Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Posted by Dave Ewoldt on April 6th, 2008 at 2:12 pm | 14 Replies

One thing about taking a deep and reflective look at the natural systems processes that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient is that it gives one an entirely different perspective on how any living organism -- in particular humans -- could be doing things differently. While some people like to insist that humans aren't ruled by the laws of nature, and continue to believe that humans can actually control nature, they generally tend to confuse making an absolute mess of things with controlling things.

This is the situation we find ourselves in today -- a major mess due to our disconnection with the natural world. This is not mere philosophical musing, but based on real world experience from my ecotherapy practice and work with local governments and businesses.

Humans are amazingly resilient and resourceful. Positing that we could "readily and elegantly" transition to a better way of relating to and being in the world is hardly a fantasy, as change to better support life is the one thing the universe does best. Neither do I find it naive nor hopelessly optimistic, because it is based on empirical evidence from a number of different fields. It also draws from indigenous wisdom thousands of years old.

I'll briefly list just a few of the scientific ones I use in my research and work:

* Neuroanatomist Marian Diamond's pioneering work at UC Berkeley on enriched vs. impoverished environments that showed significant (measurable) neuronal growth in as little as 45 minutes by going from an impoverished to an enriched environment. Today, we live in an impoverished environment in more ways than one. It takes slightly more than flashing web ads and game boxes to enrich a cultural environment built on isolation and Madison Avenue shallowness, as well as myriad losses of natural fulfillment from a degraded natural environment.

* Paulo Freire's literacy work with indigenous people in South American. People that the Western mind would assert were incapable of literacy could become literate in as little as three weeks with only two conditions being met: 1) teach them who, and/or what, was oppressing them, and 2) teach them what they could do about it.

* The study from the early 1960s by Breland and Breland that explained the spectacular failures of operant conditioning in radical behaviorism. All species quickly revert to more natural behaviors as soon as the artificial stimulus is removed, or as the subjects are moved closer to their natural environment. That is, operant conditioning is really only effective for any length of time in an artificial, sterile environment that can be constantly controlled. This leads directly to...

* Affluenza. American economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in the late 1950s that people don't actually desire more stuff once basic needs have been fulfilled. Maintaining consumer culture requires massive energy and a 24x7 effort to manipulate people into doing things they wouldn't do of their own free will.

* The concept from wilderness therapy that culture is only three days deep. It takes an average of three days for people to leave the stress, depression, and worries of their daily, industrial lives behind when they go on three week wilderness excursions. The reverse is also true. It takes three days to get back to those same pathological levels when they return to the artificial world of Western civilization.

* America is ranked 149 out of 150 countries on the happiness scale; 50% of Americans take at least one prescription drug daily, with 20% relying on 3 or more; the average American's body burden is over 90 toxic chemicals and industrial pollutants. The guiding principle of American psychiatry is to make people feel sane about living in an insane world.

However, as J. Krishnamurti said, "It is not a sign of good health to be well-adjusted to a sick society." The majority of people today would love to do something differently -- to get out of the rat race. Numerous studies over the past 60 or so years have shown that the things people actually want are inherently sustainable: to have more time with family and friends, pursue education, spend more time in nature, develop personal pursuits... to have more quality leisure time in general. However, since none of these enrich the captains of industry, instead of more quality leisure time, Americans spend about one billion working hours per year in order to buy more leisure wear.

It is hardly "nostalgic nonsense" to point out that some Indian tribes planned for the seventh generation. To simply dismiss out of hand this fact because some of them overhunted, ignores that one of the better known instances of this -- the hunting to extinction of the North American elephant by the West Coast tribes -- was followed by the realization that they screwed up and so they changed their pattern of living with the land so it didn't happen again. Western civilization has yet to achieve this level of cultural advancement and maturity. Just because we have iPods and bunker-busters doesn't mean our technological prowess makes us better.

To buy into the intellectual paucity of revisionism such as Steven Pinker's is to believe a story that rationalizes the worst of human nature to help sell the myth that what we have now is the best that could ever be. If you're going to use the appeal to authority, at least be honest about that authority's standing in the cult of the technofetishist along with its other reductionist luminaries like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. This is like quoting Fred Singer on global warming.

Does it really make any sense to throw out everything another culture did simply because they did one thing wrong? We're supposed to be an intelligent species with the ability to learn from our mistakes, even if we seem to rarely demonstrate this ability, or if pop culture refuses to acknowledge it. Can't we take a good aspect of one culture, combine it with the good aspects of other cultures, and create something even better with the advancements in knowledge we possess?

One of the chief arguments for maintaining the status quo is that it is human nature to be domineering, aggressive, and competitive and we can't act differently. However, other cultures put the lie to this assertion. It is every bit as much a part of human nature to be nurturing, compassionate, and cooperative. In fact, the aspects of human nature that we choose to nurture are the ones that grow and flourish. Change begins with making new or different choices. Pointing out that there are examples from our past of people making conscious decisions to live more in harmony with the natural world and attempt to provide for their offspring's future is hardly a call to return to the cave, start carrying water, chopping wood, and dancing naked around the campfire with feathers stuck in our butts -- regardless of the fact that many people derive great satisfaction from doing so. This is merely an example of natural diversity at work, a diversity from which we derive our greatest strength.

I really have a hard time seeing the above leap in logic as anything more than either intellectual dishonesty or immaturity. I don't want this to seem either gruff or demeaning, and please try not to take it that way. What I do think we all should spend more time doing, though, is to deeply and honestly examine our assumptions and seek to determine from whence they have arisen. Who profits? Whose sacred cow remains ungored?

This even entails the terms we choose to use to describe our situation. If we talk about the "collapse" of Western civilization, then that's what we'll suffer through. There is no doubt that Western civilization is unsustainable, and if left to its own devices will bring life as we know it on Earth to an end. This is the fate of all force-based dominator control hierarchies. (Some people like to differentiate with hierarchies of actualization, but all hierarchies are at odds with natural systems. There are better ways to describe the relationships in chaotic systems of increasing orders of complexity than by using terms derived from mechanistic linearity.) If we talk about creating something new instead of reacting to collapse, we shift the energetic focus of our actions and responses.

The collapse scenario does directly assume a Mad Max transition. This is because it believes we're willfully addicted to consumerism because we actually enjoy it, not that it's being forced on us, and that we would react negatively to being offered the opportunity to participate in gaining what we really do want. As I pointed out above, severe deprivation of many human needs and desires is what we have now. Not allowing ourselves to think about this is part of the consensus trance, and I don't think the red pill needs to be as strong as many people think it does. This became even clearer to me when I was running for public office. People across the political spectrum are willing to engage in this conversation, they just aren't aware of an alternative to the status quo. However, they can quickly connect the dots as soon as they are pointed out to them.

Now, with all this said it would be the height of foolishness to ignore the fact that we must protect ourselves from those few true sociopaths; that we're surrounded by a culture that has been raised to not believe in themselves while simultaneously worshipping individualism; and that thinks it is perfectly ethical to screw the other guy before he screws you. But this is simply not normal, healthy human nature. It is a response to unmet needs. I mean, we do live in a society in which the Darwin Awards have been created to celebrate the three most common last words of the Southern Redneck: "Hey! Watch this!" But all this really does is point to the failure of both American education and Western culture, not to an innate deficit in human nature.

