Monday Meditations: Born of Clay

You create with clay, not with sky. Past the sky is the void of space. Why are you looking to the void to find your inspirations and your gods?

Remember your connection to clay that made you, the clay to which your ancestors returned. You are made from the grave dust of a thousand generations before yours. You are a short span of time that eats through life and then is in turn eaten.

A creature of earth, who are tied to the ground you live upon and supported by it. Fear for the future when you eat from the land of another without giving earth back to that land in thanks. This is unsustainable, the center does not hold.

Give thanks to the Earth. Give thanks to Ancestors. Pray to your descendants- to our unborn elders- for you will leave the world to them one day. Death is the return to earth, the becoming of earth that will nourish your descendants. Give yourself willingly to the soil and protect the soil and the health of the soil- for when you do, you protect both your ancestors: who are in the soil, and your descendants: who will be raised by the soil.

The soil is a fortune teller than tells us the future of those who live upon it. The soil is a records keeper that tells the history of those who lived upon it in days past. To take from the soil and not give back, to overwork the soil and not re-nourish it, these things are crimes against tomorrow's children.

Death is not the end of time on earth, not a cutting short. Death is a return to the earth so that you can do your part for the next generation. Death is an accounting for how you have treated the land you lived on. Do not die within a box, leave your nutrients to the earth. If you do this, the earth will feed your children and their children and on into generations unseen.

In the clay beneath your feet will you create your legacy. From the clay beneath your feet will you be judged by your descendants.

The Schedule

So as I plan this crazy idea, I know that I will need to keep a ridiculously strict writing schedule. Several people close to me have already doubted my ability to keep it up consistently. So I will clearly need a method of keeping track of how on schedule I am so that if I fall behind I now how much I need to do in order to catch up.

I feel as though I will need to plan this like a movie shooting script. I will have to know before each day, what is required of me to reach the next stage in the story.

I am going to keep a widget or gadget or something similar on top of the page to show what the current word count and where I should be based on how far into the year we are at any time.

The plan is to start with the New Year, like a resolution, only hopefully more successful.

FAQs ... or "What the Hell is Wrong with you?"

Why are you doing this?
Because I'm a mad fool with something to say, and daft enough to think I might pull this off.

Why does it need to be this long?
The length started as a mental challenge. How much would I write in a year, if I wrote every day? Then that musing prompted me to wonder if I had any idea that needed that much text to properly explain. When I found an idea I'd been struggling with for years that did require such length, and might even need more, I realized I owed it to myself to attempt the impossible.

Why the one year deadline?
Because I know myself well enough to know that if I don't set some stupid audacious goal, I won't be fired up enough to work at it. I may fail to make my deadline, but attempting will push me better than having no deadline.

This is an exercise in vanity.
It won't be art will it?
It is absolutely an exercise in bravado, and yes, probably vanity as well. Wouldn't you want to have an achievement by your name like 'wrote the world's longest novel'? And unlike an achievement such as 'spent the most time in the Amazon river on a pogo stick', this one might impress people. Does that mean it won't be art? It might, but I hope to achieve something truly artistic here. In fact, the novel itself will hopefully be a comment on the nature of story itself- but that will come done to how well I plan and how well I write.

Why release the novel into the Public Domain?
Two reasons: one noble one selfish. If the books is public domain, anyone can publish it without permission, and the Guinness Book of World Records only recognizes published (not self-published) works for inclusion. Second, since the novel I will writing is an mythopoeic exercise in story and culture, I want people to be able to play with it and build on it. In the public domain, I have literally given it to everyone, and nobody (including) myself can claim the final say on how its used or what it means. I want this novel to have a rejuvenating effect on our cultural mythology, and to be a set of building blocks and a tool chest that others can use. I can't very well do that if I horde control of the work to myself.

So is this just a first draft then?
Yes, but since I am publishing it. Then its also a published work and a finished product. Although I don't imagine that any myth is finished and I will like Stephen King and George Lucas, be rebuilding this product for quite some time. But the cool thing is, if you like this story in any version, is that it is already in the public domain and you may keep or distribute or work on or with any part of this story for any reason. You don't even have to give me credit or let me know, although both would be awesome and appreciated.

What if it sucks?
Then I tried. I will have learned a lot, improved a lot, and will do better next time.

Current Project: The Song of Seven

I am listing this as the current project. The future project would more accurately describe the project however. I have realized that writing 3781 words per day, a writer could write a novel of 1.38 million words in length in a single year. This would beat the current Guinness World Record of the the longest novel, currently held by Marcel Proust's 'À la recherche du temps perdu.'

The resulting novel's word count would also be 1/1000th the age of the known universe in years. To do this, a novelist would need to write roughly 4000 words per day. Anthony Trollope wrote 3000 per day, and did so consistently through his whole life. Many writers of the Victorian era, such as Charles Dickens, wrote enormous masterpieces such as 'Bleak House' in a serialized fashion in Newspapers. This serialized method forced the authors to write the story in real time, leaving them unable to go back and edit or rework.

