea Fails to Freeze , The Moscow Times
      "Russia’s Arctic Laptev Sea has not yet frozen for the first time since records began, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Centre."

    Gardening

    Genetic Engineering

    Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that this section was paid for by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its product. Millions of dollars are spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are equally safe. Sadly neither method of agriculture is even remotely substainable.

    • Panic-free GMOs, A Grist Special Series by Nathanael Johnson
      "It’s easy to get information about genetically modified food. There are the dubious anti-GM horror stories that recirculate through social networks. On the other side, there’s the dismissive sighing, eye-rolling, and hand patting of pro-GM partisans. But if you just want a level-headed assessment of the evidence in plain English, that’s in pretty short supply. Fortunately, you’ve found the trove."
      A series of articles that does a pretty good job of presenting the facts about GMOs. I plan to include one article from this series here each month.
    • Food for bots: Distinguishing the novel from the knee-jerk in the GMO debate, by Nathanael Johnson, GRist— Panic-free GMOs

    Practical Skills

    • Make a mid-century modern-style coffee table, by Patrick Laperrière and Matt Wallace, YouTube— Lee Valley
      "Lee Valley’s Patrick Laperrière and Matt Wallace show you how to make a mid-century modern-style coffee table out of black walnut."
      I watched this video because I am at the moment seriously considering making a coffee table. It presents some good ideas.
    • Using a Blanket Pin, by Coalcracker Bushcraft, YouTube

    Canadian Politics

    Politics

    Linguistics

    Debunking Resources

    These are of such importance that I've decide to leave them here on an ongoing basis.

    Science

    Lacking an Owner's Manual

    The human body/mind/spirit doesn't come with an owner's manual, and we continually struggle to figure out how best to operate them.

    Gender and Sexuality

    There is No God, and Thou Shall Have No Other Gods

    I don't think I've made any secret of the fact that I am an atheist, but I may not have made it clear that I think any sort of worship is a bad thing and that believing in things is to be avoided whenever possible. Indeed, I do not believe in belief itself. That's what the "Thou shall have no other gods" is about—it's not enough to quit believing in whatever God or Gods you were raised to believe in, but also we must avoid other gods, including material wealth, power and fame.

    Further, many people today (including most atheists) follow the religion of "progress", which is based on the belief that mankind is destined to follow a road that leads from the caves ever upward to the stars, and that however bad things seem today, they are bound to be better tomorrow due to technological advancement and economic growth. This is very convenient for those who benefit most from economic growth, but it is hardly based on any sort of science and leads to a great deal of confused thinking.

    Humour

    These are great times for political satire.

    Books

    Fiction

     

    Non-Fiction

    • Natural: How Faith in Nature's Goodness Leads to Harmful Fads, Unjust Laws, and Flawed Science, by Alan Levinovitz
      Overall, this book does a pretty good job of highlighting much of the nonsense done in the name of nature. If anything, he is a little too kind to the "natural" nuts, especially in the section on medicine. Personally, I just haven't found the medical profession to be as uncaring and inhuman as Leviowitz would have us believe. But then I don't live in the U.S.
      Anyway, if the idea that everything natural isn't necessarily good is new to you, this one is definitely worth a read.
    Posted by at 6 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Wednesday, 17 July 2019

    Responding to Collapse, Part 10: the future of the power grid

    Sunset over Lake Huron

    In this series of posts I've been advising my readers that moving to a small town remote from large population centres, in an area that can supply the basic necessities of water, food and firewood, is a prudent way of coping with the ongoing collapse of BAU (Business as Usual). With the caveat that some advance preparation will be needed to ensure successful use of those resources.

    In the next few posts in this series, we'll look at some of the details of how BAU will collapse and how you can prepare to weather that collapse. In the immediate future infrastructure breakdowns will get more frequent and longer until finally it's no longer practical to rely on BAU for the necessities of life. It seems to me that supplies of electrical power, diesel fuel and money will be at the heart of many of the troubles that lie ahead, so I'll concentrate on those areas.

    And while I'll mainly be talking about infrastructure breakdowns we should remember that interruptions of service can occur for a couple of other reasons.

    The first has to do with the way our economy is organized and how we choose to provide vital services such as power, water, sewers, housing, food, communications, transportation, education, health care and so forth.

