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

I have lived with a pack for almost 20 years. I can say with certainty that they have a life of their own. The dynamics of relationships among the dogs are fascinating and they fit their pack life and responsibilities around our human doings. The dogs within the pack all have their own responsibilities from who watches the door and warns of intruders to who "relay" barks, to who has perimeter duty. In packs which howl, there is the one who starts the howl and who ends it. The order of the pack and who has what rights in what area is made by some determination of their own.

In relationship to the human members, they each have their own relationship, but there is a pack influence that is clearly evident. Who is responsible for keeping an eye on what member. Who follows and who watches. While we humans are officially in charge, there is only so much intervention into the actual day to day functioning of the canine members that is effective. In my experience, determining who has what job is not a human's to determine.

When a member of the pack is lost, it is crushing for the entire pack. The loss is felt on many levels, and they grieve. This is not anthropomorphism on my part. I have watched that grieving process too many times. While each dog expresses their loss in their own way, it is clear that they mourn the loss in an emotional way. Their process is also much different in some ways that human grieving. I believe this is because their sense of smell plays such a big part in their lives. When they smell the missing pack member, it reignites the hope they will reappear. It also reignites the sense of loss.

I am writing this now because we have lost two members of our pack in a short period of time. While the loss of these two close companions is huge, so is the potential loss of the pack continuity.

We spay and neuter our dogs, so our dogs do not reproduce. However, they do pass on the pack knowledge and (dare I say) culture. Our most current pack was Ben and Grady's pack. We have had dogs come into this pack. First Aerie, and then for a period of time Maddy and Buddy who eventually moved to Seattle. But Ben and Grady moved from becoming two dogs as part of the household to a pack when Aerie came to us. Sadly, she died an untimely death due to being poisoned.

What had been forged with Aerie was a pack. I don;t know that I can explain the transformation even though I lived through it. With Aerie's entrance into the family the whole dynamic among the dogs changed. The relationships became much more complex and richer in some ways. Their relationship to the human members of the pack also changed in more subtle ways. Humans calculated into their lives in a different way. They became more emotionally complete and balanced somehow. When Aerie died, the "pack" component remained, but it was clear that the balance was wrong.

By the spring after Aerie's death two pups - Crow and Fox - came to join Ben and Grady. They trained those pups to be dogs, but they also formed a complex pack with a rich life that we were honored to be a part of. As they started reaching adolescence, Ben and Grady went from being a pack with pups for who they were surrogate parents (a task Grady definitely did not like) to a rebalanced pack again.

First, Ben passed and the pack went on with Grady essentially taking on full pack leadership. One of the most amazing things was Ben's passing. He had seriously injured himself and could not stand any longer. Grady, Fox, and Crow all kept a close eye on him. Each would check on him. Crow took a tennis ball down and carefully placed it within his reach (Ben was an avid ball player). It was one of the most touching things I have ever seen.

When Grady passed, Fox and Crow were adrift. They clearly carried the social "mark" of Ben and Grady, but they were a pack missing something. Neither had ever had to be "in charge" and they leaned on each other heavily. The following summer Cody joined us. He raised his share of hell in terms of how things were supposed to work He was nine months old and not a malleable puppy. However, over time things settled down and Cody took his place in the pack and learned our pack's rules. He was a "pushy" dog and He and Fox came to a compromise. Fox was in charge outside and Cody was in charge inside. Crow of course refused to acknowledge either of them being in charge and was the real leader of the pack.

Cody was the anchor of the next generation of our pack which started with Ben and Grady. Then, on December 31, 2009, we lost Cody to a hemangiosarcoma. There was nothing to be done. Crow and Fox were stunned and bereft, and so were we. We had not just lost a dear companion, but now the future existence of this pack was at risk. We had been keeping an eye open for another pack member before Cody's death. We now started looking more closely, but no likely dog presented him or herself.

Then, just as we were starting to adjust to the loss of Cody, we got hit with another loss. Our dear Crow went into massive convulsions which were caused either by a brain tumor or pancreatic cancer. The prognosis was more than grim for even a short term (week or two) improvement, and virtually no hope beyond that. So we gave her back to the universe. This loss was devastating on so many levels. It was devastating as the loss of a dear companion, particularly following on the loss of our Cosmic Clown Cody. It was a devastating loss to Fox who had now lost his entire pack, but also his sister from whom he had never been separated. It was also the loss of a significant part of the pack's knowledge.

With the loss of both Cody and Crow, all of the pack's responsibilities fell on Fox. He was now a pack leader without a pack - they had all been ripped from him. He was not just a dog alone. He was a grieving one dog pack. His response, and our own loss, was tearing us all apart.

We checked the Humane Society site for the 100th time, and there was a dog who had that certain look in her eye. So we immediately loaded Fox into the car and headed off to the shelter. Upon arrival, we said that we wanted to meet "Missy." We met her and she seemed a sweet and calm creature, so we asked to have Fox meet her. The meeting went better than we ever expected. It seemed that they could become friends so we adopted her and brought her home. She and Fox are still figuring each other out, and "Missy", who we have renamed Mossy, is trying to adapt to living in this new home.

We are not sure what will happen from here. We do not know if Mossy will learn the pack knowledge. We will likely be getting another member once Mossy is secure and settled in and Fox feels more confident with her. Our pack - Ben and Grady's pack - is still at risk of "dying." That will only magnify the loss.

The dying out of a pack is like the dying out of a tribe. Once it is gone, it is gone - forever. You can build a new pack, but it will be another pack. While over the years, as members come into and leave the pack the individual personalities leave their stamp, there is a certain "feel" to the pack. I can't explain it.

For now, we grieve the losses and cling to each other (human and canine) to find what comfort we can. We hold hope for a firm bonding of Mossy into our lives, our hearts, and our pack.

The founders of our current pack Ben and Grady. Ben is the German Shepherd, and Grady a dingo and border collie cross.

Ben (right) and Grady were joined by Aerie (left).

Grady, Fox and Crow.

Cody

Fox (foreground) with Crow and Rowan.

Sir Fox

Mossy on her first night in her new home.

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.

Create pressure on governments to keep the assistance flowing? Perhaps, but there is no shortage of assistance being sent to Haiti. There is however a huge problem in Haiti's limited ability to absorb the assistance.

Whether it's small and inefficient sea ports, one small and inefficient airport, a lack of decent roads, and a lack of government direction - all aspects of any place as poor as Haiti - it takes time for outsiders to come in, unload their cargoes, and organize a distribution network from scratch.

Certainly the disturbing reports and pictures are useless from the point of view of prevention. It was a natural disaster, not to be predicted, not to be prevented. One could argue that post-disaster investments could ameliorate events the next time there is an earthquake. But the kinds of images and reports being broadcast will be long forgotten if and when the world's governments get around to re-building.

So the question for me remains, what are we to do with such information?

I am reminded of another disaster, one that happened in the last few years. It was not a "natural" disaster but the deliberate work of the immensely powerful.

In this other disaster, roughly a million people died, about five times the current estimate of death in Haiti. I don't know how many were crippled, but it must have been a great number. This other disaster created more than two million refugees fleeing for their lives. Most of them fled to poor but generous countries, not being welcome by the rich and powerful, and especially not by the country responsible for the mayhem.

As far as pictures and reports, most of them seen in North America were sanitized. Many if not most of the reports were dishonest, clearly not informing people of the magnitude of the horror as it happened. There was a brave group of reporters who produced images every bit as terrible as those we see from Haiti, including scores of hideously mangled children.

But those pictures were not broadcast in North America, were not published in The New York Times or other newspapers "of record." Indeed, the reporters taking these images and writing tough reports actually became targets of the forces causing all the horror.

I'm referring, of course, to the invasion of Iraq, an event whose toll of killing and damage easily compared to the dropping of a thermonuclear bomb on a good-size city.

Of course, the great and bitter irony is that that disaster was both preventable and could even have been stopped once it had started. One could almost guarantee that publication and broadcast of pictures and reports comparable to what's now coming from Haiti would have stopped that demonic brutality. Here indeed gruesome, truthful press coverage could have made a difference, but not in Haiti.

And there was another, smaller disaster recently, smaller but still terrible, and it was completely preventable. In this one about 1,400 people died, including 400 children, and a great deal of the infrastructure of a relatively poor people was destroyed. The damage cannot even be repaired because those responsible for the horror maintain a siege on the victims, allowing no material assistance to be delivered.

Here too you likely will not have seen the kind of pictures or read the kind of stories coming out of Haiti. Some were available - I recall one of poor people trying to avoid stepping in a stream of blood flowing down a narrow street - again the work of amazingly brave reporters, but their work could only be found at not-widely known sites on the Internet. None were published or broadcast by the establishment press in North America. These events occurred in a place called Gaza.

If you think the press is objective, if you think the press does not slavishly serve the interests of the powerful, you just might want to think again.

I used to ponder at that admonition every morning back in 1962, and its message did sink in, as I think it did in the minds of every student in the class who wasn't just falling asleep in the back of the room, or idly daydreaming. Students in that class went on to become brain surgeons, genetic engineers, writers, computer scientists, horticulturalists and lawyers. I don't think too many of us are conspiracy theorists.

Malone encouraged me and my classmates to pursue a science track. He selected a fellow student and me for an experiment, shifting us midway through the fall term to an 11th grade advanced physics class, where we learned to calculate vectors, understand wave behavior and the peculiar nature of light, and where we experimented with electricity (I learned its power when, during a boring lecture, I absent-mindedly stuck two straight pins into the electric outlet on my science desk and crossed them, causing a flash and pop, burning the outlet cover and my fingers, and casting the whole classroom into darkness). Sometimes I was lost, but most of the time, I was simply captivated, learning about the inner workings of the atom and the universe.

The public school I attended was excellent, featuring a number of iconoclastic teachers, who taught us to question, not just to memorize.

Sadly, I have learned that this is not the norm in American education, which many explain why the country is so prone to conspiracy theories.

What can we expect when polls show that only 39% of Americans believe in evolution (no surprise since fewer than 33% even know about DNA and its role in heredity)? What can we expect when one in five Americans, or about 20% of us, think that the sun revolves around the earth, or that 55% believe that they are protected by a "guardian angel"?

Conspiracy theories abound where people are fearful and ignorant. There is the conspiracy theory that Americans never really landed on the moon, the conspiracy theory that Jews run the world, the contradictory conspiracy theory that the Freemasons or Opus Dei run the world, the conspiracy theory that President Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya. The list goes on and on.

I'm not saying there are not good reasons for considering 1some conspiracy theories. Certainly the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 was more complicated than the work of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald. Too many things had to work perfectly, and there are too many conflicting pieces of evidence, from the poorly adjusted sight on his gun to the Zapruder film and the alleged trajectory of one incredibly destructive "magic" bullet, for the official story to work. Ditto the assassination several years later of Martin Luther King.

Nor, or course, is the official story of the 9-11 attacks credible, and indeed even the participants in the 9-11 Commission are now refusing to stand by the commission's conclusions about what happened. There are too many gaping holes, from how planes hitting the tops of buildings and creating fires that were far below the melting point of steel could have caused those buildings to dissolve into dust from the bottom up to why another building, not hit by any plane, would collapse in exactly the same fashion for no reason.

But not accepting an official explanation is different from adhering to a full-blown conspiracy theory, and Americans seem amazingly inclined to do the latter.

The most stunning example of this is the popularity of the global warming conspiracy theory.

Despite all the terrifying evidence before our eyes-the rapid disappearance of the North Polar ice cap, the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, the shrinking back of mountain glaciers all over the world, the frightening acidification of the upper layer of the global oceans, the measurable and accelerating rise in sea levels, and the thousands of years of data on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere that can clearly be linked to temperature changes around the world, only half of Americans even believe that global climate is changing, and even fewer, just 36%, believe that the rising global temperature is caused even in part by human activity. Even more astounding is the fact that the number of Americans who believe the earth is heating up has fallen over the last few years from 77% to 51%.

Parallel to this is a growing support for an elaborate conspiracy theory that postulates that governments around the world, in collusion with virtually the entire scientific community, are working collectively to make up and promote a bogus story about global warming.

With other conspiracy theories, from the swine flu vaccination conspiracy to the lunar landing hoax, there is little need for concern. People have their belief system and go about their lives harmlessly. But with the climate change conspiracy, there is a terrible danger that it is leading to government inaction that could ultimately doom the human race, and indeed many of the earth's myriad life forms, to extinction.

Let's look at what the climate change conspiracy advocates are saying. They argue that the governments of Europe, of the US, of Canada, of China and India, and indeed of much of the rest of the world--governments that rarely agree on anything, I might point out--are acting in concert to promote a bogus claim that the earth is heating up because of man-made release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They claim that this conspiracy is being supported by the almost universal connivance of the world's scientists, who are collectively falsifying data and hiding countervailing data. And all this is happeningthey assert, despite the almost universal opposition of the world's corporations, most of which, we know, are resisting having governments take any serious action to combat climate change, and in many cases (look at the US Chamber of Commerce), are actively challenging the whole notion of climate change.