To perform such a feat in a serial fashion, the author would need to plan out their plot and their structure well in advance. The following is especially true if the author plans (as I do) to use multiple interweaving plots to tell a story that transcends any one plot.

So that is my plan. I will write a novel that will break the Guinness World Record for the longest novel (somebody other than the author must also have published the work, but that can be addressed later).  I will write this novel in 2000 word installments, twice per day. I will post the progress as I write it, serializing it as Charles Dickens serialized 'Bleak House'. I also release the whole work into the public domain.

I am planning my project now. I am not ready to begin writing. I do not know whether I can do this. But whether I succeed or fail, the attempt should prove magnificent.
 

Monday Meditations: What is the fear that drives domesticated man?

What is the fear that drives domesticated man? Where does his terror lie? What drives him to lock his dead away from their nurturing mother in the final sleep? What drives him to coat the comfortable ground with stone and steel until the earth sleeps so far below that it cannot be felt? What drives him to insulate himself within buildings so much larger than are needed? What drives him to interact with the world and with other domesticated humans through ever more convoluted intermediaries?

(domesticate man can safely be referred to as male- for his politics explicitly marginalize the female as well as the minority and the servant and the slave)

Let us examine the words in common across differing views. Lets us look for the assumptions not questioned, but held by all.

"That he may have dominion over . . . every creature." 

Genesis 1:26

"There is not, within the wide range of philosophical inquiry, a subject more intensely interesting to all who thirst for knowledge, than the precise nature of that important mental superiority which elevates the human being above the brute, and enables man alone to assume the sway wheresoever he plants his dwelling; and to induce changes in the constitution and adaptions (sic) of other species, which have no parallel where his interference is unknown."

by Edward Blyth 

(The Magazine of Natural History   Vol. 10. 1837)

"If it can be shown possible for man to have descended or ascended from the lower animals, it will require enormous additional evidence to show that such descent is probable; and still much more to make it certain. "

by Rev William A. William 

(The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproven in 50 Arguments, 1925)

"Homo heidelbergensis was developing a complex mind - once this boundary had been reached, there was no turning back."

The First Europeans, British Broadcast Corporation 2010

"The more disciplined behavior (behavior determined by intellect) displayed by the individual, the more human he becomes. The less disciplined behavior (behavior in response to instinct) displayed by an individual, the more he becomes like the lower order animals that are lacking in intellect and are driven by their instincts. "

The Evolution of the Human, www.onelife.com

The assumptions should be clear.

Domesticated man does not consider himself an animal. Or, if forced to admit that indeed he is an animal in the technical sense, then domesticated man maintains that he is so different- so above- other animals so as to render the argument moot. 

I would like to use a different quote to draw attention to the second assumption in the above quotations.

"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

Douglas Adams

Why is domesticated man afraid of being an animal? Why is domesticated man so driven to enforce his conception of order upon an already perfectly functioning and ordered world? What does this have to do with domesticated man's need to hide from the world he is seeking to re-order in his own image?

So many questions. So much fear.

From Fakelore to Makelore (Fixing a Stolen Term)

Fakelore refers to invent folklore, but in a way that presumes that inventing folklore is somehow unusual or spurious. Makelore is the same idea, but understands that all folklore is invented and serves a social cultural purpose and created.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakelore 

Makelore is incredibly important to memory and story and we should build our own personal and shared makelore in order to remember the stories that tell us who we are and who we want to be.

Cross Thinking

I don't read books one at a time. I read several books at once. I let these books have a conevrsation. What does this have to say to that? The books are normally not too similar, because that would be boring. I enjoy seeing the connections between books a little further a field.

What does Sudhir Venkatesh's "Gang Leader for a Day" have to say to A.J. Jacobs' "My Year of Living Biblically"? Quite a lot actually.

What does "Man's Search for Meaning" have to say that can enlighten "The Long Emergency"? More than you might think.

Currently I am reading "You are Now Less Dumb" and "The Five Stages of Collapse", and the result is enlightening. Reading a book about common errors in thinking and common methods of self deception while also reading a book that essentially points out that the modern international economy is a Ponzi scheme, allowed me to gain insight into the questions "How did we let this happen? And why is nobody sounding the alarm?"

Monday Meditations: Rotting Life and Decomposition Phobia

The domesticated human is afraid of death and more precisely- afraid of decomposition. Dead human bodies are sealed in boxes before they are allowed to enter the earth, safe now from every remixing with the land that birthed and sustained them, safe now from ever returning and being part of the next cycle of life. The domesticated human removes themselves from the landscape, from the eco-system. They take food, they take air and they take in minerals and nutrients, but never return them- as is the bargain life makes with itself. 

The domesticated human is a thief and a parasite. The domesticated humans takes and takes and does not give back. So the question arises- why not?

The domesticated human is afraid to die, afraid to rot, afraid to give back, afraid to return. Do they fear retribution, angry vengeance from the rest of the earthy community if they allow their body and perhaps their spirit to rejoin the earth from which it was composed? 

