CB: So Michael, as a subscriber to Truth to Power's Daily News Digest, I know that every day you see the headlines regarding skyrocketing food prices. Can you say a bit about why you think this is happening?

MB: Well, I think what we're seeing with food prices, with spot shortages and commodities in various places around the world is just the beginning of a much larger situation. Fundamentally, what's happening is that as the cost of fossil fuels goes up, then the whole agricultural production system is affected because the whole system is dependent on fossil fuels for fertilizers for fuel, pesticides, and herbicides. The cost of all of these is going up, and we're just now reaching the point where, as the era of cheap fossil fuels ends, and as fossil fuels continue to become increasingly expensive, the entire global industrial agricultural system is going to collapse. We are seeing the very beginnings of that right now, and for most people, especially here in America, it seems very remote, but it will have tremendous impact here in this country within the next two or three years.

CB: What would you say to people who would argue that actually the price of oil has gone down and doesn't seem to be rising much?

MB: Well, the price of oil fluctuates a lot, but the trajectory is steadily upward. Since we've reached the point on the planet where we're beyond Peak Oil, that is, we've burned more than half the oil that's on the planet, it is inevitable that oil from here on out will be harder to get out of the ground and more and more expensive. This is not a bullet we can dodge.

CB: Currently Transition Colorado is working very hard at finalizing your first Eat Local Campaign for Boulder County. You have the Boulder County Commissioners on board and the Boulder City Council as well. Transition Colorado could have chosen to focus on a number of other issues this year. Why is this event so urgent, in your opinion, and what do you hope to accomplish by organizing it?

MB: As we've been emphasizing the need for relocalization and our community's needing to be able to meet our most essential needs locally instead of being dependent on globalized systems, we've seen that the area where we are most vulnerable here in Boulder County is food. At the moment we're spending about $700 million a year on food. From all that we can tell from the limited data that's available, less than 1% of that is being spent on food being grown in Boulder County. That's a tiny, tiny amount. So currently, our food shed, which is kind of like a watershed, stretches across the globe. We're bringing in food from China, South America, Europe, and as the industrial agricultural system begins to fail, we have no choice but to shrink our food shed to be much, much more local. And it looks like we don't have much time to do that. The impact on industrial agriculture will begin to unfold within the next two-three years, so we need to quickly rebuild local food and farming.

Fortunately, there has been a tremendous amount of work done by people like Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver, and Joel Salatin-people who have been working on these issues for years and have helped to educate millions and millions of people about the importance of local, organic food. So there's a great readiness and a rising demand for locally grown, organic food. So what that means is that this is an area where we can have the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time. It's not everything that we need to do in terms of relocalization, but it is maybe the most important thing.

There are lots of reasons for this besides needing to meet our food needs locally. There's a benefit to health that comes from local, fresh, organic food. One of the most important but perhaps least recognized issues in the transitioning from an industrial, fossil fuels agricultural system to a localized organic system is that the latter will greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We're beginning to understand now that the way we grow and process our food, the way we ship it-all of that, contributes about 31% to our greenhouse gas emission. So here in Boulder, while there's a lot of effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through pretty advanced climate action plans, there is no discussion of the impact of food and farming and greenhouse gas emission. So this is one area where we can make a huge difference in a very short period of time. And since no one else locally is taking that issue on, we will and we are because we must. This is also an area where Transition initiatives around the country can demonstrate leadership.

CB: This leads me to ask the next question which is: What should individuals be doing in terms of creating their own food security? And what should neighborhoods and communities be doing to create food security for their place?

MB: For a long time now we've been saying that it's a good idea for everyone to learn to grow at least some of their own food. This is something that everyone can do, no matter where they live, even if they live in a high-rise apartment building. They can grow at least some of their food. Initially it's not so much about how much food they might each produce, but it's about learning the skills. It's about reconnecting with the natural processes and cycles of life and beginning to understand soil, how to build it and restore it. These are skills we have become very disconnected from and that will be essential for all of us in the future.

So we think that those kinds of skills are going to be more important to food security than storing up lots of food. We can always grow food. As we're compelled increasingly to eat seasonally again, we're going to have to learn how to preserve food from harvest so that we can consume it during the winter months. So we get to learn all those things like canning, drying food-ways that we can feed ourselves year-round. We've gotten so accustomed to being able to eat whatever we want anytime we want it. We just go to the grocery store. We've become totally dependent on this system, and we've lost those basic skills. That's the more real aspect of food security.

On a neighborhood level, I think one of the most important things we can do is to organize as neighbors to support each other. A lot of people can't have their own gardens. They might be able to have a window box garden or some tomato plants on their porch, but they can't really produce much. But community gardens can easily be organized. Again, it's not so much about the amount that's grown, but rather about the process of people working together and rebuilding those fundamental connections between people. Those kinds of connections have been at the heart of civilization from the beginning, and they have eroded away the last two hundred years or so.

On a broader level within a local food shed, let's say an area of a couple hundred miles or so, such as in Boulder County, we need to focus collectively on greatly increasing food production. 75% of our agricultural land here in Boulder County is being used either for pasture land for animals or to grow crops to feed animals. We need to be using much more of that land to grow food for our own people. Agriculture has gotten focused over the last century on exporting commodity crops to other countries and has totally lost site of the need to feed our own people. We need to reverse that priority and make the purpose of local farming and the whole food system to feed our own people first, then export surplus once those local needs have been met. It's a huge transition we have to go through, but that's ultimately where our food security will come from.

CB: One of the presentations you frequently do is entitled "The Extent of Our Predicament". In a few words, what is the extent of our predicament, and what should we be doing to deal with that predicament?

MB: First of all, what inspired me to talk about this is Gus Speth's book The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability where he concludes that we will never do what is necessary until we understand the full extent of our predicament. So I've been speaking more and more about our predicament in terms of first of all, the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels-the reality that we will never be able to replace the amount of energy we're burning in fossil fuels today and that we will have no choice but to dramatically reduce our energy consumption. That's the first realization that we have to come to.

The second is that climate change is going to change the face of the planet and will certainly change the trajectory of the human presence on the planet, and this will happen much more quickly and much more painfully than almost any of us is willing to think about. But we need to begin. Primarily because of our use of fossil fuels and our profligate burning of fossil fuels, we've unleashed profound changes in our climate that are probably going to give us the equivalent of a species near-death experience. The near-death experiences for many individuals will be a profound wake up call and will produce a shift from an aimless, dissipated, wasted life to a focus on purpose and service. Climate change is likely to be affording us as a species, that kind of opportunity.

The third aspect of our predicament is the reality is that our economic system will not recover but will go into a steeper decline, eventually plunging into an irreversible global depression that will last beyond our lifetimes. Of course, it's because our entire global economic system has been based on cheap fossil fuels and the American dollar. The whole system now is beginning to collapse. So we need to understand that the global systems on which we've come to depend are already failing, and they will fail dramatically in the future. So we have to rebuild from the ground up our capacity to live well, to live meaningfully, in a healthy and productive manner on this planet.

CB: Michael you often speak of the "evolutionary threshold" on which humanity stands in the present moment. What do you mean by this?

MB: I think that where we are as a species and what gives me hope perhaps, is the realization that we are a very young species in the universe. We are living in a time where we are beginning to emerge from our species adolescence into adulthood. It's not a very comfortable time just as is often the case for adolescents when they begin to shift into early adulthood, but that's what's up for us, and as we shift into adulthood, we'll have to live very, very differently. But seeing it that way is very good news because it means that as a species it means that we're not doomed, we're not fatally flawed-it just means that it's time for us to grow up together. Of course, in order to do that, we're going to have to make some pretty significant changes. We're going to have to put behind us our childish way of living, our very selfish way of living, but we certainly have an opportunity to begin to realize the potential and destiny of the human species.

There's no guarantee that we'll make this transition. In fact, there are a lot of reasons to doubt that we'll be able to do this. In our adolescence, the problems we've created for ourselves are so overwhelming that if we don't make the course correction very quickly, the window of opportunity will have passed, and we will not survive. But right now, the window is still open, and if enough people can wake up to our predicament and put into place the basic processes and structures that will enable what's best about the human species-what's the most important, what's the most precious about our species in order to survive beyond this transition, then ultimately humanity will fulfill its purpose and destiny.

CB: Thank you Michael for taking this time to talk about the crucial role of local food and farming. For readers in Boulder County, please attend the Eat Local Campaign. For readers elsewhere, check out the Eat Local website and think about how you might implement a local food and farming campaign in your place.

Michael Brownlee is the Co-Director of Transition Colorado, Boulder County

I share their enthusiasm for profound, bone-marrow transformation of the status quo. Jefferson really was right when he proclaimed that the United States needed a revolution every twenty years. Many of us who were activists during the Vietnam War era were determined to pull off a revolution that would destroy the military industrial complex, institutionalized racism, and the entire capitalist agenda.

Today's visionaries and activists cherish similar hopes, yet I fear that they do not yet grasp the kind of revolution that the planet seems to be asking for. And unlike the revolution we envisioned four decades ago, this one must be in response to the planet and the earth community. From this perspective, I believe there are two kinds of revolution in front of us: The kind that is inappropriate and the kind that is both useful and critical for planetary survival.

Inappropriate Revolutions

The most truly inappropriate revolution would be one based on false assumptions, principally, the notion that political change on a grand scale is meaningful. Pundits of this kind of revolution include all cheerleaders for the Democratic Party and all others who champion the Progressive, left-liberal landscape. These folks are currently obsessing about the November election and agonizing over Tea Party cacophonies. From this perspective, if the far-right were resoundingly defeated by the election of liberal candidates, the nation might be spared from spiraling downward into fascism.

Other well-meaning but naïve proponents of revolution argue that social upheaval and more people in the streets will signal enough distress among the population to provide fertile ground for a political and cultural revolution. While not directly advocating the overthrow of the federal government, these individuals are poised to organize and assume positions of leadership should sufficient unrest unfold.

Inappropriate revolutions tend to focus on widespread global (whether literal or symbolic) measures that will result in mass consciousness raising, mass movements, and mass political and cultural change. This philosophy mirrors "bigger is better" and assumes that significant change only happens when society at large is involved. Models of this kind of revolution in the modern era would be ones such as the Russian Revolution, the Maoist revolution in China, and the Cuban Revolution.

Such revolutions rarely address the emotional and spiritual aspects of social change because for the most part, the possibility that any force greater than the human mind and ego exists is rejected out of hand. A revolution operating from this assumption is by definition, human-centric. Whereas political revolutions may include individuals who care deeply about the ecosystems and argue passionately for stewardship of the earth, their agenda is not fundamentally informed by the earth. Man is still the measure of all things and therefore, given the desired political context, humans can reverse their species' destruction of the planet and engineer something approximating utopia.

So what is an appropriate revolution? And appropriate to what, you may ask.

Appropriate Revolutions

An appropriate revolution is one that is relevant to what is actually needed in the light of human and planetary evolution. It is not primarily political but rather informed by what the earth community is asking for. For example, the earth is not asking for more efficient and accessible healthcare. Rather, it is asking that humans live in such conscious intimacy with the earth that nearly all of humanity's diseases and injuries are prevented as a result of that relationship.

Likewise, the earth is not asking for renewable energy but a cellular level transformation of consciousness regarding how we live on the earth-how we eat, what we wear, the products we use, where we live, where we travel and how.

The earth is not asking for jobs, but rather a painfully honest examination of our purpose in walking on her body in terms of the work that is most beneficial for her and all species that inhabit the planet.

The earth is asking, no pleading, for inhabitants who are willing and eager to live and relate locally in small communities, cooperating with neighbors to replenish what has been stolen from the earth and to enhance the well being of all species.

In his essay, "A Revolution That Is Arising From The Earth", William Kotke states:

We who can read these words are civilized people who have been mentally conditioned by the culture of civilization and the industrial society from birth. We have precepts loaded into our subconscious minds which cause us to see reality in a certain way. To a native Maya person in the State of Chiapas, Mexico, the earth speaks through them. They live integrated with the earth in their everyday energy systems and in their mental attitudes. To them the fact that the earthlife has manifest these living things around us, and us, means that we are children of the Mother Earth and we speak as one of the voices of the earth. To the Maya this is obvious on a deep level. To us it is an interesting intellectual proposition only, because we have been conditioned by a cultural upbringing that filters out this deep understanding and we do not mentally link our life with the life of the living earth.

To the Maya security is the earth and its care. The Maya live with the earth and feed from its natural bounty. Historically for a million years our species has been very successful. We have been adapted to the earth life. We lived within the ecological web and energy flows of the earth. Our traditional migratory patterns carried us over our gathering areas. In the season when the game were fat in one place we went there, when the berries were ripe in another we went there. Our success was adaptation to the life of the earth. We also had a culture that respected the earth and living things. The proposition is simple. We are alive, we live because of the other living things which feed us, we are obligated to respect and encourage those other living things so that we too can live.

In order for these indicators of an appropriate revolution to be actualized, a new kind of human must emerge-a new species with conscious self-awareness that knows-not thinks or feels-that it is not "in harmony" with the earth, but that it is the earth. This knowledge can only be acquired if our species is willing to experience, not theorize, that it originated from something greater and emerged on this planet for the purpose of serving something greater in order to perpetuate its values throughout the earth community and for countless generations in the future.

This revolution has already begun and manifests itself in the mission and work of organizations like Transition, Business Alliance of Local Economies (BALLE), and the permaculture movement. These organizations are about much more than growing organic gardens. One of their principal functions is the revolutionizing of how money works-a revolution without which fundamental change is impossible. They are creating self-sufficiency and resilience in neighborhoods and local communities, both of which may serve as mainstays in the event of infrastructure collapse, food and water shortages, natural disasters, economic devastation, and loss of essential services.

The localization efforts of organizations such as these have far more implications than mere "emergency response" preparation. They will eventually become the new normal as the collapse of industrial civilization exacerbates. The sooner these systems become firmly in place, the more resilient their citizens will be in navigating a world that in a couple of decades may be unrecognizable by current standards. They have evolved not merely out of vision and ingenuity but out of

a palpable sense that a new humanity is in the process of emerging-a humanity that functions optimally not in a global economy or through mass consciousness raising, but through networking and smallness of scale.

So with those who argue that a revolution is desperately needed, I would heartily agree-with the caveat that it must be an appropriate one, skillfully moving in response to the earth and the evolutionary threshold on which humans stand. It must focus on building vibrant and discerning communities who will keep ears and hearts to the ground, listening for what the earth is asking of them.

In closing this piece, I must notice that three years ago on the Speaking Truth to Power website, I wrote in depth about the fallacy of placing confidence in Barack Obama as the candidate who would "revolutionize" the United States. I was called cynical, narrow-minded, and hopelessly pessimistic. Three years later I am hard-pressed to find anyone who is enthusiastic about the record of President Obama or the likelihood that if he has a clue about anything, he would actually abdicate his Goldman-Sachs designed throne and implement the platform of "change" on which he ran for office. Even if he were to do so, there is no money for such an agenda, and a cataclysmic Gulf Oil disaster has become an unimaginable game-changer.

All of this only validates my premise that local action, self-sufficiency, and taking charge of issues in one's community are the essential ingredients of revolutionary change rather than dependence on a distant President and Congress, bought and orchestrated by the very system that is annihilating the earth community. Do not take my word for it. Research for yourself what the three organizations mentioned above have accomplished in the last three years. If you still insist on calling me cynical, I would argue that the definition of that word completely escapes you.

About one year after Barack Obama became President, I noticed on one radical left website the words "the ‘hopium' is wearing off." While the majority of Americans believe that Obama is a better President than George W. Bush, Jr., it has now become painfully obvious that Obama's leadership has offered little divergence from the policies of the Bush administration. In the throes of what can only be described honestly as the Second Great Depression, Americans suffering from a deluge of unemployment, foreclosures, bankruptcies, loss of health insurance and retirement savings have not yet fully confronted their despair. They pretend that a return to unlimited growth and delirious consumerism is possible and even likely in the long term, but all the while, just beneath the surface of that chimera the demon of despair is growing increasingly restless and ominous.

Despair moves us to confront existential questions, and let's remember that that big word isn't just a philosophical term but directly refers to our existence. Existential questions are questions of meaning and purpose-questions about the human condition such as: Why do the innocent suffer? Why do those who commit brutal acts so often go unpunished? If there is a God, why do these things happen? Why am I here?

Despair also brings us face to face with an emptiness that is at our core, regardless of how fulfilled and serene we feel. And while some theologians would assert that the emptiness is a God-shaped void that only religion can fill, I would argue that the emptiness cannot be filled by anyone or anything because it is a fundamental reality of the human condition. However, I hasten to add that the pain of the void can be minimized in a variety of ways.

Citizens of industrial civilization have attempted for centuries to fill the void by cherishing the delusions of unlimited growth, unbridled progress, the acquisition of material wealth, the sanctity of the family, the piety of organized religion, the status of obtaining advanced degrees, and of course, the use of substances to obviate or medicate the sensation of emptiness. As civilization continues to deteriorate, and as fewer and fewer options for filling the void are available, the masses will be brutally confronted with their own despair. When the people, things, and activities that have provided meaning for them throughout their lives no longer exist, we are likely to witness madness and suicide on an unprecedented scale. I state this, dear reader, not to incite fear, but to prepare us for a milieu of chaos resulting from a pandemic of meaninglessness as nearly all of that which has provided meaning for so many is swept away.

What is more, I realize that anyone reading these words may be at times overwhelmed with despair. This is difficult to avoid when contemplating the scale of horror that humans have inflicted on the planet in terms of wars, resource depletion, environmental devastation, and innumerable forms of injustice and brutality. Unless one lives a hermetically sealed life, one encounters these realities daily.

When I first published Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, I was afraid that it would be reviled at the worst and virtually ignored at best. While it is true that it did not and will not become a best-seller, I have been astounded at the book's success and the comments I have received from readers. Consistently they report that Sacred Demise profoundly lowered their level of despair by catalyzing a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. In most cases, readers completed the book, or re-read it, and took away a palpable appreciation of the demise and what is truly sacred about it.

As I engage with collapse-aware individuals and communities throughout the world, what I consistently hear is the profound alienation they feel in a world unraveling. We all have personal wounds that evoke despair, but as psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan notes in her book, Healing Through The Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear and Despair, "Despair grows not only out of our personal wounds, losses, and disappointments, but also out of our needs for community and a shared sense of meaning-spiritual necessities for which we harbor a profound and aching, though largely unconscious, nostalgia."

Greenspan also notes that often our personal despair will not let up until we confront our despair for the world. You may be familiar with Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment workshops, designed to help people face their despair and create community with others who are engaged in similar work. Macy believes that despair is to be trusted because it is a natural, visceral response to a planet in crisis inhabited by beings who are committing suicide.

Generally, the psychotherapy profession does not address despair for the world. In fact, if you were to walk into a therapist's office and say that you feel grief and despair for the world, you are likely to be labeled depressed, paranoid, phobic, or pathologized in some other way, presented with myriad reasons why your despair is unwarranted in a world so full of glorious potential, and probably asked to consider taking an antidepressant. It is likely that unless you consult a therapist who is fully informed regarding the coming chaos, you will need to find support from other individuals similarly informed and share your feelings about the future with them.

Joanna Macy speaks to this directly:

But because of the individualistic bias of mainstream psychotherapy, we have been conditioned to assume that we are essentially separate selves, driven by aggressive impulses, competing for a place in the sun. In the light of these assumptions, psychotherapists tend to view our affective responses to the plight of our world as dysfunctional and give them short shrift. As a result, we have trouble crediting the notion that concerns for the general welfare might be genuine enough and acute enough to cause distress. Assuming that all our drives are ego-generated, therapists tend to regard feelings of despair for our planet as manifestations of some private neurosis.

This is precisely why in recent months I have begun a Transition Counseling practice, which some people have called "Collapse Coaching", that offers people an opportunity to share their feelings about the future and receive support and practical input regarding preparation. I believe that increasingly we will need this kind of coaching in our communities as the wheels fly off of a civilization dependent on cheap fossil fuels for its operation and the illusion of endless growth and consumption for its motivation.

When we do not acknowledge despair, it reinforces our tendency toward numbness, the preferred "feeling state" of most citizens of modern culture. If we remind ourselves that emotion has the word motion in it, and if we consciously allow the despair, yes even dialog with it, asking it what it wants from us, we may find that it is indeed an ally.

In reality, despair presents us with an opportunity to enhance our sense of meaning and purpose. As Greenspan states: "Despair is faith's darker handmaiden. There is no faith without doubt and despair, just as there is no good without evil, no day without night. To be authentic, faith must be all-inclusive-encompassing Auschwitz as much as it encompasses paradise." If you bristle at the word faith, feel free to replace it with meaning, purpose, inspiration, or some other word.

The human psyche is extremely comfortable in the territory of despair. For this reason, we need to trust our despair and allow it to guide us to the transformation that is waiting to happen within us. We also need to remember that we feel our despair in the context of a world that is withering and a species that is rushing headlong toward extinction. Our personal despair and the wider story of despair cannot be separated. This does not mean that we stay stuck in blame and abdicate personal responsibility where it should be claimed. What it does mean, however, is that suffering is both personal and collective, and that the latter is larger than our personal egos. It may be that despair is a catalyst not only for our personal transformation, but also that of our species.

Thus arises another opportunity to remind us all that service in the world is often an excellent antidote to despair. Service can give our lives meaning and help place our personal story in the context of the larger story of a civilization that has reached its growth limits and is currently in demise. However, we do not need to reach our limits of soul growth as individuals. In fact, the more we acknowledge our limitations of material growth, acquisition, and control, the more expansive our souls are likely to become, and service frequently enhances the process.

Yet another tool for soothing our despair is to follow the example of Wendell Berry in his beautiful poem which opens this article. In it he states that when despair for the world grows in him, he consciously enters nature and allows it to comfort him so that for a time, he can rest in the grace of the world and experience himself as free. Yet it is not only comfort he receives but the "peace of wild things." But how can "wild" be synonymous with "peaceful"? Isn't wild unpredictable and therefore anxiety-producing? Could this actually be one of the most important antidotes to despair: Wild, unpredictable, capricious, even dangerous? Is not part of our death-like despair the lack of wildness? Psychologist Bill Plotkin states in Nature And The Human Soul that "Something in us is truly wild and wants to stay that way through our entire life. It is the source of our deepest creativity and freedom."

I want to underscore Wendell Berry's advice. I am blessed to live in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado. Recently, I have committed to journeying twice a month into the mountains and spending sacred time in some isolated places there. It may be as short as one hour or as long as an entire day. While I have taken many extended trips into the mountains earlier in my life, having lived at the foot of Pikes Peak in my late-twenties, I now journey into the mountains more contemplatively and for shorter periods of time.

My intention when taking these short trips is exactly the same as Wendell Berry's. I go in order to "rest in the grace" that is there. It is a comforting, soothing, inspiring, and restorative experience. However, without exception, grief comes, whether I invite it or not. It is quite simply, ever-present these days as I allow myself to become intimate with nature--and I give my grief to the earth. Sometimes I do it by lying face down on the earth and sobbing. Sometimes by standing with my back pressed firmly against a towering pine tree and feeling its strength coursing through my body until I break into laughter. Sometimes by sitting in the soil and sifting it tenderly through my fingers as tears of both sorrow and joy flow.

Part of me realizes that it is only a matter of time until the lush landscape into which I have immersed my body and soul will be destroyed by climate change. In Colorado, this is already happening with the death of incalculable numbers of trees infected by the pine beetle. Another part of me is also keenly aware of the earth's magnificent history of regenerating herself. The very elements of nature in which I revel on these journeys are remnants of the earth that have been destroyed in eons past. Perhaps in a million years, the landscape in which I sit, that may be destroyed in my lifetime, will metamorphose into another lovely landscape or other elements that will provide comfort and revitalization for some other members of the earth community.

Somehow, when I return from my short mountain getaways, I am buoyed; I feel some distance from my despair for the world, and I am renewed in body and soul. It is as if I have spent hours communing intimately with a dear friend. And even as I return to the low-intensity urban community in which I live, my "friend" remains in my heart. She is still up there in the mountains, and I can return to her, but more importantly, she is in my body, and I take her with me as I do the work I came here to do. Even if she is made extinct, she is within me, and her palpable sacred presence within cannot be made extinct. I am exhilarated by her effervescent, wild fecundity, and my despair recedes. I feel my wildness; industrial civilization has not killed it because my wildness inspires me to find meaning in the madness of a collapsing world. And it compels me to write these words and to invite you to immerse yourself in your wildness, as well as your gifts of service, because when you do, it will be impossible to be driven by despair.

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This article is an excerpt from Carolyn's forthcoming book Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Toolkit For Inner Transition which will contain a treasure-trove of exercises and resources of emotional and spiritual preparation for an uncertain future.

In October, 2010, Carolyn will lead a 2-day workshop in Boulder, Colorado on "Sacred Demise and The Soul of Transition". For more information, contact Carolyn@carolynbaker.net

In some spiritual and psychological circles we often hear unambiguous proscriptions against the emotion of anger. However, in many indigenous traditions, anger is not experienced with the same suspicion one finds in Western psycho-spiritual circles. While ancient teachings regarding anger do not condone aggression, they do not unequivocally assume that feeling the emotion of anger will lead to hostility or violence. In fact, they tend to revere anger as an innate human emotion which may be utilized on behalf of the earth community without inflicting harm. Ancient teachings often include practices for "uploading" the raw emotion of anger to higher chakras or physiological energy centers on behalf of preserving boundaries or protecting the innocent-both of which are characteristics of the non-aggressive warrior.

Anger is one of the Five Stages of Grief articulated by the death and dying researcher, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. As I noted in Sacred Demise, in the context of those stages, anger shows up in reaction to a loss. First we feel shock and denial, then move into anger which may include frustration, anxiety, irritation, embarrassment, and shame. Subsequently, we move into depression and grief, followed by bargaining, then acceptance and re-investment in our lives. As Kubler-Ross emphasizes, none of the stages are neatly detached from the others. We tend to move through them fluidly, with each stage somewhat blurring into the next stage or containing remnants of the last one.

In the process of preparing emotionally to navigate the coming chaos, it is crucial to examine each stage of grief, to note where we have been in the process, to look at where we are in the moment, and to honor each emotion along the way. Many people today are stuck in anger because they have not allowed themselves to move through it into mindful grieving. In fact, I believe that the United States, and many nations throughout the world are currently mired in anger. In 2009, author and spiritual teacher Caroline Myss, stated in her article "An Epidemic of Global Anger": "We are a community of nations on fire with anger. And we are getting angrier by the day. Whether we look at the increase in uprisings occurring around the world or at the escalating tension brewing in America, what is becoming more apparent is that we are witnessing a rapidly increasing rate of global anger, so much so that it qualifies as an epidemic."

Many Americans are enraged at their government. Some who have been researching the demise of the current paradigm and understand the self-destructive aspects of corporate capitalism, the limits of economic growth, and the unsustainability of a civilization dependent on fossil fuels feel angry because their leaders refuse to acknowledge what is so. As their minds have been awakened, so have their emotions, and anger has been part of the process. But as they have come to understand that industrial civilization itself is collapsing, they are likely to have stopped wanting to repair and improve it and have begun to entertain a larger picture of how they could join with allies in constructing a new paradigm and a new culture.