To believe in such a far-reaching conspiracy theory, one would have to first deny all the evidence before our eyes. But then one would also have to believe that the US, China, and Europe, as well as other countries, are in league. You would also have to assume that thousands of tenured scientists--a group with a disproportionate number of large egos and people with a penchant for disputation and controversy, I might add--are all working in concert to bury information and create a false theory. Finally, you would have to believe that all this effort is being made in order to pursue an economy-crippling strategy of making fossil fuels more expensive that is directly in opposition to the wishes of virtually the entire capitalist system.

When, I have to ask, has the US government ever acted deliberately against the interests of the major capitalist enterprises? When, except during revolutionary moments, have any nations acted against the wishes of the assembled commercial interests within their borders? The short answer is: never.

Unless you think the Jews, or alternatively the Freemasons or Opus Dei or the Federalist Society, or maybe all these disparate groups together, are behind this vast conspiracy, and have successfully terrorized and bribed the tens of thousands of scientists and government officials into complicity, the idea of a conspiracy so huge and far-reaching is simply laughable.

And yet with almost half of Americans ready to believe it, the corporate media, eager for ratings, are playing along, giving equal billing to the global warming deniers. Just last night, ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson offered a story on climate change that featured competitor Fox TV's ardent climate change denier and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck as a suppsedly credible advocate for the argument that global warming is an elaborate hoax.

We might as well be watching news stories about how we've all been duped into believing that the earth revolves around the sun, or that, god help us, the damned thing is round.

The truth is, if there is a conspiracy regarding climate change, it is a conspiracy by our government to minimize the threat (we saw that concretely with the attempt by the Bush administration to muzzle climate scientists like NASA's James Hansen), avoid taking serious action, and pretend that the actions being proposed, like "cap and trade," will solve the problem.

As I sit here in southeastern Pennsylvania on December 10, looking out at the green grass on my lawn, which has yet to feel a hard frost just two weeks before Christmas, I'm reminded of Mr. Malone's old banner: "If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist." The corollary is clearly: "If you can measure it, it does exist."

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.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 .

Energy Bulletin is a program of Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the world transition away from fossil fuels and build sustainable, resilient communities
.
Source URL: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50713

Links:
[1] http://www.energybulletin.net/50675
[2] http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50694
[3] http://sharonastyk.com/2009/11/03/1408/
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Demise-Spiritual-Industrial-Civilizations/dp/1440119724/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
[5] http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1329/1/
[6] mailto: Carolyn@carolynbaker.net

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.

One could believe that ocean drilling and oil platforms are old hat and incredibly safe. After all, we hear so little about the problems with drilling platforms. Instead, we are told that the companies can safely drill six miles down under the ocean and seamlessly deliver oil to the maw of the global economy. However, according to the Rig Incident List at Oil Rig Disasters, they list 198 incidents listed from 1956-2007 (most incidents listed are after 1976) which resulted in 1078 fatalities (though there is not fatality data on a number of incidents).

There is a more current example that could serve as a case study of why Arctic Ocean drilling should be avoided. The case study is the West Atlas drilling platform in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia. This oil platform title="Australia fails to plug oil leak , BBC, 10/14/2009">has been leaking for more than two months. Multiple attempts have been made to find and plug the leak; however, they have been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, oil continues to pour into the sea, and into the migration route and habitat for marine life - including endangered turtles, humpback whales and others.

There is an attempt to build a nearby "relief well" and pump sludge into the existing well to stop the leak. However, there is now a new problem. The well and rig are now on fire. The fire is the result of another attempt to stop the leak, and efforts thus far have not stopped the fire. (All workers are safe and have been evacuated from the rig.) At this point, the drilling company's (PTTEP Australasia) plan is to continue with the "kill well." There are no estimates of how long that will take.

Now take this incident and move it to the Arctic. Move it to what is considered one of the most sensitive environments in the world with one of the the most extreme climate environments. How long might such a leak go on in those conditions? Months? Years? Until the well ran dry? What would happen if the Arctic ecosystem was drowned in oil? I have no idea, but shudder to think of the death of the Arctic and virtually all life forms within it. Certainly that destruction would not be confined to the Arctic.

Despite the risks and sensitivity of the Arctic, the Obama administration has given "Shell a green light" for offshore drilling in the Beaufort Sea. The noise of the drilling alone could have dramatically negative effects on marine life - particularly the bowhead whale. As reported in The Guardian article:

Whale experts warn that the bowhead stocks are sensitive to noise and could be driven further off shore by the disruption of drilling. That in turn would have an impact on their chances of survival, which have already been harmed by early side-effects of global warming.

There are also fears that any drilling could lead to oil spills which would be impossible to clean up amid the Arctic's broken sea ice.

Drilling in Arctic waters is worse than a bad idea. It is a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, even without an accident, the operations could cause irrevocable damage to already endangered sea life.

Can't we just stop and figure out a way forward that doesn't cause further destruction of a world on the verge of eco-collapse?

As of 11/03/09, the rig fire has reportedly been extinguished

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."

The truth of the vast reserves comes in an article by John Dizard of the Financial Times. In his article "Shale gas numbers may not add up," Dizard writes: (emphasis mine)

From one end of the known world to the other, which is to say from Boston to Washington and some points in between, there is a consensus among the well informed that one part of a national energy plan is in place. Thanks to the discovery and mapping of huge reserves of gas in shale formations, we have an alternative to dirty old coal, and, possibly, imported oil for transport fuel. A 40 per cent increase in the country's gas reserves! You can thank advanced American technology for that.

Well, you can thank advanced American something, but along with the technology you can also thank the advanced American ability to extract money from investors. The key element of this national characteristic is the willingness to listen carefully to determine what people with money want to hear, and then tell them that. Again and again.

Money, that thing we are told "makes the world go round." If one wants to extract money, then one must convince folks that the "product" is worth buying. In the world of investing, that "product" is making money - not natural gas, or cars, or grapes. In the case of oil and gas, the risks are higher because the failure rate is higher. There are hypotheses that oil and gas should exist some place, but drilling may end up "a dry hole," or far less resource than was thought. Therefore, to get investors (or government/tax payer) money, one has to engage in overselling the potential. This has become more difficult as oil has stayed below $100 a barrel (though that is unlikely to continue).

There is another obstacle. Namely, that the extraction of natural gas (and oil) raises its own problems regardless of how available - or profitable - that might be. The extraction of natural gas (and oil) comes with its own destructive side with toxic chemicals and redirecting and contamination of water supplies.

There is some degree of irony that the term used for extraction is "fracking." Fracking is a mining process where water and chemicals are pressure forced into the ground (or well) to both force the natural gas or oil to the surface, as well as to ease its movement through the ground and pumping process. Fracking potentially pollutes water sources as the fracking mixture escapes into ground water, and by the waste sludge that is pumped up. This is also a water intensive process and therefore diverts fresh water supplies from natural, agricultural, and human use.

This means, that while vast supplies of natural gas may lie just below our feet, the process of obtaining those resources may cause unacceptable damage to human populations and the environment. Fracking may also cause another problem - earthquakes. Increased levels of quake activity in Cleburne, Texas in the wake of fracking activities raises the level of concern about the practice. Given that the process does break down underground rock and soil, it is not a stretch that it could cause earthquakes.

Drilling and extraction companies have largely refused to say what the ingredients of the fracking mixture are by claiming that it is proprietary, and the EPA does not require them to disclose this information because the mixtures are claimed to be "proprietary." However, some energy company executives have also asked for this information. As reported at ProPublica, at least some of the mixture has been determined by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. While, the mixture is broken down, the actual chemicals have not been released. In the NY samples, the composition included 90.6% water, .11% acid, .05% controller, .08% subtractant, etc. In other words, the purpose of the chemicals used, but not the chemicals themselves.

As noted in the ProPublica article:

At issue is whether hydraulic fracturing, and the chemicals it requires, might be responsible for water contamination incidents in drilling areas across the country. The process, which is currently exempt from federal oversight under the Safe Drinking Water Act, forces millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and small amounts of chemicals, into the earth to break rock and release gas. Scientists, including some at the Environmental Protection Agency, have said they can't thoroughly investigate the contamination incidents because the names of the chemicals are protected trade secrets.

The expanded exploration and drilling is meeting increasing resistance from East Coast to West. In the news of late, public protest and activism in Pennsylvania has stopped the plans to drill for natural gas in the northern Pennsylvania watershed. Likewise, a "plan to drill of the Colorado plateau" is meeting strong public resistance.

The impacts of oil and gas exploration in Wyoming is increasingly becoming publicly known. A new documentary, "Split Estate" is bringing attention to the multiple problems being faced by Wyoming residents. There are water contamination issues resulting in health problems, use and contamination of scarce water supplies, and encroachment on property rights and living conditions. The property rights issue ties to the fact that many people own the surface of their property and not what lies beneath it. This is not a new problem and has been an issue in water poor states such as those in the Southwest for quite some time. However, the issue in Wyoming is that drilling operations are being set up within feet of people's homes as exploration rights are granted to oil and natural gas companies. Below is a clip from the documentary "Split Estate:"

We are in an age of global warming which is threatening water supplies across the planet. Even those in water rich areas such as the Pacific Northwest look to shrinking supplies and loss of water reservoirs as winter snowpack and glaciers dwindle. Therefore, massive new drilling expeditions across the country pose a significant threat, and that may exceed concerns about oil and gas supplies. Fracking, and perhaps for resources that are more hyped than real? No frakking way!

Related Articles of Interest
Don't Frack with Our Water!. Polly Howells. In These Times. 10/04/2009.

Water Worries Threaten US Push for Natural Gas. Jon Hurdles. Reuters. 10/01/2009.

DemocracyNow! 9/03/2009 segment Fracking and the Environment: Natural Gas Drilling, Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Contamination:

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.

Gaia, the Earth, is our mother and we are engaging in matricide against her. Nonhuman animals are our brethren, and we are engaging in fratricide against them. Intentionally or not, we are on course to emulate Orestes and Cain. As a deeply committed vegan and a practitioner of my own eclectic spirituality-in which I consider nonhuman animals and the Earth to be sacred-this disturbs me in a profound way. Yet I find solace in the fact that Mother Earth was here long before our species became an infestation and that unless we radically change our mode of existence, She will eradicate us like the virulent pests that we are.

Whether we want to admit it or not, nearly all of our psyches have been twisted, perverted and, in some instances, pulverized to the extent that we live and believe some of the most outlandish lies that an objective and sane mind could imagine, were such an observer somehow able to completely extricate themselves from the tapestry of self-deceptions we call "reality." Our inculcation is so deep, the damage to our battered psyches so immense, and the appeal of industrial civilization's alluring artificial and pernicious comforts so strong that many people barricade their minds from the truth with a variety of potent psychological defenses, including projection, ad hominem attacks, scorn and ridicule, anti-intellectualism, appeals to tradition, distortion, rationalization and a host of others.

While it poses a monumental challenge, if we're going to stave off self-destruction and the annihilation of billions more nonhuman animals along the way, we must exorcise the psychic demons that keep our souls shackled to the pathological and metastatic ways in which our species behaves and organizes. Painful and seemingly impossible as it may be, there are a number of deeply ingrained cultural memes and components that we need to significantly alter or obliterate to avert impending disaster.

Patriarchy, which infects and informs the monotheistic religions on which many of our morals, customs, and beliefs are based, serves as a source of many ills. One can smell the stink of adult male privilege wafting from our corridors of power, our universities, our corporations, our churches, our legal system--it's nearly ubiquitous. Women and children are still second class citizens, even in the so-called Westernized "liberal democracies."

The social impact on women and children is troubling enough, but male and masculine predominance has far more profound and deleterious effects on nonhuman animals and the planet. Myths that man as hunter, man as carnivore, and man as uber-predator predominated throughout most of human history and that engaging in such activities enabled us to become social and intelligent still permeate the dominant culture like a foul stench. It is much more likely and demonstrable that our ancestors were gatherers and foragers (a task in which women and men participated at least equally)-eating a diet that was largely herbivorous (with occasional insects and scraps of "meat") and living as potential prey to large carnivores (a position in the food web which forced us to live much more cooperatively and to think critically to protect ourselves, hence sharpening our capacity to communicate and to problem-solve).[2] Our downfall was utilizing the means we developed to defend ourselves as tools of domination and predation.

Social and peer pressure drive many men to suppress and scorn their "feminine" tendencies, or anima. "Weaknesses" like compassion, mercy, love, empathy, kindness and nurturing are discarded in favor of an obsessive devotion, a fetishism really, to "manly" ideals and preoccupations like war, conquest, winning, achieving, dominating, over-powering, and taming. I know this from personal experience. My father, coaches, teachers, and other paternal figures in my life instilled a "warrior mentality" in me and crushed my natural inclinations to empathize and act on my compassion. It took me two decades of fighting, soul searching, parenting, and painful trial and error to find a healthy middle ground. As evidenced by the endless wars we wage, our species has a long way to go towards finding such a balance.

