Culture Shock

There's not a lot in the news to write about lately, to be honest. The financial markets are staggering again, people are rushing to embrace any social fad they can to try to find meaning, the attempts by the governments of the world to hang on to some sort of normalcy are getting ever shriller and desperate. Something's happening with gays and immigration and temperatures are really high. Twenty years ago, bad news was news. Now, it's the norm. Nothing to see, just go look at the celebs.

One of the things that will become crucial for people to understand about our ongoing collapse is that they need to be able to adapt their expectations and ways of living to the reality around them. I'm reminded of the old trope of the rich woman who is standing on a sinking boat and wondering where her butler or maid is at (there are a hundred different variations of this). Yes, humans are adaptable, but I think adaptability is like a muscle -- you need to exercise it on a regular basis or it's too weak to help you much.

Culture can change very quickly, but our expectations sometimes remain the same. I wrote a while back about subcultures, but I think those who try to cling to the past are eventually going to be in their own subculture while the rest of the world has moved on to something more realistic. Getting stuck in the past is going to be a little like Jews in the 30s who assumed that because Germany had always been relatively decent to Jews (unlike the rest of Europe), that things were going to continue to be the same, even with the fellow with the funny moustache in change.

"Culture shock" is a real phenomenon, for a variety of reasons. We are wired to be familiar with things, with our brains only being able to process so much change in a new environment. It's expected when we move to another part of the country, or to another nation, but do we expect it when our environment changes around us? In the modern, cheap energy age, it's really not a huge problem. In a time and place where food is scarce and energy expensive, it can be a potentially lethal problem. Imagine still having the idea stuck in the back of your head that you can go to the store and buy food...even though the store is no longer there.

For people living in modern industrial civilization, there are a number of ways we can begin to prepare ourselves for the culture shock of industrial civilization ending. While people can assimilate, given time, we may well be in a situation where things happen very rapidly and we are trying to make a transition overnight (maybe even literally). Therefore, it's essential to start making at least a bridge to a different way of life while we have the time and resources to learn how to adapt.

Everyone has different circumstances and abilities, but some suggestions come to mind. First, try living a way or even a week, without using electrical lights in your home. Likewise, try preparing all of your food outside. And, if possible, don't drive anywhere for a week as well. If you are a picky eater, or even a normal eater, try doing some eating outside of your comfort zone -- go get some sushi or spicy food. Go to a foreign language learning group and learn how to communicate in a different language, especially if there are native speakers. If you're a religious person, go to a church of a different denomination. If you're not religious, go to a church.

The idea here is not to take up a new way of life or get a taste for caviar, but to get out of your "groove," so to speak. People who are not accustomed to doing so will be paralyzed in an emergency as they try to find a familiar model of how to behave and what to expect. Our civilization is on the cusp of entering a very long emergency, and there is not going to be anything familiar about it to people who have grown up in a society of excess. This is the time to learn a new mode of behavior, not when the first power grid goes down for good.

Robot Road

Many people are familiar, at least in passing with the term "Luddite." For those who aren't, Luddism was essentially a working class insurgency in 19th century Britain, which arose from dissatisfaction over skilled weavers being systematically replaced by unskilled labor using weaving machines. People would wreck machines, threaten factory owners, and even went so far as to battle with elements of the British army that were sent to suppress them. While arguments over the Luddites' motives are still debated, the consensus view generally is that the Luddites were not averse to the introduction of machines, but to the effects of the machines -- lowered wages, the inability to value labor correctly, and the impact it would have on them and their families. In other words, they feared the basic loss of ability to survive. Luddism eventually died out as the introduction of machines made it possible to more fully exploit natural resources and the economy expanded wildly for around two hundred years.

Fast forward to the modern age. There have been a few instances of discontent and grumbling about the replacement of workers in various industries by robots, but this was largely offset by the fact that people were able to find employment in other industries, such as the service industry and the technological fields, which were riding off of the accumulated capital of the last few centuries. Now, that same store of capital is slowly drying up, and the ability of people to be able to find other forms of employment are going with it. In the face of twenty to twenty-five percent real unemployment, the question of what technology has done to the labor force is beginning to be thrown around again.  This article goes into detail about what effects there have been on the labor force as we approach a sort of "mini-singularity" in terms of where we are with automation and human labor. There are some real howlers, such as the notion that everyone should graduate high school by 2020. What for? So they can be educated enough to know why they're never going to find meaningful work or anything but a survival existence? Also brought up is the idea that there should be a guaranteed minimum income for people. How does that work, as well, when we have more debt than all of human civilization's past debts put together? There are also some sobering bits, such as people dipping into their retirement to make ends meet, which is the all-too-familiar story of people clinging to the edge of the cliff by their fingertips.

The late Jane Jacobs, in her book "Dark Age Ahead," went into some detail about the idea of "cultural amnesia." Without going into much detail, the general concept was that we either "used it or losed it" (bad grammer intended) when it came to various skills and ideas. I suspect that it may be a relic of human evolution, where the "old ways" were abandoned, so we didn't waste time doing things that didn't work for us. Consider, for example, that people are suggesting that the medical field may be largely automated at some point. This isn't a crazy notion -- lots of surgery is now being done with remotely-operated machines. However, what happens to the knowledge of the medical profession? Are those ideas slowly lost as times goes on and replaced by "go see the robot." What happens when the robot isn't around? Will the idea of germ theory, for example, die out in a generation?

Where does all of this leave the average person, too? It's increasingly clear that we are going to face a divide at some point -- either be in the part of humanity that services and develops technology, or be a part of humanity that scrambles for what is left, whatever that is. Truck driver? Good luck, with rising fuel costs and the development of reliable robotic vehicles on the horizon. Teacher? Good luck, with increasingly sophisticated educational software being developed. Soldier? Drones and robots are free to train, can be deployed indefinitely, and don't cause problems for politicians by coming home in flag-draped coffins. And, for those who want to start a little niche business, how many cake decorating places, photo studios, and baristas can a largely unemployed populace support, anyway? We are either part of the mechanism of technology or we are going to be displaced by it -- there is no middle ground.

All this comes at a catch, though -- our material resources are running out, in spite of what we're told. Oil is increasingly hard to retrieve. Metals are getting more expensive as the easily-accessible stocks have long since been made into other things, or just plain used up in industrial production. People are trying to exploit the resources in space now, but will that program end before it ever gets off the ground? Are we going to have robots that run on thin air? Are they going to be powered by "cost savings?" The more advanced our production architecture becomes, the more reliant it becomes on the infrastructure to support it. Eventually, we will merge back into one humanity -- those who placed their hopes on robotics and lost out due to thermodynamic realities, and those who were displaced by robotics and just "made do." People will have a new shared interest in trying to find enough to eat and to have a roof over their head.

If nothing else, it begins to remind us that we still need to have one foot in each world -- the world where technology and magic reign, where we still tryi to find work and a means to survive in modern society, and a foot in the world where we accept regressive change, in spite of our optimism and good intentions. If we have a job that can potentially be replaced by technology, we need to understand that we may at some point be permanently out of work and need to plan for that possibility. If we work in a technological field, we probably have more a "cushion," but have to understand that it will not last forever. What replacement skills can we find for ourselves? Most of all, it's time for everyone to try and maintain the collective memory of how things were done before there was technology to make them happen -- how did we heal a broken bone before we had x-rays? How did we plant a field before there was a tractor and industrial fertilizer? As people who understand the party can't go on forever, this is our praxis and we need to remind ourselves of the importance of it, even as our technological civilization plays Icarus with the future.