It is likely that for these individuals, anger metamorphosed into deep grief or despair as a feeling of powerlessness to "fix" civilization set in. Implicit in the emotion of anger is the sense that something can or must be done to alter the that has evoked anger. As one comes to understand the inevitability of the unraveling of industrial civilization and the futility of attempting to prevent it, one may in fact experience a sense of relief that collapse is beyond control and proceeds in its own way, in its own time. One grasps that our mandate as a species is to move with the demise, not against it, and find within the unraveling a greater purpose than the one civilization has offered, proceeding with the work we came here to do. At that point, even though we may carry some residue of denial or anger, and even though our willingness to see what is so puts us directly in the path of deep grief, the embrace of our purpose and our role in the collapse process, is in itself a re-investment in our lives and the well being of the earth community.

However, the individuals I have just been describing do not comprise the vast majority of those in the United States or the world who are fixated in anger because they are also fixated in denial. One cannot move through the Five Stages of Grief if one does not move beyond denial. Refusing to see what is so guarantees that the journey through the stages will not occur. So whether one is an enraged Muslim suicide bomber or a vitriolic white, middle class Tea Party enthusiast, one's emotional state and behavior belie an inordinately diminished perspective of reality, resulting in a desperate need for vituperative scapegoating. In other words, fixation in anger.

The Mary Oliver poem above about loving the world which in part means reveling in the sensual delight of nature which means becoming "accustomed to savoring that which is momentous, concealed within bare bones simplicity." It also means a profound gratitude which the poem describes as "mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here." The world has given us stupendous gifts which Oliver says causes her to "stand still and learn to be astonished."

But does our gratitude for the world mean that we should never be angry about the injustice or self and eco-destruction its inhabitants have perpetrated upon each other and the earth community? Certainly not, but being deeply connected with our purpose in the world provides perspective that buoys us and allows us to keep moving forward when the magnetic pull to become fixated in anger may feel irresistible.

When we are intimately familiar with our purpose, we understand that the world is not paradise, it is not a vacation resort, and it is not a place to which we have come to live in perpetual bliss. Rather, the world is comprised of both the magnificent wonderment and extraordinary beauty depicted by Mary Oliver as well as the horrors engineered by a species about to become successful in its incalculable attempts to commit suicide.

Author and spiritual teacher, Marshall Vian Summers, writes in his book Greater Community Spirituality:

Be without judgment of the world. If the world were a perfect place, you would not need to come here. If the world were a place that functioned harmoniously, without friction or conflict, this would not be the place for you....The world is your place to work and to give. Its pleasures are small but real. Its pains and difficulties are great. The world cannot give you what you seek, for what you seek you have brought with you from beyond the world.

That which we have brought with us from beyond is something greater than our personality or human ego. Summers refers to it as Knowledge, and others use terms like the sacred, spirit, the Self, the divine within. However we choose to name that part of ourselves, it comprises our core. I believe that the more intimately familiar we are with it, the less we expect from the world, and the more we are willing to serve the world in order to imbue it with the sacred. Loving the world, as Oliver names it, is not about sentimental emotion, but about a commitment to the work we came here to do which by definition, serves the earth community.

The mathematical cosmologist, Brian Swimme, in his extraordinary lecture series, "The Powers of The Universe"clearly articulates this concept. Cataclysm, he notes, is one of the inherent powers of the universe, and "it is currently happening on our planet. The choice before us is whether we will participate consciously." Participating means that "as all the structures that are destroying the earth are collapsing, they are releasing us into the essential nature of who we are." While this awareness does not remove our anger or our anguish, it brings us face to face with the deeper meaning of the collapse of industrial civilization and our purpose in it.

I believe that the world of the future will be a chaotic world which will be, among other things, an angry world, especially in the initial stages of the demise of the current civilization. In a December, 2009 article "America The Traumatized" , Adele Stan argues that a series of events that occurred in the first decade of the twenty-first century have made us a PTSD nation--and that was before the BP oil disaster of 2010. Until we understand trauma and post-traumatic stress, the need to blame the traumatizing event or person(s) who inflicted it is exceedingly compelling. When we do grasp the magnitude of trauma and its consequences, we come to understand how futile is our rage in the face of an inundation of horror.

I write these words more than two months after the BP Gulf of Mexico cataclysm. Am I angry as I witness the horror? Am I enraged at the lies of BP with regard to its prior knowledge regarding the safety of the Deepwater Horizon rig? Am I livid when I hear the stories of people who tried to warn the corporation that its bypassing of standard international safety regulations would result in catastrophe? Does white hot rage pulse through my body as I witness BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, taking a yachting trip and begging to "get his life back" as the entire world lays the blame for this debacle at his door and as the entire ecosystem is now in the path of the destruction visited upon it by a multitude of corporations and CEO's of BP's and Tony Hayward's ilk? Am I incensed when I see millions of people immersed in an epic blame-fest, pointing fingers and mouthing incessant sentences beginning with "they shoulda, coulda, woulda"?

The answer to all of those questions is a resounding "yes", and from the moment the catastrophe was first made public, I realized the probable scope of it, and I saw the word t-r-a-u-m-a writ large all over it. What purpose at this point will my anger serve? How could I be seduced by the inherent assumption in my anger that the there is a possibility that the situation can be remedied? In my opinion, the BP oil disaster of 2010 is nothing less than 100 Hurricane Katrinas in slow motion. It is an unfathomable game-changer-perhaps the tipping point in humanity's destruction of this planet. As I witness countless animals dripping and dying from disgusting quantities of crude oil resembling raw sewage suffocating their bodies; as I consider that perhaps 40-50% of the sea floor of the Gulf of Mexico will soon be covered with petroleum; as I reflect on the spread of the spill into other oceans and the death of plankton and the ultimate devastation of the food chain; as I consider the economic devastation of a section of the country that comprises about 20 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, and as I speculate that perhaps the entire Gulf Coast region may become uninhabitable, I see, hear, and feel nothing but trauma. Furthermore, if the entire population of the United States were not already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, it is now.

Yet what I have personally discovered about my anger over the years is neither that I shouldn't have anger or that I should discharge it whenever I feel like it, but rather, to approach my anger mindfully. A stellar article by Holistic Psychologist, Jennifer Franklin, entitled "Mindfulness In Practice: Anger Management" defines mindfulness this way: "To be mindful is to be conscious, more awake, more informed about how one lives one's life.

Being more mindful, therefore, allows us to make more awake or informed choices in every moment. Our words and actions would be more mindful if we were more awake or conscious in those moments in which when we choose them." According to psychotherapist Richard Pfeiffer, quoted in the article, anger is a neurological response process that essentially prepares us to fight or flee.

We have many options for creating more mindfulness within ourselves. Meditation is, of course, one of the principal tools for strengthening mindfulness, even if the meditation is not the specific technique called "mindfulness meditation." It is important to remember that mindfulness isn't so much about becoming mindful of the world around us, although that generally accrues from a meditation practice, but rather, mindfulness is about being mindful of ourselves. It helps us become centered observers of our own process.

For example, the Dr. Franklin's article offers the classic example of road rage and how it can be handled mindfully instead of reactively:

When you exercise mindfulness, you exercise non-reactivity or the capacity to stay centered, grounded, and unshaken in response to a stimulus. Now, don't confuse non-reactivity with non-feeling. Let's use road rage as an example. You're driving, and someone cuts you off, and in response to being cut off you flip the driver the bird. You've just behaved reactively.

Contrast that with what non-reactivity would look like in that scenario: You are cut off by the driver, and rather than focusing your attention on the event itself, you focus it on you. You focus it on the sensations you are feeling in your body, most likely a fast heart rate, perhaps a tightness in the chest, or constricted breathing. Then you shift your attention to your breathing, sending the breath into the parts of your body that are feeling the anger-your heart, your chest-wherever it is for you. In the time it took you to do this exercise, you never even thought about flipping the driver the bird because you were too busy focusing on your reaction; that driver has probably gone on his or her merry way by now. This is non-reactivity.

Non-reactivity allows us to feel all of our feelings but not react to them. We feel them until we organically feel something else or until we decide mindfully, with awareness and choicefulness, that either we want to focus on something else or we want to act.

As I sit with the BP disaster, other emotions course through my body-deep, deep grief; fear, despair, and helplessness, and I have to wonder about the emotions of the earth itself. And since I believe that Gaia is a living, breathing organism, I must correct my use of "the earth itself" and state unequivocally that I believe she must be very, very angry. Within the past two years prior to the BP disaster, we have witnessed what many believe is an unprecedented number of natural disasters. Although officials from the U.S. Geological Survey insist that the number of earthquakes has not increased in recent years, many question that conclusion. Is Gaia "working through" her Five Stages of Grief? And if she is angry, what might she do next?

Perhaps those questions feel too anthropocentric to the reader, so I refer to the natural process of homeostasis which is "the ability of a system or living organism to adjust its internal environment to maintain a stable equilibrium." When a system is out of balance, some internal process attempts to adjust the imbalance and return it to a state of balanced functioning.

In a 2008 interview with C-Realm Podcast, Albert Bartlett, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of The Essential Exponential for Our Planet, stated, regarding population and unlimited growth, "If we don't stop it now, then Nature will stop it through a big die-off." Bartlett argues that population and growth spell annihilation for the planet if humans do not radically change their ways of occupying our planet.

One might argue that if Bartlett's theory is so, it is all a matter of simple physics and that speaking of earth's anger is pure anthropocentrism. Yet the distinguished doctor of medicine and biophysics, James Lovelock, who penned the book The Revenge of Gaia, argues in that work, as he does in many places, that humans have created out-of-control global warming and climate change which are now wreaking revenge on our species. Lovelock too may be indulging in rampant anthropocentrism, but if the earth itself has conscious self-awareness, both Bartlett and Lovelock may be onto something.

While we cannot validate with certainty earth's anger, we can certainly attest to our own in the face of humanity's devastation of the ecosystem. And while I do not concur with some in the field of psychology who argue that anger isn't really a fundamental human emotion but a kind of mask for other feelings such as fear and grief, I do believe that in the case of our anger toward members of our species who are committing ecological suicide, it is crucial that we connect with our grief and terror regarding the state of the planet and the dire consequences of the project of industrial civilization which we are now beginning to experience.

In the short term, anger may be useful in motivating us to act-to prepare for the coming chaos, to help raise the awareness of others, and to inspire others to prepare, but if we allow ourselves to fully grasp the calamitous reality of the future into which we are moving, I believe that our anger will soon be eclipsed by fear, grief, and despair. My forthcoming book, Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Toolkit for Inner Transition, provides an extensive array of options for utilizing all emotions we might encounter in a world unraveling in order to sustain and protect ourselves.

Among the myriad reactions I hear to the BP disaster from the folks with whom I interact, the one that overshadows all others is anguish. We hold hands across the sand and bodies of water, we pray, and we talk to our friends, but fundamentally, we are absolutely powerless to remedy or reverse what occurred on April 20. We knew our planet was in a state of full-blown collapse, but we didn't expect it to unfold this way. As one friend recently said to me, "It's just a matter of time now." I could have said, "Until what?" but I long ago learned not to ask questions I already know the answer to. My friend and I could just as well have been standing on the deck of the Titanic having the same conversation.

In an angry, chaotic world, it will be important for us to read the deeper emotions that underlie the rage we are likely to see erupting in society and in our communities. We will need to fortify ourselves emotionally and logistically from the collateral damage that myriad wounded-animal outbursts from others could inflict upon us, and even more importantly, not allow our egos to succumb to the momentary pleasure our own indulgence in rage might afford. At the same time we validate the rage our fellow humans feel, our compassion must penetrate the vitriol and understand the shipwreck that any human soul might become after years of sailing the waters of dogged denial and unwarranted faith in the American dream. If you are reading these words, it is likely that you have awakened from the dream or are in the process of doing so. Millions more never have and never will. How will we hold all of our emotions in the face of the rage their sense of betrayal will evoke in them? How will we go on loving the world?

**Portions of this article are excerpted from Navigating The Coming Chaos: A Toolkit For Inner Transition, By Carolyn Baker,  which will be submitted for publication in the fall of 2010.

More recently, Callahan has published Directing The Power of Conscious Feelings: Living Your Own Truth (Hohm Press, 2010) This book is nothing less than an encyclopedia of emotional healing, offering a "biblio-boot camp" of preparation for the collapse of industrial civilization and the Next Culture that might emerge from it. I highly recommend the book, and although I have not experienced any Next Culture trainings, they appear to complement all that I have written and taught about the inner transition necessary for navigating the coming chaos.

In recent years, writers such as myself and Daniel Quinn, Derrick Jensen, Richard Heinberg, Michael Meade, Malidoma Some, Joanna Macy, and others have written extensively about the infantalization of the citizens of empire and have suggested that rites of passage or an initiatory process is needed in order for us to become responsible adults who accept and live within the limits of our planet. Callahan adds:

Modern culture is a child level responsibility culture, far below adult level. Modern society does not require that a person grow up prior to being given (or allowed to take) positions of responsibility...Our society makes messes without having consciousness of, or taking responsibility for, the consequences of those messes.

The example Callahan gives is the corporate practice of "externalizing costs", but a more timely and poignant example is quite simply, the worst manmade environmental disaster in the history of the United States, created by the BP Corporation, now turning the Gulf of Mexico into a giant dead zone-an event which will soon have unfathomable ramifications globally. In a child's world, there are no worries about cleaning up messes. Caretakers (governments and taxpayers) exist in order to provide the child everything it wants and needs, and if messes are made in the process, then it is the caretaker's job to clean them up.

Yet few who have addressed infantalization have offered a specific path for the journey from it to adulthood. While Callhan has no formula for this, he asserts that the principal rite of passage from emotional immaturity to maturity is the capacity to consciously, constructively work with one's feelings, directing the power of feelings in service of the entire earth community. In Directing The Power of Conscious Feelings, he validates what most of us have felt all of our lives regarding our feelings in relation to modern culture, namely that none of them are acceptable.

Many of us have experienced that feeling sadness, fear, or anger in this culture is threatening to others, so we keep those feelings in check, preferring to share them only with trusted others. Yet even joy in the culture of empire is unacceptable.

Recently, I was speaking with a friend who had just returned from a visit with her son who is in his late-twenties and works as an executive with a major transnational corporation. My friend has done a great deal of work on feelings and appropriately expressing them. In a conversation with her son, she verbally expressed her sadness about something in her life, and he responded with, "Could we not have any drama today?" The next day she mentioned feeling angry about something that had nothing to do with her son, at which point, he said, "You know, I'm really tired of your drama."

I share this story because as Callahan clearly demonstrates, the ideal in the culture of empire is a state of numbness. No feelings--sorrow, fear, anger, and even joy, are acceptable. People are esteemed for abiding in a state of numbness which is defined as sane, stable, and even-tempered. While following the recent oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there was a public outcry for President Obama to become outraged regarding the devastation BP had created, but the ideal perpetuated by political pundits and advisors was for Obama to remain "cool-headed". They and the President knew that any passionate display of any emotion would result in a decrease in popularity and a perception of him as "irrational." The desired and only acceptable state in the culture of empire is numbness, and any variation from it is frequently perceived as "drama."

Curiously, Callahan talks about drama in the book but uses the term "low drama" to describe any action that is designed to avoid responsibility. Actions like this are legion, but we could say that any time we avoid feeling our feelings, we are engaging in low drama because the abdication of responsibility begins with numbness.

The author inspires us with the term "next culture", also the name of his website, and gives us a glimpse of what that culture might look like in terms of how people relate to their feelings and to each other. He uses the term "archearchy" to describe a culture that is not dominated by the masculine principle or the feminine, but by both. As he says, it is "a new and truly sustainable culture, oriented more toward being present and being with, and less toward consuming, owning, having, going, and doing."

Directing The Power of Conscious Feelings is filled with diagrams, charts, illustrative photos, and "maps" which make the book remarkably reader-friendly and beautifully clarify the author's concepts in no-nonsense fashion. My favorite is a map comparing the attributes of modern culture and the next culture which contrasts the essential mottos of both cultures and leaves us with: "Human cultures are so immature. Can you grow up?"

By the time the reader reaches this point in the book he/she will have been given a treasure-trove of tools for boarding the ship of feelings and steering it in the direction of a new culture that cannot be realized without conscious emotional, and I would add, spiritual, preparation. I believe that these tools constitute a profound rite of passage for non-indigenous people and provide a structure for psychospiritual maturation.

The work Callahan offers us doesn't look easy, but it does look amazingly rewarding. The time to begin that work is not when we are in the throes of the collapse of life as we have known it, but now, as we create all manner of lifeboats for navigating inner, as well as outer transition.

Clinton Callahan may be contacted at the Callahan Academy at: clinton(@)callahan-academy.com

I disagree and feel adamant about using the term for a number of reasons. In the first place, I am an historian, and as I endeavor to make sense of human history, I notice that monumental changes do not occur in one fell swoop, but over time through a variety of stages. Personally, I am deeply involved in the Transition movement, and I am also strongly aligned philosophically with individuals such as Joanna Macy and David Korten who frequently use the words Great Turning. I could not agree more that in the larger scheme of the unprecedented changes we are navigating, a Great Turning is indeed occurring. However, I believe that it is crucial to hold both the larger picture and the current predicament in our consciousness simultaneously in order to remain effectively present in this moment, as well as in a state of preparation and anticipation for a more redemptive future.

What is more, the Great Turning/Transition is a process, and like all processes, each stage is important. While it is tempting to minimize the stages in favor of our natural human longing for the desirable end result, we may actually jeopardize our appreciation of the destination by refusing to be present with each segment of the journey. The stage in which we happen to find ourselves at this present moment is the collapse of every institution within industrial civilization. I challenge anyone reading these words to give an example of one institution that is not in a state of obvious, irrevocable decline. While in the larger scheme of things, we are in Transition and also experiencing a Great Turning, we are profoundly in the early stages of a shattering unraveling such as our planet has never experienced in human history. That must not be minimized.

In addition, inhabitants of industrial civilization who have not yet understood its consequences seem particularly averse to the word "collapse". Unlike millions of indigenous and dispossessed peoples throughout the world who have been unconscionably devastated by it, their identities remain invested in the false security that it promises and the hope that the next two or three decades will somehow deliver an extension of what life in present time is like. Therefore, I believe that coming to terms with the reality of myriad, ubiquitous forms of collapse in the first decade of this century is imperative. Long term, a great turning is occurring, and we are in transition, yet we have only to observe the breathtaking changes that have transpired in the past three years to notice an undeniable unraveling of this civilization. A collapse by any other name is nevertheless a collapse.

Within the human psyche reside many themes, including death and rebirth. The two always travel together without exception because both are integral aspects of the human story. Attempt to minimize or eliminate one, and you invariably minimize or distort the other. We all wish to be "in" the later stages of the Great Turning, but we aren't, period. We are where we are, and where we are is painful, sad, frightening, enraging, uncertain, and yes, dark. Who would not wish to be basking in the light of the journey's end or near-end? Who would not prefer to look in the rear view mirror (oops, I use an expression from pre-Peak Oil days) and see clearly that we have come through the ordeal, and we are now on the other side of it--free to live out the new paradigm in all of its promise? We can hardly contain our elation as we contemplate that possibility, right?

But we are not in that stage of the journey yet; we have just begun. Our work now is to be present with what is, even as we hold the larger vision in our hearts. To be present means to be willing to look, and the beautiful thing about being present in this moment is that we can utilize all of the qualities of our deliciously imagined future to buoy us in the here and now. In fact, as I emphasize repeatedly in Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, without savoring and practicing those attributes moment to moment, we cannot endure the future emotionally or spiritually.

Notice I said cannot. I am profoundly frightened for the numbers of people I meet who are highly collapse-aware, but who are doing nothing to prepare emotionally and spiritually. Without that preparation, they are extremely vulnerable to breaking down; with it, they are more likely to break through.

The proper response to death is respect and ritual. Respect literally means "to look again." When people die, we review their lives and renew our appreciation for their contributions and accomplishments. We create rituals to honor those and to express our gratitude for their presence in our lives. Ritual simply means "to fit together" which is to say, we reconnect the broken, separated pieces and in doing so attempt to find meaning in the experience. Given the Great American Death Phobia, this culture is particularly challenged in its capacity to respect death as a part of life and find meaning in it. I believe this may be the principal reason for resistance to words like collapse or unraveling.

What is most challenging for us to hold in the throes of the magnitude of the current oil spill, in the face of being daily deluged with increasingly frightening information about climate change, witnessing around us the beginning of the obliteration of world financial markets and possibly the end of money as we have known it, witnessing the extinction of species at previously unimaginable rates, finding ourselves surrounded with unrelenting natural disasters-this, all of this IS the Great Turning. And at the same time, in this moment, it also IS the collapse of industrial civilization.

Who would not want to be reveling in rebirth? Yet rebirth does not, cannot occur, without death. In present time we may feel marinated in death as its ubiquitous presence threatens to overwhelm us. It is as if we are being asked to walk through a war zone, witnessing around us the fallen everywhere and not knowing if we ourselves will survive. And we my wonder, why can't we just get to the other side and as Thomas Paine said, "begin the world all over again"?

It may be that our species, tortured and toxified by industrial civilization as it has been, is incapable of beginning the world all over again without having lived through the ghastly consequences of what unprecedented growth and disconnection from the earth invariably produce. Perhaps we need this death in order to mould, shape, treasure, and protect the new life we ache to create.

In present time, what we can do with the unraveling is honor and respect what everything that is dying has given us. We can creatively construct rituals that erupt out of our hearts and out of the earth, acknowledging what the oceans, the land, the animals, and all other treasures of this beautiful planet have provided. We can thank and bless them, and we can invite our loved ones to join and co-create rituals with us.

Above all, it appears that we are being asked to allow our old way of life to die. Something in us is dying as we walk through the war zone. Something in us is dying with maybe as much as 100,000 gallons of oil being released daily into the Gulf of Mexico, now slithering into the loop current of the Atlantic Ocean. Something in us is dying with all the life that this cataclysm is extinguishing. Perhaps we need that death in us in order to unequivocally grasp in every cell of our bodies that disconnection, endless growth, competition, and entitlement kill everything in the universe. Perhaps humanity requires devastation of this magnitude in order to become a new kind of species-the kind of species that will never again allow such madness to prevail on this planet.

A very old myth written in myriad versions in ancient texts may be instructive in this collapse/transition/Great Turning journey, namely, the story of our old friend Noah who was instructed to build a lifeboat. Storyteller and author Michael Meade, in his latest book The World Behind The World, offers a timely, poetic appreciation of Noah's mission and ours:

The problem wasn't that the end of the world had come; rather the issue was how to act when it seemed that way. Secretly, each of us is a Noah sent on a distinct and seemingly foolish errand that can help the world as well as fulfill us....Noah stands for the timeless dreamer in the human soul who knows what to do when the floods of change gather and the sense of dissolution grows. (102, 120)

I do not wish to imply that we cannot experience joy or celebration until the Great Turning is complete. Even in the face of horror, we can have moments of humor, play, and elation. Our vision of a "greatly turned" humanity can sustain and inspire us, producing periods of unprecedented community and conviviality in the here and now. The turning is happening, and the collapsing of a way of life that does not work is a pivotal piece in the process. In fact, accepting the natural process of collapse as the first step in the Great Turning is profoundly liberating and empowering.

As always, the poets say it better than prose, especially the mystical poets who catapult our minds to the depths then propel us back up into clear-eyed, laser awareness. So often when they speak of love, they are not referring to human love or romance, but to the soul and the unbounded freedom our intimacy with it generously offers us. Within the cacophony of civilization's demise, Rumi whispers:

Transition, Great Turning, Collapse? The words matter and don't matter at the same time. It's all about being fully present where we are while holding the vision of being somewhere incomparably different.

Essentially what Williams tells us is that the Deep Water drilling operation was under unparalleled pressure to drill faster and deeper, cutting corners and defying essential aspects of the industry's well established drilling protocol. We can argue about whether BP and other oil giants are ramping up drilling due to the end of cheap and abundant oil on this planet or simply because of greed and a voracious obsession with profits. To engage in that kind of debate, however, is to ignore the most fundamental issue at the root of this disaster. Corporate culture, media, politicians, and the misguided American public are all failing to grasp the issue, and I suggest, are behaving like enablers responding to an addict's fatal overdose, as well as failing to recognize the extent to which they themselves are addicts.

Let me clarify: The addict is the oblivious citizen of industrial civilization who delusionally demands that he/she must at all costs maintain a lifestyle made possible by cheap hydrocarbon energy. That citizen overdosed on April 20, 2010 and may have taken the planet to their grave with them.

Now let me count the ways in which this cataclysmic oil spill is very much like a fatal drug overdose. In order to fully understand the analogy, it's necessary to grasp the extent to which the culture of industrial civilization is addictive. What makes it addictive?

Quite simply, an uncompromising-yes relentless insistence on maintaining the lifestyle to which it has become addicted, and like the addict, willing to do whatever it takes to do so, despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. This includes evidence that the addiction itself will ultimately and invariably prove fatal for the addict, for the addict has little interest in rational, scientific research. He is obsessed with only one thing: lifestyle. It doesn't matter what it costs him or anyone else. Life is all about the next fix, period. The fix could be a possession, a person, or a position in life.

So when the addict, the culture of empire, overdoses and takes everyone and everything with him, he can use the defense mechanism of blame. It wasn't my lifestyle that caused this, he says, but the corporation that pumped the oil. Furthermore, it was the administration's fault for not adopting tougher regulation. While these factors may have entered into the equation, they are not the fundamental issue. Focus on blame works beautifully for awhile to distract attention from the devastation caused by the addict. But eventually, it wears thin.

Another favorite distracting tactic of the addict is "Look how I'm trying to fix it." He mobilizes his enablers to convince the world that something is being done to reverse the repercussions of his latest shitstorm. First we'll try a dome structure to cover the oil leak and capture the oil. Or if that doesn't work, we'll blast garbage into the leak. Or if that doesn't work, we'll use a siphoning tube. In fact, even as I write this article, BP is proclaiming that it has "turned a corner" in the oil spill. This should reassure all the oil addicts, facilitating their craving and assuaging any embarrassing traces of guilt. It's all better now; this temporary nightmare is going to go away. Ya see, human ingenuity, especially of the corporate kind, will solve all problems and clean up all messes created by the addict.

Then there's my favorite addict appeasement approach: alternative energy. Don't worry, says the enabler. We'll get wind or solar or something online for you as soon as we can so that your lifestyle won't miss a beat. Yes, that may take fifty years, but meanwhile, we'll think of something to keep it going for you because this is America, and the lights never permanently go out here.

Before the addict experiences a fatal overdose and ravages everyone and everything around him, there is always the choice to end the addiction and enter treatment. Treatment involves withdrawal from the substance, then taking a long, exhaustive, meticulous look inside oneself to confront the demon of the addiction. Much support is necessary; the addict cannot make the journey alone.

The Transition Handbook frames our dependence on hydrocarbon energy in terms of an addiction. We can blame, rationalize, project, deny-we can employ whatever defense mechanism we choose from humanity's vast repertoire of them, but like the hard core addict, the human race is committing suicide. It is willing to kill every form of life in the oceans, cause the extinction of every species on earth, pollute every cubic inch of breathable air, poison every drop of water on the planet, and yes, enable an unfathomable cataclysm such as we are witnessing in the Gulf of Mexico at this moment, in order to perpetuate the lifestyle to which it feels entitled. Like all addictions, this one is both irrational and insane.