Anthropocentrism and its malevolent spawn, speciesism, are also demons that dwell deep within the collective human psyche. In People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck wrote a compelling argument that narcissistic people, who lack the capacity to empathize and are pathologically self-centered, are evil. What could be more narcissistic than a species of beings that believes that the planet on which they reside and the fellow creatures with whom they share that planet exist for them to use and abuse as they see fit?

As a dedicated animal liberationist, I've studied, read, watched, listened to, and observed the vile manner in which our species exploits, tortures and murders other sentient beings with callous indifference, and in some cases, obscene pleasure. (In the interests of full disclosure, I participated in, and benefited from, nonhuman animal exploitation for years before my conversion to veganism). Yet rarely a day passes without me recoiling in horror at some other form of cruelty we inflict on "lesser" species. And those who rush to defend the abject immorality and myopic idiocy of anthropocentrism and speciesism often crow that humans have subdued nature and are superior beings "at the top of the food chain." It seems more than a bit odd that such "superior" creatures would be so paranoid and insecure that they'd devote incredibly vast amounts of their time, energy and resources to creating, building, and stockpiling weapons. Or that they'd overpopulate and "foul their own nests" to the point of an ecological collapse.

Dr. Seuss was more of a prophet than a clever author of children's books, as evidenced by The Lorax. There's a little Once-ler in all of us, but a lot more in some than others. How many Thneeds do we need? At what point do we come to our senses and collectively abandon consumerism? Must all the Truffula trees be felled, the Bar-ba-loots become extinct, and all water become contaminated with Gloppity Glop and Schloppity Schlop before we come to our senses and reject corporate consumerism as the Earth murdering, self-destructive way of being that it is?

Heavily reinforced by the omniscient, omnipotent god we are indoctrinated to believe exists, [the same god who created Adam (men) in his own image, Eve (women) as an afterthought with one of Adam's ribs, and the rest of creation for our use], bolstered by Calvinist notions that the wealthy have prospered because they are righteous, "justified" by a Cartesianism that holds that nonhuman animals don't have the consciousness to experience pain as humans do, and replicated by the mass addiction to the infotainment of corporate mass media, the dominant culture infects nearly all of us like a virus and has hundreds of millions genuflecting to transparently hyper-ambitious, morally retarded troglodytes like George W. Bush, Sara Palin, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and James Inhofe AND rewarding them with power, influence and affluence.

Each of us needs to consciously work to restore a balance in ourselves and reintegrate into the natural order to the extent that it's possible. Our species has become so addicted to fueling our egos, so obsessed with domination, so compelled to be in control, and so hell-bent on conquest that in an ironic twist, we've become our own predators and victims of our own blind ambition to play God. Despite our Herculean efforts to extricate ourselves from nature and place ourselves upon a pedestal on high, we remain deeply interconnected with the Earth and with the other species of sentient beings we are abusing and destroying wantonly. As we devour them to satiate our appetite for power and wealth, we devour ourselves, making for a bizarre act of self-cannibalization.

Contrary to the pernicious myths of the dominant culture, Homo sapiens will not become an endangered species if we "regress" to organizing in reasonably egalitarian social structures with democratic, decentralized and limited governing bodies; limited industrialization, agriculture, and technology; a high degree of individual autonomy balanced by socioeconomic interactions based on cooperation rather than competition; a renewed reverence for Mother Earth-living as grateful residents rather than savage plunderers; a respect for the rights of nonhuman animals to be free of human-imposed confinement, torture, and slaughter; and a relegation of violence to its proper place-as a means of self-defense or extensional self defense.

If each of us replaces the question, "Is it good for the children?" with "Is it good for the Earth and nonhuman animals?" as we make each significant decision in our lives, we will have gone a long way towards saving billions of nonhuman animal lives and our own species, but that is only one side of the equation.

Given what Adorno coined as the "absurd persistence of domination," personal evolution and the education of others will not be enough to overcome the powerful inertia of 10,000 years of systemic anthropocentrism; monarchy and plutocracy; wholesale violence against people, other animals and the planet; and the masses' strong propensity to fall for propaganda and readily accessible palliatives.

Consider Orwell's observation in "The Road to Wigan Pier:"

"Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life."

Make no mistake about it. Those with vested interests in the status quo-the systemic oppression and exploitation of humans, nonhuman animals, and the Earth alike- are fiercely determined, ruthless, heavily armed, technologically endowed, and highly skilled at manipulating the people. Our culture of domination will not "go gently into that good night." Flower power, granola, and vegan potlucks will not even give the juggernaut of industrial capitalism pause. In conjunction with our personal evolution and the education of others, anti-capitalists and liberationists of all stripes must come together to form a culture of resistance, employing as many tactics as we can imagine with as much intensity and power as we can muster. They "leave all options on the table," so why wouldn't we?

As my best friend in the world would say, "We better get our minds right..."

And once enough of us do, resistance will no longer seem futile.

References:

[1] "The Sixth Extinction" by Niles Eldredge
http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/eldredge2.html

[2] "Man the Hunter to Homo X: Rethinking Human Nature" by Steve Best
http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/%e2%80%9cman-the-hunter%e2%80%9d-to-homo-x-rethinking-human-nature-2/

Jason Miller, Senior Editor and Founder of TPC, is a tenacious forty something vegan straight edge activist who lives in Kansas and who has a boundless passion for animal liberation and anti-capitalism. Addicted to reading and learning, he is mostly an autodidact, but he studied liberal arts and philosophy at the University of Missouri Kansas City. In early 2005, he founded the radical blog Thomas Paine's Corner. An accomplished and prolific essayist on social and political issues, his writings have appeared on hundreds of alternative media websites over the last few years. He is also a press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and the founder of Bite Club of KC, a grassroots animal rights activist group. You can reach him at willpowerful@hotmail.com

Thomas Paine's Corner wants to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to receive them, type "TPC subscription" in the subject line and send your email to willpowerful@hotmail.com

For the latest updates on the animal liberation movement, visit NAALPO at animalliberationpressoffice.org/

If you have a Facebook account, don't forget to look up Thomas Paine's Corner's Facebook page via the "search" feature and become a fan.

And if you have a MySpace account, don't forget to friend Thomas Paine's Corner at myspace.com/anarchovegan

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!

In March of 2009, Obama's head of the EPA Ken Salazar decided to remove the grey wolf from the endangered species list (again). The last time this was done under Bush (April 2008), there was a slaughter of wolves in Yellowstone. A coalition of conservation groups filed an injunction to stop the slaughter.

While the groups fight on, the U.S. District Judge in Idaho did not continue the stay on the hunt. The "season" opened yesterday in Idaho, and will open on September 15th in Montana. Idaho sold 10,000 tags to kill 220 wolves, and Montana will allow 75 kills. In both cases, this is roughly one-fifth of the estimated population.

Why in the world are we hunting predators in the twenty-first century? We already have reduced most predator species (including wolves) to a population level which will likely drive them to extinction. In doing so, we have upset a balance so that other species (from rabbits and mice to elk) have population problems which must be controlled by "man."

The decision to remove the wolves from the endangered species list is wrong - scientifically and morally in my opinion. That the EPA continues to fight this in court is maddening. I am outraged. I am heart sick. It was no big surprise when Bush's EPA decided to remove the wolf. After all, he consistently put people in these positions who hated the agencies they were responsible for. However, I erroneously thought the Obama would take a more reasonable approach to the environment - and to the issues of the wolves in particular. Yet another disappointment.

Please Take Action

Despite the open season, conservation groups continue the fight for the wolves - and other species. The Western Watersheds Project remains one of the best resources on the legal battle being fought. You can support the organization at this link. You can also take action through The Defenders of Wildlife writing, donating, and spreading the word. Their lives are in our hands.

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 discouraged because people have to put so many other things in their lives ahead of making the desparately needed changes we need to make in our lives and in our community. Some of the things that come first seem frivolous to me and I wonder, don't they get it? But usually their priorities are understandable.  Some people are really struggling to keep afloat. Nearly everyone is working long hours, often into the night to keep the roofs over their heads. Many retirees who once had time for community involvement lost money in the stock market and have had to go back to work full or part time. Others are losing their homes. People get ill, have accidents, have to devote time to older parents and children ... and worst of all, some have to move away because they can't find work or afford to keep their homes. When lots of such things converge at once I feel very alone, like it is all on me to somehow keep all our efforts going, but fortunately before long someone will call or e-mail me about an extra effort they are doing or an idea they want to work on, or a breakthrough they've had and I feel grateful again. I'm amazed really, that our work here has a life of its own. It just happened today. Someone wrote to say they have donated the cost of the park rental for our October 24th 350 event! 

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?

I already mentioned the extensive support structure I have here in our community and in my online communities - ecopsychology boards, the other ecopsychologists who I work with as faculty in our online Ph.D. program, other eco-nomic practitioners, and colleagues like yourself.

Having always lived in cities where I never had a sense of community (except perhaps in high school) until I moved here, I was astonished to discover what it means to live in a real community - both the good and the bad, the ease and challenge of it. At the same time, to some degree I think our community, perhaps like others, is more split now than at other times. I find there are those who still have a lot of money and have no clue about what's going on. They keep raising assessments for more golf carts and hosting fancy social events. Then there are those who are awake and busy changing how they live, sometimes hindered by local rules and regulations. There are those who are severely challenged because of the economy and don't have time for anything else but to keep their heads above water. Those who are new-agers. Those who are fundamentalist Christians. All with their own views of life that are more front and center now because of the sense of impending crises that looms over us all. 

I believe that in this period of time the challenges of the collapse are accentuating our differences and further separating us. Things we once could cover over lightly and be one community with greater ease have grown into wide fissures that make bridging differences harder. I first began to notice this after the 2000 election. Suddenly people who had socialized easily together before, no longer could or would. And it's become still more pronounced since. I often say to those who get frustrated at times trying get beyond all these differences that we have to focus on tolerance and have very long arms to reach around and embrace everyone.

On the other hand, the transition programs we've started here are bringing people together across all these divides, sharing in activities where none of these concerns are relevant or discussed, i.e. the many wood pellet co-op subscribers and the organic produce co-op subscribers come from all groups and all views, but we don't really know how our views are alike or different because we just want to enjoy these new aspects of our community. 

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, because you wrote the foreword for it, 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.

SE: As you know, I love your book. I have a very deep nature-based faith. It definitely has shaped my willingness to see and accept what is actually happening and has given me tools to use in my personal and professional life. Nature spirituality and philosophy is truly a godsend because it enables me to make sense of a nonsensical world. I understand that everything that's happening is a natural result of our unnatural way of life. Gratefully it also enables me to have a concept of what a different kind of life we could create if we followed the principles of nature. They guide me in doing what I can in my life and in helping our local community to create such a way of life. I have daily nature practices I draw on.

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

SE: What gets me up in the morning and gives meaning to my life is both the exciting projects we keep working on and the forward progress we're making on the one hand and on the other hand the unending beauty of the forest, and life with my husband, our dog and my friends.

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?

SE: I just had an extended conversation about life purpose on an ecopsych board I belong to. It's a wonderful topic to reflect upon at this time. I believe I am here to continue finding my purpose day to day. I do not believe I have "a" purpose that was set sometime in the past or sealed in stone somewhere. I believe, as Viktor Frankl pointed out to me rather sharply when I couldn't quite grasp it, we have to "find"(to use his words) our purpose as it unfolds moment by moment, seek it out in the ever-evolving, intelligent self-generating web of life of which we are part (not his words).  

CB: PLEASE ADD ANYTHING ELSE AT THIS POINT THAT YOU'D LIKE TO SAY THAT I MAY NOT HAVE THOUGHT TO ASK YOU ABOUT.

SE: Just to thank you, Carolyn, for inviting me to reflect on these questions. I have enjoyed articulating and sharing them and find value of doing so.

The signs seem to indicate that the current economic downturn will continue, and perhaps even intensify over the next couple of years. Part of this has to do with more real estate issues, part with continued job losses, and part with the global economic scenario. For real people, things do not look all that good.

The real estate debacle is not behind us. The chart below from Credit Suisse shows mortgage reset activity remaining high through 2011. Elizabeth Warren, appearing on the August 12, 2009 MSNBC "Morning Joe," warned that another shoe would be dropping as commercial real estate entered a reset period that runs through 2012.

The chart below is an edited version found in an article by Doug Hornig, which is originally from page 47 of the Credit Suisse 2007 report Mortgage Liquidity du Jour: Underestimated No More

The U.S. (and other nations) continue to experience rising unemployment. The upbeat report by the Obama administration stating that the unemployment rate had dropped while the number of new claims increased was based largely on dropping 637,000 people from the labour count. In other words, a statistical change occurred in the number of people actively looking for work. It does not mean they became employed.