Dual Purpose Living

On my last post, a reader commented about what kind of lifestyle changes he and his wife should be making in order to prepare for where our civilization is headed. I think this is a sentiment which is shared by a large number of readers. Many of us are locked into the debt-and-consumption society, for quite a large number of reasons. We may have tried to go down the path of "success," only to be saddled with large student loans and an increasingly bleak employment outlook. We might have family members we are caring for, or be tied to a job which we cannot find elsewhere. It breaks my heart to hear people who feel this way, because there is the grinding pressure one on hand of knowing something is substantially wrong with the "big picture," yet they feel helpless to do anything about it on the other hand. However, in spite of what we are thinking and feeling at the moment, there is some reason not to despair.

The first thing that we have to keep in mind is that collapse does not generally happen overnight. Barring extraordinary circumstances, we're not going to go from eating dinner from the fridge one day to roasting rats over a 55-gallon drum the next. In many respects, we have been in decline since 1970, both the last time that the real wages of workers rose and America hit peak oil production. Everything since then has basically been a Federal Reserve-backed Ponzi scheme, real estate fraud, or finding newer and stupider ways to piss away the accumulated wealth of civilization. For many people, life since 2008 has been living in a state of individual collapse. Look around, take a drive through most small towns, or formerly busy shopping areas. What's left? Maybe a couple of knick-knack stores or something. Mostly, you'll see real estate signs up all over the place. On a macro-scale, population growth rates are getting ready to tank. People can't afford to feed a large family, or a family at all, in most cases.

My point here is that we are not looking at a situation where we're thrown into icy water and expected to swim. Even if the currency crashed overnight, there would still be enough largesse thrown at the cities to make them last for a while. For that matter, the argument that the only place to make it through collapse will be in the country probably needs to be called into question, but that's a story for a different day. Instead, just as people adapt to "having less is the new normal," we need to adapt to "thinking different about how to do things," and this adaption is where we really need to be with ourselves. Consider that the "American dream" even as recently as a decade ago consisted of a 3 bed, 2 bath house on a 1/4 ace of ground, couple of cars, steady office job, and a trip to Disney every few years. How many people still really have that expectation in mind? Some, but we're also seeing this generation increasingly become one that stays with their immediate family, something that was a relatively normal state of affairs for most of human history.

More specifically, we can begin to adapt in a number of sensible ways, not all of which involve an immediate and drastic lifestyle change. The first step is mental, like with anything else -- do we understand where we are at in life and society? Do we know how we relate to others? Are there friendships and relationships we can build or repair? This is not to suggest that we seek out people to "use" -- on the contrary, we have to encourage and expect a "give and take" between people. Thinking outside the box here is helpful, too. I remember an extreme example of a discussion I had with a person who suggested that if the dollar collapsed, all economic activity would grind to a halt. Maybe on a continental, macro-based level, but people on a local level would find ways to adapt and either barter or develop a new means of exchange.

The second thing is to begin actually try learning and practicing skills. In many cases, things are a matter of scale -- if you can raise a small herb garden, then you're already learning the basics of food production. If you make some beer in a bucket, you're learning a lot about brewing. Ditto for almost everything. I've dabbled in quite a few things, and there are some things I do well, others not so well, but it still gives me a context to work with. This will be the most important thing, the ability to adapt to different needs. If we can't find someone to do it, or afford it, we have to do it ourselves. In terms of skill building, and crafting, there are plenty of people who are willing to pass along their experience and knowledge, too. Take a notebook, and listen. Or you may be able to find people who will let you do some hands-on help if you seem particularly interested and sincere. I once got a lesson in the basics of playing a hammered dulcimer after expressing some genuine interest and appreciate of the musician's work (I've like hammered dulcimer music for a long time).

Third, we need to look at dual-purposing our lives and interests. Are golf or video games going to be a big activity down the road? Probably not. Ditto for "antiquing" or scrapbooking or collecting worthless figurines or something. If we have a choice between getting a job in the city, or someplace where can get a little land, which should we pick? If we're buying a car, do we pick one that is "luxury" or one that is more easily maintained and can be used to travel on our increasingly poor road network? Are our leisure activities something we could eventually use to begin to make a living in a post-collapse economy? I've explored brewing and winemaking for this reason, along with teaching unarmed self-defense, blacksmithing, and some other odds-and-ends, all to have something to fall back on if need be. Don't overlook music and entertainment, and other arts, too. Acoustic music will probably come back into demand at some point, as the means to listen to digital music becomes increasingly rare (we all have an MP3/4 player these days, but the batteries in those don't last forever, even assuming we will still be able to get regular electricity to charge them). Become a "nerd," too -- because we are going to be able to do less and less of macro-scale science and engineering, it doesn't mean that we will be doing less of it on a micro-scale. Knowing some science, like chemistry and physics, as well as some math, will go a long way toward validating certain approaches. After all, physical survival and life itself is just a numbers game with energy input vs. energy output.

The temptation to feel overwhelmed, and to feel a great deal of pressure, when it comes to changing our lifestyles, is understandable. We know that the current model is unworkable and is going to hit a brick wall sooner or later. We don't want to be on the bus when that happens. On the other hand, the sooner we begin to decouple, even in small ways, from the "mainstream" lifestyle, we will begin to feel a greater sense of reward for our efforts, as well as being able to increasingly get a sense of what we need to do and where we need to go.

It's Material

The blessing, and eventual problem, of living in an industrial society, is that we are surrounded by lots of mass produced items we become dependent on for functioning. These things are often not made to last more than a few years, much less a generation or more, because they can be easily replaced, and because the people who manufacture them will go out of business if they don't. In fact, there is often such a surplus of manufactured goods that it sometimes make more short-term economic system to discard things people don't know what to do with than it does to sell them. One of my first jobs was working at a retail store that sold appliances. It was not uncommon for us to be told to throw a perfectly good returned or "scratch and dent" washer or dryer away, instead of marking it down and making it available for a customer. The problem was that a new unit could be sold in its place, and the company could still make more off of selling the new unit, and discarding the old, than it could by a mark-down. At least to the credit of the people I worked with, none of us was ever happy about having to do that and realized what a complete waste it was.

As a society, we still tend to operate the same way, even if we don't often think much about it. Most clothing really isn't purchased with the intent of durability over time. Elastic, for example, will tend to get brittle after a period of non-use. I was surprised when I pulled out a pair of socks the other day that I'd had for just a couple of years and heard the characteristic "crackle" of broken-down elastic. If we have the foresight to stock up on a few extra pairs of socks or underwear, are we taking this into account? Our ancestors made do just fine with underwear that used drawstrings and ties, if they wore any at all (see this).

Plastics, likewise, can break down over time, especially when exposed to sunlight. So can rubber tires (which is where "dry rot" comes from, having nothing to do with exposure to water). Our snazzy new greenhouse covers might look nice now, but what happens when they yellow and turn opaque from micro-cracks? Or the plastic handle on our mass-produced hoe or shovel snaps? Wooden handles, cared for, will last forever. Also, consider the problem of plastic pistols, such as Glocks. They have a claimed lifespan of one hundred years or more, but none of them have been around for more than thirty or so years, so who knows? (although, in fairness, ammunition's shelf life is generally between 20-40 years)

Even engines and modern vehicles are problematic, with ten or fifteen years doing pretty good on most things powered by internal combustion. I talked in my last practical commentary about the maintenance that vehicles require, and the need to find practical alternatives for transportation, both personal, and of goods. One thing that people might consider purchasing is a Vermont garden cart. My parents had one of these, didn't take good care of it, and it lasted for twenty or so years before finally falling apart due to neglect, not any flaw in the cart itself. While this is a mass-produced item, it is made to last for generations, and can be bought with solid rubber tires for durability.

People who "prep" always seem to operate from the assumption that the lights will come back on at some point, and Wal Mart can be cleaned up and re-opened after a few years of rot. Freeze-dried food and a locker full of ammunition are nice, I suppose, but the reality is that the lifestyle shift brought on by the new Dark Age is going to require an evaluation of how we live our daily lives and what we can do to best adjust. It's not the dramatic things which are going to make a difference to most people, but the simple items which made life easier for our ancestors, when our idea of a "Dark Age" was their idea of normal life.