Do they fear something else?

Do they fear many other things?

The Key Questions

How do you know if you've mastered the three essential skill sets? Can you answer the following questions?

Critical Thinking

The Key Quest(ion): Can I evaluate the information presented to me effectively?

Self-Sufficiency

The Key Quest(ion): Can I provide myself with the food, water, shelter, and care necessary to survive here?

Self-Defense

The Key Quest(ion): Can I Effectively protect and defend myself from the social, mental, emotional and physical threats to my well being?

Practice Witchcraft

Empty heads make the loudest rattles

Every day you will see or hear or think of clever new ideas, and work-arounds and short cuts and innovations. And every day you will likely abandon them for fear of what the neighbors or the family or your coworkers will think. You can hear the whispers and the lectures before they begin.

And so you do nothing.

William Kamkwamba built a windmill from scrap and scavenged material using engineering manuals written not in his native language. His neighbors thought he was crazy, or hiding in the junk yard to smoke marijuana. When it worked, and he was able to light light bulbs and charge cell phones people were impressed, until the rains were late and people began accusing him of using witchcraft to steal the wind. William's windmill can irrigate his family's fields even if the rains don't come allowing his family to survive droughts.

Practice witchcraft.

What is the Question?

What is the problem?

The problem is that modern life holds people hostage by deliberately withholding the skillset and knowledge necessary to be self-sufficient, forcing people to ransom their labor and time in exchange for food and shelter.

People are not in a position to negotiate fairly and on equal footing.

People are stuck using majority rule to obtain any decent deals from those who control the use of force.

What is the solution?

People need the ability to walk away from a bad deal, and need the ability to exist without the deal. If you are not allowed to refuse to play, you cannot have agency.

We are setting our children up to be helpless in the face of adversity. We are training our children to be helpless when the economy goes bad, to be helpless when employees screw them over, to be helpless before the banker and the credit card company and the politician.

When a politician lies to our children, how will they cope when we have left them without the critical thinking skills to dissect the double talk?

When times get tough and companies downsize, how will your children manage when they have no job to bring in cash without the abilities to make their way without somebody to pay them?

When an employer bullies them or a spouse abuses them, how will your children defend themselves when you have taught them to always run back to a figure of authority rather than learn how to defend themselves in an appropriate manner?

It's more difficult to talk to a son or a daughter whom you've taught to catch your BS. It's more difficult to punish a son or daughter who doesn't depend upon you for spending money. It's more difficult to abuse or intimidate a son or a daughter whom you've taught to defend themselves from verbal, social, mental or even physical abuse.

We are setting out children up for failure because too many parents are afraid of the leverage that they would lose if they gave their children the real tools of adulthood. These parents are hobbling their children to make the job of parenting less taxing. Don't be those parents.

Every time a parent says "Because I said so." they fail as a parent. Not permanently of course, life is rarely that critical. But every time a parent resorts to authority with no other justification, they harm the development of their child and leave that child a little less able to cope with the ambiguity of adulthood.

We are attempting to rule our children, when we should be teaching them. It is a poor teacher whose students do not surpass them.

If you teach a fact, you are planting a twig. If you teach a skill, you are planting a seed.

Stolen Glory

They have stolen our glory. I've heard many people comment about how recent generations, typically meaning my generation and the ones that have come after my generation, are less motivated, less mature, somehow failing to live up to their potential like other previous generations (generally the generations of those making the snarky comments). This didn't make sense to me. Our biology hasn't changed in a hundred years, not enough to make a difference.

And therefore if there is a change, then it comes from the environment that we were raised in, culturally and physically and socially etc. In which case, if there is a problem with my generation and the successive generations after me, then it has been foisted upon us by the generations that raised us.

Now this is obviously a facile and shallow argument, and would be akin to arguing original sin. Every generation could blame the previous one all the way back to some lobe finned fish in our distant past.

But there is something interesting here. In the case of my generation and the generations born after me, somebody is actively sabotaging us. In the last century people have figured out how humans tick far better than ever in their history. Following World War Two: The Milgram Experiment showed how to motivate people to do morally reprehensible things they wouldn't normally do. Skinner and his box deconstructed how to training and motivate and shape the behavior of everything from pigeons to people. Marketers figured out how to convince us to buy things we didn't need. And video games took all of this and transformed itself into a hermetically sealed virtual world that would satisfy all of our needs. In the eight years since the Matrix depicted a virtual prison for humanity, huge swathes of humans have willingly chosen precisely those sorts of prisons. And within those prisons, designed by marketers and B.F. Skinner and Stanley Migram's disciples, humanity has diverted huge amounts of resources to virtual efforts and achievements and trials and triumphs that would previously have manifested in the real world.

They have stolen our glory.

https://thisisnotadvertising.wordpress.com/tag/museum-of-humanity/

So we must steal their tricks.

We must steal the sense of mission and the sense of epic scale. We must steal the sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves. We must steal the sense of contribution and show people how they are contributing to the end of the Ten Thousand years of Darkness.