We could, of course, choose to let ourselves be overcome by despair, believe in the worst of human nature and that there's nothing we can do about it on our own. This is, after all, the actual foundation of Western religion. Or, we could look at the creative, cooperative direction of life, and rationally, sensuously, and spiritually decide to work with it for the benefit of the web of life.

But you're not going to be doing anyone any favors whatsoever by telling them they're muddle headed at best to believe we could consciously make different choices, or that they should ignore the fact that the power of the current dominator paradigm comes from nothing more than a story which we grant legitimacy. For example, the reason feminism became widely accepted was not because it was a reaction against patriarchy (damaging as this mindset is), but because it pointed out how much we were missing by ignoring and denigrating the contribution of over half the population.

A lifeboat is what takes you away from imminent disaster. Relocalization is a lifeboat that takes us to an alternative in creating a partnership society that adheres to the natural systems principles that allow us to maximize the potential of who we really are. It is not wasting our energy on fighting the old, but offering it hospice as we create the new -- a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice. A steady-state economy is but one aspect of this that consciously adheres to the population and natural resource limits of ecological carrying capacity.

A scientifically validated process for starting us on this journey is consciously and sensuously reconnecting all of our senses to their roots in the natural world. This is a remembering that when we're in holistic integration with the natural world -- which necessarily includes each other -- nature provides an abundance to meet natural expectations of fulfillment, as well as the models and metaphors necessary to create a sustainable future.

The best way to transition through times of chaos is to try to ensure that doesn't become our reality in the first place. Part of this is to help return meaning and purpose to people's lives, which relocalization's alternative to corporate globalization does.

"You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -Bucky Fuller

Yes, we humans have become highly conditioned and habituated to our current deprived state of being. But, as the current structure fails to maintain its functions and more and more of us begin to realize that the next "fix" is never going to come -- when we can no longer ignore the widening cracks in the foundation of our culture, nor the unraveling of the strands in the web of life -- the first instinct will be to look for an alternative, not who we can beat to a bloody pulp to steal their PopTarts.

The purpose of beginning the relocalization process NOW is to fulfill the promise of Buckminster Fuller's quote. People will be drawn to what is working, a way to both survive and thrive without The Beast that turned us into consumerist slaves.

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Holistek
April 7th, 2008

Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave,

Firstly, thank you for your comprehensive response to my email.

We could engage in a dialogue about our different perspectives on these important issues, and a part of me is indeed attracted to that. However, I think that it would probably be futile, in terms of the possibility of either of us changing the other's mind.

Which opens up a different approach. I invite you to consider me as a case in point in connection to your thesis that people can change through rational, conscious choices. I certainly consider myself someone who is open to rational argument. I have been known to celebrate joyously when someone proves me wrong, for I have discovered an error in my thinking, and that is indeed a cause for celebration.

But whichever of us holds the right of this matter on which we differ (and I assume we agree that we cannot both be right), the fact is that I consider you seriously mistaken, and you no doubt see me in the same way. My question to you then is this: what can you actually do to change my mind? You can lay out the facts and evidence that serve to convince you, as you do below. But that doesn't work at all, for those arguments don't hold water for me, as mine didn't for you. I see your words shot through with internal contradictions and rationalizations, selection of evidence and avoidance of contrary evidence, faulty inference and deduction, etc. - or at least I think that I see those things. And from your response to me, I infer that you believe that you see similar inconsistencies in my own arguments.

So we return to my position that even in this relatively minor issue that carries no vital consequence, that doesn't threaten to greatly change our lives, we are unable, I suggest, to convince each other. At least one of us (perhaps both) is strongly attached to an irrational belief system.

Which is how we might describe those people who are caught up in the current Western mindset that is unsustainably destroying the environment, consuming our precious primary resources, risking climate change, etc. If you cannot change my mind, why would you expect anyone to be able to change the minds of those others?

As I see it, most people (there are rare exceptions) consider changing their basic worldview only when their current worldview proves unviable. And that can't usually be done by argument, only by their personal situation deteriorating so seriously that they question their basic premises. That is why I say that it is only after something as serious as a collapse that most people will consider changing their beliefs. Anything smaller, especially the campaigns of people like Suzuki, Gore, and you and me, simply won't produce the fundamental change that is needed.

So here is my challenge to you, David. Change my mind on this question, since you (perhaps rightly) believe me to be attached to a mistaken belief system, and you believe that people are open to conscious, rational re-education. And if you can't do it for me, on what do you base your belief that anyone can do it for the majority of our citizens, in advance of a societal collapse?

David

----- Original Message -----

From: Dave Ewoldt

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 5:14 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

One thing about taking a deep and reflective look at the natural systems processes that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient is that it gives one an entirely different perspective on how any living organism -- in particular humans -- could be doing things differently. While some people like to insist that humans aren't ruled by the laws of nature, and continue to believe that humans can actually control nature, they generally tend to confuse making an absolute mess of things with controlling things.

This is the situation we find ourselves in today -- a major mess due to our disconnection with the natural world. This is not mere philosophical musing, but based on real world experience from my ecotherapy practice and work with local governments and businesses.

Humans are amazingly resilient and resourceful. Positing that we could "readily and elegantly" transition to a better way of relating to and being in the world is hardly a fantasy, as change to better support life is the one thing the universe does best. Neither do I find it naive nor hopelessly optimistic, because it is based on empirical evidence from a number of different fields. It also draws from indigenous wisdom thousands of years old.

I'll briefly list just a few of the scientific ones I use in my research and work:

* Neuroanatomist Marian Diamond's pioneering work at UC Berkeley on enriched vs. impoverished environments that showed significant (measurable) neuronal growth in as little as 45 minutes by going from an impoverished to an enriched environment. Today, we live in an impoverished environment in more ways than one. It takes slightly more than flashing web ads and game boxes to enrich a cultural environment built on isolation and Madison Avenue shallowness, as well as myriad losses of natural fulfillment from a degraded natural environment.

* Paulo Freire's literacy work with indigenous people in South American. People that the Western mind would assert were incapable of literacy could become literate in as little as three weeks with only two conditions being met: 1) teach them who, and/or what, was oppressing them, and 2) teach them what they could do about it.

* The study from the early 1960s by Breland and Breland that explained the spectacular failures of operant conditioning in radical behaviorism. All species quickly revert to more natural behaviors as soon as the artificial stimulus is removed, or as the subjects are moved closer to their natural environment. That is, operant conditioning is really only effective for any length of time in an artificial, sterile environment that can be constantly controlled. This leads directly to...

* Affluenza. American economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in the late 1950s that people don't actually desire more stuff once basic needs have been fulfilled. Maintaining consumer culture requires massive energy and a 24x7 effort to manipulate people into doing things they wouldn't do of their own free will.

* The concept from wilderness therapy that culture is only three days deep. It takes an average of three days for people to leave the stress, depression, and worries of their daily, industrial lives behind when they go on three week wilderness excursions. The reverse is also true. It takes three days to get back to those same pathological levels when they return to the artificial world of Western civilization.