The Jobs Picture

Ed left a good comment on my previous post, but it was unfortunately eaten by Blogger.  Since it is another insightful comment, I wanted to make sure it was posted:

"Off topic, but responding to the comment on my comment, I'm becoming interested in how peak oil will interact with what seems to be the increasing trend to eliminate jobs through automation (the mainstream bloggers I know alert to the latter are Stuart Sandiford (sp?) at Early Warning and Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, and I don't think they have digested the implications).

Labor saving devices at the beginning of the industrial revolution put craftsmen and agricultural smallholders out of work, but allowed households to improve their material quality of life through acquiring relatively cheap mass produced goods that they didn't have access to before.  Current labor solving technology does not really increase the goods and services available to a household, you still get one washing machine even if it now can be produced with two thirds fewer workers.  It makes these products cheaper, but there is no increase in production that will absorb the redundant workers.
Essentially the end result is the same number of goods produced with cheaper inputs, instead of more goods produced with cheaper inputs.  WIthout factoring in peak oil, in principle this should not be difficult for societies to adjust to, you just put most of the population on some form of welfare, which doesn't have to be that high because it now costs much less to have a middle class standard of living (but watch for population constraints).  In practice this takes a huge cultural adjustment.

Will rising resource costs halt or reverse the trend towards automation?  Or will have it have no effect on automation, but put the world in a Malthusian crisis where "surplus" members of society have to be eliminated?  I'm not sure, but again we are dealing with a wind down that will be difficult but tolerable as opposed to a nightmare."

This has been a line of inquiry that has interested me for a while, as well.  I think the key point is a lack of effective management of social trends in modern society.  We don't have the political will to identify the crisis and the need to plan for the coming transition is sorely absent from any kind of conversation on what direction society is taking. 

The ideas of "structural unemployment" and "jobs that are never coming back" are probably two early warning signs of what direction we can expect things to take.  By extension, the people who held these surplus jobs also seem to be surplus, themselves.  I think the first time this was really addressed was when Walter Reuther was shown a machine that could make some union auto workers' jobs obsolete.  Reuther responded by asking how many cars those machines would buy? 

I tend to think that the same factors which reverse automation (unpayable debt, rising resource costs, etc) will simaltaneously wipe out the ability of nation-states to maintain a working entitlements system.  In turn, this will sharply cut the effective cost of labor again (which is itself largely falling -- here is the BLS report).  At some point, it will become cost-effective for those who still have some measure of wealth to hire large number of menial workers, not unlike what was the case in 19th century England where urban populations ballooned with no attendant expansion in available work. 

Also, I wrote a post on this a while back, with what I thought were three trends that people might undertake in response to having no work and few options.  I should note that I don't mean to romanticize or idealize any of them, but that they seem to be likely once the welfare checks stop coming and people need to find some way to keep a roof over their heads.

Again, thanks for the good comment, and it is something to start looking for while sifting through the news.

Old Fashioned

For those of you who have read James Kunstler's Witch of Hebron, you'll already be familiar with a certain section of the book, but for those who haven't, I'll briefly detail a small part of the story (and leave out spoilers, as it's quite a good read).  As part of some other action in the story, a carbon fiber fly rod and modern spinning reel get broken beyond repair, with one of the characters reminiscing about how it represented the height of materials engineering and would probably never be duplicated again. 

That Mr. Kunstler included this passage speaks a lot to his true grasp of what collapse really means, and serves as a reminder of what we stand to lose once the process really accelerates and the things we have built can't really be replaced easily, if at all.  Take not just fly rods, but consider the idea of not being able to go into a Wal Mart or Bass Pro any longer, and buy your choice of outdoor equipment for those adventures into the RV park campground.  Or, also consider that your outdoor adventures are going to be a whole lot rougher in the future than plugging in a bug zapper and reaching into the cooler for a beer. 

Our ancestors in America -- both native and colonial -- faced the problems of outdoor travel and survival, and often thrived, in spite of rough conditions, while making use of the materials around them and often being forced to be relatively self-sufficient out of necessity, not choice.  Imagine taking a trip cross-country on horseback, or on foot, when roads were little more than muddy wagon-trails, when the idea of a hotel hadn't even been considered yet, and you have to carry your supplies with you on your back, not in the trunk of your car.  However, through the ages, a store of mythology and assumption have been built up around the actions these people took, and how they lived, to where real outdoor survival has taken on something of a surreal veneer at times.

Back in the 40s, one writer, Ellsworth Jaeger (who was also a college instructor on these topics), seeing that there was an increasing interest in people getting back to the outdoors as a reponse to the horrors of World War 2, set out to write a guide called Wildwood Wisdom (here on Amazon) on how things were done back before technology began to affect outdoor life, and is a contrast to other works which assume that the reader has at least some access to modern technology, or isn't dealing with a long-term survival situation.  Instead, his work focuses on life at the point in time right before the West began to really be tamed, when there were still plenty of people who lived in a style that hadn't drastically changed for thousands of years. 

Just as an example, there is plenty of information on how to craft low-tech outdoor clothing, and how it was done back in the pre-industrial period, even including how to lay out a pattern for a buckskin jacket, or a shirt made from a wool blanket.  Other chapters include information on cooking, foraging, shelter, etc, but from the perspective of how it was really done, not someone's modern reinterpretation of how they think it might have been done -- or should have been done.  Even more important, Jaeger's writing focused on day-in and day-out life, not emergency survival situations that most books are focused toward. 

There have been a number of books on the subject written over the years, but I'm not aware of any that have been as comprehensive and down to the basics as Jaeger, or had as much of a focus on the practical daily life skills that people would have practiced away from the "civilization" of the time.  While the Leibowitz Society advocates and practice preserving ideas from the modern age, such as cosmology and higher mathematics, the other focus is on the ability of people to survive from day to day in rough conditions, making a book like this invaluable for anyone who sees the collapse coming and is working to prepare for it.

Brother Against Brother

As part of writing this blog, and researching much of the material which goes into it, I've had the opportunity and need to talk to a wide range of people with an equally wide range of opinions.  This includes people who either back the Tea Party viewpoint or the pro-Obama viewpoint. 

The thing which stands out in many of these discussions, is that there is no reconciliation between one viewpoint and another.  People on the right accuse people on the left of wanting to use government to oppress them and destroy them financially.  People on the left accuse people on the right of wanting to "take over" the system and trample freedom in the name of some hidden agenda.  The facts no longer matter, the notion that each side genuinely believes it is trying to do what is best for the nation, is lost on the other.  The hatred between each camp is palpable and is not decreasing.

Things like this get glossed over in the good times, when there's no real pressure and competition for how to distribute limited resources.  When everyone is fat and happy, there's no need to worry about who's fighting over scraps.  Now, however, with uneployment and despair reaching catastrophic levels, a president with no ability to lead the nation out of the mess, a congress which is paralyzed by partisanship and whoring after lobbyist dollars, the pressures are growing until the inevitable is going to happen, a spark of some sort, the first rock through a window, which is going to set off a spiral of violence until a de facto state of civil war exists.

The first American civil war came perilously close to tearing the nation apart and has had repercussions that have not stopped to the present day.  This was in a time and place when there was a giant western frontier for people to escape to and rebuild new lives in a place of plenty.  Now that there are no ready-to-exploit frontiers left, no safety valve for radicals of both sides, what is going to be the end result?  A nonstop grind of civil conflict until there is not one stone standing on top of another?