Every person who has chosen to research Peak Oil, climate change, global economic meltdown, species extinction, and population overshoot is not unlike an addict who has some moment of clarity in which he can actually choose to walk to the nearest rehab facility and fall on his face screaming for help. None of us can do that investigative work without the massive support of other "cheap energy addicts in recovery". None of us can do it without a spiritual as well as a logistical recovery program which all authentic recovery absolutely requires.

Like the recovering addict there will be moments of terror about what the future holds, and the greater the devastation we have created, such as the largest oil spill in the history of the world, the more daunting the future will feel. Like the recovery of the addict, our recovery will require rigorous honesty and a commitment to finding meaning and purpose, not in the substance, which is killing us and the planet, but in a different kind of lifestyle. This will be a lifestyle of simplicity, cooperation, and deep connection with nature and our fellow humans. It may mean alterations in our behavior that feel like sacrifices until we realize that the joy, meaning, and contentment they bring us are what we wanted all along.

Therefore, as we witness the spread of the most devastating and widespread oil slick in history; as we see the photos of oil saturated wildlife and watch frantic fisherman in despair because they have lost their livelihood; as we watch enablers blaming and scrambling to fix the un-fixable, let us do as they say in Twelve Step programs, and take a searching and fearless moral (and energy) inventory of our lives and notice where we are in our recovery from addiction to cheap and abundant fossil fuels. Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over documents how brief in the history of the human race the party was, how much fun it was, and of course, how lethal it was and is. So while the enablers are blaming and fixing, it behooves all of us to ask of ourselves the toughest question of all: What are we doing to recover?

These days, wherever I speak or conduct a public event, and whenever I check my inbox for email, I hear similar stories of conflict or estrangement in the lives of courageous men and women who have chosen to dig deeper into the state of the macrocosm, only vaguely aware of what it might bring forth within the microcosm of their own lives. Onerous it is to be preparing for the future-contemplating and acting on the weighty issues of where to live, how to earn a livelihood, what skills to learn, and how best to fortify oneself for survival in an unraveling world, but it is nothing like having loved ones distancing or parting ways when one wants and needs them now more than ever.

Sometimes it's about fear for the well being of loved ones; sometimes it's about wanting to share something as momentous as collapse and transition with our best friend who also happens to be our beloved. Sometimes it's about wanting to be validated, heard, and seen. Maybe it's just about wanting help with the extensive, arduous tasks of preparation. But sadly, perhaps tragically, in countless instances, the kind of joining for which our hearts desperately yearn cannot happen-for whatever reason. That doesn't make our loved ones sick, bad, crazy, or stupid, but it does mean that we have reached a threshold in our relationship with them that will result in distance, perhaps permanent estrangement.

How do we cope with this? After all, isn't human connection the larger hope we hold for this transition? Isn't that what's it's all about?

Nothing I could say would make this easy, but perhaps the pain can be tempered with a larger perspective.

First, we need to remind ourselves that in the milieu of industrial civilization, we have all been thoroughly indoctrinated in the "necessity" of romantic partnership. If by a certain age we don't have a partner or have lost too many of them, we are deemed terminally defective. This is, like it or not, particularly true for women.

Furthermore, facing the future alone is frightening, and again, I believe this is especially true for women. Wouldn't it be nice, we think, to go through the transition with a partner or with all of our family members? We'd be safer, and so would they. And what a bond we could forge with each other, holding each others' hands at the end of the world as we have known it and working together to create a new one!

Yet I am becoming increasingly convinced that the transition we are heading into is going to change everything, and I mean everything. Far beyond the amount of oil we use, electricity we have available, food we grow, or skills we learn, if we survive physically, we will be transformed, re-made, and utterly metamorphosed at our core. In fact, this process challenges us, I believe, to become a new kind of human being. Can this happen if we are surrounded by exactly the people we would like to be surrounded by? Perhaps-and then again, perhaps not.

What is certain is that we cannot navigate collapse and transition alone; we must have allies, but it may be that we do not get to choose entirely who those allies are. Our most intimate companions may be strangers we barely know, and our strongest adversaries may be people we thought we could always rely on.

What I'm referring to here is the non-rational, soul level of transition that is beyond our control or reasoning or planning. It has to do with doing what we have come here to do and fulfilling a greater purpose-one that may be only dimly visible to us now. This may require joining with people we do not even yet know and parting with those who cannot walk where we feel compelled to journey.

Not for one moment would I minimize the grief many people are walking through as they find loved ones distancing from or leaving them. The loss is heart-wrenching, and it must be felt.

All of this is part of the burden of letting ourselves know what is so. Truth is no free lunch; it always exacts a price. Small wonder then that the overwhelming majority of humanity has no interest in knowing it. And really, why would anyone sign up for knowing the exact state of our planet? As my friend Mike Ruppert says, it really is much easier on a sinking Titanic to state unequivocally that the ship is unsinkable or to saunter into the bar and order a drink.

In a chaotic world of endings, unraveling, catastrophe, or protracted demise, relationship will be a pivotal issue. For this reason, the survivalist mentality which purports to "go it alone" with an "every man for himself" attitude, not only will not serve those who embrace it, but will profoundly put their physical survival at risk. For our well being, we will absolutely require connection with other human beings in times of chaos and crisis. Therefore, cultivating a broader perspective of relationship in advance of the coming chaos may be exceedingly useful in learning how to navigate relationship challenges in the future-challenges on which our survival may depend.

In today's affluent milieu of social networking, fitness and body obsession, tanning salons, fine dining and dance clubbing, the roles that civilization has proscribed for men and women are maintained and nurtured impeccably. In navigating the dating scene in an effort to secure a partner, men generally prefer to present themselves as well-groomed, sensitive gentlemen, and women typically project intelligence and self-sufficiency alongside beauty and sexual prowess. The protocol for relationships between the genders is civil and respectful. But imagine a world in chaos where projecting the current popular persona of one's gender is rendered irrelevant or even dangerous. Stereotypes and the roles we consent to play will no longer serve us because in that world, survival will be paramount.

For this reason, it behooves anyone consciously preparing emotionally and spiritually for a chaotic future to forge strong relationships with friends, neighbors, and family members. In fact, I believe it is wise to consider all of the relationships we have in our lives as sacred in that they are venues for learning about and cultivating our inner world. Even more importantly, they are opportunities for serving the earth community with whom we are inextricably connected by living out our purpose. In this way we begin to understand the relationships in our lives as part of our preparation for the future because they are as essential for our inevitable well being as food, water, shelter, or weapons. In fact, they may constitute the ultimate advantage.

And if relationships are part of our preparation for the future, we will need to forge ones that are mutually supportive and sustainable. We will need to deeply evaluate our relationships and ponder which ones enhance our preparation and which ones do not. While this may sound heartless, we have only to recall the familiar example of the airline flight attendant who admonishes us to first put on our oxygen masks before putting them on our loved ones.

As we allow ourselves to be schooled by our relationships, we recognize places where we have fallen short of how we prefer to relate to another, places where we have transgressed boundaries, failed to be present, subtly or blatantly abandoned others, failed to speak our truth, or perhaps, spoken our truth so forcefully and insensitively that we have inadvertently hurt the very ones we care about deeply. From our errors we can learn how we need to be in relationship and increasingly glimpse the momentousness of our connection with every person in our world. Quite naturally we may entertain the notion that people are in our lives and we are in theirs for specific purposes, and though we may never know the totality of the purpose, from hindsight we gradually understand that some purpose was served.

Not only must we, in my opinion, contemplate relationships between ourselves and other humans, but between ourselves and everything in our lives, for the truth is that we have a relationship with our homes, our possessions, our pets, our careers, our roles, our communities, our neighbors, our past, our present, and our future. If we are willing to consciously examine each of those relationships in terms of the purpose they serve in our lives, we participate in a deeper evaluation of them and thereby clarify their place in our lives. As a result, we counteract a tendency to wed our identity to people, places, and things while paradoxically making it possible to cherish them more because we are more keenly aware of their purpose in our lives. Likewise, this deep evaluation may precipitate a natural letting go of those things in our lives which drain our energy or finances or which make our lives more complicated and less resilient at a time in human history when survival depends on simplicity and the ability to adapt.

Stripped of that to which we have wedded our identity, collapse and transition will compel us to confront questions of purpose on a regular basis, perhaps hourly-perhaps moment to moment. We are likely to find ourselves contemplating every meaningful relationship in our lives, and many that seem devoid of meaning. Relating to diverse human beings and their idiosyncrasies, even depending for survival on individuals we may never have encountered in a less chaotic world, could become our new normal.

Schooled as we are to grapple with the tangible, logistic aspects of the "End of Suburbia" such as being forced to downscale everything we do as a result of Peak Oil, we may have failed to notice that the collapse of industrial civilization will produce not only an outer transition but an inner one as well. Are we preparing for the inner transition to the same extent that we are preparing for the outer one? The relationships in our lives may be the first, but not the last, arena of our lives that compels us to address inner preparation.

Poetry, the language of soul, often captures meaning more aptly than rational, linear prose. The Spanish poet, Juan Ramon Jimenez, in his poem "Oceans" captures best the distress, as well as the possibility that unwanted losses offer us even as we agonize through them:

I have a feeling that my boat

And we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Portions of this article are excerpted from Carolyn Baker's forthcoming book Navigating The Coming Chaos: Tools For Inner Transition.

Historical and Current Perspectives

First, even a cursory understanding of church history provides numerous clues regarding the inevitable outcome of the initial agenda of early church fathers. Of course the word fathers signals the birth of patriarchal religion in the West which even beyond male domination is synonymous with a way of life based on power and control. Shortly after the birth of Christianity and as the Christian church became an organized system in the Western world, the top priority in its agenda was to exterminate paganism and its indigenous roots and influence. The supreme irony, of course, is that Christianity had deep roots in paganism and could not have congealed into a viable religion without it.

The significance of the disavowal of paganism cannot be overemphasized. The word "pagan" originally meant, country dweller or rustic and implied that the pagan had an intimate relationship with the earth. It was that relationship, more than anything else about paganism, that made it so repugnant to the custodians of official church dogma. Moreover, the earth and the female gender were clearly associated in the minds of early church fathers with irrationality, defilement, chaos, and evil. St. Tertullian wrote to women: "Do you not know that you are each an Eve? With the sentence of god on this sex of your lives in this age, the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil's gateway. You are the unsealer of the forbidden tree: You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant to attack. You destroyed so easily god's image, man. On account of your desertion even the son of man had to die."

Researchers of the early Christian Gnostic sect, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy in their book Jesus and The Lost Goddess, point out that in the early stages of Christianity, a protracted struggle between literal and symbolic interpretation of sacred texts continued until the literal interpretation triumphed in roughly the 5^th century. In the earliest stages of Christianity, many pagan converts to the religion believed in a Christian goddess, and indeed this teaching became an integral part of Gnosticism. As the church became increasingly male dominated, church bishops "vigorously suppressed the idea that there was a Christian goddess." Ironically, in 431 at Ephesus, which had previously been the site for worship of the pagan goddess, a church council met and "bestowed the title of the ousted goddess upon Mary, the mother of Jesus." The larger significance of this action is that it "put an end to Gnostic ideas of equality between the sexes." (44)

The Gnostic Christian sect struggled valiantly with the official church hierarchy to modify the church's perceptions of women and nature, but ultimately, the church prevailed, and Gnosticism was declared heresy. The subsequent history of church leadership reveals a burgeoning pattern of male hierarchy distancing itself from the earth, from the feminine, and from matters of the heart, thoroughly preoccupied with intellect and domination. Medieval scholar, Lynn White comments on the Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis:

While many of the world's mythologies provide stories of creation, Green-Roman mythology was singularly incoherent in this respect. Like Aristotle, the intellectuals of the ancient West denied that the visible world had had a beginning. Indeed, the idea of a beginning was impossible in the framework of their cyclical notion of time. In sharp contrast, Christianity inherited from Judaism not only a concept of time as non-repetitive and linear but also a striking story of creation. By gradual stages a loving and all-powerful God had created light and darkness, the heavenly bodies, the earth and all its plants, animals, birds, and fishes. Finally, God created Adam and, as an afterthought, Eve to keep man from being lonely. Man named all the animals, thus establishing his dominance over them. God planned all of this explicitly for man's benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man's purposes. And, although man's body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature: he is made in God's image.

White's analysis of the Christian doctrine of dominion over the earth illumines how it institutionalized an attitude of disconnection from nature and the fundamental philosophical underpinning of Western civilization, namely that humans were superior to other species and therefore had the inherent right to dominate them. Notable exceptions to this pattern were mystics such as St. Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich who wrote and taught prolifically about their own and humanity's relationship with nature. Christian mystics always held a decidedly feminine perspective and were marginalized accordingly.

Two thousand years of church history reveals a progression from a small group of diverse Jewish and pagan adherents of disparate spiritual paths to an increasingly standardized hierarchy which exists today as both a government and one of the major religious organizations on the planet.

Enter the second perspective necessary for making sense of epidemic pedophilia in the institution: an understanding of large systems and their role in the collapse of industrial civilization. At every turn, organized religion throughout the world has supported corporate oligarchies and their pillaging of resources and people. "Infinite growth" has been the hallmark not only of industry but of proselytizing religious hierarchies-a model which is inherently unsustainable. Moreover, adherence to the model of infinite growth guarantees its ultimate dissolution. Add to this more than two millennia of suppression of women and nature, and you have a deadly recipe for implosion.

Organized Religion's Monstrous Shadow

Like rape, pedophilia is not about sex, but rather about power. For this reason, it would not matter if priests were married. In fact, most sexual abuse of children is committed by heterosexual males. Thus, attempting to treat symptoms of institutionalized pedophilia by allowing priests to marry or by accusing abusing priests of homosexuality is pointless because it does not address the systemic nature of these criminal acts against children which has little to do with marital status or sexual orientation.

Incidentally, I have not failed to notice that millions of children are sexually abused in their homes in every country and that in some countries, the sexual abuse and mutilation of children is ubiquitous and virtually accepted as an integral part of the culture. In those places too, parents and pillars of the community often proclaim their impeccable morality and righteousness.

What is more, whenever any individual, community, or organization declares itself a healing agent in service to the world, it must be aware of its shadow self, which if not consciously addressed will erupt in behavior unimaginably antithetical to its explicit mission. The shadow is simply all parts of self that we have disowned as the "not me" which takes up residence in the unconscious mind, i.e., We are the church; we are moral, upright, and here to save your soul from sin and eternal damnation. Our intentions and behavior are above reproach.

In a remarkable anthology on the shadow entitled Meeting The Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, the Buddhist-oriented Benedictine monk, David Stendl-Rast, in an article on "The Shadow In Christianity" notes that when we "try to live up to the standards of a God that is purely light...we can't handle the darkness within us. And because we can't handle it, we suppress it." (132) Indeed, Catholicism is not the only religion or spiritual path where the shadow exists. It abides in every person, group, and institution. Rather than something to be feared, however, it is something to be worked with, understood, and its energy utilized in service of living consciously and compassionately in the world.

Connecting All The Dots

Every institution in industrial civilization is in the process of collapsing. One has only to observe education, healthcare, finance, media, transportation, government, and yes, religion, to observe institutions, not merely in a state of crisis, but in a profound process of dissolution. Moreover, the collapse of one institution does not occur in isolation but is rather connected with the collapse of all the others. And each institution is inextricably linked to the "Three E's" of industrial civilization's demise: energy, environment, and econmics.

Religion is but one institution, and the Catholic faith is but one religion in a web of faiths rapidly unraveling as "something greater" in the psyche of human beings attempts to make sense of things like financial collapse [TRANSLATION: the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the world]; increasing healthcare costs [TRANSLATION: money-driven medicine devoid of one shred of compassion]; public school closings [TRANSLATION: the abject failure of standardized testing and the triumph of the public school to prison pipeline]; energy depletion [TRANSLATION: the permanent end of cheap and abundant fossil fuels]; climate change [TRANSLATION: the abject destruction of the ecosystem]; and the war on terror [TRANSLATION: infinite global conflicts sparked by industrial civilization's desperate attempts to secure the last remaining drops of oil on earth.]

The problem with the Catholic Church is not the pope or pedophile priests; the problem with the Catholic Church is the Catholic Church-one of the most toxic systems in human history which has unflinchingly colluded with corporate capitalism and the worst of humanity's repressive regimes for gargantuan profit and the standardization of power and domination as a way of life.

As organized religion continues to unravel, human beings who have been seduced by it will be tempted to abandon their innate tendency to attempt to make sense of disappointment and loss. In the worst case scenario, they will become bitter, enraged, violent, depressed, and maybe even suicidal. Others may opt for a "new atheism" which while currently quite fashionable is not producing much more than what journalist Madeline Bunting calls "a lot of sore heads." In her most recent piece she asks "Are The New Atheists Doing Anything To Stop The Ills of Religion?" Bunting argues that the new atheism has sold a great deal of books but that in fact, "The paradox of New Atheism is that in its bid to make religion unacceptable, it has contributed to making it a subject that is considered worth talking about again." Perhaps that is because as she also notes, "When someone is killed in a car accident, western rationality is good at analyzing how the brakes failed and the road curved, but has nothing to say about why, on that particular day, the brakes failed when it was you in the car: the sequence of random events that kill. This search for meaning is part of what drives the religious spirit."

It is precisely this search for meaning in the face of the collapse of civilization that I have attempted to address in depth in my 2009 book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse. One of the opportunities collapse may offer is a return to the application of indigenous, earth-based wisdom disavowed two thousand years ago by patriarchal Christian theologians. In my opinion, this knowledge must sculpt the new paradigm that begs to be created by and for the earth community in which neither children, animals, soil, seas, forests, mountains, and rivers are exploited.

What is needed is not more priests or more religions. One Catholic priest who fully grasped his intimate connection with the earth chose to call himself not a theologian, but a geologian. That remarkable human being was none other than the late Thomas Berry who lamented that "Unfortunately, Western religious traditions have been so occupied with redemptive healing of a flawed world that they tend to ignore creation as it is experienced in our times."

In 1999 Berry published his landmark book The Great Work-the great work, of course, being the lifelong process of understanding and knowing ourselves in relation to the earth. In The Great Work, Berry quotes a devout Catholic educator, Maria Montessori who believed that "only when the child is able to identify its own center with the center of the universe does education really begin." Institutionalized pedophilia is the inevitable, systemic outcome of an entity which glorifies masculinity, disavows the feminine, repudiates nature and the human body, revels in the profits of global corporate capitalism, and makes domination and exploitation its implicit canon. I celebrate the collapse of organized religions, but I mourn the casualties of that collapse-the countless innocent children who never had the opportunity to identify their own center with the center of the universe.

Joe Bageant, a man after my own heart who's hunkering down in rural Mexico making tortillas, pens a scathing article, "Americans Are 'Hope Fiends' Because Honestly Looking At The Present Situation Would Destroy Just About Everything We Hold As Reality". In it he states that hope is political pablum for an infantilized nation. He too, reluctantly voted for Obama because he thought Obama just had to be better than Bush, but now Joe is crying on his tortillas and saying things like, "Hope is magical thinking, believing that somehow, some larger unknown force is in motion to set things right."

And a journalist for whom I hold the greatest respect, Robert Jensen, writes an article on getting rid of "hope" and "faith", inspired by his interview of Abe Osheroff, long-time activist and documentary film maker. It opens with a short vignette by Jensen:

After a recent talk about the struggle for social justice and the threats to the ecosystem, a student lingered, waiting to talk to me alone, as if he had something to confess.

"I feel so overwhelmed," he finally said, wondering aloud if political organizing could really make a difference. The young man said he often felt depressed, not about the circumstances of his own life but about the possibilities for change. Finally, he looked at me and asked, "Once you see what's happening -- I mean really see it -- how are you supposed to act like everything is going to be OK?"

Boy do I know this one. I lived with it regularly as a professor of college history and psychology as I laid out in molten lava the state of the world which they had been programmed to ignore while drowning in the propaganda of realizing the American dream through getting a college education.

Jensen proceeds in the article to talk about how unacceptable it is among progressives to be anything less than upbeat. And he continues:

Some organizers respond to such concerns with upbeat assurances that if we just get more people on board and work a little bit harder, the problems will be solved -- if not tomorrow, certainly within some reasonable period of time. I used to say things like that, but now I think it's more honest, and potentially effective, to acknowledge how massive the obstacles that need to be overcome really are. We must not only recognize that the world's resources distributed in a profoundly unjust way and the systems in which we live are fundamentally unsustainable ecologically, but also understand there's no guarantee that this state of affairs can be reversed or even substantially slowed down. There are, in fact, lots of reasons to suspect that many of our fundamental problems have no solutions, at least no solutions in any framework we currently understand.

Some have challenged me: Why give in to such despair? My response: If honest emotional responses based on rational assessments lead committed activists to feel despair, why try to bury that? It's better to grapple with those emotions and assessments than to respond with empty platitudes.

The damage to the ecosystem may mean that a large-scale human presence on the planet cannot continue much longer. The obsession with self-interest cultivated by capitalism may be so deeply woven into the fabric of contemporary identity that real solidarity in affluent societies is no longer possible. The deskilling and dependency that comes with a high-energy/high-technology society has eroded crucial traditional skills. Mass-media corporations have eroticized violence and commodified intimacy at an unprecedented level, globally.

None of this is crazy apocalypticism, but rather a sober assessment of the reality around us. Rather than deny the despair that flows from that assessment, we need to find a way to deal with it.

Jensen cites a couple of gems from Osheroff that must not be dismissed, such as, "But personally, I'm not hopeful because I think hope is a kind of religion, and religions don't work. If you're hopeful you're going to suffer disappointments, whether it's politics or your personal life. You can care about things, you can want things to happen, you can work to make things happen without being hopeful." Make things happen without hope?

So now we come down to the crux of the issue: What is the definition of "hope"? For an answer to this question, I'm reminded of James Howard Kunstler's incessant vitriol about hope. After he has thoroughly bashed the notion of hope, he usually moderates a bit and defines it as something that comes from within the person, rather than from the exterior. Similarly, in Jensen's interview of Osheroff, the latter notes the capacity of humans to be decent, kind, and compassionate. I've noted this as well in my 2009 review of Rebecca Solnit's book A Paradise Built In Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise In Disaster in which the author emphasizes that in crisis situations, humans more often tend to cooperate rather than resort to violent or destructive behavior.

I want to underscore this because I am repeatedly called "pessimistic", "fear-mongering", or my very favorite, "cynical." The latter is my favorite because I like to point out that the word "cynic" actually comes from a Greek word that referred to a dog chewing a bone for hours non-stop, the point being that the cynics in ancient Greece held onto an idea and "chewed" it incessantly until everyone except their fellow cynics were sick of them. Why is this important to me? Because the real cynics, in my opinion, are those joined at the hip with "hope" who refuse to look more deeply into the psychological and political history of a candidate like Barack Obama and as a result, are flummoxed in 2010 that he has become the reincarnation of George W. Bush, Jr. As I've said before, it's the "high definition" definition of insanity-following the same pattern which yields negative results ad infinitum but expecting that the next time, the result will be different.

And then there's "faith" which is a cousin to hope and also a cousin to religion. Faith is usually about violating one's rational mind in order to feel better or to appease the gods or some tyrannical human authority figure. It is erroneously used synonymously with "trust"-erroneous because trust is about relationship whereas faith is about obedience. Therefore, I must agree with Bageant that it is indeed infantilizing.

So what is the cure for hope and faith?

The first aspect of the cure, quite simply, is total honesty. The statements by Hedges, Jensen, Osheroff, and Bageant, are replete with white-hot honesty. And whenever we get brutally honest, we are confronted with emotions-most of which are unpleasant. That said, let's start with the most basic reality of all: Industrial civilization is in the process of collapsing which means that as a result, there is absolutely no return to normal, and our lives are also in the process of being permanently altered.

Recently, two subscribers to my website's news digest reported that when they took my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse to their local public libraries to ask the libraries to order a free copy, the response was, "We just simply can't have a book like this in our collection." This is the response one might hear upon requesting that the libraries include pornography in their collections. Is my book pornographic? Yes! In this culture at this moment, naming and understanding the reality of the collapse of civilization is nothing less than pornographic in the minds of infantilized Americans.

And one even witnesses the empire-programmed addiction to hope in the most well-intentioned activists. Hope is not the same as having a vision, but I believe we must be cautious about confusing the two. As my readers know, I am deeply involved in the Transition movement which offers a vision of a positive future, but that vision will only become real as a result of our commitment to make it happen. Moreover, any vision of a positive future must be open to addressing and feeling the feelings around the consequences that so few wish to contemplate, namely, that the human race is committing suicide.

If we are willing to think with much more adult minds than the two library staff persons mentioned above, and if we are willing to grapple with the reality of collapse, with what attitude, mindset, or sensibility do we persevere in the face of it? And...is persevering the most important issue? If it isn't, what is?

I submit that after honesty comes the willingness to accept reality. That means stopping all pretense and delusion that we can prevent collapse. News flash: Collapse now has a life of its own, and I am convinced that whether it's 10 million activists in the streets of every country on earth or the hundredth monkey principle on steroids, collapse is an inevitable part of our future. It cannot be prevented because it is well underway. It has its own trajectory and its own velocity, but it can be slowed, and the effects can be lessened.

However, before we get distracted by how to slow it down, we need to deal with the next quandary which is much less appealing, namely, our despair. As Jensen states above, rather than deny or minimize our despair, we need to find a way to deal with it. But if you can't take a Joanna Macy "Despair and Empowerment" workshop, what can you do?

You can certainly read my book, Sacred Demise and complete all the exercises in it, but you can also read poetry, make art and music; you can not only talk about your feelings about collapse with other people, but talk about your values and priorities-what is important to you, what is your individual purpose in life, what is your shared purpose together? And of course you can keep doing what you're already probably doing if you're reading this article-getting deeply involved in your community to help it become resilient and self-sufficient.

Above all, you need to spend a significant chunk of time every day-I suggest a half hour twice a day-in contemplation. If you have a meditation practice, wonderful. If not, develop one. It should be a time of stillness and restoration. It should be a time of listening to the inner wisdom of the soul/psyche-a time when thoughts and feelings are not censored but simply allowed and witnessed-and perhaps later, journaled about. While it is true that no one can navigate collapse alone, it is also true that while navigating it, the relationship with oneself may be the most crucial of all.

Civilization has robbed us of an inner life to such an extent that most people in this culture are terrified of or perplexed by the notion of one. Yet no matter how many gorgeous organic gardens we can grow, no matter how much food and water we can store, no matter how much we re-skill ourselves, no matter how many dialog circles we sit in, no matter how well we raise our chickens, if we don't have an inner life, then we are perilously at risk of emotional and mental breakdown when the daunting stress of collapse is in our faces, and we won't be able to answer the most important question as we navigate it: Who am I and who do I want to be during this incredibly challenging time?

Finally, I highly recommend my upcoming online course "Navigating The Coming Chaos" at the Post Peak Living website which runs from April 24-May 15, and there is a significant discount for early registration. This course is an ideal venue for applying all of the options stated above and more.

In any event, it's time to become discerning, pro-active adults-forsaking our "hope" and "faith" in people and distant forces outside us to do for us what we can only do for ourselves and with others of like heart and mind whom we love and trust. The abject betrayal that most progressives in this nation are currently experiencing confirms that any hope that comes from outside us will most likely result in a force to be reckoned with that is much worse than the one our "hope" was intended to avoid.

