The Four Questions

At the end of last week’s review of Age of Limits 2014, I posed the following four questions, which I think are key to moving beyond merely intellectualizing the predicament we face, and toward making actual meaningful changes to the way we live:

1. How can we communicate the reality of collapse to family and friends in ways that are constructive rather than destructive and find helpful ways to reflect our “endarkenment” in our everyday behavior?

2. How can we form personal relationships with people that can survive the disappearance of official life support systems based on finance, commerce and centralized authority?

3. How can we transform our physical selves into ones that will stand a chance, by eliminating lifestyle diseases, bad habits, luxuries and comforts, and by finding maximally independent and resilient ways to provide the necessities?

4. How can we make use of ritual and spiritual practice to transform a group of individuals into a community?

Over the past week I have collected a number of responses from a number of people. Rachel jumped the gun, sending in comments even before I posted my questions:

The biggest specific suggestion I have for next year is something you mentioned on Monday morning: the need for a session on how to respond and deal with family and friends around us who have a different worldview that does not involve a collapse narrative. I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t benefit from this discussion. … I talked to my sister when I got home. She had attended … just [on] Saturday and got a lot out of hearing both you and Dennis Meadows speak. … After coming home, she tried to explain the conference to her husband, who dismissed the conclusions, saying the usual types of things, like “Paul Ehrlich was proved wrong.” My sister didn’t know how to talk about it. How then can she even start making changes in her own family? … How can one make important changes if one’s spouse, parent, close friend, or whoever has a different worldview? Maybe in some cases it’s simply impossible without divorcing from a relationship. But maybe there are strategies.

Ellen wrote:

Your questions just posed need to be answered. … I don’t know if the human species can or even should survive. What poor stewards of the earth we have been. But if there is to be anything of value salvaged, if we as a species are not to degenerate into mindless barbarism, then we have to create a new paradigm and a new culture. Somehow I would like to save the intellectual capital our species has evolved over the millennia. How to accomplish that is worthy of prolonged and thoughtful debate and discussion.

Pete wrote:

[Collapse] is a very depressing subject for [my family] (not so much for me) and they therefore resist because they cannot “live there”. Well, I don’t live there. I am open to what comes, will do the best I can when it does and have made common sense preparations, in addition to putting some of my savings into precious metals. I am doubtful that we can convince most people of anything. Here in the US especially they live in their own made-up world, having always during their lifetime experienced nothing but relative prosperity.

Liam wrote:

Nobody can be … sold on collapse without first experiencing it in the own lives (illness, tragedy, dissolution, etc.) and then also being curious enough about the larger world to look.

Yossi wrote:

I worked as a psychotherapist and often used the [Kübler-Ross] model with people who had experienced loss. I was able to invest in the model emotionally as well as intellectually because I too had suffered losses. None of the people attending your conference have actually experienced collapse – if they had you would not be attending a conference, using a flush toilet, eating two nice meals a day and commenting about it on the internet. Nobody really knows how they will react to loss until they have suffered it and I think that the same will apply to collapse. I am not saying that it isn’t useful to think deeply about it and have a considered response ready but when it happens the trauma will be unimaginable and emotions will overwhelm people.

On question 2, Robert wrote:

The current deep drought in California may be a valuable empirical model of how very large numbers of people respond to accelerating depletion of an essential resource. The water supply situation in California is dire. … There is abundant data on the accelerating trend of water resource depletion and the situation will worsen in the coming months. If the drought persists through the coming winter the situation will take a dramatic turn to the realm of disaster. How will the populous behave? How is California government respond? Much handwrining in State government, especially the legislature, but no tangible plan and little action. Folks watering their front lawn at mid-afternoon on hot days.

Kathy wrote:

Thank you … for writing about the Ik and introducing me to the concept of culture death. It gave me a new way to perceive that what has happened to my people was a kinder gentler version of what happened to the Ik, and [that] we are simply a little kinder and gentler than the Ik but otherwise—well the mean-as-a-snake hillbilly is not a myth. … John Michael Greer [once] mentioned in a throw-away line that if you want to understand what culture death looks like, consider Southern Appalachia.

John wrote:

At some point there will be a turning of the collective ship towards the ominous black clouds of the collapse storm. I suspect the world will quickly divide into three groups, the hopeless/helpless/abandoned urban and suburban folk (dead) the pull together/circle the wagons/we can adapt folk (mostly dead, unless lucky in location) and the various flavors of nomads, prepared and unprepared (mostly dead as well, for where is there to go?).