It is in times like these when knowledge is lost and ideas die, in favor of the daily struggle to survive.  Look at any of the "third world" nations wracked by civil wars in recent decades.  What is there except using food as a weapon, making homebuilt AK-47s in the basement, and getting high in between clashes in the streets between one "militia" and another?  Do we think that we're any more immune to this than any other nation or culture?

While it doesn't necessarily seem that civil war and collapse would necessarily intersect with the storing of knowledge for rebuilding in the distant future, consider that the Khmer Rouge made a habit of putting plastic bags over the heads of people who wore glasses or didn't have callouses on their hands.  Would a few bins of carefully packaged books be enough to condemn someone?  Even if that were not the case, do we expect that anything resembling a public library would survive civil upheaval, or would they be torn down and disposed of along with all other institutions, such as universities, that one faction or another saw as objectionable? 

To Prep or Not to Prep?

The posts which have received the most comments on the blog have been centered around "prepping" and the speed at which we expect collapse to occur, if we expect it to occur at all.  Prepping has long been a staple of the idea of personal survival, even if it hasn't always occurred in the framework of a breakdown of modern civilization.  After all, what's a root cellar but a means of putting food aside for when it might not be available in the future?  Prepping, itself, is just a modern, reasonable, interpretation of "storing up for winter," expect that we're storing up for when there's nothing left on grocery shelves and never will be left again.

The attitudes around it, either favoring prepping, or dismissing it, seem to really reflect our own personal views of how we think the course of civilization is most likely to proceed.  Logically, this makes a lot of sense.  If we think that we'll see a gradual decline, why would we spend a lot of time and effort on acquiring supplies that would likely never get used, when we could still obtain what we needed?  Likewise, if we expect that the bottom could fall out from things overnight, we would want to have all we would potentially need because we would think that we could not acquire it again. 

Logic tends to point to this being the safer route.  The assumption has always been the collapse of industrial civilization through attrition of resources as being the most likely form of collapse, to the point where looking at anything else becomes somewhat "heretical."  The idea of a gradually decreasing slope on a curve of resource availability and industrial activity is just there to keep people from getting too nervous about the contraction.  The reality is that a best-fit isn't going to reflect what is most likely to happen -- a chaotic curve of fits and starts as we see pockets of collapse appear, followed by desperate human activity to try to restore some sense of normalcy (the "bailouts" in the past few years as evidence of this).  For a casual observer, that would be a blip on the radar, but for the person living through a food riot, it would be very real.

Collapse through de-industrialization would proceed in fits and starts, but what about a more sudden and profound sort of collapse?  A pandemic, resulting from the bird flu or somesuch, would be devastating and would quickly spell the end for our complex systems as people would not be able to maintain them.  War of some sort is always a spectre waiting in the wings.  The poles shifting, pick something.  If we look at things from a mathematical perspective, the odds that there will be a civilization-ending event are almost certain, given enough time.

In the end, I think a reasonable case can be made for erring on the side of having more goods set aside, than not.  In a sense, this is a companion to Pascal's wager -- instead of dealing with the existence of God, we're dealing with the possibility of collapse.  Does it make more sense to prepare for a collapse that may not come within our lifetime or does it make more sense to assume it won't occur and then be left with only hoping that it doesn't?

Like Minds

It's been nearly a year since I started this blog, and a number of things have become abundantly clear.  One thing is that there is a growing sense among people that things really aren't headed in the right direction.  It may be from environmental concerns, too many promises made by governments with shaky finance, or just a gut feeling that we are entering a time when various unseen factors begin to create a complex pattern which will bring civilization to its knees.  Another is that people are looking for information and motivation, anything which will help them both prepare and also to come to grips with what seems inevitable at this point (revolutions, war, famine, pick something).  However, the last is the fact that some people have also gone down the same road that the Leibowitz Society has, that of understanding that there is much valuable information which needs to be saved and preserved. 

Added to the resources links are a couple of items that people may not have looked at before, the Ozymandius Society and the Long Now Foundation.  The contrast between the two ideas could not be more different.  The Ozymanidus Society would like to preserve some record of the apex of human knowledge, going out probably far beyond the lifespan of our species.  I've had a few discussions with the gentleman who has initiated that project and it's interesting to see where our ideas both intersect and diverge. 

The Long Now Foundation is a completely different effort.  Instead of being one highly intelligent person, it is a gathering of highly intelligent people, among them one Neal Stephenson, whose novel Anathem has been some of the inspiration of the Leibowitz Society.  Their idea is to take a long-term view with regard to human thought, to create a body of thought which lasts beyond the few milliseconds that our information-saturated minds seem to be able to retain any pattern.  While the idea of a dark age is implicit in their work, it is a dark age of the mind and human cognition, not a physical one which involved the collapse of human society.
But, in both cases, there is still the idea that we need to save our thinking, our knowledge, our ideas.  The Leibowitz Society sits somewhere between these two extremes, recognizing on one hand that the pace of events in human civilization, the "black swans" so to speak, are aligning so quickly now that there isn't a lot of hope of stemming a collapse.  On the other hand, there is the idea that we can and should preserve knowledge and ideas for a future age, as well as for their own sake. 

While part of the "mission" of the Leibowitz Society is to collect and preserve knowledge, we need to step back a minute from storing books and trying to figure out what would be of value, and instead just think for ourselves for a time.  What ideas catch our interest?  What theory or insight has been valuable in our lives and would be of value to others?  Is it psychology?  Philosophy?  Applied mathematics?  I would be interested in hearing from people who have rejected the "fast food" of modern pop culture and begun to explore the pathways of their own mind.  This, I think, is where we begin to see that we are not alone, that we are indeed part of a common vision of letting our knowledge outlive ourselves.

Expiration Dates

The idea of long-term planning in prepardness is something which doesn't get a lot of play in the real world setting.  People seem to expect that a crisis will last a year or two, then we'll dust off, pick up the pieces, and drive down to pick up a pizza.  Or something like that.  The coda on every piece of fiction written by a survivalist seems to show the surviving protagonists relaxing, with the lights back on in a family setting that is almost reminescent of the ideal of the fifties. 

In contrast, the more mainstream post-apocalyptic fiction tends to look toward the opposite view, especially cinematic fiction.  Looking at the world of Mad Max, it's clear that there is going to be no quick and easy recovery in that setting.  Other films like Cyborg, Steel Dawn, and The Ultimate Warrior, all seem to show the same idea, that a world which has taken centuries, if not millenia, to assemble itself in a certain way, falls apart, then the crash is going to be as loud as the ascent was spectacular. 

Of the two views, I think the long-term collapse view is far more realistic.  When Rome (the ancient era equivalent of America) collapsed, it took over a thousand years for Europe to reassemble itself in any form that even began to rival what the Roman Empire had been at its height.  Therefore, part of the "mission" of the Leibowitz Society is to encourage long-term survival planning, not on the order of a month, a year, or even a decade. 

Modern "prepping" seems to operate with the mindset that if enough things are put to the side, there will be no problems.  Firearms and ammunition are always on the list, but what happens when the firearm is still around, but the 3-4 cases of ammunition stored up don't work as intended any longer?  What about the several pairs of shoes with soles that crack from depolymerization and the socks that don't stay up because they were made with elastic and no other provision to keep them in place?

Realistically speaking, it seems reasonable that the model for where human industry will settle at will be somewhere prior to the dawn of the industrial age.  In other words, if it existed, or could be done, in the late 1700s, it's probably fair to say it will be possible after the collapse.  So, with regard to firearms, black powder flintlocks seem likely to be around, but modern ammunition will probably not be likely to be produced.  There are some areas, such as medicine, that will at least benefit from modern knowledge (no more bleeding with leeches), even if not all the technology (x-rays) are available.  One of the most striking things will likely be the "flattening" of society and labor, as high-tech agriculture is replaced by sweat and toil. 

