Dear Abby

I’m still not a huge fan of Dimitry Orlov, although if Sharon Astyk were to market “I’d do Dimitry Orlov” bumper stickers, I might buy one just because it’s such a great insider joke.

Maybe part of the problem I have with Dimitry is his off-hand dismissal of efforts such as Transition initiatives. As I see it, any movement toward a more sustainable, more resilient tomorrow is better than sitting around waiting for the sky to fall. We need positive visions of what the world could be. We need more bicycles, more gardens, more community. Okay, maybe reality will fall short of the plans that were made, but a step in the right direction is still a step in the right direction.

Or maybe I have a problem with him because he seems so sure of himself. I like writers who admit they could be wrong. Or maybe because he seems so ‘out there’ – so far out on the fringe that he risks 'kook' status and I’m trying to convince others that doomsayers such as he are not kooks but intelligent, well-informed, rational people who just happen to be really good at reading the tea leaves.

All that said, Dimitry made some salient points that I’d like to share.

In answer to the concern how long before TEOTWAWKI?, Orlov offers the following:

Now: end of growth, onset of permanent crisis.
The next decade: steep declines in the availability of fossil fuels; some of the natural realm left intact; some ability to make alternative arrangements.
The following decade: collapse of fossil fuel industry; natural realm largely destroyed; no ability to make alternative arrangements.

A fast collapse is the optimistic scenario. The alternative is a nasty ‘slow burn.’

The biggest risk of all, as I see it, is that the industrial economy will blunder in for a few more years, perhaps even a decade or more, leaving environmental and social devastation in its wake. Once it finally gives up the ghost, hardly anything will be left with which to start over. To mitigate against this risk, we have to create alternatives, on a small scale, that do not perpetuate this system and that can function without it.

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It’s always personal. No one will inform you that collapse has happened; you will only know that it has happened to you.

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There are two components to human nature, the social and the solitary. The solitary is definitely the more highly evolved, and humanity has surged forward through the efforts of brilliant loners and eccentrics. Their names live on forever precisely because society was unable to extinguish their brilliance or to thwart their initiative. Our social instincts are atavistic and result far too reliably in mediocrity and conformism. We are evolved to live in small groups of a few families, and our recent experiments that have gone beyond that seem to have relied on herd instincts that may not even be specifically human. When confronted with the unfamiliar, we have a tendency to panic and stampede, and on such occasions people regularly get trampled and crushed underfoot: a pinnacle of evolution indeed! And so, in fashioning a survivable future, where do we put our emphasis: on individuals and small groups, or on larger entities - regions, nations, humanity as a whole? I believe the answer to that is obvious.

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I think that what makes us likely to think that technology will save us is that we are addled by it. Efforts at creating intelligent machines have failed, because computers are far too difficult to program, but humans turn out to be easy for computers to program. Everywhere I go I see people poking away at their little mental support units. Many of them can no longer function without them: they wouldn't know where to go, who to talk to, or even where to get lunch without a little electronic box telling what to do. . . .

There are people who believe in the emergent intelligence of the networked realm - a sort of artificial intelligence utopia, where networked machines become hyperintelligent and solve all of our problems. And so our best hope is that in our hour of need machines will be nice to us and show us kindness? If that's the case, what reason would they find to respect us? Why wouldn't they just kill us instead? Or enslave us. Oh, wait, maybe they already have!

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Now, supposing all goes well, and we have a swift and decisive collapse, what should follow is an equally swift rebirth of viable localised communities and ecosystems. One concern is that the effort will be short of qualified staff.

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We have a huge surplus of “factory-farmed humans” and a shortage of “free-range humans.”

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It is an unfortunate fact that the recent centuries of settled life, and especially the last century or so of easy living based on the industrial model, has made many people too soft to endure the hardships and privations that self-sufficient living often involves. It seems quite likely that those groups that are currently marginalised, would do better, especially the ones that are found in economically underdeveloped areas and have never lost contact with nature.

But the best part of the whole article is Orlov’s ardent advice (this aside from his admonition to invest in land and bronze nails):

Conserve energy: get plenty of rest and sleep a lot. Sleeping burns ten times less energy than hard physical labor.

Save time: avoid living by a schedule. Choose the best time to do each thing. Work with the weather and the seasons, not against them.

Pick and choose: always have more to do than you ever plan to get done.

Have plenty of options: You don’t know what the future holds, so (don’t) plan accordingly.

Think for yourself: the popularity of a stupid idea doesn’t make it any less stupid.

Laugh at the world: make sure to maintain a healthy sense of humor.

Now that is much-needed advice -- advice I can even live with!

Dark Thoughts on a Bright Morning

I'm suffering from cognitive dissonance. I log onto the web and read in the blogs of people like Dimitry Orlov, John Michael Greer, and James Howard Kunstler that we are already well into national collapse and that our economy will only get worse, much, much worse, never, ever to recover. Then I turn on the TV and everyone, from the President to the man-on-the-street, is talking about 'things getting back to normal' with the question being 'when,' not 'if.' I look outside the window and the world looks the same today as it did yesterday. I go to Wal-Mart and the shelves are stocked, people are buying, and we are still a nation of abundance. Kids are going off to college and getting degrees in public relations and business administration. The neighbor ladies are planning their shopping trips as if they were mini-vacations. Golf courses are selling memberships, Creekstone is selling multi-million dollar mansions, and the stock market is selling stocks. Have I bought into the insane ramblings of fringe kooks? I ask myself that question almost daily and every time the answer is the same: our whole economic model is based on an absurd fallacy of infinite growth in a finite world. We may be able to eke out a few more months, even possibly a few more years, of business-as-usual, but business-as-usual cannot last much longer. So it isn’t what the pundits are writing that convinces me, it is the truth as I see it. I admit to the possibility of being wrong, but until convinced otherwise, I must live within the parameters of this reality.