    Today most of the world's nations are capitalistic, with a distinct neo-liberal flavour. Under such conditions, companies are operated to make a profit and other goals, such as the public good, are strictly secondary. So when a "for profit" company finds its business becoming less profitable they must find ways to increase their charges or to supply less for the same fees or to quit supplying customers in less profitable areas altogether. And if they don't do those things they will either be bought out by companies that will, or they'll suffer bankruptcy. If there doesn't appear to be much chance that another company could make a good profit in the same business then it will never be reestablished. And if the public was relying on that company to provide vital services, then we are just out of luck.

    Of course there are other ways of organizing an economy, and in particular other ways of setting up companies to provide infrastructure services. But the argument is often made that for profit companies operating in a free market are more efficient. I would question if there has ever been any such thing as a free market, and whether it would function as predicted in any case. Efficiency in this case is defined as the amount of return on share holders' investments, and has nothing to do with providing a high quality and reliable service to your customers.

    But perhaps we should set all that aside in order to focus on the really critical thing, which is the difference between the way such companies work in growing economies versus contracting economies. In a growing economy it is relatively easy to make a profit and do so while supplying a service for the public good. But when the economy begins to contract that becomes more and more difficult for "for profit" companies.

    Governments can set up non-profit organizations whose primary goal is to provide services for the public good and they are likely to last longer in a contracting economy. In my experience, contrary to typical capitalist propaganda, they can also be quite efficient. But as the economy contracts so will tax revenues and eventually governments will have to cut back on the services they provide. With good planning though, they can do this in a controlled manner with lots of advanced warning, and give people time to adapt to the situation.

    As the economy gets even weaker, co-operatives organized by the people who need the services hold considerable promise. I'll have more to say about this over the next few posts.

    The second thing is that if you rely on BAU to make a living, you will find that your own economic circumstances are declining. When you can no longer afford the services you have come to rely on, you'll have find ways to provide them for yourself, and in the process learn how to get by with less, like it or not.

    I can consume along with the best of them, and there are certainly all kinds of things that it would be useful to have as we try to become more self reliant. But don't worry too much if you can't afford some of the shiny toys I'll be mentioning in future posts. As well trained consumers we may feel that buying things must be the solution to the problems that face us, but it isn't. Actually, there is no solution to the fix the world is in at the moment, and the best we can do is adapt to the changing conditions. Part of that is learning to get by while consuming less. This is hard for me and I'll bet it's hard for you too. That's why I talked first about preparing by become part of your new community (in posts 7 and 8 of this series), rather that the less important preparations that involve accumulating "stuff".

    Back 2012, when I started this blog, the authorities recommended that you be prepared to weather emergencies lasting for as long as three days (72 hours). They were basically saying, "don't rely on us to be there immediately—it may take as long as 72 hours before help arrives." In the meantime, this has been changed to two weeks in some areas. Is emergency response capability declining, or are they expecting more lengthy and severe emergencies? I suspect both. Of course serious "preppers" are laughing at this—they'd recommend that you have supplies on hand for a year or two. I don't disagree, but you have to start somewhere. And as collapse deepens those longer intervals to prepare for will come to seem more reasonable.


    Power Outages

    Power outages will probably be the most frequent infrastructure failure you'll have to cope with. Short outages have relatively minor impacts, but because electricity is at the heart of so much that goes on in modern civilization, as outages stretch out they start to effect more and more things.

    Eventually, it seems very likely that the power grid in many, if not most, areas will cease to function. I encounter two different responses to this idea. Many people cannot conceive that their 24 hour a day, essentially infinite supply of power could every come to an end. Others are fixated on the idea of a sudden and hard crash which will bring the whole of industrial civilization to an end, including the power grid.

    I'm somewhere in between, holding what I think is a more detailed and nuanced opinion. Most of the rest of this post is going to be spent talking about how the slow decline of the power grid will go, leaving the responses I would recommend for the next post.