I drew up the following list as an intellectual exercise to try to figure out how long things would last following a complete collapse, based on general expiration dates.  Obviously, it's not complete, and these are just rough estimates.  But, it's interesting to still think this through in terms of a generational exercise.  If we accept the core principle behind the Leibowitz Society -- long term storage of knowledge -- then we also should accept the idea that the preparations we've made for ourselves to get through the coming collapse are also likely to be used by our descendants, and we should plan accordingly for them, too.

2 years:
Canned foods, medicines, seeds

5 years:
Gasoline, diesel, kerosene
Batteries (dry and wet cell, lipo)
Paint
Soap
Elastic
Non-leather shoes
Pens and ink

20 years:
Modern roofs, acidic paper

20-40 years:
Ammunition, preserved foods

50 years:
Metal tools

100 years:
Wooden furniture, wine, distilled liquor, firearms

While not inclusive, it would be interesting to hear of examples of people setting things aside for the long term, or if they can think of prepping supplies which don't have long shelf lives and or will be used up quickly and people will have to find substitutes for them.

Crash, Bang, Boom

I didn't check the news between about 7 in the morning and just a little while ago...and was reminded of exactly how fast the economy can start to implode again, much along the lines of what happened back in fall 2008, when I went to lunch and came back to see a five hundred point drop.  The stock market is down around five percent, oil is down below 90 dollars a barrel (signaling that people believe that demand is going to drop off shortly, due to the failing economy), etc. 

The big difference between then and now is that I think there's a sea change in attitudes toward the economy and recovery, and not for the better.  In 2008, Barack Obama was elected partly because people saw some sign of hope with a change in party at the White House.  This followed on the heels of a massive bailout package which started triggered the deficits north of a trillion dollars.  People believed for much of 2009 and 2010 that recovery was still possible, that all the measures taken by the Fed and the government would bear some sort of fruit, that green shoots were coming up all over the place.

Oops.

The debt discussion and the tacit admission that there is no political will in Washington to even begin to take any serious steps to address seem to have been the last straw, the American version of the Argentinian government admitting at the end of 2001 that there was no way to deal with the debt, that the problem had gone too far and there was nothing to do but watch the barn burn down. 

People are still going to raise the rallying cry that the crisis can be overcome, that we can come to terms with the debt and deal effectively with it, save the economy, and so on.  Hope is a good thing and we can't live without it, but there's also a time to be realistic and understand that a storm is coming.  Whether or not this is going to be the last high point on the roller coaster before the big 200 foot drop, or we're going to see more ups and downs, it has to be clear that we're not going to return to "normal" again, maybe not in our lifetimes or our children's lifetimes, that the figurative lights are going out across America, and the industrial world, maybe for good. 

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While people make think it's getting too late in the game to prepare for what's going to happen down the road, especially folks who are coming to the realization that things are getting ugly, the truth is that anything in the way of preparation may be helpful.  The position of the Leibowitz Society has generally been that the most likely collapse scenario is one of the relatively gradual decline (in other words, you'll definitely see it coming and not have to run from a horde of zombies), but that the decline isn't going to be linear.  In other words, there are going to be peaks and valleys of stability and instability on the way down.  Instabilities might well cause situations, for example, where electrical power is lost for a time or store shelves get emptied in a buying panic.  In times like this, it will be absolutely critical to be as self-reliant as possible, where "conventional" prepping will be invaluable.  I picked up a book recently, called "The Prepper's Pocket Guide" with an eye toward reviewing it for people who were new to the idea of prepping and long-term survival.  While it's not as comprehensive as a lot of other works, it's a very good entry-level work and has a lot of useful information for people who are new to the subject or just looking for a one-stop information source to flip through on a regular basis.  Recommended.

Chess

When most people think of surviving for the long term, they focus on sensible areas, like how to produce food, how to take care of medical problems, self-defense, etc.  However, one area which is often neglected, at least from my experience, is entertainment.  While people are wise to concentrate on the fundamentals of survival, they fail to remember that they are not going to want to work non-stop in the fields or the workshop and might want to find some entertainment to break the monotony. 

There are obviously a number of forms of entertainment available, such as music, sports, art, but gaming is a time-honored way of passing the time.  Games of various sorts go back millenia, to ancient Rome, Babylon, India and Japan, to name a few.  In the modern age, whole websites are devoted to board gaming (such as Board Game Geek) and there is almost an endless variation of those games.  Out of all the games available, the one that still seems to stand out is chess.

Chess, over all other games, has a few advantages:

1. The rules are easy to learn and haven't changed in several hundred years.  There's no "house rules" under most circumstances. 

2. The rules are easy to learn, fitting maybe on one sheet of paper, making it very easy to learn, but taking a lifetime to master.

3. The playing components are simple to make, durable and minimal.  32 pieces and a board can be made out of crude wood, clay, etc.  It's portable and easy to store.  Cards are complicated to make and wear out with regular use.  True-rolling dice are difficult to make.

4. The language of chess is universal, as it's all math and symbols.  Anyone can play a game with anyone else without speaking a common language.

5. There is, for the average person, enough depth in the game that they can never really grasp all the fundamentals of it.

If you've never really played chess before, I encourage you to give it a try.  If you've played a few times and gotten shelled by your opponent, go find a few books which can give you drills and problems designed to help you get a handle on enjoying the game.  Even while we are still living in our modern information-age society, there is a level of enjoyment in playing a game of chess that you won't find in more (superficially) sophisticated forms of entertainment.

Ghost Town Blues

I saw a very interesting piece (here) on the shift of population from America's rural areas to the cities, especially the northeast.  This really isn't news to anyone who has spent any time in a rural town in recent years.  If you go to "main street," you'll see most of the beautiful old brick buildings have fallen into disrepair, with cracked or boarded up windows, peeling paint, water damage.  They no longer serve any use, no more than a castle in the countryside in Europe.  Yeah, sure, you might find something like a photo studio in one, a pizza parlor in another, maybe even a government office, but mostly, the occupants are like pigeons living in the loft of an abandoned mansion -- they're there, but just because it's there and have no real tie to the place.

Interestingly, the piece even talks about post offices closing up.  This is in addition to sheriff's departments who are increasingly unable to provide patrol services to rural areas as their own budgets evaporate.  So, not only are rural areas losing population, they are also losing any kind of political organization.  Roads, also, are going back to gravel and bridges that are in need of maintenance or are damaged are often simply closed until the necessary funding can be found (good luck).  Of course, some roads aren't all that passable to begin with. 
Part of the problem is the loss of jobs in the rural areas.  Farming is increasingly done on a very large scale, requiring lots of energy input and expensive machinery, putting it out of the reach of most people as a practical way of making a living.  A number of the plants which were opened in rural areas (due to low land costs and lower living costs) are closing or relocating because of the economy and rising shipping costs.  Of course, as population shifts, all the service-based businesses close as well, as there's no one left to patronize those businesses.

This seems to be a trend with most empires, at any rate.  Rome, for example, was relatively decentralized for quite a long time, with the bulk of the population being composed of small-scale farmers.  As slavery increased, and landowners grew and consolidated their holdings, the population tended to move to the cities and seek handouts, leaving the rural areas relatively deserted.  In turn, this put considerable pressure on the administration and stability of the Imperial cities, that of trying to make sure the populace was fed and didn't riot or revolt.  While arguably not a factor which directly contributed to the fall of Rome, it isn't hard to imagine that it made the Empire somewhat less flexible and able to respond to other problems.

There are some obvious implications for modern America here.  One is that the loss of smaller-scale farming, distributed populations, and close ties to rural areas, means that agriculture and food distribution is going to wind up being even more "brittle" than it has been in the past, and dependent on effective transportation.  Another is that the population which moves to the cities is probably not any more likely to find work than it would have in the countryside -- the continuing Depression, combined with the fact that many people are going to be competing with an established labor force that already has existing social connections, means that opportunities will be limited, even on a generational basis.  Politicians are going to face the dilemma of trying to fund social programs to appease an increasingly restless urban population and further ruining the budgets, or are going to face a situation like the Paris communues -- modern "ghettos" which erupt in violence from time to time (I'm reminded of "Mega-City One" from Judge Dredd, too).