Mana

Willpower is a fungible depletable resource. If we use willpower on one thing, we don't have it for a later thing until we replenish our store of willpower.

Willpower is key to our success in life.

But calling it willpower makes it easy to understand that it is like calories, something we need to replenish and something that we burn.

We need a new word. I propose: Mana.

Old Word Repurposed: Warrior

Warrior is an ambiguous term to most people.
But then so is adult. People become adults by trudging through time one second at a time, and accumulate additional privileges through no achievement or effort in most cases (earning a driver's license and graduating high school are the most arduous things that people must do to acquire the traditional trappings of adulthood).
You can become an adult in the modern world so easily that term is meaningless. Warrior is something that you become by doing something. Like being an athlete or a writer or a scientist or a scholar; being a warrior implies a doing in the word itself. If you claim to be an athlete, but look like Homer Simpson people will rightly question your claim. But to claim to be an adult, one need merely get older and have a piece of ID if you wish to enter a bar.
We use Warrior not to mean one who is violent, but one who is ready to face the world: capable of critical thought, able to be self-sufficient, and able to defend their self against opposing forces.

Monday Meditations: On Pacifism

I would only have to write this to a domesticated populace. Attack a bear at your peril- it WILL retaliate. Watch small children, if one transgresses the other- the injured party will inevitably respond. Watch the social life of wolves or chicken, the pecking order is not a metaphor.

Only the modern human is so domesticated, self-defense having become so alien, that not fighting back in the face of violence could be touted as a virtue.

Even the loyal and humble dog will snap at an abuser. Humans have domesticated animals precisely by breeding for docility, and in doing so the effectively breed out the ability for these animals to survive without human intervention.

What then, does that say about us and how those in power have shaped our modern domesticated human tendencies? If upset, we protest. That is to say, we beg those who have wronged us and ask that they make things better.

Violence is power, and the threat of violence is power. The rightness of the ability to meet oncoming violence with defensive violence is what underlies the laws allowing self-defense. Likewise the rightness of meeting oncoming violence with violence is what anyone who intervenes in an assault or a rape invokes. This is why they are lauded as heroes.

What does it say about us, when we vilify all uses of violence- including righteous ones? What does it say about the imbalance of power when we live in a society where the right violence is implicitly or explicitly granted to one group and not another? What do these things tell us about society?

Virtually every aristocracy in history has tried to limit the underclasses access to the means of violence. Swords or spears may only be wielded by certain groups. Certain elite are explicitly allowed to kill underclass members for any perceived slight. This imbalance is not an accident.

Some readers may be put off by my use of the word violence in a positive manner, rather than using a more polite and acceptable word like self-defense. Violence is a means of self-defense, as is charm, as is running, as is psychology and bribery, and so on. Self-defense is safely vague and politely allows the meek to talk around or about violence without ever having to address the honest nature of violence. This choice of words, unless used to include the whole array of self-defense possibilities, is cowardly.

And of course cowardice is good, meekness in the flock makes the sheep dog's duties easier- those chosen few allowed to wield the sword. But you only need a few sheepdogs. After all, you don't want sheep with sharp teeth in your flock.

Addiction

Have you ever thought about civilizations caffeine addiction? Have you ever considered the implications inherent in the fact that as a culture we must drug ourselves daily with stimulants in order to convince ourselves to participate in the collective game we all agree to play? One fifth of all Americans admit to dreading Mondays. 10 to 15% of people admit to having a episode of clinical depression in their lifetime. Just over 9% admit to using illicit drugs. Alcohol and Marijuana remain the most abused illicit drugs in the USA. One would almost think that we were trying to hide from the reality of our situation. I suspect the feeling is one of helplessness. Attempting to medicate our pain is not the approach of somebody who believes that their situation can be solved. By attempting to medicate our collective depression, anxiety, angst, malaise and more away; we are saying that we cannot remove the factoring that are causing or contributing to those feelings.

Something Missing

There is something missing from your life. A hole at the center of your being. You are less than you should be. You want more.

You are not crazy. The world around you is crazy. And you are awake. And so it's up to you.

There are Rules

Humans are bags of meat dancing a crazy dance due to the electric current running through them. They dance to a beat and a rhythm derived from their genes and their neural pathways and modified by experience and social pressures.

If you wish to imagine an immortal soul on top of this, be my guest. But any immortal soul present seems not to intervene with the working of the human body as described above, even including the workings of the human brain. If you wish to imagine that such a hypothetical soul does intervene in the workings of the human body including the brain, then again be my guest. However, you will be correct in guessing how people behave less often than those who do not make that assumption.

With all of that sobering information in hand, let's look at how humans interact.