All those job losses translated into a 34 % increase in consumer bankruptcies - in July alone. Unemployment (and under-employment) is also fueling ongoing foreclosures. Foreclosures and tight credit drives down housing (and real estate values) putting more people (and businesses) upside down on their loans.

Not surprisingly, the global nature of the economic collapse is reflected in a major hit on global trade. It is down 36% from its peak in July 2008 or about $1.5 trillion.

And so we cycle around and around, sinking a bit lower on each spin. All of the indicators I see do not signal a recovery. However, there are other indicators which could be interpreted with a new meaning: that "recovery" may not mean the same thing any more. If "recovery" means returning to where we were before the current crisis, then the odds seem slim indeed. If "recovery" means returning to the growth path we were on, then the odds seem long beyond calculation. The reasons for this have to do with the physical constraints of the planet. Simply, there would appear to be a limit on the resources and capacity of the planet for continued development, growth, and exploitation.

Below are a series of graphs. The first one is a sample of an exponential growth curve. These curves are characterised by their "J" type formation. The sharpness of the "J" depends upon the rate of growth that the curve is measuring.

Sample of an Exponential Growth Curve

(From: Regents Prep Algebra Lesson

Here is the fossil fuels curve. This represents the dominant form of energy use around the world (and particularly in "developed" nations) at this point in time. Since it is frequently argued that the other human growth curves (population, development, per capita income, etc) are linked to energy availability, then the energy curve is distinctly important in any recovery.

(From: Geothermal Education Office slide 117)

However, fossil fuels are not the only resources that we use. This graph from The New Scientist is instructive (link gives scalable image of graph below).

Of interest is that if global consumption continues at the current rate, the materials indicated have a life expectancy of 58 years (on average). However, if the global rate increase to half of the U.S. current consumption, the expectancy drops to 20 years. Currently the uranium supply is expected to last another 30-40 years, but every nation that has the capability (including the U.S.) wants to dramatically increase the number of nuclear power plants to make up for the loss of fossil fuels (and decrease CO2 emissions). Such an increase would likely halve that 30-40 year estimate.

Certainly one major consideration is the global growth in population. That alone would naturally increase consumption of resources. However, if you add increasing consumption AND population growth, then the impacts increase significantly.

(From: SUSPS)

And of course we have the issue that consistently gets talked about, but not acted on - global warming. Below is a graph of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. While CO2 is hardly the only contributor to global warming, it is an indicator we ignore at our own peril.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

(From: Planet for Life)

Back to "J" curves.

I would make the proposition that an exponential growth pattern is not sustainable in a closed environment. When we look at fossil fuels, resources, population, CO2 (among a myriad of things we could measure), all are on an exponential curve. This means that any "recovery" will occur in a physical environment of increased demand and (soon) decreased availability. In other words, we cannot return to the previous path and continue on our merry way.

Some of you may be science fiction fans, and have read (or watched) the stories of people mining the junk yards for resources. We could well find ourselves in that situation. In fact, in poorer areas of the world, they are already "mining" our "junk." For example, in China (and elsewhere) electronics - particularly computers - are smelted down for precious metals or stripped for reusable parts. This may become a global (pre)occupation. Reducing consumption - or radically changing what and how we consume - is central to any recovery. So to is firmly addressing the issue of population. The U.S. consistently withdraws global family planning funds because of "religious" considerations. We have to get past this, and put reproductive control in the hands of women. That birth planning and control needs to be in women's hands. Such power increases the voice and status of half the population. It also reduces the number of unintended (or forced) pregnancies.

We need to look real hard at Reduce - Reuse - Recycle, and follow it. There are huge implications of the "three Rs."

Reduce, means consume less. Not good news in a society where consumption is 70% of the economy. However, reducing consumption would be aided by improving the quality and longevity of what is produced (get rid of planned obsolescence). On the other hand, there are those things which really do have a short use expectancy - packaging for example. These things should have an accelerated degradation so they do not persist in the environment, or can be remanufactured to other purposes.

Reduce also has possibilities for the energy scenario. It is estimated that we could globally reduce energy use by 60% by increasing energy efficiency across the board (transportation, electronics, buildings). Such efficiencies can lengthen the time frame to depletion, though not eliminate it.

Reuse means the repurposing of things. The simplest example is using plastic food containers for other storage purposes. However, it would be helpful if they could be used for the same food storage. In other words, instead of everything coming neatly packaged, people could refill their containers from bulk sources. Some stores already have this option for some consumables. Reuse may also be taking items and passing them on, or recycling them for a different purpose (clothing fabric into rugs for example).

Recycling presupposes a use for the recycled material. Right now, there is some recycling that occurs (unevenly across the country and across the world). However, the uses of recycled materials is not what it could be. Right now, the primary use for recycled plastic is outdoor furniture. We only need so many picnic tables in the world. Right now there is a global argument on the use of plastic bags. However, plastic bags are not the only plastic issue. Plastic seems to be the packaging of choice - even for food. It shouldn't be, and it doesn't need to be. It is something that the world can no longer afford to use the way that it does.

We need to look at the future (and the present) very differently. In that examination, we need to reframe the "economy." This may be the hardest for the U.S. to do. We have structured an economic system (and to some extent enforced it globally) where money stands between the individual and virtually everything needed to live (housing, food, power, education, water, medical care ...). This means that folks must get money legally, illegally, or through inheritance, to survive. When that legal path is based on high consumption, then we are chasing our tails through a tunnel of mirages. Profit means getting excess value - from the planet, from the workers, and from consumers. We are at the end of excess, therefore we need to reimagine a different way of living.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with needing to either change our path - or be forced to change our path. The planet provides certain baseline realities that add dimension to the current economic crisis - and strategies to "get out of it." Simply regaining the status quo is not a solution (or at least not one that will last long). In fact, a return to our previous path will only accelerate the next collapse - for which we will have even less capacity to respond. It is critical that we not be lulled to sleep by soothing rhetoric, and demand real answers - and real leadership - from decision makers.

There are individuals who have been aware of these issues for decades; however, nothing has been done to address them due to the sociopathic nature of greed and lust for power at the highest levels of politics, governance, and commerce. Moreover, the vast majority of the populace has been only too happy to remain in blissful ignorance in order to avoid taking any responsibility and in order to be able to continue to deny that our culture is rotten from within. Apparently, most of us would prefer to watch some fake "reality" television program. We evidently prefer a fabricated reproduction of the real to that which is truly real - rather than face, head on, the truth of life as it actually exists.

The only solution to this trinity of situations anywhere in the world is the creation of sustainable community. There are many kinds of communities in the world, few of which are sustainable, Cuba being an exception.

Sustainable community is critical to the continuation of human life on earth, and many are beginning to rhapsodize about creating local communities. The reality is that the vast majority of individuals in Western culture have absolutely no clue about fashioning such.

This series of articles will attempt to identify, confront, and address the deep challenges of creating and living in sustainable community. It will, of necessity, be a good example of a complex living system. A simple definition of a complex system from Wikipedia states that "a complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties (behavior among the possible properties) not obvious from the properties of the individual parts. This characteristic of every system is called emergence and is true of any system, not just complex ones."

This means that, with respect to the emergence of these articles, fluidity, change and chaos are and will be factors as we go along.

The Big Trinity

Climate change is finally making its way into public consciousness and discourse. Increasingly, we will find that our daily lives are irrevocably changed due to changes in climate. Simply put, the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 parts per million. We've already surpassed that number and even if the whole world stopped putting more carbon into the atmosphere this very moment, the carbon levels would continue to climb for a long time.

Clearly, the US, China, Great Britain and India are not about to stop gorging on and spewing non-renewable poison. Coal is the dirtiest of all fuels and coal plants continue to befoul and destroy the planet and the atmosphere, particularly in China and the US. By the way, there is no such thing as "Clean Coal." "Clean Coal" is an oxymoron, and one has to be a moron to believe it.

The US, in particular, rather than creating an all-out mandate for renewable resources, is perfectly willing to engage in endless war. This, in itself, requires enormous infusions of oil. This means that we will be fighting to gain the few remaining drops, and that humanity (not to mention all other forms of life on earth) is in big, deep trouble.

The fossil fuel situation (Peak Oil and Gas) is not understood by the vast majority of the citizenry. That will shortly change, bringing with it tremendous shocks to the public. Everything that we depend upon for life, such as food, water, heating and cooling, transportation, health and medical care, and access to other affordable staples that we have long taken for granted, will become less and less available to the average person.

Economic meltdown is already here - in spades - and the economies of the "first world nations" will never go back to being what they were. Unemployment, the housing crisis, the looming commercial real estate crisis, homelessness, lack of healthcare, increasing costs for food, and lies, greed, and sociopathic malfeasance in the realms of finance, politics, and commerce make daily headlines in primarily alternative news sources. The mainstream media continues its assault on intelligence and reason. Unfortunately, there is not yet a critical mass of individuals that understands spin from truth.

Capitalism is defined by Merriam Webster Dictionary as: "an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital (from Late Latin meaning "top of the column" goods), by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market."

We are now learning that the "free market" has been anything but free and that few citizens have access to "capital" goods.

Why, one might ask, does the foregoing matter? It matters because most individuals in Western culture equate Communism (a political system) with Socialism (an economic system) and have knee jerk reactions to any system other than Capitalism. This is due to a lack of real knowledge and understanding. There have been many people in the past who have warned of the coming demise of capitalism, including the great theologian, Paul Tillich, author of The Courage To Be.

In the years to come, we will all be required to possess a large measure of "the courage to be." The question is: what social form will our "courage to be" take? The human being is nothing if not creative and imaginative, and these new forms of social interaction will be created as necessity demands. More than likely, these new forms will more closely resemble what we think of now as socialism than capitalism and communism. Our new societies and communities, in order to be sustainable, will require it.

The reasons that many people dream of living in some sort of sustainable community are many: they may be sick and tired of politics as usual, power structures, irresponsible, greedy lifestyles, have serious ecological concerns, be worn out with making money just to spend money - for all sorts of reasons based upon their own individual values and beliefs. So many people are starving for an alternative.

The difficulty is that creating a truly sustainable, compassionate, joyful community is anything but easy and requires that we engage not just our heads, but our hearts and souls as well. Absent heart and soul, any community is destined to fail. Western culture, including many of those that dwell therein, is not known for valuing either.

The first impediment to the creation of community, much less sustainable community is that we have no clue as to how to go about doing so. Western Civilization, in its thousands of years' drive for power, control, and wealth, has decimated every indigenous culture on the planet. Western belief systems carry the mantra that "might makes right." Just because we have the power to do something does in no way mean that we should - a fact that we will soon come to realize and confront in our daily lives.

The very people who might have had something to teach us are long dead. Even though there are written remnants of indigenous wisdom that are helpful to us today, reading about indigenous cultural communities is hardly the same as being able to experience them first hand.

What this means is that we are on our own - castaways of our own making - and are completely unprepared to face the tsunami of change that is upon us, due to our unwillingness and inability to face the truth. We in Western culture cannot expect or even hope to avoid the ramifications of our actions and inactions. We have hidden from our own internal personal and cultural darkness and shadows for millennia. The Piper has arrived in town for payment.

In the second installment of this series of articles, we will begin an in-depth discovery and discussion of the primary challenges of the creation of community. Stay tuned.

Martha Ireland is a social entrepreneur, author, poet, educator, public speaker, organizational and social theorist, human performance and business consultant, futurist, and social architect. Visit her website at Sustainable Strategic Solutions. She may be reached at ireland.martha@gmail.com

CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you've been doing in recent years.

Freeacre: I was born in Portland, Oregon, but after my parents divorced, I was raised in Michigan. I would have graduated from high school in 1967 and probably become a journalist, as I was granted a full scholarship to Michigan State University's School of Journalism. But, instead, I eloped with a draft resister and left for Canada. So, I guess you could say that I have always taken politics personally. I was divorced by the time I was 21. Back in the States, I worked for Robert Kennedy until he was killed and later became a political activist against the Vietnam War. After that, I earned an associates degree and got into mental health and was a trainer of empathy and values clarification at a crisis intervention center. Then, I became a counselor for emotionally disturbed adolescents in Michigan, Oregon, and California over the next 16 years. In 1978, I returned to Oregon, married a man with three children, and had one of our own. We lived in Portland until the recession in 1984 brought us to Jamaica for two years (with Project HOPE), then Napa, California for six, and eventually, we moved to South Lake Tahoe. I began to sell advertising space in the local newspaper, which led to being an outdoors columnist and also a special sections editor. I worked at the Tribune nine years. My husband died of cancer after 25 years of marriage, and I put a new life together with an old friend from Michigan. Murph and I have been together since 2002. For the last five years, we have been retired and living in a forty year-old single wide mobile home on a paid for acre of land in Central Oregon, attempting to create a "lifeboat" for ourselves and family. I guess you could say that we are militantly working class and committed to the concepts of freedom and localizing food production. Murph can tell you about his history.

