“If [humanity] is to survive, [it] will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. [Humanity] will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life’s exciting variety, not something to fear” Gene Roddenberry.
This is not meant to be a doom and gloom scenario, just a realitity check. “When it comes ot the crunch, who are the people you know that you can truly rely upon?” Not the ‘friends’ and aquaintances you hang out with or go out at night to whatever commercial entertainment you enjoy. Can you really rely upon them in a crunch? Will they open their home to you and share their food with you wihtout hesitation? Your family probably will, but will your friends and neighbors? Now, who would you open your home to and share your food, without hesitation? These questions address the tightness of your real community connections. Now there are many of us who subscibe to, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” And you might be surprised to find out in a crunch how many of them think, “A friend in need is a pain in the ass.”
This is one of the major problems of a fully commodified society. If you live with the assumption that the grocery store trucks will arrive every night so that the store clerks and restock the shelves the next morning, or that the electrity will always be there when you flip the switch, system disruption may come as a hugh surprise. For all the boomers and pre-boomers in the devleoped world who grew up in the heyday of consumer economic growth during the 60s and 70s, it was a good life. Globalization starting in the 80s with all that stuff and cheap prices gave us hyper-comsumerism in the developed countries for another 40 years. But, since the pandemic of 2020, the realities of the world are more obvious to any willing to look. Besides all the poilitcal chaos and loss of freedoms since 2020, notice how your grocery bills and energy bills have climbed sharply in the last 5 years? It’s much more than simple inflation. It is a sign of how the global food (and water for much of the world) and energy systems we always took for granted are fickle and struggling to maintain themselves.
Now I’m not casting a dystopian vision to come. But I am saying that being prudent and working to develop a parallel localized society, should the shit hit the fan is a wise precaution. And it is also a great start to developing a fairer, more equitable society that is sustainable, peaceful and self-sufficient. This isn’t about developing a psychological bunker to withstand the coming apocalyse and subsequent apocalyse. It is about developing a new system that supercedes the dystopia we actually currently with within. Hyper-consumerism is already the apocalyse, and signs of its demise are everywhere. The amazing number of movies in the last few years where ‘supeheroes’ (e.g., Marvel Comics, DC Universes ) showing up is a nice enertertaining set of fictions, but I don’t mean this to be discouraging, the real truth is that they are just that – fiction – not real. If you believe in aliens, they are probably intergalatic tourists watching this joke called humanity with all the problems it creates for itself.
If you are still bought into the economic myth that ‘money’ will somehow be the solution, imagine money suddenly becoming worthless. People during the depression era before WWII found this out. It was a reality for all the parents of the currrent aging boomer generation). I have talked a lot about how the hierarchical systems have us all scrabling totry and be successful in a dog-eat-dog world. That aspect is one none of us like, espcially the ones who haven’t succeeded. And even the ones who have either pretend they ‘like’ success with its little perks, find the stress of staying afloat in the economic sewage a soul-destroying way of life. I can hear more than a few of you thinking that I must have gotten out fo the wrong side of the bed this morning. I have been writing this blog for eight and a half years now, and I still observe the same crapolla in global society as I did when I started.
I know from my many interactions how much people really desire a kinder more sustainable world. Before the industrial revolution, I don’t think it was a fairer world, but I do think that because of the tighter community living in villages and rusitc small urban settings it was a kinder more self-sufficient world oeerall. I think people in general were more connected to the natural world and understood more clearly than we do now, what worked locally in living well in an area, if not affluently. Food was nearly always local and energy from wood, wind-power or water-flow, was the resticive aspect for technology.
The industrial revolution came with all its assumptions about a technological future. However, we don’t like to think about the horrors spawned because of the industrial revolution – squalid desease ridden housing, long dangeorus work hours for all ages, poor work compensation, toxic environment with short life expctancies and general misery overall for the workign classes.The small numer of hierarchy did well though and sold us the toxic dream of ‘making it’ if you only worked hard enough. One of my friends recently asked if was was a modern socialist. Good heavens no. I am not for hierarchies running our lives, and socialism is just another kind of hierarchy. Neither am I any of the many political labelsl (e.g., anarchist) people try to apply to me. I am a localist and sustainabilitist – if you have read my blog for a while you will know what I mean.
I believe in personal soverignty, community cohesiveness organized and run at the grassroots, collaborating with other communities for a new kind of living. I like technology that doesn’t destroy the planet I need to survive – luxury and comfort is great, as long as it fosters that cohesiveness and aloows everyone to thrive. Utopia? Not really, we still have to get on with each other and allow eveyone to be as authentic as they wish. That doesn’t fit with our current model of living – for a few perhaps, but unconditional conformity is one of the rules that the hierarchies demand. I see Roddenberry’s dream with Star Trek as a feasible path. But that path is one we create and treat for oursleves, the hierarchies will not do it. Nothing in it for them. About 250 years ago the world discovered new sources of energy and the ability to develop technolgies that would revolutionize how we lived. The industrial revolution was our step into a newer kind of world, but that world was not kindee for the majority of us or to the planet that we rely upon to nurture us. We thought that science would make the world, but science without morality is a dangerous toy, like fire in the hands of a toddler. I have proposed a spiritual focus as a way to understand life and its connectivity.
It took many decades, but I think we have finally evolved enough as a species to know what works and doesn’t work in how to thrive on this planet. I think we have arrived back where we started 6 millennia ago as T.S. Eliot said, “”We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” “What he meant by this is about the concept of productive struggle. Humanity will want to progress, but once it does, it will return to where it started and understand what drove it to progress in the first place” e-notes.
We tried being harsh conquerors – it is time to think of being kind, self-actualized collaborators with new energies and new kinds of technologies. “…we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years” H.G. Wells.
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