As it gets harder and harder to maintain a workable economy, too, the cities are obviously going to see a serious degregdation in living standards.  While people have advocated staying in urban areas during periods of collapse, it may get to the point where they are not worth occupying any longer, by any rational measure.  The larger the population, the worse these problems will be. 

On the other hand, this does present some opportunities for people who are interested in transitioning to a post-oil, post-industrial lifestyle.  Entire towns are up for sale now, apparently, and more and more land is going to simply be abandoned and allowed to become overgrown again.  One aspect of the Leibowitz Society's philosophy has been the exploration of forming communities around the preservation of knowledge, similar to Dark Ages monasteries, meaning that these efforts would find plenty of open and unused space.  It is obviously up to the individual to decide what their best course is, but this is still some food for thought.  The key idea to remember is that what a person who has grown up in the information age is looking in terms of dwelling space or lifestyle is going to be vastly different from a person who is contemplating the transition to post-collapse life. 

Tectonics

This summer is shaping up to be one for the history books, and not in a good way.  Another drug-addled musician joined the "27 Club," some headcase with a vaguely racist-nativist agenda kills nearly 100 people in Norway, record heat is cooking crops and tempers in most of the lower 48.  While nothing is on the radar at the moment, I wouldn't be surprised if we wake up one morning and hear about a Category 5 killstorm barreling its way toward the Eastern Seaboard.

However, all of the topical bad news of the day is still overshadowed -- in spite of the media's best efforts -- by the impending economic financial implosion in America and the Hobson's choice it poses for people in political office.  The choices have boiled down to extending the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar slowly sink, or not raising the debt ceiling and seeing the dollar melt down overnight.  This is what the media and politicians are not presenting to people -- that there is no way out with the two "options" being floated right now for people.

The logical choice would be to simply stop spending money that the nation doesn't have.  This is what most people do when they're faced with bills they can't pay.  If they're smart, they don't go get another credit card.  For the American government, it would mean drastically cutting defense and social spending, pushing it down to levels where it would be possible to stop adding to an already massive debt and maybe even start cutting that debt a little, here and there.

There is of course a small problem with this.  Objectively speaking, the United States is an empire, not a nation.  It maintains military bases in many different parts of the world, something that is almost unique at this point in time, and exercises a great deal of influence over many governments through economic incentives.  In addition to maintaining external control, America itself is not really a nation in the sense of a shared culture and values, with the Civil War being an obvious example of this heterogeneity and the problems it can cause.  The "War on Poverty" itself was simply a massive attempt to soothe the pain of and address the injustices directed at the African-American segment of the American population before it tried again to assert itself politically, and so on. 

Ultimately, America cannot disengage from where it already is, without first dealing with the issue that the definition of America itself would change, and this is what the real heart of this political battle is all about.  The right wants to support military spending, the left wants to support social spending, and neither type of spending can be sustained in the long run.  This is the fate of empires...extending themselves to the point where they can't be maintained and destroy themselves in the process of trying to make it just a little longer, like the person who can't stop spending.  For people who have studied ecology, this is referred to as "carrying capacity" -- the population we have now (both literally and in terms of ideas and institutions) has been built around something which could not be sustained.

While people have mentioned that a default might be a good thing, to reign in spending, the issue here is that doing so is going to very quickly expose the fault lines in American public life.  Far too many people have their fortunes and fates tied to the American government, to the dollar, and to the systems that have been created around these two entities.  Could the pieces of lives and institutions be picked back up quickly enough once the dust of the economic chaos settled?  Or would we see a confusion with no clear way forward?  I think it would take only a very short time before people start mentally and emotionally, if not physically, heading for the exits.  It won't be longer after that all the systems which have been put in place and maintained by those same people will cease to exists.

It's never easy to know how to act in times like these, but I think one piece of advice makes sense -- disengage as much as possible.  Look to minding your own life and realize that the thunder you're hearing is the long-forecast storm finally arriving.  Get away from anything which requires a sound dollar and make sure you have plans in place for the day when there is nothing on the store shelves and what you need must be obtained through barter or local labor.  Understand that you are going to do with a much simpler lifestyle if you are not living simply.  If you already are, then be content in knowing that you're likely going to be okay in the long run.  Last, understand that all things come to an end, sooner or later, including nations and empires, and that what is really most important is likely in front of you anyway.

Consumer Confidence Game

Well, so we're in the middle of the vacation season.  As James Kunstler has put it, "The time of the year when we turn Lake George upside down with cigarette boat Cuinsiarts."  Or something like that.  I'll defer to his ability to turn a phrase, but you get the idea.  When the highways are even more choked with people going places they can't afford to go to, so they can start counting down the time until they can go home.

In the daily games of "How do we keep their eye off the ball?" at the alphabet soup networks, the Casey Anthony ordeal has come to a close for the moment, to be replaced by the aftershock of of talking heads all clamoring to make the most outrageous statements about how the process of law should work.  Some people have called for an end to the jury system, and I expect we'll eventually have someone stumble across the Code of Napoleon and decide to apply the bastard child of criminal law in post-Revolution France.  Maybe we'll just skip to the world of Death Race and be done with it (good flick if you enjoyed Running Man...haven't seen the original Death Race, so I can't comment).  

Unemployment is edging back up again, or at least hovering around like a buzzard who wants a snack.  It looks like the steam has run out from the stimulation, the census lift, and the Golden Age of Hiring at the Golden Arches.  Almost ten years of war and a busted economy which is falling off the cliff, slow-motion, like Homer Simpson, are leaving people wondering where we're going next. 

Consumer Confidence, that weathervane of how willing we are to spend money we don't have on crap we don't have, is sinking yet again, two straight months in a row now.  Some people will say that it's a sign we're not recovering, economically, but I think it's a sign that people are coming to their senses and realizing that no promises or debt-based government lottery/stimulus packages are going to make a damn bit of difference in what is a steadily declining nation.

Ultimately, people are going to start seeing they have to learn how to fend for themselves, or at least help each other out.  While I'm pretty jaded a lot of the time about collapse, having maintained this blog for most of a year, having kept something jumped out at me today that made even me sit up.  I was looking through a bookseller's items and noticed the little bar at the bottom which showed what other people were looking at:  Self-Sufficient Life Homesteading, Home Canning, Wilderness Survival Guide Books CD, Survival CD Self-Reliance, Raising Chickens Permaculture...

So much for books about World War Two, the Ford Mustang or vacation homes...

No One Need Apply, Part Two

CNN recently ran an article about the employment situation in Zimbabwe.  Apparently, the position of hangman has been vacant for years, but plenty of people are interested in it, just to guarantee a regular paycheck.  I don't know the social attitude toward capital punishment in Zimbabwe, but it seems clear that the social attitude toward being unemployed shares an awful lot with the United States, as large numbers of people take jobs well below their professional skill level and education just to get by.  One reason for the riots in Tunisia was a large class of former college students that were unable to find any work related to their education.

I've been waiting for some years for the "higher education bubble" to burst in America.  Millions of young adults head off to college, still armed with the out of date mindset of a generation before (get a degree, someone will give you a job), all-too-willing to accept decades of debt slavery based on student loans underwritten with bad government debt.  Four years later, or maybe six or eight, these same young adults find themselves with an inescapable debt (bankruptcy laws don't apply) and fewer and fewer job prospects.  At my local chain bookstore, the staff consists largely of English majors who weren't able to find anything else but a minimum-wage job working a register and finding books on a shelf.  This isn't necessarily confined to degrees which don't directly translate to professional training, either -- plenty of people with accounting degrees, law degrees, etc, are facing increasingly poor employment prospects. 