MURPH'S STORY
I was brought up in a pretty conventional Midwestern family in Michigan. My father was a frustrated city boy who wanted to be a farmer and got an agriculture degree from Purdue but was never able to actually do the farming trip. Both parents were college grads. So through out my childhood I usually had all kinds of animals around, and I learned a lot about husbandry from my dad and worked summer jobs on a variety of farms. When I graduated from high school in 1959, I immediately entered college.

Both of my parents held education, not job training, high on the list of priorities for their kid's futures. I sort of adopted a curiosity about nearly everything and my college background showed that; 320 hours in a huge variety of areas. I didn't actually graduate until I went back to school in the 90's, and then qualified for three degrees.

I was never able to do a sufficient amount of compromising to utilize my education to make money, and so I migrated from one kind of job to another, preferring, generally, to work with my hands. I spent 4 years in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, taught for about 3 years, and finally ended up training as a tool and die machinist in the 80's and 90's until I retired from "Working on Maggie's Farm". (A reference to one of Bob Dylan's songs)

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

Freeacre here. I'm trying to remember my first inkling of the collapse. I think it was around 1998 that I was asked to attend a conference on Sustainability as a press person on the college campus in Tahoe City. I had never heard of the term "sustainability" before. But, a bunch of really fascinating scientists and specialists were there, and they blew me away with concepts of resource depletion, etc. I am pretty sure that Richard Heinberg was there, but I am not certain, as my notes have been lost. Anyway, I was hooked. A year or so later, I got connected to the internet for the first time. I must have looked up "sustainability" and come across Mike Ruppert's "From the Wilderness" website around 2003. I took that very personally as well. That is also when I first became aware of you, Carolyn, on Ruppert's site.

HOW MURPH BEGAN THINKING ABOUT COLLAPSE

I really didn't get much involved in politics until the 70's when I had my own business as a guitar maker, a family, and started to get really nervous concerning the economic and political shenanigans going on at the time. My parents were also very concerned, and we felt that there was a high probability of economic and social collapse back then. My parents bought a quite remote 100 acre plot of ground in the middle of the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, to which I moved to in 1980. That collapse didn't happen even though the nation came close, and my family and I stuck it out in Arkansas for 10 years, at which point I moved back to Michigan after a divorce in 1990.

That is when I really got interested in politics. Needing a job, I finally moved to Iowa in the middle of a corn field and worked for an outfit as a machinist in training. Got a computer and started reading a lot more on the subject of politics and economics, tried a bit of investing in the stock market until I figured out that was a racket with few winners. Then Freeacre and myself got together, and I moved to California. The intensity of political and economic investigation started to increase 100 fold. Ruppert's book, "Crossing The Rubicon" and web site looked pretty authentic to me, and we began making plans to divorce ourselves from the greater society.

CB: And then what happened? What lead to the next things, what books, documentaries, and people influenced you?

Freeacre again. When I think about it, I realize that Mike Ruppert's brilliant messages about Peak Oil and the impending economic collapse fell on fertile ground. My plans for life had already been destroyed several times. I was not under any illusions that "things will be okay" or "it can't happen to me." My step-son had gotten a particularly virulent form of cancer when he was thirteen. He underwent 22 months of chemotherapy and a lifetime dose of radiation which left him scarred for life and left us bankrupt. We stupidly filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which left us with forty percent of the medical bill of $200,000. We lost our house and our car. It took us five additional years working three jobs between us while raising our baby and 3 teenagers, one with cancer, to pay off the debt. Years later, after leaving a lucrative job with Project HOPE, we were more or less homeless for a year, You see, after leaving Project HOPE as a trainer for biomedical engineering and looking for suitable employment, my husband lost the caps on his front teeth. Have you ever attempted to get a job with no front teeth? How about trying to get a dentist to do the work when you don't have a job? Forget it. Welcome to my working class world. We were poverty stricken for years. I was a counselor in a very good residential treatment center with years of experience. But the state of California put a $7.25 cent an hour cap on wages for psychiatric child care workers. It took us forever to claw our way out of debt and buy a home in Tahoe. A week after signing the papers on the house, Ralph was diagnosed with fourth stage lung cancer. Nine months later, my husband was dead. I was 50, and my world had already collapsed at least three times. By the time Murph and I got together three years later, and we began to read "From the Wilderness," we realized how vulnerable we were and began to make what Howard Kunstler calls, "alternative arrangements."

I don't think I was reading much else about peak oil and financial collapse. Instead, I was reading metaphysical books, Daniel Quinn, and searching for the feminine face of God. We re-financed the home, paid off our credit cards and the automobile. Then, we took the rest of the money and fixed up the dwelling. We knew that we only had two years before the mortgage re-set. So, we had to get it sold by then. Happily, for us, real estate prices were sky-rocketing. We sold it and had enough money to purchase the cheapest listing in the poorest county in central Oregon with cash. We put in a new well and septic and fenced the property. Then we began composting and building up the soil. We've been doing that for almost five years now. Except for several months where I was the ad director for our tiny community newspaper, I have lived off my savings because I developed a debilitating case of fibro-myalgia in Tahoe and was, of course, turned down for disability payments. We made the savings last until the Social Security kicked in. Today, I am in pain most of the time.

But, I am not alone. Have you ever wondered where all the people go that fall by the wayside in this ruthless climb to the top that we are supposedly all on? Little, backwater small towns would be my answer. About a quarter of the people walking around in the grocery store here look like they could have been the Unibomber. We are fat. We are crippled up. We wheeze when we take a deep breath. We may be left with one breast from a mastectomy or have a stent in the heart. We don't look at all like the folks in the magazines and on T.V.

But, to me, it feels like Murph and I have found our perfect place. I love it here, and I love the people here more and more every day. They are amazing and from all walks of life. Retired from all sorts of lines of work from rocket scientists to loggers - these people may walk in slow motion, but they are the friendliest and most knowledgeable and skilled people as a whole that I have ever known.

When we first arrived here we began to collect a whole library of books and documentaries with which to attempt to educate the locals. We have them all - Kunstler, Heinberg, Baker, Astyk, Jensen, Greer, and Ruppert, along with all the documentaries on Peak Oil and "What a Way to Go". But, we got very few takers. I'll tell you what has worked better for us later.

CB: As you were finding yourself on the 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 our senses?"

Ha! Only almost every day - especially when for so long the dire economic forecasts of collapse seemed to not happen and all is denied in the mainstream media, and the television programming reinforces a reality that doesn't match up at all to ours. We read LATOC, peak resource, alternative news and financial sites every day. We are baking all our own bread, cooking everything from scratch, raising a garden in the high desert and gathering eggs and have disconnected the satellite TV, while our friends are buying RV's and going on trips to see friends and relatives as if everything is just hunky-dory. We often turn to each other and ask, "Are we fucking nuts, or what?"

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?

For years, pretty much everyone thought we were depressing and didn't want to hear what we had to say. After awhile, they'd just say, "Well, you are probably right, but we don't want to hear it. It's too depressing." After sharing that I am not planning to live much beyond 2012. For instance, I was accused of trying to make my sister-in-law an "emotional hostage." I guess I didn't realize how painful that concept is for her and others. So, I've shut up about that now. I have more compassion for those in denial than I used to. I realize that there are some things that are too horrifying for them to deal with. I think it starts very early. Like, "No, Daddy doesn't really love you," or "No, this isn't the greatest, most free place to live." We live in a matrix of lies, and the truth, let's face it, it is very painful. Now that our emphasis is on living this very healthy lifestyle and we are enjoying ourselves and our little "free acre" so much, friends and family are beginning to take much more of an interest and trying some of the things that we have been doing. I think fun and pleasure are more potent agents for change than fear or guilt. That would be my contribution to the movement, I guess. Once people see that you've filled your chest freezer with produce from the garden, they taste your excellent free range eggs, eat some of your yummy fresh bread and rabbit jerky, and learn that you are living on just your Social Security, they want to know your secrets. You don't have to convince them of peak oil or the doom-o-sphere.

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 feeling emerge? How do you manage those feelings?

For several years, we were appalled and very angry at the information we were learning about resource depletion, the destruction of the environment, the corruption of the corporations, the complicity of the government, the profiteering, the loss of liberties, the wars, the torture, etc, etc. We began to participate in blogging on a site that bemoaned all these things with wonderful, tension-relieving rants. This evolved into our own site, http://www.troutclancampfire.blogspot.com/.

We still get angry, depressed, appalled, and fearful. But, it seems just the right people have shown up at the cyber campfire and in our physical lives to form a supportive community that is very helpful.

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?

We are very active members of a local Community Action Group that was formed to thwart the county's efforts to bring in millions of federal dollars in grants and collect substantial fees for individual and unaffordable nitrogen reducing septic systems. The county seems to want to encourage resort development and displace the poorer people who live here, so we fight them tooth and nail. We have also joined the local Grange, which supports community agriculture. In connecting with all these people, we find a lot of common ground despite huge differences in politics and religions. One learns to speak many languages, depending on differing frames of reference. For instance, one can look at the malfeasance of the powers that be and conclude that Satan is in charge, or Reptilians, or that sociopathic scum rises to the top. Whatever... no matter what you call it, they still suck and must be defeated.

We started out just bringing muffins or extra eggs to neighbors. This has mushroomed into so much back and forth bartering, gifting and trading that it is just mind-boggling! It seems the closer we get to collapse, the more food, supplies, tools, and tips are shared. The more we give away, the more shows up, despite the fact that we are pagan anarchists and most of our neighbors are Christian fundamentalists. Who woulda thunk it?

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 become so clear to me that just as collapse has enormous energy, food, climate change, health care, 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 the collapse.

It's ironic, but I was a licensed Practitioner in the Church of Religious Science for twelve years. But, I could not reconcile the church's teaching on abundance with my visions of collapse. I became critical of the expensive workshops and the seemingly unconscious enthusiasm for consumer goods that seemed to have no connection to resources or what poor wage slave was producing all this stuff. So, when we moved, I did not join another church.

But, now, more and more, I find my spirituality strengthened. Without my even realizing it, my dreams have come true. I have a wonderful relationship, a paid for piece of land. We grow our own food and have great friends. Even the fibro can be interpreted as a sort of gift that has opened my heart to the suffering of others. I have come to know the powerful process of the drumming circle and the cyber tribe. I feel a part of something greater than myself. Most of the metaphysical training that I had has been validated for me.

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

Freedom. We feel free. I know that on the macro level, our freedom is being diminished by the day. Many of our Constitutional rights are being compromised or denied altogether. As a people, our financial freedoms are disappearing as well. You name it, we are losing it. But, because we came here five years ago and declared ourselves "free", we have made it so for us. For five years we have gotten up when we wanted to, decided what we wanted to do that day, and pretty much done it. They can't take that away from us. We have imperatives like feeding the animals and watering the garden and going to meetings. But, those are all obligations that we have taken of our own choice. We find the experience of freedom to be thrilling.

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?

Well, this must sound totally grandiose, coming from a couple of old fuckers living in a forty year old trailer in the high desert of nowheresville, but I have a feeling that we are two souls who came here to help out with the transition that is happening. Call it "The Age of Aquarius." Call it whatever the Mayans called it. Maybe we are those that the Cherokees foretold would come back as Whites with Indian souls. I don't know. But, both of us seem to have been dissatisfied from day one with the culture that we found ourselves in. Murph is more of a warrior. I am more of a healer. But, between the two of us, we are a pretty good team. In terms of the Collapse, when it gets scary and overwhelming, I like to think that, "We were born for this!"

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

Well, Carolyn, your book is still coming in the mail, so I have not read it. But, I think that Sacred Demise is a good title. I have been thinking a lot about my demise and coming to terms with it. My goal is to get my mind around the concept of "enough." In our type of sick capitalism, there is no such thing as "enough." Never. Not for a minute. We need more just to break even.

This seems to have spread out into everything else as well. Not enough money or stuff or time. We seem to have lost a sense of enough or plenty. And, until we do cultivate a sense of plenty, I believe that we will always be impoverished and we will continue to deplete the resources of the planet and kill life on earth.

I want to have a sacred demise. I want to be able to live and die with confidence, with strength, gratitude and grace. And, I don't think I can do that without cultivating a sense of "enough."

Aho. That means, "I have spoken." The talking stick is passed.

You may contact Freeacre and Murph at: sunrise3@coinet.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

READ PART TWO OF THIS SERIES

READ PART ONE

It seems that the mainstream media can only focus on one thing at a time, and then are easily distracted from what they are focusing on. Right now, they are focusing on healthcare reform. This is truly an important issue, but all the reporting takes us little closer to understanding the issue. However, it conveniently forced a number of other issues out of the circle - the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the global economic crisis, and global warming (to name a few). I am starting with global warming because the news has been dire and under-reported.