The Breeding Instinct

All animals exist to survive long enough to breed. This is not a hypothesis, this is a provable fact. Humans are created and derived from their genetic code, they are servants to their genetic code and strongly limited by that genetic code. That genetic code is derived from the parents of any individual human. Humans that do not breed, remove their genetic code from the human experiment, as with all other animals. And so, the imperative to breed is wired into human beings more securely than anything else. You can argue against such assertions, but adultery, Playboy magazine, polygamy, Spring Break, the film industry, pretty much every major religion, the existence concubines, and more will prove you wrong.

We can argue, if we wish, than this genetic urge should be resisted, or controlled, reined in, or transmuted (to steal a phrase from Napoleon Hill). But this only proves the existence of the genetic imperative further. Humans, and in fact all animals and plants and fungi and so forth exist to breed. If they did not, they would not continue to the next generation, because breeding is a profoundly dangerous activity that actively impedes the success of the parent organisms. At the very least parents must spend calories producing the necessary extraneous parts, and the female must devote a certain amount of time to gestating the offspring, and many animals must devote significant time and energy to new creatures that cannot contribute to the welfare of the parents. Parenthood is a profoundly losing proposition, until you take into account that we are genetically wired to find it valuable and fulfilling. We are wired to get hormonal happiness hits for meeting these genetically wired breeding milestones. And we must account for this genetic influence if are to accurately account for, anticipate and structure human behavior.

The Tribal Mind

Humans are neurologically wired to be swayed by peer pressure. You can argue against this, but decades of psychological experimentation will prove you wrong. From Stanley Milgram to Dan Ariely to Philip Zimbardo; study after study and test after test have explained that the human mind is designed to work as part of a group, not as a lone individual. Humans are apes. Most apes are social beings. Whether for prey species or predator species, social behavior is a useful adaptation. Sociability is so useful it even arises in lions, members of the usually solitary feline species. Social species develop neural pathways that are optimized for social behavior. Compare the behvior of a pet cat to that of a pet dog. Dogs are naturally social animals, cats are not. And the need for social acceptance that dogs have is so well observed its practically an accepted punch line to jokes.

Humans have the same social punchline. We are easily influenced, easily coerced, because the cost of losing in-group status is frequently death by exile. And as such we need to take our easily duped neural programming into account if we are to accomplish things that are unpopular or unknown.

Humans are wired neurologically to think socially, and we are amongst the most intensely social species in history, with brains designed to memorize faces and to notice and retain friendship and relationship statuses for the group of which we are part. But our social instincts are still bounded by biological instincts. The law of 150 is a documented general limit of the human mind to retain between 100 and 200 (generally 150) people and their related social connections clearly in mind. Beyond that number, people become strangers by biological necessity. And if you are a stranger, then the brain sees you as an other. And in the world of the tribe, the other is less than human.

If this sounds xenophobic, that's because it is. Nothing competes against an individual animal so strongly as a member of its own species, because no other species wants the same types of food, the same types of territory and dens, the same types of mates. And for social species, the only members of the species that are generally safe are those of the in group, the tribe. And so when the human brain hits its biolgical limit of 150 in this new global village it begins to strain under the new requirements of universal cooperation expected of it. two hundred throusand years of human evolution and millions of years of evolution before that has shaped the human mind to see those not in the in-group as less than human. There is a reason so many tribal people's names for their tribe translates directly as "the People". They are people, other humans are not. This isn't evil, although it may feel that way at first blush. Tribes that didn't operate this way may have existed, but they couldn't compete effectively for resources and so they no longer exist.

For the first one hundred and ninety thousand years of human evolution, the tribe engaged in social adaptation and refinement to optimize how the tribe worked related to how the human brain thought. For the last ten thousand years however, we have engaged in a massive social experiment that is unlike anything we encoutered in the previous 2 million years before, and our minds are not adapted to this new social experiment. We have attempted to mandate a change in social behvior, but the human brain has limits and unless we take those into account we will continue to get results other than what we want.

Humans, as we previously noted, compete most strongly with other humans. And in order to breed, humans must survive to maturity. Further, in order for an individual human's genes to survive in the body of their offspring, the offspring must survive. As such, humans and human groups that are better at surviving in the long term tend to continue passing their genes from generation to generation longer than those that do not look at survival as a group activity.

As such, the instinct for survival is deeply rooted in humans, but so too (in an apparent paradox) is the instinct for cooperation. prior to this modern experiment, huamn social groups balanced these instincts well and made humans one of the most broadly successful species on the planet, existing in nearly every avaiable ecosytem and on every continent save Antarctica.

Conclusions

Humans are the sum of their biological systems, their personal experience, and their social environment. And for nearly two hundred thousand years our social sturcture was built to work with and optimize our biological inheritance.

If we are to maximize what we can accomplish, we must do this again.

The Future

I want to talk to you today and I want to let you know that you are the most important generation in history. And that because of that, history will remember people like you and me as history's greatest villains. The world is in danger on multiple levels.

The evidence has been obvious for years. But only now are people starting to accept the evidence in large numbers. As a result, this generation- you and I will be blamed for the collapse that is likely coming. This is not fair, but this is how it is.