* America is ranked 149 out of 150 countries on the happiness scale; 50% of Americans take at least one prescription drug daily, with 20% relying on 3 or more; the average American's body burden is over 90 toxic chemicals and industrial pollutants. The guiding principle of American psychiatry is to make people feel sane about living in an insane world.

However, as J. Krishnamurti said, "It is not a sign of good health to be well-adjusted to a sick society." The majority of people today would love to do something differently -- to get out of the rat race. Numerous studies over the past 60 or so years have shown that the things people actually want are inherently sustainable: to have more time with family and friends, pursue education, spend more time in nature, develop personal pursuits... to have more quality leisure time in general. However, since none of these enrich the captains of industry, instead of more quality leisure time, Americans spend about one billion working hours per year in order to buy more leisure wear.

It is hardly "nostalgic nonsense" to point out that some Indian tribes planned for the seventh generation. To simply dismiss out of hand this fact because some of them overhunted, ignores that one of the better known instances of this -- the hunting to extinction of the North American elephant by the West Coast tribes -- was followed by the realization that they screwed up and so they changed their pattern of living with the land so it didn't happen again. Western civilization has yet to achieve this level of cultural advancement and maturity. Just because we have iPods and bunker-busters doesn't mean our technological prowess makes us better.

To buy into the intellectual paucity of revisionism such as Steven Pinker's is to believe a story that rationalizes the worst of human nature to help sell the myth that what we have now is the best that could ever be. If you're going to use the appeal to authority, at least be honest about that authority's standing in the cult of the technofetishist along with its other reductionist luminaries like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. This is like quoting Fred Singer on global warming.

Does it really make any sense to throw out everything another culture did simply because they did one thing wrong? We're supposed to be an intelligent species with the ability to learn from our mistakes, even if we seem to rarely demonstrate this ability, or if pop culture refuses to acknowledge it. Can't we take a good aspect of one culture, combine it with the good aspects of other cultures, and create something even better with the advancements in knowledge we possess?

One of the chief arguments for maintaining the status quo is that it is human nature to be domineering, aggressive, and competitive and we can't act differently. However, other cultures put the lie to this assertion. It is every bit as much a part of human nature to be nurturing, compassionate, and cooperative. In fact, the aspects of human nature that we choose to nurture are the ones that grow and flourish. Change begins with making new or different choices. Pointing out that there are examples from our past of people making conscious decisions to live more in harmony with the natural world and attempt to provide for their offspring's future is hardly a call to return to the cave, start carrying water, chopping wood, and dancing naked around the campfire with feathers stuck in our butts -- regardless of the fact that many people derive great satisfaction from doing so. This is merely an example of natural diversity at work, a diversity from which we derive our greatest strength.

I really have a hard time seeing the above leap in logic as anything more than either intellectual dishonesty or immaturity. I don't want this to seem either gruff or demeaning, and please try not to take it that way. What I do think we all should spend more time doing, though, is to deeply and honestly examine our assumptions and seek to determine from whence they have arisen. Who profits? Whose sacred cow remains ungored?

This even entails the terms we choose to use to describe our situation. If we talk about the "collapse" of Western civilization, then that's what we'll suffer through. There is no doubt that Western civilization is unsustainable, and if left to its own devices will bring life as we know it on Earth to an end. This is the fate of all force-based dominator control hierarchies. (Some people like to differentiate with hierarchies of actualization, but all hierarchies are at odds with natural systems. There are better ways to describe the relationships in chaotic systems of increasing orders of complexity than by using terms derived from mechanistic linearity.) If we talk about creating something new instead of reacting to collapse, we shift the energetic focus of our actions and responses.

The collapse scenario does directly assume a Mad Max transition. This is because it believes we're willfully addicted to consumerism because we actually enjoy it, not that it's being forced on us, and that we would react negatively to being offered the opportunity to participate in gaining what we really do want. As I pointed out above, severe deprivation of many human needs and desires is what we have now. Not allowing ourselves to think about this is part of the consensus trance, and I don't think the red pill needs to be as strong as many people think it does. This became even clearer to me when I was running for public office. People across the political spectrum are willing to engage in this conversation, they just aren't aware of an alternative to the status quo. However, they can quickly connect the dots as soon as they are pointed out to them.

Now, with all this said it would be the height of foolishness to ignore the fact that we must protect ourselves from those few true sociopaths; that we're surrounded by a culture that has been raised to not believe in themselves while simultaneously worshipping individualism; and that thinks it is perfectly ethical to screw the other guy before he screws you. But this is simply not normal, healthy human nature. It is a response to unmet needs. I mean, we do live in a society in which the Darwin Awards have been created to celebrate the three most common last words of the Southern Redneck: "Hey! Watch this!" But all this really does is point to the failure of both American education and Western culture, not to an innate deficit in human nature.

We could, of course, choose to let ourselves be overcome by despair, believe in the worst of human nature and that there's nothing we can do about it on our own. This is, after all, the actual foundation of Western religion. Or, we could look at the creative, cooperative direction of life, and rationally, sensuously, and spiritually decide to work with it for the benefit of the web of life.

But you're not going to be doing anyone any favors whatsoever by telling them they're muddle headed at best to believe we could consciously make different choices, or that they should ignore the fact that the power of the current dominator paradigm comes from nothing more than a story which we grant legitimacy. For example, the reason feminism became widely accepted was not because it was a reaction against patriarchy (damaging as this mindset is), but because it pointed out how much we were missing by ignoring and denigrating the contribution of over half the population.

A lifeboat is what takes you away from imminent disaster. Relocalization is a lifeboat that takes us to an alternative in creating a partnership society that adheres to the natural systems principles that allow us to maximize the potential of who we really are. It is not wasting our energy on fighting the old, but offering it hospice as we create the new -- a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice. A steady-state economy is but one aspect of this that consciously adheres to the population and natural resource limits of ecological carrying capacity.

A scientifically validated process for starting us on this journey is consciously and sensuously reconnecting all of our senses to their roots in the natural world. This is a remembering that when we're in holistic integration with the natural world -- which necessarily includes each other -- nature provides an abundance to meet natural expectations of fulfillment, as well as the models and metaphors necessary to create a sustainable future.

The best way to transition through times of chaos is to try to ensure that doesn't become our reality in the first place. Part of this is to help return meaning and purpose to people's lives, which relocalization's alternative to corporate globalization does.

"You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -Bucky Fuller

Yes, we humans have become highly conditioned and habituated to our current deprived state of being. But, as the current structure fails to maintain its functions and more and more of us begin to realize that the next "fix" is never going to come -- when we can no longer ignore the widening cracks in the foundation of our culture, nor the unraveling of the strands in the web of life -- the first instinct will be to look for an alternative, not who we can beat to a bloody pulp to steal their PopTarts.

The purpose of beginning the relocalization process NOW is to fulfill the promise of Buckminster Fuller's quote. People will be drawn to what is working, a way to both survive and thrive without The Beast that turned us into consumerist slaves.

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Sarah Edwards
April 7th, 2008

Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave and David, I don't want to intrude or interrupt your dialogue. I find it interesting to gain differing perspectives.

What I would like to contribute to the discussion is a reference back to Heinberg's points by antrobologist Marvin Harris.