Things are changing with global warming - and changing rapidly. How fast warming is happening has been revised once again. It is 2009 and we are told "World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warns." The culprits pointed to in the article are increasing solar activity and intensifying El Niño. So it is bad news that warming will speed up again, but solar radiation (or how it impacts the earth) and El Niño themselves are impacted by other sources. A case in point is cloud cover and ozone reduction.

In a classic example one technological advance causing more problems we have dealing with the hole in the ozone. As you may recall, this is a battle that we are supposedly winning. The ozone layer is a primary protector of the planet from solar radiation. The widespread use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - chlorine based materials that were used in refrigeration of all kinds, and as propellants in spray bottles. After finally accepting the link between CFCs and destruction of the ozone layer, there was a major switch to replace CFCs with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). This happened in the 1990s and has been successful in allowing the ozone layer to start rebuilding itself. Yay, technology caused a problem and then solved it - or did it?

Now we find that those ozone-saving HFCs are actually increasing the global warming problem. According to research reported in the Washington Post (7/20/09):

But researchers say what's good for ozone is bad for climate change. In the atmosphere, these replacement chemicals act like "super" greenhouse gases, with a heat-trapping power that can be 4,470 times that of carbon dioxide.

While HFCs are still a small part of the global warming gas emissions, they are a growing one. If we do not stop this source soon, then the HFCs may undermine any gains from reducing CO2 emissions.

Given the severity of the consequences of global warming, and the fact that it is accelerating, what massive effort is being made to address the issue?

Well, "ExxonMobil (is) continuing to fund climate sceptic groups." ExxonMobil has continued to fund global warming denier think tanks and lobbying efforts despite publicly claiming that they have stopped such funding.

The G8 met in early July to hammer out a global warming strategy. The compromises to addressing the issue are not moving far enough fast enough, and certainly fall well short of the ever increasing pace of global warming. In fact, the baseline of emissions actually moved 15 years - from 1990 levels to 2005 levels. The also agreed to a 2C cap on global warming. This is one of the stupidest agreements that one could make. We clearly have no handle on even slowing down the rate of either emissions - nor controlling the positive feedback loops that are accelerating warming. What are we going to do when we hit that 2C increase? Shrug? Further, the goal for reducing emissions has been moved from 2020 to 2050. Believe me, this is a problem that we cannot "kick down the road."

Obama certainly takes global warming much more seriously that Bush did; however, is he taking it seriously enough? New evidence is now surfacing on the advance of global warming that was hidden by the Bush administration. That information has been released by Obama. Further while the Bush administration budgeted $1 for global warming for ever $88 budgeted for defense, Obama has narrowed that gap. His budget ratio is 1:9 (excluding additional funding for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). However, much of that is within the one time economic recovery appropriation. Beyond the recovery money, the Obama budget for global warming is $10.6 billion. (Lobe, IPS, 7/28/09).

Global warming poses a threat that may decimate human population and life on the planet. In fact, if the oceans die (and there is a growing possibility of this), then global warming may be an extinction level event. Global warming is referred to as a "threat multiplier" in security-speak - meaning that it will dramatically aggravate other security issues. Yet, the United States, and virtually every other nation, continue to drag their feet on addressing the issue.

I know we have critical issues we face as a nation and a world, but this one will not wait for us to "get around to it."

In his famous work "The Waking." Michigan poet, Theodore Roethke, offered sage advice for navigating unprecedented transitions and cultivating resilience. Wisely, the Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins establishes three domains for people who are awake to these transitions as they endeavor to journey through them into a post-industrial world. Those domains are simply head, hand, and heart, and they refer to-learning: the facts regarding the challenges of Peak Oil and climate change, the mastery of skills necessary for survival in a post-petroleum world, and nurturance the nurturing of that which gives meaning and purpose to our lives in the Long Emergency . A preponderance of the literature addressing transition issues provides information for the head and hand, yet there is a dearth of illumination for the heart-support and validation for our trembling souls as we consciously maneuver our lives and communities into a world humans have never before known.

While millions of our species have experienced the collapse of their civilizations, none before this generation has transitioned from an industrial to a post-industrial lifestyle. None has experienced resource depletion, energy decline, climate change, overpopulation, or broken economic systems in the same manner as that with which we are currently faced. Whether it occurs rapidly or slowly, the collapse of a civilization is always traumatic. Wherever we might be in the process, it is tempting to become pre-occupied with logistical preparation only, i.e., relocating to a sustainable area of the world, learning skills, acquiring tools, storing food, and much more. Yet if one does not address the interior world as well as the exterior, the journey may be immensely daunting, even overwhelming.

What Is Resilience?

For this reason, we must ponder the issue of internal resilience deeply and consciously cultivate it as diligently as we attend to matters of head and hand. Two possible definitions of resilience are:

**the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

**ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

In fact, resilience cannot remain simply a theory; it becomes very personal, very quickly.

Resiliency researcher, Albert Siebert, author of The Resiliency Advantage and The Survivor Personality, comments on has this to say about internal psychological resilience:

Resilience is the process of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. Resilient people overcome adversity, bounce back from setbacks, and can thrive under extreme, on-going pressure without acting in dysfunctional or harmful ways. The most resilient people recover from traumatic experiences stronger, better, and wiser.[1]

Seibert posits five levels of internal resiliency:

*Maintaining one's emotional stability, health, and well being

*Focusing outward and developing good problem-solving skills. (research indicates that problem-focused coping leads to resiliency better than emotion-focused coping).

*Focusing inward and developing strong inner "selfs" such as self-esteem, self-confidence, and a positive self-concept.

*Developing resiliency skills

*Developing the talent for serendipity, -the ability to convert misfortune into good fortune.[2]

I highly recommend Siebert's article on "How To Develop Resiliency Strengths" which offers additional tools for cultivating this crucial psychological skill.[3]

Cognitive Dissonance And Resilience

It is important, I believe, in developing resilience, to understand that like any other skill, it is built up over time and through myriad experiences that test us on a variety of levels. As individuals begin to awaken to the realities of collapse, they almost immediately confront their own cognitive dissonance regarding the cultural milieu in which they live and the facts of industrial civilization's demise.

In the 1950s, social psychologist, Leon Festinger's research on cognitive dissonance revealed that "inconsistency among beliefs or behaviors will cause an uncomfortable psychological tension. This will lead people to change their beliefs to fit their actual behavior, rather than the other way around, as popular wisdom may suggest."[4] Such a response to cognitive dissonance is invariably linked with the defense mechanism of denial. For example, if I do not want to change my behavior in relation to the environment or fossil fuel consumption, I am likely to discount hard evidence regarding climate change and Peak Oil. If I rationally ponder such evidence, however, I may choose to change my behavior, or I may embark on a nihilistic path of "Eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow, we're all going to die."

Festinger's research concluded that to release the tension created by cognitive dissonance, we tend to do one of three things:

*Change our behavior.

*Justify our behavior by changing the conflicting cognition.

*Justify our behavior by adding new cognitions.[5]

I hasten to add that the process of confronting and dealing with our cognitive dissonance does not occur exclusively in the mind. Cognitive dissonance and our response to it is almost always emotionally charged and has everything to do with the emotional issues we bring to the dilemma. This is exceedingly important because these very issues may undermine our capacity for resilience.

Choosing to confront the reality of collapse and change our behavior catapults us immediately into a profound sense of loss, and the natural human response to loss is grief. During the 1960s, Swiss psychiatrist, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, who pioneered modern research on death and dying, wrote extensively about the stages of grief encountered by humans as a result of loss. Kubler-Ross emphasizes that the stages do not necessarily unfold in a linear fashion but that we may experience two or more simultaneously or within hours or moments of each other.

The first stage, denial, is when we refuse to accept that loss is occurring. In the case of the collapse of civilization, we've all heard the litanies of denial and probably have a few of our own: Natural phenomena are causing climate change, not humans; there's plenty of oil-all we have to do is drill for it in the United States; the economy is in really bad shape now, but it always bounces back eventually; technology will find a way to fix this-the list is endless.

From denial we then move to anger, although frequently, the anger is veiled or misdirected. We may feel angry at our jobs or spouses or children, not fully aware that it is civilization itself with which we feel enraged for its multitudinous violations of our humanity. Or we may feel anger toward the messenger-the doomer/dystopic/downer who announces and articulates collapse in all its fullness. If we are fortunate, we begin to recognize that our anger is at civilization, with very good reason, and we focus our anger there, and stop blaming extraneous people and things.

As the reality of collapse bears down upon us, we may then begin bargaining with collapse or life or a higher power. With one foot still in the domain of denial, we think to ourselves, "If I drive a hybrid car, maybe I can continue living the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed; if I turn out all the lights in rooms I'm not using, maybe I can postpone the consequences of Peak Oil." We may resort to an endless cache of bargaining chips in order to avoid feeling the full emotional impact of collapse which resides in the next stage.

We can stay stuck in any one of the stages of loss, but genuine healing and empowerment are only possible when we fully open to grief-the one emotion that our denial, anger, and bargaining have been defending against. The most compelling and human response to the rape, pillage, and plunder of our planet is deep grief, and the beginning of healing occurs when we consciously open to it.

When we allow ourselves to grieve the innumerable losses which civilization has wrought, our bodies and psyches are freed to move through the grief to a place of acceptance and re-investment. As with the other stages, the last is a process, not an event-a process very different from "worry" because what we accept is not only the inevitability of collapse, but our powerlessness to stop it, as well as our limitations in avoiding its daunting repercussions. We accept that there are no guarantees, and as with any terminal illness, we have the opportunity to look fully into the face of our own mortality and beyond. Only then can we wisely re-invest in living our lives, regardless of outcome, which profoundly facilitates responding to collapse with grounded, prudent preparation.

To allow oneself to experience the various stages of grief is the first step in building resilience because it is a step in the direction of emotional maturity. Richard Heinberg has spoken and written on many occasions about the infantalization that pervades the culture of civilization which prevents us from coming to terms with negative events and emotions. As a result, the majority of humans behave like two year-olds who cannot accept limits in relation to economics, energy, or the environment.

In the documentary "The Great Squeeze"[6], James Howard Kunstler notes that Americans have lost a tragic sense of life. He explains that this does not mean a sense that everything is horrible, but rather, that we seem to have no sense of a beginning, a middle, and an end to our life experiences-as if we are entitled to endless quantities of money, energy, land, or whatever resources or things we desire.

From Infantalization to Initiation

We have the choice of waiting until that to which we feel we are entitled is ripped away from us gradually or suddenly, or adopting the attitudes of indigenous people who throughout human history have been intimately connected with the earth and therefore keenly aware of humanity's limits. In traditional cultures children are consciously launched into adulthood with carefully structured ceremonies of initiation which mark the end of childhood and the beginning of maturity. Throughout his or her adult life, the indigenous person deepens their connection with the land, with the tribe, and with traditions of ritual and celebration which give meaning and purpose to their human existence.

It is also understood in indigenous traditions that if an individual does not experience a conscious initiation structured and supported by the tribal community, he or she will nevertheless be initiated-by life, and in ways that may be much harsher and more alienating. I believe that the current collapse of industrial civilization is precisely such an initiation for all of our species.

What's Age Got To Do With It?

As the indigenous person ripens into old age, she or he prepares for elderhood which has little to do with age but everything to do with wisdom. In the culture of civilization one encounters elderly persons who are anything but elders due to their lack of wisdom and at the same time, very young persons who because of their depth of wisdom might aptly be called "elders." We could say that elderhood is about sagacity, not longevity.

A hallmark of indigenous wisdom lingering from our ancient hunter-gatherer roots is the quality of resilience. Our ancestors understood that it was necessary for their survival to be able to change course and adapt accordingly. Therefore, it may be that resilience is in our DNA and can be tuned into as well as cultivated.

In addition to the suggestions offered by Siebert above, I would like to add my own. First, I adamantly believe that just as we must prepare ourselves physically for collapse by eating healthy foods and getting in shape, we must also cultivate emotional depth and discernment. In my opinion, this does not mean "resolving all of our issues". At this writing, we are witnessing the collapse of a healthcare system in the United States that is now being held together by a few frayed threads. In a post-industrial world there will be no formal healthcare, nor will there be psychotherapy as we know it today. Anything we can do now to attend to our physical and emotional wellbeing-any tools we can bring with us into collapse to enhance that wellbeing are absolutely crucial.

Some of the tools we might consider are first of all, personal journaling as a means of becoming still and present each day to our experience. It is an efficient and illuminating tool for attending to the inner world.

Many individuals have also discovered the rewards of joining a Non-Violent Communication[7] group as a means of deepening their sense of community as well as their personal emotional well being. For those involved with Transition Towns, Non-Violent Communication groups are natural, and perhaps inevitable, corridors of connection among citizens of a particular place.