The previous generation- your parents and mine- will claim ignorance. They will say that the signs weren't clear. They are lying, of course, to save their guilty souls. The signs were clear. Our parents simply stuck their heads into the sand and passed the buck to us.  Well, unfortunately for us- the buck seems to have stopped here. Our parents are busy playing denial or pass the blame or both. So we are all that's left.

And based on our performance so far- history will remember us as villains and cowards- as world breakers. In the time it has taken to say this. Another species is likely extinct, 15 will be extinct by the end of this hour, over 300 by the end of the day. Between 300 and 600 acres of rain forest will have been deforested permanently. Almost 300 people will have been born, onto a planet whose population has gone from 1.5 billion to 6.7 billion is roughly 100 years.

Species extinction, deforestation and associated ecosystem destruction, overpopulation.

Why do we allow this?

Because its too big? Because we need to make a living? Because we have bills to pay and assignments to hand in? Because time spent saving the world means an F in biology or not paying the cable bill?

How dare we.

"Of Course, these are critical services, but energy's role in our lives is actually more fundamental, essential, and subtle. We extract energy from our environment to create order out of disorder and complexity out of simplicity. Put simply, societies with access to lots of energy are generally more adaptive, resilient, and better at solving problems."

(The Upside of Down, by Thomas Homer-Dixon, page 37)

A Formal Objection


The paragraph above exemplifies nearly everything destructive and self-defeating about our civilization. It articulates near perfectly almost the whole of the Industrialized Nation's philosophy.

"We extract energy from our environment to create order out of disorder..."

Let us start with this passage. It is, just to start, patently untrue. This statement implies that the natural world lies in disorder without us civilized humans. That the water cycle, and erosion and plate tectonics are disordered and without pattern. That natural selection and macro-evolution are just random events. That ecosystems are simply random collections of animals and plants. The ignorance in this statement is simply astounding.

The second half of the sentence is even worse however.

"...and complexity out of simplicity."

Tribal cultures have an incredible level of order- just to limit ourselves to humans for the moment. Pretending that there is a higher level of complexity in civilized society fails to take into account all the myriad of nuances of tribal society.

Beyond human affairs however, the passage says implicitly and explicitly that what civilized humans make is more complex than a leaf of lettuce or a grain of millet and the accompanying plant that produced it, and the accompanying ecosystem, food web/food chain that made that plant possible- tying together thousands of species and even more apparently inanimate forces such as the wind and the nitrogen cycle.

The arrogance in this statement, arrogance that is left as a premise and not even examined by its author, is almost beyond belief. Or at least, the arrogance would be beyond belief if it did not come from a culture with a ten thousand year history of such arrogance.

The next sentence is not as bad, but it has within it one of the key miss-assumptions of civilized humanity.

"We often use this order and complexity, in turn, to help us solve the problems we face- for instance, to shelter ourselves from our harsh environment and to protect ourselves from attack."

By assuming that the world is harsh, everything becomes an enemy or an attack. This basic belief in a hostile wilderness (the wilderness itself being an invention of civilized humanity) is what allows us to drive all species before us and destroy them whenever they resist or simply stand in the way of our expansion.

"Put simply, societies with access to lots of energy are generally more adaptive, resilient, and better at solving problems."

This statement is partially true on the surface. Such societies are rarely more adaptive and just as rarely better at solving problems. They don't need to be either, because they can simply pour energy into the problem. Much in the way a rich person can simply spend money to make most problems go away.

And this does not make the rich person more adaptive. They pay other people to be adaptive. All of this does make the society more resilient however- at least temporarily. The weakness of this statement is that such societies are thus dependent upon a mass of cheap and readily available energy.

In other words, such societies are addicted to energy. They are slaves to cheap fuel and act like junkies when they need another 'hit' of cheap energy to keep their economies and the accompanying systems running.

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.

-Edmund Burke

Another Path?

Instead of looking at the world around us as both a dangerous wild place and also as a giant piggy bank we can take as much from as we like, we should instead look at the world as a partner.

The world is not alien. We have made ourselves very alien, but the earth is not alien at all. The earth is our home and our parent and our partner in our continued existence.

We need to treat it like an equal. Take what we need, but never again become so gluttonously greedy. Give back to the earth when we take from it. Treat it, and by association ourselves and our children, with respect.

This lifestyle will necessitate adaptive cultures, and resilient cultures, because your become more capable and adaptive and resilient when you cannot simply throw money/energy at a problem and attempt to over power it. In such cases you must be creative and capable and - obviously- better at solving problems.

Our problem is that all that -very limited- high energy fuel has made us very lazy; and wealth has taken the place of ingenuity. We need to regain our ingenuity and our resilience. And that starts with changing our premises.

The earth is not a wilderness, full of disorder and dangers. It is our home and our workshop and out school. We do not need more energy to be more adaptive and resilient. We need more ingenuity, more mental flexibility and more competence to be adaptive and resilient.