Harris postulates that it is the means of energy production that's the infrastructure of a society and what drives the formation of the culture that develops around it. So the current social values and behavior we see now and project into the future arises from our fossil fuel/machine/nature-disconnected infrastructure.

Another means of energy production would of necessity produce a different set of social values and behavior. My question is, can the cart pull the horse? Does necessity have to force a new infrastucture that will lead to a new culture and concurrent way of interacting with one another and the natural environment? Or, can we institute a new way of interacting within the context of the old/existing infrastructure? Dave, you often seem to see things as they could be, which is enlightening and mind-expanding. But David, you are presenting ramifications of our current reality. Your raising very real issure of how do we get from here to there? It's like needing a boat to get to an island where all the boats are kept.

I think this dilemma is one of the shortcoming of Knustler's new novel World Made by Hand. He doesn't invision the inevitiable sea change that must/will occur at all levels of society. He sort of takes a bit of this and a bit of that and cobles it together in a possible outcome. Granted it's fiction and undoubtedly designed not to predict or advocate but to make people think and consider.

Personally I believe the quandary many of us find our selves in is that we just don't know what the post-collapse infrastructure will be. That relates to an earlier post of yours Dave on another board regarding the economy. Our current economy is based on fossil/fuel machine-drive/ energy and consumption, which is "unnatural" at its core. It's not sustainable, so it will crumble sometime and something else will emerge. In the meantime, though, millions of people have to support themselves within it this system while trying to protect themselves from it's collapse.

Sarah

______________

Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"I don't worry about tomorrow; find out about a mile on down the road."
See the Light. Bo Bice,
_____________
Subscribe to our free newsletter - Natural Wisdom
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----- Original Message -----

From: Holistek

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:01 AM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave,

Firstly, thank you for your comprehensive response to my email.

David

----- Original Message -----

From: Dave Ewoldt

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 5:14 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

One thing about taking a deep and reflective look at the natural systems processes that keep an ecosystem healthy, vibrant, and resilient is that it gives one an entirely different perspective on how any living organism -- in particular humans -- could be doing things differently. While some people like to insist that humans aren't ruled by the laws of nature, and continue to believe that humans can actually control nature, they generally tend to confuse making an absolute mess of things with controlling things.

This is the situation we find ourselves in today -- a major mess due to our disconnection with the natural world. This is not mere philosophical musing, but based on real world experience from my ecotherapy practice and work with local governments and businesses.

Humans are amazingly resilient and resourceful. Positing that we could "readily and elegantly" transition to a better way of relating to and being in the world is hardly a fantasy, as change to better support life is the one thing the universe does best. Neither do I find it naive nor hopelessly optimistic, because it is based on empirical evidence from a number of different fields. It also draws from indigenous wisdom thousands of years old.

I'll briefly list just a few of the scientific ones I use in my research and work:

* Neuroanatomist Marian Diamond's pioneering work at UC Berkeley on enriched vs. impoverished environments that showed significant (measurable) neuronal growth in as little as 45 minutes by going from an impoverished to an enriched environment. Today, we live in an impoverished environment in more ways than one. It takes slightly more than flashing web ads and game boxes to enrich a cultural environment built on isolation and Madison Avenue shallowness, as well as myriad losses of natural fulfillment from a degraded natural environment.

* Paulo Freire's literacy work with indigenous people in South American. People that the Western mind would assert were incapable of literacy could become literate in as little as three weeks with only two conditions being met: 1) teach them who, and/or what, was oppressing them, and 2) teach them what they could do about it.

* The study from the early 1960s by Breland and Breland that explained the spectacular failures of operant conditioning in radical behaviorism. All species quickly revert to more natural behaviors as soon as the artificial stimulus is removed, or as the subjects are moved closer to their natural environment. That is, operant conditioning is really only effective for any length of time in an artificial, sterile environment that can be constantly controlled. This leads directly to...

* Affluenza. American economist John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out in the late 1950s that people don't actually desire more stuff once basic needs have been fulfilled. Maintaining consumer culture requires massive energy and a 24x7 effort to manipulate people into doing things they wouldn't do of their own free will.

* The concept from wilderness therapy that culture is only three days deep. It takes an average of three days for people to leave the stress, depression, and worries of their daily, industrial lives behind when they go on three week wilderness excursions. The reverse is also true. It takes three days to get back to those same pathological levels when they return to the artificial world of Western civilization.

* America is ranked 149 out of 150 countries on the happiness scale; 50% of Americans take at least one prescription drug daily, with 20% relying on 3 or more; the average American's body burden is over 90 toxic chemicals and industrial pollutants. The guiding principle of American psychiatry is to make people feel sane about living in an insane world.

However, as J. Krishnamurti said, "It is not a sign of good health to be well-adjusted to a sick society." The majority of people today would love to do something differently -- to get out of the rat race. Numerous studies over the past 60 or so years have shown that the things people actually want are inherently sustainable: to have more time with family and friends, pursue education, spend more time in nature, develop personal pursuits... to have more quality leisure time in general. However, since none of these enrich the captains of industry, instead of more quality leisure time, Americans spend about one billion working hours per year in order to buy more leisure wear.

It is hardly "nostalgic nonsense" to point out that some Indian tribes planned for the seventh generation. To simply dismiss out of hand this fact because some of them overhunted, ignores that one of the better known instances of this -- the hunting to extinction of the North American elephant by the West Coast tribes -- was followed by the realization that they screwed up and so they changed their pattern of living with the land so it didn't happen again. Western civilization has yet to achieve this level of cultural advancement and maturity. Just because we have iPods and bunker-busters doesn't mean our technological prowess makes us better.

To buy into the intellectual paucity of revisionism such as Steven Pinker's is to believe a story that rationalizes the worst of human nature to help sell the myth that what we have now is the best that could ever be. If you're going to use the appeal to authority, at least be honest about that authority's standing in the cult of the technofetishist along with its other reductionist luminaries like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. This is like quoting Fred Singer on global warming.

Does it really make any sense to throw out everything another culture did simply because they did one thing wrong? We're supposed to be an intelligent species with the ability to learn from our mistakes, even if we seem to rarely demonstrate this ability, or if pop culture refuses to acknowledge it. Can't we take a good aspect of one culture, combine it with the good aspects of other cultures, and create something even better with the advancements in knowledge we possess?

One of the chief arguments for maintaining the status quo is that it is human nature to be domineering, aggressive, and competitive and we can't act differently. However, other cultures put the lie to this assertion. It is every bit as much a part of human nature to be nurturing, compassionate, and cooperative. In fact, the aspects of human nature that we choose to nurture are the ones that grow and flourish. Change begins with making new or different choices. Pointing out that there are examples from our past of people making conscious decisions to live more in harmony with the natural world and attempt to provide for their offspring's future is hardly a call to return to the cave, start carrying water, chopping wood, and dancing naked around the campfire with feathers stuck in our butts -- regardless of the fact that many people derive great satisfaction from doing so. This is merely an example of natural diversity at work, a diversity from which we derive our greatest strength.

I really have a hard time seeing the above leap in logic as anything more than either intellectual dishonesty or immaturity. I don't want this to seem either gruff or demeaning, and please try not to take it that way. What I do think we all should spend more time doing, though, is to deeply and honestly examine our assumptions and seek to determine from whence they have arisen. Who profits? Whose sacred cow remains ungored?

