Good advice and a question

This is generally good advice. But ask yourself: what are their assumptions?

Three Pillar Skills

I have written a little bit previously about three pillar skills. So what are they?

Three pillar skills are skills that relate to critical thinking, self sufficiency, and self defense: what we call the three pillars of adulthood. These three broad categories define the core essence of what it means to be an adult: the ability to think and make decisions, the ability to provide for ones self, and the ability to defend ones self from harm. With these skills, we are at mercy of external forces that do not generally have our best interests in mind.

Growing up means more than being old enough to buy beer, drive, and have a job. Growing up means taking your life into your own hands. Being a child means leaving your life somebody else's.

A Video to Watch

Feeling ambitious today, I wandered around the internet at an ungodly hour and assembled a Squidoo lens here. While I was doing so, I found a very well designed little video on Peak Oil, one of the many reasons our generation needs to improve its three pillar skills. So I thought that I would post the video here for your edification. Enjoy!

Are you lost?

Finding North
 
Are you lost? If you are in the northern hemisphere, The sun is to your south. If it is afternoon the sun is south west. If it is before noon the sun is south east. So if it is in the afternoon, Put the sun to your back and left. Now you are facing roughly north. If it is in the morning put the sun to your back and right. Again you are facing to the north. If it is night find the big dipper. Follow the two stars that make the big dipper's scoop up and you will see the north star. Once again you are facing to the north.

Walking in a Straight Line

One of the most common reasons that people get lost, stay lost, generally get scared, panicked and eventually wind up dead in the woods is because they cannot walk in a straight line. At least they can't without an asphalt road to guide them. People generally walk in a wide circle because they favor one side of their body, generally the dominant side. Without landmarks that people are familiar with using for positional orientation, people easily veer off their intended track in the bush.

Using two-point sight lines is a good basic way to avoid veering off course. To do this line up two landmarks, one in the middle distance and one in the far distance- in the direction you wish to travel. Now turn around 180 degrees and look straight back behind you. With moving your view find two landmarks that area already lined up and mark them as well. This is reverse two-point sight lining. Now reacquire your forward sight lines and walk to the first landmark. When you reach the first landmark, turn back and reacquire your reverse sight lines to make sure you have not veered to far off and to reorient yourself with the view back the way you came. Now repeat the process.

If a point is far enough away and on high enough ground, you may safely use a single point as a tracking method for traveling in a straight line. This is called High Ground Single Point walking. One reason that single point walking can be deceptive is that if the point is not high enough so as to be visible the entire journey you may have to give up sight of point for some period and may, in that time, go off course. Another reason single point walking can be deceptive is that you may have to shift to the left or right to go around obstacles, and without a second point you may reach your first point, but be aiming in a different direction when you get to that point than you originally intended.

Further Information
http://redcedarvolunteers.wetpaint.com/page/Navigation

A Couple of Quotes To Make Us Think

"It is not enough to be busy... the question is is: what are we busy about?" 

Henry David Thoreau

"Finding out whether you are the source of your wants, or they are something you wanted, is the key to knowing what you truly want." 

Ernie J. Zelinski

"Knowing others is wisdom. Knowing yourself is enlightenment." 

Lao Tzu

Population Overshoot

Population Overshoot, the idea that we may have already passed the Earth's sustainable carrying capacity- and may be in the process of devouring the biological capital that allows life to continue, is a terrifying and increasingly unavoidable topic. But how one addresses this topic depend upon how one views humans and their society in relation to the rest of Planet Earth. Depending on how long energy remains abundant and cheap, and depending on how much people all over the world are consuming, we may be near or past overshoot right now. But, of course, since these and other relevant variables are subject to outside pressures (such as our actions), nothing is decided yet.

Add to this problem other problems equally as scary: such as peak oil, climate change, species extinction, and resource depletion, and you start grasp the magnitude of the situation. We have to be heroic in order to surmount the challenges that previous generations have left for us. Nothing less and amazing will do the job. Right now we are watching bureaucrats and politicians walk around being mediocre, spouting meaningless platitudes. We need to be better than that. If we want to be buried in soil that is still capable of supporting life, we need to step up to the plate and be radically better than the generations that came before.

And even if we do all this, it still may not be enough. That is the reality, and I'm not to lie to you or hide that behind mumbo jumbo and fuzzy thinking. The number of challenges piling up in front of civilization is getting pretty intimidating. We may be fine without doing anything, although this outcome is increasingly doubtful. We may be fine after some hard work, although this too is increasingly doubtful. We may be fine after a lot of monumental work, but it may also be that no amount of work will be enough to save our civilization.

Rome fell, Greece fell, Egypt fell, the Ottoman Empire fell, the British and Spanish Empires fell, so did Napoleon's France, so did the Mayans and the Aztecs. Some fell on the own. Some fell because of outside forces. We may not be able to our civilization, just as so many other peoples could not save their civilizations. But despite the odds, we certainly must try.

The new tribal revolution

I have been thinking about the new tribal revolution: a term coined by Daniel Quinn in his novel "My Ishmael".

Meant as a movement that would harness the creative spirit of the industrial revolution and use it to design a sustainable and satisfying way of life for humanity. I've been thinking the Genus Rex could be defined as part of the new tribal revolution.

Thoughts?

A sucker punch

I watched the movie sucker punch. The movie looks at how we retreat from unpleasant truths by entering into various fantasy worlds. So the question that I want to ask is, what would you rather be- a fantasy hero who can't handle reality or somebody who works hard enough  to have a real life that other people fantasize about?

Carrying the load

I wonder about our population and what we contribute. There are almost seven billion of us. And what do we do?