    Power outages can be as simple as a utility pole getting knocked over during a traffic accident, to as complex as the grid failures that happened in northeastern North America in 1965 and 2003. And to take it even further, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) from nuclear weapons or coronal mass ejections (solar flares) can do huge damage to electrical girds which may be very hard to recover from. But I think some of the most common and serious problems with the grid will come from three specific areas:

    • The first is equipment failure due to age and/or lack of maintenance, aggravated by overloads such as air conditioning load during summer heat waves. As the economy continues to contract power companies are going to find themselves short of capital and less able to invest in their own systems, leaving those systems more susceptible to failure. /li>
    • The second will be damage due to storms that are growing more frequent and more intense due to climate change—things like high winds, tornados and ice storms in particular. Lengthy outages will happen when there are widespread weather related problems combined with shortages of spare parts and limited manpower to install them. Those latter two problems will come mainly from cash strapped utilities trying to save money.
    • The third is sabotage. The grid is very exposed to a saboteur who knows what he is doing, and because of its geographically diffuse nature, very hard to secure. As collapse intensifies, there will be increased civil unrest—more angry people looking for easy targets that symbolize the establishment. The grid is certainly one such target.

    Of course, these concerns apply to the grid as it exists today, using conventional generation. It seems there is going to be a serious attempt to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, primarily solar and wind. Those who are pushing for a "Green New Deal" are telling people that we can use wind and solar to replace fossil fuels, and that in the process more jobs will be created and we'll actually end up more prosperous. This is a very unrealistic dream and just off the top of my head I can think of four serious problems with it:

    1. What solar and wind produce is electricity. But electricity supplies only 18 to 20% of our current energy use. Most of the rest comes directly from coal, oil and natural gas, and those fuels are used in ways that will be difficult, if not outright impossible, to replace with electricity.

      The main issue is that a battery is not nearly as effective a way to store energy as a tank of diesel fuel. And there are definite physical limitations on how much better batteries can get— we can probably improve them by a factor of two, but that's about it. Despite what we keep hearing in the news, it simply isn't practical to use batteries to power airplanes or long distance heavy transport by road, rail or sea. The quantity of batteries needed, and the size and weight of those batteries, is the problem.

      There are many industrial processes that use coal or natural gas for heat. Replacing those fuels with electricity may be theoretically possible but we haven't, for the most part, even started to develop ways to do so, much less begun to implement them.

    2. Phasing out fossil fuels would require using renewables to supply much larger quantities of electricity than we are currently using. But there are fundamental problems with using renewables to produce even part of the comparatively small amount of electricity we use now.

      One aspect of running a power grid that the general public is largely unaware of is that generation must be matched exactly to the load. Since load is something the grid operator cannot control to any great extent, generation that is "dispatchable"—that can be turned on and off on demand and ramped up and down as required—is very important. Conventional generation is dispatchable to varying degrees but renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are intermittent and for the most part not under the control of the grid operator—the very opposite of dispatchable. As such, renewables only exacerbate the problems of running a grid, especially given the lack of feasible large scale storage technologies. Yes, I know there are a number of storage technologies available but none of them are economical to use on the scale that would be required for use in a power grid with intermittent renewable energy sources like solar and wind.

      The concept of a "smart grid" which gives greater control of both generation and load offers hope of addressing these problems to some minor degree, but only at the price of adding complexity to the system. And adding complexity never increases reliability.

    3. The immediate reason for switching away from fossil fuels is to reduce the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere in order to combat climate change. But no one seems to be thinking of the carbon footprint of switching away from carbon. The switchover to renewables would be a massive undertaking powered mainly by fossil fuels, and the amount of CO2 being released would greatly increase during that effort.

      Much of this construction effort would also require large quantities of steel and concrete. Making steel and concrete involves the release of CO2, regardless of where the energy comes from—it's inherent to the chemistry of the processes involved.

      So it is by no means obvious that we can get off fossil fuels and onto renewables without creating an even worse climate crisis that the one we are currently facing.

    4. Renewables have a very low EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). A high EROEI is essential to the functioning of a modern industrial economy--money is just accounting, energy is really what makes the economy go. Any country which adds a large quantity of renewables to its energy mix will lower its overall average EROEI, making it more difficult to support a growing economy and a high tech industrial society. So even if we could somehow manage to switch over entirely to renewables, we'd have trouble sustaining a high enough level of technology to maintain and repair solar and wind generation facilities. And replacing them when they wear out would be a real stretch. Switching to renewables is something we might be able to do once, but then we'd be in big trouble.

