Bonus Track: Amerikan Hologram

https://soundcloud.com/doomstead-diner/american-hologram-frostbite

Amerikan Hologram is #18 in the new Frostbite Falls Daily Rant Podcasts on the Doomstead Diner.

The last few rants have been focused on the Kabuki theatre playing out across the pond between Russia and NATO along with, swimming in the other direction, the implosion of the Chinese Credit Market. For tonight I’d like to return home here to the Land of Good & Plenty to look at some of the persistent myths, lies and just plain old BULLSHIT many Amerikans of my generation believe WERE true at some time in the past, even if they do grant they probably aren’t true anymore.

When I talk about my generation I’m talking about Boomers of course, who are crawling all over the web these days like cockroaches since they are retiring by the truckoad and got nothing better to do with their time. Or rather nothing better most of them can afford to do with their time, since only a relatively small minority have fat pensions to supplement Social Security. At the price of gas these days, Motoring around in an RV to visit the grandkids between stops at golf courses isn’t happening so much anymore. If they are fortunate to own an RV, it’s likely sitting in a trailer park in Yuma with the A/C on full all day while they do their cruising around the Blogosphere complaining about how Amerika has gone down the toilet and how great it was in the Old Days. To be fair, it’s not just the Boomers, it’s also the real Oldster population of Silent Generation folks who were kids during WWII doing this sort of bullshit complaining…

For the rest, listen to the Podcast!

In a bit over a week from now, after a couple of years jawboning collapse on the Doomstead Diner, the Knights of the Round Table on the Diner are finally going to meet up IRL down in Texas. “In Real Life” is the meaning of that acronym for people who don’t frequent Cyberspace that much, in contrast to the In Virtual Life you pursue as an Internet Junkie, where often people have Identities and Personalities not precisely like their IRL ones.

Whether you pursue an Anon paradigm or not, the way in which you react to people and discuss your ideas is generally a good deal different IVL as opposed to IRL. People tend to be more Strident about their beliefs IVL, social niceties are not as commonly kept to IVL as IRL. Usually IRL you pursue a Politeness paradigm, you don’t INTENTIONALLY try to piss people off for instance. What this means though also IRL is that often people do not discuss the things most BUGGING them or most crucial to their World View, because they don’t want to deal with the CONFLICT that comes from that IRL.

So, IRL the general paradigm is “Don’t Discuss Religion, Politics or Sex“, because all of these topics tend to get the emotions running hot, particularly if the people chatting them up have diametrically opposed viewpoints, which in a “Multi-Cultural” society they often do. It is of course highly unlikely you can get a “civil” discussion going about Sex IRL between a Fundy Christian, a Fundy Muslim and a Gay Rights Activist. In fact you generally do not get such civil discussions going even IVL over the Net, but at least it cannot break out into Fisfights in Cyberspace. Nor can anybody pull a GUN on you over the net either! LOL. You get what we on the diner call “Napalm Contests”, otherwise known as Flame Wars. As intense as these things often can become, you still are in relative SAFETY to pitch out your opinions over the net, and the worst that happens generally speaking is if you make too much of a nuisance of yourself on somebody else’s website you get banned, or if it is your own website you ban the person making such a nuisance of themself. I make the effort not to Ban anyone, but that is not to say I do not make life difficult for nuisance creators of this sort, I most certainly do that. In fact I have developed a whole bevvy of means to make life difficult for Trolls and Napalm Artists without Banning them.

Anyhow, with that general knowledge in mind here, over time on a website such as the Diner, people of Like Minds do come together, in our case discussing AT LENGTH just WTF to do about a Collapsing Civilization we all see occurring around us on a basically Daily Basis? How do YOU personally deal with this now, what PLANS have you made for the day TSHTF? Will those plans WORK, and if so, for how long? The flaws in everybody’s plans are discussed at length as well, then ideas get pitched out how to fix those flaws. In our case, we developed a Construct called SUN, for Sustaining Universal Needs as the IVL idea for handling the many problems we already see evident here, and as a result gave birth to a new website and Nonprofit 501c3 company to further develop these ideas IRL. This all occurred with none of the principals involved EVER meeting each other IRL, up until NOW. It is remarkable we got even THIS far here, given the fact that in all the discussions NEGATIVE WAVES always crop up as various Diners chip in their 2 cents on why the whole idea is bullshit and can’t work.

Not only our local Diners will occassionally remark it is useless to try to prepare for a Collapsing Civilization, we constantly get even more depressing input from our friends over at Nature Bats Last, where it is not just Civilization Collapse they consider inevitable now, it is Near Term Human Extinction, along with probably every other living organism above the level of the Tardigrades. In the face of so much Negativity, it’s not always easy to keep Spirits Up amongst the Heliopaths, our nomeclature for the Diners who are involved in turning SUN from a cyber-idea into reality. We do Soldier On though regardless, as in the words of Illuminati Scumbag Winston Churchill

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If you find yourself going through Hell, KEEP GOING!