This even entails the terms we choose to use to describe our situation. If we talk about the "collapse" of Western civilization, then that's what we'll suffer through. There is no doubt that Western civilization is unsustainable, and if left to its own devices will bring life as we know it on Earth to an end. This is the fate of all force-based dominator control hierarchies. (Some people like to differentiate with hierarchies of actualization, but all hierarchies are at odds with natural systems. There are better ways to describe the relationships in chaotic systems of increasing orders of complexity than by using terms derived from mechanistic linearity.) If we talk about creating something new instead of reacting to collapse, we shift the energetic focus of our actions and responses.

The collapse scenario does directly assume a Mad Max transition. This is because it believes we're willfully addicted to consumerism because we actually enjoy it, not that it's being forced on us, and that we would react negatively to being offered the opportunity to participate in gaining what we really do want. As I pointed out above, severe deprivation of many human needs and desires is what we have now. Not allowing ourselves to think about this is part of the consensus trance, and I don't think the red pill needs to be as strong as many people think it does. This became even clearer to me when I was running for public office. People across the political spectrum are willing to engage in this conversation, they just aren't aware of an alternative to the status quo. However, they can quickly connect the dots as soon as they are pointed out to them.

Now, with all this said it would be the height of foolishness to ignore the fact that we must protect ourselves from those few true sociopaths; that we're surrounded by a culture that has been raised to not believe in themselves while simultaneously worshipping individualism; and that thinks it is perfectly ethical to screw the other guy before he screws you. But this is simply not normal, healthy human nature. It is a response to unmet needs. I mean, we do live in a society in which the Darwin Awards have been created to celebrate the three most common last words of the Southern Redneck: "Hey! Watch this!" But all this really does is point to the failure of both American education and Western culture, not to an innate deficit in human nature.

We could, of course, choose to let ourselves be overcome by despair, believe in the worst of human nature and that there's nothing we can do about it on our own. This is, after all, the actual foundation of Western religion. Or, we could look at the creative, cooperative direction of life, and rationally, sensuously, and spiritually decide to work with it for the benefit of the web of life.

But you're not going to be doing anyone any favors whatsoever by telling them they're muddle headed at best to believe we could consciously make different choices, or that they should ignore the fact that the power of the current dominator paradigm comes from nothing more than a story which we grant legitimacy. For example, the reason feminism became widely accepted was not because it was a reaction against patriarchy (damaging as this mindset is), but because it pointed out how much we were missing by ignoring and denigrating the contribution of over half the population.

A lifeboat is what takes you away from imminent disaster. Relocalization is a lifeboat that takes us to an alternative in creating a partnership society that adheres to the natural systems principles that allow us to maximize the potential of who we really are. It is not wasting our energy on fighting the old, but offering it hospice as we create the new -- a sustainable future based on ecological wisdom and social justice. A steady-state economy is but one aspect of this that consciously adheres to the population and natural resource limits of ecological carrying capacity.

A scientifically validated process for starting us on this journey is consciously and sensuously reconnecting all of our senses to their roots in the natural world. This is a remembering that when we're in holistic integration with the natural world -- which necessarily includes each other -- nature provides an abundance to meet natural expectations of fulfillment, as well as the models and metaphors necessary to create a sustainable future.

The best way to transition through times of chaos is to try to ensure that doesn't become our reality in the first place. Part of this is to help return meaning and purpose to people's lives, which relocalization's alternative to corporate globalization does.

"You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -Bucky Fuller

Yes, we humans have become highly conditioned and habituated to our current deprived state of being. But, as the current structure fails to maintain its functions and more and more of us begin to realize that the next "fix" is never going to come -- when we can no longer ignore the widening cracks in the foundation of our culture, nor the unraveling of the strands in the web of life -- the first instinct will be to look for an alternative, not who we can beat to a bloody pulp to steal their PopTarts.

The purpose of beginning the relocalization process NOW is to fulfill the promise of Buckminster Fuller's quote. People will be drawn to what is working, a way to both survive and thrive without The Beast that turned us into consumerist slaves.

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Holistek
April 8th, 2008

Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Thank you for this, Sarah. I think that you are right about the means of energy production (and correspondingly, food production as a basic form of energy) being fundamental to a society's culture.

I also think that there is a developmental structure to cultural stages. If I may speak in terms of an imprecise but illustrative metaphor, I think that we stand at a cultural threshold in our cultural development, with choices about where we go from here. The metaphor is to human personality development. When we are children, we fall naturally into an intimate relationship with our environment (a child is visibly emotional, comfortably dependent, easily affectionate, etc.). This stage corresponds to that of native societies, which were intimately associated with their environments.

The next stage is that of the adolescent, who tends to be phisically mature (adult size and strength) but emotionally immature. Adolescence is characterized by dogmatic and reactive independence from the parents, emotional concealment, disaffection from the parental environment and attempts to assert control of everything. This is the stage that I consider Western society to be at (I think the parallels are self-evident). It is also a time of excess: consuming to excess, excess speed, excess experience (e.g., drugs), things which risk the very life of the organism.

The task facing the adolescent on the threshold of maturity (this according to Jung) is to integrate and synthesize the two previous stages: to comgine dependence and independence into mature interdependence which is comfortable with both and knows when each is appropriate. This, as I see it, is the task facing us: to integrate the best of Western and Aboriginal cultures, speaking very generally.

The psychological temptation and great danger here is that of regression to the childhood/Aboriginal stage and outlook, which is characterized by a demonization and rejection of the learning of adolescence. I see this represented by the positions of some on this list, including Dave Ewoldt and Tom Ellis. With the very best of intentions, and much integrity, they seem to me to be counselling a return, in effect, to a childlike relation to the natural world, which at this stage of our development would be regressive rather than progressive. One sees this in the rejection of all the archetypal learnings of adolescence, learnings which we can characterize as basically masculine (an example is hierarchy, which I raised as a test with Dave, and which he rejects as pathological) when compared to the learnings of childhood, which are essentially feminine (I mean archetypes here, not male and female).

The issue of sustainability is one that clearly shows up at this point. An adolescent still lives unsustainably, off the income of his/her parents. The essential element of human adulthood, in my opinion, is when one accepts responsibility for one's own life and consumption, and becomes a net producer (physically and/or emotionally). The same is true in terms of a culture's relationship to the natural world: we need to move into psychological adulthood, which is to become net producers (in the ecological sense), both physically (giving back to the ecosystem as much or more than we take) and emotionally (environmental stewardship, caring about our world enough to really understand and serve its health).

If there is one role which I think an organization like the Post Carbon Institute can play most powerfully in the transition of the world to a better future, it is in holding a clear vision of this task, and in leading the wider society as wise elders did in native societies. For that role, however, we need to bring a genuine wisdom to the task, and overcoming/transcending the temptation to regress, based on a natural nostalgia for the lost innocence of childhood, is our first challenge, as I see it.

Thanks again, Sarah, for your supportive comments.

David Shackleton

----- Original Message -----

From: Sarah Edwards

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:11 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave and David, I don't want to intrude or interrupt your dialogue. I find it interesting to gain differing perspectives.