    All this is of course based on not having to change our lifestyles, not having to accept a lower level of prosperity and consumption. Indeed one frequently hears people talking about increasing economic growth in order to bring the poor parts of the world up to our level of consumption. It is clear to me that this is not going to happen and that what we really need to do is reduce our levels of consumption down to what can be supported without fossil fuels, using local, sustainable, low tech renewables. It is also clear to me that we will not do this voluntarily, that the majority of our efforts will go into maintaining business as usual regardless of the consequences.

    Give all these factors time to work and it will become difficult to continue running the power grid as a whole. Some parts of the gird will simply quit working. Others that have proved unreliable, which place the grid as a whole at risk, will eventually have to be excluded from the grid. These islands will grow until the grid as we know it falls apart.

    There will be a few areas where generating equipment will continue to function for a long time and will be able to supply local load. Again, the matching generation and load will be a problem since most such generation comes in large chunks and is a long way from large amounts of load. The most hopeful situations are small hydro (water) powered generators, which can be run at less than full capacity and adjust quickly to match varying loads.

    Anyway, it seems clear that we can indeed expect more frequent and longer power outages. But what are the effects of these outages, and what can we do to mitigate them?


    The effects of power outages

    When the power goes out, you lose the lights, heat, cooling, cooking equipment, refrigeration and so forth in your own home. Even most oil, gas and wood heating systems rely on electricity for control, ignition and circulating fans. Then there are all the services that comes to you from outside your home, that you rely on to just work, but which need electricity to do that.

    In general, the most critical services run off batteries which are kept fully charged as long as the power is on. When the power goes out, these services keep right on running as if nothing had happened, at least until the batteries are discharged. The batteries for the controls in power stations are rated for eight hours. The batteries in cell phone towers are rated for two to four hours.

    Everything I'm finding on the internet says that the central switching stations for land line telephone service should keep working even during long power outages, which implies both batteries and backup generators. I have some doubts about this, and I'll be keeping an eye out for more detailed information.

    Many slightly less critical services have generators that start automatically with only a brief interruption when the power goes out and run as long as there is fuel (usually diesel fuel) in the tank. If arrangements have been made to refill that tank, then this can go on for quite a long time.

    Even less critical services than these can have a portable generator hooked up to them if need be. This would include facilities operating on battery power, if the power is off so long that the batteries need to be recharged.

    Most service stations don't have backup power so you likely won't be able to get fuel (gasoline, diesel, propane) while the power is off. During long outages the many supply chains that are powered by gasoline and/or diesel fuel will be in trouble.

    Natural gas pipelines have to be pressurized to keep to gas flowing through them. Some of the pumps used to do this are powered by natural gas, some by electricity. And I suspect that at least some of the controls for the gas powered pumps are electrical. So your natural gas supply, at least in some areas, will be compromised during electrical outages.

    The pumps in municipal water and sewage systems need electrical power too. Some may have backup generators, but not all. If you live on a farm or in a very small town, your toilet is likely gravity feed into a septic system and weeping bed, and will work as long as you have water to flush them. Or perhaps you have already set up a composting toilet which requires no power at all. Your water supply is probably from you own well, with a pump driven by an electric motor that uses 240V AC (if you are in North America). Even if you have a generator, you may need an electrician to help you hook it up to that motor.

    Refrigeration of food in grocery stores and pharmaceuticals in pharmacies and hospitals will be jeopardized. Fortunately our local hospital does have a backup generator.

    Radio and TV can be important sources of information during emergencies. But you will likely find that only a very few of your local stations are set up to keep broadcasting during power outages.

    It would also be great if internet service could continue during power outages. I understand it some areas it does, but we get our internet through the local cable TV company, and even short outages to their facilities knock out our internet connection and our cable TV service, even if the power is still on at our place. Your situation may be different—I hope so.

    Oddly, or so it seems to me, most traffic lights aren't backed up in any way and stop working when the power is off.

    ATMs won't be working, nor the systems that allows us to pay for things by credit and debit cards. Even if you do have cash in hand, you may find many retail outlets are unable to sell you anything when their cash registers and product code scanners aren't working. Many of them may just lock their doors for the duration of the outage.