Similarly, Heart Circles[8] as developed by founder, Tej Steiner, offer deeply rewarding venues for connecting with oneself, one's community, and the earth. Heart Circles are not therapy process groups and should not be conducted as such, but rather offer opportunities within families, businesses, and local communities to support awakening, resilience, and social change.

Very important for our emotional wellbeing is our capacity to hold alongside current dark realities, a vision of how we would like to structure our lives and communities in a post-carbon world, even if our vision never comes to fruition. Peter Senge[9], scientist and organizational development wizard, teaches the urgency of holding our vision alongside an accurate picture of current reality for the purpose of generating the creative tension necessary for arriving at new and perhaps previously unimagined options. Just as it is perilous to hold only an optimistic vision of the future without considering the dire implications of collapse, it does not serve us or our fellow humans to focus on calamity to the exclusion of possibility. Both are essential nutrients in harvesting the innovation and resourcefulness required to meet the exigencies of the Long Emergency and transform the paradigm that brought us to the present predicament.

As we cultivate head awareness through information, and cultivate hand awareness through re-skilling, the challenges of collapse require that we also cultivate the heart awareness that nurtures resilience for the daunting transitions ahead. "Great Nature has another thing to do to you and me", says Roethke, and by fine-tuning our resilience, we may "learn by going where go."

[1]resiliencycenter.com/articles/5levels.shtml

[2]Ibid.

[3]resiliencycenter.com/articles/survresiliency.shtml

[4]wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Festinger

[5]changingminds.org/explanations/theories/cognitive_dissonance.htm

[6]thegreatsqueeze.com/index.html

[7]cnvc.org/

[8]heartcircle.com/

[9]infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm

CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you've been doing in recent years. I know that question is really a three-part question, so take plenty of time to answer those parts.

JOHN: Nancy Mae grew up in a small town in Southern Kansas. Her family raised horses; she did barrel racing. In a town where everyone listened to Country & Western, she was heavily into Blues. After working for years as a radiology tech in a large Wichita hospital, she went to Dental School. It didn't take her too long to wake up to the fact that amalgam fillings were the worst kind of poison. She loved her patients and learned all she needed to in order to take perfect care of them.

I (John) was born in Chicago and raised in L.A. After a Chiropractor saved my life, I figured out that might be a good thing to do. Within six months of starting my practice, I became dedicated to doing discovery-based clinical research (which is still a compulsion at this time). Years later, I met this wild and wonderful hot-headed, red-headed DDS. I was hooked. In Kansas City, we built an amazing Sand-Box . . . a fun place to play and work. We hung the best art on the walls and had a state of the art high-end audio system - after all, we needed great music so we could boogie on the dance floor (until exhaustion would set in). Together, we took our healing art and our love to the highest levels imaginable. It was a party.

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

JOHN: Nancy and I share an interest in the study of time and space. We study history to learn about the past. We study ourselves deeply in order to learn about the 'Now'. We study prophecy and astrology to learn about the future. Because light bends, time becomes space. If timing is everything, then one should really be in the right place in order for the proper reality to manifest.

A great many years ago, while studying many lines of prophecy all at once, I got a glimpse of the future. That picture set itself in place like a tattoo on the inside of my frontal bone. I had a sense of the ordering of things. From that point forward, for me, life has been a lot like running a gauntlet......working hard to stay ahead of the '8-ball', as it were. There were many events that signaled the passage of time - the clock ticking down the minutes until 'midnight'. That sense of urgency caused us to travel extensively.

One day, two lines of force came together at the same time. So, we sat down and had a family meeting, Nancy Mae and me. I made the point that we were working our selves to death - and - that the sand was running out of the hour glass . . . that the powers that be (TPTB) had their train very much on the tracks, and the end was in sight (somewhat at a distance). I suggested that if we wanted to stay alive and survive all our wonderful patients that it was time to turn the key in the lock and walk off into the sunset (holding hands, of course). At first she argued: "But we just got to the top of the mountain - now is no time to quit." I replied: There is never a good time to quit.

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?

JOHN: After a week or two of discussion, we agree that it was probably the right time to do something. Previously, we discussed how sad it was that so few folks in the USA had come awake to the coming onset, the promised difficulty. Not being martyrs, we decided that meant we could not stay and fight. Reality required our going into exile, finding a foreign land we could call home. We'd traveled a lot. But, we had not found THE place. I'd always had a nagging feeling to check out Chile. We talked about it. On the spur of the moment, I got onto a plane and flew to Chile to check it out. In four days, I had found a city, an apartment, a proper (English speaking) law firm, and a relocation agent to assist us in our move.

Upon arriving back in Kansas City, I discovered that Nancy Mae was stunned with my suggesting "the time was now, and Chile was the place."

We listed the clinic and the house with Realtors, and ordered a dumpster and a container to be parked in front of our house. With her mouth, Nancy Mae said yes, let's do this. However, with her body she was saying something else. She treated patients up until the day before we got onto the plane to depart the USA.

In retrospect, considering all the books read, movies seen, lectures attended, it was the study of history that most gave its influence. That old saying comes to mind about those failing to study history being doomed to repeat it. And . . . if history does not repeat, then it at least rhymes.

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?

JOHN: Yes, over the first six months, Nancy was really not sure if we had done the right thing - and of course we were really missing friends and family. Yet, as these first two years have passed, we've found that almost everything about our lives is better here than it was in the USA. We've purchased a small organic farm - along with some adjacent property - and are building a new house. Our social life is richer here. We are loving Chile.

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?

JOHN: Our family members have had some mixed feelings about our big move. Our son left the USA before we did. Our two daughters have not been so fast to come awake to the present danger - they may be Egyptians, swimming in the river of De-Nile. Yet, as they are seeing the USA headed for the dumpster, they are talking about joining us here.

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?

JOHN: Surely, it was the awareness of the coming collapse that got us off our butts and moved to Chile. Going into exile is a gut wrenching experience. Going somewhere where you do not know anyone and do not speak the language is a scary thing at best. I think it safe to say that we probably experienced just about the full gamut of available emotions. Yet, we have an abiding awareness that Almighty Nature - or Universe, if you prefer - has everything under control, and it is just our small selves that have some crazy need to worry about things that we know deeply inside will be more than all right in the end.

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?

JOHN: This is the wildest part of it all - - where we bought our farm, there is a 'coming together' of some of very fun and interesting people from all over this 3rd rock from the Sun......totally unexpected. A community is forming here and we had nothing to do with it, other than to come. The future is so bright we may need to buy new sunglasses.

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.

JOHN: We love your book - thanks tons for writing it. The world needed this book at this time.

We are very blessed to have a rich inner life. The universal law of 3-in-1 is manifest in our relationship. We have our love and our partnership with each other and with the Very Divine. We have both always felt guided and taken care of, to say the least.

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

JOHN: Life is a banquet, a veritable feast. We are living our Chilean Adventure. It continues. It is rich; it is full; it is amazing. We are so very grateful to the Chilean people for allowing us to be guests in their country. As soon as things slow down, we must ask ourselves the question: What can we do for Chile?

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?

JOHN: Wow . . . that is such a big question. The answer lives on so many different levels. Maybe we can speak to a few of those levels.

Two thousand years ago the instruction was given: "Love ye one another." Nancy and I are still working on that one. We mostly love everyone . . . but some folks come into to our lives to help us realize that our love has yet to become perfect. I guess God is not done with us, yet. We are still a work in progress.

Way back when, Nancy and I got cheated out of a major part of a life together. Now we get to have that time together.

We think that all things must grow. We are still working on our personal growth and development.

We have found that the final frontier is the human psychophysiology. So we spend a lot of time working on our healing. We were stunned to find some very high quality healers nearby to assist us in this most important process.

Our farm has become a vortex. We are called to attend to the growth and maintenance of this awesome force. Nancy has taken the lead here. This land, as with all land, is sacred.

Our children, grand children, and great grand child require our attention, from time to time. We think that is important.

My research into the digital switch in the human nervous system is not yet done, nor is the protocol-set I work with clinically . . . this continues.

Carolyn, thanks for this opportunity to reflect back on these past two years.

The Andres may be contacted in Chile at: Turiya@Delta-Clinic.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or Skype: DrJDAndre
TrulyMail: DrJDAndre

Welcome to empire Charlie. You remind me of Lili Tomlin when someone asked her when she left her birthplace city of Detroit, and her response was, "When I realized where I was." Good for you Charlie, you're not totally psychically numb. Now the next question is, where will you go from here?

Charlie could not be more dead-on about society. Its fabric is completely unraveling, and that epic saga is just getting warmed up. I reacted like you, Charlie, when I discovered things like Peak Oil and the hard evidence of human species-created climate change. What you're witnessing is the mind-numbing ineptness of your government, or anyone else's, to deal with the unraveling, for governments, with their perverse corporate liaisons, after all, are the lifeblood of the empire that is disintegrating. Hence, they are the last entities capable of offering sane responses to the unraveling.

But I would caution you not to spiral down into terminal cynicism, like most of your mainstream media associates. The word cynicism, after all, is related to an ancient Greek term synonymous with the word "dog", and some say it referred specifically to a dog chewing a bone endlessly, even after the marrow was gone.

So what's a person with their hair on fire who's finally come to terms with the collapse of Western civilization to do? First, since you're in the UK, you may want to check out the blog of a fellow Brit named Rob Hopkins, who founded the Transition Town network in Totnes. In fact, you may want to interview him and have a long conversation about his take on all of this. I wouldn't tell you that the Transition model is a magic bullet which will prevent the unraveling because the unraveling now has life of its own. What I will tell you is that it's likely to inspire you to reframe collapse not as a disaster, but as an opportunity on myriad levels. This is not to say that it does not entail pain and suffering for the human and all other species; rather, I'm suggesting that it is both the pain and the opportunities within them that offer us nothing less than an evolutionary threshold. We have in front of us the possibility of reweaving from the threads of the unraveling, a new fabric that we can believe in.

An American president recently ran his campaign using the slogan "change we can believe in." Presently, however, I don't see a lot of Americans or the world holding its breath. As you've pointed out: There hasn't been much change, and there certainly is little in the political arena to inspire our belief because as you've noted, "even language itself seems unreliable."

Your article underscores the vacuousness of governments and the political process. Even before the French Revolution, people seeking change in the Western world have petitioned their governments for it. The unraveling, however, has rendered that approach essentially meaningless. What it has necessitated is a change in personal and community behavior and the creation of vibrant, local economies of scale in which people no longer wait for empire to give what it cannot give, but pick up the threads of an unraveled civilization and weave it themselves according to what their unique place and population require.

Some folks, myself among them, would offer the possibility that the unraveling serves a deeper, metaphysical purpose having to do with a shift in human consciousness. To that end, I have written Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse which suggests an emotional and spiritual roadmap for navigating the unprecedented changes ahead.

Thank you for your incisive, courageous piece which verbalizes what so many are only thinking or perhaps haven't yet consciously registered. I don't believe that as you suggest, we can weave new structures quickly, and I certainly hope that what we weave are not "institutions", but I do believe that many of us are weaving a new paradigm for our species which may allow us to discover the true depths of our humanity.

CB: Tell us a little about your background, where you grew up, your family, and the work you've been doing in recent years. I know that question is really a three-part question, so take plenty of time to answer those parts.

SB: My name is Susan and I am a feminist, mother, educator and soul-mate and wife to a wonderful man, Jerry! I was brought up with Midwestern values in a hard working and caring family. I would term our economic status as lower middle class with a lovely grandmother who took care of our family when needed. "When needed" is defined as when my dad was either laid off from the water heater factory or there was a monumental factory strike.

Childhood was extremely pleasant! I learned to garden, sew, make bread and can from my wonderful Grandma! I spent much beloved time with my Grandma through my early adolescence. These times with my Grandma were carefree and always great fun.

I became a first generational college graduate due to the fact my Uncle George was a member of the La Porte, Indiana School Board and preached the value of education. It was tough for my family to send me to Purdue University, but with college loans and a mother who worked a menial job for eight years to get both myself and my brother through college, I graduated.

In college, I was a full-fledged hippie and have to this day believed in non-violence and the integrity and value of the human spirit. Another belief is that smaller is almost always better. We believe it is better to have people collectively work together instead of someone dictating what one should believe and should buy and should think. I can honestly say that I live my life with Jerry just that way!

Belief that we, as humans, are lifelong learners, created the motivation to earn a Master's degree and a Doctorate. Today, I feel very differently about earning degrees because the value of mastering skill sets like water harvesting, gardening, canning, off-the-grid building construction, candle-making, soap-making seem like far greater accomplishments than a higher education diploma or two. These skill sets have fallen away in our current society. I believe the value of these skills and abilities will be exceptionally sought after as we experience the end of civilization as we know it today.