There's a tendency to play the "blame the victim" game here, that people should've known that things sometimes come with strings attached and that there's no guarantee of success.  However, what prospective students didn't realize -- and what our civilization as a whole is still failing to comprehend -- that the ground has shifted beneath their feet, that the world which they were raised in, and people still believe in, simply doesn't exist anymore.  Lots of things are clear in the rearview, but maybe not so much when they're around the next corner. 

It does beg the question of how things will change socially, as we have an increasingly large educated class with little hope of success or life beyond trying to figure out how to pay their minimum loan payments and not find themselves arrested for not coming up with the cash to Sallie Mae or whoever.  Will we see a generation of "refuseniks" arise, who simply don't pay back their loans and form communities around this common burden?  Or will they form political action groups to try to have mass student loan forgiveness?  In an age when we're willing to bail out banks and given planeloads (literally) of dollars to foreign dicators, the latter idea doesn't seem so outlandish.  Finally, will they be primary contributors to political disruption and mass dissent?

If anything, we can see that when the collapse of our systems is in the offing, then like the chaos of a collapsing universe, all sorts of new patterns emerge and things which were once unthinkable become commonplace.  This was the view when the Soviet Union was headed off the edge of the cliff and it wasn't unheard of for soldiers occupying Eastern Europe to be picking over the refuse in garbage dumps for the essentials of life.  It doesn't take much speculation to see that we're on the same track and that, if anything, we flew a lot higher and have a lot farther to fall before it's all over.

Gold and the Means of Production

I want to shift gears away from current events for a little back and back to thinking about the future.  Where we all are in life right now is, with some exceptions, probably our greatest potential in terms of what we can do with our personal futures, and also true of the future of society as a whole.  The surpluses of wealth are steadily being eaten up, easily accessible resources are basically gone, the population is well above what the pre-industrial carrying capacity of the world is, and so on.  In other words, we're not at the top of the mountain any longer, as we've slipped down it a bit, but we've caught ourselves at least for a little while and have time to think about it before the next shoe drops.

Reactions to this, of course, are mixed.  Some people choose to basically deny the reality of the situation and continue living as they always have, by spending small fortunes on trivial things and not worrying about their future.  Others take a more long-term view and invest in gold or other things which have traditionally had intrinsic value to them.  Still others prepare by buying things which they think they'll need to survive in a post-collapse world (guns and ammo, preserved food, medical supplies, etc). 

Obviously, spending like there will never be a collapse is probably not a wise decision.  However, I think there are some assumptions in the other two strategies which need to be questioned.  While gold and silver have historically been valuable, until recent years, they have not had any real utility for industrial purposes.  Sure, people could make jewelry from them, but there was always a lingering expectation that said jewelry could be turned back into a means of exchange at some point (supposedly, sailors wore gold earrings for this reason -- something that could not easily be lost if they were washed overboard or shipwrecked).  However, if you're starving and have a bag of gold, but nowhere to spend it for food, then it's worthless.  On the other hand, supplies can be used up or lose their functionality over a period of time.  Ammunition has a shelf life of somewhere between 20 to 40 years, producing ammunition for modern firearms will be difficult in the future, medicines also expire, the food will be eaten sooner or later, etc.

What is lacking here is any sense of having a means of building wealth post-collapse.  A lot of the time, I see people writing about the subject of post-crash life who assume that we're all be living as simple farmers or we'll be rapidly rebuilding as soon as the last of the lights go out.  Both cases seem to be an extreme which isn't practical -- if we just suffered a collapse (in other words, the system that sustain our society have completely failed), then what is going to be left to rebuild with?  Likewise, the assumption that specialist occupations won't quickly re-emerge in a purely agricultural society is also questionable. 

So, I'm still puzzled that people don't put more time/thought into post-collapse professions and businesses and preparing to do something besides simply try to get by.  Consider a person who has some home brewing or wine making skills.  While people often do this as a hobby, and may envision making a little wine after a collapse for trade, why do they not think of scaling it up to be a larger enterprise, maybe employing several people?  The knowledge is already there, but the idea may occur to them too late and they may not have the equipment to do much beyond small batches of production.  However, buying the equipment to make more wine would not be expensive at the current time -- a garage or storage barn full of carboys, airlocks, corks and discarded bottles would be enough to sustain a relatively large-scale operation for some time, taking fruit in trade and trading wine in turn.  Other people that have other hobbies or skills may think about expanding them to be larger-scale operations.  Printing, papermaking, candlemaking, distilling, smithing, weaving, etc, all come to mind.

Ultimately, having some means of production may allow a community to be built around the industry, much like most villages in the middle ages had at least one "cottage indsutry" to produce wealth for storage, improvements or trade.  Likewise for monasteries that relied on production of everything from cheese to wood products to sustain themselves.  People might say "Well, why can't we just use what's out there now for this?"  The issue is that modern production is very process-oriented and relies on decentralized production of materials and processing on a scale too large to be practical for most people.  What do you do with a brewing plant when the electricity doesn't come on any longer?

While I realize that the subject of wealth building is probably a strange one to tackle, when discussing economic collapse, and may be distasteful to some, I think it would be a good idea to define it in broader terms, too.  Adam Smith postulated that when one person can benefit from the fruits of their labors, it's likely that all will benefit as well.  Consider a person who builds a mill in a village that didn't have one.  Yes, they might charge a nominal fee for processing the grain into flour, but people will be able to more effectively use their grain harvest at that point.  Or, another person might build a brewery to let people turn grain into alcohol for long-term storage.  Over time, this will tend to build stronger communities with deeper resources which are more able to weather various problems as they arise.

Lastly, I would point out that one part of the philosophy of the Leibowitz Society is the creation and maintenance of strong communities to serve as centers of information storage and dissemination.  This means that the idea of creating centers of production to help sustain that community makes perfect sense, as well as how it would benefit the individual who maintained that means of production.

Meltdowns and Buffers

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan is shaping up to be one of those events that no one knows the true extent of until it's well in the rear view mirror.  Going from a death toll of a hundred or so, into the tens of thousands now, with no one really sure of what the real toll is, confusion over the actual state of nuclear plants in Japan, if they've melted down or not, store shelves emptying, etc. 

The Middle East is still in turmoil, although the disaster in Japan and short attention spans have pushed it off the front pages for the moment.  However, tensions are still high in many places there and it doesn't seem like it would take much for things to get out of hand quickly again, especially now that the reformers in Egypt are not satisfied with the choices they're being given and want to move to a more civilianized government.  The lid is still on Saudi unrest, but once people have the idea of self-determination in their minds, it's hard to get rid of.
In the United States (and in Europe), there is the question of where the economy is going.  In spite of some items of good news.  Rising oil prices have a good chance of crippling whatever recovery is currently going on and leaving a large portion of the American population ever less certain of their future.

 In chemistry, a "buffer" is any substance which tries to keep a system at a certain state, such as a pH buffer which will prevent acidity in a solution from rising or falling below a certain value.  However, at some point, the buffer can't adjust for what's being put into the solution and the nature of the solution will dramatically change almost immediately (going from neutral to very acidic, for example). With nuclear reactors, the various control mechanisms which keep the reaction from running out of control serve the same function.

What we seem to be seeing now is a test of our modern industrial civilization's ability to "buffer" events.  We have various reserves and institutions which are designed to provide precisely this function, but they can only work so long and go so far.  Japanese society, for example, was able to cope with an economic crisis in the early 90s, but can it deal with the physical, economic and social damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami?  The Middle East has long been kept in a statis by Cold War legacy politics and a conservative religion and mindset, yet those controls are no longer able to keep events in check -- which way will things go once that buffer is gone?  And, in America, we've been able to deal with the economic events so far, including spikes in oil prices, but at what point are we going to see the systems we've built to handle these shocks give way?  Already, some politicians are calling for the strategic oil reserve (a fool's errand) to help control oil prices.  What's going to be next on the horizon as we sink into the next dip of the recession?