    Not all of them, though—I was quite impressed during a recent outage when I saw the guy behind the counter at a nearby convenience store beavering away with a cash box, battery operated calculator and a notebook to record sales in. It can be done, but one hopes the prices are marked clearly on items rather than encoded in UPCs. This is an example of an individual (or maybe his manager) taking the situation in hand and keeping things working rather than sitting back and letting them fall apart.

    No doubt I am missing many of the potential effects of long power outages, but I think this gives you the flavour of what you'll be facing. Next time I'll talk about how you can mitigate the effects of power outages, both short and long, and what your community can do to cope when it finally finds itself permanently isolated from the grid.


    Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

    Posted by at 11 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Monday, 18 March 2019

    Responding to Collapse, Part 7: A Team Sport

    Late Winter (Early Spring?) on Lake Huron

    At the end of my first "Preparing for/Responding to Collapse" post , I said that we'd be considering the following subjects in this series:

    • where you want to be—where bad things are less likely to happen
    • who you want to be with—people you know, trust and can work with
    • what you are doing—something that can support you, and allow you to develop the skills and accumulate the resources you will need

    I think I've given the first one adequate treatment in the last 5 posts (2 to 6 in this series) so now I'm moving on to the second item—who you want to be with.

    So, who do you want to be with? The main thing, I think, is that you want to be with people, rather than being alone—to borrow a phrase from Douglas Rushkoff, being human is a team sport. (Here's a podcast with Rushkoff and Naomi Klein that I found interesting. Of course Rushkoff isn't talking about exactly the same thing as me, but it's still good stuff.)

    What I am talking about is this: it is in the nature of human beings, and very much to our benefit, to work together in groups. Such groups act as a force multiplier, achieving more than what you would expect from simply adding up the number of people involved. And that's more both in the sense of 1) achieving the group's common goals and 2) enhancing the individual well being of its members. For most of the time that people have existed, we've lived together in small groups (less than Dunbar's number), made decisions largely by consensus, and allocated resources in a sort of "primitive communism"—from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, if I can be forgiven for quoting Karl Marx.

    During the difficult times that lie ahead of us, I think we will need to fall back on this way of living, in order to successfully meet the challenges we face.

    But over the last few centuries this sort of thing has gotten a bad name. People have gone from living in small, close knit communities made up of large, extended families to living in isolated nuclear families or as lone individuals, and relating to other people mainly via the formal, money based economy. During the time when this change was happening, the level of affluence in our society continually increased, allowing us to get by just fine more or less on our own. It seems that many people have come to believe that individualism is at least partly responsible for the progress we have experienced, and that our former way of living probably had to be abandoned in order to reap the benefits of that progress.

    I would say that such ideas are a long way from reality. So much so that I think we'd better stop here for a closer look at the advantages of living and working together in groups, and follow that up by considering why we have given up on this way of life. Best to be clear on this before going on to the practicalities and pitfalls of forming and working together in groups within your new community.

    It's interesting that while today's corporations are intensely capitalistic and competetive, within them people are often organized in teams or crews whose members relate to each other in a very "communistic" way. I'd say that this is a tacit acknowledgement of what actually works best. For much of my career with Hydro One (Ontario's electric transmission and distribution utility) I worked as part of a crew of maintenance electricians. While it is true that there are some jobs that can be done by one person, most of the work we did went much better when done by a small group of people. Once such a crew gets to know each other and the work they are doing, they can organize themselves to do that work more productively and enjoyably than the same number of individuals could do working separately.

    Within a crew there is usually a diversity of skills that complement each other, and allow people to focus their efforts on the parts of the job best suited to them. And of course the nature of most work (be it physical or mental) is such that it can be done quicker and more easily if the people doing it help each other.

    Teams like this are an excellent learning environment, where you can pick up a great deal from people with more experience or different experience than you. Not just job related learning, but also contributing to your growth as a human being.

    Beyond productivity and training, there are many benefits to the members of the crew which are not an intentional part of the situation or necessarily supported by management, but which certainly make for a better work environment— camaraderie, companionship, support (both in times of difficulty, and in growth and accomplishment), and the ability to make the boring parts of the job go quicker with humour, story telling, singing, etc.