We kill each other. We use energy. We use resources. We eat the world. But what do we give back?

I do not mean replenishing renewable resources. I dp not mean donating charities that benefit other humans. I mean what do we offer the world as payment for our continued survival. We exist because our ancestors won the extinction lottery countless times. People ignore how much luck is involved in natural selection. The process isn't random, but outside events shake up the game. And this has. Happened to our benefit as a species many times.

We really do owe the planet and the life on it a little more gratitude. The house cat on your lap is descended from giant cats that wiped out many ancient species, we should thank tabby that early man was spared.

This isn't a joke and it isn't meant to be a hippie platitude. Good hunters understand the need for reverence. We could all stand to learn from that.

Thinking about safety

We are afraid of life. We try to wrap it in pads and protect ourselves from it with a helmet and air bags. We try to simulate it, model it, and distract ourselves from it. We are afraid of being wrong, afraid of failure, afraid of getting hurt.

We are a culture, not of children, but of infants- who cry when something changes. What are we to do?

Testing the waters on a Workshop

With the crisis in Japan, and the fact that the west coast is still at high risk of a major earthquake, we felt that it was important to put together a workshop that could act as an introduction to disaster preparedness. We call it "Escaping Ground Zero."

In the workshop you will learn warning signs of earthquakes, floods and tsunamis. You will learn what parts of the lower mainland are at risk for tsunamis, earthquake damage, flooding, and liquefaction: where the ground becomes so wet that buildings sink as though in quick sand. You will learn what to pack for an evacuation bag. You will learn which routes out of the greater Vancouver area are likely to be open and which will likely be clogged with desperate people, and which are at risk of road closure due to avalanche in the event of an earthquake. You will learn what type of earthquakes the west coast is prone to, and what areas will be hardest hit by the resulting tsunami. You will learn how to coordinate your escape team. And you will build a plan so that you increase your chances of survival. Because this isn't a matter of if, just a matter of when.

We need to know from you how many people are interested in paying $20 for a full day workshop on a weekend, in order to set up our venue. So please let us know so we can put this up as quickly as possible.

The Games People Play and Why

In 1964 Eric Berne wrote "The Games People Play", and laid out in excruciating terms how we manipulate each other in order get what we need out of our relationships. He wrote about children who misbehave because this is the most successful way of generating attention from their parents. He wrote about Stable parasitic relationships where one person is domineering and other submissive, but both get something from the relationship. The domineering person is able to justify and explain away their aggressive behavior by ranting to friends about how the other person in the relationship is like child who needs structure or some other self-justification. The submissive person is able to feel noble by virtue of the sympathy received from friends and family and the concerned attention lavished on them. The one member of the relationship gets to let their aggression run wild, and the other gets to receive sympathy and play the victim.

This is who we are. We are people who play games in order to extract from the people around us, those things psyche needs: attention, validation, identity, and so forth. In a functioning society, culture and tradition and community steers people towards healthy games that empower the players. In a sick culture, either there are no guides, or the guides send people to games designed to benefit a small portion of society at the expense of the other players.

Any community that wishes to be healthy and functioning will look at the games being played and adjust them as necessary. A new set of games can be created consciously, look at Alcoholics Anonymous. The organization mixed success in getting people to stop drinking, but it is very successful at changing the games people play. School likewise teaches children whole new sets of games. To set up new games, either group coherence is required or else a change to the physical environment that forces or at least nudges people to play the new games.

The games we play today are not helping us. Watch any reality Television show. Watch Maury or Jerry Springer. Oh never mind, you probably do already. The point is that our games have become embarrassing as well as damaging. And we need to do something about it if we want to preserve what we have built.

Our generation needs to learn how to educate themselves and how to self-correct. We need to learn how to effectively question authority, while still learning from experience. We need to learn how to be responsible and self-sufficient so that we are able to contribute to our community and be interdependent. Our goal at Red Cedar is to teach habits that will enable members to become social, economic and ecological leaders in the future.

For years now, western nations have been living as though theirs was the final generation. They could do as the please, and damn the consequences. Now the consequences are becoming visible and frightening. Positive change in this world will depend upon the actions of today's youth. Those of us under thirty will be deciding on things that will affect our lives for years to come, just by how we live. Most activism seeks to sway those people in power, those with everything to lose and little to gain from a change in the status quo. The leaders of today are not where we should be looking. 

We should be looking at the leaders of tomorrow.

Imagine learning skills that will make you able to stand alone, not merely more employable. Imagine learning how to care for yourself and your family, not how to pay others to do this. Imagine learning how to think for yourself and analyze what the experts tell you, instead of being forced to react to them on gut instinct. Imagine being in charge of your own life, instead of feeling as though it is crawling along on automatic along a route you never chose.

That is crazy goal of Genus Rex Enterprises Inc.

Make self-reliance skills widespread. Enable the current generation through enhancing what they are able to do. Because we believe that with this, we be able and proud to stand up and make the world a better place.

It could happen here...

I've been watching in horror as Japan experiences everything but Godzilla himself. And I've been listening and noticing that what everyone seems to be wondering is could it happen here?

It could. It could and it will. The earthquake at least. And probably the tsunami. It's been three hundred and ten years since our last nine point earthquake. We're due. It might not come till we're all dead, but it will come. And it might come in in your lifetime.

Are you ready? Japan thought it was ready. So did New Zealand and probably Haiti.

And it isn't just earthquakes. Look at the flooding in Australia and Pakistan. Look at New Orleans after Katrina. The dice have no memory. Lucky today does not mean lucky tomorrow.

So... are you ready?