Ultimately, what this points to, from a perspective of collapse, is that we really have no way of knowing how long what we've built can hold out against unforeseen events.  We can maintain things for so long, but like the buoyancy of a boat that is suddenly overwhelmed  from flooding, we're not going to know it until it's too late, even though we've seen it coming from a long way off.  We need to make sure we're prepared and able to cope with events as they occur, and when they overwhelm our civilization's ability to deal with them effectively.

Returns

As the readers of this blog know, I've been away for a while, but now I'm back.  Thank you for the inquiries and compliments that many of you've sent in my absence and I feel both bad for making you send them and glad that you did.

Over the years that I've studied how civilizations collapse (and personal survival long before that), I've run into a lot of people who have inexplicable faith in the future.  They look at the past, see that there have been many problems which have come up, then looked at the solutions to those problems, then look at the future, assuming that the past is our guide.  In truth, we are entering new territory -- the point in time where we have absolutely no model for a mismanaged and overextended civilization, outside of how Rome fell.  People cannot contemplate the end of things, either of their own lives, or the "world" which has been built for them and which they in turn have built on. 

When we have the "balls" to point out to them that "Hey, your false idols are going to topple sooner or later, probably sooner," they have mixed reactions, from looking at us like we're a little nuts, to downright hostility to question the worldview which they have put so much faith into.  And, in truth, there are a few maladjusted "doom junkies" who, for deep psychological reasons, would love to see billions die off and humanity collapse back into the paleolithic for a long downhill slide.  But, for the rest of us, we live in the same space that enthusiastic optimists do...we go to the same places, have the same kinds of friends, like the same kind of food.  The only real difference is that we have taken a look at the future, with an unbiased eye, and know there's no way to escape the coming storm.  We're not happy about the way things are turning out, how the optimism of the 1950s has turned into the denial of 2011. 

This is not an easy thing to deal with.  Sometimes, we just have to take a breath, go smell the roses for a while, waste time in a hobby or other form of distraction.  We look at the abyss, but the abyss definitely looks back at us.  All the time.  For those of us who write publicly about these topics, who spent hours thinking about the collapse of modern civilization, poring over every last scrap of relevant information and item of bad news, it's even more painful to keep going and writing on the subject.  The truth is, when people call us"doom and gloom" for speaking the truth, we all too well know what a price there is to pay for going down this road of inquiry in the first place.  It gets hard to enjoy modern life, when you know it's getting late in the day and there's a cold, hard rain coming.  Not just modern life, with the bells and whistles, but everything.  Sometimes, we have to walk away for a little while, but we come back stronger than before, with more resolve, because we know that we can at least reach a few people who will take this to heart.

Not that I've ever cared much critics, and not that I would ever quit writing because someone got mad because I suggested that all they take for granted today will likely be gone in a few years -- to quote Austin Collins -- "It's easier to offend you than to hold my breath for days."  Instead, if I ever quit again, it's because I need to take a break and rediscover why I'm here and why I do what I do.  In the meantime, there's plenty of material to write about, including the battle over unions and what it really means in America, to the collapse of regimes in the middle east (bonus points to anyone who thinks that civil war in oil-producing regions is going to hose our economy once more), to personal preparedness.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for being real out there, not people lying to yourselves.

No One Need Apply

Last week's jobs report confirmed what a lot of people have felt on a gut level, that the various programs and packages which were designed to boost the economy and cut unemployment really aren't working as intended.  The unemployment rate is still very high and there is mention of "structural unemployment," even though this is disputed in the political circles.  Again, one's gut is the guide here -- if the economy has changed in such a way that the current level of unemployment is due to profound changes in the economy, then it's likely that we're seeing the birth of a new social class of permanently unemployed people.  The problem is not simply one of making a few tweaks to tax rates or changing trade policy, but instead a widespread lack of recognition that the economy itself is in such rough waters by now that anyone who falls over the side of the boat is likely lost. 

What is also unwritten is, if the current unemployment crisis is due to a mismatch of jobs and worker skills, do we reach a case where, no matter how good or diverse our skills are, that the jobs simply do not exist any longer?  In other words, if no jobs exist any longer, then everyone is going to be suffering from structural unemployment.  Part of the reason for this is the lack of hiring due to a lack of consumer spending, according to the official line.  Again, a little insight would probably suggest that this is likely to be a cascading cycle, where part of the consumer base reducing spending due to the inability to do anything more than survive leads to more unemployment and less spending by others as well. 

From the perspective of witnessing the arrival of the new Dark Age, this is just one more piece of evidence in the case for collapse.  High unemployment was a serious problem in ancient Rome, where slave labor displaced paid labor, and much time and energy was spent trying to deal with the social problems caused by the large class of the unemployed.  Likewise, as unemployment reaches historically high levels, the resources of the modern governments are going to be stretched even more in an attempt to try to deal with what is going to ultimately be an unsolvable problem -- having too many people and too little work for them.  This leaves national leaders with two unpalatable choices, either going broke in an attempt to provide a social safety net for steadily increasing numbers of unemployed, or face serious social instability as people no longer have even the barest guarantee of any kind of sustenance.

On a personal level, it's truly difficult to talk to a person who has been unemployed for an extended period of time, much like talking to a person who has a terminal disease.  You want to give them some sort of encouragement, a sign of hope, but the simple fact is, there are not many prospects for improving one's employment situation these days.  Even people who have jobs are simply trying to hold onto them and not find themselves out the door as their company downsizes yet again.

Given that the economy is probably not going to fundamentally improve, it's critical that we have some idea of how to deal with the situation on a personal or private basis, as part of our overall efforts to preserve and protect knowledge.  After all, if we're trying to fill our stomachs, then anything else takes a back seat.  I've written a bit (Living Arrangements) about what I think are three likely scenarios for some trends that are will occur due to changing social patterns, part of which will be caused by high unemployment.  However, to avoid being in this position, or suffering unduly from it, we need to plan ahead.

First, it's important that we do not look to our current employer, or even field of work, as being what we are going to be able to count on in the future.  There is simply too much uncertainty by this point to put all our eggs in one basket, be it an individual employer or one skill.  If we lose a paycheck, what then?  Do we have a plan in place or are we going to take unemployment and hope that the government checks don't bounce at some point down the road?

Second, we need to take a serious look at our own lives and determine if there are things we are doing which are wastefully expending resources that we could save for a future crisis.  I'm a big fan of recreation which is free, or costs next to nothing to do, for this reason, and shake my head when people engage in ultra-expensive hobbies such as automotive restoration.  Often, we can combine recreation with something which is also a way of creating a new source of income in a post-collapse world, such as brewing, sewing, building repair, intensive gardening, etc.

Third, we need to plan out a second skill or way of providing at least some income, especially in a society where the dollar (or euro) has ceased to exist.  What skills and goods can be traded without needing to go through some sort of financial system?  It may not provide a great living, but might be enough to either provide some food or fuel, or get a position working for someone who still has some resources.  It goes without saying that people should not necessarily be studying something which requires high technology to work, or a working power grid, or functional economy, etc. 

While we are entering a very rough period of human history, we at least have one thing going for us -- we understand what we are facing and can start readying ourselves for making the inevitable adjustments.  For people who still believe that currencies don't collapse, that empires don't end, the transition to a post-collapse economy will be even more vicious that it has been for those who are already in the limbo of unemployment.  We need to strive to make sure that we are able to provide for ourselves and those around us as we seek to preserve, protect and distribute knowledge.