I was inspired to focus on Kathleen because she is a friend and because I had firsthand awareness of her passionate commitment to a local cause-a commitment that shared by a small community of activists, has now made an enormous difference not only for Vermonters, but for all of New England and perhaps the rest of the country also.

In fact, in an article "David vs. Goliath Vermont Style", Charlotte Dennett, who ran for Attorney General in Vermont in 2008 stated on February 26:

A driving snowstorm could not keep Vermonters away from the statehouse in Montpelier yesterday as the Vermont Senate convened a historic debate and then voted on the future of the state's aging nuclear power plant.

Some 1300 people - most of them standing before live video coverage outside the small, overcrowded Senate chamber -- listened to several hours of respectful debate that even included the proposition of building a new nuclear power plant in Vermont as per President Obama's pro-nuclear agenda. But when it was all over, senators from both parties resoundingly voted against a last-minute amendment for a new plant to replace the old one, and similarly defeated re-licensure of Vermont Yankee in 2012 by a vote of 26 to 4. Amidst cheers, clapping and hugs from the victors, it was clearly another Vermont moment for a state that prides itself on being cutting edge on social, political and environmental issues. As the only state in the nation that by statute allows its legislature to decide whether to re-license a nuclear power plant, the vote is likely to have wide-reaching ramifications, including for residents of Massachusetts who live near the Vermont Yankee plant.

I caught up with Kathleen by phone on the day of the Senate's historic vote and she graciously gave me this interview. 

Kathleen, please tell us what motivated you initially to begin organizing for the closure of Vermont Yankee.

In my work, I am standing on the shoulders of many anti-nuclear activists who have worked tirelessly over the years fighting a corrupt nuclear industry that cares more about its proliferation than the health of the people who are affected.

Last week's vote against the relicensing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant near Brattleboro is considered historic because it has allowed the voices of Vermont people to be heard through their elected leaders who voted against allowing Vermont Yankee to continue past its expected lifetime of 2012. It has allowed the people to say what Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been doing: Allowing contamination of the air we breathe and the water we drink, and that is not acceptable. The NRC has never said no to the nuclear industry, and I feel that the NRC is corrupt and is in collusion with the industry, allowing aging nuclear power plants numerous license amendments and exemptions from safety testing over the years.

What specific research did you do on the medical dangers of Vermont Yankee? Tell us a bit about what you discovered.

 As a registered nurse and after many years of working in the medical profession, I am acutely aware of the health and environmental dangers that make people sick. Myself a breast cancer survivor, I have watched over the years as the incidence of breast cancer continues to increase with nobody asking the right questions. One out of 13 women got breast cancer when I was first diagnosed in 1984. Today the incidence is one woman out of eight. What is that about? Passionately wanting to protect my family and my community, I have committed myself to the crusade to stop the relicensing of what my research revealed: that thyroid cancer, a marker for radiation exposure was on the rise in women not only in Vermont but across the country.

Although I am only one of hundreds of Vermonters against Yankee I was irate when the Vermont Department of Public Health re-wrote Vermont's radiation protection regulations weakening the laws to allow Vermont Yankee an uprate in 2006 which also allowed greater amounts of radioactive contaminants to be emitted from the site. The ionizing radiation to which people are exposed as a result of Vermont Yankee's operations is a known human carcinogen. No dose is without risk, and the best science today tells us that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk over a person's lifetime.

The NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who are in charge of radiation protection are still using standards that do not take into account the differences in susceptibility to radiation-induced cancer, with women facing a risk about 50 percent higher than men while the risk for children is several times higher. What is happening to the health of women and children is not being captured in national or state health statistics because the data being publicized on men and women is condensed and aggregated over 5 years so that the public health significance is being lost. It is a national issue because the Center for Disease Control (CDC) does not have jurisdiction over the NRC. Nobody does. The NRC is charged with protecting the public, but all we see here in Vermont is the NRC protecting the industry that pays their salaries 

Tell us what else motivates you.

I have been an activist my whole life. My parents instilled in me that it was important to contribute to community life and work toward making this world a better place for the children and generations who come after us. Being political is one way but not the only way. Choices we make, where we live, what we buy, who we support, are all ways we can make a difference. You find your passion. What I am doing to expose the corruption of the NRC and the nuclear industry and its health effects on future generations is mine. 

What specific research did you do on Vermont Yankee? Tell us a bit about what you discovered.

In the United States, the NRC's technical and safety regulations governing nuclear power plants are developed by the private nuclear industry using voluntary consensus standards. The owners of the nuclear power plants, the suppliers and manufacturers who sell the nuclear fuel, as well as the builders of nuclear power plants, are providing the oversight on themselves--policing their own industry just like the banking and financial industry did before their massive taxpayer bailout. Most of those standards in use are outdated but are still in use by the nuclear industry. They would never pass muster today knowing what we know.

Of course, what we know today as far as the effect of radioactive contamination is being ignored. The NRC is allowing radioactive tritium contamination across the country. Tritium caused mutagic effects on DNA especially in the unborn, but the NRC thinks it's OK for the decrepit, aging plants to wash it away in our rivers. That's OK with them, but it's not to the kids or women drinking that water downstream. The NRC tells us it will not harm us and no one has the jurisdiction over them to dispute what they say or are allowed to do.

One of the arguments against voting down Yankee's relicensing was economic. Supporters of Yankee argued that closing the power plant would hurt Vermont economically and cause utility rate increases. Opponents of Yankee argued that closing Yankee would provide an excellent opportunity to enhance the state's economy by investing in renewables and making the state more self-sufficient. Tell us your thoughts on this issue.

Vermont needs jobs but not at the cost of the health of our women children and future generations. Besides, look at all the work they are doing there now digging wells to see if they can make the tritium disappear. Today it's reported that the cesium they found deep in the ground was from Chernobyl.  Believe that one. A nuclear accident from 1986 is still contaminating our soil in Vermont. That does not make me feel any safer. There will be plenty of jobs cleaning up the radioactive contamination at Vermont Yankee. However, the industry is not mandated to clean it up. Besides that, there is nowhere to ship the radioactive waste on site, so Vermont Yankee supporters can work there guarding it for infinity. Vermont wants the site returned to a green field. Let's see what the NRC does about that.

The industry's rhetoric about jobs and such is not trumped by the deceit and lies they have demonstrated, and I believe those are only the tip of the iceberg. It was recently revealed that Neil Sheehan, our NRC spokesman, did not think it was a public concern nor important enough to report to the public that over a million gallons of tritium- laced water was dumped into the Hudson river by Entergy's Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant--the drinking water supply of New York  City! We only find this out because of a whistleblower. If a whistleblower goes to the NRC with a complaint, the NRC does not have to report it to the public. In my opinion, the NRC is deeply corrupted.

I know that you and your family have made some personal changes in lifestyle in order to utilize renewable energy rather than rely on the conventional power grid in Vermont. Can you tell us about those?

Changing one's lifestyle is a personal process that is never finished as there is always more you can do. Reducing our carbon footprint one step at a time is the right choice for us. What we do is personal for us, and everyone needs to be thoughtful to make that commitment. Our biggest commitment is choosing to live in the city of Rutland and help the city survive rough times. We can walk or bike anywhere we need to go. 

I'm also aware that you are passionately committed to your local community of Rutland. You are involved in the local food coop there and in the arts in your town. Tell us more about what you're doing and why you feel it's so important.

Rutland is a city without an interstate so it is not easy to get here. We are surrounded by mountains and farmland, and some of us want to keep it that way. We don't have urban sprawl. We have no buses into the city but we do have Amtrak, and that needs to be seriously upgraded.  Vermont relies heavily on the economic engine of tourism. Many of us rely on the Killington Ski Area and tourism for work even though those are seasonal and minimal wage job opportunities for a relatively well educated population. It is a choice many are making, and we all come together as a community via the local food coop and a year-round farmer's market. Our family is promoting walking gently on the earth with the annual Rutland Long Trail festival coming into its fourth year, celebrated in August in the heart of Rutland. As the city goes, so does the rest of Rutland County, so what we do here is very important. We need to be vigilant in preserving and developing the assets we do enjoy.  

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about your journey of activism in the past couple of decades or that you'd like to add about Vermont's decision not to relicense Yankee?

This fight is far from over. The people of Vermont through this vote have flexed their muscle. The NRC is put on notice. They are not considered trustworthy. Will they mandate that Entergy clean up its mess and leave Vermont Yankee as a green field? The fight has only begun.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The February 24 decision by the Vermont Senate not to relicense Vermont Yankee was a stunning triumph of activism and local political action by citizens passionately committed to their place and its environment. When we juxtapose it with the paralysis of our pathetically corrupt federal system, it is all the more remarkable. It is testimony to the power of local communities cooperating to defend and protect the integrity of their place, their people, and their land base. I reiterate what I have stated repeatedly: All solutions are local, and if it's not local, it's not a solution.

Kathleen Krevetski lives with her husband Wayne in Rutland, Vermont, and they have come to think of themselves as urban homesteaders. Check our http://www.longtrailfestivalvt.com/ or visit the festival on August 7, 2010

As Rich Benjamin of Alternet notes, Joe Stack's "suicide screed chafes and exposes a raw wound this country does not know what to do with." Bingo.

In the same week as Stack's rampage, an Ohio man so enraged about his home being foreclosed upon, even though he owes far less on it than it's worth, bulldozed the house so that the bank would not be able to repossess it. Not unlike Stack, Terry Hoskins was trying to cope with business debts as well as a lawsuit, and vehemently demonstrated his rage toward banks for all the world to see.

It doesn't take Patrick Jane, "The Mentalist" or Allison DuBois, "The Medium", to grasp that these eruptions of vitriolic rage are most likely, previews of massive civil unrest worldwide, as individuals and families awaken to the current ghastly global transfer of wealth, so brilliantly exposed in David DeGraw's "The Economic Elite Have Engineered An Extraordinary Coup"-a wealth transfer of mindboggling proportions that has left the middle class impoverished and writhing in despair. But this particular side of the Toxic Triangle-economic meltdown, along with the other two sides, climate chaos, and planetary energy depletion, signals that the human species has entered, not a long and painful recession, but nothing less than a tipping point in its own evolutionary odyssey.

And now, millions of human beings who for at least a decade have been unwilling to look deeply at how their world works, find themselves depressed, enraged, paralyzed, and terrified at best and suicidal and homicidal at worst. Since before the turn of the 20^th century, many courageous researchers who were willing to look deeper gave us extraordinary "maps" of who was running the world and what the consequences of that reality would be-individuals like Mike Ruppert, Richard Heinberg, Dmitry Orlov, Peter Dale Scott, Colin Campbell, Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Cynthia McKinney, Sibel Edmonds, and many more. They produced volumes of research related to the Triple Crisis/Toxic Triangle which for the most part, fell on deaf ears.

The corporate capitalist system had forced on American families a lifestyle that left them too busy and too strapped with debt-and of course, too hypnotically entranced with the proverbial "American dream", to read the signals that were becoming more ominous by the day. Besides, in the pubescent ecstasy of the earning/spending/debt party, who wants to be annoyed with downers like becoming an adult and comprehending the facts and their consequences?

And so, those who were too busy, ambitious, hard-working, conscientious, dedicated, and of course, let us not forget, patriotic, have within the past two years been blindsided by that which they refused to acknowledge--and worse, they who have called the mapmakers and their supporters, such as myself, "whack jobs, wing nuts, conspiracy theorists, fearmongers, and pessimists" now find themselves bewildered, flabbergasted, dumbfounded, and horrified.

Tragically, it's the result of being uninformed and unprepared, and when the excrement hits the circular air mechanism, it results for the unprepared in becoming unplugged-like Joe Stack and Terry Hoskins.

But Terry and Joe are only two cases in point. Apparently, the United States government (not Patrick Jane or Allison DuBois) is anticipating many more such incidents. In December, 2008, the Phoenix Business Journal reported in a story entitled "Arizona Police Say They Are Prepared As War College Warns Military Must Prep For Unrest; IMF Warns of Economic Riots" that "a new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks." Concurrently, Military.Com cited another part of the report which stated that "Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities ... to defend basic domestic order and human security, likewise in the case of 'unforeseen economic collapse', 'pervasive public health emergencies,' and 'catastrophic natural and human disasters,' among other possible crises."

Fortunately, many individuals and families have awoken to the reality that what our species is confronting is nothing less than the total collapse of industrial civilization and the end of the world as we have known it. They are coming to understand that the collapse is a process, not an event, and that some aspects of it will be slow and grinding, while other aspects will be sudden, catastrophic, and traumatic. And very importantly, they are becoming prepared.

But how does one "prepare", and what is preparation anyway?

In my experience, there are three aspects. The first concerns individual and family self-sufficiency which relates to things like learning to grow one's own food, learning to store and preserve food, understanding and utilizing permaculture design principles in all aspects of life; deeply evaluating one's living situation and assessing where the most sustainable living venue might be; completely extricating oneself from the debt/credit system; learning natural, holistic healing techniques and wild, edible plant foraging skills. These are only a few of the most basic forms of logistical preparation.

And please note, this is not about becoming a camo-clad survivalist with years of food and water stored underground and protected by an arsenal of weapons. In fact, the reality of our predicament is that the lone survivalist/"apocalypse man" is precariously at risk because survival demands cooperation and coordination.

Therefore, the second aspect of preparation relates to neighborhood and community cooperation, and I believe that the Transition Handbook and Transition movement worldwide offer the most practical, sensible, and feasible model for creating local resilience and self-sufficiency. Those who are skeptical of community preparation often argue that a burgeoning police state will not allow such communities to exist let alone thrive. What they tend to overlook are the realities of energy depletion and economic unraveling which are likely to seriously curtail the functioning of all levels of law enforcement worldwide.

Finally, but in my opinion, most fundamental, is emotional and spiritual preparation for the unprecedented changes which have already begun and which will continue and intensify for many decades to come. It is perhaps the best hedge against becoming "unplugged" in the face of mindboggling chaos and transition. For this reason I published in 2009 Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse--a poetic manual of emotional and spiritual preparation for navigating the daunting challenges of our uncertain future.

Although I do not condone Joe Stack's violent attack on the Austin IRS office, I find that his articulate suicide letter contains many grains of truth, as well as a tragic exposé of his lack of comprehension of the larger transition that inundated his life with an overwhelming number of smaller ones. Myriad forms of preparation are no guarantee of survival or well being in the face of the end of the world as we have known it, but they may allow us unimaginable opportunities for personal and community transformation.

In addition to the Transition Handbook, I strongly recommend the Post-Peak Living website and its online "Uncrash Course", as well as my upcoming course in April, 2010 on "Navigating The Coming Chaos". For further information on the latter course, please contact me at Carolyn@carolynbaker.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

No one needs to be either unprepared or unplugged. But the time to address both issues is now.

During the past year, Hollywood has brought forth an array of post-apocalyptic movies such as "2012" and "The Road", but "The Book of Eli" is unique in this genre by way of a message that supersedes a abject survivalism as the bottom line theme. The message was intentional for screenplay author, Gary Whitta, who comments that "faith and hope have as much value to humanity as sustenance and safety." In other words, "The Book of Eli" is about much more than first-chakra survival in a world where little else matters and where most people are fighting, moment to moment, to simply stay alive.

The story focuses on a man in the not-too-distant future who has become a warrior, not by choice but by necessity, 30 years after what is referred to as "the flash" and the subsequent war that left the earth a catastrophic wasteland. Few people are alive who remember what the world was like before those cataclysmic events, and the rest are illiterate with no sense of history or purpose beyond finding food, water, and shelter.

For three decades, Eli (Denzel Washington) has been walking and wandering in response to a voice that he says came from inside him to protect the book (a bible) that he found amid the rubble of cataclysm, and keep heading west. Along the way he witnesses myriad injustices and wrongs he could help right, but instead, he chooses to abide with his instructions and avoid such entanglements.

We wonder why a bible in such a world makes any difference, but we soon discover that the war may have erupted in part because of religion and the power and control some people usurped in its name. Almost all bibles were burned after the war, and we assume it was for this reason. One man besides Eli in the current intellectual wasteland understands the power of books and reading them, and especially the power of the bible as a tool of control. That man is Carnegie (Gary Oldman)-an ironic name given that the nineteenth-century steel tycoon, Andrew Carnegie, donated millions to the building and maintenance of libraries in the United States. After encountering Eli and learning that he has a bible, the Carnegie of Whitta's screenplay is relentless in his quest to obtain it and is willing to do whatever it takes to do so because he shamelessly declares that "if we have the book, we can control people". But from Eli's perspective, nothing and no one will stand in the way of fulfilling his mission and following the instructions to keep walking west.

Some reviewers have described the milieu of "The Book of Eli" as a "Mad Max" scenario, but it seems important to note that the latter movie was made in the 80s in the throes of Reagan's "morning in America" when consumerism on steroids and off-the-scale narcissism ruled. Thus, in those days, movie-goers could only find the world of Mad Max bizarre and purely mythical whereas today, as we find ourselves sinking deeper into the Second Great Depression, fraught with the ramifications of Peak Oil, climate change, and global economic devastation, that particular scenario feels increasingly more plausible.

In Eli's world of abject lawlessness, ruled by roving gangs and petty dictators like Carnegie, life is all about survival and the physical strength it takes to maintain it. What we consider today basic necessities of life, such as soap, toothpaste, and shampoo have disappeared, and most humans are creatures that can only be described as vile in their lack of hygiene as well as their lack of any moral compass.

For Eli, however, life is about so much more than food, water, and shelter, and that is precisely what makes his character and this particular movie unique. He is cherishing what seems to have eluded everyone else around him-a profound spiritual connection. Forget that it's a bible he's carrying. Forget that his spirituality has a distinctly Christian flavor. As anyone who sees the movie is likely to agree, he could have been carrying the I Ching or the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran. Please dear reader/moviegoer, do not get ensnared here by whatever axes you have to grind with religion. The point is that it was Eli's connection with the sacred that sustained him emotionally in a world of madness and mayhem.

And yes, a world of cannibalism where people who eat human flesh develop uncontrollable, chronic trembling, particularly of the hands, and those whose hands do not tremble are proud to be "not one of them". It's a world of ghastly abuse of women-gang rape and sexual slavery. In fact, as I witnessed the treatment of women in this film, I reflected on complaints I've heard from many of my female friends about the portrayal of women in James Howard Kunstler's novel A World Made By Hand. And while I agree that the portrayal in that novel was grim, what I also believe is that it was probably understated in terms of how life for women in a post-collapse, savage world is likely to become.

As a result, Eli holds values unknown to those around him. He's kind and caring, but he's not a pacifist; he kills to defend his life and protect the innocent. He feels and expresses gratitude before meals for the food he is privileged to have and for the mentoring friendship he develops with a young woman who insists on walking alongside him as he continues his journey. Her insistence is driven by her admiration of him as well as the misery of her life in the town controlled by Carnegie. She is Solara (Mila Kunis), and she has no concept of life before "the flash" and "the war"-a time when Eli says, "We had more than we ever needed, we didn't realize how precious it was, and we threw stuff away that people would kill for today." Sound familiar?

Eli further shows us how human he is as he cherishes a battered IPod he charges along the way from parts of an old car battery or wherever he can occasionally find electricity. Early in the movie he falls asleep to Al Green singing "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?" In fact, the lyrics are quite ironic given Eli's situation:

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart

And let me live again

I have stated repeatedly that I do not know how the collapse of industrial civilization will play out, and I have also stated in my book, Sacred Demise, and elsewhere, that without a profound spiritual connection-a solid sense of meaning and purpose for our existence, a collapsing, transitioning world will be untenable and unbearable. "The Book of Eli" portrays precisely why that is so. And like no other futuristic movie of our time, it depicts poignantly why and how the demise and its ensuing journey are sacred.

Curiously, this movie appears in our culture at the same time as James Cameron's latest blockbuster, "Avatar." Deeply embedded in many of Cameron's movies is a spiritual or archetypal theme, and "Avatar" is perhaps the most obvious example. Although it offers a much more pleasant viewing experience, it is profoundly connected with "The Book of Eli" on one level because if the lessons "Avatar" illustrates to the human race are not learned, the irrevocable result will be "The Book of Eli."

I could say much more about the movie depicting Gary Whitta's screenplay which I passionately urge you to see, but I really do not want to dilute its impact. While it is not all darkness and horror, it doesn't offer the traditional happy ending but rather one possibility of transition to a new paradigm of wisdom our species. "The Book of Eli" reveals where we are headed, but more importantly, the difference one human being's relationship with something greater makes for himself and for future generations.

Then along came Mr. Wonderful with his irresistible smile and infectious inspiration. He wooed you with his charm, that smile, and his engaging discourse-so articulate by comparison with the unintelligible babbling you had put up with for eight years. He cared about you and your children. No longer were you alone; like Martin Luther King, he had a dream-a dream congruent with yours, and the passion you both shared for the dream was hypnotic and felt deeply spiritual. You actually thought that he was a messenger sent from another world to rescue you and take you out of the nightmare. He used transcendent terms like "hope", "change", "yes we can." And not only were you totally surrendered to his embrace, but you begged everyone else to do the same. He's our only hope, you told them and yourself. You could scarcely contain your ecstasy when they all chose him in the last hours of the eight years you had all excruciatingly endured.

It was a new day, one year ago at this time. Your sighs of relief could not have been longer or deeper. You and your children were now safe at last.

But today, you ponder reflectively the past year, and what you have now come to understand is that the hero you married is a prisoner. You believed him when he told you he was free and at liberty to make the changes he proclaimed. You trusted him, committed yourself to him, and fought for him. And now you discover that he's betrayed you and that his actions really aren't that divergent from his predecessor's. In fact, he is a prisoner of the same forces that terrorized you for the previous eight years. Fooled again. Betrayed. You sink into despair and depression. You talk to your friends-the others who also believed in him. You feel those old and familiar emotions you felt from 2001-2008 that you thought you'd never have to feel again. "What can we do?" you ask. "What are our options?"

The affair is over, and you don't know whether to cry, rage, get drunk, stay stoned, or rethink leaving the country. You've married a prisoner; you've made another bad choice. You feel bitter and perhaps a little self-loathing. In fact, you want to take a shower because you feel dirty all over.

OK, I could be talking about a real love affair here between two people-one a professional con artist and the other, an enabler. Or I could be talking about a nation of hopeful citizens who wanted to believe so desperately that their new hero would reverse the course set forth by the sociopaths of the previous administration and lead them forward to a better, more humane life, a more bonded community, a saner world for themselves and their children.

What we all must ask ourselves at the end of a relationship that turned out badly-a relationship at the end of which we felt betrayed and disappointed is quite simply: What is my part? Why did I make this choice? What did I not wish to see? What were the red flags I chose to ignore?

This week, Michael Moore was interviewed by Democracy Now and confessed his sense of betrayal and disappointment with Obama's first year. What I heard from him and hear from almost every progressive liberal who expresses similar sentiments is a jaw-dropping naïveté regarding the nomination of candidate Obama and the system he represents. It is the epitome of the definition of insanity: repeating a behavior proven erroneous without exception, time after time, yet expecting that the next time, the result will be different.

Yet both sadly and fortunately, as is true whenever the betrayer shows his true colors, this is a teaching moment for the enablers. And this particular teaching moment is more important, more momentous than any in our national history. Why? Because of what is at stake in terms of the future of the planet, and that future is inextricably connected with a paradigm to which we have been "married" as a people since the birth of our nation.

Last week's Supreme Court ruling lifting limits on campaign financing by corporations was truly the last nail in the coffin of democracy and sealed the fundamental definition of fascism attributed to Mussolini which was simply, "the corporate state." Abramoff rules, and politicians no longer have any reason to function other than corporate whores. As a friend suggested to me a few days ago, members of Congress should now dress themselves in NASCAR uniforms indicating which corporations own them so that we don't need to bother researching the facts but can see them wearing the information on their bodies.

During the 2007-2008 hyperventilating euphoria of progressives regarding the candidacy of Obama, my website, Speaking Truth to Power, was exposing Obama's corporate connections and forecasting that little if anything would significantly change with his election. I was labeled Debbie Downer from Doom and Gloomville and called a conspiracy nut. And so here we are: Revelations from Matt Taibbi and others regarding Goldman Sachs as the largest contributor to Obama's election campaign, an escalation of war in Afghanistan above and beyond the proportions of Bush's war in Iraq, Obama's sanctioning of Bush's policies on torture, Obama's prone position in relation to Wall St. and his choice to surround himself with economic advisors who were directly responsible for creating economic collapse-I could continue ad nauseum. The similitude between the policies of Bush II and Obama are so glaring that last week, progressive journalist, Danny Schechter, asked, "Has Obama Become Bush II?" (I am particularly fond of the Photoshopped image attending the article-a picture worth more than a thousand words.)

In this teaching moment, those disappointed and despairing of their tryst with Obama have a golden opportunity to ask themselves what his betrayal of them reveals regarding the political and economic systems of America and the reality that no politician can even be nominated for the Presidency by the two-party monstrosity, let alone elected, unless that candidate is permanently dressed in his or her NASCAR uniform. If you do not ask this question, you will continue living out the definition of insanity with every national election because you refuse to look deeply at the fundamentals of how the corporate state functions. You will cover its rotting stench with come cloying cologne of "hope" and thereby not only enable your betrayers but waste precious time by not attending to life and death issues.

My 2006 book, U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You, endeavored first and foremost to leave the reader with an understanding of who owns and operates the American political system. Others have offered their brilliant analyses-Naomi Klein in Shock Doctrine, Mike Ruppert in Crossing The Rubicon, and Kevin Phillips in Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism. Your failed love affair with Obama is now your teaching moment-a critical opportunity to research these four books above and buy out of the putrid, perfidious American political system and buy into making your local community resilient and self-sufficient.

I have long since rejected the American political system and have not voted in any national election since 2000, nor will I again in my lifetime. To do so is to buy into a system that has created what for years I have termed the Toxic Triangle of energy depletion, economic meltdown, and environmental devastation. Every drop of human energy I invest in that system is energy divested from working with my community, my neighborhood, and my loved ones to respond to the current and coming horrors that have been wrought by the three "E's": catastrophic climate chaos, multitudes of environmental refugees, impending global food shortages, the depletion of safe and clean drinking water worldwide, widespread droughts and environmental disasters, unprecedented energy depletion, environmental illnesses and pandemics, and global economic cataclysm.

Visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller, E.F. Schumacher, and Herman Daly have demonstrated that global challenges are most effectively addressed on the local level, where pragmatic responses and options can be created as an alternative to investment in the fantasy of global solutions. That is to say that in the 21^st century, "global" is synonymous with "corporate" and therefore guaranteed to exacerbate rather than grapple with the daunting issues confronting the earth community.

Some individuals argue that focusing on re-localization forces us to ignore the global corporatism of an international ruling elite. My response is to ask why we must do one or the other. It is crucial in my opinion to be aware of the powers that be and their machinations, but I must also ask, what realistically, any of us can do to alter or avert their agenda? The answer is nothing; however, there is much we can do to protect ourselves and our communities from it by becoming self-sufficient and resilient.

On Inauguration Day, 2009, I was intrigued as I watched the swearing in of Obama, by the presence of one man standing behind and to the right of Obama--none other than Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. I doubt that the positioning was intentional, but for me, it was symbolic. It forces me to ask, which interests, which ruling elite families are "standing behind and to the right" of Obama? To what extent is he their creation and theirs alone? For that reason, I chose a photo of that symbolic moment to accompany this article. Take a closer look and think about it deeply. On Inauguration Day, I scoured the internet to find a photo of Rockefeller standing behind Obama during the Oath of Office because I knew its symbolism would later be appreciated by many more Americans than just me. This moment is the moment I had in mind.