The professional work I have been doing has involved the areas of education, program development, advocacy, leadership and fundraising. Jerry and I have worked extensively in the non-profit sector with a mission-based focus of serving people with disabilities. Most recently, I have managed a college teacher certification program. Currently, I manage a program funded through the US Department of Education called Educational Opportunities Center. The intent of the program is to assist persons in completing their GED, or enroll in a trade and technical school or assist people in entering higher education. Many of the environments we serve include prisons, drug courts, workforce centers, foster care, trade and technical centers, homeless youth shelters, and community probation.

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

SB: Two events occurred almost simultaneously for Jerry and me. We read Richard Heinberg's book, Power Down, and we experienced Hurricane Rita while living in Houston, Texas.

Power Down really scared us because we had never thought or spoken of a life without oil and electricity. We immediately denied the book, but something made us read more and become intelligent on the topic. As the truth began to sink in, we began to grieve things we still had in everyday life like air conditioning and water and the ability to move from one place to another in a car or plane. We got depressed and still get depressed from time to time, but today there is more moment-forward in our thinking and through our actions.

(As a sidebar to answering this question, my father took many opportunities, usually over suppertime meals, to start conversations that had a common theme: one day civilization would be out of useable oil. Although my father never attended college he was self-educated and well read on the topic of oil depletion. That very theme rang very true for me, as Jerry and I did our own research and began contemplating our reality.)

The second experience that really propelled us was Hurricane Rita. Jerry and I were thoroughly unprepared for Hurricane Rita. Looking back on the lack of preparation, we were idiots without supplies!

Our story began by naively leaving north out of Houston at 5:00 AM the day the hurricane was to come inland in one of the largest mass movements of people in history (3 million people using three different highway systems in 24 hours). There was with no thought of using contra flow traffic to maximize the lanes exiting the city. With a disabled father-in-law, a cat, a dog and a second car with a daughter and her cat we traveled 14 hours and accomplished only 55 miles! Almost out of gas for both vehicles, we decided to turn around. Miraculously, we found gas for both cars and made our 40 minute trip back to Houston.

We returned to our home in Houston that night and almost immediately lost power after the storm began around 11:00 PM. Following the storm that lasted many hours, the intense heat and humidity with no cross ventilation, was barely manageable. In the early days, we never lost heart because every neighbor was saying the power will be right back on. Wrong. It was over two weeks later that power did return. When the water pressure failed, we both knew we were in trouble.

Jerry and I both had a personal incident caused by the intense heat and humidity that was unrelenting. Both incidents occurred at different times. Each of us got overwhelmed and fearful and hopeless. In each case, the other person was able to comfort and talk through their fears and hopelessness that we were both strongly experiencing.

Have I mentioned caring for a man with advanced dementia during this period? We tried to keep up the semblance of calm and routine. When we still had water pressure, showers kept DA (our name for this gentle man who we cared for 7.5 years) cool but the early darkness, worry, and not knowing came to be our pervasive thought patterns. Not healthy.

Thankfully, we came up with an idea to use a rental car (filled with gas) and venture north to stay with a daughter and her family six hours away. We stayed with Stacey for a week until we heard the power was back on in our neighborhood.

Both Power Down and living through the hurricane and its aftermath resounded that we must get prepared! We had just embarked on the journey of our lives!

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?

Jerry and I found the Titanic Lifeboat Academy in Astoria, Oregon. Caren Black and Christopher Paddon have been incredibly helpful and "real" with Jerry and me. I remember bursting into tears after our first telephone conversation with Caren and Christopher. We had found people that felt the same way we did! We were not alone. They assumed nothing and never judged Jerry and me. Their message was simple: "Sell your home, get out of debt, relocate to a more accepting environment and develop an action plan".

We have used their guidance and coaching to keep us moving forward. We have followed their advice and believe today, we have taken mostly the right steps. We have also talked with them about the sensitive topics of choosing to have guns and which guns and for what reasons.

We were able to sell our huge house in one weekend. We have dramatically downsized two times and both times the process has been freeing because it was our choice. We have voluntarily lived in much smaller rental homes for the last three years choosing to save the money instead. We do not feel we are uncomfortable and, in fact, do not even use one of the bedrooms in our current rental home.

Getting out of debt took a while longer, but we accomplished the task of being debt-free. Have I mentioned that we looked for the perfect property in seven states that took 2.5 years? Early in 2008 we found the perfect property in Northeast Oklahoma. We have 27 acres of mostly hard wooded land that has lake access to the second-largest lake in Oklahoma. The property has a creek and two Indian springs. At this point, our property is mostly paid off!

Jerry and I also went from two cars to one luxury vehicle to one car that gets 40 miles to the gallon. When we made the voluntary change from the luxury car to the small car, I had people at the community college I worked at ask if, "We were all right".

I would be remiss not to mention the importance of preparing spiritually for the end of civilization as we know it. Most of the resources noted above deal with strategies for preparedness and things to acquire, NOT the looking inside to see if we are prepared. Carolyn Baker's finest gift (so far) has been her book, Sacred Demise. Simply, read this book!

The book takes you from where you are, as you are reading, and opens up the possibilities and promise for a new civilization transformed from empire, climate change, loss of life, and the defeat of globalization. The book does not sugar-coat. You do not need to believe in a certain religion; only believe in a higher power like the power of nature. Strategies are thoughtfully presented and the reader is never lost. This must read resource is a gift that gently guides the reader how to get in touch with their feminine side so that the reader can prepare their spiritual side. This book gives a perspective that is extremely timely and a breath of fresh air.

Truth to Power has been our beacon. Other people we have read include Matthew Simmons, Richard Heinberg, Sharon Astyk , Julian Darley, James Howard Kunstler, Caren Black and Christopher Paddon from the Titanic Lifeboat Academy, Michael Byron, Steve Solomon, Derrick Jensen, Joel Skousen, Eckhart Tolle, Louise Hay, David Hawkins, Gary Craig, Naomi Klein, Masanobu Fukuoka and Dave Jacke.

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?

SB: Jerry and I have come to think of our "knowing" of the end of civilization as a true gift. I do not know exactly why we know but "knowing" gives us another gift, time. There will never be enough time. The precious time we do have is for preparation including helping people to come to terms with their fears, denial, losses and living changes.

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?

SB: Our family members are still in denial. From time to time someone will ask us what we think will happen. Jerry and I will never give up and we will be ready to answer their questions and quiet their many fears when empire cannot support the lies (OR people will finally get it when people are lined up for food at the grocery store).

We have lovingly given our family key books to read and DVDs to watch to move them from denial. Unfortunately, the blinders are on, and the empire program is still running.

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?

SB: As explained in Sacred Demise, the stages of death, dying and loss written so eloquently by Steven Levine and Elizabeth Kubler Ross fit our emotional ups, downs, and plateaus perfectly. Just because you have grieved, does not mean you will not feel this emotion again. Jerry and I often are saddened by the special aspects of life we will one day say goodbye to like taking a warm shower, seeing a special exhibit at a museum, hearing a symphony orchestra or enjoying the bliss of a sushi meal.

Frank discussion has immensely helped Jerry and me when the raw emotions come flooding back. Time and checking your perspective and good conversation are great healers. About two years ago one of my faculty members, Karen, woke up after watching "What A WayTo Go". Karen was experiencing panic and fear. Jerry and I had her over to dinner and talked with her and shared our thoughts and feelings. We did mostly active listening, validating Karen's fears and started a conversation that continues today but over the internet, since we have moved from Texas to Oklahoma.

One other thing I have done along my personal journey is to post pertinent articles outside my office at the university. The articles range from climate change to pandemics to sustainability to gardening, to overpopulation, to transition communities, to peak everything, and food shortage. People often comment. I take their first comment or question to start asking them what their thoughts are on whatever topic they bring up. The interest is always sincere and often mixed with some anxious humor. I then ask if they would like to receive newsworthy and pertinent articles. Currently, I have 40 people (referred to as Friends and Family) that I send out articles to via the internet. And, I'd have to confess many of the articles come right from Carolyn's site, Truth to Power.

In this small group of Friends and Family, I can honestly begin to see a few waking up based simply on their responses and questions. I am a hopeful individual, maybe even a Pollyanna of sorts because I will never give up on the hopefulness of mankind. I do not believe a magic red pill will save civilization. I believe that mankind will accept and transition into a very different civilization like the very difficult yet rewarding one described by James Howard Kunstler in his novel, A World Made By Hand.

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?
SB: It has just occurred to me that the forty people just referred to as Friends and Family is an example of a community of sorts!

Community is the one area where we have the most unsettled plans and, consequently, fears about what our community will look like and who will become its settlers. This is a work in progress!

I can tell you that Jerry and I have each other, two dogs and one cat. We moved from Houston, Texas to Northeast Oklahoma in mid-December 2008. The temperature was in the 80's and very humid as we said our goodbyes to Houston. Ten hours later we experienced a blustery chill factor of 9 degrees in Northeast Oklahoma. Our animals thought we were totally crazy!

Let me describe a little more our situation and plan to transition. Jerry and I both have full-time jobs. We are living in a community 65 miles from our homestead property. Although this is not an ideal situation for developing community, we have taken many steps to introduce and familiarize ourselves with neighbors and the nearby town. We have found the people of Oklahoma sincerely friendly and helpful.

Our goal is to have our yurt sitting on our deck by late summer 2009. One of the scenarios we have accepted is that our yurt could provide the housing we need if things crater by early fall 2009. The transition to the yurt would be difficult but, we believe, realistically possible.

Currently, we are building a thirty-by-thirty-foot deck that will support our first building, a yurt. The yurt is twenty-eight feet in diameter and is being built in Virginia by the Buffalo Mountain Yurt Company. The people building our yurt will be delivering the yurt once the deck is finished and assisting Jerry and me in the "yurt raising." This will be accomplished by late summer 2009.

The yurt will provide temporary housing while we build our first Earth Ship! Several years ago, Jerry and I attended a week long workshop on Earth ship building in Taos, New Mexico. We stayed in an Earth Ship and were fascinated by the design allowing for the structure to be fully off-the-grid in any climate. The temperature outside in Taos was 120 degrees and the inside of our Earth Ship was a constant 72 degrees! The founder, Michael Reynolds, has spent his lifetime fine tuning the design of these unique living structures. (I strongly recommend seeing the site.)

To read the remainder of this article, you must be a Truth to Power subscriber.

Susan Bedwell may be contacted at susanlbedwell@aol.com

[In the next few months, Truth to Power will be featuring interviews with individuals who are consciously transitioning to a post-carbon lifestyle. In spite of the volumes being written about preparation for collapse, we rarely have the opportunity to hear real people discuss at length the process they have gone through and continue to navigate in their unique journeys through the Long Emergency. Some articles in the series will be published free in their entirety, and some will be partially published, requiring a subscription to Truth to Power in order to read the full article.

Everyone's story of preparation is different; there is no one-size-fits-all model. This series of interviews with real people preparing for collapse will honor the uniqueness of those individuals and the methods of preparation that serve them in their particular situations.--CB]

A Wall St. Journal article, July 1 entitled, "A bank run teaches the ‘plain people' about the risks of modernity", by Douglas Belkin, reports the challenges the Amish have confronted in the past decade, specifically those having to do with economic collapse. In 1993, Northern Indiana Amish established the Tri-County Land Trust, not unlike lending arrangements set up in many other Amish communities. Not insured by FDIC and based on its own bylaws, the trust now has about $40 million in assets. Until November, 2008, the land trust offered low-interest loans and provided other financial support for Amish homeowners and proprietors of small businesses. However, it suspended lending and has not yet resumed. Add to this the fact that, this past spring, the Land Trust literally had a bank run because the Amish began to experience the same consequences of economic collapse as the rest of the nation did. According to the Wall St. journal story, "...the Amish in northern Indiana edged into the conventional economy, lured by high wages of the recreational vehicle and modular home industries. And they wound up experiencing the same economic whiplash millions of other Americans did."

As almost everyone knows, it is exceedingly challenging to sustain privately-owned family farms. The Amish did it for centuries until the latter part of the twentieth century when they began taking jobs off the farm where they made good money, but many also became seduced by consumerism. They gradually spent more money, allowed themselves some of the conveniences previously shunned in order to live more simply, and found themselves caught up in spending more money and buying things they didn't need-things like bigger weddings, vacation homes in other states, model train and truck hobbies, and even hiring taxis to go on extended shopping trips.

You may wonder if I'm really talking about the Amish. Indeed I am.

This story hits close to home for me because my grandmother was Amish as a young child until her parents left the sect to become Mennonites. I have a number of Amish relatives and had the opportunity to visit a few last summer. In fact, I wrote an article subsequently entitled "North America's Amish Community: Least Likely To Be Devastated By Collapse." What I did not see at the time, certainly not among the families I visited, was the extent to which some members of the community had become seduced by the capitalist economic system.

The Tri-County Land Trust is minutes from where I grew up in Northern Indiana and very close to my home town of Elkhart which earlier this year had the highe