Anyhow, after a couple of years of discussion of the problems, we are going to meet up in Texas at the “Toothstead” to begin with, which is the ongoing project of a retreat location one of the Heliopaths, Eddie the Dentist is constantly working on to develop its self-sufficiency in terms of food and energy production. After a couple of days of celebration there, 5 of us are heading over to Monolithic Domes in Italy, TX to participate in a 5 Day “Crash Course” in how to construct Ferrocement Domes, which are probably the sturdiest structure you could ever build and also come in a relatively low prices per square foot of usable interior living. Useful for everything from Domiciles to Grow House and storage units, and pretty easy to erect anywhere without a massive amount of heavy equipment, though of course if you are spraying Shotcrete you do need access to some higher tech equipment. Which is why if you are going to get such things built, NOW is the time to build them rather than AFTER TSHTF, when doing so will be a whole lot more difficult.

As part of this group Adventure, we are going to be recording much of what goes on and presenting the material on our Collapse Cafe and Podcast pages as Vidcasts and Podcasts, and we also hope to bring live discussion on as well for the duration of the Convocation, courtesy of such marvelous technological Gimmickry currently available like Livestream, Google Hangouts and GoToMeeting. Here on the Diner, we will be Announcing these Live Broadcasts during the week inside the Diner in the Convocation thread that this article is linked to. If you wish to join with us in discussion about the various topics and problems currently Ongoing and very likely to get a whole lot worse in the not-to-distant future, stay tuned to the thread and look for the Links that will bring you into them. You’ll need a working Webcam and Mic of course, and may need to download some Client software or Plugins also. The Geeks on the Diner will be available to assist you in this if you are a technological Luddite.

For me, this is a very exciting adventure, though every time I leave the Last Great Frontier for an excursion to the Lower 48 nowadays it makes me nervous. Any given day the ATMs could lock up; any given day a “Terrorist Attack” or “False Flag” could go down instigating Martial Law, the Airlines could be grounded and I would not be able to make it back to my Perch here in Alaska, which I still consider to be among the best places left on Earth to be when it all goes to Hell in a Handbasket. A risk worth taking though, and you can’t stop living or let your fears get the better of you in a situation like this. For myself also, even if it did occur I could not make it back here, I know I have my Fellow Heliopaths in the Lower 48 who will give me a bit better location to park my butt before I head for the Great Beyond than a FEMA Death Camp.

I look forward to meeting IRL my IVL Heliopath friends from the Diner, WHD, Lucid Dreams, Gypsy Mama, Eddie the Dentista and Haniel the Tech Wizard who picked up the Ball from my friend Peter in Ocean Falls who set up the Diner software and who now keeps it running and relatively free from too many glitches or sabotage by the NSA.

The Doomstead Diner and the SUN website continue to grow and develop here, we have in the works coming also Moodle Education Software for bringing yourself up to speed on means and methods for better securing yourself for the hard times to come, and we hope to soon also begin the process of transferring these ideas into IRL communities, sprinkled all around the FSoA, and the rest of the Globe as well. We will be engaging in Demonstration Projects IRL in Texas, South Carolina and Minnesota to begin with, and we welcome inquiries into setting up Demos wherever you are located also. You can contact us on the SUN website to find out more about that.

Following the Convocation in TX beginning next week, at the end of May on the Memorial Day Weekend, Diners intend to be present as well at the Age of Limits Conference held at the 4 Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. We hope to be able to bring you more Vidcasts and Podcasts from there as well, with interviews and discussions with some of your favorite Doomer Pundits like Gail Tverberg of Our Finite World, John Michael Greer of the Archdruid Report, Dmitry Orlov of Club Orlov and Albert Bates from The Farm in TN, along with many other who will be attending this conference.

Coming through the rest of the week here leading up to the Convocation will be more Blogs from the other Heliopaths, with their thoughts on the coming Collapse as well as their perspectives on what it takes to transform IVL life IDEAS like SUN into IRL Communities that can make it possible to bridge to the Future in a BETTER TOMORROW, not a worse one or none at all. Check in on the Diner Blog this week to read more about that.

After that, I hope to see some of you via the Magic of the Internet while we proceed to Burn that Hotel Down in Italy TX. We are an Amerikan Band of Doomers, and we will Party Down here as we walk into the waning days of Industrial Civilization. It’s not too late to join us there either, contact us on the Diner and we will give you all the specifics.