Some enablers are capable of changing their behavior and making saner choices. For example, those that have a magnetic attraction to prisoners might find themselves losing interest because they have discovered the deeper meaning of freedom-the ability to create with the support of others, authentic, meaningful responses that do not seduce one into the prison system itself.

This particular affair is over. The "hopium" has worn off. It's time to choose whether you will pursue another affair with another prisoner or walk away from all forms of incarceration, theirs and yours. This is your teaching moment.

This morning I browse the Internet and find this article: "America The Traumatized: How 13 Events of The Decade Made Us The PTSD Nation." I highly recommend reading it because it is the most complete assessment of our trauma from the beginning of this century until the present moment. It's only fault is that it does not address the extent to which the European settlers who founded this nation and their descendants have traumatized this continent's indigenous population and the rest of the world from the moment they set foot on North American shores.

Shock Doctrine

If you have not yet read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, you do not yet fully understand the trauma of the last decade nor its permanent effects in America and in the world. Klein's incisive analysis clarifies the extent to which the world has been traumatized far beyond the events of September 11 and reveals an economic policy of the last half of the twentieth century that, like the events of that particular day, will perpetuate an indefinite climate of terror throughout the twenty-first century.

The "holy wars" engendered by 9/11 in turn produced countless men and women emotionally and spiritually eviscerated by them, returning to their homelands to become the next generation of murderers, spouse-batterers, and child abusers. And simultaneously, the close of the decade brought forth an economic bloodbath which left masses of dispossessed human beings homeless, bankrupt, unemployed, without healthcare or retirement, and in myriad instances, depressed and suicidal. Moreover, this financial carnage was not merely a vast series of incidents of economic trauma, but implemented the permanent dismantling of the middle class--a sea change of calculated, systematic impoverishment.

A December 15 MSNBC story reported that: "Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults, causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities."

As Klein documents, some of this past decade's trauma was circumstantial; some, deliberate, but all has left an indelible, protracted mark on the human species which is likely to endure even beyond this century.

Hey, I'm Not Traumatized

Some readers may argue that this article, so far, is irrelevant to their circumstances. After all, you may argue, I haven't experienced any of the above-mentioned forms of adversity. Very well-yes, I really mean that. I'm happy that you have been fortunate enough to avoid them, but do not think, dear reader, that you have been able to avoid being traumatized. In fact, if you are alive on planet earth today, you are living and will live the rest of your life in a state of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While you may not have lived through a traumatic event, you cannot escape the effects of a plethora of traumatic events around you, and what is more, you will be reminded of those events on some level every day of your life.

Is it the foreclosure signs you see as you look out your front window? Is it the story about the Nigerian airline passenger this past weekend who allegedly intended to blow up a plane-a story that dominates airtime on cable news channels, internet sites, and newspapers? Maybe it's the homeless people you see on your city streets carrying signs begging for whatever change you can spare. Unless you're living in a hermetically sealed isolation tank, you know someone who has lost their house, job, healthcare, retirement benefits, a limb or a life in war. You're not an addict? Don't feel like self-medicating? Untold millions of people do. Why is that?

Perhaps you haven't had your "End of Suburbia" moment when you really get, down to your toenails what the end of cheap and abundant oil will mean for you and your loved ones. Maybe you can't wrap your mind around going to the grocery store only to find that there is no food there. Just can't grasp getting seriously injured and needing surgery, but no hospital, doctor, or nurse can be found-at least one with anesthesia? Oh, and did I mention that sometime this coming decade, it may become very difficult or impossible to find clean, safe drinking water? Now, do you feel traumatized?

You, yes you, are experiencing some form of PTSD, and that will become increasingly obvious to you as the collapse of the empire that engineered the pillage grows more insane, more desperate to survive, more threatened, and more willing to do whatever it takes to stay on life-support.

I haven't even mentioned here the reality of childhood trauma that many of us bring to the table in the traumatic decades of the twenty-first century. How this factors into the equation is unknown, but it does, and it will, and added to the reality that we live in a culture of competition, as opposed to cooperation, trauma-past and present, is an enormous contributor to our daunting difficulties in creating and maintaining supportive and harmonious living communities.

Wow, I'm Multi-Tasking!

For activists and those working for change, it is extremely important to understand the trauma of the people with whom and for whom you are working, as well as your own. It accounts for the inability of so many people to look at the realities of collapse and stop pretending that a "return to normal" is imminent. And even when folks are able to look, our multitudinous forms of PTSD may keep us from realizing how little time we have to prepare and stop us from allowing ourselves to be deeply penetrated by what is truly at stake.

In an article "In Terror's Grip: Healing The Ravages of Trauma", by Harvard Medical School's Bessel van der Kolk, he emphasizes that the difference between a normally stressful event and a trauma is the degree of helplessness one experiences in the face of it. Numbness, confusion, shock, withdrawal, denial, addictions, and many other behaviors are attempts to avoid the feeling of helplessness and the reliving, consciously or unconsciously, of the trauma. The result is often an attempt to avoid feelings that might evoke memories of the trauma or use the distractions of work, family, or other responsibilities to keep emotions and memories at bay. Thus the obsession with "staying happy" or "keeping things light" or "having a positive attitude."

I notice, for example, that it is much easier for activists to "lose themselves" in causes and projects than actually feel the feelings associated with these endeavors. This accounts for the ubiquitous question "What should we do?" that arises as people begin to awaken to the dire issues of Peak Oil (and every other resource), climate change, global economic catastrophe, species extinction, and population overshoot-to name only a few. If I'm busy "doing" and "solving", then I don't have to feel my feelings about something that may or may not have a solution. If I don't feel my feelings, however, I am likely to misdirect my energy and while being quite task-oriented, fail to be the person I need to be, for myself and for others, as the external situation further deteriorates.

The moment we feel our feelings, we are no longer in the land of logistical preparation where we can operate from the neck up and pretend that there is no force greater than the personal human ego operating within in us or outside of us. Once we feel, we are in the territory of soul-a domain that is irrational, non-linear, unpredictable, and beyond our control.

As Van Der Kolk and others emphasize, a sense of helplessness is what keeps us from exploring our feelings in relation to collapse more fully. Yet what is unavoidably true is that on many levels, we are helpless or at least feel helpless in the face of monumental challenges like Peak Oil and climate change.

The Mother Of All Fears

If I feel, I enter the domain of the heart and soul, and if I do that, I will invariably, sooner or later, confront my fear of death. But isn't that just another trauma? Well, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. A number of wise men and women have researched death extensively including Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Stephen and Ondrea Levine, and the Dali Lama who claims to spend at least one hour a day contemplating his own death.

Isn't this just a lot of self-absorbed navel gazing? I think not. In fact, I believe it is very important in a culture that is based on invincible heroism, to contemplate our defeat and our demise regularly. Until we do so, death has unspeakable power over us-so much so that it prevents us from feeling our feelings and thus tapping into that "something greater" within us that can guide us to where we will be most useful to our loved ones and the rest of the community of life.

In fact, Van Der Kolk, the Harvard Medical School researcher, highly recommends feeling our feelings: "...effective treatment of PTSD", he writes, "must involve promoting awareness, rather than avoidance, of internal somatic states." He uses the term "mindfulness", a word often used by practitioners of meditation, stating that, "Mindfulness, awareness of one's inner experience, is necessary for a person to respond according to what is happening and is needed in the present, rather than reacting to certain somatic sensations as a return of the traumatic past. Such awareness will free people to introduce new options to solve problems and not merely to react reflexively."

What Does Your GPS Say?

Finally, says Van der Kolk, "Imagining new possibilities, not merely repetitively retelling the tragic past, is the essence of post-traumatic therapy." In this I hear the both-and that we must embrace as we navigate another decade of trauma and traumatic residue from the previous one. That is, we must be willing to feel our feelings and listen to their reverberations in the body, and at the same time, envision and imagine life lived in a new paradigm of cooperation, enoughness, service, respect, and deep listening and truth-speaking. In the coming decade of transition trauma, we must listen deeply not only to others but to the "something greater" within us-the internal GPS (not Global Positioning System but Greater Positioning System) that can center and ground us when all manner of terror confronts us and tempts us to resort to numbness, avoidance, panic, cynicism, or frenetic busy-ness.

I don't know how the next decade will end, but it is beginning with an insipid mediocrity that I find more ominous than blatant upheaval. Thus I cannot help but wonder to what extent a dramatic "event(s)" will be necessary to awaken more of our species or the level of catastrophe required for the awakening to occur. In other words, a significant portion of the human race may be incapable of mindfulness without the experience of more trauma of a more calamitous nature. I would very much like to be wrong about that, but we're out of time, and most of humanity is obsessed with a "return to normal."

This week's issue of Newsweek features an article on "Survivalism Lite" which highlights families around the nation who are preparing for the worst. Of course, it's all about amassing vast quantities of food, medical supplies, and ammunition. Nowhere in the piece is there one mention of how these people intend to cope emotionally and spiritually when all the cans of Chef Boyardee run out. What this movement portends is quite simply, a bunch of traumatized people preparing to inflict more trauma on themselves and others.

There is absolutely no place in the decade ahead for arrogance based on how much we know about collapse and how prepared we think we may be for it. Like veterans returning from combat, we are all the walking wounded, and our work is to hold onto each other and feel our own and the other's feelings, then join hands and transform our communities. The work to be done is daunting in quantity and scope; it is the work not only of preparation but also of healing-the work of looking inside ourselves and asking, "Who is preparing? Who is healing? Who do I want to be-who must I be in the 20-tens?"

This morning I also received this stunning poem by David Whyte which I invite us to take with us into the new decade:

MAMEEN (Conamara, Ireland)

Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.

Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.

- David Whyte

Carolyn Baker is available for Transition coaching/counseling and spiritual direction. Please contact her at Carolyn@carolynbaker.net

As institutions crumble and the global economic meltdown worsens and morphs into irreversible collapse, many people feel lost and disoriented, especially if they have lost jobs, health care, experienced foreclosure or bankruptcy, and of course, if they have lost the funds which they may have spent decades assuming would be there for them in retirement. The seemingly endless losses of collapse can be terrifying and paralyzing, and it is always easier to complain about the culture than to take action to empower oneself and serve the rest of the community of life on this planet. It may also be tempting to assume that since collapse is inevitable and now moving along unstoppably with a life of its own, there isn't any point in exerting any effort to alleviate the misery it is manifesting everywhere by compassionately serving others, even those who may know or care little about collapse. On one level, it is easier to just sit than to act.

One woman who does not embrace that perspective and who beautifully exemplifies empowerment and service is Kathleen Byrne, R.N., who works essentially two full-time jobs as a hospice nurse and as the proprietor of a cheery boarding house and hostel in rural Vermont. Despite numerous challenges in the past year, Kathleen has been able to thrive by working in two industries which not only pay the bills but feed her soul, namely, hospice care and hospitality. A former restaurant owner and gourmet chef, she offers housing but also serves up a sumptuous cuisine which enhances the feeling of home her guests already experience.

I can't help notice that the words hospitality and hospice come from the same root word having to do with kindness toward guests. For this reason, Kathleen's two jobs complement each other, and she is the perfect person to perform and embellish both tasks.

CB: Thank you Kathleen for your willingness to do this interview. Please tell our readers your thoughts on the current and worsening collapse of industrial civilization. How have you seen it playing out in the past two years, and where do you think it's going to go, particularly in terms of its effects on healthcare and housing?

KB: I saw "The End of Suburbia" and experienced the catastrophe of Katrina within weeks of each other in 2005 and knew then that the dark times were upon us. I have not watched tell-a-vision in over 15 years and so have been able to detox from the nightly news and American culture. Like a character in an apocalyptic novel, I gauge the level of collapse we are experiencing by the news that people bring me from away-such as Truth to Power's Daily News Digest.

This summer, two different sets of environmental refugees came to the Inn. Two Alabamans came to Vermont looking for property because "the summers are too hot in Alabama now." A couple with a two year-old child stayed with me for a few days while looking for property here, fearful over the water supply in Boulder, Colorado.

This week, I received a call from a mental health counselor who wanted help for his 56 year-old client. The man had long been cared for by his father who was now a resident in a nursing home. The placement the counselor had found for the man was no longer suitable, and the only other option was a hotel or homeless shelter.

I have patients who are faced with the option of buying food or medications. I don't need to tell you how this will all play out. We have all read Grapes of Wrath. Eventually, I will be inundated with the homeless and hungry.

CB: As you know, I live in Boulder, and what we know for sure is that there is plenty of water here-for now, but what is alarming is the misuse of it and the possibility of millions more people moving to Colorado. Nevertheless, there will be many communities across the nation and the world in which collapse will produce environmental refugees.

So my next question is: Why do you think it's important to take action in the world, even as everything around us seems to be collapsing?

KB: The answer to this question lies in my Catholic upbringing and the kindness of my mother. The dictates of those early years were to give back to those less fortunate since we had been given so much. I am grateful to my father who emphasized the importance of education, my mother who taught me to read before I started kindergarten and showed me by example to be kind and loving, and the many others I have met in countless books who have reinforced the values of hard work and purpose. My favorites are Howard Zinn, Pema Chodron, and Joseph Campbell. How could I not absorb all this and be grateful and lovingly give back?

A miracle occurred on December 17th, my 64th birthday to underscore this. I celebrated by listening to the Beatles famous song "When I'm 64" and was flooded with emotions as I remembered what life was like in the 60's in our country and for me as a young woman. Life seemed simple then, but I was unformed and unfulfilled and had not yet traveled the path to adulthood. Later in the dark of my birthday night, a former boarder came in out of the Vermont cold, a homeless 68 year-old with a limp and emotional problems. I asked no questions and welcomed him into the warmth of the inn, making sure he had eaten recently. Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where when you have to go there, they have to take you in." By trusting me and returning, this man gave me the birthday present that clarified my life's purpose. I am reminded of the stories of countless hobos on the byways during the (other) Great Depression who drew the smiling cat logo in chalk on the sidewalk of the house of the kind-hearted woman. I aspire to be her.

CB: Tell us about your work as a hospice care nurse. What makes it so enlivening and enriching for you personally? How do you feel you are making a difference in a collapsing world?

KB: In 1971, I was a VISTA Volunteer assigned to a Community Action Agency in Anadarko, Oklahoma . It was there that I saw an Indian child with fetal alcohol syndrome, a result of the rampant alcohol abuse among the Indian population. That one shocking moment directed my rather drifting 60's life to nursing school to "make a contribution to the world."

I had felt that this promise would never really come to fruition, but now, after 33 years in the profession, I have the job that allows me to fulfill this promise. I am a nurse for a home care-hospice agency in Vermont. I am privileged to care for people in their own homes with the mission of keeping them there safely. My life's purpose of being of service is fulfilled by every person I am privileged to care for: the Viet Nam Vet with PTSD and a recent amputation; the 75 year-old Vermont farm woman with ovarian cancer; the oxygen dependent woman in a trailer park that lost power after a high wind storm. One morning at 4 AM I drove over a daunting Vermont mountain to help an elderly man living alone in the house in which he was born. He was in pain and had no one to call for help but the home health nurses. The essence of nursing is to care for such an older man who is alone and in pain in the middle of the night. These older Vermonters are stoics who are used to adversity-- to the cold and snowy climate, rural isolation and the 40-mile trip for supplies. These people are my teachers, my sisters, my brothers, my mothers. And so, let me not sit lifeless and unfulfilled when there is so much work to do. Let me contribute to my community of patients bravely soldering on, teaching all of us so much.

CB: Now please tell us about your management of the hostel/boarding house you own. Has it been a profitable enterprise for you in the past year? How do you feel this work makes a difference? What has made it rewarding for you?

KB: The inn ! Oh, my! A huge blessing, great fun and a financial disaster all rolled into one! I think of Loreena McKennitt, the Canadian vocalist and composer, who said in a commencement address at Laurier College in 2002 , "No matter how much you think you know what you want, life sometimes takes you by the scruff of the neck and offers you surprises and changes, other possibilities and opportunities even in the heart of disappointments, and your talents and potential, your capacity to effect change may lie in completely different areas from where you thought they were and sometimes you need to go with this."

And so, the inn that I bought in 2008 with the hopes of it becoming an intentional community has become a boarding house and hostel where travelers and adventurers can find a good meal and a comfortable bed. The boarders get a furnished room and use of the kitchen and dining and living rooms. There have been 12 of them since March, some staying for two days and one for five months. There was a woman who left her husband and needed short-term, temporary shelter; a talented musician/botanist who works for the Forest Service; a writer/editor, and a student on his way to the Art Institute of Chicago. Sometimes there are even guests--like the two sisters cycling from California.

This 2.5 acres of permacultured land at the edge of the Green Mountains and populated by my 16 chickens, 8 cats and Rabbit is not Earth Haven. It is, however, community to the 10 of us who live here, and we have become a family who cares for each other. A baby will be born in March, and there is a beautiful, sweet 15 year-old who is home schooled. At a time in the history of the planet when we have peak oil, climate change, great unemployment and war, we have each other and gardens and the White River in our backyard and the beauty of the Green Mountain National Forest, the wilderness that is the "undiluted work of the Creator". These people and this place have pushed me far beyond my boundaries and are keeping me young....And I have found my community.

CB: You could be living a nice, quiet, isolated life in retirement, but you're obviously not. Tell us why.

KB: I always say with a smile that Goddess looks out for stupid women like me, and She has surely saved me from my father's retirement. My father retired financially secure to his bedroom where he sat for 25 years essentially going crazy from self-absorption. There I was, living in a house I had paid for with money in the bank collecting "social insecurity." The next thing I knew, my loneliness and fear over collapse had propelled me to Vermont. Who knew that I would find the light and the dark you talk about Carolyn - fun, tears, fulfillment , frustration - in other words, a great life.

As Pema Chodron says, "It's not about getting to a place that's really swell." So I have been saved from myself, the self that wanted safety and security where things were really swell. My path now is very different from any darn thing I could have imagined! Let my life continue to make a difference to others. Let me fulfill my purpose on this dark and scary planet. Thank you Carolyn for inviting me to talk with you.

Kathleen may be contacted at: kthlnbyrne@gmail.com

This winter solstice is particularly dark. I watch the blood drain from the faces of my progressive friends, disillusioned by their "yeswecan" poster boy who has accomplished little in his first term but the escalation of a despicable war for oil and drugs, and with the stroke of a pen, opened the floodgates for troops and military contractors to rape and pillage yet another piece of the planet. "Welcome to the Golden Arches of Kabul. May I take your order?" The "Hopium" wears off, and we're reminded that it's still winter, and it's still very, very dark.

I contemplate the word "apocalypse" which originates from the Greek word that means "the unveiling". The poster child wins the peace prize, but just hours beforehand, he unleashes hell on earth. Did you see that? The veil was lifted for a few moments and we saw who really owns him.

Humanity is committing suicide in a thousand ways. This week, they all shook hands in Copenhagen and agreed to throw a bone to the climate change militants while genuflecting before corporate capitalism as the supreme deity on earth. The gods have been appeased, but the veil was lifted briefly. Oh my, did you see that? Corruption, scandal, and one climate scientist, Jim Hansen, not only boycotts the entire spectacle, but hopes it will fail because he was able to see through the chicanery even as it was being orchestrated.

A Congress of solidly owned legislators shakes hands and agrees that healthcare has nothing to do with health but only profit for big pharma and the insurance industry. It's all there if you just look. You don't even have to read about it on an alternative news website. Open your eyes because the veil has been torn off, and if you ever wanted to see naked people who can't even find their clothes-who aren't even trying, this is it. But beware because you are a walking pre-existing condition simply because you breathe air.

Over two decades ago as a psychotherapist in training, I worked in the back ward. I have the scars to prove it. I'm fortunate not to have been more severely injured, but more fortunate not to be living the hell I witnessed in the eyes of the patients inhabiting the so-called "mental health unit." Yet unlike the inmates who run the current asylum that is empire, those folks, in that ward, really knew they were crazy. They wanted so badly to die, and they told you that, straight up. They didn't make delusional statements like "this is a necessary war" or "this climate deal was a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" or "hold your nose and vote for it." What's really crazier than the insanity these statements blatantly reveal is the attempt to keep the veil in place. Let's all pretend that industrial civilization is temporarily limping along in some "rough patch" that will invariably, inevitably (because this is America) turn around and re-establish itself in the land of "normal." I'll take a flagrantly violent and suicidal psychotic any day of the week who is excruciatingly aware of their anguish and begs to be allowed to end their misery. Please, I implore you, give me the certifiable schizophrenic who "knows" he is Jesus and that killer ants are crawling all over his body.

No darkness is as dark as that perpetuated by people who insist they are living in the light.

So what's the real deal with the species that sits, as Tim Bennett suggests, like Thelma and Louise, at the edge of the cliff, about to punch the gas of the '66 T Bird into oblivion while taking everything and everyone else in sight with it? Is it really all about hating the culture and its vacuousness that much?

I keep coming back to the dark-and the light. I can't forget how they need each other-like the North and South poles-like every opposite we can possibly imagine that is only truly defined and appreciated by what it isn't. After all I've written here, how dare I talk about the light? Isn't that all just theory? Where's the experience?

Every once in awhile, one of those patients in that back ward would receive the kind of treatment that allowed him or her to walk out the front door with fear and trepidation, but nevertheless committed to staying alive and finding many reasons to contribute to the lives of others. And even more frequently these days, I find individuals and communities that are discovering a deeper meaning and purpose in their lives that they are holding alongside the horrors created by an inexorably suicidal human species. I encounter in the most unexpected places people who are not just sitting and waiting, but working-working hard to contribute to the well being of the community of life. They wish to minimize the suffering that the collapse of empire will entail, but even more importantly, they are doing their work just because-because it makes a difference to others, because it empowers themselves and all the lives they touch, because they can't not do the work, because in doing whatever work they feel called to do, they are finding and fulfilling their purpose in being on this dark and scary planet.

You see it isn't just about jumping off a cliff to end the anguish. It's about finding meaning, and even if we build communities that look like permaculture design on steroids, even if we return to steady-state economics and create burgeoning economies of scale based on cooperation, compassion, creativity-even if we fashion intentional communities that approximate heaven on earth, even if we were to forge a culture of nirvana, it is only by immersing ourselves in the inner transition process that brings emotional and spiritual transformation far beyond anything traditional psychotherapy has to offer-it is only there that we find the meaning and purpose that will move us through the evolutionary threshold on which we stand and make the current cultural nightmare a bit more bearable.

A new kind of human is possible, but it will be experienced only as the old paradigm definition of humanity breathes its last breath. The veils keep falling off the things they have been concealing for more than 5,000 years. Let's keep assisting the unveiling and call what's underneath exactly what it is.

One way to do this is to find and do the work we came here to do and which massive unemployment and underemployment, vs. greasing the wheels of empire, now gives us an excellent opportunity to discover.

Our second job is to become in the indigenous sense of the word, elders of the community. The elder is not necessarily the older. His or her job always was and will be not only the preparation of youth for initiation, but speaking truth and creating beauty. These may seem like contradictory tasks, but they are profoundly complementary. In indigenous cultures, elders are truth-tellers who are often disliked for their directness and candor. Yet they know that this is the job of the elder, and that to do anything less is to betray succeeding generations. At the same time, the elder knows that the horrible truths unveiled must be balanced by the creation of beauty-poems, songs, stories, works of art, and music. In earlier definitions of the word "prophet", it meant not someone who tells what will happen, but what is happening and what is about to happen. Thus the elder must be both a prophet and an artist, for one needs the other and cannot exist without it.

I'm reminded of scenes from the recent movie and novel "The Road" in which "the man" teaches "the boy" that some individuals "carry the fire", and others don't. As the ending reveals, this instruction, as much as the incessant heinous experiences they encountered, made a permanent impression on the boy, and we are led to believe, would be the litmus test on which he relied in a world which many found impossible to endure.

Another poet who was roughly a contemporary of T.S. Eliot was William Butler Yeats. Both lived the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries, and both witnessed the global cataclysm of World War I. Yeats in particular was deeply troubled about where industrial civilization was taking the planet, yet he never relinquished his conviction that its horrors would ultimately bring forth that new kind of human.

At this solstice/nativity moment, Yeats speaks to us of the light that attends the darkness and cannot be extinguished:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

And so I ask, on this longest night and shortest day: What beauty did you create today?

And in this very dark moment, are you carrying the fire?

I was a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years, and 12 years ago, I felt compelled to leave the profession. At the time, I wasn't clearly aware of why, but today, I realize that some part of me knew that not only was the profession about to disintegrate, but that my talents and skills could be more effectively engaged elsewhere.

I currently live in Boulder, Colorado where I am developing a Transition Counseling and Spiritual Direction practice to reach out to individuals who may be experiencing unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, loss of benefits, loss of retirement, and other crises resulting from the collapse of industrial civilization. I'm also exploring options for working with people by phone as well as in person. As I interact with people hurting from a variety of economic, emotional, physical, and spiritual devastations, I notice that few of them have to be reminded that something is horribly wrong with the culture in which they live. They feel unspeakably betrayed and shattered as a result of the faith they invested in the American dream, and they are now experiencing the nightmare it has become in their personal lives.

Up until perhaps 2008, it might have been useful to bemoan the culture in which we live in an effort to teach our fellow humans that it is killing them and all other earthlings. Today, I find that even if people maintain a persona that we're simply passing through a "rough patch" and that things will get back to normal because after all, this is America, and we will bounce back - just beneath the surface of that particular mask is a profoundly disturbing awareness that we are in dire and unprecedented territory and that a "return to normal" is a tragic chimera.

Because few people are solidly convinced of what this pathetic culture can actually deliver, I'm finding it unnecessary and even counterproductive to keep whining about that reality. What people want and need is a sense that they're not alone, that they're not crazy, that there are many things they can do to enhance their personal empowerment in the context of an unraveling civilization, and very importantly, that there is work for them to do in their neighborhood and community - that they can invest their life force energy there and work with others to prepare for a deepening collapse. Curiously, I'm finding that the latter option is perhaps the most important of all.

I am currently working with Transition Colorado and networking with other Transition groups around the nation and world, but Transition is only one of many venues for involvement with one's community in preparation for the Long Emergency. The opportunities for doing preparatory work with others locally are infinite.

While I believe it is crucial to understand how we have all incorporated the toxicity of the culture on myriad levels, and while it is equally important to buy out of the dominant system, it is extremely important to engage with other awake individuals in preparing for collapse by doing that work together. The time of focusing exclusively on individual childhood wounding, individualistic self-empowerment, coping skills, and personal self-esteem is over. I'm not dismissing these as irrelevant, but humanity has now reached an evolutionary threshold in which we must grow up and evolve together or become extinct.

Evolving together means working together. Incessant navel contemplation and "woundology" enhanced by sitting in groups and attempting to create intimacy is not only narcissistic, but is in some sense, a crime against the earth community because it compartmentalizes humans from their inherent membership in the human and more-than-human families. It fosters a sense of "us and them" and propagates an odious arrogance that "our little group" is better than, wiser than, more evolved than, and more likely to survive than those others hoodwinked by the dominant culture. I'm not sure that at this point in the collapse process that we can engage in this kind of work without inadvertently perpetuating the culture of empire that we proclaim to abhor.