    As it happened we were also members of a labour union, which did its best to shield us from the worst predations of management. Unions are a pretty clear case of the use of group solidarity in dealing with a situation where the power dynamics would otherwise be completely one sided.

    Co-operative efforts of groups of people in organizations like food co-ops and housing co-ops enjoy the benefits of enhanced bargaining power and economies of scale that are not available to nuclear families or single individuals. A group can also provide a safety net for its members in a way that conventional insurance, provided by a company whose main responsibility is to its share holders, can never do.

    People working and living together also get to know each other quite well. Because of this the group can effectively discourage its members from shirking their responsibilities and provide them with a strong incentive to contribute to the full extent of their abilities.

    And lastly I'll just note that compared to an isolated existence, living in groups with people that care about you and will help when you need it, has considerable psychological benefits.

    So, given all these advantages, why have we largely abandoned our extended families and close knit communities?

    Certainly, there is some overhead involved in living and working in close knit groups, and you can see why people who have attained a sufficient level of affluence might choose to exercise their independence and strike out on their own.

    But the idea that group life is not worth the effort is somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy. Living as we do these days, with a big emphasis on individualism and little opportunity to practice working in groups or learn it from experience people, we have forgotten many of the interpersonal the skills that make primitive communism work so well. And as long as things are going well there is little incentive to really try to make co-operative efforts succeed. We can do just fine on our own, without the trouble of getting along with others. Those whose lives are the most precarious, for whom individualism really isn't working, have come to simply not trust other people, and would never think of working together for their mutual advantage.

    But even allowing for all that, I think we also need to keep in mind that isolated people are a lot easier to control and exploit, and this is very much to the advantage of the people who are running things in our society.

    Whenever I see people making choices that clearly run counter to their own best interests, I've found that I only have to look a little further to uncover a great deal of effort that is being expended to make them do so. Effort that is being made by those who do stand to benefit from those poor choices. This is certainly the case practically everywhere in the world today, with most countries ruled by oligarchies who at best give only lip service to democracy, and are not of the people, by the people or for the people.

    So, I would like to suggest that what going on here is rather different from the way we are encouraged to perceive it. Maybe, for most people, the growth of individualism was anything but progress. And while it is true that this happened while a lot of progress was happening, you don't want to confuse cause and effect. If you look closely, you can see that much of that progress was basically economic growth, or very closely tied to economic growth, which was largely driven by our switch over to using fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. So I'd say economic growth and the rise of modern capitalism drove the growth of individualism, rather than the other way around.

    A excerpt from David Graeber's Debt: the first 5000 years may help clarify:

    By the end of World War II, the specter of an imminent working-class uprising that had so haunted the ruling classes of Europe and North America had largely disappeared. This was because class war was suspended by a tacit settlement. To put it crudely: the white working class of North Atlantic countries, from the United States to West Germany were offered a deal. If they agreed to set aside fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep their unions, enjoy a wide variety of social benefits (pensions, vacations, health care...), and, perhaps most important through generously funded and ever-expanding public educational institutions, know that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit guarantee that increases in workers' productivity would be met by increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s. Largely as a result, the period saw both rapidly rising productivity and rapidly increasing incomes, laying the basis for the consumer economy of today.

    This was the world into which I was born and grew up. Essentially, "setting aside fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system" amounted to abandoning our communities and extended families, in exchange for individual affluence and economic security. Unfortunately, because of 1) a financial system based on interest bearing debt and 2) a growing population, this world required endless economic growth in order to continue fulfilling its promise. In another reality, where planets have infinite resources, this might have been possible, but not here.

    After a few paragraphs about how this relates to Keynsian economics, Graeber goes on to say:

    When the Keynsian settlement was finally put into effect, after World War II, it was offered to only a relatively small slice of the world's population. As time went on, more and more people wanted in on the deal. Almost all of the popular movements of the period from 1945 to 1975, even perhaps revolutionary movements, could be seen as demands for political equality that assumed equality was meaningless without some level of economic security. This was true not only of movements by minority groups in North Atlantic countries who had first been left out of the deal... but what were then called "national liberation" movements from Algeria to Chile, which represented certain class fragments in what we now call the Global South, or, finally, and perhaps most dramatically, in the late 1960s and 1970s, feminism. At some point in the '70s, things reached a breaking point. It would appear that capitalism, as a system, simply cannot extend such a deal to everyone. Quite possibly it wouldn't even remain viable if all its workers were free wage laborers; certainly it was never be able to provide everyone in the world the sort of life lived by, say, a 1960s auto worker in Michigan or Turin, with his own house, garage, and children in college—and this was true even before so many of those children began demanding less stultifying lives. The result might be termed a crisis of inclusion. But the late 1970s, the existing order was clearly in a state of collapse, plagued simultaneously by financial chaos, food riots, oil shocks, wide spread doomsday prophecies of the end of growth and ecological crisis—all of which, it turned out, proved to be ways of putting the populace on notice that all deals were off.

    I would say that the underlying problem causing this failure of capitalism is economic contraction caused by the reduction in the surplus energy available as we've been forced to tap into ever poorer quality and/or less easily accessible fossil fuels. And sadly this is a problem for all economic and political systems. Indeed, it is a problem without a solution, which is bringing about changes that we will just have to adapt to.

    I am not certain if Graber agrees with me that the crises we've faced since the 1970s are quite real, but I do agree with him that those in power have certainly used those crises to "put the populace on notice that all deals are off." He is also quite right that this is a "crisis of inclusion"—as the economy contracts the rich and powerful are not about to be excluded, so a great many other people have had to be, in order for the rich to keep a relatively larger slice of a shrinking pie.

    But how, you may ask, does this relate to the problem of diminishing community in our modern society? Well, it seems that all the fixes that are available to the excluded majority involve us being separated from our former support systems (family and community in an informal economy) and striving to perform better as competing individuals in the formal economy.

    We are told that to secure a good job we need an education, at least a bachelor's degree. This means (in many countries) taking on a significant amount of debt, so that after you graduate, you'll be desperate to get a job and pay off your student loans. This leaves you very little choice in the job you take and little choice about leaving it if it doesn't suit you.

    To get that job it is very likely that you'll have to move a long way from where your family currently lives and set up as a lone individual, in a place where you, at least initially, have no support network.

    If you meet the love of your life and decide to live together or actually marry, you will both have to go on working to pay off those student loans and make a start on building a family together.

    This is a stressful situation, especially since you don't have any sort of support network and I suspect it contributes to marriage breakup. If you do break up you'll be left as a single mother or a lone individual.

    Or perhaps instead of seeking higher education, you could go for a job in the trades. As I said earlier, crews of tradesmen are among the best examples of communistic relationships found in today's world. But in most companies there is a strong push to have people working by themselves whenever possible and to have as little contact with their co-workers as possible, lest they organize a union. Unions are in a desperate situation today, with no effort being spared to break them and leave working people completely at the mercy of management.

    All this is very convenient for those who are in power. It is easier to exploit people who are not organized, who see each other as competitors rather than comrades. And in the process you can monetize much work that used to be part of the informal economy and make some additional profit out of it, while keeping people conveniently isolated from each other. I'm not saying this is a conspiracy of any sort, just rich people supporting the kind of politicians who will benefit them the most in the short term, and rest of us taking the path of least resistance through our lives.

    Even if you are fortunate enough to have a good, secure job, it is pretty easy to look around and see that many other people find themselves with no support from family or community and working for minimum wage with no benefits in a job where their schedule can be adjusted and their hours reduced arbitrarily and they can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. And if they end up jobless and homeless, there is a definite tendency to put the blame for this onto them, rather than a system which sees workers as liabilities rather than assets.

    No wonder many people are starting to express doubts about the current world order. As BAU continues to collapse it will become more and more clear that there must be a better way to live. Many would tell you that things are more likely to break down into chaos and violence but a closer study human behaviour in disasters shows that when there is trouble, people feel a strong urge to work together to help each other pull through.

    Well, that was a lot of words expended in support of a proposition that I originally thought was obvious. I do think it was worth it, but now this post is just about as long as it should be. So I'll wrap things up here and continue next time with a look at the pitfalls and practicalities of forming and working together in groups within your new community.

    The Disaster Mythology is a subject that keeps coming up on this blog, and to save explaining it again and again in various posts, I've finally created a page about the subject: The Disaster Mythology. Check it out.


    Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

    Posted by at 4 comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)