Jerry wrote:

I have personal experience with recently moving to a small (pop 1,200) rural but compact town that is traditionally conservative, and down on its luck economically, but also has a small community of white, middle-aged liberal progressives (for lack of a better term). Those folks are somewhat aware of the problems we face, although it rarely goes beyond the usual litany of white middle class environmental issues such as GMO’s, factory farms, etc. As such, they have recently started a food co-op that sells VERY expensive and supposedly organic food. A few of them are currently engaged in trying to get a transition movement off the ground, but whenever I try to raise the issue of global ecological overshoot and collapse with them I am literally told to shut up for being too “negative.” Right to my face. There are one or two white, middle aged, right wing preppers in town, living in luxury RV’s and stockpiling guns, ammo, rice, and beans. I can talk to those folks about collapse, but mention anything remotely like an ecological basis for our predicament and I can expect a wild-eyed, spittle-flecked tirade against the climate change “hoax.” The vast majority of the remaining population are either low-wage working class, or people living in outright poverty. Most are politically conservative and very religious. Drugs and alcohol are big problems. How then can you present the challenges we face in terms that are not political, religious, or environmental, but which somehow still communicates the urgency of the situation? And how can you communicate that urgency in a way that is not perceived as fatalistic or unnecessarily negative? How can you ask people to explore the possibility of radically rethinking their living arrangements without posing a direct threat to their worldview? I am increasingly convinced that the answer lies in one word: Security.

Kevin wrote:

You need a clan. Not a bunch of folks like you or that you like, but a group that accepts each other and will circle the wagons and not bitch too much. We need to practice it on the crowded plane, the local fair, the funerals and weddings, the office, the home. It requires virtually no moving parts, and it is what keeps folks sane when things are crappy. So when the blowhard is yammering on at conference, I have been there, just see it as practice. You have socks! And a chair! And you’re not dead!

Doug wrote:

The greatest conundrum our species faces in this dire time is our tendency toward hierarchy. 10000 years of it may be too much for our species to overcome. I feel anarchy is the only way forward, but honestly can’t see how we get from here to there.

Liam wrote:

Get into the habit of trading favors, being reliable and nonjudgmental, and the relationships will blossom. Remember we live in a toxic social context, anything less pathological sells itself.

Only Pete ventured to say anything on question 3:

I’d say by knowing what’s what, exercising common sense and doing what’s sensible and prudent while we can. The milieu with which we will be confronted is so complex that any sort of detailed planning is useless. … I would include as sensible getting rid of as much debt as is possible, owning some precious metals and storing some food, water, currency and “tradeables”.

On question 4, Pete again:

I don’t think it can be done. … For myself, I have for decades looked into that realm between religion and science, if you will, with an open mind while accepting no dogmas, and have found, I think, a few answers. But these are just for myself, unburdened by any felt need to seek agreement.

Kathy wrote:

I’ve thought and thought about this … and I can’t really justify my stand from a secular point of view. I no longer have the proper secular vocabulary to do so. So anything I said would be meant specifically for a Christian struggling to come to terms [with collapse].

Don wrote:

I would like to make a suggestion relative to rituals. Paul Woodruff, a philosopher at the University of Texas and a former military officer, has written Reverence. As a philosopher, he makes fine discriminations so that we are able to communicate with a minimum or misunderstanding. For exsample, a religious person may be reverent, but a reverent person need not be religious. On page 250, Woodruff identifies music, poetry, and ritual as key languages of reverence. Sacraments and liturgy are not generally useful languages of reverence. Giving a knife blade a sharp edge can be an exercise in reverence, I think. Watching a skilled sharpener we experience the reverence also. My guess is that we need to “re-reverence” as much of our mundane world as possible. As the distractions wind down, we will need to satisfy ourselves with reverence for what we need to do.

I hope that this conversation continues, and actually leads us to something. In the meantime, here are some interim thoughts:

• I am sorry that I didn’t make it clear from the outset, but failure is not an option. If you can’t bring your family and friends on board, then by definition they will end up overboard, and, if you don’t find yourself another group, so will you. If any of us succeed at answering question 1 but fail at 2, 3 or 4, then, again, your chances will be slim to none. Needless to say, commentary along the lines of “We’re all gonna die!” is less than entirely helpful.

• Existing society, be it urban or rural, will be of minimal use. Practice saying “culture death.” At best it will be a source of recycled material—human, animal, vegetable and mineral. Urban settings are definitely a better place to scavenge/recruit: it’s a richer environment, there are more people, a greater diversity of experience, and more immigrants (who have experienced something other than an overfed life on autopilot).

• Those who have led a sheltered and comfortable existence never having had a reason to question the assumptions on which their lives have been based will also be of minimal use. Understanding collapse requires going through it, or at least observing it directly. Prosperity, affluence and security have the same effect on character as a windless environment has on trees: even a weak gust of wind can snap them in half.

• Finally, an entirely intellectual approach will likewise be minimally useful. The task is to get people out of their heads and connect them to each other emotionally (feel the right “vibe,” if you will) and to nature physically (by dropping bad habits and developing good ones), all served up with a sense of reverence for nature (human and otherwise) and a healthy sense of awe for all that which we can never hope to understand.

Now, I would like to hear from someone—anyone—who has succeeded, to whatever small extent, and could tell us what it took and what it was like.