Perhaps even more counterproductive is isolation and an abdication of our human responsibility to serve the earth community. While it may be useful to sit in conversation groups with likeminded folks, it is, in my opinion, our moral obligation to serve the world in which we live, and as stated above, the opportunities for doing so are endless. This is tricky because it means we must create and maintain good boundaries. It means serving but also keeping some distance from the prevailing paradigm. Engaging in service does not mean wallowing in the system, but it does mean affirming that we are part of the earth community, not better than - that we are equally vulnerable, equally fallible, and that by serving, we are joining with our fellow earth inhabitants to carry the vision of a new paradigm, whether that paradigm ever prevails or not.

In her recent blog post, "Lessons From The Edge", Sharon Astyk reminds us of why it's important to carry the vision:

...at the end of the night the sense is this - that though the odds are increasingly small and the abyss below us increasingly vast, what matters most is that we live our lives as though we can succeed, because every bit of harm we prevent and every blow softened matters, and in the end, how you lived matters as much as the winning. Most of what we do may not work, in the sense of preserving it all, but ought to preserve some -and some is a great deal when measured in human lives and happiness.

You see, it isn't about "preventing" collapse or the triumph of a new paradigm, but rather about minimizing the suffering.

Some individuals believe that the ideal model for transcending the culture of empire is the ecovillage or intentional community. There may be a time, in my opinion, when this option is truly viable, but at this stage of collapse, I think not. People who do live in intentional communities usually report that because of the emotional baggage people bring to the community, it is necessary to spend hours daily "processing" these issues in order to resolve conflicts. Generally, if this processing is not done, the community falls apart. That, from my perspective, is because for the most part, non-tribal people are not yet in a situation where they need to create tribes. When they need to do so, they probably will. Until then, we will have isolated ecovillages held together by incessant psychological processing, and how, I ask, is this different from living in a gated community in suburbia?

As Kathy McMahon notes:

Rather than learning to speak more honestly, (a skill I value, highly, by the way), I think that the true therapist encourages people to do more listening and do more real honest work with other people they live around. Meaningful work means local work that will heal and repair the world around you.

I believe that in addition to service, we must also address our own personal shadow. The shadow is a Jungian term that simply means all within us that we have disowned and said, "That's not me." It can be the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, and everything in between. It is more than just taking responsibility for "my part" in an event or an interaction. It is the willingness to explore how something we despise or loathe may actually be a part of us which we project outward onto other individuals and on the culture itself. In other words, how do I act out empire on a daily basis? How do I abuse, exploit, plunder, pillage, manipulate, and use power and control to get what I think I need? How do I subtly or blatantly perpetuate Western civilization's curse of entitlement and "specialness"? Of course, I wouldn't do any of this consciously, because I'm too "enlightened", right? Wrong. That's why rigorous exploration of the shadow is so crucial.

Doing shadow work is very humbling and radically diminishes arrogance because it reveals our sameness and what we have in common with our fellow humans, as opposed to how we believe we are superior. And in fact, in the same way that within the dark recesses of the earth we sometimes find gold, within the most despised parts of ourselves, we find treasures that if "mined" and worked with, provide the compassion, creativity, patience, and humility that allow us to transform the "emperor within."

One piece I found implicit but not explicit in both Erickson's and McMahon's articles is the importance of connecting with something greater than ourselves and other humans. I have attempted in Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, to offer not only tools for emotional preparation for collapse, but options for enhancing our relationship with something greater. Some people abhor the word "spiritual", yet some of the most "spiritual" individuals I have ever met call themselves atheists and agnostics. Here again, the contamination of words with the semantics of empire challenges our definitions, but in my experience, I have met few people who aren't "spiritual" in the sense that they are able to stand in awe of forces greater than the personal ego, such as nature, love, beauty, joy, and sorrow - to name only a few. For me, "spiritual" means little more than having a heart and a gut, and where emotion ends and "spiritual" begins, who can say?

Here in Boulder, and in several places around the country, people have started Sacred Demise study groups which simply means they are using the book as a springboard for exploring many other topics. What I know of these groups is that they are not intended to be venues for ongoing inner work or the creation of intimacy, yet in the process of coming together to work with the book's contents, both seem to occur quite naturally. What I also notice is that folks in these groups are not isolated, but extensively involved in service in their neighborhoods and communities.

Much of the emotional work we may "think" we need to do at this stage of the transition - work that is still primarily optional, will pale by comparison to work that will need to be done as collapse accelerates. Some of the work we are doing now may seem almost irrelevant in the light of intensifying challenges down the road. But all of the work we do now or later will be informed and interpreted by the conditions around us and will only make sense in the light of them.

A very important question for those currently practicing psychotherapy is raised by McMahon:

When our neighborhoods are defined by the five-to-ten miles around our homes, we'll be forced to learn new skills, and being diplomatic will count a whole lot more than honesty all by itself. As therapists, we'd do well to encourage our clients to appreciate the qualities of human connections and interactions by doing thoughtful, tangible and useful things for others in our neighborhood, without an expectation of an immediate payoff. When we learn to be helpful and constructive to others, our oddness or emotional damage will become less important than the way we go about salvaging our humanity. We may well find ourselves in a time when it will be a rare person who has escaped true hardship. Right now, one of every six workers in the U.S. are unemployed or underemployed.

What will our job as psychotherapists be when that number grows to one in five or even one in three?

In the title of this article I have put the word "ends" in quotation marks because I do not believe that the world will end, but certainly the world as we have known it is ending. That includes the institution of psychotherapy which in its traditional form is collapsing as rapidly and as profoundly as every other institution of civilization. Two decades from now, it will bear little resemblance to its present form. One reality of that transition will be that if therapists expect to get paid for their work, they should plan to accept payment in vegetables or chickens because money as we know it, eventually won't exist. Regardless of what happens, however, it is only the work we do in the external world - in our particular places with real human beings, that gives meaning to the work we do in the inner world. If we can spend as much time in the community garden as we do on the couch, then perhaps it will serve us to have a shrink as the world ends. Or perhaps as awake individuals strive to maintain this balance, less therapy will be needed and our roles as therapists as we know them will become obsolete. We will then discover other gifts to offer our communities.

I have written much about initiation, more recently an article entitled "Humanity's Rite of Passage: A World Tended By Adults." The initiated woman or man knows that the world is not a perfect place and that if it were, he or she would probably not be here because his/her gifts would not be needed here. Contempt for the culture serves no one, nor does insistence that our roles in relation to a collapsing empire must function in traditional ways. Collapse will show us where we are most needed and how we can best serve, yes the operative word is serve, our fellow creatures.

Carolyn may be contacted at Carolyn@carolynbaker.net This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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If incessant adrenalin rushes enhanced by stupefying special effects are what you desire, seeing "Collapse" should be postponed until you are ready to hear, see, and feel how Director Chris Smith's uncanny discernment is brilliantly conveyed in one of the most poignant, but inspiring movies of this decade.

When was the last time you saw a movie that opened with a plea for revolution-no, not the kind with bullets and bombs, but the kind Thomas Jefferson said should happen every twenty years-a revolution in our thinking? In fact, the kind of revolution Mike Ruppert calls for in the opening scenes is one that takes place inside us. In fact, that kind of revolution is one he's lived since he was a political science major at UCLA in the seventies. Whether you like him or not, whether you agree with him or not, you cannot argue that every word that comes out of his mouth in "Collapse", issues from bone-marrow experience-the kind none of us would ever welcome, the kind some of us would have long since committed suicide over, the kind most of us would gladly walk away from. Yet, Mike Ruppert is still alive, still speaking his truth, and amazingly, still able to laugh and play music.

From this point forward in this review, I will refer to Mike Ruppert as simply "Mike." That's because despite the fact that we've had our disagreements in the past and not a few "come to Jesus" moments, this guy named Mike--"Ruppert", "MCR", the LAPD narc, the investigative journalist, and "batshit insane conspiracy theorist" as he has been derisively labeled, is still my friend, and has been for almost a decade.

So what kind of movie opens with the main character coming in, sitting down, lighting a cigarette, and being asked, "So who are you?" Shortly, the viewer may be thinking, "Wish they hadn't asked that question because I really don't want to know." That means that by the time you've heard three minutes of Mike's personal story, you are already appalled and prepared to plug your ears and do anything but hear more. Your first response may be, "That can't be true", yet his story is fully documented in writing and by verified numerous eyewitnesses. In summary, his was no ordinary childhood and certainly no ordinary law enforcement career. All roads led to that career as a highly decorated Los Angeles Police Department detective, and everything after has been impacted by it. For as Mike very clearly states in the movie, that clean, dedicated, twenty-seven year-old cop is still alive in him and has always wanted some answers-and yes, some justice.

But to the same extent the conscientious cop lives within him, so does the cartographer, the map maker, whose life depended on finding out how the world really works as opposed to how we've been told it works. I would say that at least 80% of his work has evolved out of an attempt to save his own life. That brings it down from ivory tower speculation to a cellular, soul level.

PEAK OIL

So if you're still hanging out with doubts about the validity of Peak Oil, you won't be after you watch this movie's second segment. I've heard and read volumes on Peak Oil, but Mike's explanation always rings in my ears more loudly than that of any other because of its clarity and simplicity. However, he admittedly stands on the shoulders of numerous Peak Oil researching giants such as Dale Allen Pfeiffer and what he calls "The Three Wise Men": Colin Campbell, Matt Simmons, and Richard Heinberg.

Mike explains that it requires the mind of a cop to understand how Peak Oil fits into the rest of the map of events in terms of motive, means, and opportunity. It is now the fundamental underpinning of foreign policy-not only that of the United States, but of all industrial nations. Institutionalized denial of Peak Oil or the refusal by our government to tell the truth about it is nothing less than criminal, according to Mike, because it means that we are building our future as if Peak Oil doesn't exist-sacrificing the lives of future generations so that we can live comfortable lives based on a lie. As for "alternative energy options", I've yet to hear anyone surpass Mike's explanations of how futile and farcical this notion is in terms of sparing us from a global energy crisis. On a small, local scale, renewable energy is necessary and useful, but it is an untenable solution for the long-term, big picture reality of the end of the age of oil.

THE DEADLY ACCURATE MAP

About the same time that Mike's newsletter, From The Wilderness began publishing stories about Peak Oil, he started connecting the dots between a number of other issues, and several articles published on the website at that time by Catherine Austin Fitts and by Mike, revealed the likelihood of a massive housing and debt bubble that would inevitably burst and result in a global economic meltdown. In his numerous articles and lectures, Mike began admonishing people to get out of debt, buy gold, pay off credit cards, and learn to grow their own food. It is illumining to return to the From The Wilderness website from time to time and revisit the economic forecasts made there which predicted the current crisis superbly. Some aspects of timing and minor details may have fallen short of accuracy, but for the most part, the forecasts were spot-on in terms of the larger picture.

Others, including myself, read, wrote for, and published aspects of the From The Wilderness map which at the time resulted in being scorned and called crazy. Those years from 2001 to the beginning of the economic crash in September, 2008 were especially tough for many of us in terms of being labeled inveterate doom and gloomers. Some of my close friends who got it were calling me "Cassandra Baker" and with good reason.

But neither Mike nor I have broken out the champagne to celebrate how right on target we were during those years because the collapse of civilization and all of its attendant horrors is not something to celebrate. However, we are both buoyed by the number of people who paid attention and acted accordingly and are still doing so today. Likewise, we are inspired and encouraged by the people who have awakened more recently and all those who are just now connecting the dots and experiencing in their bones, the same revolution to which Mike refers in the opening moments of "Collapse."

Fiat Currency, Fractional Reserve Banking, and Compound Interest-these are the only three things you need to know, says Mike, about money. These three inherently comprise a pyramid scheme; in fact, the entire global economy is a pyramid scheme. It is based on the infinite growth paradigm which has now collided with something much more powerful. Our economy is collapsing, but many other countries in the world are collapsing much more rapidly. In summary, the people who have been running the planet are now losing control.

POPULATION

Anyone who has been researching the collapse of industrial civilization understands, as Mike clearly reminds us, that a global population explosion occurred almost simultaneously with the discovery of oil as the 19th century moved into the 20th . Population has steadily increased as the availability of oil has increased, and it is axiomatic that as access to oil decreases, so must the population.

A question that naturally arises from these disturbing realities is whether or not the human race can understand them and change its behavior in time to avert catastrophe. At this point, Mike reminds us of three types of responses to a Titanic-like situation. One is the deer-in-the-headlights response in which one is frozen with fear and surprise and begins to ask, "What does this mean? What do I do?" Another kind of response is, "We know this is happening, we know we're all going to die unless we build lifeboats, so let's get busy doing it." Another group says, "This is the Titanic; it's unsinkable."

Everything is going to break down differently in different places, according to Mike. Currently, we are seeing the bumpy plateau of energy prices which fluctuate wildly. The critical, lethal point of the plateau for the human race is when oil prices spike again, and no one can afford to buy the oil, at which point, everything will shut down.

THE TRANSITION PHASE

What is critical now is for us to begin to put new structures in place before the old infrastructure completely crumbles. That phase could last between 20 years (which would be incredibly fast) to 50 or 100 years. What is crucial is that we don't panic but rather analyze our own local situation to see what structures must be put in place there. Shortages will occur, but most likely, gradually as opposed to abruptly. Specific shortages will happen in specific places for a specific period. Thus, what is important is not to prepare for the end result of collapse, but to prepare for the transition.

When asked if a collapse be "prevented" by human ingenuity, Mike pensively responds with, "No amount of technology, no amount of human ingenuity can overturn the laws of physics and the laws of the universe." Humankind's greatest peril, he asserts, is to believe that it can overturn the law of the universe and "become God."

He very directly admonishes us to: Buy gold, insulate your house, restore the soil around you and grow food in the restored soil; get organic seeds and store them; get a land line and realize that your cell phone will not be available as the system's collapse exacerbates. Local food production is the most fundamental key to human survival in the collapse of industrial civilization.

For example, when the Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea and Cuba were desperately dependent on Soviet oil. The two nations adapted to the loss differently. North Korea maintained its rigid communist system, and millions starved. The Cuban government, however, adapted by growing organic food almost everywhere, abandoning the agribusiness model. The idea was to grow food where people were going to eat food, and the result was remarkable resilience-and survival. The phenomenon to which Mike is referring in this section of "Collapse" is extremely well documented in the 2006 film, "The Power of Community". In summary, in the new human paradigm, everything will be local, and as all animals species know, survival must occur in community, not in isolation.

Director Chris Smith has succeeded in capturing the essence of Mike Ruppert, and one aspect of that essence is the monumental load of grief he carries regarding having spent three decades crying "from the wilderness" to humanity to awaken and embrace the new paradigm. Yet even as the grief is poignantly revealed to us through Mike's tears, so is the balance he maintains through savoring love, fun, play, and making people smile-all of which are very instructive to those of us who are consciously preparing for collapse.

Mike reminds us of Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief and comments that currently, our society appears to be caught in the Anger stage. Ironically, the day I began this review was the same day in which the Ft. Hood massacre occurred, followed by another terrifying shooting rampage in Orlando, Florida. The protracted debate on healthcare over the course of 2009 has been punctuated with numerous violent outbursts at town meetings and insane rages against "socialism" by thousands of hurting middle class Americans. Caustic vitriol pervades our crumbling culture, and that chilling reality is exacerbated by mainstream media's massive lies, distortions, and omissions. How we get through this phase, according to Mike, is critical, and unfortunately, we have little in the culture to assist us in moving through it. However, once we do, and once we begin experiencing acceptance, we are then able to discover like-minded "passengers" on the Titanic with whom we can ally to build lifeboats.

I was recently asked if I thought it was possible that I could be "wrong" about Peak Oil and climate change. My response is that it's possible to be wrong about anything. But as Mike so powerfully comments in "Collapse", there is no longer anything to debate. Engaging in debate on these issues is very much like debating whether the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Peak Oil and climate change are happening; what's to debate?

For those who expend energy with political solutions, Mike points out that capitalism, socialism, and communism are terms "that need to be put in the trash can immediately." The only thing the human race will be concerned with in the future is survival, and ideologies and political parties are showing us less than nothing about how to do this. Engaging in large-scale political processes is not only futile, but deprives us of the energy we need to be investing in survival. All these ideologies were created on the premise of infinite resources, and none offer a balance with the planet's resources and other species.

Yes, we have a sincere, likeable guy in the White House, but, says Mike: He's a prisoner-a prisoner of the government, of politics, of the Federal Reserve, of a system that's archaic. Don't make success or failure rest on his shoulders. The only thing any of us can possible change is our minds.

Stop running from your fear, Mike admonishes us, and starting moving toward embracing your fear because therein lies our ability to survive. This will be, he optimistically reminds us, the greatest evolution in human thinking our species has ever known. Do not run away from your fear, your love, or any emotion because that is the life experience. In those emotions we find the richness of art, music, poetry, and all human creations. Our greater work, he says, is to pull that richness out of the rubbish of civilization's paradigm--a comment which bears uncanny resemblance to what I have written in Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse.

Asked if he would ever "walk away" from three decades of work, Mike asks: If there was a German in 1932-33 who had the foresight to look ahead and see what the end result of the Third Reich would be, could they have in good conscience turned around and walked away? We are collectively as a species responsible for what may be the greatest holocaust in human history-our own suicide.

While I have no negative comments regarding "Collapse", I do have concerns about two issues which could be interpreted as contradictions. One is Mike's statement in the movie that during the Bush administration, he believes Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were paying very close attention to his work. The viewer is left to wonder about his rationale for this bold statement, especially as he concludes the comment with, "that's all I care to say." Three decades of persecution by the powers that be does not, in itself, indicate that any two members of those powers were intensely interested in Mike and his work. So I'm left wondering what he knows that we don't.

Those of us who have been close associates of Mike in the past witnessed his dramatic exodus from Los Angeles to Ashland, Oregon in 2006, based as he said at the time on what a horrible place he believed L.A. would turn out to be in collapse. Yet it is precisely to that city that he returned in 2008. One may be tempted to accuse him of hypocrisy, but only if one does not understand that Mike spent most of his life in L.A., and it is for him "home" in every sense of the word. Some people preparing for collapse choose to relocate to exotic locations; some choose what is familiar and comforting.

The movie draws to a close with Mike's recounting in detail the Hundredth Monkey story. For all its poignancy and sad moments, "Collapse" leaves us with great optimism, joy, possibility, and inspiration. While the logistical focus of the movie is on Mike Ruppert, the ultimate focus is on each of us-on that part of us that knows in every cell of our bodies that we are now in the throes of collapse and that our survival and the meaning of our very existence lies in embracing and to some extent living the Michael C. Ruppert that abides in all of us.

I would say that the real crux of Time's Up is the challenge of how to keep the human race from continuing to commit suicide. The first 82 pages of the book are devoted to a painstaking explanation of the inextricable connection between humans and all other life forms. The fundamental reality of the connection is that "nothing is so dependent upon other forms of life as humans, the ultimate consumers." Likewise, "everything we do has the potential to disrupt something, knock if off balance as we negotiate the finest of lines; yet that line we are repeatedly stepping over."

Anyone who argues that humans have nothing to do with climate change needs to read these 82 pages because they unequivocally silence that illusion.

Central to Farnish's book is the premise that everything hinges on connection--the human species' connection with everything else. Unfortunately, it is something we must be taught--something that must be explained in words, but something that indigenous peoples know instinctively and need not spend years thinking about.

"It is nothing great and mysterious", says Farnish, "it is simply the necessary instinct that ensures we do not damage the ability of the natural environment to keep us alive. Failure to connect is the reason humanity is pulling the plug on its life-support machine."

Unlike the indigenous person, "the majority of people in the industrial West who identify most strongly with a hyper-consuming way of life, learning how to reconnect out of necessity is a struggle: most of us have never experienced anything but the disconnected lives we inhabit." However, Farnish reassures us, "we have always been connected, we just need to recognize how natural and comfortable it is to be this way."

Farnish reassuringly holds our hand while he helps us take baby steps toward understanding the essence of connection. He leads us into some very personal experiential, contemplative exercises that engage the right brain and allow us to feel connection rather than simply thinking about it.

Civilization, Farnish says, has put us in a "constant state of sensory deprivation; kept in that state in order that we can be willing participants of Industrial Civilization. If we connect with the real world permanently, then the spell will be broken: we will no longer be 'viewers', 'customers', 'consumers', 'voters', 'citizens'; we will just be us."

The author reminds us that:

"We are in the terminal stages of the greatest addiction humanity has ever seen. We live in a constant disconnected haze; drip-fed a cocktail of proto-choice, dreams, lies, fear, abuse, and hope. We are users of this culture, and it feels good--until we need another dose."

Unique to Farnish's analysis is a list of The Tools of Disconnection, that is, ten techniques for keeping us disconnected from each other and the earth, which of course, keeps us disconnected from ourselves:

• Reward us for being good consumers, store managers, marketing executives, investment bankers
• Make us feel good for doing trivial things--local politicians, writers, therapists
• Give us selected freedom--national politicians, judges, dictators
• Pretend we have a choice--vehicle salespeople, travel agents
• Sell us a dream--advertisers, educators, missionaries
• Exploit our trust--scientists, military officers, office managers
• Lie to us--economists, government ministers, public relations officers
• Scare us--journalists, broadcasters, customs officers
• Abuse us--soldiers, police officers, property developers
• Give us hope--religious and spiritual leaders, environmentalists

Whether or not you agree with the occupations Farnish has grouped with these tools of disconnection, the tools themselves make perfect sense. They have been and continue to be remarkably successful in achieving their intent: to keep us in the disconnection addiction.

So what about the "uncivilized solution" contained in the subtitle of Time's Up? First, the author insists, we must face a very difficult reality: Each of us is the system. "You are part of the system; you have to take responsibility for your part of the problem: how does that feel?" The good news, however, is that each of us is far more important than the people higher up in the web because we are "the engine, the energy source, the reason for its continuation." Without our cooperation, our faith, the system would have no energy and then it would cease to exist.

Farnish is adamant that Western civilization is in the process of collapsing, as is the ecosystem. However, each of us can help the process along and thereby minimize the damage by initiating collapse within an economy. This collapse, of course, is already happening because the public is losing confidence in the economy. "The need for confidence is a psychological feature of Industrial Civilization...." The system is extremely fragile because it is desperately dependent on faith in itself.

Two things we must do: Concentrate on the Tools of Disconnection--notice them, avoid them, and live our lives in a manner that abdicates them. Equally important, we must "ensure that useful information stays out there--in the minds of as many people as possible." Beware of the seductions of corporations, especially the oxymoron of the "green corporation."

Farnish states that "It is possible to create a situation where civilization is left to crumble gradually, reducing the impact on humanity, and the sooner this is done, the less the global environment will be harmed. He makes three stellar points that must not be missed:

1. Reconnect with the real world, so that we can understand our close relationship with it in everything we do. The more you connect, the more you will realize how unreal civilization is.
2. Live in such a way that we do not contribute to the expansion of the global economy, reducing our impact on the natural environment in the process. Be aware that authority figures within the system, such as political leaders and corporations, will attempt to provide you with 'green' advice: this advice is designed to ensure that civilization continues, and should be ignored.
3. Create the conditions so that others may also change through education and, even more importantly, undermining the tools that civilization uses to keep us part of the machine. Don't waste time protesting; this changes nothing--that is why it is legal.

A future outside civilization is a better life; one in which we can actually decide for ourselves how we are going to live.

Farnish provides a clearly organized list of "Key Skills For Going Beyond Civilization" in the short-term, in the long-term, and in the medium-term. He emphasizes that "We need people to discuss plans and ideas with, to help us get things off our chests, to laugh and enjoy things together, to just be there when we are feeling low."

I'm thrilled that Farnish perceives civilization through the lens of addiction and consistently coaches us to enrich and enlarge our deeper humanity. However, I fear that he has nearly written off the spiritual dimension of our being as hopelessly contaminated with religion, faith, and submission to authority. With this I must take issue because the very connectedness he counsels us to develop is in itself, in my opinion, the fundamental nutrient of the human soul and is nothing less than a spiritual practice. Navigating collapse and creating a species that is intimately connected with all others, is absolutely contingent on inner, as well as outer, transformation which has nothing to do with swallowing "faith as fact". It is rather about applying the connectedness principle internally as well as externally and experiencing in every cell of the body that there is something greater than the human ego. Unless we become deeply intimate with that "something", we are doomed to create nothing more than a pathetic sequel to the nightmare that Western civilization has become.

In the end, Time's Up leaves us with a momentous choice:

"We can look at the results of the experiment called civilization and feel helpless, or we can look at what we have in ourselves, and what remains undamaged on the Earth and think, 'We can do better.' The future is still ours if we have the determination to survive it and, whether you like it or not, the future will be determined by the decisions you make."

In the current moment it is nearly impossible to trust many of the voices in our world that issue from the field of economics. It is safe to say that none of the most esteemed in the field has the slightest idea how to address the global economic crisis. So when I picked up Duane Elgin's book The Living Universe: Where Are We? Who Are We? Where Are We Going?, I was a bit wary when I read about his MBA from Wharton Business School - that is, until I realized that he is also the author of Voluntary Simplicity: Toward A Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich. Even more reassuring is Elgin's work as a social research scientist at SRI International and his work with Joseph Campbell alongside his lifelong commitment to integrate science, economics, and the world's greatest wisdom traditions.

Elgin asserts that on the other side of our growing systems crisis, the world will be a decidedly different place depending on our actions now. We will either have an Earth ruined through conflict or an Earth restored through cooperation. Echoing the perspective of geologian and eco-scholar, Thomas Berry, Elgin states that:

The universe is deeply alive as an evolving and learning system and we humans are on a journey of discovery within it. We are learning to live within a living universe. If we lose sight of where we are (living in a living universe) we profoundly diminish our understanding of who we are...and where we are going....

The book is divided into the three categories above, with a final section on "Actions For The Journey Ahead." Realizing that many readers may not espouse the living universe perspective, Elgin goes to great lengths in the book to establish a rational foundation for his assertion, skillfully marrying the principles of modern science with ancient wisdom. Although I read the entire book, I found the first two sections onerous since I needed little persuasion regarding the scientific basis for arguing the case of a living universe. However, for those who do, Elgin's arguments are intellectually sound and powerfully compelling.

My interest in the book lies in the third section: Where are we going? Elgin wastes no time telling us that we are hanging from the edge of the cliff, but he does not leave us there because he reminds us that at this pregnant time in human history, we are each called to help birth a larger vision of the human journey. The author underscores what I have been asserting for many years and what I reiterated throughout my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, namely, that more than just a successful response to climate disruption and the dwindling supply of cheap oil, we need a compelling story about the human journey that enables us to look beyond looming conflicts over scarce resources. As citizens of the earth, every person has the right and responsibility to contribute to the collective visioning of our journey.

Essential Excerpts from The Living Universe

While it's tempting to get ahead of ourselves, we are at a dangerous time in the transition from separation to communion. We are between two major stages and moving rapidly into a time of planetary initiation. Entering as we are a world system crisis, we must choose whether we will pull together in creative cooperation or pull apart in profound conflict. According to Elgin, the coming decades will reveal the soul of our species and provide the opportunity for a rite of passage from one great trajectory of learning development to another.