What I would like to contribute to the discussion is a reference back to Heinberg's points by antrobologist Marvin Harris.

Harris postulates that it is the means of energy production that's the infrastructure of a society and what drives the formation of the culture that develops around it. So the current social values and behavior we see now and project into the future arises from our fossil fuel/machine/nature-disconnected infrastructure.

Another means of energy production would of necessity produce a different set of social values and behavior. My question is, can the cart pull the horse? Does necessity have to force a new infrastucture that will lead to a new culture and concurrent way of interacting with one another and the natural environment? Or, can we institute a new way of interacting within the context of the old/existing infrastructure? Dave, you often seem to see things as they could be, which is enlightening and mind-expanding. But David, you are presenting ramifications of our current reality. Your raising very real issure of how do we get from here to there? It's like needing a boat to get to an island where all the boats are kept.

I think this dilemma is one of the shortcoming of Knustler's new novel World Made by Hand. He doesn't invision the inevitiable sea change that must/will occur at all levels of society. He sort of takes a bit of this and a bit of that and cobles it together in a possible outcome. Granted it's fiction and undoubtedly designed not to predict or advocate but to make people think and consider.

Personally I believe the quandary many of us find our selves in is that we just don't know what the post-collapse infrastructure will be. That relates to an earlier post of yours Dave on another board regarding the economy. Our current economy is based on fossil/fuel machine-drive/ energy and consumption, which is "unnatural" at its core. It's not sustainable, so it will crumble sometime and something else will emerge. In the meantime, though, millions of people have to support themselves within it this system while trying to protect themselves from it's collapse.

Sarah

______________

Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"I don't worry about tomorrow; find out about a mile on down the road."
See the Light. Bo Bice,
_____________

Larry Menkes
April 8th, 2008

Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave, Sarah, all,

Very sage and useful comments on the transition from dependence through interdependence. And also good words on what sustainability leadership might be at it's best.

But, in an addictive, sibling society, shouldn't we be preparing for potential of mass regression under acute stress, as we get deeper into energy insufficiency? You cite Jung and there seems to be a lot of shadow expression going on in America at this time.

The oil addiction is a really apt metaphor, but there's a lot of denial. A few years back, when I opened a sustainability workshop like it was the beginning of a meeting of Oilaholics Anonymous, the audience didn't quite know how to respond, and very few got the joke until I explained it.

Larry

On Apr 8, 2008, at 09:42, Holistek wrote:

Thank you for this, Sarah. I think that you are right about the means of energy production (and correspondingly, food production as a basic form of energy) being fundamental to a society's culture.

I also think that there is a developmental structure to cultural stages. If I may speak in terms of an imprecise but illustrative metaphor, I think that we stand at a cultural threshold in our cultural development, with choices about where we go from here. The metaphor is to human personality development. When we are children, we fall naturally into an intimate relationship with our environment (a child is visibly emotional, comfortably dependent, easily affectionate, etc.). This stage corresponds to that of native societies, which were intimately associated with their environments.

The next stage is that of the adolescent, who tends to be phisically mature (adult size and strength) but emotionally immature. Adolescence is characterized by dogmatic and reactive independence from the parents, emotional concealment, disaffection from the parental environment and attempts to assert control of everything. This is the stage that I consider Western society to be at (I think the parallels are self-evident). It is also a time of excess: consuming to excess, excess speed, excess experience (e.g., drugs), things which risk the very life of the organism.

The task facing the adolescent on the threshold of maturity (this according to Jung) is to integrate and synthesize the two previous stages: to comgine dependence and independence into mature interdependence which is comfortable with both and knows when each is appropriate. This, as I see it, is the task facing us: to integrate the best of Western and Aboriginal cultures, speaking very generally.

The psychological temptation and great danger here is that of regression to the childhood/Aboriginal stage and outlook, which is characterized by a demonization and rejection of the learning of adolescence. I see this represented by the positions of some on this list, including Dave Ewoldt and Tom Ellis. With the very best of intentions, and much integrity, they seem to me to be counselling a return, in effect, to a childlike relation to the natural world, which at this stage of our development would be regressive rather than progressive. One sees this in the rejection of all the archetypal learnings of adolescence, learnings which we can characterize as basically masculine (an example is hierarchy, which I raised as a test with Dave, and which he rejects as pathological) when compared to the learnings of childhood, which are essentially feminine (I mean archetypes here, not male and female).

The issue of sustainability is one that clearly shows up at this point. An adolescent still lives unsustainably, off the income of his/her parents. The essential element of human adulthood, in my opinion, is when one accepts responsibility for one's own life and consumption, and becomes a net producer (physically and/or emotionally). The same is true in terms of a culture's relationship to the natural world: we need to move into psychological adulthood, which is to become net producers (in the ecological sense), both physically (giving back to the ecosystem as much or more than we take) and emotionally (environmental stewardship, caring about our world enough to really understand and serve its health).

If there is one role which I think an organization like the Post Carbon Institute can play most powerfully in the transition of the world to a better future, it is in holding a clear vision of this task, and in leading the wider society as wise elders did in native societies. For that role, however, we need to bring a genuine wisdom to the task, and overcoming/transcending the temptation to regress, based on a natural nostalgia for the lost innocence of childhood, is our first challenge, as I see it.

Thanks again, Sarah, for your supportive comments.

David Shackleton

----- Original Message -----

From: Sarah Edwards

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:11 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave and David, I don't want to intrude or interrupt your dialogue. I find it interesting to gain differing perspectives.

What I would like to contribute to the discussion is a reference back to Heinberg's points by antrobologist Marvin Harris.

Harris postulates that it is the means of energy production that's the infrastructure of a society and what drives the formation of the culture that develops around it. So the current social values and behavior we see now and project into the future arises from our fossil fuel/machine/nature-disconnected infrastructure.

Another means of energy production would of necessity produce a different set of social values and behavior. My question is, can the cart pull the horse? Does necessity have to force a new infrastucture that will lead to a new culture and concurrent way of interacting with one another and the natural environment? Or, can we institute a new way of interacting within the context of the old/existing infrastructure? Dave, you often seem to see things as they could be, which is enlightening and mind-expanding. But David, you are presenting ramifications of our current reality. Your raising very real issure of how do we get from here to there? It's like needing a boat to get to an island where all the boats are kept.

I think this dilemma is one of the shortcoming of Knustler's new novel World Made by Hand. He doesn't invision the inevitiable sea change that must/will occur at all levels of society. He sort of takes a bit of this and a bit of that and cobles it together in a possible outcome. Granted it's fiction and undoubtedly designed not to predict or advocate but to make people think and consider.

Personally I believe the quandary many of us find our selves in is that we just don't know what the post-collapse infrastructure will be. That relates to an earlier post of yours Dave on another board regarding the economy. Our current economy is based on fossil/fuel machine-drive/ energy and consumption, which is "unnatural" at its core. It's not sustainable, so it will crumble sometime and something else will emerge. In the meantime, though, millions of people have to support themselves within it this system while trying to protect themselves from it's collapse.