We need to seek enough, not more. We need to work with our partners on this planet- the animals, the green plants, the fungi, the bacteria. We have been at war with 1.5 million species, as well as the ecosystem that makes our continued survival possible, and it is a war we cannot win.

We need a whole new world view, and we need it now.

New Term: Year Zero

Year Zero is the time and process of becoming intersufficient. Named after the tradition in DC Comics of giving heroes a new back story by writing retrospective revisionist origin stories (retcons) and titling them 'Year One'; most famously 'Batman: Year One' by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. Grant Morrison pitched a reboot effort for the Batman movie franchise after the disaster that was 'Batman and Robin', by proposing a Batman origin story called 'Batman: Year Zero' that would focus on how Bruce Wayne became Batman rather than his early time as Batman. The title has recently been coopted for a new Batman story arc with similar aims.

And so with this pedigree, we coopt the idea of Year Zero as the period of becoming who we were meant to be, the period in which we become the heroes that the world needs.

It is tempting to use Matrix inspired terminology like the 'red pill', however simply waking up to what must be done is only a very small part. Bruce Wayne's training and discovery process that is inherent in the term Year Zero is far more accurate and more empowering.

Monday Meditations: The Path of life

The path of the free human, the path of the wild human is thus: from dependence to independence to Interdependence. To stop early is to never learn how to be human, and never learn how to properly be an animal, and how to properly live upon the earth. 

Dependence

You were born a child, helpless, in need of protection, instruction and nourishment. You were cared for and taught and fed and sheltered. This is the way of the child, and those of us who still cannot make our own way without the resources of others are here still, and thus still children.

Independence

Your mission, your task, your purpose as a child is to learn. You must learn to be an adult. To be an adult you must know how to think for yourself- to spot deceptions, to reason things through, to ponder, and think creatively. These are the marks of an adult- an active intellectual life. To be an adult you must be able provide for yourself, food, and shelter and clothing and tools that you will need. The mark of an adult it the ability to make or find what one needs to live alone.  To be an adult you must also be able defend yourself and your home. What good is the ability to grow food, if a man with a sword shows up each day to take your food from you and eat it himself? What good is the ability to think great thoughts if a man with a sword can force you to turn you mind to making him a more effective conqueror? Thus you must defend.

Interdependence

As essential as those three things are, they do not make you fully an adult yet. Until you have used your skills to contribute to your community and connect into that web of interdependence- teaching and providing willingly to continue the community into tomorrow, you are only an adolescent. The skills are essential, giving those skills back is what completes the transformation from child to adult.

Caveman Science Fiction

Caveman Science Fiction

Also by Aaron Diaz, from his webcommic Dresden Codak, this comic shows a strong counter argument to blind fear of the future. That does not make the comic's own arguments immune to a solid examination from somebody unafraid of bringing critical thinking to bear. Give it a read and think about what assumptions the author himself is making.

Stolen Word: Resillionaire

A Resillionaire: and individual with the ability to rebound despite the stress and adversity. This is something that we should all seek to be. But our willpower, our internal Mana, is a fungible and finite resource that we must manage in order to do this. In order to be able to remain resilient in times of adversity, we need to be confident in our abilities- to assess the chaotic world around us causing our adversity, to provide for ourselves despite the adversity without skillset, and the protect ourselves from those people who would take advantage of the adversity to take from others less able.

To be a resillionaire, you have to build up your internal assets rather than your financial assets.

New Word: Intersufficiency

Intersufficiency or intersufficient is a word built from the words interdependeny and self-sufficient. The word means to be self sufficient in order to be part of a healthy interdependent group. The premise is that you cannot contribute properly to the group and the group cannot function in a healthy manner unless all members are able to contribute sufficiently to make everyone feel as though the arrangement is fair. Intersufficiency can be seen a trait of both a group and an individual. An interusfficient group is one where the members are all self-sufficient enough without the group that all members are able to contribute without coercion. An intersufficient individual is one who is able to provide for themselves, but who is also able to apply those self-sufficiency skills for the benefit of the group.

On Being Buried Alive (Not like that!)

-From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"An earth lodge is a semi-subterranean building covered partially or completely with earth, best known from the Native American cultures of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. Most earth lodges are circular in construction with a dome-like roof, often with a central or slightly-offset smoke hole at the apex of the dome.[1] Earth lodges are well-known from the more-sedentary tribes of the Plains such as the Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara, but they have also been identified archaeologically among sites of the Mississippian culture in the Eastern United States."

  

If we look throughout the world, we see a lot of people digging themselves into the ground, despite the potential problems of dampness and water and (without electricity) a distinct lack of light. 

Plains Indians of the United States did this, as did tribes of the Mississippi, and the British Columbian Interior region. Germanic tribes and Scottish and Hebridean peoples used the Black House which was a similar double stone walled design. Early humans in South East Asia took refuge in caves, and earth mounds in England may possibly have been used to living quarters as much as burial grounds.

Why? After all, it is a lot of work to dig into the ground, and that ground is wet and damp. What benefit is derived from such buildings?

Quite a lot in fact.