A critical step in this supercharged setting is to imagine together the world of our vision. All current signs point to a future of catastrophe and ruin, and it is easy to envision many such scenarios but much harder to visualize a future of opportunity and renewal. The latter is still a vague and unformed possibility in our collective imagination. The bigger the challenges, Elgin implies, the larger the vision required to transform conflict into cooperation and thereby facilitate a more promising future. Not only must we hold an expansive vision, but that vision must be informed by a commitment to a larger story of humanity than civilization has provided.

Some may question the need for understanding the reality of a "living universe", but Elgin argues that it is necessary because understanding it allows us to discover our inextricable place in the fabric of life and expands our empathy as we come to see ourselves as beings of cosmic dimension and participation. Such compassion then becomes the basis for a higher unity that transcends our great diversity--racial, ethnic, sexual, generational, religious, political, economic, and more.

A world divided at the same time that it is facing enormous challenges, attended by the presence of weapons of mass destruction, is a recipe for catastrophe. Thus, unprecedented initiatives for global reflection, reconciliation, and the healing of past wounds are crucial as we endeavor to achieve a sustainable and meaningful future. Whatever our differences of gender, race, class, wealth, religion, or political orientation, we all participate in the deep ecology of consciousness which provides a common ground for meeting, understanding and reconciliation. In fact, if the human community is to live sustainably on the Earth, deep wounds of the human psyche and soul will need to be healed.

The first step in being healed is being heard. Despite a communications revolution which is still accelerating exponentially, humans are just beginning to experience an explosion of conversation. Concurrently, there must be a revolution in fairness, for without it, the world is destined to sink into endless conflict over scarce resources. Elgin reminds us that it was communication that enabled humans to evolve from early hunter-gatherers to the verge of planetary civilization, and it will be communication that enables us to become a bonded human family committed to the well-being of all.

But individual healing is only one aspect of the transformation, rebuilding our cities and neighborhoods into islands of relative self-sufficiency - reducing dependency on distant sources of food, energy, and other material needs - will become the basis for a global economic revolution. The hallmark of this revolution will be simplicity which is simultaneously a personal choice, a civilizational choice, and a species choice. According to Elgin, we will make that choice for a sustainable future with much greater enthusiasm when we recognize that it is a necessary part of a future path that calls forth our species potentials and leads us into ever-greater communion with the living universe.

The alienation of today's massive cities could be replaced with a social and physical architecture sensitive to the psychology of modern tribes and a flowering of diverse communities--most created through retrofitting. One current manifestation of this is the eco-village.

Despite the appeal of eco-villages as a design for sustainable living, there is not time to retrofit and rebuild our existing urban infrastructure before we hit an evolutionary wall. Climate disruption, energy shortages, and other critical trends will overtake us long before we have the opportunity to make a sweeping overhaul in the design and function of our cities and towns; therefore, it is important to turn from the experiments in eco-villages and co-housing and to adapt their designs and principles for successful living to existing urban settings. Without the time to retrofit into well-designed green villages, we must make the most of the existing urban infrastructure and creatively adapt ourselves within it. Global challenges will produce a wave of green innovations for local living--technical, ecological, economic, social, architectural, and more. Lessons learned in eco-villages and co-housing will be important sources of invention and inspiration for a new village movement as existing urban architecture is transformed into human-scale designs for sustainable living.

Grasping the deeper significance of "the living universe" allows us to see ourselves as citizens of the cosmos who are actively engaged in a heroic journey of awakening, and we will then tend to fulfill that self-image. Because the mass media are so powerful in presenting and reinforcing our self-image as a species, it is critical that we use this storytelling machine of mass culture to tell ourselves bigger stories about where we are, who we are, and where we are going. Humanity is growing up and growing into the reality that we are beings of both biological and cosmic dimension.

Thus it is vital that we begin conversations about sustainability at a scale that matches the actual scope of the challenges we face. This is a time for rapid learning and experimentation locally, all the while being mindful of how we connect globally. In order to build a positive future, we must first collectively imagine it. This comes about through conversation, and with local to global communication, we can mobilize ourselves purposefully, and each can contribute their unique talents to the creation of a life-affirming future.

What is the Life Stage of Humanity?

Elgin emphasizes that there are no right answers but that there is a high level of agreement that surprises everyone. With audiences he begins by asking people to discuss the life stage of our species as reflected in our collective behavior. "After five to ten minutes," he says, "I ask them to come up with a 'social average' and choose among these four stages for the species: toddler, teenager, adult, and elder. An overwhelming majority of the groups vote that humanity is in its adolescence. Interestingly, the reasons given are much the same around the world. Then I ask them to consider a second question: What was most important for you in making the journey from adolescence to adulthood?--the premise being that what was important for you at a personal level is probably going to be relevant to the human family at a global level. This conversation reveals that, as important as, for example, a new energy policy may be for humanity's future, even more important are efforts to awaken a new level of collective maturity that includes a more conscious relationship with the living universe.

Curiously, Elgin's book came into my life just days after I wrote "Humanity's Rite of Passage: A World Tended By Adults". It validated my belief that regardless of the strides our species makes in energy policy, carbon reduction, or creating economies of scale, if we do not mature emotionally and spiritually into adult human beings, we will have succeeded only in replicating the current predicament of a world replete with dazzling technological innovation, commandeered by children

At the same time, however, the majority of citizens, greatly enabled by mainstream media, remain clueless about what is happening around them, or even adversely in their personal lives. Marinated in denial and entitlement, they naively await a "return to normal" and persist in doing more of everything that hasn't worked, isn't working, and never will. So I must ask, how is that humankind, supposedly "the measure of all things" can behave with such recalcitrance and oblivousness to reality?

For the past two decades, alongside engaging in exhaustive research on empire and all that has brought us to civilization's collapse, I have been a student of myth and archetypal psychology, as well as indigenous traditions. The fact that for the most part, these topics are foreign to our culture as a result of Western civilization's inculcation, speaks volumes about our behavior toward ourselves, other humans, and the earth community. So-called "civilized" humanity has been exiled from its rootedness in nature and the organic process of human development so conscientiously observed and nurtured by indigenous peoples. Consequently, the culture of modernity is not only disconnected from the earth, but in a large sense "developmentally disabled". An integral aspect of the disability is modern humanity's disavowal of the initiatory process in the care and training of children.

As I have explained in my book Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse, most indigenous cultures have elaborate initiation procedures for their young people during the age of puberty; however, in the modern world, one does not have to be a member of an indigenous community to experience initiation. In fact, Carl Jung asserted that initiation is an archetype or fundamental motif inherent in the human psyche. That is to say that something in us wants and expects engagement in the initiatory process, not only at the age of puberty, but throughout our human experience. The process is so fundamental, Jung believed, that even if we do not participate in a formal rite of passage ceremony as we transition from youth to adulthood, our human journey will provide us with initiatory events for the purpose of deepening our humanity and our connection with the cosmos and something greater than the human ego.

Examples of initiatory events which humans frequently encounter are loss of meaningful work, loss of livelihood, loss of home, loss of health, loss of relationship, loss of future security, loss of life, or loss of place. I have intentionally reiterated the word "loss" because loss is the hallmark of modernity. The irony is that civilization has promised us inestimable gain but fundamentally delivered infinite loss at every turn of our path toward embracing its demands.

In tribal cultures where formal rites of passage are practiced, it is understood that life on earth is fraught with loss-that in fact, loss is the hallmark of human experience but that the bone-marrow ordeal of the initiatory process grounds the young person moving toward adulthood, by way of loss, into his or her permanent place in the community. Thus, regardless of what losses one may endure, for the initiated man or woman, one's connection with community and with the sacred are constant. As a result, one is equipped to face and navigate loss with remarkable fortitude and grace, not alone, but supported by elders and peers in the process.

I do not wish to idealize tribal cultures or imply that they are without challenges or devoid of dysfunction. Indeed, the more they are encroached upon by civilization, the more dysfunctional they become. My intention is not to focus on indigenous peoples per se, but on the archetype of initiation that I believe inhabits the human psyche. If my premise is correct, then much of how we as a species have arrived at the current predicament of committing planetary suicide makes perfect sense.

Moreover, if the reality of initiation is deeply embedded in our humanity, it is likely that survival and navigation of the collapse of civilization will be enhanced by our perception and response to collapse as an initiatory process.

Furthermore, in our fundamental human origins, we are all indigenous people. Whether or not we claim our indigenous roots, "white roots" do not exist. We are either actively acknowledging our indigenous roots, or we are ignoring them, but in fact, all of humanity has been colonized by civilization, the collapse of which offers us the opportunity to reclaim our heritage and liberate ourselves from conquest.

This then leads to the question: How does an uninitiated species respond to the predicament it has created, and conversely, what is the initiated response to the collapse of civilization?

Capitalism: A Children's Story

The capitalism to which I refer is not that of the small business enterprise which began flourishing in the Middle Ages, but rather corporate capitalism, which is synonymous with the proliferation of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of an elite oligarchy. It is rooted in a world view antithetical to the common good in which certain individuals, by virtue of privilege and a sense of specialness and entitlement, exert influence on neighboring entities and institutions in order to deploy myriad varieties of economic and social control. It is the apotheosis of uninitiated, puerile engagement with the world.

Unfortunately, our awareness of corporate capitalism's treachery and even our contempt for it, does not exclude us from its seductive manipulation, for its roots penetrate our psyches deeply and insidiously. We have been conditioned by industrial civilization far more profoundly than we may ever be able to consciously discern, by a legacy that extends far back in time through innumerable generations. Thus, if we are to astutely prepare for the demise of civilization, we must critically ponder the myriad ways in which we have internalized its fundamental world view and attendant values. Detached as we may be from the day to day trappings of civilization, even as we rail against the evils of corporate capitalism, it behooves us to notice our physical and emotional responses to the topic of the collapse of the systems we proclaim to disavow. Understanding that no sane human being welcomes suffering, death, and untold misery, our emotional responses and ensuing attitudes to the unraveling of civilization may reveal our level of awareness regarding the initiatory process and our participation in it.

What Developmental Disability Looks Like

Around us and even within ourselves, we notice a host of responses to the current predicament. Some of those might be:

**Entitlement: This should not be happening to me. I have worked very hard in my life and deserve to be gainfully employed doing meaningful work. I grew up in a poor or struggling middle-class family, and my parents worked hard to make life better for me. I've paid my dues. I shouldn't have to rent or shop in thrift stores or tighten my belt. After all, this is America, and I deserve to enjoy the American Dream.

**Positive attitude: You can wallow in gloom and doom if you want, but I'm going to maintain a positive outlook. If I look at the negative things that are happening, I'll get stuck in negativity and won't be able to come up with creative solutions. Besides that, I'm afraid I'll get depressed and won't be able to dig myself out of an emotional dungeon.

**There are solutions to these problems: Somehow, someone is going to come up with solutions. Technology and human ingenuity will lead the way. If we just work hard enough, we can create a mass movement that will transform consciousness and the systems that created these problems.

**Sustainability will save the day: If enough people recycle, cut carbon emissions, buy green products, and use renewable energy, we can prevent the collapse of civilization.

**I deal with problems when they happen instead of obsessing about them ahead of time: I don't want to spend my energy worrying about these things now. I'll take action when I need to, and I'm sure that when I need to, I'll make the right decisions.

**I want to enjoy life; I don't want to spend all my time thinking about the future: It's important to live in the here and now, and right now, my family and I are OK. It's mentally unhealthy to be thinking and talking about the collapse of civilization.

**The love/fear polarization: I want to take action, but I don't want to do so out of fear. Fear is not a good motivator. I prefer to focus on love and compassion.

Unfortunately, these attitudes are not only denials of reality, placing their adherents in abject danger, they are self-betrayals. Within each one we hear the echo of the fundamental tenet of civilization: It's all about me and mine. No mention here of future generations; no cognizance of an earth community and the urgent need for working together to care for one another, the planet, or our descendants. Ironically, the self-absorption inherent in these responses is a ghastly form of self-destruction that colludes with civilization in committing planetary suicide. Let us remember that the word "collusion" simply means "the sharing of an illusion"-as in, "recovery is right around the corner; everything is getting better; just hang in there."

What Does Developmental Durability Look Like?

Conversely, what some responses to collapse from the initiated perspective?

**Non-special engagement with humanity: Yes, I've worked hard in my life. From that experience I have gathered many skills which will be useful to me as the earth community undergoes enormous shifts. Because I am not separate from that community and because we are all deeply connected, I am being called, along with all other beings who inhabit the planet, to not only experience these momentous changes, but to contribute my talents and skills to enhancing our common well being in this process.

**A willingness to confront what is, not how I'd like it to be: I do not enjoy looking at unpleasant realities, but if I don't look, then I cannot see, and if I cannot see, I am not serving myself or anyone else. I will look, and I will feel the feelings that surface as I do so. I will remember that within the word "emotion" is the word "motion" which means that feelings are fluid and shift and change like the flow of water. Feeling sad today does not guarantee that I will feel sad tomorrow or that I will become frozen in any one emotion. I will ask my community to look with me, and we will support one another as we do so.

**There may be no solutions to the issues created by humanity's greed, self-absorption, and cruelty. We may be encountering a predicament that cannot be solved but only responded to. How can I and my loved ones and community best respond to these daunting challenges? How can we work together to minimize loss of life and care for each other? If there are no "solutions", then what does this mean? What is the message in this unprecedented reality?

**The crisis the planet now faces is far more immense than responding with mere sustainability. Sustainability means that something lasts, and living sustainably is a natural and inevitable response to living in connection with the earth community. Living in this way at this late hour is unlikely to prevent the collapse of civilization. I will not feed the puerile paradigm of civilization for the sake of supporting green products because it's "the right thing to do" or because it makes me feel good. I want to live sustainably not because it will "save" the earth but because my connection with the earth community compels me to do so.

**I am willing to deal with both the present and the future. It is foolish to only live in the present moment. Time is a tapestry of past, present, and future, and I need to prepare for the future as well as enjoy the present moment. Because I am an adult, I need to be mindful of the well being of myself, my loved ones, and my community, as well as generations that will succeed me, and therefore, I cannot afford to live exclusively in the present.

**Ironically, the more I consider the likely consequences of the future, the more I appreciate the here and now. Each moment, each meal, the reality of having food, shelter, health, friends, and my faculties I savor more intensely because I am aware of the likelihood that in the future, these gifts will be much harder to acquire than they are now. In fact, humans have the capacity to read the indicators of how the future might be based on compelling evidence; not to do so or having done so, then choosing not to prepare would be mentally, physically, and emotionally unhealthy.

**I will not polarize the emotions of love and fear. Fear in humans serves an evolutionary function-to warn of impending danger so that one may take action to prevent harm. From the initiatory perspective, love and fear are complementary, not conflicting, emotions. Through fear, humans often tap into layers of courage that were previously unknown and unused. The word "courage" has its roots in the French word la coeur which means heart. To have courage is to have heart and to be motivated by love and compassion.

In a recent interview with author, Barbara Ehrenreich, she asserts that "positive thinking is permeating our society, from medicine to business, and is even contributing to our financial crisis." Although she does not frame her objections to positive thinking in terms of an uninitiated perspective, her description of positive thinking and its impact on modern civilization accurately describes a world view devoid of initiation. While I do not wish to champion cynicism or clinical depression, the positive thinking craze, which in this country grew out of the Victorian transcendentalist movement, is a hallmark of privilege and has been utilized by the entitled ruling elite to pacify and manipulate the remainder of society.

In indigenous traditions, positive thinking is held differently than in modernity because from the initiated perspective life is a holistic mix of positive, negative, and everything in between. In fact, in its purest application of the indigenous perspective, experiences are what they are, and humans are not wise enough to determine at the outset whether an experience is "good" or "bad." Only from hindsight can we begin to evaluate them. The qualities of joy and celebration are fostered in indigenous traditions, particularly as antidotes to human suffering, but not as positive thinking per se. Rather, one looks squarely at the challenges confronting oneself and the tribe, but a cornucopia of emotions are allowed in the process.

I'm reminded of repeated scenes in the movie "Dances With Wolves" in which medicine man, Kicking Bird, asks his white ally, John Dunbar, how many more white people will be arriving on Lakota land and when. The medicine man's question is typical of what Native Americans in those days who were aware of the burgeoning presence of the white man were asking. While some nineteenth-century Indian people may have turned to alcohol to help them forget the conquest, many did not and wanted to know the specifics of the very bad news of European invasion. Had Dunbar given Kicking Bird anything but the honest answer of, "there will be as many as the stars" or encouraged him to "think positively", the Lakota holy man would have at least lost trust in Dunbar, or worse, decided that he was completely crazy.

The initiatory process of indigenous peoples has developed organically throughout their history as a result of their intimate connection with nature. Anyone closely observing nature comprehends its capriciousness, volatility, uncertainty, and inherent inequities. One species painstakingly nurtures its young only to have a significant number of its offspring annihilated by another species. From the human perspective, nature is extraordinarily cruel. Initiation evolved in part as an attempt by humans to make sense of nature's uncertainties and serves to teach the initiate that life is a series of challenges which evoke all manner of emotions and opportunities for finding meaning in multifarious, bewildering adversity. Thus the initiated person views all harsh conditions as part of the initiatory process-even the conquest and ultimate extinction of his or her tribe.

But initiation in indigenous cultures have served an even more momentous purpose than any of those mentioned above. It was a necessary and pivotal preparation for elderhood, which had little to do with age and everything to do with wisdom. Male and female elders were the overseeing parents of the tribe-guardians of the community's purpose and destiny. All initiatory roads led to becoming an elder whose fundamental function was to mentor new initiates and keep the process of birth, initiation, elderhood, and death intact, for the benefit of present generations and those yet unborn.

American Date Rape

To be uninitiated, psycho-spiritually, is to remain an emotional adolescent in the modern world. Civilization perpetuates the anti-initiation process which fixates human beings on the world of puerile pursuits and guarantees that civilization's mission and values will never be closely examined. Consumerism and fostering the identity of the citizen as consumer, attended by the mandate of positive thinking, delivers the end-product of the eternally adolescent adult who is literally, putty in the hands of the corporate capitalist rapist.

Ehrenreich notes in her interview, as does Michael Moore in "Capitalism: A Love Story", that the interminable, tantalizing carrot held out to the middle and working classes by corporate capitalism has been the hope that "you too can be rich someday" alongside the Horatio Alger "anything is possible in America" delusion. The fantasy has been brilliantly wielded to evoke envy and unfounded admiration for the titans of affluence, holding at bay bone-marrow resentment against the ruling elite for fear that exposing their insidious machinations might permanently preclude the lowly worker from joining their exclusive club. In other words, maybe if I don't criticize the filthy rich, I'll have a better chance of being one of them some day. Or in the words of Barbara Ehrenreich:

I'm saying this is an ideology that takes away all the indignation there might be about extreme economic polarization.

If you think you're going to be rich someday, why would you be resentful of million-dollar bonuses or $10 million CEO salaries, you know? You're going to be there, so it would be against your own self-interest to stand up for your class interests.

Hence, the perpetually adolescent citizen in awe of the wealthy, with internally blathering litanies of positive thinking a la Oprah, Suze Orman, or The Secret reverberating in the mind, is fundamentally incapable of discerning the lethal essence of corporate capitalism or penetrating its odious marketing skullduggery. Thus when the rapist slipped the ruffies of "riches in real estate" or "turn your home into an ATM machine" into the middle class American lexicon, the result was collusion: the sharing of a catastrophic illusion that resulted in colossal financial plunder, leaving the adolescent victims battered, burglarized, and bewildered to awaken and discover that they had participated in the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the human race-at their own expense.

At this point, two things should be self-evident: It is time for the human species to grow up, and it is time for us to frame our experiences of humanity's converging crises through the lens of planetary initiation.

Tribal initiations always involve some type of ordeal in which there is no guarantee that the initiate will physically survive. It is, in fact, an intentional brush with death. In some instances, the initiate has a choice about when to engage in the ritual and always has the choice not to participate at all. However, most choose to participate as a result of a lifetime of preparation for it by the community. And while a young man or woman may have fear or dread of the experience, he or she is well aware by the age of initiation of the personal and community consequences of opting out of the ritual.

In no way am I suggesting that individuals not raised in tribal cultures should participate in literal initiation rituals, but I am proposing that perceiving the collapse of civilization as an initiatory experience is a meaningful, salutary, appropriate, and empowering response to it.

While on the one hand I agree that everyone is at a different level of awareness regarding the demise of Western civilization, I also believe that this should not excuse us from incrementally educating our minds and cultivating emotional resilience in order to navigate future crises. Not all children at the age of five may be ready for kindergarten, but a ten year-old who has never begun a grammar school education is a walking tragedy.

Although many of us speak freely of living in a post-peak or post-industrial or post-petroleum world, we have no clear picture of what that world will look like. What we do know, however, is that navigating the transition to that world and surviving in it is not for the faint of heart. To accomplish either or both will require something beyond a five years' supply of food. In fact, it will demand that we perceive the crisis as an evolutionary threshold-a crossroads in the odyssey of our species that I believe is most accurately understood as an initiation.

Only collapse as initiation can illumine, at the deepest levels of our being, the choices we make as we attempt to transform a devastated civilization. The transition is utterly dependent on inner transformation. Otherwise, we are unlikely to create anything but a mirror image of industrial civilization.

So what might a world forged by initiated adults look like?

Surely it will be a world in which every aspect of human functioning will be carefully designed and lived in intimate connection with the non-human world. (A specific design system, permaculture, is ideal, and it behooves anyone contemplating life after civilization to become familiar with its principles.) It will be a society in which relationships have been transformed and honed by collective suffering and mutual support. The most anxiety-producing events will not be about being stuck in traffic gridlock, being forced to change one's weekly hair styling appointment, or discovering that one's internet server is down. Rather, world views and values will be dictated by having or not having food, water, shelter, personal safety, clothing, physical health, and supportive friends and neighbors.

The world to which I am alluding is a world in which every moment, every encounter, every experience is an initiatory exercise challenging its inhabitants to practice gratitude, compassion, kindness, alertness, discernment, and be present in the body and emotions. These realities will be doorways, not merely to a new society, but most importantly, to a new strain of humanity-a planet protected and nurtured by initiated elders.

No one needs to wait for the dire repercussions of collapse in order to begin the initiatory journey. One need only open the eyes and heart to a deeper level of perception so that "a thousand explanations" will not be necessary.

n this interview she talks about the collapse of industrial civilization - what it may look like, reasons for its occurrence, the effects of collapse and, how to relocalize and create sustainable communities in the throes of collapse. Through the lenses of psychology, spiritualism, and history Carolyn explicates that collapse is a dynamic affair, not sudden, but a drawn out process of erosion that will test our subjective relations and our consciousness, while shaking off old paradigms, and what we can do to maintain a sense of peace, pragmatism, and community.

Frank Joseph Smecker: You maintain that the collapse of industrial civilization is occurring now ; can you define collapse? And explain why industrial civilization is eroding at its very foundations?

Carolyn Baker: First of all, I'm talking about a process that is slow - not like falling off of a cliff but more like rolling down a bumpy hill. Most of us know what collapse is beginning to look like. It begins to look like massive departures from organized religions alongside Catholic diocese child-sex scandals. It begins to look like rising unemployment and a growing gap between classes. Wouldn't you agree that an educational system that can only produce standardized children by forcing them to take standardized tests five hours a day, four days a week, is functioning in a state of abject disintegration? Or what about the health care system that is so broken and unequal? Collapse is primarily the demise of the chief institutions such as education, health care, political, financial -

FJS: Collapse can also be recognized on account of its effects upon the ecological balance of the planet such as a burgeoning endangered species list, climate change and melting glaciers - the desiccation of arctic permafrost, the acceleration of droughts and desertification... the list is damn long...

CB: Absolutely - everyday the endangerment or imminent extinction of a species, if not several, is announced. We are reminded of the melting polar ice caps, the plummeting of giant ice shelves into the sea; fires raging in places they seldom had in the past. Yes, the list is sadly long. Aside from the effects and appearance, collapse is mainly the demise of a paradigm of growth, expansion - of domination and control, of separateness. This paradigm is vanishing and it will have to be replaced. My work not only points this out, but is also a tool to educate about inclusion, local community-geared organization, and small-scale production versus pyramidal hierarchy - which clearly doesn't work. It's apparent that the large institutions don't work: federal and state governments are rapidly going bankrupt. Solutions will have to come from relocalized communities. In terms of energy, it's pretty clear now that we've passed 'peak' regarding oil production. This is crucial because we've relied so long on cheap and abundant fossil fuels. No longer is production easy and cheap; we are now moving away from affordable hydrocarbon energy. And the truth is, the whole hierarchy-from-the-top-down approach is no longer working. The big secret (which is really no secret at all) is that the institutions themselves are collapsing and, you can't have a recovery without access to energy and you can't access energy without money - it's a catch twenty-two! We're printing more money to access more energy, which is becoming harder and more expensive to access and produce and, in turn, we are going further into debt thence more bankruptcy. We have come to the end of large bureaucratic government institutions.

FJS: You assert that there is nothing government can do to stop collapse - that there is no large-scale political change that will mitigate collapse, not even major reformation like replacing capitalism with socialism will stop the dominant culture from destroying the planet and marching toward collapse. How so?

CB: Let's face it, a presidential candidate cannot even receive substantial votes, let alone be elected, unless he is solidly in the pocket of the corporate interests of the US - the same corporate interests that rely on unsustainable growth and exploitation of the natural world. Besides, no one candidate is remotely capable of executing a fundamental paradigm shift within the span of four to eight years. As for our 'democratic' process, during the initial stages of the economic meltdown many players in Congress looked the other way - there may be no more than six people in congress I can say I absolutely trust; it truly is the fox guarding the chicken house! Anyway, as I stated earlier, collapse is occurring as a result of specific paradigms that have been held for centuries that are resulting in the destruction of the human and non-human realms. Merely replacing capitalism with socialism will not work. Changing systems is ineffectual not only because an opposite system is still a system but also, most importantly, only the political and economic structures are altered, while the fundamental paradigm - one of control and domination, remains intact. Father Thomas Berry wrote in The Dream Of The Earth , "both liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism committed themselves totally to the vision of industrial progress which more than any other single cause has brought about the disintegration that is taking place throughout the entire planet."

FJS: Apparently, the collapse of industrial civilization is the inevitable outcome of a contrived system inherently intent on growing exponentially in a finite world with set - i.e. invariable - limits. Do you believe that the purpose of "limitless growth" is designated for the notion of progress, a philosophical idea that was latent in the "Christian notion of self-perfection for divine ends," an end in which the future is static and "Heavenly?"

CB: Since the Enlightenment, it has all been about reaching a static age of perfection - which goes against all indigenous wisdom. The first thing that was done to the indigenous by Westerners after colonization was the taking away of indigenous rituals because they were seen as impediments to 'progress.'

FJS: So the whole proselytizing thing can also be seen as a swapping of religions, so to speak - supplanting an indigenous worldview with a 'civilized' worldview that worships production and progress?

CB: To call it a 'swap' is an understatement. To shift indigenous religions with Christianity is a rape - a violation that has led us to where we are now. And if we don't stop to recognize this and don't understand why we are where we are, there is no chance of a new paradigm. I wrote a book a while back called U.S. History Uncensored: What Your High School Textbook Didn't Tell You . It's basically a history of the US from 1865 to now, and can be a useful read to know how we got from even there to here, and it is available at my website or at Amazon.

FJS: In your recent book, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path Of Industrial Civilization's Collapse , you have written that "the more we honor and celebrate our inherent animal nature, the more likely we are to effortlessly honor our limits." Would you agree that civilization's transgressions of natural limits is linked to the suppression of our inherent, intuitive animal instincts?