Why this obsession of mine? I am trying desperately to understand where we are and where we are headed so that I may make intelligent decisions in the here and now. Three questions remain – how bad will it get, how long do we have, and what can I/should I do? I don’t have the answer to any of these questions, but I spend an inordinate amount of time reading what others have to say and considering their take on things.

Dimitry Orlov uses the collapse of the Soviet Union as a model for what’s to come, but I think the differences are as important as the similarities and if he addresses those, I haven’t yet found it.

I believe the collapse of the United States will be worse than that of the Soviet Union for many reasons, the first of which is widespread gun ownership. In the USSR, guns were in the hands of trained professionals. These trained professionals, after the collapse, became a danger to society, but they were limited in number and they were for hire. In the US, guns are in the hands of petty thugs, organized crime, militant survivalists and AngryWhite Men. Cities will be hardest hit, but small towns won’t be immune. The bloodbath is likely to be horrific. In the beginning, I see the National Guard and local authorities being used as peace enforcers, but as collapse accelerates, they are as likely to become part of the problem as part of the solution. In cities, violence is likely to be random and chaotic in the beginning, but becoming more organized as time goes on. Thugs will form gangs, gangs will organize into competing Mafiosi, Angry White Men will shoot anyone who comes to the front door, and all the elements will be at odds. Sarajevo comes to mind. In the small towns, it may be just loonies who go on shooting sprees. But in some towns, there will be local thugs who band together to grab power and take control of dwindling resources. Angry White Men will stand in opposition. In some places, thugs will win. In others, they will be wiped out and Angry White Men will take control, which may or may not be any better. And in still others, coalitions will be formed. I don’t think national and state governments will disappear entirely, but I do think they will become increasingly irrelevant. Who ends up in control of the towns’ daily life and resources will depend on the comparative strength of local groups and their respective willingness to work together in peace.

Another reason the US will be worse off than the USSR is the old adage, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” The average American lives a life of much greater ease and prosperity than the average Soviet ever did. We have farther to fall, so the trauma will be that much greater. Adding to that is the American sense of entitlement and invulnerability – “it can’t happen here” is so basic a belief as to be almost unshakeable. The Russians, however, have a fatalistic mindset. They see life as struggle, and, indeed, their history has been one of constant struggle. So, not only will we have further to fall, we are psychologically ill-equipped to deal with harsh realities. Nor are we equipped to deal with the physical realities – public transportation is all but non-existent, supply chains are long, and farming has become, for the most part, agri-business. Rare is the family farm with horses and oxen or the blacksmith with fire and forge. The Soviet Union had not advanced so far as to have almost obliterated the old ways of doing things.

Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a rather isolated event. While their country was imploding, the rest of the world was going its merry way. It won’t be that way with the collapse of the US – in part due to a global economy that relies upon American consumerism and the American dollar, in part because the international web of finances binds our fates together, and in part because we share a common, fatally flawed economic model. The poor countries may fare the best – once we stop exploiting their resources to feed our insatiable appetite for stuff, they may have a chance to recover what they have lost. I hope they do. But it won’t be a collapse of the USA, it will be a global collapse with much more dire consequences.

The energy equation is also significant. Russia had enough oil and natural gas to supply not only its own needs, but to export in exchange for hard currencies. The US has no such luck. Not only is our own supply of cheap, abundant energy insufficient, but the global supply will soon become increasingly tight and expensive. As the shortfall becomes more and more apparent, the nations with oil are likely to begin hoarding it for their own use or selling it to the highest bidder. And when it is gone, it is gone. We’ll find some alternatives, but nothing will replace what we have squandered.

And lastly, the collapse of the Soviet Union occurred during a time of relative peace, prosperity, and climate stability. The collapse of the United States will occur during a time of potential resource wars, global poverty, and climate instability. Everything will be falling apart at once. Epidemics are likely to sweep across the world, natural catastrophes are likely to accelerate, and the food distribution chain is likely to disintegrate at a time when the world is not able to respond.

There are, however, some ways in which the US may fare better than our Soviet counterparts. For one, we are not an uneasy collection of conquered nations – we are truly a united people with a united fate. For another, our politicians are elected, not selected, and we do have more freedom than the average Soviet ever imagined. We have churches with a long tradition of reaching out to those in need, and we have a heritage of pioneering spirit. I watch Americans pull together to fight a flood, to rescue a community torn apart by tornado, or to comfort the victims of random violence. I see the upsurge in home gardening, the renewed interest in raising chickens and keeping bees, the inventiveness of earthships and alternative housing. I sense that there are great untapped resources in America just waiting to be unleashed. I think Americans, not all, but a significant number, will rise to the occasion in ways that will surprise everyone, myself included.

To be continued . . .