Sarah

______________

Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"I don't worry about tomorrow; find out about a mile on down the road."
See the Light. Bo Bice,
_____________

Sarah Edwards
April 9th, 2008

Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Interesting, Larry. I recently wrote a letter to the editor of the LA Times in response to an article called "The Oil Habit" http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover30mar30-sg,0,4363275.storygallery which opened with the statement "I am Elizabeth (the author's name) and I'm additcted to oil." It was a good article about the little things we can do around the house to use less and how dependent we are on it in ways we don't usually think about, but I foudn it quite limited in it's perspective on the depth and seriousness of the problem we face. They didn't print my letter. I wasn't surprised because I think the whole purpose of the article was to help people see that they are contributing to the problme and can do something positive about it.

But here's what I wrote. It expresses my take on the addiction metaphor:

I appreciated Elizabeth Douglass’s 3/30 article “The Oil Habit.” It is important to note, though, that we are not addicted to oil. It is our lifeblood, as two other articles on 4/1 so poignantly point out (“A 'perfect storm' of hunger,” “Reduced corn crop forecast plants fears”). We’ve been raised on oil and other fossil fuels. Our country grew up on them. This is not a habit we can break like cigarettes or alcohol. We are dependent on oil for our food, transportation, commerce, medicine, communication, sanitation, and the job specialization that provides the vast majority of our livelihoods.
As difficult as it is to stop a habit like smoking or drinking, breaking our dependency on oil and fossil fuels will be far harder. While replacing our gas-guzzlers with hybrids or eliminating our use of plastic water bottles are steps we can take personally, breaking this dependency isn’t something we can do by ourselves. It will involve a wholesale change in the way we live and who we are as a people.

We can begin this process, however, by joining with others to create small, sustainable, walkable, food-producing local communities within our own towns, neighborhoods and bioregions. Many people are already beginning to do this, as one can see by reviewing their efforts and progress through such organizations as the Relocation Network (www.Relocalize.net) or BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (www.livingeconomies.org). The sooner we begin such efforts, the less difficult they will be to realize.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Guess you can see why they didn't print it.

Sarah

______________

----- Original Message -----

From: Larry Menkes

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 7:51 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave, Sarah, all,

Very sage and useful comments on the transition from dependence through interdependence. And also good words on what sustainability leadership might be at it's best.

But, in an addictive, sibling society, shouldn't we be preparing for potential of mass regression under acute stress, as we get deeper into energy insufficiency? You cite Jung and there seems to be a lot of shadow expression going on in America at this time.

The oil addiction is a really apt metaphor, but there's a lot of denial. A few years back, when I opened a sustainability workshop like it was the beginning of a meeting of Oilaholics Anonymous, the audience didn't quite know how to respond, and very few got the joke until I explained it.

Larry

On Apr 8, 2008, at 09:42, Holistek wrote:

Thank you for this, Sarah. I think that you are right about the means of energy production (and correspondingly, food production as a basic form of energy) being fundamental to a society's culture.

I also think that there is a developmental structure to cultural stages. If I may speak in terms of an imprecise but illustrative metaphor, I think that we stand at a cultural threshold in our cultural development, with choices about where we go from here. The metaphor is to human personality development. When we are children, we fall naturally into an intimate relationship with our environment (a child is visibly emotional, comfortably dependent, easily affectionate, etc.). This stage corresponds to that of native societies, which were intimately associated with their environments.

The next stage is that of the adolescent, who tends to be phisically mature (adult size and strength) but emotionally immature. Adolescence is characterized by dogmatic and reactive independence from the parents, emotional concealment, disaffection from the parental environment and attempts to assert control of everything. This is the stage that I consider Western society to be at (I think the parallels are self-evident). It is also a time of excess: consuming to excess, excess speed, excess experience (e.g., drugs), things which risk the very life of the organism.

The task facing the adolescent on the threshold of maturity (this according to Jung) is to integrate and synthesize the two previous stages: to comgine dependence and independence into mature interdependence which is comfortable with both and knows when each is appropriate. This, as I see it, is the task facing us: to integrate the best of Western and Aboriginal cultures, speaking very generally.

The psychological temptation and great danger here is that of regression to the childhood/Aboriginal stage and outlook, which is characterized by a demonization and rejection of the learning of adolescence. I see this represented by the positions of some on this list, including Dave Ewoldt and Tom Ellis. With the very best of intentions, and much integrity, they seem to me to be counselling a return, in effect, to a childlike relation to the natural world, which at this stage of our development would be regressive rather than progressive. One sees this in the rejection of all the archetypal learnings of adolescence, learnings which we can characterize as basically masculine (an example is hierarchy, which I raised as a test with Dave, and which he rejects as pathological) when compared to the learnings of childhood, which are essentially feminine (I mean archetypes here, not male and female).

The issue of sustainability is one that clearly shows up at this point. An adolescent still lives unsustainably, off the income of his/her parents. The essential element of human adulthood, in my opinion, is when one accepts responsibility for one's own life and consumption, and becomes a net producer (physically and/or emotionally). The same is true in terms of a culture's relationship to the natural world: we need to move into psychological adulthood, which is to become net producers (in the ecological sense), both physically (giving back to the ecosystem as much or more than we take) and emotionally (environmental stewardship, caring about our world enough to really understand and serve its health).

If there is one role which I think an organization like the Post Carbon Institute can play most powerfully in the transition of the world to a better future, it is in holding a clear vision of this task, and in leading the wider society as wise elders did in native societies. For that role, however, we need to bring a genuine wisdom to the task, and overcoming/transcending the temptation to regress, based on a natural nostalgia for the lost innocence of childhood, is our first challenge, as I see it.

Thanks again, Sarah, for your supportive comments.

David Shackleton

----- Original Message -----

From: Sarah Edwards

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:11 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave and David, I don't want to intrude or interrupt your dialogue. I find it interesting to gain differing perspectives.

What I would like to contribute to the discussion is a reference back to Heinberg's points by antrobologist Marvin Harris.

Harris postulates that it is the means of energy production that's the infrastructure of a society and what drives the formation of the culture that develops around it. So the current social values and behavior we see now and project into the future arises from our fossil fuel/machine/nature-disconnected infrastructure.

Another means of energy production would of necessity produce a different set of social values and behavior. My question is, can the cart pull the horse? Does necessity have to force a new infrastucture that will lead to a new culture and concurrent way of interacting with one another and the natural environment? Or, can we institute a new way of interacting within the context of the old/existing infrastructure? Dave, you often seem to see things as they could be, which is enlightening and mind-expanding. But David, you are presenting ramifications of our current reality. Your raising very real issure of how do we get from here to there? It's like needing a boat to get to an island where all the boats are kept.

I think this dilemma is one of the shortcoming of Knustler's new novel World Made by Hand. He doesn't invision the inevitiable sea change that must/will occur at all levels of society. He sort of takes a bit of this and a bit of that and cobles it together in a possible outcome. Granted it's fiction and undoubtedly designed not to predict or advocate but to make people think and consider.

Personally I believe the quandary many of us find our selves in is that we just don't know what the post-collapse infrastructure will be. That relates to an earlier post of yours Dave on another board regarding the economy. Our current economy is based on fossil/fuel machine-drive/ energy and consumption, which is "unnatural" at its core. It's not sustainable, so it will crumble sometime and something else will emerge. In the meantime, though, millions of people have to support themselves within it this system while trying to protect themselves from it's collapse.