CB: Absolutely. Derrick Jensen wrote in Endgame, Volume I, that: "The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of any economic system." And that, "Any economic system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and really stupid." We're the only species, that I'm aware of, that doesn't honor limits. One of the deeper layers explaining our disconnect from nature is our "fear and loathing of the body," of our instinctual wildness and, our vulnerability to death. This all causes us to distance ourselves from the reality that we are indeed animals. And also, native peoples, as a result of their intimate connection with nature, are glaring reminders of our animal-ness. To be 'civilized' is synonymous with being domesticated, restrained, and repressed, and if we are to participate in instinctual behavior, let's use sex as an example, we are encouraged to do it in a controlled, sanitized, or even surreptitious fashion. I think it's pretty important we all begin to realize that it isn't wild animals that are soiling their nests and desecrating their habitat, but rather humans. I'm sitting here right now looking out at beautiful rolling green hills. I often see deer grazing along the hillside, and you know what? They don't ever come to my house because they have limits! Animals live within the limits of their environment because their lives depend on doing so. In the new paradigm, other animals and creatures will be the elders; they will be the wise ones who will help us remember our animal origins and animal destiny. Animals already teach us surrender, acceptance, and limits. There's a great quote by Eckhart Tolle in which he states: "No other life-form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life-form violates and poisons the earth that sustains it...Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them cats.

FJS: Why do you suppose so many people reject the truth, or at the very least, the notion of, collapse and refuse to ask these necessary questions?

CB: Collapse is terrifying; we're not going to bounce back. Besides, many people are still entrenched in the 'Myth of America' - that anyone, or the US as a whole, can be triumphant. Plus, people who are hurting from bankruptcy, foreclosure, unemployment - it's hard for these folks to accept that this is permanent: it's not going away.

FJS: Decades ago, psychiatrist R.D. Laing developed three rules by which he believed a pathological family (one suffering from abuse, alcoholism, etc.) can keep its pathology hidden from even its own family members. Adherence to these three rules allows perpetrators, victims, and observers to maintain the fantasy that they are all one big, happy family. The rules are: Rule A: Don't [talk about the problems and abject conditions]; Rule A1: Rule A does not exist; Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or nonexistence of Rules A, A1, and/or A2. These rules aren't exclusive to nuclear families but also apply to larger cultures, especially cultures that are violently abusive to its own people and the land, lest the people recognized the flaws of such abject behavior. Would you agree that these rules are adhered to within the dominant culture, heightening collective denial and silence in the wake of collapse?

CB: Exactly - without question. The American culture can be compared to one large dysfunctional family, and it can also be compared to an addiction model. By maintaining denial we enter a very dangerous realm. As Carl Jung emphasized, whatever we deny or pretend to ignore does not go away, but only becomes larger in its power and influence, not only within the psyche, but throughout our external world too. And anything we do to resist or postpone the collapse will only make it worse. In 2007, the Pentagon announced that it is conducting simulation exercises in specific US cities in preparation for possible chaotic scenarios resulting from climate change, a nuclear attack, pandemics, or natural disasters. Clearly, law enforcement and the military are anticipating the possibility of dealing with an unruly citizenry. The possibilities of martial law, suspension of the Constitution, and immediate imprisonment for dissenters or generally unruly individuals are daunting - it's no wonder we don't want to think about the reality of collapse and the full extent of its consequences. But again, whatever we deny or ignore only becomes a larger threat. If we don't attend to the reality of collapse that is happening now, we risk not only encountering it without a lack of pragmatic preparation, but we're very likely to deprive the deeper, eternal layers of ourselves, obviating any effective community building.

FJS: Would you agree that hope, righteousness, and 'keeping a positive outlook' also keeps the truth at bay while galvanizing complacency?

CB: Ah yes, hopium .

(There's a brief pause as we both chuckle)

CB: The longer we dwell on false hopes - which I would define a false hope as an external hope: that something out there will fix this, that technology will save us, or that a newly elected president will bring change - the longer we persist in this the harder the collapse will be. Hope must come from within, from inside you, and really, I don't like to use the word 'hope', I don't like it - I prefer 'inspiration.' And let's be honest, calling someone 'doomerish' or 'keeping a positive attitude' that doesn't honestly address today's daunting conditions doesn't change the fact that we are witnessing the unprecedented extinction of 200 species per day; it won't reverse peak-oil or stop famine or resource wars. I believe that new solutions come from holding the dark reality alongside one's vision - what many indigenous called 'holding the tension of opposites.' I say down with hope, up with holding the tension of opposites! As for righteousness, I wrote in Sacred Demise that a righteous attitude often leads to detachment from reality: it bypasses any emotional response one may have to the desperate situation we and all other life are in on this planet - it makes the state of the planet someone else's problem, not ' my ' problem. It implies that one is above emotions and doesn't want to soil his/her 'sanitized' psyche with them. And as for the addiction to a 'positive attitude,' well, upholding the latter in the face of the end of the world as we have known it is beyond irrational - it's a humancentric obsession, as if the only thing that matters as the world burns is to feel good about oneself. And to add to your previous mentioning of R.D. Laing's three rules for a pathological family - anyone who keeps a positive attitude in this culture - the culture of civilization that is killing the planet - killing all of the people and species we all love - that person is not only irrational and deeply afflicted with denial, but is exactly like a member of an abusive family system in which physical and sexual assault are occurring in the home on a daily basis, but that family member insists on 'thinking good thoughts' and resents anyone and everyone who says what is so about the abusive system.

FJS: You also wrote in Sacred Demise that collapse can be seen as a metaphor for growth. For starters, what is the connection, if any, between the dominant culture's fear of death and the ubiquitous fear to confront the reality of collapse? And moreso, can you discuss how growth cannot be attained without requisite loss?

CB: The bottom line of confronting collapse is facing our own mortality. If we refuse to do this, collapse will be horrifying. We need to be more of a culture of adults then of children. We need to accept that there is an end - there is an end to this 'party' we've been having for the last two hundred years or so, as there's an end to each and every one of our individual lives. An integral part of restoring life is the willingness to be present with death. Acknowledging this will help us weather the collapse. The indigenous have known for thousands of years that life is comprised of loss - their traditions, rituals, and ceremonies help deal with loss: they devote a great deal of time and energy into preparation for life's losses and, their traditions teach that loss is an enormous and necessary part of the human experience. Part of becoming a mature, initiated adult is to learn and grow from loss. We just can't grow without it, and, despite the pain, it is food for growth. A huge point in Sacred Demise is my view on the collapse process as comparable to the indigenous view of the cycle of life. First the child is born into life, then later on there is the puberty-initiation process - which is far greater than just a rite of passage - it is a brush with death, a connection with loss, and an emergence into adulthood. What we're experiencing globally with collapse is a global initiation into new growth and true adulthood, elderhood - not age per se - it has more to do with wisdom than age.

FJS: In your introduction to Sacred Demise you write that the collapse of industrial civilization is a "necessary evolutionary trauma in the odyssey of planet earth." Can you explain what you mean by this?

CB: Collapse is undeniably going to be painful. But it will also be an enormous precedent for the transformation of the human consciousness. Again, with loss comes growth - or at the very least, the conditions for growth. We can embrace collapse and accomplish small tribal living and local problem solving - this is really a tremendous opportunity to organize locally. It's very important to hold the visions and potentialities of transitioning in the wake of collapse. One initiative I have become a part of is Transition Town ; this is not a magic, silver bullet but it is a viable option and vision, and much better to hold onto than only the dark realities. Remember the tension of opposites.

FJS: Can you talk a little about Transition Town ?

CB: Absolutely. Basically, Transition Town is a worldwide network organizing around energy breakdown, but is also a community response to climate change, economic meltdown, and even the possibility of the complete evaporation of the dollar; some Transition Towns are working on creating local currencies. The Transition Town group in Montpelier , Vermont (Transition Town Montpelier) is currently holding a nine-day Village-Building Convergence to educate the local communities regarding the exigencies of collapse such as emergency response and feeding communities. This is a prime example of embracing collapse in order to strengthen community relations and redefine social arrangements so as to be sustainable and non-hierarchical.

FJS: You write that one can find beauty in collapse; what role does beauty play in the throes of collapse?

CB: We must find beauty in everything we do. Part of the reason we're in the paradigm we're in now is that many people lost a sense of, and connection to, beauty in life, in nature on earth. As for collapse, there can be tremendous beauty in preparation for collapse and community organizing. In a section in his book, A World Made By Hand , James Howard Kunstler writes about homemade musical instruments, for example. Combined with dance, voice and music can solidify the community in sacred ritual, merriment, and conviviality as they have for thousands of years among our ancestors. This to me is beautiful. Poetry, too, is so important. Music, art, story telling, and ritual - all of this we must express and enjoy. We have the opportunity to relearn the language of soul. The language of industrial civilization is so linear - the soul wants us to learn a new language. Beauty is that magnificent and mysterious bridge to nature, to ourselves, and to the sacred. If our work is to further open our hearts, allow our egos to die, and fully surrender to the greater self, then beauty is the consummate facilitator of that process.

FJS: There is a poem written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes that you share with your readers in Sacred Demise -

CB: Yes, it's titled Father Earth .

FJS: Yeah, that's the one - it's a very beautiful poem.

There's a two million year-old man no one knows.

And the soil beneath her is fertile and black with her tears.

RR: I grew up in Los Angeles very close to LAX.  I am an only child of middle class parents raised in other places, so I had very little family around me as a kid.  Summers on Cape Cod with my mom's sister were my escape.  My father, who grew up on a farm in a very small town, really influenced my love of nature and orientation towards living in balance.

I loved school all the way through.  I majored in chemistry in college and graduate school, although my passion was psychology.  I spent the first fifteen years of my adult life working for small startups in the biotechnology industry in Silicon Valley first as a scientist and then learning everything I could about the operational administrative side of running a small biotech company.  I managed just about every administrative part at one time or another and I especially enjoyed construction management and information technology.  My science background enabled me to translate scientists' needs into words the non-scientist could understand, so I enjoyed bridging the two worlds.

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about the current transition for which you are preparing? Please elaborate on that.

RR: Initially, I thought I had the perfect career.  I believed in the pharmaceutical industry and the good I thought it was doing.  Then, four years into my career at my first job, the biotech startup I worked at was swallowed by a huge pharmaceutical company.  I began interacting with this large company and quickly realized how naïve I had been.  That was the first clue that I needed to make a change because my career lacked meaning for me as I was supporting an industry focused on making money.  Six years later I was totally burned out, so I quit work and traveled for 15 months.  Extended travel had been an unfulfilled dream of mine.  I left the country with the idea that I might live somewhere else completely.  While I was traveling, someone told me about a documentary they had seen on CNN about the possibility of the world running out of oil.  I remember feeling frightened.  It was 2000 and I was three months into my journey, and I decided I had better keep on traveling because it seemed likely that the ability to travel would become impossible in the future.  Eventually, I went back to work because I still had a large mortgage, but I was still really unhappy.

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you?

RR: A few years later I met a man who was really educated about Peak Oil.  He insisted that I read Richard Heinberg's "Power Down," Jim Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" and Matt Savinar's "The Oil Age Is Over."  I was so terrified by Matt's book that I could only read it at lunch time or I couldn't sleep.  I knew intuitively that all three authors were correct about the big picture of what they predicted, and I became very motivated to make big life changes.  Talk about taking the red pill.  I realized that as a middle manager in the biotech industry I had absolutely no practical skills and I really wanted to help people directly.  I also knew that Silicon Valley would be an undesirable place to live during energy descent, so I decided to move.  First, I moved to a small, rural community in Northern California.  Although I learned a lot about homesteading and living off the grid (20 minutes from town, two and half miles up a dirt road), it was simply too remote for me.  After a year I moved to a larger, progressive, semi-rural community that is less remote.  I have been there for two years now and I love it.  Many people in town are aware of what is happening, so I can talk about peak oil without getting a blank look in return.

As part of the transition I decided to become a clinical herbalist and a Somatic Experiencing practitioner (Peter Levine's work).  I am finally doing something that I love.  All of the changes I have made fall under Pat Meadows' "The Theory of Anyway" as explored by Sharon Astyk: http://casaubonsbook.blogspot.com/search?q=do+the+right+thing.  The changes I made are all changes that deeply feed me and are changes I would make even if collapse were not imminent.

While I have been studying Peak Oil closely for over four years now, recently Chris Martenson's "Crash Course" helped me understand our financial system more deeply and see how it relates to energy usage.  The "Crash Course" also gives me a tool to help educate friends and family in a way that is more palatable than even Richard Heinberg's writings.

CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?

RR: On a deep level I always knew I was doing the right thing.  It is simply logical that a natural resource like petroleum is finite and that spewing toxins into the environment would eventually cause us problems.  I had to titrate the changes and make them a little bit at a time.  Otherwise, I would get really overwhelmed and doubt myself because I was going against everything I had been taught.  I also had to continue immersing myself in information related to Peak Oil because life is still very comfortable and our mainstream lifestyle is still very seductive.  Every once in awhile I still momentarily get caught in it with my few friends that are materialists.  Sometimes I just pause and look around at life as we know it and notice that it all feels really surreal in the face of energy descent.  How long will my cell phone continue to work?  How long will I be able to get information from the internet?  How long will I be able to visit my parents in L.A.?

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that?

RR: My parents don't understand at all.  They think I am nuts, and they won't even talk with me about it.  They can't understand why I left what to them was a really great career in order to transition to a lifestyle that makes no sense to them.  I have gone from owning a 2000 square foot house with a mortgage to living in a trailer on someone else's land that is mortgage free.  I am off the grid, and I have a beautiful, large garden.  I am no longer bombarded by the neighbors' wireless networks or traffic noise, and I can see lots of stars at night.  I feel much more in touch with nature's rhythms. 

If something significant happens in the world related to Peak Oil and the financial collapse, then I use it to raise my concerns with my parents.  Otherwise, we don't talk about it.  I have had to make peace with the fact that they will never leave Los Angeles. They both survived significant world events as young people and I really pray they don't have to suffer through the collapse.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face", what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

RR: I have been through several cycles of utter despair, hopelessness and anger since I began immersing myself in this information.  Those cycles continue.  It is essential that I face them, ride them like a wave and learn from them.  I always seem to emerge more committed to living a simpler lifestyle.  Also, sometimes I will take an information break for a week or so.  I find that break helps me keep things in perspective.

As part of staring in the face of collapse, I have had to face my own death because in spite of all of the physical preparations I have made, I am as unlikely to survive this transition as the next person.  Rather than giving up, my life now is about how I can best serve in the moment and this has been a huge transition from making life decisions based on logic.  I believe that death is a going home as Charles Eisenstein says.

In this moment I am reflecting on a line from Charles Eisenstein's recent piece called "In The Miracle."  He says "If you find a strong underlying fear, respect it as your protector, a guardian that keeps you from leaving your world before it is time."  I have always struggled with fear more than any other emotion and Eisenstein's statement helps me put my fear in perspective as a guardian so that I honor it and still move forward.

CB: I'm wondering what the role of community is in your life. It's a lonely, if not hostile, world out there if one is talking to most people about collapse. Where do you get support?

RR: This is where I feel most vulnerable.  I am single and have very little immediate family with whom I am close or can count on when things get really awful.  I am slowly building community where I live now, and it simply takes time.  I just have not lived here long enough.  I get support from a small, close circle of friends who also see what is happening.  What is the most difficult for me is that most of my friends who understand what is happening cognitively have not been willing to make big life changes in response.  I know they have to titrate their experience of what is happening in order to take care of themselves, and it is very frustrating because in my opinion we are quickly running out of time to make significant changes.  I crave like-minded community with whom I can live in a more balanced way.

CB: Not everyone would say that they have a spiritual path or perhaps any interest in spirituality at all. Do you have a connection with something greater, and if so, how has it informed your life and the changes you've made?  As you know I've just published a book on this topic, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse because it became so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, healthcare, and other implications, it is the consummate spiritual phenomenon of the twenty-first century. I also wrote the book to provide a roadmap for preparing emotionally and spiritually for collapse.

RR: I believe emotional preparation is the most important kind of preparation we can undertake.  At the end of the day the only resource we can actually count on when something happens is ourselves.  I have been enormously diligent in facing my own demons in addition to making physical preparations.  Spirituality as it relates to nature is a large part of my life.  I find great solace in nurturing the plants in my garden and spending deep time in nature.  I do believe in a higher power and I do trust the greater wisdom of what is happening even though I wish it did not include the suffering of many, many people.  I find myself turning to indigenous spirituality as a way of connecting with nature and our place in nature.  I have been deeply influenced by both Martin Prechtel's books, and I appreciate Sacred Demise as a workbook for facing our own edges.

CB: What is your passion these days? What gets you up in the morning and gives meaning to your life?

RR: My passion is helping others clear their emotional hurdles.  I have an eclectic combination of skillsets I can draw from, and I love that.  I love being able to provide alternatives to our mainstream healthcare system.  I also enjoy using little pieces of my toolbox when I talk to the clerk in the grocery store.  I really want to be a light in all of this, recognizing that just listening to someone can make a huge difference in their life.

CB: I have just one last question for you. I'm wondering if you can comment for our readers on life purpose. That is, what have you come to understand as your purpose in life at the present time? What did you come here to do?

RR: My life purpose is to invite movement wherever I go using whatever combination of my skills are necessary.  If I can help people face collapse with greater ease and an ability to find joy in the moment, then I am doing what I came here to do.

CB: Please add anything else at this point that you'd like to say that i may not have thought to ask you about.

I want to emphasize that I have zero hope that our culture will survive this transition.  We will be forced to simplify how we inhabit this planet.   I am glad about that because I believe abundant energy has allowed the human species to have too great of an impact on the earth and on other species that live here too. 

I wrote a poem a few weeks ago that feels very relevant to our times.  Here it is:

Remember.

There is no such thing as death.

Just a departure from this body.

I am Energy in motion

Life energy

Passionate, essential energy

It's time for courage.

CB: I really, really want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview, and I wish you well in every aspect of your life. You are a powerful role model for our readers and for the world, and may you live and work and be well; may you flourish and continue fulfilling your purpose as so many of the barriers to our doing so unravel, and in many ways, offer us a level of freedom we could not have known as solid citizens of empire.

Compared to life today our lives were simple. We were allowed to roam about the area as far as our legs or our bikes could take us. There were two neighborhood drug stores in walking distance, as was the school. After Brown vs Board of Education brought integration of the public schools, though I had no problem with that personally, racial conflict became rampant in the school and walking to and from or holding school social events was no longer safe. There was chronic fighting, some shootings and knifings, so my parents moved our family to the suburbs. That was a very, very traumatic experience, as there was literally no where to walk to and no place to play outdoors. My brother and I rode the bus to school each morning in the dark and home in the afternoon right after school was out. In a year or so my parents got me a car so I could get to high school and visit friends.

For the past 25 years my husband Paul and I have been co-writing, consulting and training on how to create balanced lives by living and working from home. That was quite novel at the time we started doing it ourselves in Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating from college and working for the regional Office of Economic Opportunity under Sargent Shriver, I got my Masters in Social Work and opened a private psychotherapy practice in my home. Soon after, Paul brought his public affairs consulting services home too.

Eventually we moved to Los Angeles, then Santa Monica, where I also had a practice and where we managed an outpatient treatment center, did in-house communication training, then began writing full time. Ten years ago my husband Paul and I moved to a small mountain community in the Los Padres National Forest, a nearby faraway place about an hour and forty minutes north of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. Currently I am a PhD Ecopsychologist and the Co-Director of Let's Live Local, a non-profit Transition Initiative. I'm also a US Transition Trainer and my husband is a US Transition Consultant. Our website is Pathways to Transition. I offer online continuing education courses for professionals seeking to understand the emotional aspects of collapse through the Pine Mountain Institute and have a local private practice doing trauma, grief, and loss counseling.

CB: When was the very first incident or event or experience that started you thinking about collapse? Please elaborate on that.

SE: In 2004 Paul and I attended a day-long conference on Peak Oil in Santa Barbara where they aired The End of Suburbia and Richard Heinberg was the keynote speaker. That day was like a bucket of cold water in the face, a whack on the side of the head, and a big wake up turning point for us both. On the way home we both agreed this experience meant our lives would never be the same. It sparked years of still-on-going changes in our home, our work, our view of the world.

CB: And then what happened? What led to the next thing and the next, and so on? What books or documentaries influenced you? Which people influenced you? 

In addition to avidly reading books by authors like Heinberg, Orlov, and Kunstler, we began showing End of Suburbia and other documentaries like Everything's Cool and What a Way to Go in our home to get our friends and neighbors on board with what would be happening in our lives. This led to the formation of Let's Live Local (LLL) in 2005 and we became one of the early Post-Carbon Outposts. We are now a non-profit and the 11th official Transition Initiative. We have many projects going and have started many local services that didn't exist before. There is a summary that needs some updating at http://www.letslivelocal.org/. Our newest is a beef co-op we just started with a local rancher who came to us after reading about LLL in the local paper and deciding he doesn't want to ship his small herd of 18 cows to the big slaughter houses any more. He wants to sell his cows locally and rely on a small house that slaughters in a way he believes is more humane, where only one animal is slaughtered at a time, without stress on the cows. We're excited about this even though we don't eat beef ourselves. I think we have to take whatever steps forward people are willing to take and just keep walking.  

In our personal lives we had to do something about our large, energy inefficient home. At first we wanted to downsize to a smaller, energy-efficient home. We thought of finding a more sustainable community to move to, visited a wide variety of locales, and put our home on the market three different times. But it did sell. Meanwhile we began making both our home and our lives more energy efficient. Everything cost far more and took far longer than we would ever have expected. But here's a list of the kind of things what we've done over the past four years. We still have so far to go. 

Auto:

Bought a Prius, which has cut our gas usage in more than half and we may get an electric scooter to do local errands 

Electricity: 

Installed Energy Smart Power Planners on appliances that use significant amounts of electricity such as the refrigerator, freezer, and other appliances.

Switched to the fluorescent bulbs

Have motion detectors both inside and outside to reduce the number of lights we need to turn on

Unplugged most appliances that use energy when off. 

Food:

Buying frequently used grains like spelt and steel-cut oats in bulk.

Compost kitchen waste and use the compost to fertilize the variety of fruit trees and berry bushes we have planted.

Share -shopping with friends to cut down on our all making separate trips in town.

In process of building a cold frame with our neighbors to grow produce next Spring.

Heat:

Sealed air leaks, using caulking, weather stripping, expanding foam, and insulating foam gaskets behind outlets and switch plates on exterior walls.

To keep heat from escaping from through our windows, we have had an e-coating film applied to our windows.

When our propane bills got over $400 a month, we installed a pellet stove to heat our 1st floor. We had a pocket door installed at the top of our 1st floor stairs so heat from the stove will not go upstairs (unless we have guests) and we no longer heat two rooms on the 1st floor and two rooms on the lower level. One of first floor rooms is now our "cold room" where we store fruit, vegetables, wine in the summer, and most of our pellets. 

When our propane bill climbed over $800 a month, we installed a second pellet stove that heats our office on our lower level as well as our first floor, particularly since we cut an opening in our master bedroom floor and now have a radiator grill that allows the pellet heat from below to directly heat our master bedroom.  The combination of the two pellet stoves now gives us an alternative heating system, allowing us to eliminate use of our propane-driven, radiant heat furnace except on the very coldest of winter nights.

Some would say that little things like this don't make enough difference to matter. But the savings alone do matter to us and, though possibly it's too late for such things to prevent a collapse, they can slow it and give us all more time to make the still larger changes we need to make. A recent article in the LA Times, "Los Angeles Residents Reducing Power and water Use," shows just what a difference such little things can make. 

You, Richard Heinberg, Dmitri Orlov, Kathy McMahon, Sharon Astyk, the Peak Moment TV's Yuba City Girls, Janaia and Robyn, Linda Buzzell, Rob Hopkins, Allison and Dave Ewoldt, and always Nature, and Connect founder, Dr. Michael Cohen, have all influenced me on this journey.

CB: As you were finding yourself on this journey, did you sometimes kind of look in the mirror and ask yourself, "What on earth am I doing?" Did you ever wonder if you had lost it or taken leave of your senses?

SE: I have often felt like I'm living in two worlds. One where everyone seems to think everything is just fine and I have to operate in that world because it is still much of the daily world I live and work in. Then there's the other world that's always sitting on my shoulder, a world in which I know everything is already different and will be getting a lot more different, totally different, sometime in the future. It is such an odd feeling. I always get this feeling when I read the newspaper. In one section of the page there may be a major story about severe climate change and in the next an article on alfresco kitchens and multi-room patios which are now in vogue for outdoor entertaining. So to me it seems that it's a whole lot of other people who have lost their senses. 

CB: How have your family members responded to the changes you've made? Have you had conflicts with them around your changes and if so, how have you dealt with that? 

SE: Gratefully my husband and I are on the same page. We are supportive of each other and working together to make changes our own lives and in the community. Each of our families is small and all are far away. Our son lives in Northern California and has as growing awareness of what we're facing. My mother is 91 so I really don't want to concern her with collapse. But she is a historian and fully aware of the economic side of what's happening. She talks to me about it often as paralleling the path of ancient Rome. She hopes she will die before things get too difficult. I understand this because I know she lived through the Depression as a child and then through WWII as a young parent. The stock market collapse has already made life harder for her as she living on a shrinking fixed income.

I have attempted to talk to other family members via e-mail and on occasion when I visit in person. But they are not interested in or aware of collapse issues. Once when I broached the subject, one of my in-laws asked me, "Is this a California thing?" They have made it clear they do not want me to send any more articles or web links on such topics. So I don't.

I fear a couple of my close friends think I've gone off the deep end. Even some who were interested and involved at the early stages when we began showing the documentaries. About half of my friends who were involved early dropped out once we began discussing what this all might mean for us here in our community and what we could do. Two seem to be on the verge of coming back, though. I have other friends who think I'm too negative and snap at me when I bring up any collapse-related topics. They believe talking about such negative things will contribute to bringing them into the world.

Fortunately, though, I have a wonderful circle of friends both online and here in Let's Live Local who are very aware and supportive of each other.

CB: What kinds of emotions have you experienced on this journey? As you are doing what I call "staring collapse in the face", what kinds of feelings emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

SE: Oh, my. Now here is a question! Every emotion in the book. I get angry that our leaders can be so blind and allow themselves to be controlled by those who can only continue to benefit if we stay on the suicidal path we're on. I get sad about things that I know are not important in the larger scheme of life, but that I will miss in a nostalgic way. The myths we've all lived in. The myths I grew up with. The kind of frivolous, carefree, and naive fun we once had. The myths I even helped to perpetuate in my work in years past. Every so often I am gripped with a gut wrenching fear of having to leave our home and mountain community, not having a place to live, and probably most of all, not being able to get the medications that keep me well. This usually passes now though because I think of my age. I realize that in the larger scheme of things, I and the things I think I need, are not all that important and that's OK, because this is the consequence of our collective history. I work to focus on gratitude for I am very grateful this very day and every day for the many blessings in my life of friends and meaningful work, a wonderful love and  partnership with my husband, and a beautiful home in the most beautiful of forests.

At other times when I see us making progress here in our community like with our pellet and organic produce co-ops, I feel elated and excited and motivated. At other times I feel di