Yesterday I managed to get started on the meat of that article I described in my last post. The article I'm titling Power to the People. I've found it expanding into a brief primer on the subject of Peak Oil in order to give the reasoning, rationale and need to undertake the formation of an energy cooperative.
While all these ideas are floating around in my head and things are taking shape there, I've found myself oddly paralyzed lately. I've been unable to muster the energy to go out of the house and accomplish much of anything. I've been sequestering myself in my home, alternately watching movies, checking e-mail, playing computer solitaire or listening to the radio news. Oh, and I mustn't forget to mention sleeping. I've been doing a fair amount of that as well. Splattered in there among the idleness is some reading as well, not forgetting that I did, in fact, get some writing done last night - and tonight (you're reading it!)
I'm feeling quite overloaded lately. I wonder whether I have what it takes to create this place I have in mind; this homestead, this energy cooperative, this connection to community.
On top of it all, I'm still here in New Orleans and working at my existing job hoping that the work holds on long enough for me to get the closing done on the house and be able to secure the property on to myself. It's a tricky gamble at this point and I'm not entirely assured of the outcome...
In any event, tomorrow is another day. Another Monday. I'll return to the job that's been providing me these opportunities for the past three years to become nearly debt-free and has paved the way for me to return to my home, to my family and to the place I want to live out the balance of my life. How fortunate am I?!? There is this amazing abundance of blessings that have been showered on me. I've, thus far, lived a life that only kings could have imagined years past. I have been given opportunities to see and do things that only a thimble's worth of people in the vast expanse of humanity have been afforded. What a ride!
I have the distinct feeling, should I be granted the chance to continue being here, that I'll witness some incredible changes. The old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. I am increasingly certain of the proximity of those times. We are in a place of converging consequences that will probably lack any of the Hollywood instantaneousness and blow 'em up glitz. Instead, it will be a convulsive peeling away of all that was previously considered unassailably permanent. Permanence of the things we've come to expect as reliable and always there when we flip a switch or turn a key or pick up a phone or turn a thermostat or... These things we've taken for granted will falter and fail in fits and starts, grinding down an erratic staircase toward de-centralization. Complexity will give way to generalized systems. Centralized energy distribution will become decidedly de-centralized and disparate in its availability. Food as we've come to know it - with it's perverse, many-fold removal from the natural state it was grown and distributed, prepared and eaten as recently as 50 or 60 years ago will, once again, become this precious commodity that is central to our waking lives. How we get about on the landscape, moving ourselves and our goods will be thrown into a drastic state of reconfiguration. We are about to witness some dire interruptions in this aspect of our lives that we'd once thought of as dependable as the air that fills our lungs when we inhale. Breath in and there's a car with gas in it to take you where you want or need to go. Breath in again and there are trucks plying the highways laden with all the goods we've become addictively dependent on for just-in-time survival. Breath in once more and there is an ambulance or fire truck or police car there to attend to your needs in an emergency. All of it is delicately balancing, either directly or indirectly, on the reliable availability of OIL.
I haven't even broached the subject of money. Interestingly enough, one of my collapse gurus, Dmitri Orlov, just gave a talk in Ireland on this subject in general and spoke of the importance and preference that ought to be given to barter as a way of trade. He emphasized how we've been fed this notion that barter is an ineffective way of transacting and that money was a far better tender of exchange. Isn't it -money - just another rude form of barter, though? You're forced to go to some job, in most instances, in order to obtain money only to find that it can only buy you the limited quantities of crap that the system is programmed to produce for your consumption. Insidiously, the real purpose of the money system and the universality of the dollar as tender of currency is to control the means by which the taxes can be collected and the interest due the banks that control our money can be paid.
Increasingly, we have come to learn the true nature of the money system. That it is a fabrication of a consortium - a cabal - of private banks that have systematically sucked the wealth of this and many other nations onto themselves. The money they issue and replicate ad naseum through the fractional reserve system is a fiction that is wholly detached from the actual wealth of the Earth that can be SUSTAINABLY gleaned without harm to our sacred Home. That system is lumbering to it's horrible end and I fear that they will do everything in their power to ensure it remains in place despite its increasing dysfunction. With the banking rulers that control this system will come the multitudes of people who are so entirely inured by, so inextricably tied to it, that they will fight to their deaths and the deaths of many, many others to ensure it remains in place while an alternative way of being and doing things struggles to emerge from beneath the shedding, rotting skin.
I've readily intoned that that which can emerge in its place can be something constructive, humane and based on a relocalized harmony with Nature and integrity of community or it can be in the form of violent, totalitarian concentrations of power into the hands of those that wield fear and subjugation in their control of people and the resources around them. The former comes through thoughtful fore-sight and planning; preparedness with compassion. It is rooted in Love.
The latter is a state that erupts out of desperation and fear. People grasping for anything that will ensure their formerly secure privileges are returned or retained. As the oft quoted Benjamin Franklin saying goes: They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security.
But that is the way of it.
I, for one, will be in the former camp as much as I can persuade circumstances. I want to be among those who see the storm that comes for what it is and does what is necessary to fortify our community against the vagaries and potential brutalities that can be swept up on our shores by it.
But for now, I'm tired in my Heart and my mind. I have retreated into a sort of cocoon that has trepidation all about it. I'm not certain I have the strength to do this. All I know is that I want dearly to be part of this community. This house and it's property are now a major part of that picture. I simply feel the need to constantly recognize the fragility of that arrangement and how quickly and easily the game may change because of the ocean of forces that I have absolutely no control over. Fearlessness is one thing. Paralysis is another. On these weekends I feel as though I'm convolescing from something; hibernating a bit. I need to rouse myself and get out of my torpor. Engage.
Let's pray on that for a time and move forward with strength and gratitude.
Until next time, in Peace,
Raven
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