Sarah

______________

Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"I don't worry about tomorrow; find out about a mile on down the road."
See the Light. Bo Bice,
_____________

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Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.9/1365 - Release Date: 4/8/2008 7:30 AM

petevanloon
April 8th, 2008

Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave, Sarah, all,

Sorry, but I thought the Childhood/Aboriginal/dependant VS Adult/Western/independent thing needed some tweaking.

I thought Western people were the dependant children, and Aboriginal people were the independent adults.

I know a white girl who, at the age of 4, was put on an island off the Kimberly coast of Western Australia, with a bunch of aboriginal "children", while her father went out filming an Aboriginal dugong / turtle hunt, in canoes.

She said the babysitter was about 6 years old, and all the kids spent the day on this adult less island, hunting and eating mudcrabs and other delicacies you might order in a seafood restaurant.

It seems to me that a 6 year old Aboriginal, who can procure top class seafood for a bunch of small children, is not dependant on adults to the same extent as we Western people, and we seem more dependant on adults, oil, etc than they do.

Aboriginal people (at least traditionally in Australia), begin "school" when they can crawl, tracking beetles, placed before them by their mums, to get them to understand where tracks lead to. They dig for food and learn plant identification from this age, so that by the time they are biologically able to reproduce, (at 14 or so), they are by all accounts independent adults.

Compare this to Western people, most of whom hardly know where a steak comes from, nor how to procure it (ie earn the money to buy it), until they are in their 20s. These days many cant even afford to leave their parents side (ie house), until their 30s !

Its obvious to me who are the dependant, child like ones, and its not the Aboriginals.

Peter van Loon
Wastewater Source Control Technical Officer
for the Chief Executive Officer

Gold Coast Water
Ph: Mob: 0404 892 096 Fax: 5581 6219
PO Box 5042 Gold Coast MC Qld 9729
pvanloon@

From: Larry Menkes [mailto:soundsynergy@]
Sent: Wednesday, 9 April 2008 12:51
To: Coordinator HUB
Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave, Sarah, all,

Very sage and useful comments on the transition from dependence through interdependence. And also good words on what sustainability leadership might be at it's best.

Larry

On Apr 8, 2008, at 09:42, Holistek wrote:

Thank you for this, Sarah. I think that you are right about the means of energy production (and correspondingly, food production as a basic form of energy) being fundamental to a society's culture.

I also think that there is a developmental structure to cultural stages. If I may speak in terms of an imprecise but illustrative metaphor, I think that we stand at a cultural threshold in our cultural development, with choices about where we go from here. The metaphor is to human personality development. When we are children, we fall naturally into an intimate relationship with our environment (a child is visibly emotional, comfortably dependent, easily affectionate, etc.). This stage corresponds to that of native societies, which were intimately associated with their environments.

The next stage is that of the adolescent, who tends to be phisically mature (adult size and strength) but emotionally immature. Adolescence is characterized by dogmatic and reactive independence from the parents, emotional concealment, disaffection from the parental environment and attempts to assert control of everything. This is the stage that I consider Western society to be at (I think the parallels are self-evident). It is also a time of excess: consuming to excess, excess speed, excess experience (e.g., drugs), things which risk the very life of the organism.

The task facing the adolescent on the threshold of maturity (this according to Jung) is to integrate and synthesize the two previous stages: to comgine dependence and independence into mature interdependence which is comfortable with both and knows when each is appropriate. This, as I see it, is the task facing us: to integrate the best of Western and Aboriginal cultures, speaking very generally.

The psychological temptation and great danger here is that of regression to the childhood/Aboriginal stage and outlook, which is characterized by a demonization and rejection of the learning of adolescence. I see this represented by the positions of some on this list, including Dave Ewoldt and Tom Ellis. With the very best of intentions, and much integrity, they seem to me to be counselling a return, in effect, to a childlike relation to the natural world, which at this stage of our development would be regressive rather than progressive. One sees this in the rejection of all the archetypal learnings of adolescence, learnings which we can characterize as basically masculine (an example is hierarchy, which I raised as a test with Dave, and which he rejects as pathological) when compared to the learnings of childhood, which are essentially feminine (I mean archetypes here, not male and female).

The issue of sustainability is one that clearly shows up at this point. An adolescent still lives unsustainably, off the income of his/her parents. The essential element of human adulthood, in my opinion, is when one accepts responsibility for one's own life and consumption, and becomes a net producer (physically and/or emotionally). The same is true in terms of a culture's relationship to the natural world: we need to move into psychological adulthood, which is to become net producers (in the ecological sense), both physically (giving back to the ecosystem as much or more than we take) and emotionally (environmental stewardship, caring about our world enough to really understand and serve its health).

If there is one role which I think an organization like the Post Carbon Institute can play most powerfully in the transition of the world to a better future, it is in holding a clear vision of this task, and in leading the wider society as wise elders did in native societies. For that role, however, we need to bring a genuine wisdom to the task, and overcoming/transcending the temptation to regress, based on a natural nostalgia for the lost innocence of childhood, is our first challenge, as I see it.

Thanks again, Sarah, for your supportive comments.

David Shackleton

----- Original Message -----

From: Sarah Edwards

To: Coordinator HUB

Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 7:11 PM

Subject: CoordinatorHUB Re: Lifeboats and collapse - expanding the dialog

Dave and David, I don't want to intrude or interrupt your dialogue. I find it interesting to gain differing perspectives.

What I would like to contribute to the discussion is a reference back to Heinberg's points by antrobologist Marvin Harris.

Harris postulates that it is the means of energy production that's the infrastructure of a society and what drives the formation of the culture that develops around it. So the current social values and behavior we see now and project into the future arises from our fossil fuel/machine/nature-disconnected infrastructure.

Another means of energy production would of necessity produce a different set of social values and behavior. My question is, can the cart pull the horse? Does necessity have to force a new infrastucture that will lead to a new culture and concurrent way of interacting with one another and the natural environment? Or, can we institute a new way of interacting within the context of the old/existing infrastructure? Dave, you often seem to see things as they could be, which is enlightening and mind-expanding. But David, you are presenting ramifications of our current reality. Your raising very real issure of how do we get from here to there? It's like needing a boat to get to an island where all the boats are kept.

I think this dilemma is one of the shortcoming of Knustler's new novel World Made by Hand. He doesn't invision the inevitiable sea change that must/will occur at all levels of society. He sort of takes a bit of this and a bit of that and cobles it together in a possible outcome. Granted it's fiction and undoubtedly designed not to predict or advocate but to make people think and consider.

Personally I believe the quandary many of us find our selves in is that we just don't know what the post-collapse infrastructure will be. That relates to an earlier post of yours Dave on another board regarding the economy. Our current economy is based on fossil/fuel machine-drive/ energy and consumption, which is "unnatural" at its core. It's not sustainable, so it will crumble sometime and something else will emerge. In the meantime, though, millions of people have to support themselves within it this system while trying to protect themselves from it's collapse.

Sarah

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Sarah Anne Edwards, LCSW, PhD Ecopsychologist
Co-Author, Middle Class Lifeboat, and Advocate for Affordable Health Care
"I don't worry about tomorrow; find out about a mile on down the road."
See the Light. Bo Bice,
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