• http://www.galfromdownunder.com/dan-price/
• http://www.surfersjournal.com/journal_entry/dan-price-and-his-hobbit-hole

The traditional dome shape of most earth lodges and black houses resists the cold brought by freezing wind through its low profile and resists earthquakes well due to its strong shape. Being built with thick walls and submerged in the earth keeps an earth lodge cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter without any added on the part of the occupant, due to the strong ambient temperature of the earth. The impact up the landscape if strong only in the early stages, after construction the land moves back in and re-greens the earth lodge quite nicely.

The primary challenge on the earth lodge is water. Water call enter and pool in the lodge if proper steps are not taken. Water can wear away at many standard building materials, such as wood (logs and beams) and thatch or similar. And all of this can render an earth lodge more temporary than a modern house might be. 

Additionally, being underground can lead to ventilation problems and poor air quality if the problems are not addressed. And finally, as previously mentioned, light can be an issue in an underground building, that may or may not have electricity.

The use of stone in the outer walls, preferably the double stone with a gravel inter lay that is commonly used in the Hebridean black houses would improve both the drainage and the longevity of the standard wooden framed earth lodge.

Adding a similar stone floor would reduce water that could collect there and would also allow for cob to be used on the inner walls. Cob, a natural earth type cement that is tremendously strong when dry, but susceptible to water damage would not be suited to the outer walls of a partially submerged home, but its strong load bearing ability and longevity when dry could be safely used as inner walls, with stone at the base and the top to act as a water barrier.

This leaves the roof as the point of contention. If modern waterproofing with plastic or another impermeable substance in unavailable, then the roof will likely be the most temporary part of the dwelling, and will need to be replaced on a semi-regular basis. The thickness of the roof will be a critical factor in keeping dry with materials that are not waterproof. Although the Scandanavians used birchbark underneath a grass covered sod roof to achieve impressive water proofing with a 30 year lifespan on the roof.

To deal with the ventilation and air quality a builder can add a solar chimney or similar passive heat exchange system that uses temperature change to drive air flow. This would also allow for more traditional materials to be used, since electricity or other active energy would not need to be added to the system for the system to function. 

Finally, how to address the lighting problem? South facing windows will catch the most natural light. White walls will defuse the light more evenly throughout the room. Reflective surfaces will bounce the light, allowing for more defusion at other points in the room. Light tubes can be added to good effect. After that the best option is going to be some sort of lantern variation.

Clothing design for Homesteads and Small Tribes

Material

Leather will likely be the word of the day. Sturdy and workable  into both clothing and armor, leather is easily available through  hunting most wild game in British Columbia. Plant fibers are significantly more difficult to cultivate and  most, like cotton, need warmer climates than we can provide.  Cedar bark can be woven into certain garments, such as hats in  the style of the Haida and Salish tribes.

  Animal fibers are more easily cultivated in this climate, but  sheep generally only provide wool and no other essentials of life  besides meat when they are finally butchered. Sheep produce milk,  but this is rarely drunk, although it makes excellent cheese.  Goats can produce cashmere- which is labor intensive and low  yield although very soft- and angora with grows quickly and is  easily harvested. Goats can also be used for dairy purposes and  for meat at the end of life, and also for land clearing purposes.  Angora rabbits will also produce angora fibers, but in smaller  amounts than angora goats and they do not provide dairy and have  no land clearing ability.

 

Thus the plan for clothing materials is as follows:

• Leather and fur from hunted game ranging from deer, elk and  moose to rabbits, hares, beavers and similar.
• Goatskin and Angora fiber from Goats. We will keep a mix of  fiber and dairy goats.
• Cedar bark strips from Cedar trees, spruce roots- and  Cattails  can also be used. These are used for hat weaving,
• Scavenged metal and hard plastic, these will be used for body  armor.
• Greenery and dry vegetation will be used for Ghillie cloaks.
• Wax to waterproof hats and shoulder pads will come from bees  kept by tribe.

Fashion Sense

Hats: We suggest stealing the hat design from the Haida, bark woven  conical hats that will shed water well in the Rainy coastal  weather, probably coated in beeswax to enhance the waterproofing. You may also employ a helmet version crafted out of water hardened  leather as well.

Cloaks: We also suggest using cloaks, probably shoulder pads made of leather  or fur to help shed water in the rain. In addition to a simple  cloak for protection from cold and rain, we recommend using a  Ghillie cloak covered in local flora as a hunting and war  camoflage

Pants: Leather pants, probably wrap pants held in place with a leather  thong, or native america style chaps will be the common type of  leg covering.

Shirts: Shirt should be loose leather tops with water hardened leather  plate brigandine over them in the summer, and angora and fur over  shirts in the winter.

Shoes: Mocassins ought be the most common footwear, with furs added for winter wear.

Coats: Overcoats can be made of various materials based on needs and availability.

Kilts and Skirts and Dresses: Kilts and Skirts and Dresses are possible during warmer summer months for cooling purposes. Various materials will be used for these.